AMERICAN SCIENCE SERIES AD VANCED COURSE
THE PRINCIPLES
OF
PSYCHOLOGY
WILLIAM JAMES
PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1905
Ul
V * -
Copyright, 1P90
BY
HENRY HOLT & CO.
HOBERT DRTIMMOND, ELECTROTYPER AND PRINTER, NEW YORE
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XVII.
PAOK
SENSATION, . . . . . . . . .1
Its distinction from perception, 1. Its cognitive function
acquaintance with qualities, 3. No pure sensations after the first
days of life, 7. The relativity of knowledge/ 9. The law of
contrast, 13. The psychological and the physiological theories
of it, 17. Bering s experiments, 20. The eccentric projection
of sensations, 31.
CHAPTER XVIII.
IMAGINATION, 44
Our images are usually vague, 45. Vague images not neces
sarily general notions, 48. Individuals differ in imagination ;
Gallon s researches, 50, The visile type, 58. The audile
type, 60. The motile type, 61. Tactile images. 65. The neural
process of imagination, 68. Its relations to that of sensation, 72.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE PERCEPTION OF ( THINGS/ 76
Perception and sensation, 76. Perception is of definite and
probable things, 82. Illusions, 85 ; of the first type, 86 ; of
the second type, 95. The neural process in perception, 103.
Apperception, 107. Is perception an unconscious inference?
111. Hallucinations, 114. The neural process in hallucination,
122. Binet s theory, 129. Perception-time/ 131.
CHAPTER XX.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE, 134
The feeling of crude extensity, 134. The perception of spatial
order, 145. Space- relations, 148. The meaning of localization,
153. Local signs. 155. The construction of real space, 166.
The subdivision of the original sense-spaces, 167. The sensation
iii
iv CONTENTS.
PAGS
of motion over surfaces, 171. The measurement of the sense-
spaces by each other, 177. Their summation, 181. Feelings of
movement in joints, 189. Feelings of muscular contraction, 197.
Summary so far, 202. How the blind perceive space, 203.
Visual space, 211. Helmholtz and Reid on the test of a sensation,
216. The theory of identical points, 222. The theory of projection,
228. Ambiguity of retinal impressions, 231 ; of eye-movements,
234. The choice of the visual reality, 237. Sensations which
we ignore, 240. Sensations which seem suppressed, 243. Dis
cussion of Wundt s and Helmholtz s reasons for denying that
retinal sensations are of extension, 248. Summary, 268. His
torical remarks, 270.
CHAPTER XXL
THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY, 283
Belief and its opposites, 283. The various orders of reality,
287. Practical realities, 293. The sense of our own bodily
existence is the nucleus of all reality, 297. The paramount reality
of sensations, 299. The influence of emotion and active impulse
on belief, 307. Belief in theories, 311. Doubt, 318. Relations
of belief and will, 320.
CHAPTER XXII.
REASONING, 323
Recepts, 327. In reasoning, we pick out essential qualities,
329. What is meant by a mode of conceiving, 332. What is
involved in the existence of general propositions, 337. The two
factors of reasoning, 340. Sagacity, 343. The part played by
association by similarity, 345. The intellectual contrast between
brute and man : association by similarity the fundamental human
distinction, 348. Different orders of human genius, 360.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE PRODUCTION OF MOVEMENT, 373
The diffusive wave, 373. Every sensation produces reflex
effects on the whole organism, 374.
CHAPTER XXIV.
INSTINCT, 383
Its definition, 383 Instincts not always blind or invariable,
389. Two principles of non -uniformity in instincts : 1) Their
inhibition by habits, 394 ; 2) Their transitoriness, 398. Man has
CONTENTS. V
PAGE
more instincts than any other mammal, 403. Reflex impulses,
404. Imitation, 408. Emulation, 409. Pugnacity, 409. Sym
pathy, 410. The hunting instinct, 411. Fear, 415. Acquisitive
ness, 422. Constructiveness, 426. Play, 427. Curiosity, 429.
Sociability and shyness, 430. Secretiveness, 432. Cleanliness,
434. Shame, 435. Love, 437. Maternal love, 439.
CHAPTEK XXV.
THE EMOTIONS, 442
Instinctive reaction and emotional expression shade imper
ceptibly into each other, 442. The expression of grief, 443 ; of
fear, 446 ; of hatred, 449. Emotion is a consequence, not the
cause, of the bodily expression, 449. Difficulty of testing this
view, 454. Objections to it discussed, 456. The subtler emotions,
468. No special brain-centres for emotion, 472. Emotional dif
ferences between individuals, 474. The genesis of the various
emotions, 477.
CHAPTER XXVI.
WILL, . . 486
Voluntary movements : they presuppose a memory of invol
untary movements, 487. Kinaesthetic impressions, 488. No need
to assume feelings of innervation, 503. The mental cue for a
movement may be an image of its visual or auditory effects as
well as an image of the way it feels, 518. Ideo motor action, 522.
Action after deliberation, 528. Five types of decision, 531. The
feeling of effort, 535. Unhealthiness of will : 1) The ex
plosive type, 537 ; 2) The obstructed type, 546. Pleasure and
pain are not the only springs of action, 549. All consciousness is
impulsive, 551. What we will depends on what idea dominates
in our mind, 559. The idea s outward effects follow from the
cerebral machinery, 560. Effort of attention to a naturally
repugnant idea is the essential feature of willing, 562. The
free-will controversy, 571. Psychology, as a science, can safely
postulate determinism, even if free-will be true, 576. The edu
cation of the Will, 579. Hypothetical brain-schemes, 582.
CHAPTER XXVII.
HYPNOTISM, , 594-616
Modes of operating and susceptibility, 594. Theories about
the hypnotic state, 596. The symptoms of the trance, 601.
vi CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXVIIL
PAOK
NECESSARY TRUTHS AND THE EFFECTS OF EXPERIENCE, . 617
Programme of the chapter, 617. Elementary feelings are
innate, 618. The question refers to their combinations, 619.
What is meant by experience, 620. Spencer on ancestral ex
perience, 620. Two ways in which new cerebral structure arises :
the back-door and the front-door way, 625. The genesis of
the elementary mental categories, 631. The genesis of the
natural sciences, 633. Scientific conceptions arise as accidental
variations, 636. The genesis of the pure sciences, 641. Series of
evenly increasing terms, 644. The principle of mediate compari
son, 645. That of skipped intermediaries, 646. Classification,
646. Predication, 647. Formal logic, 648. Mathematical
propositions, 652. Arithmetic, 653. Geometry, 656. Our doc
trine is the same as Locke s, 661. Relations of ideas v. couplings
of things, 663. The natural sciences are inward ideal schemes
with which the order of nature proves congruent, 666. Meta
physical principles are properly only postulates, 669. ^Esthetic
and moral principles are quite incongruent with the order of
nature, 672. Summary of what precedes, 675. The origin of
instincts, 678. Insufficiency of proof for the transmission to the
next generation of acquired habits, 681. Weismann s views, 683.
Conclusion, 688.
PSYCHOLOGY.
CHAPTER XVII.
SENSATION.
AFTEB inner perception, outer perception ! The next
three chapters will treat of the processes by which we cog
nize at all times the present world of space and the mate
rial things which it contains. And first, of the process
called Sensation.
SENSATION AND PEKCEPTION DISTINGUISHED.
The ivords Sensation and Perception do not carry very
definitely discriminated meanings in popular speech, and in
Psychology also their meanings run into each other. Both
of them name processes in which we cognize an objective
world; both (under normal conditions) need the stimula
tion of incoming nerves ere they can occur ; Perception
always involves Sensation as a portion of itself ; and Sensa
tion in turn never takes place in adult life without Percep
tion also being there. They are therefore names for dif
ferent cognitive functions, not for different sorts of mental
fact. The nearer the object cognized comes to being a
simple quality like hot, cold, red, noise, pain, ap
prehended irrelatively to other things, the more the state
of mind approaches pure sensation. The fuller of relations
the object is, on the contrary ; the more it is something
classed, located, measured, compared, assigned to a func
tion, etc., etc.; the more unreservedly do we call the state
of mind a perception, and the relatively smaller is the part
in it which sensation plays.
Sensation, then, so long as we take the analytic point of
2 PSYCHOLOGY.
view differs from Perception only in the extreme simplicity of its
Meet or content* Its function is that of mere acquaintance
with a fact. Perception s function, on the other hand, is
knowledge about t a fact; and this knowledge admits of
numberless degrees of complication. But in both sensa
tion and perception we perceive the fact as an immediately
present outward reality, and this makes them differ from
thought and conception, whose objects do not appeal-
present in this immediate physical way. From the physio-
* Some persons will say that we never have a really simple object or
content My definition of sensation does not require the simplicity to be
absolutely but only relatively, extreme. It is worth while in passing,
fowever^o warn the reader against a couple of inferences that are often
made One is that because we gradually learn to analyze so many quali
ties we ouzht to conclude that there are no really indecomposable feelings
i the mind The other is that because the processes that produce our sen
sations are multiple, the sensations regarded as subjective facts must also
Te compound. To take an example, to a child the taste of lemonade comes
at first as a simple quality. He later learns both that many stimuli and
manv nerves are involved in the exhibition of this taste to his mind, and
he also learns to perceive separately the sourness, the coolness, the sweet
the lemon aroma, etc., and the several degrees of strength of each and all
of these things.-the experience falling into a large number of aspects,
each of which is abstracted, classed, named, etc., and all of which appear
to be the elementary sensations into which the original lemonade flavor
is decomposed. It is argued from this that the latter never was tne simple
thing which it seemed. I have already criticised this sort of reasoning
in Chapter VI (see pp. 170 ff.). The mind of the child enjoying the simple
lemonade flavor and that of the same child grown up and analyzing it are
in two entirely different conditions. Subjectively considered, the two
states of mind are two altogether distinct sorts of fact. The later mental
state says ^this is the same flavor (or fluid) which that earlier state per
ceived as simple/but that does not make the two states themselves identical.
Tt is nothing but a case of learning more and more about the same topics
of discourse or things. -Many of these topics, however, must be confessed
to resist all analysis, the various colors for example. He who sees blue and
yellow in a certain green means merely that when green is confront.
with these other colors he sees relations of similarity. He who sees abstract
color in it means merely that he sees a similarity between it and all the
other objects known as colors. (Similarity itself cannot ultimately be ac
counted for by an identical abstract element buried in all the similars, as
has been already shown, p. 492 ff .) He who sees abstract paleness, inten
sity, purity, in the green means other similarities still. These are all out
ward determinations of that special green, knowledges about it, zufalligeAn-
tichten, as Herbart would say, not elements of its composition. Compare
the article by Meinong in the Vierteljahrschrift filr wiss. Phil., xn. 324.
f See above, p. 221.
SENSATION. 3
logical point of view both sensations and perceptions differ from
1 thoughts (in the narrower sense of the word) in the fact that
nerve-currents coming in from tJie periphery are involved in their
production. In perception these nerve-currents arouse volumi
nous associative or reproductive processes in the cortex; but ivhen
sensation occurs alone, or with a minimum of perception, the ac
companying reproductive processes are at a minimum too.
I shall in this chapter discuss some general questions
more especially relative to Sensation. In a later chapter
perception will take its turn. I shall entirely pass by the
classification and natural history of our special * sensa
tions, such matters finding their proper place, and being
sufficiently well treated, in all the physiological books.*
THE COGNITIVE FUNCTION OF SENSATION.
A pure sensation is an abstraction; and when we adults
talk of our sensations we mean one of two things : either
certain objects, namely simple qualities or attributes like
hard, hot, pain; or else those of our thoughts in which
acquaintance with these objects is least combined with
knowledge about the relations of them to other things. As
we can only think or talk about the relations of objects
with which we have acquaintance already, we are forced to
postulate a function in our thought whereby we first become
aware of the bare immediate natures by which our several
objects are distinguished. This function is sensation.
And just as logicians always point out the distinction
between substantive terms of discourse and relations found
to obtain between them, so psychologists, as a rule, are
ready to admit this function, of the vision of the terms or
matters meant, as something distinct from the knowledge
about them and of their relations inter se. Thought with
the former function is sensational, with the latter, intellec
tual. Our earliest thoughts are almost exclusively sensa
tional. They merely give us a set of thats, or its, of subjects
* Those who wish a fuller treatment than Martin s Human Body affords
may be recommended to Bernstein s * Five Senses of Man, in the Interna
tional Scientific Series, or to Ladd s or Wundt s Physiological Psychology.
The completest compendium is L. Hermann s Handbuch der Physiologic,
vol. m.
4 PSYCHOLOGY.
of discourse, with their relations not brought out. The first
time we see light, in Condillac s phrase we are it rather
rather than see it. But all our later optical knowledge is
about what this experience gives. And though we were
struck blind from that first moment, our scholarship in the
subject would lack no essential feature so long as our mem
ory remained. In training-institutions for the blind they
teach the pupils as much about light as in ordinary schools
Keflection, refraction, the spectrum, the ether-theory, etc.,
are all studied. But the best taught born-blind pupil of
such an establishment yet lacks a knowledge which the
least instructed seeing baby has. They can never show him
what light is in its first intention ; and the loss of that
sensible knowledge no book-learning can replace. All this
is so obvious that we usually find sensation * postulated
as an element of experience, even by those philosophers who
are least inclined to make much of its importance, or to
pay respect to the knowledge which it brings.*
* " The sensations which we postulate as the signs or occasions of our
perceptions" (A. Seth: Scottish Philosophy, p. 89). "Their existence is
supposed only because, without them, it would be impossible to account
for the complex phenomena which are directly present in consciousness "
(J. Dewey: Psychology, p. 34). Even as great an enemy of Sensation as.
T. H. Green has to allow it a sort of hypothetical existence under protest.
" Perception presupposes feeling " (Contemp. Review, vol. xxxi. p. 747)
Cf. also such passages as those in his Prolegomena to Ethics, 48, 49.
Physiologically, the sensory and the reproductive or associative processes,
may wax and wane independently of each other. Where the part directly
due to stimulation of the sense-organ preponderates, the thought has a
sensational character, and differs from other thoughts in the sensational
direction. Those thoughts which lie farthest in that direction we call sen
sations, for practical convenience, just as we call conceptions those which
lie nearer the opposite extreme. But we no more have conceptions pure
than we have pure sensations. Our most rarefied intellectual states involve
some bodily sensibility, just as our dullest feelings have some intellectual
scope. Common-sense and common psychology express this by saying
that the mental state is composed of distinct fractional parts, one of which
is sensation, the other conception. We, however, who believe t!very
mental state to be an integral thing (p. 276) cannot talk thus, but must
speak of the degree of sensational or intellectual character, or function, oJ
the mental state. Professor Bering puts, as usual, his finger better upon
the truth than anyone else. Writing of visual perception, he says: "It
is inadmissible in the present state of our knowledge to assert that first
and last the same retinal picture arouses exactly the same pure sensation.
