Then only at the stage of the build-up on a screen does the object enter into the mind of a perceiver as perception .sx If we accept the analogy of the television apparatus then here is mediation of the most absolute sort .sx Is it possible to reconcile this mediation with the sense of utter transparency which accompanies the act of 'seeing,' upon which Professors A. J. Ayer and Gilbert Ryle , and Mr. R. J. Hirst and Mr. M. Lean have placed such necessary emphasis ?sx Or in more general terms can we reconcile the body as instrumentality with the world as immediacy ?sx The problems which have so far proved so insoluble for perception are even more central to the discussion of the ro@5le of feeling in man's experience of himself and the world .sx For here again in a theory of prehension there would seem to be yet another scientific schema interposed between man and the world he directly experiences through perception , and , it could be argued , with less justification or profit .sx The questions come thick and fast .sx If there is a universal but unconscious 'feeling' in what sense is it 'knowledge ?sx ' If it is not 'knowledge' to the organism , what is its ro@5le ?sx Does unconscious feeling rise in some symbolic form into consciousness or as an emotional pressure like instinct ?sx How is an unconscious feeling to be reconciled with a conscious sensory experience of the sort we describe as a 'feeling ?sx ' As for example , ~'I feel good' or ~'I have a stomach-ache ?sx ' Though I can only do so as a layman , it is going to be necessary to look at some of the scientific findings .sx But we can easily be dazzled by science into imagining that we know more about our bodies than we do know in direct experience .sx The body-schema science has built up for us is apt to obscure the enigmatic experiential relation a man has to his own body .sx Common sense suggests that we should look at the body as given in private experience before we decide what it is like in terms of public science .sx =3 :sx THE SELF'S KNOWLEDGE OF THE BODY .sx On the threshold of every man's awareness is his intimate sense of being , or being identified with , a body .sx He is this body .sx He exists this body , as M. Jean-Paul Sartre would say .sx He cannot conceive existence without it .sx If he stops to reflect on it , he is conscious on the threshold of perception of its enjoyable warmth and beyond its warmth , obscurely felt , its energy , its nature of seeming to be coiled like a spring ready to do his bidding .sx It is difficult to analyse this situation except in Cartesian terms , much as one would like to avoid them , for man both is his body and conceives his body as his instrument in the world .sx In a discussion of animal behaviour Professor Michael Polanyi remarks that ~'There is a purposive tension from which no fully awake animal is free .sx It consists in a readiness to perceive and to act , or more generally speaking , to make sense of its situation , both intellectually and practically .sx ' Man's existential encounter with himself could be described in these terms .sx He knows himself as a 'purposive tension' seeking 'control of itself and of its surroundings .sx ' Dr. Erich Kahler speaks of man's bodily consciousness in a more general but still illuminating way :sx 'When I try to delve into my innermost feelings , my initial feeling of self , I find that at the bottom there is not just a feeling of sheer existence , or of sheer thinking , the Cartesian cogito .sx There is , immediately and simultaneously , something more .sx There is implicit in my feeling of existence a feeling of organic existence , or organicity , of wholeness .sx Distorted , stunted as it may be by the wear and tear of modern life the original form is still traceable as it was present in the bud of youth :sx a ball of radiating strength and capacity ; all-sidedness , all-potentiality ; coherence , correspondence , co-operation of all my organs and faculties .sx A young healthy human being feels the unity of body and mind' ( or rather , one might say , since this is already metaphysical , he cannot conceive their disunity ) 'the one present in the other , and the mind governing the body in a still " ve , unconscious , spontaneous manner ; neither intellect nor brute force is autonomously prevalent .sx Such elemental feeling of organic existence shines forth in the beautiful , masterly , fully animated bodies of " primitive " people .sx . in whom the whole body is face and has the playful , controlled expression of a face .sx ' Man's consciousness of his almost hidden organic energy is more difficult to reach than the sense of warm bodily being , for when we reflect on the body it becomes passive and relaxes , but for the most important part of our waking lives we are 'keyed up' to activity , without taking thought about it .sx When we are stretched in attention , ready to act , as a runner waiting for the starter's pistol , we are in the worst possible position for reflection .sx But the state of action , or of being coiled for action , probably fills more of our waking lives than the relaxed and reflective situation , even with such notably recumbent figures as philosophers .sx In the active state , the separation of the will from the bodily activity is so impossible to conceive that we are barely conscious of using the will to perform actions .sx The whole body becomes pervaded with will , is will .sx This identity of body , self and will has important consequences for the theory I am developing .sx What other modes of the body-self's generalized awareness are there ?sx I think we must add the sense of a locus of our perceptions and ideas .sx We have a spatial presence , and we have an inner space which this presence guards .sx We have the sensation of thought going on inside us , as it were in the head , though grief and heartache are genuinely elsewhere .sx The sense of location is not a sharp one .sx 'In' us , we say , and less vaguely , 'in our heads,' but never as 'in' an organ open to any perceptual inspection like a hand or a finger-nail .sx Erich Kahler speaks of man not as a spot of sheer being thrown into existence in the existentialist sense , nor as a function of thinking , but as 'an inner space , a latent arena , an area of self .sx ' For him this self-identity also involves 'the silent presence of a person's whole background and surroundings .sx . the total potentiality of his experiences ever ready to be called into function , in short the immeasurable avenues of his memory and of his interiorized world .sx ' The perceiving , thinking , worrying , planning processes of the self are 'us' as much as the body is 'us .sx ' And though they cannot be apprehended like the body , they belong to it .sx As David Hume pointed out , we cannot turn round and catch our minds or selves :sx the mere act of trying to seize upon personal identity as if it were another 'thing' we could handle , defeats us , for it is in the nature of personal identity always to be doing and seizing and never to be seized .sx Here lies the guarantee of its inalienability .sx Though it was not part of David Hume's argument the fact that there is an inviolable element in man and other organisms may be important for more than knowledge .sx Whitehead emphasized that we see with the eye .sx No purpose would have been served by creating the eye to see the eye .sx The organs of sense function in the world , and in relation to the self , in a transparent way .sx As far as the eye is concerned I mean this literally .sx If one turns one's attention from what one sees to that by which one sees , one is conscious of a pool or area of pure transparency in the region of the eye-sockets , an emptiness into which the world pours without hindrance .sx The eye itself is withdrawn from the dimensions of sight into pure nothingness .sx Of the senses , only touch brings presence to the body .sx This bodily absence , or to put it in the teasing way the existentialists might adopt , presence-in-absence , points to the need for a new metaphysic of the body .sx That which is most near to us and necessary to us in existence is almost without a philosophy except where its perceptual machinery is concerned .sx The first bodily circumstance to be understood is how little knowledge of the body is given to us in nature .sx To understand this we have to escape from the all too common assumption that the body-schema we learn from text-books is given to us as part of natural equipment .sx Even a mirror is not given to man in nature , except perhaps in a sheet of water , and we can conceive of a prehistoric man going through the whole of his life without ever seeing his body brightly mirrored before him .sx And how little even the mirror would tell him !sx What we see , or see in a mirror , or infer from the bodies of others , is the external sack , or skin , containing the external organs and covering the muscles which shape the torso and the limbs , but masking the internal organs completely , and helping to hold them in position against a rigid skeleton , that grotesque caricature of a living man which comes to light for the primitive only when a man is some time dead .sx Detailed knowledge , especially about the interior , we secure only from surgical and physiological research , just in the same way as our knowledge of the functioning of our senses is the product of research .sx In a pleasing and thoughtful essay on the aesthetics of the body , Mr. John Brophy speaks of the skin as mental frontier seldom crossed except by those whose studies compel it .sx Even they in their initial training have to overcome a profound repugnance when called upon to cross that human boundary .sx 'It seems to be the natural order that the skin should conceal all the internal workings of the body , and , when this convention is overthrown , whoever views the exposure feels a violent protest in both mind and body .sx This protest is doubtless closely associated with the realization of pain , which no merely intellectual observation of anaesthetic affects [SIC] can compensate .sx It is also heightened by sense impressions from the opened-up body which differ noticeably from those given out by a body enclosed in an intact skin :sx the internal organs are often exceedingly brilliant in colour , and some of them emit odours and heat .sx Moreover , even if the revelation is made by skilful surgery , the tissues are likely to be continuously bathed in blood .sx When wounds or injuries are inflicted the exposure will also be untidy , and the suffering of the torn body , unmitigated by anaesthetics , will be expressed in writhings , shouts or moans , unless shock brings about unconsciousness or death .sx By all this the observer's senses are outraged .sx ' Mr. John Brophy's comments are much to the point , yet not all the story .sx The intense psychological shock which is the immediate consequence of another's injured body has really to be explained on more than aesthetic grounds .sx There are aesthetic grounds for shock , but no one is shocked by animal carcases dripping blood in the butcher's shop or by the mighty blows of his cleaver through the quivering flesh of the joints exposed for sale .sx Indeed the young wife who might faint at the sight of blood from a cut finger will become expert in handling and judging ( to say nothing of cooking ) the flesh of dead animals .sx Clearly the aesthetic protest is not the whole one if such experiences can be even pleasurably borne .sx We have to relate shock over bodily injury to what has been said of the transparency of the sense organs .sx Consciousness of them would block consciousness through them .sx Intense consciousness of the body interferes with the instrumentality of the body in the world .sx Only when the young tennis player forgets his racket and forgets to be proud of it can he really hit with it .sx