"sensations felt nowhere-we certainly have no memory of pains that were not felt somewhere-in that arena, in fact, which we come to call our body." The absence of remembrance of what took place soon after birth being, as I have so often observed, no proof that it did not happen, the proof offered is, "that no ingenuity whatever will get our pains into "our bodies, or give us knowledge of these bodies, unless we commence "with the admission that certain pains and pleasures of a physical order "are, as soon as they attain to any distinctness, felt in different parts of a certain arena, thus localising each other. Many writers describe "this localisation as an acquired perception. Now, no one doubts for a "moment that the accurate localisation of our sensations is acquired by "experience; but that experience, we maintain, would not be possible "were there not some vague localisation given us at once, by simultaneous sensations felt in different parts of our system. How else do we get our first idea of space or position?" To this last question I have already endeavoured to give an answer. With regard to the localisation, so far as it regards our external sensations, I see no difficulty in believing that it takes place altogether by the process to which, as the writer admits, we are indebted for our power of "accurate localisation." I am bit by an animal, or my skin is irritated at some point, and I am at first unable, as occasionally happens even now, to fix the exact place of the sensation. I move my hand along the surface until I find the place where the friction of the hand relieves the irritation, or where its contact increases the smart. I am now expressing these facts in the ordinary language of mankind, but I have sufficiently explained the sense which that language bears in my own doctrine. The view I have taken of the manner in which we obtain our cognition of place, does not rest on any previous localisation, even vague, of our sensations. Nor does the localising of a sensation, say in one of our limbs, amount to anything but attributing to the sensation an uniform and close conjunction, either synchronous or by immediate succession, with the group of sensations of various kinds which constitute my perception of the limb. In general we probably first discover that the sensation is connected with the limb, by perceiving that the exciting cause of the sensation is connected with it. Mr. Bain states the matter as follows:†"I can associate one pain with "the sight of my finger, another pain with the sight of my toe, "and a third with the position of my arm that determines the crown of my head. An infant at the outset knows not where to look for the cause of an irritation when anything touches it; by and by the child "observes a coincidence between a feeling and a pressure operating on 'some one part; whence a feeling in the hand is associated with the "sight of the hand, and so for other members.-When the feeling is more

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If distance and direction are explicable in the way I have pointed out, place and position follow by obvious consequence. If once it be admitted that impressions of touch can be cognised as at once simultaneous and separated by a series of muscular feelings, i.e. at once distant and simultaneous, and that this amounts to cognising them as in space; the position of these impressions among one another, which constitutes their place, will easily result from the different quantities of muscular sensation required for passing from one to the other, combined with the distinctive qualities of the muscular sensations dependent on what we call difference in the direction of the motion.

+ The Senses and the Intellect, pp. 397, 398 (2nd ed.)

"internal, as in the interior of the trunk, we have greater difficulty in "tracing the precise seat, often we are quite at a loss on the point. In "this case we have to trust to some indications that come to the surface, "or to the effect of superficial pressure on the deep parts. By getting a "blow on the ribs we come to connect feelings in the chest with the place "in our map of the body: we can thus make experiments on the deep"seated organs and learn the meaning of their indications. But the more "inaccessible the parts, the more uncertainty is there in assigning the "locality of their sensations." There are some difficulties, not yet completely resolved, respecting the localisation of our internal pains, for the solution of which we need more careful and intelligent observation of infants. But I think enough is known to show that the localisation of our sensations is not the starting point of our knowledge of place and position, but follows it. It is true that (as Dr. M'Cosh observes *) "if a child is wounded in the arm, it will not hold out its foot." But, before it has given evidence of having "any acquired perceptions," will it hold out its arm either? On the theory that the localisation is an acquired perception, it should do neither the one nor the other.t

