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Updated: June 19, 2025
This is an important law in physiology discovered by Müller two centuries ago, and consequences of a philosophical order are attached to it. The facts on which this law is based are these. It is observed that, if the sensory nerves are agitated by an excitant which remains constant, the sensations received by the patient differ according to the nerve affected.
In children almost any unexpected phenomenon, such as a sudden "booing" from behind a door, is attended by laughter, and in like manner the kinetic reaction produced by the innumerable threats of danger which are suddenly averted, a breach of the conventions, a sudden relief from acute nervous tension; a surprise indeed, any excitant to which there is no predetermined method of giving a physical response may be neutralized by the excitation of the mechanism of laughter.
Acting as stimuli, the impulses seem able to produce two distinct effects: first, to throw resting organs into action and to increase the activity of organs already at work; and second, to diminish the rate, or check entirely, the activity of organs. Impulses producing the first effect are called excitant impulses; those producing the second effect, inhibitory impulses.
Whence it has been concluded that the peculiar nature of the sensation felt depends much less on the nature of the excitant producing it than on that of the sensory organ which collects it, the nerve which propagates it, or the centre which receives it. It would perhaps be going a little too far to affirm that the external object has no kind of resemblance to the sensations it gives us.
The consciousness remains insensible to those nervous properties of the current which are so often repeated that they are annulled; it perceives, on the contrary, its variable and accidental properties which express the nature of the excitant.
The widow Mary, in her later years, made many pilgrimages to holy places and saintly persons, and among others to Agne, the recluse; but she would never be induced to visit Cyrenaica, whither she was frequently invited by her children and grandchildren; some more powerful excitant was needed to prompt her to face the discomforts of a journey.
When making the analysis of matter we impliedly admitted two propositions: first, that sensation is the tertium quid which is interposed between the excitant of our sensory nerves and ourselves; secondly, that the aggregate of our sensations is all we can know of the outer world, so that it is correct to define this last as the collection of our present, past, and possible sensations.
In developing our own standpoint, we note that of the outer world we are acquainted with nothing but our sensations: if we propound this limit, it is because many observations and experiments show that, between the external object and ourselves, there is but one intermediary, the nervous system, and that we only perceive the modifications which the external object, acting as an excitant, provokes in this system.
The widow Mary, in her later years, made many pilgrimages to holy places and saintly persons, and among others to Agne, the recluse; but she would never be induced to visit Cyrenaica, whither she was frequently invited by her children and grandchildren; some more powerful excitant was needed to prompt her to face the discomforts of a journey.
I was myself perhaps a more effective excitant; and at least to one old gentleman the spectacle of my successful struggles against sleep and I hope they were successful cheered the flight of time.
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