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Consciousness in
Flesh
An unapologetic
phenomenological study

yo c h a i ata r i a
 Consciousness in Flesh

“Ataria’s detailed primer on the phenomenology of the body draws on an interdisci-

plinary mix of classic phenomenologists like Merleau-Ponty and recent work in
embodied cognition. He puts this phenomenology to work to develop an insightful
understanding of the diverse and yet connected experiences of tortured prisoners of
war and long-term meditators. Using these extreme phenomenologies, Ataria deftly
guides us through a brilliant analysis of the essential variables of body, emotion, and
temporality that shape consciousness.”
—Shaun Gallagher, Lillian and Morrie Moss Chair of Excellence
in Philosophy, University of Memphis
 Yochai Ataria

Consciousness in Flesh
An Unapologetic Phenomenological
Study
Yochai Ataria
Tel-Hai Academic College
Upper Galilee, Israel

ISBN 978-3-030-86833-8    ISBN 978-3-030-86834-5 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86834-5

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
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Originally published in Hebrew by The Hebrew University Magnes Press

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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For Yemima, who day after day, hour after hour, answers hineni,
me voici, ‫הינני‬.
 Abstract

This book offers an uncompromising and unapologetic phenomenological study of

altered states of consciousness in an attempt to understand the structure of human
consciousness. Drawing on the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, it sets out to decipher
the inextricable link between consciousness, body, and world. This link will be estab-
lished through the presentation of in-depth phenomenological research conducted
with former prisoners of war (POWs) and senior meditators. Focusing on two such
disparate groups improves our understanding of the nature of the subjective experi-
ence in extreme situations—when our sense of boundary is rigid and we are discon-
nected both from the body and the world (POWs); and when our sense of boundary
is fluid and we feel unified with the world (meditators). Based on empirical-phenom-
enological research, this book will explain how the body that is from the outset
thrown into the intersubjective world shapes the structure of consciousness.

vii
 Acknowledgements

This book has been part of me since I took my first course at Haifa University,
almost twenty years ago—half of my life. It is hard to even begin to list the
people (friends, colleagues, lecturers) to whom I owe a debt of gratitude, and
therefore I have decided to limit myself to those who have accompanied me
closely throughout the entire period of my studies and the writing of this
book. My thanks to Prof. Yemima Ben Menachem, Prof. Shaun Gallagher,
Prof. Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Prof. Jacob Raz, and Dr. Stephen Fulder for
their dedication and generosity. Thank you for always being willing to listen.
I would like to thank the members of the non-profit organization “Erim
Balayla” (Awake at Night, which represents former prisoners of war in Israel)
and “Tovana” (Insight) who agreed to be interviewed for this study.
Many people were involved in editing this book. I am especially grateful to
David Shimonovich, Maya Shimoni, Judy Kupferman, and Rebecca Wolpe,
who helped me to make the multitude of words that I wrote into a read-
able book.
I am also grateful to the publisher, Palgrave Macmillan, and its dedicated
and professional team for their help and support.
I would like to thank Tel Hai College for its generous financial support of
the work on this book.
I began to think about this project when Adi and I were a young couple.
While working on it, Assaf, Ori, and Shir were born, and we became a family.
The book is full of examples of intimate moments of pure joy from our daily
life. These moments are engraved upon me, into my flesh and my words. I am
blessed and full of gratitude for the life you have given me.

ix
 Contents

1 Phenomenology of the Body  1

1.1 The Phenomenology of the Body According to Merleau-Ponty   2
1.2 Perceiving the World through Movement  14
1.3 Embodied Cognition  24
1.4 Concluding Remarks  35
Bibliography 36

2 The Subjective Experience During Altered States of

Consciousness 39
2.1 Extended Isolation as a Prisoner of War: How It Feels  39
2.2 The Experience of Meditation  59
2.3 Conclusions  85
Bibliography 86

3 Embodied Consciousness 89
3.1 The Structure of Consciousness  89
3.2 The Internal Horizon 105
Bibliography113

4 Concluding Essay: The Knowing-Body and a World of Meaning115

Bibliography117

xi
xii Contents

E
 pilogue119

Appendix: Phenomenology as a Method127

Bibliography137

Index145
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Size difference illusion (The Ebbinghaus illusion or Titchener

circles)7
Fig. 1.2 The triangular structure of movement-expectation-sensation 20
Fig. 2.1 Expectation-Movement-Sensation in normal situations and
pathologies53
Fig. 2.2 Self-as-subject vs. self-as-Object 69
Fig. 2.3 Sense of duration as a function of the openness of the world 73
Fig. 3.1 The structure of consciousness 90
Fig. 3.2 The present moment 93
Fig. 3.3 Body, emotion and duration 94
Fig. 3.4 The emotional-temporal field (ETF) 95
Fig. 3.5 Mass distorts the space—the EFT 96
Fig. 3.6 Explicit perceptual field 97
Fig. 3.7 From autobiographical self to autobiographical field 100
Fig. 3.8 The autobiographical field 100
Fig. 3.9 I versus ME 101
Fig. 3.10 The reflective structure 103
Fig. 3.11 Introspection as a time-based process 104
Fig. 3.12 Inner horizon versus external horizon 108
Fig. 3.13 The stream of consciousness, the emotional dimension, the
corporal level, and the sense of self 110
Fig. 3.14 The stream of consciousness illusion 112

xiii
 Introduction

It is 10:30 AM, and I walk into class, feeling stable and in control. My body moves
of its own accord. This is the seventh class of the semester, and I am diving deep into
Merleau-Ponty’s flesh, trying to explain to the class the following concept:

What is meant when we say that there is no world without a being in the world?
Not that the world is constituted by consciousness, but rather that conscious-
ness always finds itself already at work in the world (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 456).

Over the years I have obtained maximal grip on the material. I discovered that to
attain max-grip, it is not enough to read Merleau-Ponty passively. Rather, it is neces-
sary to take an active approach: to write about him, to talk about him, and, most
importantly, to learn how to observe the world as he does—in his words, “it is more
accurate to say that I see according to it, or with it, than that I see it.” (1964, p. 164)
This is a daily and ongoing activity that must be executed in the world itself. Reflection
alone is insufficient. One could even say that pure reflection takes us further away
from Merleau-Ponty.
Teaching Merleau-Ponty is like magic. The examples seemingly appear spontane-
ously: the way the students hold their pens in one hand and papers in the other,
keeping their notebook stable; their posture on the chairs, which is the result of an
attempt to find a position in which they can hear me and at the same time take notes.
The lighting needs to provide them with an optimal view of the Power Point presen-
tation and at the same time enable them to see the words on the page:

For each object, just as for each painting in an art gallery, there is an optimal
distance from which it asks to be seen—an orientation through which it pres-
ents more of itself—beneath or beyond which we merely have a confused per-
ception due to excess or lack. Hence, we tend toward the maximum of visibility

xv
xvi Introduction

and we seek, just as when using a microscope, a better focus point, which is
obtained through a certain equilibrium between the interior and the exterior
horizons. (Merleau-Ponty 2012, pp. 315–316)

We talk about the way they choose their pens—the attempt to achieve maximal
grip, the roughness of the plastic, the thickness of the point, the feeling of engraving
letters on the page. We all agree that during an exam, this issue becomes especially
important: a sweaty palm changes our ability to express ourselves, sometimes pre-
venting us from being understood, even by ourselves.
It is a rainy morning, and we try to reconstruct the process of choosing shoes—
shoes that will not slip on the asphalt. I have a recurring ankle sprain. On rainy morn-
ings, I take care to wear shoes with a better grip on the foot and the slippery pavement,
shoes that can be trusted, shoes that will allow me to forget they even exist; shoes that
will give the world a better grip on me. We are all trying, constantly, to achieve maxi-
mal grip—every movement and every breath are part of this never-ending project.
When it works, we forget that there is anything moderating between us and the world.
When it happens, the world grips us, while we forget ourselves within it.
Teaching Merleau-Ponty feels like coming home. My body moves as though in a
dance; the words speak of their own accord, they become filled with a renewed mean-
ing intended only for my students. Indeed, my students sense that the words are far
more than empty chatter. In these moments, I grip the words perfectly; they are flaw-
lessly synchronized and in complete harmony with my physical gestures.
The words are a tool via which I probe more and more deeply, refining my ideas—I
do this in a shared, intersubjective field. I try to offer the students a way to attain opti-
mal grip on the ideas. This is not a purely reflective process. I do not ask them to think
but rather to pinpoint the action that they are executing at this exact moment. I direct
them to the primal bodily, the pre-reflective experience: the chill going through the
body at a terrifying thought or the sight of a dead animal on the road; the stiffness of
the body when we meet a person we dislike; the pleasant warmth in the body when we
meet someone we love; the inability to find a comfortable position when we cannot
fall asleep; and more. We continue to discuss how we constantly touch ourselves (the
hand repeatedly goes to the face), the pleasure of scratching, of friction.
The class is over. I go up to my office and turn on the computer. I have an email
inviting me to give a talk in Chicago. My student dream has come true. Fifteen years
have passed since the day I entered my first class at Haifa University, and now I am a
professor, someone who is invited to give talks; others want to hear my opinion. Yet,
despite the joy and satisfaction, I notice that my breath has become labored. My body
sinks into the chair, my head leans on my arms. I feel my chest. The air gets stuck in
my throat. This is not anxiety. Not yet, at least. It is heaviness. The room is too
brightly lit, the clothing I wear has lost its softness. The air conditioner is stifling—I
turn it off and open a window. Yet it is not enough, and I find myself sitting on the
balcony. These feelings tell a different story: I know that I do not have the words, that
I will not be able to get a grip on them, I know that the words have stolen the world
from me. I know this is an accident waiting to happen.
 Introduction xvii

I love to lecture—I feel confident, I know that I can feel the audience and dance with
it. To some extent, I feel free during lectures. The problem is not the lecture itself—I do
not suffer from stage fright. The problem lies elsewhere. I remember all too well how,
in 2014, I sat in Shaun Gallagher’s office in Memphis and could not string together two
sentences in English. In Hebrew too, I do not speak clearly; I stutter. I started to stutter
when I was around 12 years old. To this day, the problem has not been resolved,
although it is now barely noticeable. When I read a story to my children and see a word
that gives me trouble, my body freezes. The tic in my eye begins, my neck starts to move
involuntarily; I shrink, the word grabs me and distorts me, humiliates me, tyrannizes
me. It steals my air. As long as my children could not read, I was able to sidestep the
word, to invent a new sentence. However, this is becoming increasingly difficult, and
recently my oldest child began to ask me why I change the wording on the page.
Likewise, when I teach guided reading courses, I sometimes find myself stumbling over
words. In this case, I cannot simply invent new sentences. The words I stutter are
obstacles that need to be overcome. When I speak in Hebrew, I feel I have an infinite
horizon of possibilities: my vocabulary is rich and I can always replace a problematic
word with a more accessible one, so that the world remains open, reachable, and avail-
able, continually inviting me to operate within it. My body floats, moving lightly, and
the horizon is open and inviting—it calls for me to act within it. Yet the moment the
stuttering begins, I am in a torture chamber, the ground falls out from beneath my feet.
My stutter has not really disappeared, it exists, even if only slightly, and it is one of
the greatest obstacles I face in life—a disability that has not yet been defined. The stut-
ter prevents me from being part of the world; I am no longer thrown into a shared space
with others but feel strange and alone within a dead world. When one stutters, the
entire horizon changes. It is no longer open but becomes full of obstacles. To stutter is
to go out for a run in bad weather and find that some demon has replaced your legs
with prostheses that do not fit your body. The stuttered word exposes the intolerable
gap between the signified and the signifier—the word disconnects completely from
reality and floats out there in a timeless space, refusing to hold specific content and to
be held, spiraling into itself, breaking down into its elementary phonetic components
and becoming what Heidegger (1996, p. 406) defines as present-at-hand: “When
something cannot be used—when, for instance, a tool definitely refuses to work—it
can be conspicuous only in and for dealings in which something is manipulated”.
Indeed, while language usually enables us to reveal the hidden, to expose the absent,
when one stutters, the ideas flee one’s grasp. It is impossible to explain them even to
oneself; the absent becomes completely inaccessible, it is no longer ready-at-hand.
The stutter falls into a void; it is like slipping on a bare cliff face with palms too
sweaty to grasp the outcrops. The stutter casts us from total gestalt to primal units
that by themselves lack all meaning; we are no longer able to operate in terms of “The
Big Picture.” The stutterer is thrown into a fragmented world, a world in which the
individual does not belong, an I-can-not kind of world.
Indeed, it is like the feeling when one goes back to playing basketball after suffer-
ing an injury (I can testify to this): movement itself becomes limited and worrisome.
The court has changed—the parquet floor that once gripped the foot, enabling you
xviii Introduction

to change direction swiftly or turn, now seems more like an ice-skating rink. The
court feels at once smaller and bigger—smaller because there are entire areas you dare
not approach; bigger because certain throws are now outside your range of possibili-
ties. If once you felt there were feints and moves you could perform, today these are
no longer within the field of possibilities. The I-Can field has shrunk, becoming an
I-Can-Not field. You have not stopped playing, but rather you play differently—you
can no longer forget yourself during the game. Instead of being in a doing-kind of
mode, you are in a thinking-kind of mode, your body is less a lived-body and more a
corporeal body. True, experience sometimes makes up for such limitations, but only
to a certain point. The same applies to a stutter. You are still playing, but in another
ball court with different rules.
I return to the email, responding that I will be glad to come. The lecture is sched-
uled to take place in another six months, but from the moment I reply to the email,
time and space alter. I know that I will have to stand before an audience and stutter,
exposed and unprotected, feeling as if I am standing bare, naked, painfully lost. From
now on, I am no longer being-in-the-world in a simple manner, not even being
toward my own death, but rather toward-this-lecture, toward-an-accident, toward a
terrible and terrifying moment that must take place.
My stutter makes every place that is not Israel intolerable—the innate knowledge
that when someone approaches me, I will stutter at them and begin to fall apart
makes the world a threatening and unbearable place. It would not be an exaggeration
to say that the stutter changes the shape of the earth. To be more exact, for a person
who stutters, the world offers only poor possibilities for action. I remember the first
time I arrived in New York: I stood in the line at the airport. I knew that I would soon
reach the customs officer, and he would ask me where I was headed. I prepared all the
documents so that I would not have to talk. I knew that if I stuttered, my body would
convey distress; I might find myself under investigation. To my great good fortune,
the officer was Jewish and was happy to speak in Hebrew.
Now, in my office, my stomach starts to bother me, my toes feel frozen and inflex-
ible, people around me become threatening. I become irritated and impatient—my
mood has changed and the whole world has changed with it. Without doubt, this is
no longer the same world. Essentially, at these precise moments, the world ceases to
be hidden. Expressing this in a way that is more loyal to the lived-experience in those
critical moments, the ability to hide from the world has diminished; to some extent,
the world is all over the place, overly present. This is a different kind of grip, it is the
grip of an emptiness that sucks you in and paralyzes you, a grip that reduces the mar-
gin for action to zero. In these moments, the world ceases to be familiar place—it is
no longer your world.
Sitting in my office, I know that I will write the lecture and recite it by heart. I will
write it in strange and uncanny English, avoiding the word “that” (TTTTHHHH-at),
which stumps me, paralyzes me, flattens me, strips me, and invades me. The same
way as the world shrinks to one point in our body in a time of pain, the word “that”
causes me to shrink into an instrument that can produce only false notes:
TTTTHHHH. This word makes me lose control.
 Introduction xix

