Note note 1 — ANALYSIS OF THE PHENOMENA OF THE HUMAN MIND James Mill

1 Important points of Psychology are raised in classifying the senses, and in assigning the order of their exposition. The author justly animadverts on the insufficiency of the common enumeration of the Five Senses, and indicates two grand omissions—the Muscular Sensibilities, and the feelings associated with Digestion.

With regard to the first omission—the Muscular Feelings,—a further advance has been found requisite. Instead of adding these to the list, as a sixth sense, they are made a genus apart and put in contrast to the Sensations as commonly understood. They are the feelings of our ACTIVITY, of the Active side of our nature, and are in relation to the Motor or Outcarrying nerves of the body. The Sensations proper, such as Smell and Hearing, are the feelings of our RECEPTIVITY, or Passivity, and arise in connection with the Sentient, or Incarrying nerves. In the exercise of the senses, however, a muscular element is almost always combined. This is conspicuous in Touch, which is most frequently accompanied with movements of the hand, or other parts touched; it is also the case with Sight, there being six muscles constantly engaged in moving the eye-ball. There is least muscularity in Hearing and Smell, but in neither is it wholly absent. Thus in Hearing, there are certain small muscles for adjusting the tightness of the membrane of the tympanum; apart from which, there are movements of the head in conjunction with hearing. So in Smell; the sniffing action with the breath is muscular. Nevertheless, it is easy to separate, in all the senses, the passive and proper sensibility of the sense, (called by Hamilton the idiopathic sensibility) from the active accompaniment. We can make experiments upon passive touch, or pure contact; we can isolate in our consciousness the optical sensibility of the eye; we can eliminate activity from the ear; and we can attend to the sensations of smell in their pure passivity.

The best course of proceeding is to deal with Muscularity apart, in the first instance, and to give it the priority in the order of exposition. Chronologically it is an earlier fact of our being; we move before we feel; there is an inborn energy of action in the animal system, which goes out, as it were, and meets the objects of sensation. This is one reason of priority. Another is the fact just stated that movement accompanies all the senses, or is a common factor in sensation. To discuss its peculiar sensibility is thus a preparation for treating of the senses.

The importance of drawing a broad line between the active and the passive branches of our primary sensibilities is seen in various applications, but most especially in the problem of External Perception. The great distinction that this problem requires us to draw between the external and the internal sides of our being (so described by an imperfect metaphor) has its deepest foundation in the distinction between the sense of expended muscular energy and the feelings that are neither energy in themselves, nor vary definitely according to our energies. The qualities of things admitted on all hands to be qualities of the external (or object) world—called the Primary Qualities, Resistance and Extension,—are modes of our muscular energies; the qualities that do not of themselves suggest externality, or objectivity,—the secondary qualities, as Heat, Colour, &c.—are our passive sensibilities, and do not contain muscular energy. When these secondary qualities enter into definite connections with our movements, they are then referred to the external, or object world. Light and colour, when varying definitely with our various movements, as postures and actions, are from that circumstance referred to the external, or non-ego; without such connections they would be called internal or subjective states.

The contrasted terms ‘Object’ and ‘Subject’ are the least exceptionable for expressing the fundamental antithesis of consciousness and of existence. Matter and Mind, External and Internal, are the popular synonyms, but are less free from misleading suggestions. Extension is the Object fact by pre-eminence; Pleasure and Pain are the most marked phases of pure Subjectivity. Between the consciousness of extension and the consciousness of a pleasure there is the broadest line that can be drawn within the human experience; the broadest distinction in the whole universe of being. These then are the Object and Subject extremes; and, in the final analysis, the object extreme appears to be grounded on the feeling of expended muscular energy.

The second omission alluded to is the Digestive Sensibility, which ought undoubtedly to be included among sensations, having all the constituents of a sense; an object—the food; a sensitive organ—the stomach; and a characteristic form of sensibility or feeling. The author farther takes notice of ‘Sensations of Disorganization, or of the approach to Disorganization, in any part of the body,’ which too deserve to be reckoned among mental facts. He might farther have adverted to the acute and depressing feelings of the Lungs, in case of partial suffocation, with the exhilaration attending the relief from such a state, and the change from a close to a fresh atmosphere. Moreover, there are states of purely physical comfort, associated with a vigorous circulation, with healthy innervation, with the proper action of the skin; and feelings of discomfort and depression from the opposite states. A slight allusion to these various feelings occurs in chapter second towards the close.

These various modes of sensibility seem to be fitly grouped together under the common head of Sensations of Organic Life: their detail being arranged according to the several organs–viz.—the Alimentary Canal, Lungs, Circulation, Nervous System, &c. These would make a sixth Sense properly so called, or a department of passive sensibility.—B.