Page:Nature and Life (1934).pdf/63

are the sense-perceptions. Sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch constitute a rough list of our major modes of perception through the senses. But there are an indefinite set of obscure bodily feelings which form a background of feeling with items occasionally flashing into prominence, The peculiarity of sense-perception is its dual character partly irrelevant to the body and partly referent to the body. In the case of sight, the irrelevance to the body is at its maximum. We look at the scenery, at a picture, or at an approaching cat on the road, as an external presentation given for our mental entertainment or mental anxiety. There it is, exposed to view. But, on reflection, we elicit the underlying experience that we were seeing with our eyes. Usually this fact is not in explicit consciousness at the moment of perception. The bodily reference is recessive, the visible presentation is dominant. In the other modes of sensation the body is