[19] Rather, when we will to contract certain muscles, and the contraction takes place, but is not followed by the accustomed movement of the limb; what follows, instead, being a sensation of pressure, proportioned to the degree of the contraction. It is not the muscular contraction itself which is impeded by the resisting object: that contraction takes place: but the outward effect which it was the tendency, and perhaps the purpose, of the muscular contraction to produce, fails to be produced.—Ed.
[20] It is unnecessary to advert to the operation of the Will, (in the first instance at least,) in considering the feelings of muscular action. The will is the principal, but not the only, source of our activity. The mere spontaneous vigour of the system may put the muscles in motion. Likewise the muscular pleasure itself operates, by the fundamental law of the will, for its own continuance; a process not commonly called voluntary. In these circumstances, it seems advisable to consider and describe the consciousness of muscular exertion by itself, and without reference to the will.—B.
There is no feeling of our nature of more importance to us, than that of resistance. Of all our sensations, it is the most unintermitted; for, whether we sit, or lie, or stand, or walk, still the feeling of resistance is present to us. Every thing we touch, at the same time resists; and every thing we hear, see, taste, or smell, suggests the idea of something that resists. It is through the medium of resistance, that every act by which we subject to our use the objects and laws of nature, is performed. And, of the complex states of consciousness, which the philosophy of mind is called upon to explain, there is hardly one, in which the feeling or idea of resistance is not included.
It is partly owing to this combination of something 59 else with the muscular feeling, in all the states of consciousness to which we have given names, that it is so difficult to think of the mere muscular feeling by itself; that our notion of the muscular sensations is so indistinct and obscure; and that we can rather be said to have ideas of certain general states of muscular feeling, as of fatigue, or activity, composed of a great number of individual feelings, than of the individual feelings themselves.
8. As the feelings, or sensations which we have in the intestinal canal, are almost always mixed up indistinctly with other feelings, and, except in the cases of acute pain, are seldom taken notice of but as constituting general states, we hardly have the power of thinking of those sensations one by one; and, in consequence, can hardly be said to have ideas of them. They are important, as forming component parts of many complex ideas, which have great influence on our happiness. But to unfold the mystery of complex ideas, other parts of our mental process have yet to be explained.
There is a certain distressful feeling, called the feeling of bad health, which is considerably different in different cases, but in which sensations of the intestinal canal are almost always a material part.
Indigestion is the name of an idea, in which the feelings of the intestinal canal are mainly concerned.
Hunger, and thirst, are also names of ideas, which chiefly refer to sensations in the same part of our system.[21] [22]
[21] Thirst is a sensation of the fauces and of the stomach; it is also a feeling of the body generally, due to a deficiency of water in the blood. It is also caused by an excess of saline ingredients in the system. In like manner, a distinction is to be drawn between Inanition, from deficiency of nutritive material in the body, and Hunger, or the state of the stomach preparatory to the act of eating. The two states must in a great measure concur: yet they may be distinct.
The account of the organic states given in this chapter would have come in appropriately under Sensation—B.