SENSATION.
But the trouble is that most, if not all, of those who
admit it, admit it as a fractional part of the thought, in the
old-fashioned atomistic sense which we have so often criti
cised.
Take the pain called toothache for example. Again
and again we feel it and greet it as the same real item in
the universe. We must therefore, it is supposed, have a
distinct pocket for it in our mind into which it and nothing
else will fit. This pocket, when filled, is the sensation of
toothache ; and must be either filled or half-filled whenever
and under whatever form toothache is present to our
thought, and whether much or little of the rest of the
mind be filled at the same time. Thereupon of course
comes up the paradox and mystery : If the knowledge of
toothache be pent up in this separate mental pocket, how
can it be known cum olio or brought into one view with
anything else ? This pocket knows nothing else ; no other
part of the mind knows toothache. The knowing of tooth
ache cum olio must be a miracle. And the miracle must
have an Agent. And the Agent must be a Subject or Ego
out of time, and all the rest of it, as we saw in Chapter
X. And then begins the well-worn round of recrimination
between the sensationalists and the spiritualists, from which
we are saved by our determination from the outset to accept
the psychological point of view, and to admit knowledge
whether of simple toothaches or of philosophic systems as
an ultimate fact. There are realities and there are states
of mind, and the latter know the former ; and it is just as
wonderful for a state of mind to be a sensation and know
a simple pain as for it to be a thought and know a system
but that this sensation, in consequence of practice and experience, is differ
ently interpreted the last time, and elaborated into a different perception
from the first. For the only real data are, on the one hand, the physical
picture on the retina, and that is both times the same; and, on the other
hand, the resultant state of consciousness (ausgeloste Empjindungscomplex)
and that is both times distinct. Of any third thing, namely, a pure sen
sation thrust between the retinal and the mental pictures, we know nothing.
We can then, if we wish to avoid all hypothesis, only say that the nervous appa
ratus reacts upon the same stimulus differently the last time from the first, and
that in consequence the consciousness is different too." (Hermann s Hdbch.,
ni. i. 567-8.)
6 PSYCHOLOGY.
of related things.* But there is no reason to suppose that
when different states of mind know different things about
the same toothache, they do so by virtue of their all con
taining faintly or vividly the original pain. Quite the re
verse. The by -gone sensation of my gout was painful, as
Keid somewhere says ; the thought of the same gout as by
gone is pleasant, and in no respect resembles the earlier
mental state.
Sensations, then, first make us acquainted with innu
merable things, and then are replaced by thoughts which
know the same things in altogether other ways. And
Locke s main doctrine remains eternally true, however
hazy some of his language may have been, that
" though there be a great number of considerations wherein things may
be compared one with another, and so a multitude of relations ; yet
they all terminate in, and are concerned about, those simple ideas f
either of sensation or reflection, which I think to be the whole materials
of all our knowledge. . . . The simple ideas we receive from sensation
and reflection are the boundaries of our thoughts ; beyond which, the
mind whatever efforts it would make, is not able to advance one jot ; nor
can it make any discoveries when it would pry into the nature and
hidden causes of those ideas." |
The nature and hidden causes of ideas will never be
unravelled till the nexus between the brain and conscious
ness is cleared up. All we can say now is that sensations
me first things in the way of consciousness. Before con
ceptions can come, sensations must have come ; but before
sensations come, no psychic fact need have existed, a nerve-
current is enough. If the nerve-current be not given,
nothing else will take its place. To quote the good Locke
again :
"It is not in the power of the most exalted wit or enlarged under
standing, by any quickness or variety of thoughts, to invent or frame
* Yet even writers like Prof. Bain will deny, in the most gratuitous
way, that sensations know anything. "It is evident that the lowest or
most restricted form of sensation does not contain an element of knowl
edge. The mere state of mind called the sensation of scarlet is not knowl
edge, although a necessary preparation for it. " Is not knowledge about
scarlet is all that Professor Bain can rightfully say.
f By simple ideas of sensation Locke merely means sensations.
j Essay c. H. U., bk. n. ch. xxm. 29 ; ch. xxv. 9.
SENSATION. 7
one new simple idea [i.e. sensation] in the mind. ... I would have
any one try to fancy any taste which had never affected his palate, or
frame the idea of a scent he had never smelt ; and when he can do this,
I will also conclude that a blind man hath ideas of colors, and a deaf
man true distinct notions of sounds." *
The brain is so made that all currents in it run one way.
Consciousness of some sort goes with all the currents, but
it is only when new currents are entering that it has the
sensational tang. And it is only then that consciousness
directly encounters (to use a word of Mr. Bradley s) a real
ity outside itself.
The difference between such encounter and all concep
tual knowledge is very great. A blind man may know all
about the sky s blueness, and I may know all about your
toothache, conceptually ; tracing their causes from primeval
chaos, and their consequences to the crack of doom. But
so long as he has not felt the blueness, nor I the toothache,
our knowledge, wide as it is, of these realities, will be hollow
and inadequate. Somebody must feel blueness, somebody
must have toothache, to make human knowledge of these
matters real. Conceptual systems which neither began nor
left off in sensations would be like bridges without piers.
Systems about fact must plunge themselves into sensation
as bridges plunge their piers into the rock. Sensations are
the stable rock, the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quern
of thought. To find such termini is our aim with all our
theories to conceive first when and where a certain sensa
tion may be had, and then to have it. Finding it stops dis
cussion. Failure to find it kills the false conceit of
knowledge. Only when you deduce a possible sensation
for me from your theory, and give it to me when and where
the theory requires, do I begin to be sure that your thought
has anything to do with truth.
Pure sensations can only be realized in the earliest days of life.
They are all but impossible to adults with memories and
stores of associations acquired. Prior to all impressions
on sense-organs the brain is plunged in deep sleep and con
sciousness is practically non-existent. Even the first weeks
* Op. cit. bk. ii. ch. ii. 2.
8 PSYCHOLOGY.
after birth are passed in almost unbroken sleep by human
infants. It takes a strong message from the sense-organs to
break this slumber. In a new-born brain this gives rise to
an absolutely pure sensation. But the experience leaves
its unimaginable touch on the matter of the convolutions,
and the next impression which a sense-organ transmits
produces a cerebral reaction in which the awakened vestige
of the last impression plays its part. Another sort of feel
ing and a higher grade of cognition are the consequence ;
and the complication goes on increasing till the end of life,
no two successive impressions falling on ?,A identical brain,
and no two successive thoughts being exactly the same.
(See above, p. 230 ff.)
The first sensation which an infant gets is for him thz Uni
verse. And the Universe which he later comes to know is
nothing but an amplification and an implication of that first
simple germ which, by accretion on the one hand and in
tussusception on the other, has grown so big and complex
and articulate that its first estate is unrememberable. In
his dumb awakening to the consciousness of something there,
a mere this as yet (or something for which even the term
this would perhaps be too discriminative, and the intellec
tual acknowledgment of which would be better expressed
by the bare interjection lo ! ), the infant encounters an ob
ject in which (though it be given in a pure sensation) all
the * categories of the understanding are contained. It has
objectivity, unity, substantiality, causality, in the full sense in
ivhich any later object or system of objects has these things.
Here the young knower meets and greets his world ; and
the miracle of knowledge bursts forth, as Voltaire says, as
much in the infant s lowest sensation as in the highest
achievement of a Newton s brain. The physiological con
dition of this first sensible experience is probably nerve-
currents coming in from many peripheral organs at once.
Later, the one confused Fact which these currents cause to
appear is perceived to be many facts, and to contain many
qualities.* For as the currents vary, and the brain-paths
* " So far is it from being true that we necessarily have as many feel
ings in consciousness at one time as there are inlets to the sense then played
upon, that it is a fundamental law of pure sensation that each momentary
SENSATION. 9
are moulded by them, other thoughts with other * objects
come, and the same thing which was apprehended as a
present this soon figures as a past that, about which many
unsuspected things have come to light. The principles of
this development have been laid down already in Chapters
XII and XIII, and nothing more need here be added to
that account.
"THE KELATIVITY OF KNOWLEDGE."
To the reader who is tired of so much Erkenntnisstheorie
I can only say that I am so myself, but that it is indispen
sable, in the actual state of opinions about Sensation, to try
to clear up just what the word means. Locke s pupils seek
to do the impossible with sensations, and against them we
must once again insist that sensations clustered together
cannot build up our more intellectual states of mind.
Plato s earlier pupils used to admit Sensation s existence,
grudgingly, but they trampled it in the dust as something
corporeal, non-cognitive, and vile.* His latest followers
state of the organism yields but one feeling, however numerous may be its
parts and its exposures. ... To this original Unity of consciousness it makes
no difference that the tributaries to the single feeling are beyond the organ,
ism instead of within it, in an outside object with several sensible proper
ties, instead of in the living body with its several sensitive functions. . . .
The unity therefore is not made by association of several components;
but the plurality is formed by dissociation of unsuspected varieties within
the unity ; the substantive thing being no product of synthesis, but the
residuum of differentiation. " (J. Martineau : A Study of Religion (1888),
p. 193-4.) Compare also F. H. Bradley, Logic, book i. chap. n.
* Such passages as the following abound in anti -sensationalist literature:
* Sense is a kind of dull, confused, and stupid perception obtruded upon
the soul from without, whereby it perceives the alterations and motions
within its own body, and takes cognizance of individual bodies existing
round about it, but does not clearly comprehend what they are nor pene
trate into the nature of them, it being intended by nature, as Plotinus speaks,
not so properly for knowledge as for the use of the body. For Ihe soul suf
fering under that which it perceives by way of passion cannot master or
Oonquer it, that is to say, know or understand it. For so Anaxagoras in Aris
totle very fitly expresses the nature of knowledge and intellection under
the notion of Conquering. Wherefore it is necessary, since the mind under
stands all things, that it should be free from mixture and passion, for this
find, as Anaxagoras speaks, that it may be able to master and conquer its
objects, that is to say, to know and understand them. In like manner Plo
tinus, in his book of Sense and Memory, makes to suffer and to be conquered
nil one, as also to know and to conquer; for which reason he concludes that
10 PSYCHOLOGY.
seem to seek to crowd it out of existence altogether. The
only reals for the neo-Hegelian writers appear to be rela
tions, relations without terms, or whose terms are only
speciously such and really consist in knots, or gnarls of
relations finer still in infinitum.
"Exclude from what we have considered real all qualities consti
tuted by relation, we find that none are left." "Abstract the many
relations from the one thing and there is nothing. . . . Without the
relations it would not exist at all." * "The single feeling is nothing
that which suffers doth not know. . . . Sense that suffers from external
objects lies as it were prostrate under them, and is overcome by them.
. Sense therefore is a certain kind of drowsy and somnolent percep
tion of that passive part of the soul which is as it were asleep in the body,
and acts concretely with it. ... It is an energy arising from the body and
a certain kind of drowsy or sleeping life of the soul blended together
with it. The perceptions of which compound, or of the soul as it were half
asleep and half awake, are confused, indistinct, turbid, and encumbered
cogitations very different from the energies of the noetical part, . . . which
are free, clear, serene, satisfactory, and awakened cogitations. That is to
say, knowledges." Etc., etc., etc. (R. Cudworth: Treatise concerning
Eternal and Immutable Morality, bk in. chap, n.) Similarly Male-
branche: "THEODORE. Oh, oh, Ariste! God knows pain, pleasure, warmth,
and the rest. But he does not feel these things. He knows pain, since he
knows what that modification of the soul is in which pain consists. He
knows it because he alone causes it in us (as I shall presently prove), and he
knows what he does. In a word, he knows it because his knowledge has
no bounds. But he does not feel it, for if so he would be unhappy. To
know pain, then, is not to feel it. ARISTE. That is true. But to feel it
is to know it, is it not ? THEODORE. No indeed, since God does not feel
it in the least, and yet he knows it perfectly. But in order not to quibble
about terms, if you will have it that to feel pain is to know it, agree at least
that it is not to know it clearly, that it is not to know it by light and by
evidence in a word, that it is not to know its nature; in other words and to
speak exactly, it is not to know it at all. To feel pain, for example, is to
feel ourselves unhappy without well knowing either what we are or what
is this modality of our being which makes us unhappy. . . . Impose silence
on your senses, your imagination, and your passions, and you will hear the
pure voice of inner truth, the clear and evident replies of our common mas
ter. Never confound the evidence which results from the comparison of
ideas with the liveliness of the sensations which touch and thrill you. The
livelier our sensations and feelings (sentiments) are, the more darkness do
they shed. The more terrible or agreeable are our phantoms, and the more
body and reality they appear to have, the more dangerous are they and fit
to lead us astray." (Entretiens sur la Metaphysique, 3me Entretien, ad
mil.} Malebranche s Theodore prudently does not try to explain how
God s infinite felicity is compatible with his not feeling joy.
* Green: Prolegomena, 20, 28.
SENSATION. 11
real." "On the recognition of relations as constituting the nature of
vieas, rests the possibility of any tenable theory of their reality."
Such quotations as these from the late T. H. Green*
would be matters of curiosity rather than of importance,
were it not that sensationalist writers themselves believe in
a so-called Belativity of Knowledge, which, if they only
understood it, they would see to be identical with Professor
Green s doctrine. They tell us that the relation of sensa
tions to each other is something belonging to their essence,
and that no one of them has an absolute content :
"That, e.g., black can only be felt in contrast to white, or at least
in distinction from a paler or a deeper black; similarly a tone or a sound
only in alternation with others or with silence; and in like manner a
smell, a taste, a touch, only, so to speak, in statu nascendi, whilst, when
the stimulus continues, all sensation disappears. This all seems at first
sight to be splendidly consistent both with itself and with the facts.
But looked at more closely, it is seen that neither is the case." t
* Introd. to Hume, 146, 188. It is hard to tell just what this aposto
lic human being but strenuously feeble writer means by relation. Some
times it seems to stand for system of related fact. The ubiquity of the
4 psychologist s fallacy (see p. 196) in his pages, his incessant leaning on
the confusion between the thing known % the thought that knows it, and the
farther things known about that thing and about that thought by later and
additional thoughts, make it impossible to clear up his meaning. Compare,
however, with the utterances in the text such others as these: " The wak
ing of Self-consciousness from the sleep of sense is an absolute new begin
ning, and nothing can come within the crystal sphere of intelligence
except as it is determined by intelligence. What sense is to sense is noth
ing for thought. What sense is to thought, it is as determined by thought.
