Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind

SECTION V. TOUCH.

In discoursing about the ORGAN, the SENSATIONS, and the OBJECTS, of touch, more vagueness has been admitted, than in the case of any of the other senses.

In fact, every sensation which could not properly be assigned to any other of the senses, has been allotted to the touch. The sensations classed, or rather jumbled together, under this head, form a kind of miscellany, wherein are included feelings totally unlike.

The ORGAN of TOUCH is diffused over the whole surface of the body, and reaches a certain way into the alimentary canal. Of food, as merely tangible, there is seldom a distinct sensation in the stomach, or any lower part of the channel, except towards the extremity. The stomach, however, is sensible to heat, and so is the whole of the alimentary canal, as far at least as any experiment is capable of being made. It may, indeed, be inferred, that we are insensible to the feelings of touch, throughout the intestinal canal, only from the habit of not attending to them.9

⁹ The surface of the sense of Touch properly so called is the skin, or common integument of the body, the interior of the mouth and the tongue, and the interior of the nose. There are common anatomical peculiarities in these organs; which distinguish them from the alimentary canal and all the other interior surfaces of the body. Moreover, although, in the alimentary canal, there is solid or liquid contact with a sensitive surface, the mode of exciting the sensitive nerves, and the resulting sensibility, are peculiar and distinct. The mode of action in touch is mechanical contact or pressure, mainly of solid and resisting bodies; in digestion, the nerves are affected through chemical and other processes—solution, absorption, assimilation, &c. In touch, there is the peculiar feeling known as hard contact, together with the varying discrimination of plurality of points. In digestion, when healthy, the feeling of contact is entirely absent.—B.

29 We have next to consider the OBJECT of TOUCH. Whatever yields resistance, and whatever is extended, figured, hot, or cold, we set down, in ordinary language, as objects of touch.

I shall show, when the necessary explanations have been afforded, that the idea of resistance, the idea of extension, and the idea of figure, include more than can be referred to the touch, as the ideas of visible figure and magnitude include more than can be referred to the eye. It has been long known, that many of the things, which the feeling by the eye seems to include, it only suggests. It is not less important to know, that the same is the case with the tactual feeling; that this also suggests various particulars which it has been supposed to comprehend.

In the present stage of our investigation, it is not expedient to push very far the inquiry, what it is, or is not, proper, to class as sensations of touch, because that can be settled with much greater advantage hereafter.

The sensations of heat and cold offer this advantage,—that being often felt without the accompaniment of 30 any thing visible or extended, which can be called an object, they can be more distinctly conceived as simple feelings, than most of our other sensations.10 They are feelings very different from the ordinary sensations of touch; and possibly the only reason for classing them with those sensations was, that the organ of them, like that of touch, is diffused over the whole body. We know not that the nerves appropriated to the sensations of heat and cold are the same with those which have the sensation of touch. If they be the same, they must at any rate be affected in a very different manner.

¹⁰ The sensations of heat and cold are, of all sensations, the most subjective. The reason is that they are least connected with definite muscular energies. The rise and fall of the temperature of the surrounding air may induce sensations wholly independent of our own movements; and to whatever extent such independence exists, there is a corresponding absence of objectivity. This independence, however, is still only partial, even in the case of heat and cold; in a great number, perhaps a majority, of instances, they depend upon our movements; as in changing our position with reference to a fire, in our clothing, and so on. It is the possibility of conceiving them in the pure subject character, and apart from object relations, that constitutes them simple feelings, in the acceptation of the text. Although not in an equal degree, the same is true of sensations of hearing, on which the author made a similar remark.—B.

To whatever class we may refer the sensations of heat and cold, in their moderate degrees, it seems that good reasons may be given for not ranking them with the sensations of touch, when they rise to the degree of pain. All those acute feelings which attend the disorganization, or tendency toward disorganization, 31 of the several parts of our frame, seem entirely distinct from the feelings of touch. Even in the case of cutting, or laceration, the mere touch of the knife or other instrument is one feeling, the pain of the cut, or laceration, another feeling, as much as, in the mouth, the touch of the sugar is one feeling, the sweetness of it another.

