10 
C. L. Herrick 
ery of the organism or by externalization of the object in the 
outside world. 
^^The finger resting on a rough surface affords a sensation of 
roughness referred to the object^ but a feeling of disagreeableness 
or pain referred to the self.^"' 
In common parlance no distinction is made. Experience is 
spoken of indiscriminately as sensation or feeling. And in fact 
they do not exist apart. But when this vague total sort of experi- 
ence comes to be cognitively controlled, that is, when it comes to 
be more precisely localized and referred, we call it sensation rather 
than feeling. The sensation does not lose all affective tone but 
it is subordinated to the cognitive function. 
In general it may be said that the prominence of the feeling element 
is in inverse ratio to the perfection of the localization.’’ Those sense 
spheres in Avhich localization is most pronounced are nearly or quite de- 
void of feeling.” “There is much reason to think that the feeling ele- 
ment is a function of the extent of the lateral propagation of the stim- 
ulus in the centers while the sensation is the conscious product of the 
reaction upon the specific center. In the healthy body all normal stim- 
uli as well as all responsive acts are calculated to produce pleasure, the 
amount of this enjoyment being dependent to a certain extent at least 
upon the range of irradiation or overflow of the excitement. Painful 
stimuli, on the other hand, are such as impose on the avenue of commu- 
nication or organ of reception a larger burden than it can carry, whether 
because the excitement itself is too intense or by reason of some reduction 
in the power of the organ. ” 
“The cognitive value of sensation, on the other hand, depends upon 
the series or System of brain centers called into play. No sensory im- 
pression passes directly from the organ of sense to the cortical center 
where it becomes conscious. Each sensation has an infra-cortical 
center where the materials from the sense organ are redistributed and 
combined with elements from the motor organs in the most complicated 
ways. ” “When a light falls on the eye and a definite change is produced 
in the pigment of the retina it must not be supposed that the resulting 
irritation of certain nervous end-organs is at once transmitted to the 
cortex to become the occasion of a sensation. On the contrary, the 
stimulus from the illuminated point passes to the coordinating appa- 
ratus in the quadrigemina where efferent currents arise and pass to the 
nuclei of the eye-muscle nerves and coordinating apparatus generally. 
After coordination the muscular effort involved in the coordinated act is 
registered; and this, with a variety of other acts below the level of con- 
sciousness, go together to the cortex and there affect the visual and other 
Journal of Comparative Neurology, vol. 4, December 1894, p. 226. 
