Page:Habit.djvu/49

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HABIT
41

though I have scarcely once touched the balls during that period, I can still manage to read with ease while keeping three balls up.'" (Autobiography, p. 26.)[1]

We have called a, b, c, d, e, f, the antecedents of the successive muscular attractions, by the name of sensations. Some authors seem to deny that they are even this. If not even this, they can only be centripetal nerve-currents, not sufficient to arouse feeling, but sufficient to arouse motor response.[2] It may be at once admitted that they are not distinct volitions. The will, if any will be present, limits itself to a permission that they exert their motor effects. Dr. Carpenter writes:


"There may still be metaphysicians who

  1. Carpenter's 'Mental Physiology' (1874), pp. 217, 218.
  2. Von Hartmann devotes a chapter of his 'Philosophy of the Unconscious' (English translation, vol. i. p. 72) to proving that they must be both ideas and unconscious.