When people give talks at conferences in the field of humanities, it is generally

acceptable to read the lecture from their notes. This solves quite a few problems. It is
also customary to sit down, so the frozen body can be hidden, buried beneath the
table. At this conference, however, I will not be able to sit down, I will have to talk in
English for over an hour. As I advance with the Power Point, the audience will see
pictures while I see the text (on my own screen). It is hard to see that I am reading
from it, but that is what I am doing. Reading aloud is never like speaking freely. My
character in English is different from the person I am in Hebrew. I am humorless,
lacking tact and elegance. More than anything, when I speak English, my body lacks
gestures, because the words and the body do not hold on to each other. This is not
poetry; it is not dancing. Rather, it is like sinking into quicksand.
When I begin to stutter in English, my body feels like a broken prosthesis; movement
ceases to be smooth, flexible, and continuous. At the same time, my grip on the world
collapses, as though the world is slipping through my fingers—I have no understanding
of space; I am cast outside of time. If language is a tool, I do not have the ability to hold
it, not to mention use it. Worse, I do not even appreciate that it is a tool, cannot com-
prehend what I should do with it and what it is for. When I am finally able to hold the
word, it is too heavy, and my body groans when I try to lift it up. I breathe heavily.
I am in the middle of my talk now. There is nowhere to hide, the remaining time
feels is infinite. I grip the words that appear on the screen in front of me—the words
themselves are no longer transparent. They, and they alone, constitute the only object
in my field of perception—the horizon is blocked. Every word appears alone, deprived
of any context, against a black background. Even I no longer understand the words.
Worse, at times, the letters begin to decompose, and I bump into them, so that for
instance the word “that” looks like TTTTTTTTTTTThat. This letter, T, when it
comes at the start of a word, especially when there’s an H after it, generating a sound
foreign to my native language, throws me back to a childhood memory: I am riding a
bike uphill, standing up, and suddenly the bicycle chain gets stuck. I fall to the floor
together with the bike, sprawled on the asphalt and feeling alone and humiliated. In
other cases, I feel that the word falls into a chasm and I need to catch it, and then it feels
like the times I tried swimming a full length of the pool without coming up for air; in
the last few meters there is a tremendous struggle between the body’s enormous desire
to get out of the water and breathe, on the one hand, and knowing that it is possible to
continue, on the other. The words that escape me force me to dive into the depths to
search for them. When I finally pronounce the word, I am almost always panting.
My body is frozen; hence, I have no choice but to write on my screen instructions
such as “breathe,” “lift up your head,” and “pause,” and sometimes even “now bang
the podium with your right hand.” I have lost my body and have no contact with the
world. Therefore, I need orderly commands. I stand in front of the audience, and my
legs are like two iron rods stuck deep into the ground. My hands grip the podium—I
need to hold on to something sturdy because when I stutter, I lose the grip on my
body and the world. I feel like I am constantly falling.
* * *
xx Introduction

There is probably a certain correlation between my stutter and some specific neural activity,
but of course one cannot reduce the experience I just described to neural activity. My stut-
ter is also not on my tongue or in my mouth. The stutter does not end with the body, and
one cannot reduce my stutter, Sartre style, to hell being other people. Likewise, my stutter
is not the result of some Freudian oral fixation. To understand the stutterer, one needs to
understand the way one is present and acts in the world. Yet this is true not only of a stutter.
Rather, it applies to every possible experience.
To understand human consciousness, we must dive into the flesh, into the shared
intersubjective space. We are not in the world like a spoon in a teacup. We are in the
world like a baby in the womb. We cannot be regarded as separate from the world, and
the brain cannot be regarded as disconnected from the body that is absorbed into
the world:

The central phenomenon, which simultaneously grounds my subjectivity and

my transcendence toward the other, consists in the fact that I am given to myself.
I am given, which is to say I find myself already situated and engaged in a physi-
cal and social world; I am given to myself, which is to say that this situation is
never concealed from me, it is never around me like some foreign necessity, and
I am never actually enclosed in my situation like an object in a box (Merleau-­
Ponty 2012, p. 377).

Furthermore, it is not sufficient to investigate particular instances of brain activity,

just as it is insufficient to analyze behavior. We must investigate the individual as an
agent being thrown into the world, a world that, in turn, is absorbed within our body.
That is the aim of this book. Here, I will try to describe the structure of human con-
sciousness as it is projected into the world: Consciousness in Flesh.
* * *
The book has three chapters. The first chapter introduces the idea that consciousness
is embodied. According to this approach, what counts is what we do in the world
and, more importantly, how we do it. Indeed, this chapter explores the question of
what we mean when we talk about the embodiment of consciousness. In the first section
of this chapter, I examine in detail Merleau-­Ponty’s phenomenological approach, in
particular the notion that “the theory of the body is already a theory of perception”
(Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 209). The second section extends the discussion, offering a
general theory regarding how we perceive the world through the body, focusing
mainly on the sensorimotor feedback loops and the concept of knowing how. The
final section explores the boundaries of our cognition, presenting the idea that cogni-
tive activity leaks through the lived body into the world.
The second chapter moves out into the practical field. It describes an empirical
study conducted among two groups: prisoners of war (POWs) and experienced med-
 Introduction xxi

itators, both of which can be defined in terms of altered state consciousness (ASC).1
In this qualitative-phenomenological study, participants took part in open-ended
interviews that were conducted using the phenomenological approach and empha-
sized the pre-reflective bodily experience. This method enabled me to examine the
subjective experience in depth while highlighting the individuals’ initial bodily
encounter with the world in which they are absorbed. Accordingly, it offers a detailed
description of the structure of the human experience during ASCs.
It is well established that ASCs can reveal a great deal about the structure of con-
sciousness (James 1902). Indeed, based on these in-depth phenomenological inter-
views, the third chapter advances a more general theory of consciousness. In this
chapter, I attempt to present a detailed theory of embodied consciousness. The
advantage of this theory is that it is based upon phenomenological research into
ASCs. Yet, the proposed structure is not disconnected from the current cognitive
discourse. Quite the contrary. This chapter combines insights from careful readings
of classic phenomenologists such as Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, together
with contemporary leading scholars in the field of phenomenology and cognitive sci-
ence such as Shaun Gallagher, Dan Zahavi, and Hubert Dreyfus, and my own phe-
nomenological observations based on the interviews.

Bibliography
Ataria, Yochai. “Dissociation during Trauma: The Ownership-Agency Tradeoff
Model.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 14, no. 4 (2015a): 1037–1053.
———. “Trauma from an enactive perspective: the collapse of the knowing-­how
structure.” Adaptive Behavior 23, no. 3 (2015b): 143–154.
Ataria, Yochai, and Yuval Neria. “Consciousness-Body-Time: How Do People Think
Lacking their Body?” Humans Studies 36, no. 2 (2013): 159–178. doi: https://doi.
org/10.1007/s10746-­013-­9263-­3.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and time. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. Albany: New York
Press, 1996.
James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: Collier Books, 1902.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A
Landes. London and New York: Routledge, 2012.
———. The primacy of perception. Edited by James Edie. Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1964.

1
These chapters expand on studies published in three papers: “Consciousness-Body-Time: How Do
People Think Lacking their Body?” (Ataria and Neria 2013); “Where Do We End and Where Does the
World Begin? The Case of Insight Meditation” (Ataria 2015a); “How Does It Feel to Lack a Sense of
Boundaries? A Case Study of a Long-Term Mindfulness Meditator” (2015b).
 1
Phenomenology of the Body

We cannot reduce consciousness1 solely to brain activity and we cannot limit

consciousness to the head. Consciousness is embedded in the world through
the body: we are present in the world in our physical, visceral bodies; first and
foremost, we are flesh and blood. Consciousness is not an exception; namely,
consciousness is in the midst of the world from the very outset—conscious-
ness and world are part of the same flesh.
In this chapter, I will discuss ideas that contradict the classical approach to
cognitive sciences, including:

(1) The difficulty with the classic cognitive model, known as the sandwich
model: input—information processing—output. I will attempt, instead,
to delineate more dynamic cognitive models.
(2) Objections to the subject-object dichotomy, instead seeking to redefine
these relationships with greater flexibility.
(3) Objections to the classic representational approach, which includes
adopting a centralized computing model in the cognitive sciences in gen-
eral, and in cognitive neuroscience in particular. Instead, I present cogni-
tive models that treat the world as our best model, without the need for a
central processing unit in the brain.
(4) Objections to the approach that ignores the body in the framework of the
cognitive sciences in general, and in cognitive neuroscience in particular. By
contrast, I present cognitive models that are embedded within the body,
which, in turn, is totally immersed within the world—cognition in flesh.
1
I have chosen not to define this concept whatsoever in this book, and this is no coincidence. There is no
lack of literature in the field. However, I believe that, at this time, the attempt to define consciousness
only generates difficulties, and so I prefer to think it through rather than to define it.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1

Y. Ataria, Consciousness in Flesh, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86834-5_1
2 Y. Ataria

In the first section of this chapter, I examine in detail Merleau-Ponty’s phe-

nomenological approach, in particular the notion that “the theory of the body
is already a theory of perception” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 209). The second
section extends the discussion, offering a general theory regarding how we
perceive the world through the body, focusing mainly on the sensorimotor
feedback loops and the concept of knowing how. The final section explores the
boundaries of our cognition, presenting the idea that cognitive activity leaks
through the lived body into the world: First, I will discuss how various tech-
nologies reshape the boundaries of the lived body, leading to a change in the
I-Can field. Subsequently, I will concentrate on how we build robots without
a central system. In the third part of this section, we will explore metaphors,
in particular how they emerge from our bodily presence in the world. I will
close this section by calling upon readers to keep their minds open—to allow
the cognitive system to leak out into the world and the world to pene-
trate inside.

1.1  he Phenomenology of the Body According

T
to Merleau-Ponty
If the subject is in a situation, or even if the subject is nothing other than a pos-
sibility of situations, this is because he only achieves his ipseity by actually being
a body and by entering into the world through this body. If I find, while reflect-
ing upon the essence of the body, that it is tied to the essence of the world, this
is because my existence as subjectivity is identical with my existence as a body
and with the existence of the world, and because, ultimately, the subject that I
am, understood concretely, is inseparable from this particular body and from
this particular world. The ontological world and body that we uncover at the
core of the subject are not the world and the body as ideas; rather, they are the
world itself condensed into a comprehensive hold and the body itself as a
knowing-­body (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 431).

1.1.1 Return to the Primary Meeting with the World

Phenomenology, as Merleau-Ponty wrote at the beginning of his monumental

book, Phenomenology of Perception, first published in 1945, is the attempt to
probe and to understand the essence of our existence before reflection took
control of our lives and shaped how we understand human existence. For
Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology is pre-reflective, an attempt to describe
human experience, yet not from the viewpoint of judgmental consciousness:
 1 Phenomenology of the Body 3

Pre-reflective self-consciousness is pre-reflective in the sense that (1) it is an

awareness we have before we do any reflecting on our experience; (2) it is an
implicit and first-order awareness rather than an explicit or higher-order form of
self-consciousness… In contrast to pre-reflective self-consciousness, which
delivers an implicit sense of self at an experiential or phenomenal level, reflective
self-consciousness is an explicit, conceptual, and objectifying awareness that
takes a lower-order consciousness as its attentional theme. I am able at any time
to attend directly to the cognitive experience itself, turning my experience itself
into the object of my consideration. (Gallagher and Zahavi 2008).

Merleau-Ponty’s great discovery is that, in contrast to the world of reflective

consciousness, when we return to the primacy of the pre-reflective experience,
we discover that the world was always there and that we can think about our-
selves only through the world. The world grasps us, and we are completely
open to the world. Essentially, these two formulations describe the same
phenomenon.
According to Husserl (1960, 1965, 1970) and Merleau-Ponty (1964,
2012), scientific research ignores the fact that we always experience the world
solely from a certain viewpoint and that this viewpoint shapes how we per-
ceive and understand the world. In other words, scientific research always
assumes a certain kind of world, and consequently always begins the investi-
gation from the second floor. Hence, it neglects our primary entanglement
with the world. Yet our experience as an organism continually exploring the
world precedes any other experience. We tend to ignore this fact or to forget
it. As a result, scientific research is extremely naïve:

Science manipulates things and gives up living in them. It makes its own limited
models of things; operating upon these indices or variables to effect whatever
transformations are permitted by their definition, it comes face to face with the
real world only at rare intervals. Science is and always has been that admirably
active, ingenious, and bold way of thinking whose fundamental bias is to treat
everything as though it were an object-in-general—as though it meant nothing
to us and yet was predestined for our own use. (Merleau-Ponty 1964, p. 159)

Indeed, at least since Descartes, philosophical discourse has always set out
from a dualistic stance. Even today—perhaps more than ever before—this
shapes scientific discourse. We still observe the world as detached from con-
sciousness, and consciousness as detached from the world; evidently, this
approach completely separates body and mind. For Merleau-Ponty, the world
is not a mental model but rather something we live through.
4 Y. Ataria

1.1.2 Theory of Perception is Theory of the Body

Everything we do and think takes place against the background of our field of
perception. The field of perception stems from the primal relationship between
the exploring organism and the explored world. Essentially, the exploring sub-
ject and the explored world cannot be separated. Rather, they are part of the
same dynamic:

My body is geared into the world when my perception provides me with the
most varied and the most clearly articulated spectacle possible, and when my
motor intentions, as they unfold, receive the responses they anticipate from the
world. This maximum of clarity in perception and action specifies a perceptual
ground, a background for my life, a general milieu for the coexistence of my
body and the world. (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 261)

