Page:Mind and the Brain (1907).djvu/259

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reasons—that no sensation is awakened by the centrifugal current. As to the sensation of effort, it has been agreed to place it elsewhere. We put it among the centripetal sensations which are produced as the movement outlines itself, and which proceed from the contracted muscles, the stretched ligaments, and the frictional movements of the articulations. Effort would therefore form part of all the psychical phenomenology, which is the duplicate of those sensory currents which are centripetal in direction.

In the long run, I can see no sort of theoretical reason for subordinating the consciousness to the direction of the nerve current, and for supposing that the consciousness is aroused when this current is centripetal, and that it cannot follow the centrifugal current. But this point matters little. My hypothesis would fairly well explain why the motor current remains unconscious; it explains the affair by taking into consideration the nature of this current and not its direction. This current is a motor one because it is born in the central cells, because it is a discharge from these cells, and is of entirely nervous origin. Since it does not correspond with the perception of an object—the ever varying object—it is always the same by nature. It does not carry with it in its monotonous course the débris of an object, as does