Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/442

 EECENT DISCUSSION ON THE MUSCULAE SENSE. 429 Nor is this distinction between the Ego taken per se and the Subject an idle subtilty of speculation. One important result at any rate it possesses, which is to serve as a basis or fundamental apercu, rendering possible the solution of that puzzling problem in psychology, the phenomenon of dual and even plural person- ality, one personality alternating with others in the conscious- ness of one and the same psychological individual ; since the Ego taken per se, the unity of and in consciousness, is plainly transfer- able to any train or trains of association which may happen, through disease or other causes, to have exclusive possession of the activities of the Subject at any one time. Finally, the Subject in psychology, whether it be immaterial soul (or mind) or material organism, when referred to the philosophical distinction of Subject and Object, belongs to the Object, not the Subject, half of that distinction. It is that object which is inferred as the proximate real condition of subjectivity, cogitatio, or consciousness. The term Object on the other hand has, so far as I can see, no technical meaning or definition in psychology at all ; supposing always that psychology keeps strictly to its proper province, which is that of investigating the genesis, government and behaviour of consciousness, as a function of an individual existent Subject, without trespassing on ques- tions of philosophy concerning the nature and reality of existents generally, as evidenced by consciousness. The uses to which it is most frequently put in psychology are supplied and satisfied by the term real condition of perceptions, thoughts, presentations, representations, sensations, emotions, and so on ; meaning those realities and real events, not included in the Subject, upon the interaction of which with the activities of the Subject correspond- ing states of the Subject's consciousness are conditioned to arise. KECENT DISCUSSION ON THE MUSCULAR SENSE. By W. LESLIE MACKENZIE. Recent discussion on the muscular sense involves four ques- tions : (1) Is there muscular sense at all, or sensibility specifically muscular ? (2) What is the nervous mechanism attending mus- cular feelings, and what relation has it to consciousness ? (3) In what parts of the central nervous system are muscular feelings represented ? (4) How do the answers to these questions affect the psychological antithesis of movement and sensation ? (1) Is there a Muscular Sense ? This is not a superfluous ques- tion. Dr. Ferrier many times in his last edition of Functions of the Brain speaks of the " so-called" muscular sense, meaning, as he elsewhere tells us, that such a " complex assemblage of im- pressions of different categories " has no claim to the title of " sense ". Prof. W. James and others hold a like view. Per-