We know ourselves only through our presence in the world; via how we
interrogate the world and act within it. Merleau-Ponty does not ignore the
fact that the world is physical, yet he refrains from reducing the world to ele-
mentary particles—he refrains from a process of reduction ad absurdum to a
neuron, a gene, and so on. Instead, he seeks to understand the world as it is
for us: the subject exploring the world to which she a priori belongs, a world
in which she is present as a single organic, complete, and dynamic unit.
We perceive every object solely through our body. The body is not some
kind of device that mediates between brain and world. Rather, the body is
absorbed in the world, which in turn grasps it and invites it to act—the world
is available and ready-to-hand. Indeed, although we feel that we perceive an
object directly—due to the dominant nature of the sense of sight—we cannot
sidestep the sensing body, the body that is touching and being touched, we are
in fact much closer to an octopus than we are to a camera.
The sense of sight creates an illusion of strong separateness from the world
and of passivity in the process of perception. The reason for this is clear: The
eye does not feel itself “seeing,” does not see itself seeing. By contrast, the
hand senses itself sensing, it touches itself while exploring the world.
Continuing this line of thought, in the case of the eye, it is very difficult to
expose the touching-being touched structure, while in the case of the hand,
this is obvious, in turn changing our most basic belief system and hence our
philosophical approach. Indeed, sight completely dominates philosophy and
creates basic distortions that prevent us from developing a philosophy more
 1 Phenomenology of the Body 5

faithful to life itself. Note, however, that the way we think about the eye is the
result of a limited and superficial phenomenology, one which flees the world
and is motivated by an obsession to catalog and to represent everything, no
matter what. Thus, it is not phenomenology at all but rather a belief from the
very outset.
We do not passively receive information from outside. Rather, we explore
the world actively in a certain manner, and only via this process does the
world become saturated with meaning; to some extent, the world is exposed
as meaningful only through the revelatory act. Every object is perceived
against a certain background, always as part of the totality of the field of per-
ception, as part of a process via which different objects are seen as connected
to each other—part of the same horizon. That is, every object is perceived
through our projection onto the absolute totality of perception. Therefore, it
is impossible to relate to an object as disconnected from the perceptual field
that shapes it. Yet, at the same time, the perceptual field is shaped by the dif-
ferent objects.
The perceptual field is not something “out there” like Newtonian space. We
construct it, we shape it, and, at the same time, it shapes and constructs us.
One can therefore say that the object we apparently see before us, seemingly
directly, is only the furthest tip of the process via which our presence in the
world creates a perceptual field that becomes the background. Only against
this background are objects “perceived” as loaded with meaning. Thus, when
it comes to meaning, background matters the most.
To understand how we perceive an object, we must focus on the percep-
tual field—the intentional structure that enables different objects to emerge.
The perceptual field is designed so that a subject, which is not separate and
cannot be separated from the world, uncovers different objects. The subject
and the object belong to the same phenomenal field, to the same horizon,
and to the same intentional arc; they are gathered together, they are part of
the same universal flesh. Indeed, as Merleau-Ponty (1968) asks, “Where are
we to put the limit between the body and the world, since the world is
flesh?” His answer leaves no room for doubt: “The body is a thing among
things, it is so in a stronger and deeper sense than they: in the sense that, we
said, it is of them.” And so, “if it touches and sees, this is not because it
would have the visibles before itself as objects,” but because “they are about
it, they even enter into its enclosure, they are within it.” This process is pos-
sible only because “the body belongs to the order of the things as the world
is universal flesh” (pp. 137–138).
6 Y. Ataria

1.1.3 Elimination of the Subject-object Dichotomy

Merleau-Ponty critiques approaches that describe processes of perception in

terms of a gap between the perceiving subject and the perceived object. Such
approaches assume the existence of two independent systems: a higher-level
cognitive system, on the one hand, and a sensory system, on the other.
Accordingly, we can explain the process that enables us to perceive the world
in the following manner: the sensory system is capable of receiving objective
information about the world around us, information that is in turn processed
and interpreted via the cognitive system. In this case, cognitive illusions arise
due to faulty manipulation of precise information, leading, in turn, to false
interpretations (Fig. 1.1). Alternatively, we could posit an opposing explana-
tion of how we perceive: the sensory system is incapable of providing an exact
world picture (from a Godlike point of view) for the central cognitive system.
Therefore, the cognitive system must collect the distorted fragments of sen-
sory information, using them to construct a new world. It is, however, not the
world in-­itself that we experience but rather a representation of the world. If
this is indeed the case, there must be a direct link between perception and
imagination. Unsurprisingly, according to the top-down cognitive approach,
imagination appears to precede perception; it even constitutes a condition for
perception. Merleau-Ponty (1964), by contrast, does not consider perception
the result of imagination. In fact, he argues the opposite: “Resemblance is the
result of perception, not its mainspring” (p. 171).
Both approaches (that which favors sensory information and that which
favors the cognitive system) emphasize the gap between the sensory system,
on one hand, and the cognitive system, on the other. These two systems work
independently. Cognitive illusions, according to these approaches, derive
from the gap between the information we receive at the sensory level (bottom-
­up) and cognitive top-down processes. In other words, processes of percep-
tion attempt to suit the representation of an object to the object. Hence,
cognitive hallucinations are the result of the link between the object in the
world and the object as perceived. Note that, according to this approach,
cognitive illusions are simply radicalized versions of the normal situation—
the system is trying to bridge the gap between representation of the object and
the actual object. In opposition, so Merleau-Ponty argues, the sensory system
does not belong to a physical-objective world, and the cognitive system does
not belong to a mental-subjective world. Therefore, cognitive illusion is not
the result of a gap between a physical-sensory world and a mental perceptive
system. Rather, the systems work together in a single unified field—the
 1 Phenomenology of the Body 7

Fig. 1.1 Size difference illusion (The Ebbinghaus illusion or Titchener circles)
The central circle on the left (B) appears to be larger than the central circle on the right
(A). Note, however, that when the subjects were asked to reach and pick them up, the
distance between their fingers was identical. This demonstrates how, a priori, cogni-
tive illusions are defined as “errors” only in the context of a research setting that com-
pletely forgot the real world. Most of the time, however, what is important for the
organism’s survival is not whether the two central circles (A and B) in the illustration
are identical in size or not, but rather their relation to the circles around them. We may
even go as far as saying that from the perspective of the creature that has to operate
in the actual world, trying to decide whether circle A or circle B is larger seems like a
complete waste of energy, since in almost 100% of the cases we only need to know the
relationship between a certain object and the objects in its surroundings. In any case,
when it comes to the actual action, the body is not deceived, it reaches to grasp the
circle (A or B) in the correct way. Indeed, the body knows how to operate in the world.
This is not computational nor analytical knowledge, but rather the knowing body that
simply tries to get a maximum grip with the world. In fact, the most important thing
we learn from this (and other) cognitive illusions is what happens when our ability to
move is restricted. Without movement, our perception is distorted. (The image from
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Mond-­vergleich.svg)

phenomenological field, a universal flesh. In processes of perception, the

higher-level cognitive system does not manipulate information that is received
passively by the senses. Such an idea stems from a mistaken philosophical
approach, which separates too definitively between outside and inside. Thus,
every explanation that separates the object as it is in the world from the way
it emerges in our consciousness is mistaken and misleading. The world is not
external to us, it is within us, and not in the idealistic sense—the world is at
the heart of the subject just as the subject is entirely absorbed in the world: “I
am thrown into a nature, and nature appears not only outside of me in objects
devoid of history, but is also visible at the center of subjectivity”
8 Y. Ataria

(Merleau-­Ponty 2012, p. 361). Essentially, classical approaches to perception

separate our consciousness from the world, whereas consciousness is all-in to
begin with; namely, it is thrown into the midst of the world.
To remain loyal to the lifeworld (German: Lebenswelt), we might suggest
that cognitive illusions tell us what happens when humans are unable to act
in the world. Indeed, it is impossible to maintain an illusion when our move-
ment has no limits. A cognitive illusion emerges when we cannot transform
the absent into the present. However, the essence of perception is exactly
that—transforming the hidden into the present, the invisible into the visible.
Perception is not a process of constructing a mental representation that should
somehow be linked to the world. Rather, it is a process of revealing the world.
Thus, perception (or truth for that matter) does not involve comparing men-
tal representations with objects in the world. With this in mind, it is clear why
perceiving becomes difficult when our movement is limited.

1.1.4 The Bodily Space

We are present in a bodily space. There are things to my right and to my left,
in front of me and behind me. We experience and perceive the world from
within our body—we are the center, and the world faces us. Indeed, we can-
not exist in a space that lacks such a perspective, our own subjective
perspective:

Space is no longer what it was in the Dioptric, a network of relations between

objects such as would be seen by a witness to my vision or by a geometer looking
over it and reconstructing it from outside. It is, rather, a space reckoned starting
from me as the zero point or degree zero of spatiality. I do not see it according
to its exterior envelope; I live in it from the inside; I am immersed in it. After
all, the world is all around me, not in front of me. (Merleau-Ponty 1964, p. 178)

Our body limits the world into which we are thrown—for example, the
fact that the visible spectrum does not include all colors limits how we under-
stand the world around us. In this sense, we have no acquaintance with the
world itself but rather with an embodied world. We do not live in an abstract
world but in our world. In Merleau-Ponty’s words:

The world is inseparable from the subject, but from a subject who is nothing but
a project of the world; and the subject is inseparable from the world, but from
a world that it itself projects. The subject is being-in-the-world and the world
 1 Phenomenology of the Body 9

remains “subjective,” since its texture and its articulations are sketched out by
the subject’s movement of transcendence (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 454)

The world, as perceived from my viewpoint, is the only world I know. It is

my world, it is prior to any objective world that science attempts to construct.
My perceptual schemes shape the world as I perceive it. These schemes are
created bottom-up, that is, from our preliminary encounter with the world.
They are the outcome of our active exploration of the world, and they can be
described in terms of sensorimotor laws, which, in turn, enable us to be tuned
to the world. Embedded in our body, the schemes allow us to operate natu-
rally in the world, to forget our body in the process of perceiving the world.
Likewise, because they derive from our continued and incessant dialogue with
the world, they are constantly updated.
A bodily viewpoint includes an emotional layer—we are always in a certain
mood: “Mood assails. It comes neither from ‘without’ nor from ‘within,’ but
rises from being-in-the-world itself as a mode of that being… Mood has
always already disclosed being-in-the-world as a whole and first makes possi-
ble directing oneself toward something.” (Heidegger 1996, p. 129). We are
doomed to be thrown into the world in a certain emotional state. For exam-
ple, when we are plunged into depression, this is expressed at the bodily level,
and thus also affects how the space around us is shaped. Indeed, space-time,
which expresses our emotional state, is not Newtonian (we are not inside
some kind of container) but the result of how we are thrown into the world
in a certain emotional state. The sense of space, like the sense of time, is the
result of the pre-reflective bodily experience of being-in-the-world. It is no
accident that a depressed person feels as though the world is closing in on her,
as though she is shrinking into a horizonless point of time, falling into a vac-
uum. This feeling expresses the bodily-emotional state. In a state of depres-
sion, the body ceases to be the lived-body, increasingly becoming the
body-as-object. In this situation, the body becomes an obstacle; the depressed
subject feels less at home in her body; her sense of belonging to the world
decreases (Ratcliffe 2015). Phrasing this in Heideggerian terms, the depressed
subject feels that the world is no longer ready-to-hand and instead becomes
present-at-hand, out of reach, something broken that cannot be fixed.
Fundamentally, it is no accident that descriptions of being isolated from
the world and from the body complement each other. Returning to Heidegger
(1982, p. 297), it could be said that to understand ourselves is to understand
the way we are projected onto (and absorbed into) the world:
10 Y. Ataria

World exists—that is, it is—only if Dasein exists, only if there is Dasein. Only
if world is there, if Dasein exists as being-in-the-world, is there understanding
of being, and only if this understanding exists are intraworldly beings unveiled
as extant and handy. World-understanding as Dasein-understanding is
self-understanding.

Essentially, then, the bodily experience at the level of the lived-body and
the experience of the world are located at the same primal layer of being-in-­
the-world: We feel our body through the world and the world through our
body: these are two sides of the same coin (Ratcliffe 2008, 2015). Put differ-
ently, our emotional state at any given moment is expressed in the way we
experience the world itself.
This idea is not intended to nullify the world of physics. On the contrary,
the space surrounding us possesses physical characteristics that constitute a
precondition for life on earth; experience cannot be separated from the physi-
cal laws on which our existence rests. Every movement we make is shaped by
the force of gravity. We are drenched in the features of the world. Perceptual
schemes are created through the organism’s encounter with the world, impris-
oned in the world of physical laws. It can therefore be said that “the world”
determines how consciousness is constructed, because consciousness emerges
from the way our body moves and acts in the physical world, that is, accord-
ing to the physical laws. People who spend a long time in a field without grav-
ity will undergo dramatic physical changes, while the consciousness of future
generations, who have never experienced gravity, will be shaped by physical
laws that differ to those of their parents. After a long period, almost certainly,
they will be very different from us—and perhaps we will no longer be able to
speak the same language and use the same metaphors. Indeed, changes in our
environment re-shape us and transform us into something else.

