then only at the stage of the build-up on a screen does the object enter into the mind of a perceiver as perception . if we accept the analogy of the television apparatus then here is mediation of the most absolute sort . 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 ? or in more general terms can we reconcile the body as instrumentality with the world as immediacy ? the problems which have so far proved so insoluble for perception are even more central to the discussion of the r&amp;ocirc;le of feeling in man &apos;s experience of himself and the world . 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 . the questions come thick and fast . if there is a universal but unconscious feeling in what sense is it knowledge ? if it is not knowledge to the organism , what is its r&amp;ocirc;le ? does unconscious feeling rise in some symbolic form into consciousness or as an emotional pressure like instinct ? how is an unconscious feeling to be reconciled with a conscious sensory experience of the sort we describe as a feeling ? as for example , I feel good or I have a stomach-ache ? though I can only do so as a layman , it is going to be necessary to look at some of the scientific findings . but we can easily be dazzled by science into imagining that we know more about our bodies than we do know in direct experience . the body-schema science has built up for us is apt to obscure the enigmatic experiential relation a man has to his own body . 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 . 3 : the self &apos;s knowledge of the body . on the threshold of every man &apos;s awareness is his intimate sense of being , or being identified with , a body . he is this body . he exists this body , as M Jean-Paul Sartre would say . he can not conceive existence without it . 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 . 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 . in a discussion of animal behaviour Professor Michael Polanyi remarks that there is a purposive tension from which no fully awake animal is free . it consists in a readiness to perceive and to act , or more generally speaking , to make sense of its situation , both intellectually and practically . man &apos;s existential encounter with himself could be described in these terms . he knows himself as a purposive tension seeking control of itself and of its surroundings . Dr Erich Kahler speaks of man &apos;s bodily consciousness in a more general but still illuminating way : 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 . there is , immediately and simultaneously , something more . there is implicit in my feeling of existence a feeling of organic existence , or organicity , of wholeness . 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 : a ball of radiating strength and capacity ; all-sidedness , all-potentiality ; coherence , correspondence , co-operation of all my organs and faculties . a young healthy human being feels the unity of body and mind ( or rather , one might say , since this is already metaphysical , he can not conceive their disunity ) the one present in the other , and the mind governing the body in a still nai&quot;ve , unconscious , spontaneous manner ; neither intellect nor brute force is autonomously prevalent . such elemental feeling of organic existence shines forth in the beautiful , masterly , fully animated bodies of primitive people &amp;hellip; in whom the whole body is face and has the playful , controlled expression of a face . man &apos;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 . when we are stretched in attention , ready to act , as a runner waiting for the starter &apos;s pistol , we are in the worst possible position for reflection . 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 . 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 . the whole body becomes pervaded with will , is will . this identity of body , self and will has important consequences for the theory I am developing . what other modes of the body-self &apos;s generalized awareness are there ? I think we must add the sense of a locus of our perceptions and ideas . we have a spatial presence , and we have an inner space which this presence guards . we have the sensation of thought going on inside us , as it were in the head , though grief and heartache are genuinely elsewhere . the sense of location is not a sharp one . 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 . 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 . for him this self-identity also involves the silent presence of a person &apos;s whole background and surroundings &amp;hellip; 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 . the perceiving , thinking , worrying , planning processes of the self are us as much as the body is us . and though they can not be apprehended like the body , they belong to it . as David Hume pointed out , we can not turn round and catch our minds or selves : 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 . here lies the guarantee of its inalienability . though it was not part of David Hume &apos;s argument the fact that there is an inviolable element in man and other organisms may be important for more than knowledge . Whitehead emphasized that we see with the eye . no purpose would have been served by creating the eye to see the eye . the organs of sense function in the world , and in relation to the self , in a transparent way . as far as the eye is concerned I mean this literally . if one turns one &apos;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 . the eye itself is withdrawn from the dimensions of sight into pure nothingness . of the senses , only touch brings presence to the body . 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 . 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 . the first bodily circumstance to be understood is how little knowledge of the body is given to us in nature . 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 . 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 . and how little even the mirror would tell him ! 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 . 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 . 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 . even they in their initial training have to overcome a profound repugnance when called upon to cross that human boundary . 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 . this protest is doubtless closely associated with the realization of pain , which no merely intellectual observation of anaesthetic affects can compensate . 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 : the internal organs are often exceedingly brilliant in colour , and some of them emit odours and heat . moreover , even if the revelation is made by skilful surgery , the tissues are likely to be continuously bathed in blood . 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 . by all this the observer &apos;s senses are outraged . Mr John Brophy &apos;s comments are much to the point , yet not all the story . the intense psychological shock which is the immediate consequence of another &apos;s injured body has really to be explained on more than aesthetic grounds . there are aesthetic grounds for shock , but no one is shocked by animal carcases dripping blood in the butcher &apos;s shop or by the mighty blows of his cleaver through the quivering flesh of the joints exposed for sale . 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 . clearly the aesthetic protest is not the whole one if such experiences can be even pleasurably borne . we have to relate shock over bodily injury to what has been said of the transparency of the sense organs . consciousness of them would block consciousness through them . intense consciousness of the body interferes with the instrumentality of the body in the world . only when the young tennis player forgets his racket and forgets to be proud of it can he really hit with it . 