Sensation

“ In order, therefore, to arrive at what really is sensation in an occurrence which, at first sight, seems to contain nothing else, we have to pare away all that is due to habit or expectation or interpretation. ”

“ How can there be any conscious life, natural or spiritual, without sensation? Sensation, and perception which is only a more interior sensation, are the states of the spirit itself in the act of recognizing the existence and qualities of things. ”

“ To us now, these organic reflexes seem but part and parcel of the special sensation whose tone they form, and which they accompany even when that sensation, so far as its mere intensity goes, might be deemed indifferent. ”

“ An object, by making an impression, produceth an emotion or passion, which again gives the mind a certain tone suited to it.
10. Perception and sensation are commonly reckoned synonymous terms, signifying the consciousness we have of objects; but, in accurate language, they are distinguished. The consciousness we have of external objects, is termed perception. Thus we are said to perceive a certain animal, a certain colour, sound, taste, smell, &c. The consciousness we have of pleasure or pain arising from external objects, is termed sensation. ”

“ We have now to ask what is involved in thinking that the sensation is. There is this involved in it, that I transcend or go beyond the sensation, and bring down a category or universal upon it, the category or universal called Being. But Being is an idea. Being is not identical or commensurate with my sensation, it embraces infinitely more. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It gave us a new sensation, a new and a higher notion of what the mind of man can put into, and bring out of, landscape painting; how its representative and suggestive truthfulness may be perfect, forming the material elements,—the body, as it were, of the picture,—while, at the same time, there may be superadded that fine sense of the indefinable relation of the visible world to mental emotion, which is its essence and vivifying soul. ”

“ By the Sensation, we mean the whole state of consciousness, under an actual or present impression of sense, as in looking at the moon, in listening to music, in tasting wine. By the Idea is meant the state of mind that remains after the sensible agent is withdrawn, or that may be afterwards recovered by the force of recollection. ”

“ He took a step forward in the theory of feeling, distinguishing by the term 'sensation' that which has objective reference, while 'feeling' referred to that "beyond which I know nothing except that it is a change in me." ”

“ Sensation, and the capacity of receiving it, being, according to this psychology, the only original quality or endowment of our nature; and sensation being always an expression either of pleasure or of pain, and the sensational capacity being a susceptibility of these feelings, it follows that pleasure and pain, and a susceptibility thereof, form originally the whole staple and essence of our constitution. ”

“ From a momentary sensation of sight, or sound, or touch we infer reality that far exceeds anything actually given to us by the sensation.
Thinking is questioning experience. When our attention is suddenly attracted by something—a flash of light, or a sound, or a twinge of pain—consciously or unconsciously we say to ourself, What is that? ”

“ We have also seen, and to the present purpose this is a point of great importance, that when the word desire is applied, to the cause of a sensation, or of an exemption from a sensation, it is employed in a figurative, or metaphorical, not in a direct sense. Few of our actions can be called pleasurable sensations ”

“ As regards Sensation, we are incessantly solicited by a variety of agencies, outward and inward. We may be roused into consciousness, through the eye, through the ear, through the touch, through the taste, through the smell, through the organic sensibilities; and all this at the same time with the rise of emotions or ideas through purely mental causes. Nay more; even under a single sense, we may have a plurality of distinguishable impressions. Sight is the greatest example. Hearing is little inferior; witness the complexity of a band of music, and the tumult of a stormy sea. ”

“ The sensation of fragrance, for example, is the consciousness of one mo [179] ment, as the remembrance of that sensation, or some other sensation, is, perhaps, the consciousness of the succeeding moment;—the mind, at every moment, existing in one precise state, which, as one state can be accurately denoted only by one precise name, or by names that are synonymous, not by names that are significant of total diversity. ”

“ We must here recall the distinction between feeling and sensation set forth in a former chapter. Feeling is cognition of effect upon self and gives rise to the emotions, while sensation is the cognition of the external cause of a sense impression and gives rise to intellection. ”

“ Every normal function of the body is attended with a pleasurable sensation. We enjoy eating, seeing, walking. Odors bring sensations which are agreeable, the sense of touch may give pleasure, and as we enjoy these sensations in fact, so we may enjoy them in memory or in imagination. We can recall the beauty of the rose, the perfume of the mignonette, the flavor of the orange, or we can imagine new combinations of these delights. We feel joy or grief [153] through reading vivid descriptions, or we can ourselves create imaginary scenes in which we are actors, who suffer or enjoy. ”

“ Whatever it is, we shall call it the material impression; remembering carefully, that it is not an impression upon the mind, but upon the body; and that it is no sensation, nor can resemble sensation, any more than figure or motion can resemble thought. ”

“ Everything which is apprehended as a sensation—such as colour, figure, hardness, and so forth—falls within the sentient sphere. To be a sensation, and to fall within the sphere of sense, are identical and convertible terms. ”

“ Behind the actual sensations, which are all we can tangibly grasp as they flash upon consciousness, he recognises a vast background of "permanent possibilities of sensation" out of which they seem to emerge. ”

“ Each sensation or perception possesses, in fact, along with its objective quality or its intellectual content, a sort of subjective coefficient, springing from the 182roots which it sends down into our being, and from the peculiar way in which it impresses, pleases or displeases, excites or subdues us, in a word, makes our whole nature vibrate. ”

“ Well, there’ll be no further reason for the ‘permanent possibility of sensation’ on my part. That’s your precious science’s best definition of life, I believe. It doesn’t appeal to one as alluring when the sensation promises to become—well, increasingly unpleasant. ”