1.1.5 The Phenomenological Field

Merleau-Ponty seeks to return to the tangible experience that precedes the

artificial separation between consciousness and the world. The first step in this
direction is defining the phenomenological field. The phenomenological field
cannot be described in terms of a Newtonian-objective field with no view-
point; likewise it would be a mistake to define the phenomenological field
solely in terms of objects independent of the consciousness.
The phenomenological field is a-dualist: There is (almost) no separation
between subject and object. The perceiving subject and the perceived world
are two inseparable sides of the same coin. This is a field made of flesh with
 1 Phenomenology of the Body 11

greatly blurred limits. This space can be described as a sort of womb: “The
world is made of the same stuff as the body” (Merleau-Ponty 1964, p. 163).
Therefore, the body cannot be regarded in an a-spatial matter: “Our body is
not primarily in space, but is rather of space” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 149).
The phenomenological perceptive field is a bodily field, the result of a con-
tinuing dialogue between the body and its environment, which shape each
other reciprocally without any clear boundary or sharp division. Within this
field, objects appear. These objects, however, are not (and cannot be) indepen-
dent of the body; instead, they are part of the perceptual field. At the same
time, these objects define the horizon, the intentional arc, and the field of
perception: “Things are an annex or prologation of itself; they are incrusted
into its flesh” (Merleau-Ponty 1964, p. 163).
In the process of perceiving an object, we dive into it and it invades us. In
such a relationship, the focus is the reciprocal grip and not either one of the
sides. In this sense, it is more accurate to think of perception as akin to sexual
relations with a beloved partner: it is no longer clear where we end and the
other begins, or vice versa.
The process of perception always takes place in a particular phenomeno-
logical field shaped by various kinds of objects that, in turn, define the specific
object perceived here-and-now. These objects stand in the background and
shape the perceptual horizon; the intentional arc. As such, they enable the
subject to dive into the perceived object, and, no less importantly, to open-
­up to it.
Every object is a mirror to the other objects—every object is reflected in the
objects surrounding it and they are reflected in it in return. Thus, for example,
every item on my desk is part of the same niche and echoes all the other items.
Take, for instance, the cup of tea that I perceive and experience right now
while working at my computer: it is something that warms me and gives me
both energy and comfort. At the same time, this cup of tea is perceived as
something that I must take care not to spill on the keyboard. This is a cup of
tea in a very precise context. This cup is very different from the same cup in
the sink, because in the sink I have no fear of this kind. Rather, there I think
of it in relation to the plates and the other cups: which should I rinse off first
in order to organize the dish rack efficiently? This process, in which I act in a
certain way vis-a-vis different objects in different situations, opens me up to
the world in a specific way, enabling actions of a certain type and preventing
me from executing other kinds of action. At least to some extent, the situation
defines the I-can field, that is, the sense of availableness.
12 Y. Ataria

1.1.6 The Lived-body as a Work of Art

The body is a simple material entity, and yet it is not a simple object like any
other object: “The body cannot be compared to the physical object, but rather
to the work of art” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 152). Therefore, we will never be
able to perceive our body as we perceive another object or explore our body as
we explore another object.
I perceive the world from the viewpoint of my body—from within the
body: “But I am not in front of my body, I am in my body, or rather I am my
body” (ibid., p. 151). Although it seems as if we experience the world directly
and the body is not present in the experience, our experience is nevertheless
completely bodily. Accordingly, our existential structure is entirely bodily.
Even if we completely identify with processes taking place within our head (a
direct result of our total identification with the sense of sight), and feel dis-
connected from the body, we are none other than our bodies and nothing over
and beyond the body.
Interestingly, Merleau-Ponty returns to Descartes and emphasizes:

As Descartes once said profoundly, the soul is not merely in the body like a pilot
in his ship; it is wholly intermingled with the body… For us the body is much
more than an instrument or a means; it is our expression in the world, the visi-
ble form of our intentions (Merleau-Ponty 1964, p. 5).

With this in mind, it is quite clear that when Merleau-Ponty says I am the
body he is not talking about the body-as-object but about the lived-body act-
ing in an environment, shaping it and shaped by it. This body, which is I (yet
not Me), is a docking point in the world. Not only am I present in the world
through my body, but I am present, always and necessarily, from the view-
point it forces upon me, that is, from within it. The entire world faces in a
certain direction—the body. Indeed, in the process of perception, the view-
point on the world is from inside. Essentially, it is impossible to perceive an
object from nowhere, and therefore the angle of perception always deprives us
of some parts. In essence, it is exactly this limitation that transforms us into
an active agent—one that explores the world in a certain style, transforming
the absent into the present in each and every action. For Merleau-Ponty, the
processes via which the invisible becomes visible are a work of art performed
not (only) by our body but through our body.
 1 Phenomenology of the Body 13

1.1.7 The Dual Structure of the Body

To be present in the world through our body means manipulating the envi-
ronment through the body, usually without conscious attention. For example,
holding an apple and turning it in my palm to identify soft areas that are
about to rot. The object, which always appears in a certain context, sucks us
into it, opens us up, calls us to act on it, with it, and through it.
The body is an object in a world of objects. If this were not the case, as
Merleau-Ponty (2012) claims, we would not be able to act in the world. Yet
“my body” (and of course this Cartesian turn of phrase is erroneous, for this
dualism exists only in language) is not an object like other objects. Indeed, the
body is not an object that I can explore from the outside like any other object.
True, that would in principle be possible with the aid of manipulations such
as several mirrors; however, I cannot move around my body in order to see it
from all sides:

I can, of course, see my eyes in a three-faced mirror, but these are the eyes of
someone who is observing, and I can barely catch a glimpse of my living gaze
when a mirror on the street unexpectedly reflects my own image back at me. My
body, as seen in the mirror, continues to follow my intentions as if they were its
shadow, and if observation involves varying the point of view by holding the
object fixed, then my body escapes observation and presents itself as a simula-
crum of my tactile body, since it mimics the tactile body’s initiatives rather than
responding to them through a free unfolding of perspectives (Merleau-Ponty
2012, p. 96).

My body never stands opposite me, as every other object in the perceptual
field does. Indeed, to examine the body fully another body would be needed—
a viewpoint that is completely external to my body: “When it comes to my
body, I never observe it itself. I would need a second body to be able to do so,
which would itself be unobservable” (ibid., p. 93). Furthermore, our body is
not only an object, but simultaneously an object and a subject. This structure
is fundamental and inherent to human existence: “A human body exists when,
between the seeing and the seen, between touching and the touched, between
one eye and the other, between hand and hand, a blending of some sort takes
place, the spark is lit between sensing and sensible” (Merleau-Ponty 1964,
pp. 162–163). As we can see, for Merleau-Ponty, this double structure is the
metaphysical structure of man. Thus, for example, the mirror exposes the
most basic existential structure of my being as at once subject and object:
14 Y. Ataria

Like all other technical objects, such as signs and tools, the mirror arises upon
the open circuit [that goes] from seeing body to visible body. Every technique is
a “technique of the body.” A technique outlines and amplifies the metaphysical
structure of our flesh. The mirror appears because I am seeing-visible [voyant-­
visible], because there is a reflexivity of the sensible; the mirror translates and
reproduces that reflexivity (ibid., p. 168).

1.2 Perceiving the World through Movement

1.2.1 Movement and Perception

According to the orthodox cognitive approach, movement and perception are

disconnected from each other. On the one hand there is input (perception)
and on the other output (movement), with cognitive processes mediating
between them. Hurley (2001) defines this as the “sandwich” model, propos-
ing a more dynamic approach: Cognitive processes do not lie between input
and output but are created out of a dynamic feedback with (and through) the
world, to be more accurate, cognitive processes emerge from, and are rooted
in, our encounter with the world at the sensorimotor level. Note that, in this
framework, the world itself plays an active role in cognitive processes.
The orthodox model prefers perception over movement and in general
“top-bottom” processes: passive input from the environment, launching a
cognitive process that enables us to “perceive” the world in the form of a cer-
tain representation within our brain. According to the orthodox model,
movement results from mental activity and has no strong influence on the
received input, since the output (movement) and input systems are in prin-
ciple independent. Moreover, in the orthodox model, perception and move-
ment are almost unrelated, whereas in the dynamic-horizontal model we treat
ourselves as an organism that explores the world through movement, and
there is no sharp separation between movement and perception: Perception is
not input, and movement is not output. According to this approach, we
should cease thinking in terms of a causal arrow advancing in one direction:
from inside-out or from outside-in. Instead, we should think in terms of
dynamic processes in which perception and movement are in constant and
ongoing interaction with no clear direction (from the inside-out or from out-
side-­in), without preference for one or another type of information. Similarly,
we should cease thinking in vertical terms (bottom up vs. top-down), with a
central system at the top that manages the organism. By contrast, we should
think about our presence in the world in dynamic-horizontal terms: the
 1 Phenomenology of the Body 15

different systems in the organism work in parallel and not in series, in a

dynamic rather than a top-down manner.
According to the dynamic model, interaction does not take place from
inside-out and from outside-in but rather in a constant process of feedback at
different levels—from the way in which we preserve physical stability and bal-
ance, through the way we extend our hand to reach out for the cup of tea, and
to the way we put together puzzles, play tennis, or write. Despite different
levels of complexity, these actions share something in common: we are con-
stantly interacting with the environment, continuously exploring our envi-
ronment, which, in turn, guides our actions; the availability of our surroundings
calls for a certain action. In this process, we are open to the world that both
grips us and sucks us into it.
The feedback teaches us what the world actually is, and, no less impor-
tantly, who we are: an exploring organism with certain abilities and limita-
tions acting within a certain environment that enables certain actions and
impedes others. Gibson (1986) stresses that our ability to explore the world
cannot be separated from our ability to explore ourselves. Indeed, according
to Merleau-Ponty (2012), “I am not concealed from myself because I have a
world” (p. 311). In terms of the perceptual system, we may then suggest that
to learn something about the world is to learn something about ourselves, and
to learn something about ourselves is to learn something about the world.

1.2.2 Exploring the World

We are our body. Among other things, this means that we are limited to our
bodily perspective. Consequently, objects cannot be fully perceived from a
godlike viewpoint and hence things are never fully exposed to us. Indeed,
objects in our surroundings always remain somewhat concealed. Things are
present but invisible, or better put, invisible yet present. We exist between the
visible and the invisible (yet to become visible); losing a grip on specific aspects
in order to obtain a grip on others. Our experience is shaped by the dialogue
between the present and the absent; things are always present to some extent
yet to some degree they are also absent.
We are asked to find an apple hidden in one of many sealed bags. Probably,
even without using the sense of sight, sense of smell, and the sense of taste,
most of us will succeed in detecting the apple, even if the other bags contain
round objects similar to an apple. We explore the world around us in the same
way that we explore the object in the bag. Let us consider, for example, how we
look for a certain pen in a pencil case without seeing it, or how we search in
16 Y. Ataria

total darkness, during a power cut, for candles in a drawer. To do so, we must
know-how to relate motor activity to sensory input; we must know-how to
relate sensory action and motor input in terms of “if-then.” In this process, we
get a grip on the object. Generally, in order to identify objects in the world, we
need to activate certain laws of motion that connect movement to sensation.
Let us further pinpoint this notion: when the bag is in our hands, it is easy
to identify the spherical shape within it; we touch the object, hold it, and
sense that it has no corners. Take a moment to think about this experience—
the sense that the perceived object has no corners. The active process of per-
ception is twofold: When we are looking for unique characteristics that will
allow us to identify the object, we are at the same time exploring salient char-
acteristics that are “missing.” Accordingly, when we collect information about
its roundness, we simultaneously pick up information about what it lacks:
corners, straight lines, and so on. Thus, the process of exploring what is con-
stitutes a dual process in which we simultaneously explore and assure our-
selves of what is absent—confirmation and refutation operate together in the
framework of movement-sensation-expectation (Fig. 1.2).
When we grasp an object, whether with hand or eye, to ensure that it
remains in our grasp or in focus, we must be able to adjust. Thus, for instance,
our hand (and accordingly our entire body) prepares differently to catch a
tennis ball or a cube of the same size (and weight for that matter). The hand
that is ready to catch the object, the hand that makes adjustments to achieve
optimal grip, is also that which holds the answer. Indeed, consider the differ-
ence between “rolling” a ball and a cube between our fingers—how much
information we extract, collect, and in fact manufacture by means of touch,
just from the character of the hand movement, the fingers, and the space
between the fingers; how much information we collect and manufacture from
the connection between motor activity and sensory input; and vice versa; how
far the sensory input shapes the characteristics of our movement.
Essentially, however, the answer to how we identify the apple in the bag is
not in the hand alone but rather in the interaction with the object—interac-
tion that naturally includes the eye, of which the hand is the direct extension
(and not as a panopticon), and eventually the entire body. Indeed, the relevant
information emerges from the encounter with the object itself, as well as from
the very movement of our bodies in a way that is independent of the object.2
As Merleau-Ponty notes:

2
This formulation is problematic because even movement that is independent of a concrete object oper-
ates in relation to some imagined object, that is, in the framework of a certain system of expectations that
assumes the presence of some particular object.
 1 Phenomenology of the Body 17

I have the world as an unfinished individual through my body as a power for

this world; I have the position of objects through the position of my body, or
inversely I have the position of my body through the position of objects, not
through a logical implication, nor in the manner in which we determine an
unknown size through its objective relations with given sizes, but rather
through a real implication and because my body is a movement toward the
world and because the world is my body’s support (Merleau-Ponty
2012, p. 366)

The movement itself helps collect meaningful information about the world.
This is achieved not only through changes in sensory input but also through
the new information it enables us to “collect” about our bodies. Every move-
ment enables us to pick up proprietary information (the sensory information
arriving from receptors in the body that report on its condition and the loca-
tion of the body in space) and kinesthetic information (the sense of physical
posture and movement of body and limbs) with regard to our location, the
manner in which we are positioned in space, and more. Characteristics of
movement itself reveal a great deal about the world with which we are satu-
rated: when we move in space, laws of motion come into play and teach us
what we must do to hold the object.
Yet these sentences are misleading. We do not collect or pick up informa-
tion about the proprioceptive system because we are not separate from it, we
ourselves are the proprioceptive system,3 we are the movements we make.
There is no “I” that learns something about a body (which, in turn, is sepa-
rated from this “I”). There is the body that is open to the world and constantly
tries to maximize its possibilities of collecting more and more information
about the world—trying to get a grip on things. We perceive the world
through our body, and every encounter with the world is a bodily encounter.
This is a process of movement, and of expectation that is refuted or confirmed
through feedback from the world and from our body. To pin down this
notion, let us return to our real life.
When I place my hand on the dresser in total darkness, seeking a flash-
light among all the things scattered on top of it, I move my hand on the
surface, feel around, explore, and attempt to “illuminate” the surface using
the sense of touch. Every object I come across immediately undergoes a
process of quick investigation: books are characterized by sharp corners,
and hence I swiftly pass them over. Pens are indeed rounded, but their size

3
This does not suggest that it possible to reduce a human being to one system or another.
18 Y. Ataria

is qualitatively different from that of the flashlight I am looking for. Indeed,

as was noted above, we always operate in a dual fashion when collecting
information: confirming while refuting, refuting while confirming. These
processes take place in parallel but are in a close dialogue. And even if the
flashlight were pen-like, nonetheless the pen and the flashlight have differ-
ent characteristics: weight, center of gravity, texture of the material, etc. In
this process, I can locate the flashlight, and, while I hold it, the exploration
process continues. I sense that the object is round, I sense the coolness of
metal, and, in a process of feedback, information regarding the character of
the object that I am holding emerges. Afterwards I sense the flashlight at a
higher level of resolution to locate softer areas. The hand keeps exploring
yet in a different context. We are no longer looking for the flashlight but
rather the on-off switch. The situation has changed, calling for a different
style of action: we are now exploring the flashlight for the relative stickiness
of the rubber, the warmth, the softness. Once this is done, I get a grip on
the flashlight. Until now it was unready-to-hand, yet in the exploration
process it becomes ready-to-hand, and, as a result, my home—which was
unready-to-hand during the power outage—becomes ready-to-hand. This
is also the way we select a tomato: we grasp it, try to locate its flaws. We
explore the tomato, focusing our resolution on everything related to sensa-
tions of pressure (softness versus rigidity) in order to make the best possible
choice. We are exploring the tomato in the context of caring. It is Thursday
now. On Friday we eat at my wife’s parents, and they love softer and redder
tomatoes sliced widthwise; on Saturday morning, my parents visit us. They
like hard green tomatoes cut into eighths, requiring a different type of
tomato (and also a different type of knife and so on). My children love to
help me cut salad on Saturday night, so the tomatoes cannot be too soft
because they use a blunter knife and will not be able to cut a soft tomato.
They too need smaller tomatoes, which they can hold in one hand and
which will suit the smaller knives they use. These considerations are all in
the groping hand, in the manner of movement, in the style, in the system
of expectations, but again, these are not top-down processes. Instead, we
are open to the needs of our environment, thus creating a map of possibili-
ties that guides us. We go to the supermarket on a certain day, at a certain
time, and the variety is limited, as is the time we can invest in choosing
tomatoes. We always operate in a certain situation that enables, limits, and
invites us to act in it in a certain fashion.
The world itself calls me to action: the shape of the flashlight enables cer-
tain movements and negates others, the rigidity of the tomato limits the
 1 Phenomenology of the Body 19

pressure I will exert on it. For example, before I even begin to feel it, its color
defines the range of action. It is clear that in the case of a greenish tomato, I
will expect a stiffer touch than a red one: “The eye is an instrument that moves
itself, a means which invents its own ends; it is that which has been moved by
some impact of the world, which it then restores to the visible through the
offices of an agile hand.” (Merleau-Ponty 1964, p. 165)