As we shall offer reasons hereafter to show, that the feelings of resistance, extension, and figure, are not feelings of touch, we should endeavour to conceive what feeling it is which remains when those feelings are taken away.

When we detach the feeling of resistance, we, of course, detach those of hardness and softness, roughness and smoothness, which are but different modifications of resistance. And when these, and the feelings of extension and figure, are detached, a very simple sensation seems to remain, the feeling which we have when something, without being seen, comes gently in contact with our skin, in such a way, that we cannot say whether it is hard or soft, rough or smooth, of what figure it is, or of what size. A sense of something present on the skin, and perhaps also on the interior parts of the body, taken purely by itself, seems alone the feeling of touch.

The feelings of this sense are mostly moderate, partaking very little of either pain or pleasure. This is the reason why the stronger feelings, which are connected with them, those of resistance, and extension, predominate in the groupe, and prevent attention to the sensations of touch. The sensations of touch operate as signs to introduce the ideas of resistance and extension, and are no more regarded.

32 The imperfection of the language which we employ, in speaking of this sense, deserves not less of our regard, than that of the language we employ, in speaking of our other senses.

We need distinct and appropriate names, for the organ, for the object, and for the sensation. We have no such name for any of them.

The word touch is made to stand for all the three. I speak of my touch, when I mean to denote my organ of touch. I speak also of my touch, when I mean to denote my sensation. And in some cases, speaking of the object, I call it touch. If I were to call a piece of fine and brilliant velvet a fine sight, another person might say, it is a fine touch as well as fine sight.11

¹¹ It is more true of the word touch, than of the names of our other senses, that it is occasionally employed to denote the organ of touch; because that organ, being the whole surface of the body, has not, like the organs of the special senses, a compact distinctive name. But it may be doubted if the word touch ever stands for the object of touch. If a person made use of the phrase in the text, “it is a fine touch as well as a fine sight,” he would probably be regarded as purchasing an epigrammatic turn of expression at the expense of some violence to language.—Ed.

In ordinary language, the word feeling is appropriated to this sense; though it has been found convenient, in philosophical discourse, to make the term generical, so as to include every modification of consciousness.3*

^3* “The word feeling, though in many cases we use it as synonymous to touching, has, however, a much more extensive signification, and is frequently employed to denote our internal, as well as our external, affections. We feel hunger and thirst, we feel joy and sorrow, we feel love and hatred.”—Ad. Smith, on the External Senses.—(Author’s Note.)

When I say that I feel the table, there is a considerable complexity of meaning. Dr. Reid, and his followers, maintain, that I have not one point of 33 consciousness only, but two; that I feel the sensation, and that I feel the table; that the sensation is one thing, the feeling of the table another. Expositions which will be given hereafter are necessary to the complete elucidation of what takes place. But the explanations which have been already afforded will enable us to state the facts with considerable clearness. In what is called feeling the table, my organ of touch, and an object of touch, in the appropriate position, are the antecedent; of this antecedent, sensation is the consequent. The expression, “I feel the table,” includes both the antecedent and the consequent. It does not mark the sensation alone; it marks the sensation, and, along with the sensation, its antecedent, namely, the organ, and its object in conjunction.

The phrase, sense of touch, or the word feeling, often synonymous, has the same complexity of meaning, which we have observed in the phrases, sense of hearing, sense of sight, and the rest of the senses.

When I say that I touch, or have the sense of touch, I mean to say, that I have a certain feeling, consequent upon a certain antecedent. The phrase, therefore, notes the sensation, and at the same time connotes4* the following things: 1st, the organ; 2dly, 34 the object of the organ; 3dly, the synchronous order of the organ and object; 4thly, the successive order of the sensation; the synchronous order being, as usual, the antecedent of the successive order.5* 12

^4* The use, which I shall make, of the term connotation, needs to be explained. There is a large class of words, which denote two things, both together; but the one perfectly distinguishable from the other. Of these two things, also, it is observable, that such words express the one, primarily, as it were; the other, in a way which may be called secondary. Thus, white, in the phrase white horse, denotes two things, the colour, and the horse; but it denotes the colour primarily, the horse secondarily. We shall find it very convenient, to say, therefore, that it notes the primary, connotes the secondary, signification.—(Author’s Note.) [Reasons will be assigned further on, why the words to connote and connotation had better be employed, not as here indicated, but in a different and more special sense.—ED.]