There can, therefore, be no reality in sensation to which the world of
thought can be referred." (Edward Caird s Philosophy of Kant, 1st ed.
pp. 393-4.) "When," says Green again, "feeling a pa"in or pleasure of
heat, I perceive it to be connected with the action of approaching the fire,
am I not perceiving a relation of which one constituent, at any rate, is a
simple sensation? TJie true answer is, No." "Perception, in its simplest
form . . . perception as the first sight or touch of an object in which
nothing but what is seen or touched is recognized neither is nor contains
sensation" (Conterap. Rev., xxxi. pp. 746, 750.) "Mere sensation is in
truth a phrase that represents no reality." " Mere feeling, then, as a mat.
ter unformed by thought, has no place in the world of facts, in the cosmos
of possible experience." (Prolegomena to Ethics, 46, 50.) I have ex
pressed myself a little more fully on this subject in Mind, x. 27 ff.
f Stumpf: Tonpsychologie, i. pp. 7, 8. Hobbes s phrase, sentire semper
idem et non sentire ad idem recidunt, is generally treated as the original state
ment of the relativity doctrine. J. S. Mill (Examn. of Hamilton, p. 6)
12 PSYCHOLOGY.
The two leading facts from which the doctrine of uni
versal relativity derives its wide-spread credit are these :
1) The psychological fact that so much of our actual
knowledge is of the relations of things even our simplest
sensations in adult life are habitually referred to classes
as we take them in ; and
2) The physiological fact that our senses and brain must
have periods of change and repose, else we cease to feel and
think.
Neither of these facts proves anything about the
presence or non-presence to our mind of absolute quali
ties with which we become sensibly acquainted. Surely
not the psychological fact ; for our inveterate love of
relating and comparing things does not alter the intrin
sic qualities or nature of the things compared, or undo
their absolute givenness. And surely not the physio-.,
logical fact ; for the length of time during which we can
feel or attend to a quality is altogether irrelevant to the!
intrinsic constitution of the quality felt. The time, more
over, is long enough in many instances, as sufferers from
neuralgia know.* And the doctrine of relativity, not proved
by these facts, is flatly disproved by other facts even more
patent. So far are we from not knowing (in the words of
Professor Bain) " any one thing by itself, but only the dif
ference between it and another thing," that if this were true
the whole edifice of our knowledge would collapse. If all
we felt were the difference between the C and D, or c and d,
on the musical scale, that being the same in the two pairs
of notes, the pairs themselves would be the same, and lan
guage could get along without substantives. But Professor
Bain does not mean seriously what he says, and we need
spend no more time on this vague and popular form of the
doctrine, t The facts which seem to hover before the minds
and Bain (Senses and Intellect, p. 321; Emotions and Will, pp. 550, 570-2;
Logic, i. p. 2; Body and Mind, p. 81) are subscribers to this doctrine. Of.
also J. Miirs Analysis, J. S. Mill s edition, n. 11, 12.
* We can steadily hear a note for half an hour. The differences be
tween the senses are marked. Smell and taste seem soon to get fatigued.
f In the popular mind it is mixed up with that entirely different doc
trine of the Relativity of Knowledge preached by Hamilton and Spencer.
This doctrine says that our knowledge is relative to us, and is not of the
SENSATION. 13
of its champions are those which are best described under
the head of a physiological law.
THE LAW OF CONTBAST.
I will first enumerate the main facts which fall under
this law, and then remark upon what seems to me their sig
nificance for psychology.*
[Nowhere are the phenomena of contrast better exhib
ited, and their laws more open to accurate study, than in
connection with the sense of sight. Here both kinds
simultaneous and successive can easily be observed, for
they are of constant occurrence. Ordinarily they remain
unnoticed, in accordance with the general law of economy
which causes us to select for conscious notice only such
elements of our object as will serve us for aesthetic or prac
tical utility, and to neglect the rest ; just as we ignore the
double images, the mouches volantes, etc., which exist for
everyone, but which are not discriminated without careful
attention. But by attention we may easily discover the
general facts involved in contrast. We find that in general
the color and brightness of one object always apparently affect the
color and brightness of any other object seen simultaneously with
it or immediately after.
In the first place, if we look for a moment at any surface
and then turn our eyes elsewhere, the complementary color
and opposite degree of brightness to that of the first surface
tend to mingle them selves wilFTEe color and the brightness
of the second. This is successive contrast. It finds its ex
planation in the fatigue of the organ of sight, causing it to
respond to any particular stimulus less and less readily the
longer such stimulus continues to act. This is shown clearly
in the very marked changes which occur in case of contin
ued fixation of one particular point of any field. The field
darkens slowly, becomes more and more indistinct, and
finally, if one is practised enough in holding the eye per-
object as the latter is in itself. It has nothing to do with the question
which we have been discussing, of whether our objects of knowledge con
tain absolute terms or consist altogether of relations.
* What follows in brackets, as far as p. 27, is from the pen of my friend
and pupil Mr. E. B. Delabarre.
14 PSYCHOLOGY.
fectly steady, slight differences in shade and color may
entirely disappear. If we now turn aside the eyes, a nega
tive after-image of the field just fixated at once forms, and
mingles its sensations with those which may happen to
come from anything else looked at. This influence is dis
tinctly evident only when the first surface has been fixated
without movement of the eyes. It is, however, none the
less present at all times, even when the eye wanders from
point to point, causing each sensation to be modified more
or less by that just previously experienced. On this ac
count successive contrast is almost sure to be present in
cases of simultaneous contrast, and to complicate the
phenomena.
A visual image is modified not only by other sensations just
previously experienced, but also by all those experienced simul
taneously with it, and especially by such as proceed from con
tiguous portions of the retina. This is the phenomenon of
simultaneous contrast. In this, as in successive contrast, both
brightness and hue are involved. A bright object appears
still brighter when its surroundings are darker than itself,
and darker when they are brighter than itself. Two colors
side by side are apparently changed by the admixture, with
each, of the complement of the other. And lastly, a gray
surface near a colored one is tinged with the complement
of the latter. *
The phenomena of simultaneous contrast in sight are so
complicated by other attendant phenomena that it is diffi-
* These phenomena have close analogues in the phenomena of contrast
presented by the temperature-sense (see W. Preyer in Archiv f. d. ges.
Phys., Bd. xxv. p. 79 ff.). Successive contrast here is shown in the fact
that a warm sensation appears warmer if a cold one has just previously
been experienced ; and a cold one colder, if the preceding one was warm.
If a finger which has been plunged in hot water, and another which has
been in cold water, be both immersed in lukewarm water, the same water
appears cold to the former finger and warm to the latter. In simultaneous
contrast, a sensation of warmth on any part of the skin tends to induce the
sensation of cold in its immediate neighborhood ; and vwe versa. This
may be seen if we press with the palm on two metal surfaces of about an
inch and a half square and three-fourths inch apart ; the skin between them
appears distinctly warmer. So also a small object of exactly the tempera
ture of the palm appears warm if a cold object, and cold if a warm object,
touch the skin near it,
SENSATION. 15
cult to isolate them and observe them in their purity. Yet
it is evidently of the greatest importance to do so, if one
would conduct his investigations accurately. Neglect of
this principle has led to many mistakes being made in
accounting for the facts observed. As we have seen, if the
eye is allowed to wander here and there about the field as
it ordinarily does, successive contrast results and allowance
must be made for its presence. It can be avoided only by
carefully fixating with the well-rested eye a point of one
field, and by then observing the changes which occur in
this field when the contrasting field is placed by its side.
Such a course will insure pure simultaneous contrast. But
even thus it lasts in its purity for a moment only. It
reaches its maximum of effect immediately after the intro
duction of the contrasting field, and then, if the fixation is
continued, it begins to weaken rapidly and soon disappears ;
thus undergoing changes similar to those observed when
any field whatever is fixated steadily and the retina becomes
fatigued by unchanging stimuli. If one continues still
further to fixate the same point, the color and brightness
of one field tend to spread themselves over and mingle with
the color and brightness of the neighboring fields, thus
substituting simultaneous induction for simultaneous con
trast.
Not only must we recognize and eliminate the effects of
successive contrast, of temporal changes due to fixation,
and of simultaneous induction, in analyzing the phenomena
of simultaneous contrast, but we must also take into account
various other influences which modify its effects. Under favor
able circumstances the contrast-effects are very striking,
and did they always occur as strongly they could not fail
to attract the attention. But they are not always clearly
apparent, owing to various disturbing causes which form no
exception to the laws of contrast, but which have a modi
fying effect on its phenomena. When, for instance, the
ground observed has many distinguishable features a
coarse grain, rough surface, intricate pattern, etc. the con
trast effect appears weaker. This does not imply that the
effects of contrast are absent, but merely that the resulting
sensations are overpowered by the many other stronger sen-
It) PSYCHOLOGY.
sations which entirely occupy the attention. On such a
ground a faint negative after-image undoubtedly due to
retinal modifications may become invisible ; and even
weak objective differences in color may become imper
ceptible. For example, a faint spot or grease-stain on
woollen cloth, easily seen at a distance, when the fibres are
not distinguishable, disappears when closer examination
reveals the intricate nature of the surface.
Another frequent cause of the apparent absence of con
trast is the presence of narrow dark intermediate fields, such
as are formed by bordering a field with black lines, or by the
shaded contours of objects. When such fields interfere with
the contrast, it is because black and white can absorb much
color without themselves becoming clearly colored ; and
because such lines separate other fields too far for them to
distinctly influence one another. Even weak objective
differences in color may be made imperceptible by such
means.
A third case where contrast does not clearly appear is
where the color of the contrasting fields is too weak or too in
tense, or where there is much difference in brightness between the
two fields. In the latter case, as can easily be shown, it is
the contrast of brightness which interferes with the color-
contrast and makes it imperceptible. For this reason con
trast shows best between fields of about equal brightness.
But the intensity of the color must not be too great, for then
its very darkness necessitates a dark contrasting field which
is too absorbent of induced color to allow the contrast to
appear strongly. The case is similar if the fields are too
light.
To obtain the best contrast-effects, therefore, the contrasting f
fields should be near together, should not be separated by shadowsj
or black lines, should be of homogeneous texture, and should be o/f
about equal brightness and medium intensity of color. Such!
conditions do not often occur naturally, the disturbing in
fluences being present in case of almost all ordinary objects,
thus making the effects of contrast far less evident. To
eliminate these disturbances and to produce the conditions
most favorable for the appearance of good contrast-effects,
SENSATION. 17
various experiments have been devised, which will be ex
plained in comparing the rival theories of explanation. ,\
There are two theories the psychological and the physio
logical which attempt to explain the phenomena of con
trast.
Of these the psychological one was the first to gain prom
inence. Its most able advocate has been Helmholtz. It explains
contrast as a DECEPTION OF JUDGMENT. In ordinary life our
sensations have interest for us only so far as they give
us practical knowledge. Our chief concern is to recognize
objects, and we have no occasion to estimate exactly their
absolute brightness and color. Hence we gain no facility
in so doing, but neglect the constant changes in their shade,
and are very uncertain as to the exact degree of their
brightness or tone of their color. When objects are near
one another " we are inclined to consider those differences
which are clearly and surely perceived as greater than
those which appear uncertain in perception or which must
be judged by aid of memory," * just as we see a medium-
sized man taller than he really is when he stands beside a
short man. Such deceptions are more easily possible in
the judgment of small differences than of large ones ;
also where there is but one element of difference instead of
many. In a large number of cases of contrast, in all
of which a whitish spot is surrounded on all sides by
a colored surface Meyer s experiment, the mirror experi
ment, colored shadows, etc., soon to be described the
contrast is produced, according to Helmholtz, by the fact
that " a colored illumination or a transparent colored cover
ing appears to be spread out over the field, and obser
vation does not show directly that it fails on the white
spot."t We therefore believe that we see the latter
through the former color. Now
" Colors have their greatest importance for us in so far as they are
properties of bodies and can serve as signs for the recognition of
bodies. . . . We have become accustomed, in forming a judgment in
regard to the colors of bodies, to eliminate the varying brightness and
* Helmholtz, Physiolog. Optik, p. 392.
t Loc. cit. p. 407.
18 PSYCHOLOGY.
color of the illumination. We have sufficient opportunity to investigate
the same colors of objects in full sunshine, in the blue light of the clear
sky, in the weak white light of a cloudy day, in the reddish-yellow light
of the sinking sun or of the candle. Moreover the colored reflections
of surrounding objects are involved. Since we see the same colored
objects under these varying illuminations, we learn to form a correct
conception of the color of the object in spite of the difference in illumi
nation, i.e. to judge how such an object would appear in white illumi
nation ; and since only the constant color of the object interests us,
we do not become conscious of the particular sensations on which our
judgment rests. So also we are at no loss, when we see an object
through a colored covering, to distinguish what belongs to the color of
the covering and what to the object. In the experiments mentioned we
do the same also where the covering over the object is not at all colored,
because of the deception into which we fall, and in consequence of which
we ascribe to the body a false color, the color complementary to the
colored portion of the covering. " *
We think that we see the complementary color through
the colored covering, for these two colors together would
give the sensation of white which is actually experienced.
If, however, in any way the white spot is recognized as an
independent object, or if it is compared with another ob
ject known to be white, our judgment is no longer deceived
and the contrast does not appear.
"As soon as the contrasting field is recognized as an independent
body which lies above the colored ground, or even through an ade
quate tracing of its outlines is seen to be a separate field, the contrast
disappears. Since, then, the judgment of the spatial position, the
material independence, of the object in question is decisive for the
determination of its color, it follows that the contrast-color arises not
through an act of sensation but through an act of judgment." f
In short, the apparent change in color or brightness
through contrast is due to no change in excitation of the
organ, to no change in sensation ; but in consequence of a
false judgment the unchanged sensation is wrongly inter
preted, and thus leads to a changed perception of the bright
ness or color.
In opposition to this theory has been developed one
h attempts to explain all cases of contrast as depend-
* LOG. cit. p. 408.
f Loc. cit. p. 406.
SENSATION. 19
ing purely on physiological action of the terminal apparatus of
vision. Hering is the most prominent supporter of this view.