1.2.3 Knowing How

Our ability to explore the world relates to our skill at engaging in an intimate
dialogue with the environment: we can connect motor activity and sensory
input. Essentially, motor activity and sensory input appear together and can-
not be separated.
Every type of exploration involves a different link between the character of
the motor activity and the sensory input, as illustrated by the following exam-
ple: A missile that is launched at a plane follows the plane using a camera.
Several basic sensorimotor laws facilitate this: When the plane viewed in the
camera appears bigger, the missile “knows” that it is approaching the target. If
the object grows and the missile travels at a fixed speed, the missile “knows”
that the plane is decelerating. When the plane is at the top left corner of the
screen, the missile “knows” that it must turn left and upward to return it to
the center of the screen. The missile does not have a central system. Rather, it
operates according to a collection of laws relating movement to sensing. This
is also the way infrared homing systems, which rely on the Doppler effect, and
others operate. All these systems work together, crosschecking data and draw-
ing a picture according to which the missile “knows” its location relative to
the plane and what it must do to hit the plane. This knowledge can be
described in terms of “if-then.”
We operate in the same way. For instance, when my right hand moves
right, it expects that it will either bump into something or nothing. Think, for
example, about how we go down an unknown staircase when the light sud-
denly goes out. In such cases, our entire body is in a state of readiness—
exploring the world and collecting information in an effort to anticipate
whether a step awaits us. Merleau-Ponty (2012, p. 106) phrases the idea in the
following manner: “From its very beginnings, the grasping movement is mag-
ically complete; it only gets under way by anticipating its goal, since the ban
on grasping is enough to inhibit the movement.”
20 Y. Ataria

Sensations

Movements Expectations

Fig. 1.2 The triangular structure of movement-expectation-sensation

Sensation generates (non-conscious) expectation, leading to (and shaping) movement
due to (a certain) expectation of a sensation, that is expressed in continuous move-
ment saturated with expectations, which for their part are constantly changing and
updating according to the sensations that generate new expectations and so on, in an
endless cycle

Before continuing, it is important to note that expectations are not a kind

of cognitive system divorced from movements and sensations. Instead, it is an
inseparable part of the triangular structure of movement-expectation-­
sensation in which none of the elements takes priority. Essentially, this is not
a hierarchical structure wherein the cognitive system has the last word but
rather a horizontal and dynamic structure.
We explore the world just as the missile follows the plane, using “if-then”
type information (if we move in a certain direction, a certain sensory input
should appear). How do we know the wall opposite us is red, and not yellow,
for example? The movement of the eye over, or better put with, the surface,
and the input resulting from the sampling and scanning movement, are
responsible for the experience of the wall is red: “The gaze obtains more or less
from things according to the manner in which it interrogates them, in which
it glances over them or rests upon them” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 154). At
the level of the sense of sight, one can consider an entire system of laws that
changes the appearance of the object as it moves between light and shadow,
and when it is exposed to different light levels. This system of laws generates
the experience of red. We can think of this process in the framework of a sys-
tem of laws concerning the movement of an object in space relative to differ-
ent types of lighting and the received sensory input. The movement itself and
the sensory input are one package, always operating together.
Moreover, movement itself, in relation to the received sensory input,
enables us to determine which sense is active. When we turn the head to the
right, that which was in the center “moves” left. Look at one point in front of
you now. Close your right eye and turn your head to the left until the point is
outside your range of sight. When this happens, blink your right eye, and you
 1 Phenomenology of the Body 21

will see that the point appears and disappears from the peripheral visual field
of the right eye and the right eye only. Think how much information can be
obtained via this process: We learn that blinking causes a visual experience
and that the character of the information is visual and not aural. The fact that
blinking causes a momentary loss of vision enables the system to know that
this is visual input and to treat it as such. Another example: When we bring
our head close to an object, it “grows.” Yet this process does not occur when
we bring our hand close to an object. Let us return to the example of moving
our head left and blinking our right eye: We understand that due to the left-
ward head movement, the object will appear only in the vision field of right
eye. Now we move the right eye without moving the head left and right, and
when we focus on the object at the periphery of the eye, we feel a certain pain.
This is additional information about the link between movement (or lack
thereof ) and sensory input. Forcing ourselves to focus on the object at the
periphery (and the extreme right of the right eye), we discover that our head
is slowly drawn to the right until the object is once again at the center of our
gaze. This is a good example of how the character of the input “controls”
movement, how the world grips us and draws us into it. Indeed, here we see
the direct link (feedback loops) between movement and sensory input. The
processes described here take place beneath the threshold of the conscious
mind; this is implicit knowledge that enables us to understand what we see—a
collection of “if-then” laws connecting motor activities to sensory inputs.
When we have a set of laws at hand, we can say that “we know how.”
According to O’Regan and Noë (O’Regan and Noë 2001a, b; Noë 2004),
perceiving does not mean carrying out a system of laws connecting motor
activity to sensory input but rather being tuned into this system of laws, that
is, being able to control it unconsciously. Inability to control such a system is
equivalent to inability to perceive. In other words, inability to manage the
laws relating movement to sensory input means that one is blind.
Essentially, one is not born with the ability to link between sense and move-
ment; this requires learning. To be more specific, we need to learn (uncon-
scious) control of the sensorimotor system of laws. Indeed, Merleau-Ponty
(2012, pp. 154–155) further stresses that we need to learn how to see:
“Learning to see colors is the acquisition of a certain style of vision, a new use
of one’s own body; it is to enrich and to reorganize the body schema.”
Not knowing-how means living in a world that is closed, undeciphered,
chaotic, a world that in Heideggerian (1996) terms, as discussed above, can be
defined as present-at-hand. The knowledge that enables us to control the sys-
tem is practical knowledge stored in our bodies—when we do not know how
to operate in the world, we are cast out of it. The world, in these conditions,
22 Y. Ataria

ceases to be accessible, it is closed to us. Perception means knowing-how to

act in the world in order to understand it. If we do not know what to do and
how to do it—we are blind to the world.

1.2.4 To See the Whole World

With a few exceptions, we feel that we see the whole world. This experience is
both quite basic and quite mistaken. Essentially, this belief is one of the cen-
tral reasons that many of us accept the approach of representations in the
brain, according to which we have a complete representation of everything we
see before us. However, this feeling (as though we see the whole world) is
merely an illusion.
Noë believes (2002) that the source of the mistake is our failure to under-
stand what it means to see. For instance, when we think about the experience
of blindness, we think to ourselves that a blind person “sees blackness.”
However, a blind person does not see blackness—she does not see: “I can close
my eyes and plug my ears, but I cannot stop seeing, even if only the blackness
before my eyes, or hearing, even if only the silence” (Merleau-Ponty 2012,
p. 416). There is a huge difference between seeing blackness and being blind
or between hearing silence and being deaf.
Lacking the most basic understanding of the experience of vision, we accept
it as obvious that the information received on the retina is almost irrelevant
and seeing means representing the world in the brain. The source of this phe-
nomenological failure is the difficulty to sense the eye at the moment it oper-
ates in the world, just like the hand that explores its environment in order to
enable us to see the world, or, more accurately, to get a grip on it. Generally,
to begin to understand the meaning of sight, one needs to understand that it
operates in tactile fields:

The very fact that genuine vision is prepared for through a transition phase and
through a sort of touching with the eyes could not be understood if there were
no quasi-spatial tactile fields into which the first visual perceptions could be
inserted. Vision could never communicate directly with touch, as it does for the
normal adult, if touch, even when artificially isolated, were not organized in
such a manner as to make coexistences possible. Far from excluding the idea of
a “tactile space,” the facts prove to the contrary that there is a space so strictly
tactile that its articulations are not at first, nor will they ever be, in a relation of
synonymy with the articulations of visual space (ibid., p. 232).
 1 Phenomenology of the Body 23

Yet, despite the great illusion of seeing the whole world at once, we have no
complete representation of the picture before us in the brain. In fact, the eye
is constantly working to grasp its environment because the eye cannot avoid
tracking an object moving in front of it. Moving objects in our field of vision
attract our attention in an uncontrollable manner (think about what happens
when a fly passes before our eyes—whether you want to or not, you will find
yourself following it), and the moment this happens, we know what to do,
that is, which sensorimotor laws we need to use in order to follow the moving
object. From the moment we sense the moving object, our dance with it
begins. In this sense, the world grasps us no less than we grasp it.
To understand the origin of the experience of “seeing the whole world,” we
can compare it to the manner in which we “remember.” Usually, we feel that
all our autobiographical memories are accessible, but of course we are not
aware of all of them all the time. We unconsciously understand what we need
to do to bring a certain memory to the surface or to dredge it up. O’Regan
claims (1992) that just as we feel that all our autobiographical memories are
accessible at all times, so too we feel that we constantly see that which is before
us, even though it is clear in both cases that this is not so. The world should
be regarded as a sort of “external memory.” We simply know what to do,
unconsciously, to effect a transformation from hidden to revealed, available,
and accessible. We know how to operate in the world in order to collect the
missing details. The way we explore the world allows us to reveal what is hid-
den, making perception the process via which the concealed becomes uncon-
cealed. The constant and ongoing movement generates varying sensory inputs,
and this, in turn, is responsible for the experience that “we see the entire
world.” This experience emerges from our ability to turn the non-present into
present. Right now, while reading these words, you can move your eyes and
make peripheral information become central, you can look everywhere and
collect details about the world around you. You know how to act in order to
obtain the missing information, to uncover the hidden parts (think for a sec-
ond about the experience of reading Wikipedia entries: we start with one
topic and via various links move to other topics, eventually we receiving a
fuller picture of the topic that we set out to study). When we examine our-
selves and ask whether we see X, all we need to do is to act in a certain manner.
This knowledge, the ability to transform something from hidden to revealed,
is at the basis of the experience that the whole world is before us. If this is on
our map of possibilities, then from our viewpoint it exists; it is right in
front of us.
24 Y. Ataria

In the case of the sense of touch, it appears easy to grasp how command of
the sensorimotor laws enables us to perceive the world. This is, however, not
the case with vision. Yet, essentially, the sense of vision operates in a fashion
far more akin to the other senses than we tend to think: “The eye was like a
giant hand that samples the outside world” (O’Regan 2011, p. 23). The dif-
ference between them is perhaps the extremely automatic way this system
operates, making us unable to sense ourselves sensing, that is, to see ourselves
seeing. The result of this automatic character is our difficulty in (and perhaps
even the impossibility of ) following what the eye does as it samples and scans
the world. The action is so quick that the experience of “sensing” we described
before, in the attempt to identify an object in a bag, barely emerges (it remains
beneath the threshold of consciousness). Yet the sense of sight also operates in
an exploratory manner—sampling and scanning the object, feeling it in an
effort to understand what this is about.

1.3 Embodied Cognition

1.3.1 The Body as a Tool and a Technology

It is morning. My son, Assaf, our puppy, Buzz, and I walk about half a kilo-
meter to the kindergarten. I pick up a stick and throw it. With a puppy’s
enthusiasm, Buzz runs, catches the stick in his mouth, and, when he returns
to us, he puts the stick at our feet and licks Assaf ’s face. Buzz cannot lick Assaf
with the stick in his mouth, this is his physical limitation. To pick things up,
the dog uses his mouth, and he uses his limbs for movement. By contrast, I, a
human being stand on two legs. Doing so frees my two hands to do whatever
is needed. In one hand I hold Assaf ’s hand, and in my other hand the stick I
threw to Buzz. I raise the stick in order to check how high Buzz can jump. I
am constantly exploring the world around me, ceaselessly testing my limits
and the limits of the creatures around me.
I use the words “to talk,” “to write” too easily; these skills should not be
taken for granted. Talking requires a unique bodily structure: the oral cavity,
the jaw, the tongue, the throat, and all the other organs must function in
perfect coordination to produce speech in a comprehensible language intended
to fulfill aims, just like any other tool. As Merleau-Ponty (2012) puts it: “As
for the sense of the word, I learn it just as I learn the use of a tool—by seeing
it employed in the context of a certain situation” (p. 425).
On our morning walk to kindergarten, we visit my parents’ home for a
moment. My mother holds a tablet, she takes a picture of us and sends it to
 1 Phenomenology of the Body 25

my sister, who is 11,000 km away. The tablet, smartphone, and other smart
devices redefine our boundaries. Technology is part of what we are, it is part
of the cognitive system. It defines our development, shaping and expanding
our boundaries and empowering the gap between our body as object and our
body as we experience it—the lived-body (Leib). Our corporeal body, the
body-as-object (Körper), always (or at least that is how we feel) ends with a
clear boundary. However, the lived-body melts into space and has no clear
boundaries. According to Ihde (2009), to say that technology is embodied is
to say that it changes our sense of boundaries, reshapes our I-can field, all
while remaining in the background. In other words, technology becomes
embodied when it integrates into the lived-body.
A person holding a smartphone in his hand is familiar with the addiction
to the device (calendar, navigation apps, and more). The I-phone is such a
successful instrument that Chalmers, in the introduction to Clark’s book,
Supersizing the Mind (2008), claims that the device is actually part of who he
is. To use Merleau-Ponty’s (1964) words: “Our organs are no longer instru-
ments; on the contrary, our instruments are detachable organs” (p. 178). This
is an important transition: from an instrument to a part of who I am, from a
fork to a prosthesis. Indeed, cognitive processes that in the past took place
“inside” now undeniably occur in the smartphone (Clark and Chalmers
1998). Note, however, that the smartphone is not only a passive external
instrument; it is an active and learning technology that has become part of
one’s identity; this is among the factors that make it so addictive. This device
frees up cognitive resources for us (and creates new burdens, sometimes even
greater). The central idea underlying apps is an attempt to reduce cognitive
load, to generate maximal information about the world with minimal effort.
To understand this statement, we need to take the user experience to extremes.
For instance, in the case of Google Glass (or any other smart glasses), the
border between cognitive processes that take place “inside” and cognitive pro-
cesses occurring “outside” becomes completely artificial. Smart glasses enable
us, for example, to navigate in real time through the streets of a foreign city
and, as we do so, they remind us of an appointment we have made and how
to get to the meeting in the framework of time and budgetary constraints.
When we meet someone and cannot immediately place her, smart glasses will
help us remember her name. They will change the lives of those who suffer
from difficulty in facial identification, and they may enable the blind to con-
duct themselves in the world in a completely independent fashion. Smart
glasses cannot be defined as a passive system—just as the eye is not passive.
Indeed, we must think of our eyes as active: “They [our eyes] are computers of
the world” (Merleau-Ponty 1964, p. 165).
26 Y. Ataria

The advanced technology in which we are totally immersed is active. This

is a learning system that will continue to improve through a variety of apps
proposed by the audience itself, bottom-up, based on actual needs. The tech-
nology of the glasses enables a certain bottom-up growth, and it is fairly clear
that, in a few years, it will be hard to manage in some parts of the world with-
out them, or without something similar that might perhaps be installed into
the eye itself. The glasses will be part of our lived bodies in the deepest sense,
but—critically to my argument—they will still be defined as a “tool” that
enables us to do something in the world. In this sense they resemble Heidegger’s
hammer, which is defined by what it enables us to do in the world—hammer
a nail and finally build a house that will protect us: “The thing at hand which
we call a hammer has to do with hammering, the hammering has to do with
fastening something, fastening something has to do with protection against
bad weather” (Heidegger 1996, p. 78). However, even though the glasses are
a tool, we will not perceive “them” but with them, similarly to the case of a
blind man’s cane:

The blind man’s cane has ceased to be an object for him, it is no longer perceived
for itself; rather, the cane’s furthest point is transformed into a sensitive zone, it
increases the scope and the radius of the act of touching and has become analo-
gous to a gaze (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 144).

