Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/64

PSYCHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES, (ill.) 51 imperfect analysis of the leading term consciousness. An action, according to Prof. Bain, is a muscular movement, actual or ideal (p. 342), by which, of course, we are to under- stand not a muscular movement as outwardly observed whether by the agent or by others, but "muscular conscious- ness, a series of modes of expended energy which the memory can retain, and which we can associate with other mental states" (p. 25). A movement then, psychologically regarded, is, Prof. Bain allows, a presentation or mental state admitting of conservation and association like any other. Again, voluntary actions, as we have seen, are all the actions of human beings in so far as impelled or guided by feelings, and feelings also are presentations or " mental states " admitting of conservation and association. Now what is "the link between feeling and action"? Apparently the feeling (p) impels or guides the human being (M or N), whereupon the human being is conscious either of (K) expending energy, or of (K) energy expended, in (k) mus- cular movement. It is to be noted that certain entirely new elements enter here. The feeling (p) as such is a " mental state"; but, to say nothing of the change of category which the attribution of the power to impel and even guide implies, the impulsion or guidance of the human being is a fact extraneous and additional to the mere presentation (p). Similarly, though less clearly, in the case of the resulting action. To admit of conservation and association a presenta- tion must have a certain individuality, such as pertains, e.g., to a movement of hand or eye or tongue : this has been denoted above by k. But no such individuality pertains to the expenditure of energy in producing Jc. 1 What then are we to say of this common fact of expenditure of energy pre- sent in all the several modes of our varying muscular con- sciousness? It is scarcely enough to say there is consciousness of energy expended (#'), implying thereby that such con- sciousness is a receptive state. So regarded K would go for nothing : there would be the presentation of k and no 1 There is sufficient analogy between the psychical and the physical to make it worth while to cite by way of illustration the following passage from Clerk Maxwell's admirable little tract, Matter and Motion : " We cannot identify a particular portion of energy or trace it through its trans- formations. It has no individual existence,' such as that which we attri- bute to particular portions of matter. The transactions of the material universe appear to be conducted, as it were, on a system of credit. Each transaction consists of the transfer of so much credit or energy from one body to another. . . . The energy so transferred does not retain any character by which it can be identified when it passes from one form to another" (Art. cix. " Energy not capable of Identification ").