By great originality in devising experiments and by insist
ing on rigid care in conducting them, he has been able to
detect the faults in the psychological theory and to practi
cally establish the validity of his own. Every visual sensa
tion, he maintains, is correlated to a physical process in the
nervous apparatus. Contrast is occasioned, not by a false
idea resulting from unconscious conclusions, but by the
fact that the excitation of any portion of the retina and
the consequent sensation depends not only on its own
illumination, but on that of the rest of the retina as well.
" If this psycho-physical process is aroused, as usually happens, by
light- rays impinging on the retina, its nature depends not only on the
nature of these rays, but also on the constitution of the entire nervous
apparatus which is connected with the organ of vision, and on the state
in which it finds itself." *
When a limited portion of the retina is aroused by ex
ternal stimuli, the rest of the retina, and especially the
immediately contiguous parts, tends to react also, and in
such a way as to produce therefrom the sensation of the
opposite degree of brightness and the complementary color
to that of the directly-excited portion. When a gray spot
is seen alone, and again when it appears colored through
contrast, the objective light from the spot is in both cases
the same. Helmholtz maintains that the neural process
and the corresponding sensation also remain unchanged, but
are differently interpreted ; Hering, that the neural process
and the sensation are themselves changed, and that the
* interpretation is the direct conscious correlate of the
altered retinal conditions. According to the one, the con
trast is psychological in its origin ; according to the other,
it is purely physiological. In the cases cited above where
the contrast-color is no longer apparent on a ground with
many distinguishable features, on a field whose borders are
traced with black lines, etc., the psychological theory, as
we have seen, attributes this to the fact that under these
circumstances we judge the smaller patch of color to be an
* E. Hering, in Hermann s Handbuch d. Physiologic, in. 1, p. 565.
20 PSYCHOLOGY.
independent object on the surface, and are no longer de
ceived in judging it to be something over which the color
of the ground is drawn. The physiological theory, on the
other hand, maintains that the contrast-effect is still pro
duced, but that the conditions are such that the slight
changes in color and brightness which it occasions become
imperceptible.
The two theories, stated thus broadly, may seem equally
plausible. Hering, however, has conclusively proved, by
experiments with after-images, that the process on one part
of the retina does modify that on neighboring portions,
under conditions where deception of judgment is impossi
ble.* A careful examination of the facts of contrast will
show that its phenomena must be due to this cause. In all
the cases which one may investigate it will be seen that the up
holders of the psychological theory have failed to conduct their
experiments with sufficient care. They have not excluded
successive contrast, have overlooked the changes due to
* Hering : Zur Lehre vom Lichtsinne. Of these experiments the fol
lowing (found on p. 24 ff.) may be cited as a typical one : "From dark
gray paper cut two strips 3-4 cm. long and ^ cm. wide, and lay them on a
background of which one half is white and the other half deep black, in
such a way that one strip lies on each side of the border-line and parallel
to it, and at least 1 cm. distant from it. Fixate to 1 minute a point on
the border-line between the strips. One strip appears much brighter than
the other. Close and cover the eyes, and the negative after-image appears.
. . . The difference in brightness of the strips in the after-image is in gen
eral much greater than it appeared in direct vision. . . . This difference
in brightness of the strips by no means always increases and decreases with
the difference in brightness of the two halves of the background. ... A
phase occurs in which the difference in brightness of the two halves of
the background entirely disappears, and yet botfr after-images of the strips
are still very clear, one of them brighter and one darker than the back
ground, which is equally bright on both halves. Here can no longer be
any question of contrast-effect, because the conditio sine qua non of con
trast, namely, the differing brightness of the ground, is no longer pres
ent. This proves that the different brightness of the after-images of the
strips must have its ground in a different state of excitation of the corre
sponding portions of the retina, and from this follows further that botli
these portions of the retina were differently stimulated during the original
observation ; for the different after-effect demands here a different fore-
effect. . In the original arrangement, the objectively similar strips
appeared of different brightness, because both corresponding portions of
the retina were truly differently excited."
SENSATION. 21
steady fixation, and have failed to properly account for the
various modifying influences which have been mentioned
above. We can easily establish this if we examine the most
striking experiments in simultaneous contrast.
Of these one of the best known and most easily arranged
is that known as Meyer s experiment. A scrap of gray paper
is placed on a colored background, and both are covered
by a sheet of transparent white paper. The gray spot then
assumes a contrast-color, complementary to that of the
background, which shines with a whitish tinge through the
paper which covers it. Helmholtz explains the phenome
non thus :
" If the background is green, the covering-paper itself appears to be
of a greenish color. If now the substance of the paper extends without
apparent interruption over the gray which lies under it, we think that
we see an object glimmering through the greenish paper, and such an
object must in turn be rose-red, in order to give white light. If, how
ever, the gray spot has its limits so fixed that it appears to be an inde
pendent object, the continuity with the greenish portion of the surface
fails, and we regard it as a gray object which lies on this surface." *
The contrast-color may thus be made to disappear by
tracing in black the outlines of the gray scrap, or by plac
ing above the tissue paper another gray scrap of the same
degree of brightness, and comparing together the two grays.
On neither of them does the contrast-color now appear.
Hering t shows clearly that this interpretation is incor
rect, and that the disturbing factors are to be otherwise
explained. In the first place, the experiment can be so
arranged that we could not possibly be deceived into be
lieving that we see the gray through a colored medium.
Out of a sheet of gray paper cut strips 5 mm. wide in such
a way that there will be alternately an empty space and a
bar of gray, both of the same width, the bars being held to
gether by the uncut edges of the gray sheet (thus presenting
an appearance like a gridiron). Lay this on a colored back
ground e.g. green cover both with transparent paper,
and above all put a black frame which covers all the edges,
leaving visible only the bars, which are now alternately
* Helmholtz, Physiolog. Optik, p. 407.
f In Archiv f. d. ges. Physiol., Bd. XLI. S. 1 ff.
22 PSYCHOLOGY.
green and gray. The gray bars appear strongly colored
by contrast, although, since they occupy as much space as
the green bars, we are not deceived into believing that we
see the former through a green medium. The same is true
if we weave together into a basket pattern narrow strips of
green and gray and cover them with the transparent paper.
Why, then, if it is a true sensation due to physiological
causes, and not an error of judgment, which causes the
contrast, does the color disappear when the outlines of the
gray scrap are traced, enabling us to recognize it as an
independent object ? In the first place, it does not neces
sarily do so, as will easily be seen if the experiment is
tried. The contrast-color often remains distinctly visible
in spite of the black outlines. In the second place, there
are many adequate reasons why the effect should be modi
fied. Simultaneous contrast is always strongest at the
border-line of the two fields ; but a narrow black field now
separates the two, and itself by contrast strengthens the
whiteness of both original fields, which were already little
saturated in color ; and on black and on white, contrast-
colors show only under the most favorable circumstances.
Even weak objective differences in color may be made to
disappear by such tracing of outlines, as can be seen if we
place on a gray background a scrap of faintly- colored
paper, cover it with transparent paper and trace its out
lines. Thus we see that it is not the recognition of the
contrasting field as an independent object which interferes
with its color, but rather a number of entirely explicable
physiological disturbances.
The same may be proved in the case of holding above the
tissue paper a second gray scrap and comparing it with that
underneath. To avoid the disturbances caused by using
papers of different brightness, the second scrap should
be made exactly like the first by covering the same gray
with the same tissue paper, and carefully cutting a piece
about 10 mm. square out of both together. To thoroughly
guard against successive contrast, which so easily compli
cates the phenomena, we must carefully prevent all previ
ous excitation of the retina by colored light. This may be
done by arranging thus : Place the sheet of tissue paper
SENSATION. 23
on a glass pane, which rests on four supports ; under the
paper put the first gray scrap. By means of a wire, fasten
the second gray scrap 2 or 3 cm. above the glass plate.
Both scraps appear exactly alike, except at the edges
Gaze now at both scraps, with eyes not exactly accommo
dated, so that they appear near one another, with a very
narrow space between. Shove now a colored field (green)
underneath the glass plate, and the contrast appears at
once on both scraps. If it appears less clearly on the
upper scrap, it is because of its bright and dark edges, its
inequalities, its grain, etc. When the accommodation is
exact, there is no essential change, although then on the
upper scrap the bright edge on the side toward the light,
and the dark edge on the shadow side, disturb somewhat.
By continued fixation the contrast becomes weaker and
finally yields to simultaneous induction, causing the scraps
to become indistinguishable from the ground. Remove
the green field and both scraps become green, by succes
sive induction. If the eye moves about freely these last-
named phenomena do not appear, but the contrast continues
indefinitely and becomes stronger. When Helmholtz found
that the contrast on the lower scrap disappeared, it was
evidently because he then really held the eye fixed. This
experiment may be disturbed by holding the upper scrap
wrongly and by the differences in brightness of its edges,
or by other inequalities, but not by that recognizing of it
as an independent body lying above the colored ground,
on which the psychological explanation rests.
In like manner the claims of the psychological explana
tion can be shown to be inadequate in other cases of con
trast. Of frequent use are revolving disks, which are
especially efficient in showing good contrast-phenomena,
because all inequalities of the ground disappear and leave
a perfectly homogeneous surface. On a white disk are ar
ranged colored sectors, which are interrupted midway by
narrow black fields in such a way that when the disk is re
volved the white becomes mixed with the color and the
black, forming a colored disk of weak saturation on which
appears a gray ring. The latter is colored by contrast with
24 PSYCHOLOGY.
the field which surrounds it. Helmholtz explains the fact
thus :
" The difference of the compared colors appears greater than it really
is either because this difference, when it is the only existing one and
draws the attention to itself alone, makes a stronger impression than
when it is one among many, or because the different colors of the sur
face are conceived as alterations of the one ground-color of the surface
such as might arise through shadows falling on it, through colored
reflexes, or through mixture with colored paint or dust. In truth, to
produce an objectively gray spot on a green surface, a reddish coloring
would be necessary." *
This explanation is easily proved false by painting the
disk with narrow green and gray concentric rings, and giv
ing each a different saturation. The contrast appears
though there is no ground-color, and no longer a single dif
ference, but many. The facts which Helmholtz brings for
ward in support of his theory are also easily turned against
him. He asserts that if the color of the ground is too in
tense, or if the gray ring is bordered by black circles, the
contrast becomes" weaker; that no contrast appears on a
white scrap held over the colored field ; and that the gray
ring when compared with such scrap loses its contrast-color
either wholly or in part. Hering points out the inaccuracy
of all these claims. Under favorable conditions it is impos
sible to make the contrast disappear by means of black en
closing lines, although they naturally form a disturbing
element ; increase in the saturation of the field, if disturb
ance through increasing brightness-contrast is to be avoid
ed, demands a darker gray field, on which contrast-colors
are less easily perceived ; and careful use of the white scrap
leads to entirely different results. The contrast-color does
appear upon it when it is first placed above the colored
field; but if it is carefully fixated, the contrast-color di
minishes very rapidly both on it and on the ring, from causes
already explained. To secure accurate observation, all
complication through successive contrast should be avoided
thus : first arrange the white scrap, then interpose a gray
screen between it and the disk, rest the eye, set the wheel
in motion, fixate the scrap, and then have the screen re-
* Helmholtz, loc. cit. p. 412.
SENSATION. 25
moved. The contrast at once appears clearly, and its dis
appearance through continued fixation can be accurately
watched.
Brief mention of a few other cases of contrast must suf
fice. The so-called mirror experiment consists of placing
at an angle of 45 a green (or otherwise colored) pane of
glass, forming an angle with two white surfaces, one hori
zontal and the other vertical. On each white surface is a
black spot. The one on the horizontal surface is seen through
the glass and appears dark green, the other is reflected
from the surface of the glass to the eye, and appears by
contrast red. The experiment may be so arranged that we
are not aware of the presence of the green glass, but think
that we are looking directly at a surface with green and red
spots upon it ; in such a case there is no deception of judg
ment caused by making allowance for the colored medium
through which we think that we see the spot, and therefore
the psychological explanation does not apply. On exclud
ing successive contrast by fixation the contrast soon disap
pears as in all similar experiments.*
Colored shadows have long been thought to afford a con
vincing proof of the fact that simultaneous contrast is
psychological in its origin. They are formed whenever an
opaque object is illuminated from two separate sides by
lights of different colors. When the light from one source
is white, its shadow is of the color of the other light, and
the second shadow is of a color complementary to that of
the field illuminated by both lights. If now we take a tube,
blackened inside, and through it look at the colored shadow,
none of the surrounding field being visible, and then have
the colored light removed, the shadow still appears colored,
although the circumstances which caused it have disap
peared. This is regarded by the psychologists as con
clusive evidence that the color is due to deception of judg
ment. It can, however, easily be shown that the persistence
of the color seen through the tube is due to fatigue of the
retina through the prevailing light, and that when the
colored light is removed the color slowly disappears as the
* See Hering : Archiv. f. d. ges. Physiol., Bd. XLI. S. 358 ff.
26 PSYCHOLOGY.
equilibrium of the retina becomes gradually restored. When
successive contrast is carefully guarded against, the simul
taneous contrast, whether seen directly or through the tube,
never lasts for an instant on removal of the colored field.
The physiological explanation applies throughout to all the
phenomena presented by colored shadows. *
If we have a small field whose illumination remains con
stant, surrounded by a large field of changing brightness,
an increase or decrease in brightness of the latter results
in a corresponding apparent decrease or increase respect
ively in the brightness of the former, while the large field
seems to be unchanged. Exner says :
This illusion of sense shows that we are inclined to regard as con
stant the dominant brightness in our field of vision, and hence to refer
the changing difference between this and the brightness of a limited field
to a change in brightness of the latter."
The result, however, can be shown to depend not on
illusion, but on actual retinal changes, which alter the sen
sation experienced. The irritability of those portions of
the retina lighted by the large field becomes much reduced
in consequence of fatigue, so that the increase in brightness
becomes much less apparent than it would be without this
diminution in irritability. The small field, however, shows
the change by a change in the contrast-effect induced upon
it by the surrounding parts of the retina, t
The above cases show clearly that" physiological processes,
and not deception of judgment, are responsible for contrast of
color. To say this, however, is not to maintain that our
perception of a color is never in any degree modified by
our judgment of what the particular colored thing before us
may be. We have unquestionable illusions of color due to
wrong inferences as to what object is before us. Thus Von
Kries;|: speaks of wandering through evergreen forests cov
ered with snow, and thinking that through the interstices of
the boughs he saw the deep blue of pine-clad mountains, cov-
*Hering: Archiv f. d. ges. Physiol., Bd. XL. S. 172 ff. ; Delabarre r
American Jourual of Psychology, n. 636.
f Hering : Archiv f . d. ges. Physiol., Bd. XLI. S. 91 ff.
i D e Gesichtsempfindungen u. ihre Analyse, p. 128.