I return home from the kindergarten. Now, as I sit in front of the computer
screen, I notice that while writing these words my ideas—by means of the
keyboard—appear on the monitor with amazing convenience. To be precise,
I do not actually have ideas in my head before I write, I just write and then
my ideas are revealed to me, at first almost as if they were foreign to me. In
this process, I do not feel my fingers; there is a direct link between my thought
and the screen before me. I wonder if I could have written these ideas in the
same formulation if I were not touch-typing, if my fingers were not as quick
as my thought. As I write these sentences, I remember my level of frustration
when I switched keyboards and the Ctrl key on the bottom left of the new
keyboard was more sensitive to pressure (not to mention the time I was in
hotel in Paris struggling with a completely different keyboard). I consider this
and understand that typists think at the pace of their typing. Their thought is
shaped by the speed of their typing. This explains why my father’s writing is
so different now. When he wrote with a pen, his thoughts flowed and his style
was clear, whereas writing on a computer has created a large gap between the
pace at which he was used to thinking and the pace at which he types. His
style has changed, the sentences he writes are neither clear nor sharp, and
 1 Phenomenology of the Body 27

when I read documents he has typed, I do not recognize my father’s style in

them. In a few more months, when the pace of his thought will adjust itself
to the pace of his typing, this will fall into place. However, even then it will
only be partial, because the keyboard will never be part of his lived-body as
the pen was part of his lived-body. Indeed, according to Merleau-Ponty
(2012), “the subject who learns to type literally incorporates the space of the
keyboard into his bodily space” (p. 146). Considering this, we might suggest
that my father’s bodily-pen-space and bodily-keyboard-space is different
in kind.
My son has returned from kindergarten. I look at him as he rides his bicy-
cle. For him, everything suddenly moves faster. To avoid falling, he must
think and act at the pace at which the wheels turn. Similarly, when he learns
to swim, he needs to think and act according to the limitations of his lung
volume. We live according to the limitations of our body, according to its
abilities. Technology enables us to redefine our limits, and it is successful only
when it becomes part of us—part of the lived-body, part of the body-as-­
subject, part of the body that knows, that is transparent (this is the process of
“embodiment”). Only when technology becomes transparent can we perceive
the world through it; in this state, technology becomes an inseparable part of
the very experience of our body. For this to happen, technology must make
actions that we would otherwise perform with difficulty simple and efficient.
Technology opens up a new world of possibilities. In so doing, it reshapes
the I-can field, completely changing our limits. It alters the manner in which
we think about the world and understand it, and, consequently, it redefines
our very existence.

1.3.2 The World is Our Best Model

According to the common approach accepted by most scholars of cognitive

neurosciences, a central system is needed to control the body in its encounter
with the world. At the beginning of the 1980s, after the failure of robot man-
ufacturing using “top-down” techniques—first creating the central system,
then “dressing” it in a body—an important breakthrough took place, and
various labs began to employ a “bottom-up” technique. Robots without a
central system and without a complex system of representations (for instance,
a vacuum-cleaning robot) operate far more successfully than robots that are
based on a central managing system. The best-known project is the Cog robot
built at MIT laboratories under the leadership of Rodney Brooks.
28 Y. Ataria

Some researchers in the field of artificial intelligence believe that there is no

need for a central processing unit in computers in general, and in intelligent
manufacturing in particular. Brooks (1990), a pioneer in the field, claims that
“the world is its own best model—always exactly up to date and complete in
every detail” (p. 5). The world always enables feedback and shapes the way we
work, guides us while coping with problems and solving them “online.” The
world is here “for us.” Hence, the best way to solve problems in the world is
to act in the world itself—there is no need for a central system representing
the world in all its complexity.
In a similar manner to people and other organisms, robots that are con-
structed bottom-up are rooted in the physical world. Such robots have vary-
ing grades of freedom: each grade is autonomous at least some degree and
knows how to communicate with the grade above and below it, but not the
other grades: The finger, for example, does not need to know that it is part of
an entire robot. It knows it is part of the hand and that it is composed of sev-
eral joints. These robots are designed to deal with challenges in the world
itself; each grade of robot is built to cope with problems in its environment
independently and autonomously, at least to a certain extent (Clark 1997).
For example, a robot with six legs (Genghis, inspired by six-legged arthro-
pods) succeeded in walking without any central control system. Surprisingly,
when one leg was removed it found a way to walk on the remaining five legs,
without a central control system and with no prior design. By means of the
feedback process, the robot succeeded in coping with a problem that its
designers did not take into consideration. According to this approach, it is not
necessary to program the robot to cope with all possible problems. Rather, it
learns to deal with the problems through its interaction with the world. The
dialogue with the world, the need to hold onto the world, teaches the robot
to deal with various complex problems. There is no central system that can
operate in such a way because a new problem will always arise: indeed, as we
know, the world is full of surprises. Essentially, if there is no need for a central
system to tackle new and unexpected problems (which the robot was not
designed to deal), then what purpose does it serve? In other words, is it even
necessary? Indeed, it appears that we sometimes cling to the idea of a central
system without any real justification:

People tend to look for the cause, the reason, the driving force, the deciding
factor. When people observe patterns and structures in the world (for example,
the flocking patterns of birds or the foraging patterns of ants), they often assume
centralized causes where none exist. And when people try to create patterns or
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Salome's burden
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at
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Title: Salome's burden

or, the shadow on the homes

Author: Eleanora H. Stooke

Illustrator: C. Howard

Release date: November 17, 2023 [eBook #72157]

Language: English

Original publication: London: S. W. Partridge & Co., Ltd, 1904

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SALOME'S BURDEN ***

Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.

SALOME'S FRESH, SWEET VOICE RANG CLEARLY

THROUGH THE DIM CHURCH.

SALOME'S BURDEN

OR

THE SHADOW ON THE HOMES

BY
 ELEANORA H. STOOKE

AUTHOR OF
"MOUSIE; OR, COUSIN ROBERT'S TREASURE,"
"A LITTLE TOWN MOUSE," "SIR RICHARD'S GRANDSON,"
"LITTLE MAID MARIGOLD." ETC.

WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON

S. W. PARTRIDGE & CO., LTD.

E.C. 4.

Made in Great Britain

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

I. SALOME'S TROUBLE

II. NEW ACQUAINTANCES

III. THE FOWLERS AT HOME

IV. "ABIDE WITH ME"

V. SALOME'S HUMILIATION

VI. PERFECTLY HAPPY

VII. AN AFTERNOON'S OUTING

VIII. AN AWFUL THING

IX. THE BLOW FALLS

X. MR. FOWLER'S RETURN

XI. JOSIAH AT HIS WORST

XII. A BRIEF REPENTANCE

XIII. MRS. FOWLER AND SALOME

XIV. A STORMY NIGHT

XV. TROUBLE AT GREYSTONE

XVI. DAYS OF SICKNESS

XVII. THE SHADOW LIFTED

XVIII. HAPPIER DAYS

Salome's Burden.

CHAPTER I.
Salome's Trouble.

IT was summer time. The day had been oppressively hot; but now, as the sun disappeared
like a ball of fire beyond the broad Atlantic, a cool breeze sprang up, and the inhabitants of
the fishing village of Yelton came to their cottage doors and gossiped with each other, as
they enjoyed the fresh evening air.

Yelton was a small, straggling village on the north coast of Cornwall. It owned but two
houses of importance—the Vicarage, a roomy old dwelling, which stood in its own grounds
close to the church; and "Greystone," a substantial modern residence on a slight eminence
beyond the village, overlooking the sea. The fishermen's cottages were thatched, and
picturesque in appearance, having little gardens in front where hardy flowers flourished;
these gardens were a-bloom with roses and carnations on this peaceful June evening, and
the showiest of them all was one which, though nearer the sea than the others, yet
presented the neatest appearance of the lot. This was Salome Petherick's garden, and
Salome was a cripple girl of fourteen, who lived with her father, Josiah Petherick, in the
cottage at the end of the village, close to the sea.

Salome had been lame from birth, and could not walk at all without her crutches; with
their help, however, she could move about nimbly enough. Many a happy hour did she
spend in her garden whilst Josiah was out in his fishing boat. She was contented then, as
she always was when her father was on the broad sea, for she felt he was in God's
keeping, and away from the drink, which, alas! was becoming the curse of his life. Josiah
Petherick was a brave man physically, but he was a moral coward. He would risk his life at
any hour—indeed, he had often done so—for the sake of a fellow-creature in peril. He was
fearless on the sea, though it had robbed him of relations and friends in the past, and if
help was wanted for any dangerous enterprise, he was always the first to be called upon;
but, nevertheless, there was no greater coward in Yelton, than Josiah Petherick on
occasions. He had lost his wife, to whom he had been much attached, five years
previously; and, left alone with his only child, poor little lame Salome, who had been
anything but a congenial companion for him, he had sought amusement for his leisure
hours at the "Crab and Cockle," as the village inn was called, and there had acquired the
habit of drinking to excess.

As Salome stood leaning on her crutches at the garden gate on this beautiful summer
evening, her face wore a very serious expression, for she knew her father was at the "Crab
and Cockle," and longed for, yet dreaded, his return. She was a small, slight girl, brown-
haired and brown-eyed, with a clear, brunette complexion, which was somewhat sun-
burnt, for she spent most of her spare time in the open air. Having passed the requisite
standard, she had left school, and now did all the work of her father's cottage unaided,
besides attending to her flowers; and Josiah Petherick was wont to declare that no man in
Yelton had a more capable housekeeper. The neighbours marvelled that it was so, for they
had not thought the lame girl, who had been decidedly cross-grained and selfish during
her mother's lifetime, would grow up so helpful; but Mrs. Petherick's death had wrought a
great change in Salome, who had promised faithfully "to look after poor father" in the
years to come. Salome had endeavoured to be as good as her word; but her influence over
her father had not proved strong enough to keep him in the straight path; and many an
evening saw him ramble home from the "Crab and Cockle" in a condition of helpless
intoxication.

"Enjoying the cool breeze, Salome?"

Salome, whose wistful, brown eyes had been turned in the direction of a row of cottages at
some distance, outside one of which hung a sign-board representing on its varnished
surface a gigantic crab and a minute cockle, started at the sound of a voice addressing her,
but smiled brightly as she saw Mr. Amyatt, the vicar of the parish. He was an elderly man,
with iron-grey hair, stooping shoulders, and a thin, clean-shaven face.

Ten years previously, he had accepted the living of Yelton, when, broken down in health,
he had been forced to resign his arduous duties in the large manufacturing town where he
had laboured long and faithfully. And the fisher-folk had grown to love and respect him,
though he never overlooked their failings or hesitated to reprove their faults.

"I am waiting for father," Salome answered frankly. "His supper is ready for him, and I am
afraid it will spoil if he does not come soon. It is a beautiful evening, is it not, sir?"

"Very beautiful. I have been on the beach for the last two hours. How well your carnations
are doing, Salome. Ah, they always flourish best by the sea."

"Please let me give you some," the little girl said eagerly. "Oh, I don't mind picking them in
the least. I should like you to have them." And moving about with agility on her crutches,
she gathered some of the choicest blooms and presented them to Mr. Amyatt.

"Thank you, Salome. They are lovely. I have none to be compared to them in the Vicarage
gardens. You are a born gardener. But what is amiss, child?"

"Nothing, sir; at least, nothing more than usual. I am anxious about father." She paused
for a moment, a painful blush spreading over her face, then continued, "He spends more
time than ever at the 'Crab and Cockle;' he's rarely home of an evening now, and when he
returns, he's sometimes so—so violent! He used not to be that."

The Vicar looked grave and sorry, He pondered the situation in silence for a few minutes
ere he responded, "You must have patience, Salome; and do not reproach him, my dear.
Reproaches never do any good, and it's worse than useless remonstrating with a man who
is not sober."

"But what can I do, sir?" she cried distressfully. "Oh, you cannot imagine what a trouble it
is to me!"

"I think I can; but you must not lose heart. Prayer and patience work wonders. Ask God to
show your father his sin in its true light—"

"I have asked Him so often," Salome interposed, "and father gets worse instead of better.
It's not as though he had an unhappy home. Oh, Mr. Amyatt, it's so dreadful for me! I
never have a moment's peace of mind unless I know father is out fishing. He isn't a bad
father, he doesn't mean to be unkind; but when he's been drinking, he doesn't mind what
he says or does."

"Poor child," said the Vicar softly, glancing at her with great compassion.

"Do you think, if you spoke to him—" Salome began in a hesitating manner.

"I have already done so several times; but though he listened to me respectfully, I saw my
words made no impression on him. I will, however, try to find a favourable opportunity for
remonstrating with him again. Cheer up, my dear child. You have a very heavy cross to
bear, but you have not to carry it alone, you know. God will help you, if you will let Him."

