Note 456 — Chapter XXVI · [430]

I owe the interpretation in the text to my friend and former student, Mr. E. S. Drown, whom I set to observe the phenomenon before I had observed it myself. Concerning the vacillations in our interpretation of relative motion over retina and skin, see above, p. 173.

Herr Münsterberg gives additional reasons against the feeling of innervation, of which I will quote a couple. First, our ideas of movement are all faint ideas, resembling in this the copies of sensations in memory. Were they feelings of the outgoing discharge, they would be original states of consciousness, not copies; and ought by analogy to be vivid like other original states.—Second, our unstriped muscles yield no feelings in contracting, nor can they be contracted at will, differing thus in two peculiarities from the voluntary muscles. What more natural than to suppose that the two peculiarities hang together, and that the reason why we cannot contract our intestines, for example, at will, is, that we have no memory-images of how their contraction feels? Were the supposed innervation-feeling always the 'mental cue,' one doesn't see why we might not have it even where, as here, the contractions themselves are unfelt, and why it might not bring the contractions about. (Die Willenshandlung, pp 87-8.)