“ In sensation, there is, as we have seen, a certain series,—the presence of the external body, whatever this may be in itself, independently of our perception,—the organic affection, whatever it may be, which attends the presence of this body,—and the affection of mind that is immediately subsequent to the organic affection. ”

“ The element that is common to them all, and which I have called ‘consciousness,’ really is consciousness. A sensation is, in reality, a case of ‘knowing’ or ‘being aware of’ or ‘experiencing’ something. When we know that the sensation of blue exists, the fact we know is that there exists an awareness of blue. ”

“ That the feelings of sight which we are capable of distinguishing from one another, are exceedingly numerous, is obvious from this, that it is by them we distinguish the infinite variety of visible objects. We have the sensation; the sensation suggests the object ”

“ The Place of Sensation in Writing.—The thing that it seems important to dwell upon here is that subjective sensations do go out from the brain and stimulate in a very real fashion the sensations that are naturally excited by external stimuli localizing themselves in the end organs of sense. ”

“ Ideas of pleasure and pain. There be other simple ideas which convey themselves into the mind by all the ways of sensation and reflection, viz. pleasure or delight, and its opposite, pain, or uneasiness ; power ; existence ”

“ What is called perception differs from sensation by the fact that the sensational ingredients bring up habitual associates--images and expectations of their usual correlates--all of which are subjectively indistinguishable from the sensation. ”

“ I dispose of all nature as I please; my heart wandering from object to object, approximates and unites with those that please it, is surrounded by charming images, and becomes intoxicated with delicious sensations. ”

“ From resistance, or the sensation produced when something 'resists our attempts to grasp it,' we get the 'outness.' Then perception is 'nothing more than the association of this complex notion with our other sensations—the notion of something extended and resisting, suggested by these sensations, when the suggestions themselves have previously arisen, and suggested in the same manner and on the same principle as any other associate feeling suggests any other associate feeling.' [486] The odour or colour of a rose recalls the sensation of touching and of resistance to our grasp. ”

“ Beauty expressed by the artist cannot awaken in us an emotion which is kinetic or a sensation which is purely physical. It awakens, or ought to awaken, or induces, or ought to induce, an esthetic stasis, an ideal pity or an ideal terror, a stasis called forth, prolonged, and at last dissolved by what I call the rhythm of beauty. ”

“ We think the sensations of seeing, hearing, and feeling come to us through the medium of these senses as outward, fleshly contrivances, which in some way communicate with the mind and bridge the gulf between the material and the mental. ”

“ The leading principle of the Inquiry is, that something extended, solid, and movable is directly manifested in our sensuous experiences, equally with the direct manifestations of our own sensations and other feelings when we are conscious of them; and also that we are obliged by common sense to regard extended, solid, and movable things as other than mere transitory sensation or idea. ”

“ From the way in which this experience is spoken of by those who have had it, it would appear to be an extremely definite and positive state of mind, coupled with a belief in the reality of its object quite as strong as any direct sensation ever gives. And yet no sensation seems to be connected with it at all. ”

“ But as soon as these two faculties have passed into action, and man has verified by his experience, through the medium of sensation, a determinate existence, and through the medium of consciousness its absolute existence, the two fundamental impulses exert their influence directly their object is given. The sensuous impulse is awakened with the experience of life—with the beginning of the individual ”

“ Absolute reality here bears the same relation to sensation as sensation bears to conception or imagination. Both are provisional or final termini, sensation being only the terminus at which the practical man habitually stops, [Pg 202] while the philosopher projects a ‘beyond’ in the shape of more absolute reality. ”

“ After sensations and images, we have to name among the phenomena of consciousness, the whole series of affective states—our pleasures and our pains, our joys and our griefs, our sentiments, our emotions, and our passions. ”

“ What other than "Physical Antecedents" excite those states of Consciousness which we call Sensations, and the Pleasure and Pain associated with them?
2. Does not all Psychological as well as Physiological probability point to the identity of the Sensorial instrumentality through which we become conscious (1) of a present Impression, and (2) of a remembered Sensation? ”

“ The difference may be clumsily illustrated by the example of a man feeling, seeing or hearing something that gives him a pleasurable sensation, or the reverse. He is conscious of the feeling or sensation, and that it is pleasurable or otherwise. ”

“ In reply to this we must immediately insist that æsthetic emotion, pure and simple, the pleasure given us by certain lines and masses, and combinations of colors and sounds, is an absolutely sensational experience, an optical or auricular feeling that is primary, and not due to the repercussion backwards of other sensations elsewhere consecutively aroused. ”

“ Thus the perception, which actually accompanies, and is annexed to any impression on the body, made by an external object, being distinct from all other modifications of thinking, furnishes the mind with a distinct idea which we call sensation ”

“ To feel is, in its two senses, either much more limited or much more general, being confined, in its restricted meaning, to the sensations of one organ, that of touch,—and as a more general word, being applicable to all the varieties of our consciousness, as much as to those particular varieties, which are immediately successive to the affections of our organs of sense. ”

“ Those perceptions, which enter with most force and violence, we may name impressions: and under this name I comprehend all our sensations, passions and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul. ”

“ Our enumeration commenced with Feelings. These we scrupulously distinguished from the objects which excite them, and from the organs by which they are, or may be supposed to be, conveyed. Feelings are of four sorts: Sensations, Thoughts, Emotions, and Volitions. What are called Perceptions are merely a particular case of Belief, and Belief is a kind of thought. Actions are merely volitions followed by an effect. ”