SENSATION. 27
ered with snow and lighted by brilliant sunshine ; whereas
what he really saw was the white snow on trees near by,
lying in shadow]. *
Such a mistake as this is undoubtedly of psychological
origin. It is a wrong classification of the appearances,
due to the arousal of intricate processes of association
amongst which is the suggestion of a different hue from
that really before the eyes. In the ensuing chapters such
illusions as this will be treated of in considerable detail.
But it is a mistake to interpret the simpler cases of con
trast in the light of such illusions as these. These illu
sions can be rectified in an instant, and we then wonder
how they could have been. They come from insufficient
attention, or from the fact that the impression which we
get is a sign of more than one possible object, and can be
interpreted in either way. In none of these points do they
resemble simple color-contrast, which unquestionably is a
phenomenon of sensation immediately aroused.
I have dwelt upon the facts of color-contrast at such
great length because they form so good a text to comment
on in my struggle against the view that sensations are im
mutable psychic things which coexist with higher mental
functions. Both sensationalists and intellectualists agree
that such sensations exist. They fuse, say the pure sen
sationalists, and make the higher mental function ; they
are combined by activity of the Thinking Principle, say the
intellectualists. I myself have contended that they do not
exist in or alongside of the higher mental function when
that exists. The things which arouse them exist ; and the
^ \ higher mental function also knows these same things. But
just as its knowledge of the things supersedes and displaces
their knowledge, so it supersedes and displaces them,
when it comes, being as much as they are a direct result
ant of whatever momentary brain-conditions may obtain.
The psychological theory of contrast, on the other hand,
holds the sensations still to exist in themselves unchanged
before the mind, whilst the relating activity of the latter
* Mr. Delabarre s contribution ends here.
28 PSYCHOLOGY.
deals with them freely and settles to its own satisfaction
what each shall be, in view of what the others also are.
Wundt says expressly that the Law of Relativity is " not a
law of sensation but a law of Apperception ;" and the word
Apperception connotes with him a higher intellectual spon
taneity.* This way of taking things belongs with the phi
losophy that looks at the data of sense as something earth-
born and servile, and the * relating of them together as
something spiritual and free. Lo ! the spirit can even
change the intrinsic quality of the sensible facts themselves
if by so doing it can relate them better to each other ! But
(apart from the difficulty of seeing how changing the sen
sations should relate them better) is it not manifest that
the relations are part of the content of consciousness,
part of the object, just as much as the sensations are?
Why ascribe the former exclusively to the knower and the
latter to the known? The knower is in every case a unique
pulse of thought corresponding to a unique reaction of the
brain upon its conditions. All that the facts of contrast
show us is that the same real thing may give us quite
different sensations when the conditions alter, and that we
must therefore be careful which one to select as the thing s
truest representative.
There are many other fads beside the phenomena of contrast
which prove that ivhen two objects act together on us the
sensation which either would give alone becomes a different
sensation. A certain amount of skin dipped in hot water
gives the perception of a certain heat. More skin immersed
makes the heat much more intense, although of course the
water s heat is the same. A certain extent as well as in
tensity, in the quantity of the stimulus is requisite for any
quality to be felt. Fick and Wunderli could not distin
guish heat from touch when both were applied through a
* Physiol. Psych., i. 351, 458-60. The full inanity of the law of rela
tivity is best to be seen in Wundt s treatment, where the great allgemeinei
Oesetz der Beziehung, invoked 10 account for Weber s law as well as for
the phenomena of contrast and many other matters, can only be defined as
a tendency to feel all things in relation to each other! Bless its little soul!
But why does it change the things so, when it thus feels them in relation?
SENSATION. 29
hole in a card, and so confined to a small part of the skin.
Similarly there is a chromatic minimum of size in objects.
The image they cast on the retina must needs have a cer
tain extent, or it will give no sensation of color at all. In
versely, more intensity in the outward impression may
make the subjective object more extensive. This happens,
as will be shown in Chapter XIX, when the illumination
is .increased : The whole room expands and dwindles ac
cording as we raise or lower the gas-jet. It is not easy
to explain any of these results as illusions of judgment
due to the inference of a wrong objective cause for the sen
sation which we get. No more is this easy in the case of
Weber s observation that a thaler laid on the skin of the
forehead feels heavier when cold than when warm ; or of
Szabadfoldi s observation that small wooden disks when
heated to 122 Fahrenheit often feel heavier than those
which are larger but not thus warmed;* or of Hall s ob
servation that a heavy point moving over the skin seems
to go faster than a lighter one moving at the same rate of
speed, f
Bleuler and Lehmann some years ago called attention
to a strange idiosyncrasy found in some persons, and con
sisting in the fact that impressions on the eye, skin, etc.,
were accompanied by distinct sensations of sound.\ Colored
hearing is the name sometimes given to the phenomenon,
which has now been repeatedly described. Quite lately the
Viennese aurist Urbantschitsch has proved that these cases
are only extreme examples of a very general law, and that
all our sense-organs influence each other s sensations.
The hue of patches of color so distant as not to be recog
nized was immediately, in U. s patients, perceived when a
tuning-fork was sounded close to the ear. Sometimes, on
the contrary, the field was darkened by the sound. The
acuity of vision was increased, so that letters too far off to
be read could be read when the tuning-fork was heard.
Urbantschitsch, varying his experiments, found that their
* Ladd : Physiol. Psych., p. 348.
f Mind, x. 567.
| Zwangsmassige Lichtempfindung durch Schall (Leipzig, 1881).
Pfliiger s Archiv, XLII. 354
30 PSYCHOLOGY.
results were mutual, and that sounds which were on the
limits of audibility became audible when lights of various
colors were exhibited to the eye. Smell, taste, touch, sense
of temperature, etc., were all found to fluctuate when lights
were seen and sounds were heard. Individuals varied much
in the degree and kind of effect produced, but almost every
one experimented on seems to have been in some way
affected. The phenomena remind one somewhat of the
dynamogenic effects of sensations upon the strength of
muscular contraction observed by M. Fere, and later to be
described. The most familiar examples of them seem to be
the increase of pain by noise or light, and the increase of
nausea by all concomitant sensations. Persons suffering in
any way instinctively seek stillness and darkness.
Probably every one will agree that the best way of for
mulating all such facts is physiological : it must be that the
cerebral process of the first sensation is reinforced or other
wise altered by the other current which comes in. No one,
surely, will prefer a psychological explanation here. Well,
\ it s^em^jfco^nje^that^ all cases of mental reaction to a plural-
\ i tLHL s * i " ^ i mns Q>e_JjgeJl3jese_^^ the^ phy- >
| siological formulation is every where_the simplest and the
V best. When simultaneous red and green light make us see
yellow, when three notes of the scale make us hear a chord,
it is not because the sensations of red and of green and of
each of the three notes enter the mind as such, and there
combine or are combined by its relating activity into
the yellow and the chord, it is because the larger sum of
light- waves and of air- waves arouses new cortical processes,
to which the yellow and the chord directly correspond.
Even when the sensible jg^ialities of things enter into the
objects of our highest thinking, it is surely the same? Their
several jsensations do not continue to exist there tucked
away. They are replaced by the HgFeFlhought jwhich,
although a different psychic unitTrom thm^ Trrmwa iliA
same sensible qualities which they know.
The principles laid down in Chapter VI seem then to
be corroborated in this new connection. You cannot build
up one thought or one sensation out of many; and only direct
SENSATION. 31
experiment can inform us of what we shall perceive when we
get many stimuli at once.
THE ECCENTRIC PROJECTION OF SENSATIONS.
We often hear the opinion expressed that all our sensa
tions at first appear to us as subjective or internal, and are
afterwards and by a special act on our part extradited or
projected so as to appear located in an outer world.
Thus we read in Professor Ladd s valuable work that
" Sensations . . . are psychical states whose place so far as they can
be said to have one is the mind. The transference of these sensations
from mere mental states to physical processes located in the periphery
of the body, or to qualities of things projected in space external to the
body, is a mental act. It may rather be said to be a mental achievement
[cf. Cudworth, above, as to knowledge being conquering], for it is an act
which in its perfection results from a long and intricate process of de
velopment. . . . Two noteworthy stages, or epoch-making achieve
ments in the process of elaborating the presentations of sense, require
a special consideration. These are localization, or the transference
of the composite sensations from mere states of the mind to processes
or conditions recognized as taking place at more or less definitely fixed
points or areas of the body; and eccentric projection (sometimes called
4 eccentric perception ) or the giving to these sensations an objective
existence (in the fullest sense of the word * objective ) as qualities of
objects situated within a field of space and in contact with, or more or
less remotely distant from, the body." *
It seems to me that there is not a vestige of evidence for
this view. It hangs together with the opinion that our sen
sations are originally devoid of all spatial content, t an
opinion which I confess that I am wholly at a loss to under
stand. As I look at my bookshelf opposite I cannot frame
to myself an idea, however imaginary, of any feeling which
I could ever possibly have got from it except the feeling of
* Physiological Psychology, 385, 387. See also such passages as that in
Bain ; The Senses and the Intellect, pp. 364-6.
f Especially must we avoid all attempts, whether avowed or concealed,
to account for the spatial qualities of the presentations of sense by merely
describing the qualities of the simple sensations and the modes of their
combination. It is position and extension in space which constitutes the
very peculiarity of the objects as no longer mere sensations or affections of
the mind. As sensations, they are neither out of ourselves nor possessed of
the qualities indicated by the word spread-out." (Ladd, op. cit. p. 391.)
32 PSYCHOLOGY.
the same big extended sort of outward fact which I now
perceive. So far is it from being true that our first way of
feeling things is the feeling of them as subjective or men
tal, that the exact opposite seems rather to be the truth.
Our earliest, most instinctive, least developed kind of con
sciousness is the objective kind ; and only as reflection be
comes developed do we become aware of an inner world at
all. Then indeed we enrich it more and more, even to the
point of becoming idealists, with the spoils of the outer
world which at first was the only world we knew. But
subjective consciousness, aware of itself as subjective, does
not at first exist. Even an attack of pain is surely felt at
first objectively as something in space which prompts to
motor reaction, and to the very end it is located, not in the
mind, but in some bodily part.
"A sensation which should not awaken an impulse to move, nor
any tendency to produce an outward effect, would manifestly be use
less to a living creature. On the principles of evolution such a sensa
tion could never be developed. Therefore every sensation originally
refers to something external and independent of the sentient creature.
Rhizopods (according to Engeimann s observations) retract their pseudo-
podia whenever these touch foreign bodies, even if these foreign bodies
are the pseudopodia of other individuals of their own species, whilst
the mutual contact of their own pseudopodia is followed by no such
contraction. These low animals can therefore already feel an outer
world even in the absence of innate ideas of causality, and probably
without any clear consciousness of space. In truth the conviction that
something exists outside of ourselves does not come from thought. It
comes from sensation; it rests on the same ground as our conviction of
our own existence. ... If we consider the behavior of new-born
animals, we never find them betraying that they are first of all con
scious of their sensations as purely subjective excitements. We far
more readily incline to explain the astonishing certainty with which
they make use of their sensations (and which is an effect of adaptation
and inheritance) as the result of an inborn intuition of the outer world.
. Instead of starting from an original pure subjectivity of sensa
tion, and seeking how this could possibly have acquired an objective
signification, wsmust, on the contrary, begin by the possession of objec
tivity by the sensation and then show how for reflective consciousness
the latter becomes interpreted as an effect of the object, how in short
the original immediate objectivity becomes changed into a remote
one."*
* A. Riehl: Der Philosophischer Kriticismus, Bd. n. Theil n. p. 64.
SENSATION. 33
Another confusion, much more common than the denial
of all objective character to sensations, is the assumption
that they are all originally located inside the body and are pro
jected outward by a secondary act. This secondary judg
ment is always false, according to M. Taine, so far as the
place of the sensation itself goes. But it happens to hit a
real object which is at the point towards which the sensation
is projected ; so we may call its result, according to this
author, a veridical hallucination.* The word Sensation, to
* On Intelligence, part n. bk. n. chap. n. g vn, vm. Compare such
statements as these : "The consequence is that when a sensation has for
its usual condition the presence of an object more or less distant from our
bodies, and experience has once made us acquainted with this distance, we
shall situate our sensation at this distance. This, in fact, is the case
with sensations of hearing and sight. The peripheral extremity of the
acoustic nerve is in the deep-seated chamber of the ear. That of the
optic nerve is in the most inner recess of the eye. But still, in our
present state, we never situate our sensations of sound or color in these
places, but without us, and often at a considerable distance from us. ...
All our sensations of color are thus projected out of our body, and clothe
more or less distant objects, furniture, walls, houses, trees, the sky, and the
rest. This is why, when we afterwards reflect on them, we cease to at
tribute them, to ourselves; they are alienated and detached from us, so far
as to appear different from us. Projected from the nervous surface in
which we localize the majority of the others, the tie which connected
them to the others and to ourselves is undone. . . . Thus, all our sensa
tions are wrongly situated, and the red color is no more extended on the
arm chair than the sensation of tingling is situated at my fingers ends.
They are all situated in the sensory centres of the encephalon; all appear
situated elsewhere, and a common law allots to each of them its apparent
situation." (Vol. ii. pp. 47-53.) Similarly Schopenhauer: "I will now
show the same by the sense of sight. The immediate datum is here
limited to the sensation of the retina which, it is true, admits of con
siderable diversity, but at bottom reverts to the impression of light
and dark with their shades, and that of colors. This sensation is
through and through subjective, that is, inside of the organism and
under the skin." (Schopenhauer: Satz vom Grunde, p. 58.) This philoso
pher then enumerates seriatim what the Intellect does to make the origi
nally subjective sensation objective: 1) it turns it bottom side up; 2) it
reduces its doubleness to singleness; 3) it changes its flatness to solidity; and
.x) it projects it to a distance from the eye. Again: "Sensations are
what we call the impressions on our senses, in so far as they come to our
consciousness as states of our own body, especially of our nervous
apparatus; we call them perceptions when we form out of them the repre
sentation of outer objects." (Helmholtz: Tonempfindungen, 1870, p. 101.)
Once more : " Sensation is always accomplished in the psychic centres,
but it manifests itself at the excited part of the periphery. In other words,
34 PSYCHOLOGY,
begin with, is constantly, in psychological literature, used
as if it meant one and the same thing with the physical im
pression either in the terminal organs or in the centres,
which is its antecedent condition, and this notwithstanding
that by sensation we mean a mental, not a physical, fact.