"Yes," Salome agreed, her face brightening. "I try to remember that, but, though indeed I
do love God, sometimes He seems so far away."

"He is ever near, Salome. 'The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the
everlasting arms.' The everlasting arms are of unfailing strength and tenderness. See! Is
not that your father coming?"

Salome assented, and watched the approaching figure with anxious scrutiny.

Josiah Petherick was a tall, strong man, in the prime of life, a picture of robust health and
strength; he was brown-haired and brown-eyed, like his daughter, and his complexion was
tanned to a fine brick-red hue. He liked the Vicar, though he considered him rather too
quick in interfering in other people's affairs, so he smiled good-humouredly when he found
him with Salome at the garden gate.

"Good evening, Petherick," said Mr. Amyatt briskly, his keen eyes noticing that, though
Josiah had doubtless been drinking, he was very far from being intoxicated at present;
"you perceive I've been robbing your garden," and he held up the carnation blooms.

"'Tis my little maid's garden, sir," was the response, "an' I know well you're welcome to
take what flowers you please. What a hot day it's been, to be sure!"

"Yes; but pleasanter out of doors than in the bar of the 'Crab and Cockle,' I expect," Mr.
Amyatt answered meaningly.

"'Tis thirsty weather," Josiah said with a smile; "don't you find it so, sir?"
"Yes, indeed I do! But I don't take beer to quench my thirst. Beer's heating, and makes
you hotter and thirstier, too. If you were a teetotaler like me, you wouldn't feel the heat
quite so much."

"That's as it may be, sir. I can't argue the point; but I hold that a glass of good, sound
beer don't hurt anyone."

Salome had retired into the cottage, remarking which fact, the Vicar seized the opportunity
and spoke plainly.

"Look here, Petherick," he said, "if you'd lived my life, you'd be a teetotaler like me—at
least, I hope you would. The big town in which I worked so long owed most of its vice and
misery to drink. I was in daily contact there with men and women lower than brute beasts
on account of the drink you uphold—men and women who would sell their own and their
children's clothes, and allow their offspring to go hungry and almost naked, that they
might obtain the vile poison for which they were bartering their immortal souls. I made up
my mind there, that drink was our nation's greatest curse; and here, in this quiet village, I
see no reason to make me change my opinion, and allow that a glass of 'good, sound
beer,' as you call your favourite beverage, doesn't hurt anyone. Your one glass leads to
more, and the result? You become unlike yourself, rough and threatening in your manner,
unkind to your little daughter whom I am certain you dearly love, and whose chief aim in
life is to make your home a happy one. I wish you would make up your mind, Petherick,
never to enter the doors of the 'Crab and Cockle' again."

"Why, sir, to hear you talk one would think I was drunk," Josiah cried, aggrievedly.

"You are not that at this minute, I admit, but you have been drinking; and if you don't pull
up in time, and turn over a new leaf, you'll go from bad to worse. Now, I've had my say,
and have finished. Your supper's waiting, I know, so I'll bid you good evening."

"Good evening, sir," Josiah responded rather shamefacedly, for in his heart, he
acknowledged every word Mr. Amyatt had spoken to be truth.

He watched the Vicar out of sight, then entered the cottage and sat down at the kitchen
table to his supper of fried eggs and bacon.

"I hope the eggs are not spoilt," Salome remarked. "But they've been cooked nearly half-
an-hour, and I'm afraid they're rather hard, for I had to keep them warm in the oven."

"Never mind, my dear," he returned. "If they're hard it's my fault, I ought to have been
here before. By the way, I've brought you a piece of news."

"Have you, father?" she said with a smile.

"Yes. Greystone is taken by a rich gentleman from London, and he and his family are
expected to arrive to-night. The house has been furnished in grand style, so I'm told."

"Did you hear the gentleman's name?" Salome asked, looking interested, for Greystone
had been untenanted for some time. The house had been built by a speculative builder, but
it had not proved a good speculation, as, beautifully situated though it was, it was very
lonely. "I wonder if Mr. Amyatt knew," she added reflectively, as her father shook his head.

"Mr. Amyatt is a very nice man in his way," Josiah remarked, "an' I shall never forget how
kind he was when your poor mother died, but he don't know how to mind his own
business. If he likes to be a teetotaler, let him be one. If I enjoy my drops o' beer 'long
with my friends at the 'Crab an' Cockle,' that's naught to do with him." And having finished
his supper, he pushed away his plate, rose from the table, and strode out into the garden.

Salome stayed to wash up the supper things, then went into the garden too, but by that
time her father was nowhere to be seen. Hurrying to the gate, she caught sight of his
stalwart figure disappearing in the distance, and knew that he was making his way to the
inn again. She stood leaning against the garden gate, sore at heart, until a chill mist from
the sea crept upwards and surrounded her; then she retreated into the cottage and waited
patiently, listening to the ticking of the tall, eight-day clock in the kitchen. She knew her
father would not return till the doors of the inn were shut for the night.

At last she heard the click of the garden gate, and a minute later Josiah Petherick
stumbled up the path, and, leaving the cottage door unlocked, crawled upstairs to his
bedroom, muttering to himself as he went. Salome waited till everything was still, then she
rose, locked the door, and swung herself, step by step, by the aid of her crutches, up the
stairs.

Before going to her own room, she peeped cautiously into her father's, which was flooded
with moonlight, the blind being up; and a sob broke from her lips at the sight which met
her eyes. The man had thrown himself, fully dressed as he was, upon the bed, and had
already sunk into a heavy, drunken slumber. Salome stood looking at him, the tears
running down her cheeks, mingled love and indignation in her aching heart. Then the love
overcame all else, and she sank on her knees by her father's side, and prayed earnestly
for him who was unfit to pray for himself, whilst the words the Vicar had spoken to her
that evening—

"'The eternal God is thy refuge,

and underneath are the everlasting arms.'"

—recurred to her memory, and fell like balm upon her sorrowful spirit. And she felt that
she did not bear her trouble alone.

CHAPTER II.
New Acquaintances.

WHEN Josiah Petherick came downstairs to breakfast on the following morning, his face
wore a furtive, sullen expression, as though he expected to be taken to task for his
behaviour of the night before. On previous occasions, Salome had, by tears and sorrowing
words, reproached him for his unmanly conduct; but this morning she was perfectly
composed, and the meal was eaten almost in silence. Afterwards, Josiah informed his little
daughter that he should probably be away all day mackerel fishing, and went off in the
direction of the beach. There was a fresh breeze blowing, and he looked forward to a
successful day's work.

Salome moved about the cottage with a very heavy heart. On account of her affliction, it
took her longer than it would have most people to get over her household duties, so that it
was past noon before she had everything ship-shape, and was at leisure. Then she put on
a pink sun-bonnet, and went into the garden to look at her flowers, pulling weeds here and
there, until the sounds of shrill cries made her hurry to the garden gate to ascertain what
was going on outside.

Salome stood gazing in astonishment at the scene which met her eyes. A boy of about six
years old was lying on the ground, kicking and shrieking with passion, whilst a young
woman was bending over him, trying to induce him to get up. At a short distance, a pretty
little girl, apparently about Salome's own age, was looking on, and laughing, as though
greatly amused.

"Gerald, get up! Do get up, there's a good boy!" implored the young woman. "Dear, dear,
what a temper you're in. You 're simply ruining that nice new sailor's suit of yours, lying
there in the dust. Oh, Margaret—" and she turned to the little girl—"do try to induce your
brother to be reasonable."

"I couldn't do that, Miss Conway," was the laughing response, "for Gerald never was
reasonable yet. Look at him now, his face crimson with passion. He's like a mad thing, and
deserves to be whipped. He—"

She stopped suddenly, noticing Salome at the garden gate. The boy, catching sight of the
lame girl at that moment too, abruptly ceased his cries, and, as though ashamed of
himself, rose to his feet, and stood staring at her. He was a fine, handsome little fellow,
with dark-blue eyes and fair curly hair; but, as Salome afterwards learnt, he was a spoilt
child, and as disagreeable as spoilt children always are. His sister, who was like him in
appearance, was a bright-looking little girl; and her laughing face softened into sympathy
as her eyes rested on Salome's crutches.

"I am afraid my brother's naughty temper has shocked you," she said. "He likes to have
his own way, and wanted to spend a longer time on the beach instead of going home. We
have been on the beach all the morning with Miss Conway—this lady, who is our
governess. What a pretty garden you have. We noticed it as we passed just now—didn't
we, Miss Conway?"

Miss Conway assented, smiling very kindly at Salome.

"I had no idea flowers would flourish so close to the sea," she remarked. "It is to be hoped
the Greystone gardens will prove equally productive."

"Oh, are you—do you live at Greystone?" Salome questioned, much interested in the
strangers.

"Yes," nodded the little girl, "we arrived last night. My father, Mr. Fowler, has taken the
house on a three years' lease. My mother is very delicate; she has been very ill, and the
doctors say the north coast of Cornwall will suit her."

"Let me see your garden," said the little boy imperatively, coming close to the gate, and
peering between the bars.

"You should say 'please,' Gerald," his governess reminded him reprovingly.

Salome invited them all to enter, and when they had admired the flowers, Miss Conway
asked if she might rest a few minutes on the seat under the porch. She was a delicate-
looking young woman, and the tussle she had had with her unruly pupil had upset her.
Gerald, however, was quite contented now, watching a bee labouring from flower to flower
with its load of honey. His sister, Margaret, sat down by the governess' side, whilst
Salome, leaning on her crutches, watched them shyly. There was a little flush of
excitement on her cheeks, for it was an unusual experience for her to converse with
strangers.

"Who lives here with you, my dear?" Miss Conway inquired.

"Only my father, miss. Mother died five years ago. Father's a fisherman; his name's Josiah
Petherick, and I'm called Salome."

"What a quaint, pretty name," Margaret exclaimed. "And you have you no sisters or
brothers?"

Salome shook her head.

"Have you—have you always been lame?" Miss Conway questioned.

"Yes, miss, always. I can't get about without my crutches."

"How dreadful!" Margaret cried with ready sympathy. "Oh, I am, sorry for you."

Salome looked gratefully at the speaker, and smiled as she made answer, "You see, miss,
I'm accustomed to being a cripple. Often and often I've wished my legs were straight and
strong like other people's, but as they are not, I must just make the best of them. Mr.
Amyatt says—"

"Who is Mr. Amyatt?" Miss Conway interposed.

"Our Vicar, miss. He lives in that big house near the church. He's such a good, kind
gentleman, you'll be sure to like him."

"Well, what does he say?" Miss Conway inquired with a smile.

"That God made me lame for some good purpose. I think myself He did it because I should
stay at home, and keep house for father," Salome said simply. "Perhaps if I was able to get
about like other people, I might neglect father, and be tempted—"

She had been about to say "be tempted to leave him," but had stopped suddenly,
remembering that the strangers knew nothing of her father; and she earnestly hoped they
would never understand how miserable he made her at times.

"As it is," she proceeded, "I do all the housework—I can take as long as I please about it,
you know—and I attend to my flowers besides."

"And have you always lived here?" Margaret asked.

"Yes, miss, I was born in this cottage."

"Doesn't the sea make you mournful in the winter?"

"Oh, no! It's grand then, sometimes. The waves look like great mountains of foam. This is
a very wild coast."

"So I have heard," Miss Conway replied. "I should like to see a storm, if no ship was in
danger. I suppose you never saw a wreck?"

"Yes," said Salome with a shudder; "only last autumn a coasting vessel ran ashore on the
rocks, and the crew was lost. You will notice in the churchyard many graves of people who
have been drowned."

"We have always lived in London until now," Margaret explained, "so we shall find life in
the country a great change. I don't know that I shall dislike it during the summer, and
Gerald is simply delighted with the beach; I expect he'll insist on going there every day, so
you'll often see us passing here. Gerald generally gets his own way, doesn't he, Miss
Conway?"

"Yes," the governess admitted gravely, looking rather serious.

"My mother spoils him," Margaret continued. "Oh, you needn't look at me like that, Miss
Conway, for you know it's true."

At that moment Gerald ran up to them. He was in high good-humour, for he was charmed
with Salome's garden; but his face clouded immediately when Miss Conway remarked it
was time for them to go home.

"No, no," he pouted, "don't go yet, Miss Conway. Stay a little longer."

"But if we do, we shall be late for luncheon, and then your father will be displeased."

"You shall have this rose to take home with you," Salome said, in order to propitiate the
child, and prevent a disturbance. She gathered, as she spoke, a beautiful pink moss-rose,
and offered it to him. "Wouldn't you like to give it to your mother?" she suggested, as he
accepted her gift with evident pleasure.

"No," Gerald rejoined, "I shan't give it to mother, I shall keep it for myself."

His sister laughed at this selfish speech; but the governess' face saddened as she took her
younger pupil by the hand, and after a kind good-bye to Salome, led him away.

"May I come and see you again?" Margaret asked as she lingered at the gate.

"Oh, please do, miss," was the eager reply. "I should be so glad if you would. I really am
very lonely sometimes."

"So am I," the other little girl confessed with a sigh; and for the first time Salome noticed
a look of discontent on her pretty face. The expression was gone in a minute, however,
and with a smiling farewell Margaret Fowler hastened after her governess and Gerald.

These new acquaintances gave Salome plenty of food for thought; and when her father
returned in the afternoon she greeted him cheerfully, and told him that the family had
arrived at Greystone. He was in good spirits, having caught a nice lot of mackerel; and
acting on his daughter's suggestion, he selected some of the finest, and started for
Greystone to see if he could not sell them there. Meanwhile, Salome laid the tea cloth, and
got the kettle boiling. In the course of half-an-hour her father returned, having sold his
fish.

"I saw the cook," he informed Salome, "and she said any time I have choice fish to sell,
she can do business with me. It seems she manages everything in the kitchen; she told
me the mistress doesn't know what there's to be for dinner till it's brought to table."

"How strange!" Salome cried. "But I forgot, Mrs. Fowler has been ill, so perhaps she is too
great an invalid to attend to anything herself."
"I don't know about that, I'm sure. It's likely to be better for us, Salome, now Greystone is
occupied. Why, you're quite a business woman, my dear! I should never have thought of
taking those mackerel up there, but for you. I should have let Sam Putt have the lot, as
usual."

Sam Putt was the owner of a pony and cart. He lived in the village, and often purchased
fish, which he conveyed to a neighbouring town for sale, hawking it from door to door.

Josiah continued to converse amicably during tea-time; and afterwards he went into the
garden, and turned up a patch of ground in readiness for the reception of winter greens. To
Salome's intense relief, he did not go to the "Crab and Cockle" that evening; but, instead,
as soon as he had finished his gardening, suggested taking her for a sail.