Dr. M'Cosh has another argument to prove that we have an original power of localising our sensations, and, strange to say, it is the very one which is usually thought to be the strongest proof that the power is acquired: viz., the persistence of the association which makes us refer sensations to a limb, after the limb has been cut off. "Müller," says Dr. M'Cosh, "has collected a number of such cases," of which one will be a sufficient sample: "a student named Schmidts, from Aix, had his arm "amputated above the elbow thirteen years ago; he has never ceased to "have sensations as if in the fingers." It is a singular oversight in Dr. M'Cosh to adduce these facts as proof that we localise the sensation at the extremities of the nerves. He forgets that after the arm was cut off, the extremity of the nerve was in the stump, and that it is there, and not in the fingers, that, if his theory were true, the sensation ought to have been felt. The reference of it to the limb which was gone could only be a case of irresistible association. It does not directly negative the existence of an instinctive localisation; but it proves that, if there be any such, an acquired association can overpower it. So in respect to the following fact, also quoted from Müller:§ "When, in the restoration of a nose, a "flap of skin is turned down from the forehead and made to unite with "the stump of the nose, the new nose thus formed has, as long as the "isthmus of skin by which it maintains its original connections remains "undivided, the same sensations as if it were still on the forehead; in "other words, when the nose is touched, the patient feels the impression "in the forehead." But the nerve that conveys the impression no longer

*M'Cosh, p. 150.

Dr. M'Cosh says (same page) "It is hard to believe that the "instantaneous voluntary drawing back of a limb when wounded, and "the shrinking of the frame when boiling liquid is poured down the "throat, can proceed from an application of an observed law as to the "seat of sensations." The obvious solution of this difficulty is, that both the drawing back and the shrinking, when they take place in an extremely young infant, are purely automatic; a reflex action, produced, without the intervention of the will, by the irritation of the motor nerves: a solution quite conformable to physiology. $ P. 149.

P. 148.

terminates in the forehead; it terminates in the new nose; and according to Dr. M'Cosh's theory the sensation should be felt there, exactly as it is after the "isthmus of skin" has been divided, the old nervous connection cut off, and a new one gradually formed. Dr. M'Cosh's facts well nigh destroy his own theory; but they are such as, on the association theory, would certainly happen. The last, especially, is of great value to that theory, because it is one of the strongest instances which show that there is a distinctive "Quale" (as one of Dr. M'Cosh's German authorities calls it) belonging to the sensation conveyed by each one of the nerves, which hinders it from being confounded with the sensation conveyed by any other nerve, and enables it to form associations special to itself with the part of the body it serves, which, as we see, persist even after it has been taken away to serve another part.

Dr. M'Cosh, in his reply, denies that his facts conflict with his theory, for his theory is, that we intuitively localise our sensations, not where the nerves really terminate, but where they "normally" terminate; that is, not where the termination is, but where it ought to be. In other words, we, naturally and intuitively, feel our sensations in a place which, in the case of an amputated limb, is not only outside our body, but may be at a distance of one or two feet from it and this seat of sensation in the space outside our bodies follows us wherever we go. This is what Dr. M'Cosh would rather believe, than that the reference of the feeling to such a place is an illusion produced by association. In support of his opinion he refers to a case mentioned by Professor Valentin (along with three others of a similar character) in which a girl whose left hand was congenitally imperfect, said she had the internal sensation of a palm of the hand and five fingers (which she did not possess) as perfectly in her left hand as in her right. But what does this prove, except that she had the same sensations in the nerves of her left hand as in those of her right, which of course, therefore, carried the same association. Dr. M'Cosh should show a case in which sensations were referred to non-existent fingers when there were no real fingers to suggest the notion.

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According to Dr. M'Cosh, the reference of sensations to a lost limb contradicts not his but the association theory; since the lapse of years after the loss of the limb would be sufficient to destroy the old association. And this, in the great majority of cases, it probably does. But it is a frequent experience that a sensation exactly like one we have formerly felt, and like nothing else, revives even after many years a long forgotten remembrance. Again, Dr. M'Cosh says that in the case of the new nose, the affection, according to the association theory, "should have been felt in "the forehead, not till the isthmus was cut, but till the old association was 'gone; and this," according to me, "might not have been for twenty "years." This overlooks an important feature in the case. When not only the old nervous connection has been cut off, but a new one formed, between the new nose and the nervous trunk which connected the old nose with the brain, the sensations become identical with those which were referred to the old nose when it existed; and the reference of them to the nose is thus supported by as old and strong an asssociation as the previous reference of them to the forehead; with the difference that while every day helps to dissolve the one association, every day strengthens and rivets the other.