But those who expressly mean by it a mental fact still
leave to it a physical place, still think of it as objectively
inhabiting the very neural tracts which occasion its appear
ance when they are excited ; and then (going a step farther)
they think that it must place itself where they place it, or be
subjectively sensible of that place as its habitat in the
first instance, and afterwards have to be moved so as to
appear elsewhere.
All this seems highly confused and unintelligible. Con- j
sciousness, as we saw in an earlier chapter (p. 214) canno, )
properly be said to inhabit any place. It has dynamic re
lations with the brain, and cognitive relations with every- j
thing and anything. From the one point of view we may
say that a sensation is in the same place with the brain (if
we like), just as from the other point of view we may say
that it is in the same place with whatever quality it may be
cognizing. But the supposition that a sensation primi- \1
tively/eeZs either itself or its object to be in the same place with \
the brain is absolutely groundless, and neither a priori
probability nor facts from experience can be adduced to
show that such a deliverance forms any part of the original
cognitive function of our sensibility.
Where, then, do we feel the objects of our original sensa
tions to be ?
Certainly a child newly born in Boston, who gets a sen
sation from the candle-flame which lights the bedroom, or
from his diaper-pin, does not feel either of these objects to
one is conscious of the phenomenon in the nervous centres, ... but one
perceives it in the peripheric organs. This phenomenon depends on the
experience of the sensations themselves, in which there is a reflection of
the subjective phenomenon and a tendency on the part of perception to
return as it were to the external cause which has roused the mental state
because the latter is connected with the former." (Sergi : Psychologic
Physiologique (Paris, 1888), p. 189.)-The clearest and best passage I know
is in Liebmaun: Der Objective Anblick (1869), pp, 67-72, but it is unfortu
nately too long to quote.
SENSATION. 35
be situated in longitude 72 W. and latitude 41 N. He
does not feel them to be in the third story of the house. He
does not even feel them in any distinct manner to be to the
right or the left of any of the other sensations which he
may be getting from other objects in the room at the same
time. He does not, in short, know anything about their
space-relations to anything else in the world. The flame
fills its own place, the pain fills its own place ; but as yet
these places are neither identified with, nor discriminated
from, any other places. That comes later. For the places
thus first sensibly known are elements of the child s space-
world which remain with him all his life ; and by memory
and later experience he learns a vast number of things about
those places which at first he did not know. But to the
end of time certain places of the world remain defined for
him as the places where those sensations ivere ; and his only
possible answer to the question where anything is will be to
say there, and to name some sensation or other like those
first ones, which shall identify the spot. Space means but
the aggregate of all our possible sensations. There is no
duplicate space known aliunde, or created by an epoch-
making achievement into which our sensations, originally
spaceless, are dropped. They bring space and all its places
to our intellect, and do not derive it thence.
By his body, then, the child later means simply that place
where the pain from the pin, and a lot of other sensations
like it, were or are felt. It is no more true to say that he
locates that pain in his body, than to say that he locates his
body in that pain. Both are true : that pain is part of what
he means by the word body. Just so by the outer world the
child means nothing more than that place where the candle-
flame and a lot of other sensations like it are felt. He no
more locates the candle in the outer world than he locates
the outer world in the candle. Once again, he does both ;
for the candle is part of what he means by outer world.
This (it seems to me) will be admitted, and will (I trust)
be made still more plausible in the chapter on the Percep
tion of Space. But the later developments of this percep
tion are so complicated that these simple principles get
36 PSYCHOLOGY.
easily overlooked. One of the complications comes from
the fact that things move, and that the original object which
we feel them to be splits into two parts, one of which re
mains as their whereabouts and the other goes off as their
quality or nature. We then contrast where they ivere with
where they are. If we do not move, the sensation of where
they ivere remains unchanged ; but we ourselves presently
move, so that that also changes ; and where they were
becomes no longer the actual sensation which it was origi
nally, but a sensation which we merely conceive as possible.
Gradually the system of these possible sensations, takes
more and more the place of the actual sensations. Up
and down become subjective notions ; east and west
grow more correct than right and left etc.; and things
get at last more truly located by their relation to certain
ideal fixed co-ordinates than by their relation either to
our bodies or to those objects by which their place was
originally denned. Now this revision of our original locali
zations is a complex affair; and contains some facts ivhich may
very naturally come to be described as translocations ivhereby
sensations get shoved farther off than they originally appeared.
1 Few things indeed are more striking than the change
able distance which the objects of many of our sensations
may be made to assume. A fly s humming may be taken
for a distant steam-whistle ; or the fly itself, seen out of
focus, may for a moment give us the illusion of a distant
bird. The same things seem much nearer or much farther,
according as we look at them through one end or another of
an opera-glass. Our whole optical education indeed is
largely taken up with assigning their proper distances to the
objects of our retinal sensations. An infant will grasp at the
moon ; later, it is said, he projects that sensation to a dis
tance which he knows to be beyond his reach. In the
much quoted case of the young gentleman who was born
blind, and who was couched for the cataract by Mr.
Chesselden, it is reported of the patient that " when he first
saw, he was so far from making any judgment about dis
tances, that he thought all objects whatever touched his
eyes (as he expressed it) as what he felt did his skin."
And other patients born blind, but relieved by surgical op-
SENSATION. 37
eration, have been described as bringing their hand close
to their eyes to feel for the objects which they at first saw,
and only gradually stretching out their hand when they
found that no contact occurred. Many have concluded
from these facts that our earliest visual objects must seem
in immediate contact with our eyes.
But tactile objects also may be affected with a like am
biguity of situation.
If one of the hairs of our head be pulled, we are pretty
accurately sensible of the direction of the pulling by the
movements imparted to the head.* But the feeling of the
pull is localized, not in that part of the hair s length which
the fingers hold, but in the scalp itself. This seems con
nected with the fact that our hair hardly serves at all as a
tactile organ. In creatures with vibrissce, however, and in
those quadrupeds whose whiskers are tactile organs, it can
hardly be doubted that the feeling is projected out of the
root into the shaft of the hair itself. We ourselves have an
approach to this when the beard as a whole, or the hair as
a whole, is touched. We perceive the contact at some dis
tance from the skin.
When fixed and hard appendages of the body, like the
teeth and nails, are touched, we feel the contact where it
objectively is, and not deeper in, where the nerve-termina
tions lie. If, however, the tooth is loose, we feel two
contacts, spatially separated, one at its root, one at its
top.
From this case to that of a hard body not organically
connected with the surface, but only accidentally in contact
with it, the transition is immediate. With the point of a
cane we can trace letters in the air or on a wall just as with
the finger-tip ; and in so doing feel the size and shape of
the path described by the cane s tip just as immediately as,
without a cane, we should feel the path described by the
tip of our finger. Similarly the draughtsman s immediate\
perception seems to be of the point of his pencil, the sur-|
* This is proved by Weber s device of causing the head to be firmly
pressed against a support by another person, whereupon the direction of
traction ceases to be perceived.
38 PSYCHOLOGY.
geon s of the end of his knife, the duellist s of the tip of his
rapier as it plunges through his enemy s skin. When on
the middle of a vibrating ladder, we feel not only our feet
on the round, but the ladder s feet against the ground far
below, If we shake a locked iron gate we feel trie middle,
on which our hands rest, move, but we equally feel the sta
bility of the ends where the hinges and the lock are, and
we seem to feel all three at once.* And yet the place
where the contact is received is in all these cases the skin,
whose sensations accordingly are sometimes interpreted as
objects on the surface, and at other times as objects a long
distance off.
We shall learn in the chapter on Space that our feelings
of our own movement are principally due to the sensibility
of our rotating joints. Sometimes by fixing the attention,
say on our elbow-joint, we can feel the movement in the
joint itself; but we always are simultaneously conscious
of the path which during the movement our finger-tips
describe through the air, and yet these same finger-tips
themselves are in no way physically modified by the motion.
A blow on our ulnar nerve behind the elbow is felt both
there and in the fingers. Eefrigeration of the elbow pro
duces pain in the fingers/ Electric currents passed through
nerve-trunks, whether of cutaneous or of more special sen
sibility (such as the optic nerve), give rise to sensations
which are vaguely localized beyond the nerve-tracts
traversed. Persons whose legs or arms have been ampu
tated are, as is well known, apt to preserve an illusory
feeling of the lost hand or foot being there. Even when
they do not have this feeling constantly, it may be occa
sionally brought back. This sometimes is the result of
exciting electrically the nerve- trunks buried in the stump.
" I recently faradized," says Dr. Mitchell, " a case of disarticulated
shoulder without warning my patient of the possible result. 7 or two
years he had altogether ceased to feel the limb. As the current affected
the brachial plexus of nerves he suddenly cried aloud, Oh the hand,
the hand ! and attempted to seize the missing member. The phantom
*Lotze: Med. Psych., 428-433; Lipps: Grundtatsachen des Seelenle
bens, 582.
SENSATION. 39
T had conjured up swiftly disappeared, but no spirit could have more
amazed the man, so real did it seem." *
Now the apparent position of the lost extremity varies.
Often the foot seems on the ground, or follows the position
of the artificial foot, where one is used. Sometimes where
the arm is lost the elbow will seem bent, and the hand in a
fixed position on the breast. Sometimes, again, the position
is non-natural, and the hand will seem to bud straight out
of the shoulder, or the foot to be on the same level with the
knee of the remaining leg. Sometimes, again, the position
is vague ; and sometimes it is ambiguous, as in another
patient of Dr. Weir Mitchell s who
"lost his leg at the age of eleven, and remembers that the foot by
degrees approached, and at last reached the knee. When he began to
wear an artificial leg it reassumed in time its old position, and he is
never at present aware of tha leg as shortened, unless for some time he
talks and thinks of the stump, and of the missing leg, when . . . the
direction of attention to the part causes a feeling of discomfort, and the
subjective sensation of active and unpleasant movement of the toes.
With these feelings returns at once the delusion of the foot as being
placed at the knee."
All these facts, and others like them, can easily be de
scribed as if our sensations might be induced by circum
stances to migrate from their original locality near the brain
or near the surface of the body, and to appear farther off ;
and (under different circumstances) to return again after
having migrated. But a little analysis of what happens
shows us that this description is inaccurate.
The objectivity with which each of our sensations originally
comes to us, the roomy and spatial character ivhich is a primi
tive part of its content, is not in the first instance relative to any
other sensation. The first time we open our eyes we get an
optical object which is a place, but which is not yet placed in
relation to any other object, nor identified with any place
otherwise known. It is a place with which so far we are
only acquainted. When later we know that this same place
is in front of us, that only means that we have learned
Something about it, namely, that it is congruent with that
* Injuries to Nerves (Philadelphia, 1872), p. 350 ff.
40 PSYCHOLOGY.
other place, called front, which is given us by certain sen
sations of the arm and hand or of the head and body. But
at the first moment of our optical experience, even though
we already had an acquaintance with our head, hand, and
body, we could not possibly know anything about their
relations to this new seen object. It could not be immedi
ately located in respect of them. How its place agrees with
the places which their feelings yield is a matter of which
only later experience can inform us; and in the next
chapter we shall see with some detail how later experience
does this by means of discrimination, association, selection,
and other constantly working functions of the mind. When,
therefore, the baby grasps at the moon, that does not mean
that what he sees fails to give him the sensation which he
afterwards knows as distance ; it means only that he has
not learned at what tactile or manual distance things which ap
pear at that visual distance are.* And when a person just
operated for cataract gropes close to his face for far-off
objects, that only means the same thing. All the ordinary
optical signs of differing distances are absent from the poor
creature s sensation anyhow. His vision is monocular
(only one eye being operated at a time); the lens is gone,
and every thing is out of focus; he feels photophobia, lachry-
mation, and other painful resident sensations of the eyeball
itself, whose place he has long since learned to know in
tactile terms ; what wonder, then, that the first tactile reac
tion which the new sensations provoke should be one
associated with the tactile situation of the organ itself?
And as for his assertions about the matter, what wonder,
again, if, as Prof. Paul Janet says, they are still expressed
in the tactile language which is the only one he knows.
" To be touched; means for him to receive an impression with
out first making a movement." His eye gets such an
impression now ; so he can only say that the objects are
* touching it.
" All his language, borrowed from touch, but applied to the objects
of his sight, make us think that he perceives differently from ourselves,
* In reality it probably means only a restless movement of desire, which
he might make even after he had become aware of his impotence to touch
the object.
SENSATION. 41
whereas, at bottom, it is only his different way of talking about the same
experience. " *
The other cases of translocation of our sensations are
equally easily interpreted without supposing any projec
tion from a centre at which they are originally perceived.
Unfortunately the details are intricate ; and what I say now
can only be made fully clear when we come to the next
chapter. We shall then see that we are constantly select
ing certain of our sensations as realities and degrading
others to the status of signs of these. When we get one of
the signs we think of the reality signified ; and the strange
thing is that then the reality (which need not be itself a
sensation at all at the time, but only an idea) is so interest
ing that it acquires an hallucinatory strength, which may
even eclipse that of the relatively uninteresting sign and en
tirely divert our attention from the latter. Thus the sen
sations to which our joints give rise when they rotate are
signs of what, through a large number of other sensations,
tactile and optical, we have come to know as the movement
of the whole limb. This movement of the whole limb is
what we think of when the joint s nerves are excited in that
way ; and its place is so much more important than the
joint s place that our sense of the latter is taken up, so to
speak, into our perception of the former, and the sensation
of the movement seems to diffuse itself into our very fingers
and toes. But by abstracting our attention from the sug
gestion of the entire extremity we can perfectly well per
ceive the same sensation as if it were concentrated in one
spot. We can identify it with a differently located tactile
and visual image of * the joint itself.
Just so when we feel the tip of our cane against the
ground. The peculiar sort of movement of the hand (im
possible in one direction, but free in every other) which
we experience when the tip touches the ground, is a sign
to us of the visual and tactile object which we already
* Revue Philosophique, vii. p. 1 ff., an admirable critical article, in the
course of which M. Janet gives a bibliography of the cases in question.
See also Dunan: iMd. xxv. 165-7. They are also discussed and similarly
interpreted by T. K. Abbot : Sight and Touch (1864), chapter x.
42 PSYCHOLOGY.
know under that name. We think of the ground as being;
there and giving us the sensation of this kind of movement.
