It is partly owing to this combination of something {59} else with
the muscular feeling, in all the states of consciousness to which we
have given names, that it is so difficult to think of the mere
muscular feeling by itself; that our notion of the muscular
sensations is so indistinct and obscure; and that we can rather be
said to have ideas of certain general states of muscular feeling, as
of fatigue, or activity, composed of a great number of individual
feelings, than of the individual feelings themselves.
8. As the feelings, or sensations which we have in the intestinal
canal, are almost always mixed up indistinctly with other feelings,
and, except in the cases of acute pain, are seldom taken notice of
but as constituting general states, we hardly have the power of
thinking of those sensations one by one; and, in consequence, can
hardly be said to have ideas of them. They are important, as forming
component parts of many complex ideas, which have great influence on
our happiness. But to unfold the mystery of complex ideas, other
parts of our mental process have yet to be explained.
There is a certain distressful feeling, called the feeling of bad
health, which is considerably different in different cases, but in
which sensations of the intestinal canal are almost always a
material part.
Indigestion is the name of an idea, in which the feelings of the
intestinal canal are mainly concerned.
Hunger, and thirst, are also names of ideas, which chiefly refer to
sensations in the same part of our system.[21] [22]
[Bain's footnote 21: Thirst is a sensation of the fauces and of the
stomach; it is also a feeling of the body generally, due to a
deficiency of water in the blood. It is also caused by an excess of
saline ingredients in the system. In like manner, a distinction is to
be drawn between Inanition, from deficiency of nutritive material in
the body, and Hunger, or the state of the stomach preparatory to the
act of eating. The two states must in a great measure concur: yet
they may be distinct.
The account of the organic states given in this chapter would have
come in appropriately under Sensation--_B._]