^5* The terms synchronous order, and successive order, will be fully explained hereafter, when any obscurity which may now seem to rest upon them will be removed; it may be useful at present to say, that, by synchronous order, is meant order in space, by successive order, order in time; the first, or order in space, being nothing but the placing or position of the objects at any given time; the second, or order in time, being nothing but the antecedence of the one, and the consequence of the other.—(Author’s Note.)

¹² Additional Observations on the Sense of Touch.—The author is right in drawing a distinction between Touch proper and the sensibility to Heat and Cold, which, though principally found in the skin, extends beyond the seat of tactile sensibility, as, for example, to the alimentary canal, and to the lungs. It is a debated point, whether the nerves of Touch are also the nerves of Heat and Cold; some persons contending for special nerves of Temperature. Such special nerves, however, have not been proved to exist.

The remark is also correct, that the feelings of temperature can be more easily attended to, as simple feelings, than the 35 feelings of touch proper. The reason is not precisely stated. It is that radiant heat may affect the surface of the body without occasioning resistance or movement, and is thus a purely passive sensibility; a subject-state without an object-accompaniment. When the degree of the sensation varies definitely with definite movements, it is treated as an object sensibility, or as pointing to the object world. Thus when we grow warmer as we move in one direction, and colder as we move in another, we no longer think of the feeling as a purely subject fact, but as having an object, or external embodiment.

It is also justly remarked in the text, that the severe sensations of heat, and cold, as well as those from laceration of the skin, may be properly classed with feelings of disorganization generally. At the same time, these painful feelings have a character varying with the organ affected; the fact of injury of tissue may be the same, but the feeling will not be the same, in the skin, the nostrils, the ear, the eye, the alimentary canal.

The description above given of the feeling that remains, when the different modifications of resistance are deducted, is scarcely adequate to represent the reality. Frequently it is true of them, that they ‘are mostly moderate, partaking very little of either pain or pleasure,’ but there are occasions when they rise into prominence and power. We may refer to the contact of the bedclothes at night, when the body is relieved from the tight and deadening embrace of the ordinary clothing. The case of greatest moment, however, is the contact of one human being or animal with another; such contact being the physical element in the tender as well as in the sexual affections. There is a combination of tactile sensibility and warmth in this instance, each counting for a part of the pleasure. The influence is well enough known as experienced among human beings; but the sphere of its operation in animals has been but imperfectly explored.

If we observe carefully the first movements of a new-born animal, a mammal for example, we find that the guiding and 36 controlling sensation of its first moments, is the contact with the mother. In that contact, it finds satisfaction and repose; in separation, it is in discomfort and disquiet. Its earliest volitions are to retain and to recover the soft warm touch of the maternal body. When it commences sucking, and has the sensation of nourishment, a new interest springs up, perhaps still more powerful in its attractions, and able to supersede the first, or at least to put it into a second place; yet, during the whole period of maternal dependence, the feeling of touch is a source of powerful sensibility both to the mother and to the offspring. Among animals born in litter, as pigs, kittens, &c., the embrace is equally acceptable between the fellow-progeny themselves. The sensual pleasure of this contact is the essence, the fact, of animal affection, parental and fraternal; and it is the germ, or foundation, and concomitant of tender affection in human beings. It is the experience of this agreeable contact that prepares the way for a still closer conjunction after the animal reaches puberty. Independent of, and antecedent to, that still more acute sensibility, there is a pleasure in the warm embrace of two animals, and they are ready to enter upon it, at all times when the other interests, as nourishment, exercise and repose, are not engrossing. The play of animals with one another clearly involves the pleasure of the embrace, even without sexuality; and it leads to the sexual encounter at the ripe moment.—B.

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