8 WILLIAM JAMES ON 



will pretend that its quality varies according as the right or the left arm, for example, 

 is used. 



So far then, we seem free to conclude that an anticipatory image of the sensorial 

 consequences of a mo'^ement, hard or easy, plus the fiat that these consequences 

 shall become actual, ought to be able to discharge directly the special movement 

 with which in our past experiences the particular consequences were combined as 

 effects. Furthermore, there is no introspective evidence whatever of the existence 

 of any intermediate feelings, possessing either qualitative or quantitative differences, 

 and accompanying the efferent discharge.-' 



Is there, notwithstanding, any circumstantial evidence ? At first sight, it appears 

 as if the circumstantial evidence in favor of efferent feelings were very strong. Wundt 

 says,^ that were our motor feelings of an afferent nature, " it ought to be expected 

 that they would increase and diminish with the amount of outer or inner work 

 actually effected in contraction. This, however, is not the case, but the strength 

 of the motor sensation is purely proportional to the strength of the impulse to 

 movement, which starts from the central organ innervating the motor nerves. This 

 may be proved by observations made by physicians in cases of morbid alteration in 

 the muscular effect. A patient whose arm or leg is half paralyzed, so that he can 

 only move the limb with great effort, has a distinct feeling of this effort : the limb 

 seems to him heavier than before, appearing as if weighted with lead ; he has, therefore, 

 a sense of more work effected than formerly, and yet the effected work is either 

 the same or even less. Only he must, to get even this effect, exert a stronger 

 innervation, a stronger motor impulse than formerly." 



In complete paralysis also, patients will be conscious of putting forth the greatest 

 exertion to move a limb which remains absolutely still upon the bed, and from which of 

 course no afferent muscular or other feelings can come.^ 



Dr. Perrier in his Functions of the Brain, (Am. Ed. pp. 222-4) disposes very easily of 

 this line of argument. He says : " It is necessary, however, to exclude movements 

 altogether before such an explanation [as Wundt' s] can be adopted. Now, though the 

 hemiplegic patient cannot move his paralyzed limb, though he is conscious of trying hard 



1 The various degrees of difficulty with which the fiat is have experienced if his muscles had naturally responded to 

 given form a complication of the utmost importance, reserved his volition. He will tell us rather that he has a sense only 

 for discussion further on. of his utter powerlessness, and that his volition is a mere 



■> Voriesungen iiber Menschen und Thierseele, Bd. i, p. "'f ^^ act,_ carrying with it no feelings of expended energy 



„„„ such as he is accustomed to experience when his muscles are 



in powerful action, and from which action and its consequen- 



8 In some instances we get an opposite result. Dr. H. ces alone, as I think, he can derive ajiy adequate notion of 



Charlton Bastian (British Medical Journal, 1869, p. 461, resistance.'' 



note) says: — Dr. J. J. Putnam has quite recently reported to me a case 



"Ask a man whose lower extremities are completely of this sort of only a few months standing. Many amputated 



paralyzed, whether, when he ineffectually wills to move patients who still feel their lost limbs are unable to make 



either of these limbs, he is conscious of an expenditure of any conscious effort to move them. One such case informs 



energy in any degree proportionate to that which he would me that he feels more able to will a distant table to move. 