The only further case referred to by Dr. M'Cosh, is one mentioned by Schopenhauer on the authority of Frorieps; that of "Eva Lauk, an Estho

*

* Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, ed. 1844, vol. ii. p. 40.

"nian girl, fourteen years old, born without arms or legs, but who, according to her mother, had developed herself intellectually quite as rapidly as her "brothers and sisters, and without the use of limbs had reached a correct "judgment concerning the magnitude and distance of visible objects, quite "as quickly as they." This, unfortunately, is all the information which Schopenhauer gives on this interesting case. In Dr. M'Cosh's judgment, it entirely disproves the opinion "that a sweep of the arm or leg, considered merely as a group of sensations without extension," could give the idea of extension. He means, probably, that it proves that the idea can be acquired without any use of arms or legs. But we do not know of what nature the girl's idea of extension was. What we are told is, that she had notions of magnitude and distance, which she applied to objects with the same correctness as other people. But her notion of distance may have been only such as could be formed by the time expended in being carried to the spot; and her notion of magnitude may have been acquired when objects were in contact with her body-perhaps still by means of muscular feelings of pressure and motion. Above all, it must be remembered that the girl was surrounded by people possessing legs and arms, and had their aid in associating the discriminating sensations of sight with the facts, of touch and of the muscles, to which they correspond. Such assistance is a great help even to children who have the ordinary complement of legs and arms; they all must acquire the association much more quickly through the help given them by the acts and words of other people. It may be confidently assumed that Eva Lauk had this help, probably in more than usual measure, and did not find out wholly by herself that a greater mass of visual sensation indicated a greater mass of tactual sensation answering to it.

I believe I have noticed every plausible objection to Mr. Bain's and my own analysis of Extension, which has a sufficiently individual character to require an answer by itself. The subject is in need of further study before all its obscure corners will be completely lighted up; but this it can hardly fail to receive, now that highly competent thinkers are engaged in extending our knowledge of the Mind by the application of the Psychological Method, grounded on the Laws of Association.

CHAPTER XIV.

HOW SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND MR. MANSEL DISPOSE OF THE LAW OF INSEPARABLE ASSOCIATION.

It has been obvious in the preceding discussions, and is known to all who have studied the best masters of what I have called the Psychological, in opposition to the merely Introspective method of metaphysical enquiry, that the principal instrument employed by them for unlocking the deeper mysteries of mental science, is the Law of Inseparable Association. This law, which it would seem specially incumbent on the Intuitive school of metaphysicians to take into serious consideration, because it is the basis of the rival theory which they have to encounter at every point, and which it is necessary for them to refute first, as the condition of establishing their own, is not so much rejected as ignored by them. Reid and Stewart, who had met with it only in Hartley, thought it needless to take the trouble of understanding it. The best informed German and French philosophers are barely aware, if even aware, of its existence.* And in this country and age, in which it has been employed by thinkers of the highest order as the most potent of all instruments of psychological analysis, the opposite school usually dismiss it with a few sentences, so smoothly gliding over the surface of the subject, as to prove that

As lately as the year 1864 has been published the first work (I believe) in the French language, which recognises the Association Psychology in its modern developments: an able and instructive "Etude sur l'Association des Idées," by M. P. M. Mervoyer. Since then, the excellent introductory discourses prefixed by M. Cazelles to his translations from the English psychologists, and the remarkable work of M. Taine, "De l'Intelligence," have, it is to be hoped, permanently naturalised the Association Psychology among French thinkers and students.