The senses, their division and work : viewed physically and evolutionally / by Henry Muirhead.

  • Muirhead, Henry.
Date:
[1877]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The senses, their division and work : viewed physically and evolutionally / by Henry Muirhead. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    2/18 (page 319)
    ft rsi.it, !. in- ■encT nci tioi B It!* leu 'DCS stab- le*! ' ■M coachman, through the reins, imparts power into his horses, or a jorporal by his direction into his men. Then we have ganglia of a nore generalised character, to sway some of the minor ones, as sergeants over corporals, lieutenants over sergeants, captains over ieutenants, up to the commander or syndicate, who may be repre- sented by the cerebrum, controlling all more or less minutely as iccasion requires; attending more to the fighting department than o the commissariat, except in taking care that proper supplies are provided and delivered. And I hold that the energies of the erebrum are expended in receiving and digesting intelligence, lolding councils, and in exciting, directing, and controlling the nuscles—not in doing their work. From the intelligence we receive through the outpost department, ve all practically believe in the existence of something we call natter—something possessing possibilities of exciting sensation— nertia. This belief is a consequence of its acting on our organism. That is to say, what we believe of it are consequences of our brain- •eactions to its action—our brain-reactions which I have endeavoured •oughly to trace to the inertia of matter. We are conscious of this natter affecting us in at least six different classes of modes. We are conscious of alterations of Pressure, Temperature, Taste, We are also conscious of alterations of Sound, Colour, Odour. The exciting causes of the first three modes of acting come to us ■ A dirough what I am led to consider the more primal, the more 'undamental instrumentalities. I therefore call them palaic. And conceive it is on the lines of these older ones that the instru- ct mentalities of the latter three are developed—those capable of elegraphing to us of the physical excitors of sound, of colour, and fj ff odour. I therefore, for distinction’s sake, call these the neoteric tense-organs. These we do not find existing in the less differentiated oiods at present existing, so in all likelihood they were not developed n those first evolved at the dawn of life on earth. Again, holding matter to exist as ether, as molecules, and as masses, then, as a sort of cross-classification, it appears to me we may hold that we are acted on by matter moving Vol. X.—No. 2. Y