"Oh, father, how delightful!" she cried, her face flushing with pleasure. "Oh, I haven't been
on the water for weeks! It will be such a treat!"

So father and daughter spent the long summer evening on the sea, much to the
contentment of both; and the sun had set before they returned to Yelton.

Salome chatted merrily as, their boat safely moored, she followed her father up the shingly
beach; but on reaching their garden gate, Josiah paused, glancing towards the swinging
sign-board outside the "Crab and Cockle," still visible in the gathering dusk.

In a moment, Salome read his thoughts, and cried involuntarily, "Oh, father, not to-night!
Not to-night!"

"What do you mean, child?" he asked with a decided show of displeasure in face and tone.

"I mean, I want you to stay at home with me to-night, father! Do, dear father, to please
me! I—I can't bear to see you as—as you are sometimes when you come back from the
'Crab and Cockle'! Oh, father, if you would only give up the drink how happy we should
be!"

"How foolishly you talk!" he cried irritably. "It is not seemly for a child to dictate to her
father!"

"Oh, father, I mean no harm! You know I love you dearly! It's supper time. Aren't you
hungry? I'm sure I am."

Josiah admitted he was, too, and followed his daughter into the cottage. He did not leave it
again that night, for his good angel proved too strong for him; and when he kissed his
little daughter at bedtime, his manner was unusually gentle, whilst the words he uttered
sent her to rest with a very happy heart: "God bless you, child! I don't know what I should
be but for you, Salome. You grow more like your dear mother every day you live."

CHAPTER III.
The Fowlers at Home.
"PULL down the blind, Margaret. The sun is streaming right into my eyes."

The speaker, Mrs. Fowler, was lying on a sofa in the handsomely furnished drawing-room
at Greystone. She was a young-looking, very pretty woman, with fair hair and blue eyes;
and she was most fashionably dressed. One would have thought her possessed of
everything that heart could desire, but the lines of her face were discontented ones, and
the tone of her voice was decidedly fretful. The only occupant of the room besides herself
was her little daughter, who put down the book she had been reading, and going to the
window, obediently lowered the blind.

"There," she said, "that's better, isn't it? I won't pull the blind down altogether, mother, for
that would keep out the fresh air, and you know the doctors said the sea breeze would be
your best tonic. I do think this is a lovely place, don't you?"

Mrs. Fowler agreed indifferently; and her little daughter continued, "Such a beautiful view
we have right over the sea. And doesn't the village look pretty, and the old grey church?
There are such a quantity of jackdaws in the tower. Mother, do you know, from my
bedroom window, I can see the cottage where that poor lame girl lives? When you are
strong enough, I'll take you to visit Salome."

"I don't want to see her, Margaret. I don't like looking at deformed people, and I cannot
think why you should feel so much interest in this Salome."

"I have seen her several times now, and I like her so much. The Vicar has told me a lot
about her, too. She lost her mother five years ago, poor girl!"

Margaret paused, and glanced a trifle wistfully at the daintily-clad figure on the sofa,
wondering if she was lame like Salome, whether her mother would cease to care for her
altogether. Mrs. Fowler never evinced much affection for her daughter, whatever her
feelings may have been, though she was pleased that she was growing up a pretty little
girl, and took an interest in dressing her becomingly. But Gerald was her favourite of the
two children, and upon him she lavished most of her love. She was fond of her husband,
though she stood in awe of him. He was kind and attentive to her, but often grew
impatient at the persistent way in which she indulged their little son.

Mrs. Fowler had led a gay life in London for many years; but latterly, she had been in very
indifferent health, and after an attack of severe illness, which had left her nerves in a
shattered condition, Mr. Fowler had insisted on shutting up their house in town, and
settling in the country. He had accordingly taken Greystone, and dismissing their old
servants had engaged new ones, who received their orders from himself instead of from
their mistress.

During the first few weeks of her residence at Greystone, Mrs. Fowler had indeed been too
ill to superintend the household; and though she was now better, she was far from strong,
and was glad not to be troubled about anything. Margaret was very sorry for her mother,
whose sufferings were apparent to everyone, for she started at the slightest unexpected
sound, and the least worry brought on the most distressing headache.

"Would you like me to read to you, mother?" the little girl inquired.

"No, thank you, Margaret. What is the time?"

"Half-past three."

"Where is Gerald?"
"Miss Conway has taken him down to the beach; she promised him this morning he should
go, if he was good and attentive during lesson time. He likes talking to the fishermen."

"Dear child! I hope they will not teach him to use bad language, though I expect they are
a rough set."

"I don't think so, mother. Mr. Amyatt says they are mostly sober, God-fearing men; of
course, there are exceptions—Salome Petherick's father, for instance, often gets
intoxicated, and it is a terrible trouble to her."

"Does she complain of him to you?" Mrs. Fowler queried.

"Oh, no, mother! It was Mr. Amyatt who told me. We were talking of Salome, and he said
her father was very violent at times, quite cruel to her, in fact. Do you know, I think
father's right, and that it's best to have nothing whatever to do with drink."

Lately, since the Fowlers had left London, Mr. Fowler had laid down a rule that no
intoxicating liquors of any description were to be brought into the house. He had become a
teetotaler himself, for very good reasons, and had insisted on the members of his
household following suit. No one had objected to this except Mrs. Fowler, and now she
answered her little daughter in a tone of irritability.

"Don't talk nonsense, child! I believe a glass of wine would do me good at this minute, and
steady my nerves, only your father won't allow it! I haven't patience to speak of this new
fad of his without getting cross. There, don't look at me so reproachfully. Of course what
your father does is right in your eyes! Here, feel my pulse, child, and you'll know what a
wreck I am!"

Margaret complied, and laid her cool fingers on her mother's wrist. The pulse was weak
and fluttering, and the little girl's heart filled with sympathy.

"Poor mother," she said tenderly, kissing Mrs. Fowler's flushed cheek, and noticing her eyes
were full of tears. "Shall I ring and order tea? It's rather early, but no doubt a nice cup of
tea would do you good."

"No, no! It's much too hot for tea!" And Mrs. Fowler made a gesture indicative of distaste,
then broke into a flood of tears.

Margaret soothed her mother as best she could; and presently, much to her satisfaction,
the invalid grew composed and fell asleep. She was subject to these hysterical outbursts,
and as Margaret bent anxiously over her, she noted how thin she had become, how hectic
was the flush on her cheeks, and how dark-rimmed were her eyes.

"She does indeed look very ill," the little girl thought sadly. "I wonder if she is right, and
that some wine would do her good, and make her stronger; if so, it seems hard she should
not have it. I'll go and speak to father at once."

To think was to act with Margaret. She stole noiselessly out of the drawing-room, and went
in search of her father. He was not in the house, but a servant informed her he was in the
garden, and there she found him, reclining in a swing-chair, beneath the shade of a lilac
tree. He threw aside the magazine he was reading as she approached, and greeted her
with a welcoming smile.

Mr. Fowler was a tall, dark man, several years older than his wife; his face was a strong
one, and determined in expression, but his keen, deep-set eyes were wont to look kindly,
and he certainly had the appearance of a person to be trusted.
"Is anything wrong, my dear?" he inquired quickly, noticing that she looked depressed.
"Where is your mother?"

"Asleep in the drawing-room, father. She has had one of her crying fits again, and that
exhausted her, I think. She seems very poorly, and low-spirited, doesn't she?"

"Yes; but she is better—decidedly better than she was a few weeks ago. I have every hope
that, ere many months have passed, she will be quite well again. There is no cause for you
to look so anxious, child."

"But she is so weak and nervous!" Margaret cried distressfully. "I was wondering if she had
some wine—"

The little girl paused, startled by the look of anger which flashed across her father's face.
He made a movement as though to rise from the chair, then changed his intention, and
curtly bade her finish what she had been about to say.

"It was only that I was wondering if she had some wine, whether it might not do her
good," Margaret proceeded timidly. "She told me herself she thought it would, and if so—
you know, father, you used to take wine yourself, and—"

"Did your mother send you to me on this mission?" he interrupted sternly.

"No. I came of my own accord."

"I am glad to hear that. But I cannot give my consent to your mother's taking wine, or
stimulants of any kind; they would be harmful for her, the doctors agree upon that point.
You have reminded me that I once drank wine myself, Margaret. I bitterly regret ever
having done so."

"Why?" she asked wonderingly, impressed by the solemnity of his tone. Then her thoughts
flew to Salome Petherick's father, and she cried, "But, father, you never drank too much!"

"I was never tempted to drink to excess, for I had no craving for stimulants. It is small
credit to me that I was always a sober man; but people are differently constituted, and my
example may have caused others to contract habits of intemperance. The Vicar here is a
teetotaler from principle. He tells me that the force of example is stronger than any
amount of preaching. Lately, I have had cause to consider this matter very seriously, and I
am determined that never, with my permission, shall any intoxicating liquors be brought
inside my doors. The servants understand this: I should instantly dismiss one who set my
rule at defiance. As to your mother—" he paused a moment in hesitation, the expression of
his countenance troubled, then continued—"she is weak, and still very far from well, but,
in her heart of hearts, she knows I am right. Do not tell her you have broached this
subject to me. Come, let us go and see if she is still asleep."

"You are not angry with me, father?" Margaret asked, as she followed him into the house.

"No, no! I am not, indeed!"

Mrs. Fowler awoke with a start as her husband and little daughter entered the drawing-
room. Mr. Fowler immediately rang for tea, and when it was brought, Margaret poured it
out. At first, Mrs. Fowler would not touch it, but finally, to please the others, drank a
cupful, and felt refreshed. A few minutes later, Mr. Amyatt was shown into the room, and
she brightened up and grew quite animated. Margaret and her father exchanged pleased
glances, delighted at the interest the invalid was evincing in the conversation.
"I think I shall soon be well enough to go to church on Sundays," Mrs. Fowler informed the
Vicar. "My husband tells me you have a very good choir."

"Yes, that is so," Mr. Amyatt replied. "We are decidedly primitive in our ways at Yelton, and
have several women in our choir, notably Salome Petherick, the lame girl with whom your
daughter has already become acquainted."

"Oh, yes. Margaret has been telling me about her. She sings in the choir, does she?"

"Yes. She has a beautiful voice, as clear and fresh as a bird's! I train the choir myself, for
our organist comes from N—, a neighbouring town, several miles distant."

"By the way," said Mrs. Fowler with a smiling glance at Margaret, "my little girl is very
desirous of learning to play the organ, and her governess would teach her, if you would
allow her to practise on the organ in the church. Would there be any objection to that plan,
Mr. Amyatt?"

"None whatever," was the prompt reply.

"Oh, thank you!" Margaret cried delightedly.

"You will have to employ Gerald to blow for you," Mr. Fowler remarked with a smile.

"I am sure he will not do that!" the little girl exclaimed. "He is far too disobliging."

"Margaret, how hard you are on your brother," Mrs. Fowler said reproachfully.

"Am I? I don't mean to be. Oh, here he is!"

Gerald came into the room with his hat on his head, but meeting his father's eyes,
removed it instantly. After he had shaken hands with the Vicar, his mother called him to
her, pushed back his fair locks from his forehead, and made him sit by her side on the sofa
whilst she plied him with sweet cakes. He was her darling, and she indulged him to his
bent. When the governess entered the room, having removed her hat and gloves, there
were no sweet cakes left. Mr. Fowler rang the bell for more, and upon the parlour-maid
bringing a fresh supply, declined to allow Gerald to partake of them, at which the spoilt
boy pouted and sulked, and his mother threw reproachful glances at her husband.

Mr. Amyatt watched the scene in silence, wondering how anyone could allow affection to
overcome judgment, as Mrs. Fowler had evidently done, as far as her little son was
concerned, and marvelling that Mr. Fowler did not order the disagreeable child out of the
room. When the Vicar rose to go, his host accompanied him as far as the garden gate, and
they stood there talking some while before, at last, the Vicar said good-bye, and started
down the hill towards the village.

The Fowlers had now been several weeks in residence at Greystone, but, up to the
present, Mr. Amyatt had been their only visitor. Mrs. Fowler had not been outside the
grounds surrounding the house yet, but talked of going down to the beach the first day
she felt strong enough to attempt the walk. The children, however, had made several
acquaintances among the fisher-folk, and a great liking had sprung up between Margaret
and Salome Petherick, for, though one was a rich man's daughter and the other only a
poor fisherman's child, they found they had much in common, and, wide apart though they
were to outward appearances, they bade fair to become real friends.
 CHAPTER IV.
"Abide with Me."

THE Fowlers had been six weeks at Greystone, when, one evening towards the end of July,
Mrs. Fowler, who was daily improving in health, accompanied Margaret and Miss Conway to
the church, and wandered about the ancient building, reading the inscriptions on the
monuments, whilst her little daughter had her music lesson. By-and-by she strolled into
the graveyard, and, seating herself on the low wall which surrounded it, gazed far out over
the blue expanse of ocean, which was dotted with fishing boats and larger crafts, on this
calm summer evening.

The churchyard at Yelton was beautifully situated, commanding a view of the whole village
straggling nearly down to the beach, whilst on the eminence beyond the church was
Greystone, against a background of green foliage.

"Everything is very lovely," Mrs. Fowler said to herself, "and the air is certainly most
invigorating. I feel almost well to-night. Who comes here? Why, this must be Salome
Petherick!"

It was the lame girl who had entered the churchyard, and was now approaching the spot
where Mrs. Fowler sat. She paused at the sight of the figure on the wall, and a look of
admiration stole into her soft, brown eyes. She had never seen such a pretty lady before,
or anyone so daintily and becomingly dressed.

Mrs. Fowler, who had shrunk with the nervous unreasonableness of a sick person from
being brought into contact with the cripple girl, now that she was actually face to face with
her, was interested and sympathetic at once. She smiled at Salome and addressed her
cordially.

"I think you must be Salome Petherick?" she said. "Yes, I am sure you are!"

"Yes, ma'am," was the reply, accompanied by a shy glance of pleasure.

"My little girl has spoken of you so often that I seem to know you quite well," Mrs. Fowler
remarked. "Come and sit down on the wall by my side, I want to talk to you."

Then as Salome complied willingly, she continued, "Does it not tire you to climb here every
evening, as they tell me you do, to listen to the organ? The church is a good step from
where you live. That is your home, is it not?" and she indicated the cottage nearest to the
sea.

"Yes," Salome assented, "it does tire me a little to come up the hill, but I love to hear
music. After Miss Margaret has had her organ lesson, Miss Conway generally plays
something herself."

"Does she? Then I hope she will do so to-night. But my little daughter is still at the organ,
so we will remain where we are until she has finished. Meanwhile we will talk. They tell me
you live with your father, and that he is often away fishing. You must lead a lonely life."