Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/447

No. 4.] fundamental nature of the æsthetic senses are of major importance in the particular views yet to be put forth in this paper, we shall for expediency postpone further consideration of muscular activities till these views have been stated. Naturally the questions of fatigue, rest, ennui, freshness, and the like are postponed also.

There yet remains to us a perhaps all-important mass of undetermined sensations for lack of knowledge of them usually classed under 'common sensibility.' When we eat, when we are full, when too full, when hungry or thirsty, when freshly active or when resting, when feverish or sickly or chilly, when circulation or digestion is disturbed, — from all parts of the body, on obscure occasions, come a number of peculiar feelings. We have creeps, shivers, shudders, throbbings, flushings, stretchings, crazy-bone prickings, numbness, feelings of emptiness and void, teeth-on-edge,'the carriage-wheel's squeaking-scrape crawling through the whole nervous system, — we have all these sensations, some agreeable and most of them disagreeable, but none of which can be given good account of. We are inclined to believe that many of these involve processes fundamental to the physical basis of our emotions and of peculiar importance to our subject, but insight into them will be easier when happily we have found the key to our æsthetic organization in general. We will only note here that their lack of connection with all other sensations is hard to be reconciled with the doctrine of qualia.

A summary to this point of our very rough sketch is now in order. Nowhere have we found tangible evidence indicating that pleasures and pains are inseparable attributes of other senses or polar complements of each other. It may be urged that we have not looked for it, or sufficiently considered the arguments which have elsewhere been given as such. But we trust that what we have said has not been without bearing on this subject, and we shall return to the point later. The few certain facts we have been able to collate are all unmistakable evidence against the traditional views held of our subject. A considerable