The sensation, we say, comes from the ground. The ground s
place seems to be its place ; although at the same time,
and for very similar practical reasons, we think of another
optical and tactile object, the hand namely, and consider
that us place also must be the place of our sensation. In
other words, we take an object or sensible content A, and
confounding it with another object otherwise known, B, or
with two objects otherwise known, B and C, we identify its
place with their places. But in all this there is no project
ing (such as the extradition-philosophers talk of) of A out
of an original place ; no primitive location which it first
occupied, away from these other sensations, has to be con
tradicted ; no natural centre, from which it is expelled,
exists. That would imply that A aboriginally came to us
in definite local relations with other sensations, for to be
out of B and C is to be in local relation with them as much
as to be mthem is so. But it was no more out of B and C
than it was in them when it first came to us. It simply
had nothing to do with them. To say that we feel a sen
sation s seat to be in the brain or against the eye or
under the skin is to say as much about it and to deal
with it in as non-primitive a way as to say that it is a mile
off. These are all secondary perceptions, ways of defining
the sensation s seat per aliud. They involve numberless
associations, identifications, and imaginations, and admit a
great deal of vacillation and uncertainty in the result.*
/ conclude, then, that there is no truth in the f eccentric pro
jection theory. It is due to the confused assumption that
the bodily processes which cause a sensation must also be
its seat, f But sensations have no seat in this sense. They
* The intermediary and shortened locations of the lost hand and foot in
the amputation cases also show this. It is easy to see why the phantom
foot might continue to follow the position of the artificial one. But I
confess that I cannot explain its half way -positions.
f It is from this confused assumption that the time-honored riddle
comes, of how, with an upside-down picture on the retina, we can see
things right-side up. Our consciousness is naively supposed to inhabit the
SENSATION. 43
become seats for each other, as fast as experience associates
them together ; but that violates no primitive seat possessed
by any one of them. And though our sensations cannot
then so analyze and talk of themselves, yet at their very
first appearance quite as much as at any later date are they
cognizant of all those qualities which we end by extracting
and conceiving under the names of objectivity, exteriority,
and extent. It is surely subjectivity and interiority which
are the notions latest acquired by the human mind. *
picture and to feel the picture s position as related to other objects of space.
But the truth is that the picture is non-existent either as a habitat or as any
thing else, for immediate consciousness. Our notion of it is an enormous
ly late conception. The outer object is given immediately with all those
qualities which later are named and determined in relation to other sensa
tions. The bottom of this object is where we see what by touch we
afterwards know as OUT feet, the top is the place in which we see what
we know as other people s heads, etc., etc. Berkeley long ago made this
matter perfectly clear (see his Essay towards a new Theory of Vision,
93-98, 113-118).
* For full justification the reader must see the next chapter. He may
object, against the summary account given now, that in a babe s immediate
field of vision the various things which appear are located relatively to each
other from the outset. I admit that if discriminated, they would appear so
located. But they are parts of the content of one sensation, not sensations
separately experienced, such as the text is concerned with. The fully de
veloped world, in which all our sensations ultimately find location, is
nothing but an imaginary object framed after the pattern of the field of
vision, by the addition and continuation of one sensation upon another in
an orderly and systematic way. In corroboration of my text I must refer
to pp. 57-60 of RiehPs book quoted above on page 32, and to Uphues :
Wahrnehmung und Empfindung (1888), especially the Einleitung and
pp. 51-61.
CHAPTEK XVIII.
IMAGINATION.
Sensations, once experienced, modify the nervous organism,
%o that copies of them arise again in the mind after the orig
inal outward stimulus is gone. No mental copy, however,
can arise in the mind, of any kind of sensation which has
never been directly excited from without.
The blind may dream of sights, the deaf of sounds,
for years after they have lost their vision or hearing ; * but
the man born deaf can never be made to imagine what sound
is like, nor can the man born blind ever have a mental
vision. In Locke s words, already quoted, " the mind can
frame unto itself no one new simple idea." The originals
of them all must have been given from without. Fantasy, or
Imagination, are the names given to the faculty of repro
ducing copies of originals once felt. The imagination is
called * reproductive when the copies are literal ; * pro
ductive when elements from different originals are recom-
bined so as to make new wholes.
After-images belong to sensation rather than to imagi
nation ; so that the most immediate phenomena of imagi
nation would seem to be those tardier images (due to what
the Germans call Sinnesgeddchtniss) which were spoken of
in Vol. I, p. 647, coercive hauntings of the mind by echoes
of unusual experiences for hours after the latter have taken
place. The phenomena ordinarily ascribed to imagination,
however, are those mental pictures of possible sensible
* Prof. Jastrow has ascertained by statistical inquiry among the blind
that if their blindness have occurred before a period embraced between the
fifth and seventh years the visual centres seem to decay, and visual dreams
and images are gradually outgrown. If sight is lost after the seventh
year, visual imagination seems to survive through life. See Prof. J. s in
teresting article on the Dreams of the Blind, in the New Princeton Review
for January 1888.
44
IMAGINATION. 45
experiences, to which the ordinary processes of associa
tive thought give rise.
When represented with surroundings concrete enough
to constitute a date, these pictures, when they revive, form
recollections. We have already studied the machinery of
recollection in Chapter XVI. When the mental pictures
are of data freely combined, and reproducing no past com
bination exactly, we have acts of imagination properly
so called.
OUK IMAGES ABE USUALLY VAGUE.
For the ordinary * analytic psychology, each sensibly
discernible element of the object imagined is repre
sented by its own separate idea, and the total object
is imagined by a cluster or * gang of ideas. We have
seen abundant reason to reject this view (see p. 276 ff.). An
imagined object, however complex, is at any one moment
thought in one idea, which is aware of all its qualities to-
gether. If I slip into the ordinary way of talking, and
speak of various ideas * combining, the reader will under
stand that this is only for popularity and convenience, and
he will not construe it into a concession to the atomistic
theory in psychology.
Hume was the hero of the atomistic theory. Not only
were ideas copies of original impressions made on the sense-
organs, but they were, according to him, completely ade
quate copies, and were all so separate from each other as
to possess no manner of connection. Hume proves ideas
in the imagination to be completely adequate copies, not
by appeal to observation, but by a priori reasoning, as fol
lows:
The mind cannot form any notion of quantity or quality, without
forming a precise notion of the degrees of each, 1 for " tis confessed
that no object can appear to the senses ; or in other words, that no im
pression* can become present to the mind, without being determined in
its degrees both of quantity and quality. The confusion in which im
pressions are sometimes involved proceeds only from their faintness
and unsteadiness, not from any capacity in the mind to receive any im
pression, which in its real existence has no particular degree nor pro
portion. That is a contradiction in terms; and even implies the flattest
* Impression means sensation for Hume.
46 PSYCHOLOG T.
of all contradictions, viz. , that tis possible for the same thing both to
be and not to be. Now since all ideas are derived from impressions,
and are nothing but copies and representations of them, whatever is
true of the one must be acknowledged concerning the other. Impres
sions and ideas differ only in their strength and vivacity. The forego
ing conclusion is not founded on any particular degree of vivacity. It
-cannot therefore be affected by any variation in that particular. An
idea is a weaker impression ; and as a strong impression must neces
sarily have a determinate quantity and quality, the case must be the
same with its copy or representative." *
The slightest introspective glance will show to anyone
the falsity of this opinion. Hume surely had images of
his own works without seeing distinctly every word and
letter upon the pages which floated before his mind s eye.
His dictum is therefore an exquisite example of the way in
which a man will be blinded by a priori theories to the
most flagrant facts. It is a rather remarkable thing, too,
that the psychologists of Hume s own empiricist school
have, as a rule, been more guilty of this blindness than
their opponents. The fundamental facts of consciousness
have been, on the whole, more accurately reported by the
spiritualistic writers. None of Hume s pupils, so far as I
know, until Taine and Huxley, ever took the pains to con
tradict the opinion of their master. Prof. Huxley in his
brilliant little work on Hume set the matter straight in the
following words :
"When complex impressions or complex ideas are reproduced as
memories, it is probable that the copies never give all the details of the
originals with perfect accuracy, and it is certain that they rarely do so.
No one possesses a memory so good, that if he has only once observed
a natural object, a second inspection does not show him something that
he has forgotten. Almost all, if not all, our memories are therefore
sketches, rather than portraits, of the originals the salient features
are obvious, while the subordinate characters are obscure or unrepre
sented.
"Now, when several complex impressions which are more or less
different from one another let us say that out of ten impressions in
each, six are the same in all, and four are different from all the rest
are successively presented to the mind, it is easy to see what must be
the nature of the result. The repetition of the six similar impressions
will strengthen the six corresponding elements of the complex idea,
* Treatise on Human Nature, part i. YII.
IMAGINATION, 47
which will therefore acquire greater vividness ; while the four differing
impressions of each will not only acquire no greater strength than they
had at first, but, in accordance with the law of association, they will
all tend to appear at once, and will thus neutralize one another.
This mental operation may be rendered comprehensible by consid
ering what takes place in the formation of compound photographs
when the images of the faces of six sitters, for example, are each re
ceived on the same photographic plate, for a sixth of the time requisite
to take one portrait. The final result is that all those points in which
the six faces agree are brought out strongly, while all those in which
they differ are left vague ; and thus what may be termed a generic por
trait of the six, in contradistinction to a specific portrait of any one, is
produced.
Thus our ideas of single complex impressions are incomplete in
one way, and those of numerous, more or less similar, complex im
pressions are incomplete in another way ; that is to say, they are gen
eric, not specific. And hence it follows that our ideas of the impres
sions in question are not, in the strict sense of the word, copies of those
impressions ; while, at the same time, they may exist in the mind in
dependently of language.
1 The generic ideas which are formed from several similar, but not
identical, complex experiences are what are called abstract or general
ideas ; and Berkeley endeavored to prove that all general ideas are
nothing but particular ideas annexed to a certain term, which gives
them a more extensive signification, and makes them recall, upon oc
casion, other individuals which are similar to them. Hume says that
he regards this as one of the greatest and the most valuable discover
ies that has been made of late years in the republic of letters, and en
deavors to confirm it in such a manner that it shall be put beyond
all doubt and controversy.
" I may venture to express a doubt whether he has succeeded in his
object ; but the subject is an abstruse one ; and I must content my
self with the remark, that though Berkeley s view appears to be largely
applicable to such general ideas as are formed after language has been
acquired, and to all the more abstract sort of conceptions, yet that gen
eral ideas of sensible objects may nevertheless be produced in the way
indicated, and may exist independently of language. In dreams, one
sees houses, trees, and other objects, which are perfectly recognizable as
such, but which remind one of the actual objects as seen out of the
corner of the eye, or of the pictures thrown by a badly-focussed magic
lantern. A man addresses us who is like a figure seen in twilight ; or
we travel through countries where every feature of the scenery is vague ;
the outlines of the hills are ill-marked, and the rivers have no defined
banks. They are, in short, generic ideas of many past impressions of
men, hills, and rivers. An anatomist who occupies himself intently
with the examination of several specimens of some new kind of animal,
in course of time acquires so vivid a conception of its form and struc-
48 PSYCHOLOGY.
ture that the idea may take visible shape and become a sort of waking
dream. But the figure which thus presents itself is generic, not spe
cific. It is no copy of any one specimen, but, more or less, a mean of
the series ; and there seems no reason to doubt that the minds of chil
dren before they learn to speak, and of deaf-mutes, are peopled wi f h
similarly generated generic ideas of sensible objects. 1 *
Are Vague Images * Abstract Ideas ?
The only point which I am tempted to criticise in this
account is Prof. Huxley s identification of these generic images
with * abstract or general ideas in the sense of universal concep
tions. Taine gives the truer view. He writes :
"Some years ago I saw in England, in Kew Gardens, for the first
time, araucarias, and I walked along the beds looking at these strange
plants, with their rigid bark and compact, short, scaly leaves, of a
sombre green, whose abrupt, rough, bristling form cut in upon the fine
softly-lighted turf of the fresh grass-plat. If I now inquire what this
experience has left in me, I find, first, the sensible representation of an
araucaria ; in fact, I have been able to describe almost exactly the form
and color of the plant. But there is a difference between this represen
tation and the former sensations, of which it is the present echo. The
internal semblance, from which I have just made my description, is
vague, and my past sensations were precise. For, assuredly, each of
the araucarias I saw then excited in me a distinct visual sensation ;
there are no two absolutely similar plants in nature ; I observed perhaps
twenty or thirty araucarias ; without a doubt each one of them differed
from the others in size, in girth, by the more or less obtuse angles of its
branches, by the more or less abrupt jutting out of its scales, by the style
of its texture ; consequently, my twenty or thirty visual sensations were
different. But no one of these sensations has completely survived in its
echo ; the twenty or thirty revivals have blunted one another ; thus,
upset and agglutinated by their resemblance they are confounded
together, and my present representation is their residue only. This is
the product, or rather the fragment, which is deposited in us, when we
have gone through a series of similar facts or individuals. Of our
numerous experiences there remain on the following day four or five
more or less distinct recollections, which, obliterated themselves, leave
behind in us a simple colorless, vague representation, into which enter
as components various reviving sensations, in an utterly feeble, incom
plete, and abortive state. But this representation is not the general and
abstract idea. It is but its accompaniment, and, if I may say so, the-
ore from which it is extracted. For the representation, though badly
sketched, is a sketch, the sensible sketch of a distinct individual. . . .
But my abstract idea corresponds to the whole class ; it differs, then r
from the representation of an individual. Moreover, my abstract idea
* Huxley s Hume, pp. 92-94.
IMAGINATION. 4&
is perfectly clear and determinate ; now that I possess it, I never fail
to recognize an araucaria among the various plants which may be shown
me ; it differs then from the confused and floating representation I have
of some particular araucaria." *
In other words, a blurred picture is just as much a single
mental fact as a sharp picture is ; and the use of either picture
by the mind to symbolize a whole doss of individuals is a new
mental function, requiring some other modification of con
sciousness than the mere perception that the picture is
distinct or not. I may bewail the indistinctness of my
mental image of my absent friend. That does not prevent
my thought from meaning him alone, however. And I may
mean all mankind, with perhaps a very sharp image of one
man in my mind s eye. The meaning is a function of the
more transitive parts of consciousness, the fringe of
relations which we feel surrounding the image, be the latter
sharp or dim. This was explained in a previous place (see
p. 473 ff., especially the note to page 477), and I would not
touch upon the matter at all here but for its historical
interest.
Our ideas or images of past sensible experiences may
then be either distinct and adequate or dim, blurred, and
incomplete. It is likely that the different degrees in which
different men are able to make them sharp and complete
has had something to do with keeping up such philosophic
disputes as that of Berkeley with Locke over abstract ideas.
