Licence: In copyright
Credit: The mind of man : a text-book of psychology / by Gustav Spiller. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![homogeneous, and it is very difficult to discover any details. Thus I observe feelings of the same simple nature throughout the length of the lower limbs, especially where they are crossed, as they sometimes are, in sitting. So the other portions of the body, more particularly where they ; touch an object or produce slight discomfort, give rise to feelings which ? are little differentiated. Ordinarily these do not develop; but now this | portion becomes stiff, now that becomes tired; now this position is un- | suitable, now that part is over-heated or too cool. For this reason, atten- ! tion to the body is intermittent. I I s 19.—The Sense Problem.* : Five senses are generally allowed for, to wit, sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. Inquirers have not been slow to add to this list. Among the additions proposed are the muscular sense, the temperature sense, the organic sense, the sense of equilibration, as also the pleasure-pain sense, and others. A strictly psychological investigation is not satisfied with these classifications; for they are based primarily on the circumstance that certain easily definable happenings go with certain sensations, e.g., the feel- ing of heat goes with frequently observed wax-melting weather, and that of cold with weather which sets the teeth chattering. Reasoning along this line, an event only needs to repeat itself often enough and it is assumed that i a nevr sense is created. Leaving aside, however, the sources of the sensa- tions, we come to the conclusion that there appears no good reason why all the sensory shocks we are liable to, with the provisional exception of ’ sight, hearing and smell, should not be regarded as one sense. Cold, heat, pains, organic and muscular feelings, may well be thrown together for ■ scientific purposes. So with the sense of contact. Touching a light object. of similar temperature to my hand, it soon becomes doubtful whether I am ^ touching anything at all, and, similarly, I believe I can feel the pencil 1 behind my ear, though I have removed it some time previously. The: various sensory systems connected with touch, such as contact, pressure,, softness, hardness, smoothness, roughness, are, therefore, essentially organic: sensations, only to be differentiated for practical purposes or for pur-- poses of restricted classification. The sense of smell falls into the same.* category of feelings as the other senses we have mentioned. It is so.i evident that we connect the sense of smell wdth our breathing through thee nostrils {Experiment] and that the reference to an object of sight or touchn outside the body, e.g., to a seen flower, is an after-thought. The sense of-i taste naturally forms no exception, for here also the thing tasted mayvi be ignored. Objective reference is, however, seemingly unavoidable ina thought when the sense of hearing is in question. I have not been ablei hitherto to localise my hearing in the ear or in any other portion of thee body, except when the sounds were shown to proceed from parts of the. * The known facts as regards the sensations are well marshalled in the second chapter, of KUlpe’s Psychologic, 1893.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21938982_0070.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
