Note note 14 — ANALYSIS OF THE PHENOMENA OF THE HUMAN MIND James Mill

14 Organic Sensibilities.—The author did well to signalize these sensibilities, so powerful in their influence on human life. They are not confined to the side of pain. The same organs whose disorganization is connected with pain, are, in their healthy and vigorous working, more or less connected with pleasure. This is true not merely of the digestive functions, but of the respiration, the circulation, and others.

Nor is it difficult in their case to make up the full analogy of a sense, as having an Object, an Organ, and a characteristic Sensation. In digestion, the object is the food, the organ is the alimentary canal; in respiration, the object is the air, and the organ the lungs. If it be said that the air is an impalpable agent and not discovered to the mind by its mode of operating, so is heat, the object of an admitted sense.

The accurate classification of these feelings may not have much speculative interest, in Psychology, but it has a great practical interest in the diagnosis of disease. For want of subjective knowledge on the part of the patient, and of a well understood nomenclature of subjective symptoms, the discrimination of disease by the feelings is usually very rough.

The best mode of arranging these sensibilities seems to be to connect them with their organs, or seats—Muscular Tissue, Bones and Ligaments, Nerves, Heart and Circulation, Lungs, Alimentary Canal. The sensations of itching and tickling are modes of skin sensibility. Tickling is an effect not well understood, although some interesting observations have been made upon it.—B.