The brain as an organ of mind / by H. Charlton Bastian.

  • Bastian, H. Charlton.
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The brain as an organ of mind / by H. Charlton Bastian. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    723/740 (page 695)
    of its own outgoing energy.” The feeling of ‘ expended energy * by which we obtain our ideas of resistance and of an external world is not contained in, or an appanage of, the volitional act, “ but is derived through impressions emanating from the moving organs themselves.” Our perceptions of ‘ resistance ’ and of ‘ weight* are, in fact, “paiVly made up of tactile impressions, partly of passive sensations emanating from our muscles and joints, and of inferences founded upon these We experience certain feelings of pressure, combined with certain sensations in the muscles and in the joints, and we gradually come to associate certain combinations of these with the sensations produced by handling certain standard weights.” If the term ‘ muscular sense* is not to be applied to the passive sensibilities of muscle, then it must be restricted to mere ‘unconscious’ impressions, which may, perhaps, pass upwards from spinal motor centres to the brain by a special set of fibres (see p. 699, note). Such an endowment would, in that case, have to be regarded as “ an unconscious organic guide in the performance of voluntary movements,” and for the existence of some such guide, evidence is not altogether wanting. It would also, in all probability, supply the guiding sensations necessary during the continuance of automatic movements. If we attempt to classify the views (which have been above set forth or referred to in mere order of time), as to the modes by which we apprehend different degrees of resistance and weighty they may be ranged as follows;— 1. Estimation of Will-force (through a so-called ‘locomo- tive faculty ’) anterior to and independent of sensations from the moving members. Scaliger and Wundt. 2. By a “sense of expended energy” which is “a con- comitant of the outgoing current ”—that is, by a sensory revelation resulting from the activity of motor centres, nerves and muscles. (This view, which is allied to the last, differs from it by the added supposition, that the appreci- ation of weight or resistance requires more than the activity of the volitional centre, and can take place only on con dition that the motor incitation is not stopped by paralyzing or other lesions, but goes on to evoke the activity of the motor nerves and muscles with which the volitional centre Is in relation.) Bain. 3. By ingoing currents or impressions from the muscles, conveyed back to the volitional centres by the motor nerves themselves. (According to this view, motor centres and nerves would be coincidently or in immediately succes eive increments of time engaged with outgoing and with in going currents.) Lewet. Through Motor Centres.