Locke had spoken of our possessing the general idea of a,
triangle which " must be neither oblique nor rectangle,
neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and
none of these at once." Berkeley says :
44 If any man has the faculty of framing in his mind such an idea of
a triangle as is here described, it is in vain to pretend to dispute him
out of it, nor would I go about it. All I desire is that the reader would
fully and certainly inform himself whether he has such an idea or no." f
Until very recent years it was supposed by all philoso-
phers that there was a typical human mind which all indi- i
vidual minds were like, and that propositions of universal I
validity could be laid down about such faculties as the
* On Intelligence (N. Y.), vol. n. p. 139.
t Principles, Introd. 13. Compare also the passage quoted above,
p. 469
50
PSYCHOLOGY.
Imagination. Lately, however, a mass of revelations have
poured in, which make us see how false a view this is.
There are imaginations, not the Imagination, and they
must be studied in detail.
INDIVIDUALS DIFPEB IN IMAGINATION.
The first breaker of ground in this direction was Fechner,
in 1860. Feehner was gifted with unusual talent for sub
jective observation, and in chapter XLIV of his * Psychophy-
sik he gave the results of a most careful comparison of his
own optical after-images, with his optical memory-pictures,
together with accounts by several other individuals of their
optical memory-pictures.* The result was to show a great
* The differences noted by Fechner between after-images and images
of imagination proper are as follows :
Imagination-images.
Feel subject to our spontaneity ;
Have, as it were, more body ;
Are blurred ;
Are darker than even the darkest
black of the % after-images ;
Have lively coloration ;
Incessantly disappear, and have to
be renewed by an effort of will.
At last even this fails to revive
them.
Can be exchanged at will for others.
Cannot violate the necessary laws of
appearance of their originals e. g. ,
a man cannot be imagined from
in front and behind at once. The
imagination must walk round him,
so to speak ;
Are more easily had with open than
with shut eyes ;
Need not follow movements of head
or eyes.
The field is extensive in three dimen
sions, and objects can be imagined
in it above or behind almost as
easily as in front.
In imagining, the attention feels at
if drawn backwards towards th&
brain.
Feel coercive ;
Seem unsubstantial, vaporous ;
Are sharp in outline ;
Are bright ;
Are almost colorless ;
Are continuously enduring ;
Cannot be voluntarily changed.
Are exact copies of originals.
Are more easily got with shut than
with open eyes ;
Seem to move when the head or eyes
move ;
The field within which they appear
(with closed eyes) is dark, con
tracted, flat, close to the eyes, in
front, and the images have no
perspective ;
The attention seems directed for
wards towards the sense-organ, in
observing after-images
Finally, Fechner speaks of the impossibility of attending to both after.
IMAGINATION. 61
personal diversity. " It would be interesting," he writes,
" to work up the subject statistically ; and I regret that
other occupations have kept me from fulfilling my earlier
intention to proceed in this way."
1 echner s intention was independently executed by Mr.
Galton, the publication of whose results in 1880 may be
said to have made an era in descriptive Psychology.
" It is not necessary," says Galton, " to trouble the reader with my
early tentative steps. After the inquiry had been fairly started it took
the form of submitting a certain number of printed questions to a large
number of persons. There is hardly any more difficult task than that
of framing questions which are not likely to be misunderstood, which
admit of easy reply, and which cover the ground of inquiry. I did my
best in these respects, without forgetting the most important part of
all namely, to tempt my correspondents to write freely in fuller ex
planation of their replies, and on cognate topics as well. These sepa
rate letters have proved more instructive and interesting by far than the
replies to the set questions.
" The first group of the ratbei long series of queries related to the
illumination, definition, and coloring of the mental image, and were
framed thus :
" l Before addressing yourself to any of the Questions on the opposite
page, think of some definite object suppose it is your breakfast- table
as you sat down to it this morning and consider carefully the picture
that rises before your mind s eye.
" 1. Illumination. Is the image dim or fairly clear ? Is its bright
ness comparable to that of the actual scene ?
" * 2. Definition. Are all the objects pretty well defined at the same
time, or is the place of sharpest definition at any one moment more con
tracted than it is in a real scene ?
" 3. Coloring. Are the colors of the china, of the toast, bread-crust,
mustard, meat, parsley, or whatever may have been on the table, quite
distinct and natural ?
" The earliest results of my inquiry amazed me. I had begun by
questioning friends in the scientific world, as they were the most likely
class of men to give accurate answers concerning this faculty of visual-
iinages and imagination -images at once, even when they are of the
object and might be expected to combine. All these differences are true of
Fechner ; but many of them would be untrue of other persons. I quote
them as a type of observation which any reader with sufficient patience
may repeat. To them may be added, as a universal proposition, that after-
images seem larger if we project them on a distant screen, and smaller If
we project them on a near one, whilst no such change takes place in mental
pictures.
-W5*trxJtov^l*4 W^ttvX fyptf lf
* -i. - \ . I. ..+** i~*i4^-i
0V PSYCHOLOGY.
izing, to which novelists and poets continually allude, which has left,
an abiding mark on the vocabularies of every language, and which,
supplies the material out of which dreams and the well-known halluci
nations of sick people are built.
-To my astonishment, I found that the great majority of the men
of science to whom I first applied protested that mental imagery was
unknown to them, and they looked on me as fanciful and fantastic in
supposing that the words mental imagery really expressed what I
believed everybody supposed them to mean. They had no more notion
of its true nature than a color-blind man, who has not discerned his
defect, has of the nature of color. They had a mental deficiency of
which they were unaware, and naturally enough supposed that those
who affirmed they possessed it were romancing. To illustrate their
mental attitude it will be sufficient to quote a few lines from the letter
of one of my correspondents, who writes :
" * These questions presuppose assent to some sort of a proposition re
garding the "mind s eye," and the "images" which it sees. . . . This
points to some initial fallacy. ... It is only by a figure of speech that
I can describe my recollection of a scene as a " mental image " which
lean "see "with my "mind s eye." . . . I do not see it . . . anymore
than a man sees the thousand lines of Sophocles which under due
pressure he is ready to repeat. The memory possesses it, etc.
Much the same result followed inquiries made for me by a friend
among members of the French Institute.
" On the other hand, when I spoke to persons whom I met in gen
eral society, I found an entirely different disposition to prevail. Many
men and a yet larger number of women, and many boys and girls,
declared that they habitually saw mental imagery, and that it was-
perfectly distinct to them and full of color. The more I pressed and
crossed-questioned them, professing myself to be incredulous, the more
obvious was the truth of their first assertions. They described
their imagery in minute detail, and they spoke in a tone of surprise at
my apparent hesitation in accepting what they said. I felt that I my
self should have spoken exactly as they did if I had been describing a
scene that lay before my eyes, in broad daylight, to a blina man who
persisted in doubting the reality of vision. Reassured by this happier
experience, I recommenced to inquire among scientific men, and soon
found scattered instances of what I sought, though in by no means the
same abundance as elsewhere. I then circulated my questions more
generally among my friends and through their hands, and obtained re
plies . . . from persons of both sexes, and of various ages, and in the
end from occasional correspondents in nearly every civilized country.
" I have also received batches of answers from various educational
establishments both in England and America, which were made after
the masters had fully explained the meaning of the questions, and in
terested the boys in them. These have the merit of returns derived
from a general census, which my other data lack, because I cannot for
IMAGINATION. 53
a moment suppose that the writers of the latter are a haphazard pnv
portion of those to whom they were sent. Indeed I know of some who,
disavowing all possession of the power, and of many others who, pos
sessing it in too faint a degree to enable them to express what their
experiences really were, in a manner satisfactory to themselves, sent no
returns at all. Considerable statistical similarity was, however, ob
served between the sets of returns furnished by the schoolboys and
those sent by my separate correspondents, and I may add that they ac
cord in this respect with the oral information I have elsewhere obtained.
The conformity of replies from so many different sources which was
clear from the first, the fact of their apparent trustworthiness being on
the whole much increased by cross-examination (though I could give
one or two amusing instances of break-down), and the evident effort
made to give accurate answers, have convinced me that it is a much
easier matter than I had anticipated to obtain trustworthy replies to
psychological questions. Many persons, especially women and intelli
gent children, take pleasure in introspection, and strive their very best
to explain their mental processes. I think that a delight in self -dissec
tion must be a strong ingredient in the pleasure that many are said to
take in confessing themselves to priests.
" Here, then, are two rather notable results : the one is the proved
facility of obtaining statistical insight into the processes of other per
sons minds, whatever a priori objection may have been made as to its
possibility ; and the other is that scientific men, as a class, have feeble
powers of visual representation. There is no doubt whatever on the
latter point, however it may be accounted for. My own conclusion is
that an over-ready perception of sharp mental pictures is antagonistic
to the acquirement of habits of highly-generalized and abstract thought,
especially when the steps of reasoning are carried on by words as
symbols, and that if the faculty of seeing the pictures was ever possessed
by men who think hard, it is very apt to be lost by disuse. The highest
minds are probably those in which it is not lost, but subordinated, and
is ready for use on suitable occasions. I am, however, bound to say
that the missing faculty seems to be replaced so serviceably by other
modes of conception, chiefly, I believe, connected with the incipient
motor sense, not of the eyeballs only but of the muscles generally, that
men who declare themselves entirely deficient in the power of seeing
mental pictures can nevertheless give lifelike descriptions of what they
have seen, and can otherwise express themselves as if they were gifted
with a vivid visual imagination. They can also become painters of the
rank of Royal Academicians* . . .
* [I am myself a good draughtsman, and have a very lively interest in
pictures, statues, architecture and decoration, and a keen sensibility to
artistic effects. But I am an extremely poor visualizer, and find myself
often unable to reproduce in my mind s eye pictures which I have most
carefully examined. W. J.]
54 PSYCHOLOGY.
"It is a mistake to suppose that sharp sight is accompanied by clear
visual memory. I have not a few instances in which the independence
of the two faculties is emphatically commented on ; and I have at least
one clear case where great interest in outlines and accurate appreciation
of straightness, squareness, and the like, is unaccompanied by the
power of visualizing. Neither does the faculty go with dreaming. I
have cases where it is powerful, and at the same time where dreams
are rare and faint or altogether absent. One friend tells me that his
dreams have not the hundredth part of the vigor of his waking fancies.
tk The visualizing and the identifying powers are by no means nec
essarily combined. A distinguished writer on metaphysical topics as
sures me that he is exceptionally quick at recognizing a face that he
has seen before, but that he cannot call up a mental image of any face
With clearness.
" Some persons have the power of combining in a single perception
more than can be seen at any one moment by the two eyes. . . .
"I find that a few persons can, by what they often describe as a
kind of touch -sight, visualize at the same moment all round the image
of a solid body. Many can do so nearly, but not altogether round that
of a terrestrial globe. An eminent mineralogist assures me that he is
able to imagine simultaneously all the sides of a crystal with which he
is familiar. I may be allowed to quote a curious faculty of my own in
respect to this. It is exercised only occasionally and in dreams, or
rather in nightmares, but under those circumstances I am perfectly
conscious of embracing an entire sphere in a single perception. It ap
pears to lie within my mental eyeball, and to be viewed centripetally.
This power of comprehension is practically attained in many cases
by indirect methods. It is a common feat to take in the whole sur
roundings of an imagined room with such a rapid mental sweep as to
leave some doubt whether it has not been viewed simultaneously. Some
persons have the habit of viewing objects as though they were partly
transparent ; thus, if they so dispose a globe in their imagination as to
see both its north and south poles at the same time, they will not be
able to see its equatorial parts. They can also perceive all the rooms of
an imaginary house by a single mental glance, the walls and floors being
as if made of glass. A fourth class of persons have the habit of recall
ing scenes, not from the point of view whence they were observed, but
from a distance, and they visualize their own selves as actors on the
mental stage. By one or other of these ways, the power of seeing the
whole of an object, and not merely one aspect of it, is possessed by
many persons.
"The place where the image appears to lie differs much. Most per
sons see it in an indefinable sort of way, others see it in front of the eye,
others at a distance corresponding to reality. There exists a power
which is rare naturally, but can, I believe, be acquired without much
difficulty, of projecting a mental picture upon a piece of paper, and of
IMAGINATION. 55
holding it fast there, so that it can be outlined with a pencil. To this
I shall recur.
"Images usually do not become stronger by dwelling on them; the
first idea is commonly the most vigorous, but this is not always the case.
Sometimes the mental view of a locality is inseparably connected with
the sense of its position as regards the points of the compass, real or
imaginary. I have received full and curious descriptions from very
different sources of this strong geographical tendency, and in one or
two cases I have reason to think it allied to a considerable faculty of
geographical comprehension.
" The power of visualizing is higher in the female sex than in the male,
and is somewhat, but not much, higher in public-school boys than in
men. After maturity is reached, the further advance of age does not
seem to dim the faculty, but rather the reverse, judging from numerous
statements to that effect; but advancing years are sometimes accom
panied by a growing habit of hard abstract thinking, and in these cases
not uncommon among those whom I have questioned the faculty
undoubtedly becomes impaired. There is reason to believe that it is very
high in some young children, who seem to spend years of difficulty in
distinguishing between the subjective and objective world. Language
and book-learning certainly tend to dull it.
"The visualizing faculty is a natural gift, and, like all natural gifts,
has a tendency to be inherited. In this faculty the tendency to inheri
tance is exceptionally strong, as I have abundant evidence to prove,
especially in respect to certain rather rare peculiarities, . . . which,
when they exist at all, are usually found among two, three, or more
brothers and sisters, parents, children, uncles and aunts, and cousins.
" Since families differ so much in respect to this gift, we may suppose
that races would also differ, and there can be no doubt that such is the
case. I hardly like to refer to civilized nations, because their natural
faculties are too much modified by education to allow of their being
appraised in an off-hand fashion. I may, however, speak of the French,
who appear to possess the visualizing faculty in a high degree. The
peculiar ability they show in prearranging ceremonials and fetes of all
kinds, and their undoubted genius for tactics and strategy, show that
they are able to foresee effects with unusual clearness. Their ingenuity
in all technical contrivances is an additional testimony in the same direc
tion, and so is their singular clearness of expression. Their phrase
figurez-vous, or picture to yourself , seems to express their dominant
mode of perception. Our equivalent of imagine is ambiguous.
"I have many cases of persons mentally reading off scores when
playing the pianoforte, or manuscript when they are making speeches.
One statesman has assured me that a certain hesitation in utterance
which he has at times is due to his being plagued by the image of his
56 PSYCHOLOGY.
manuscript speech with its original erasures and corrections. He can
not lay the ghost, and he puzzles in trying to decipher it.
44 Some few persons see mentally in print every word that is uttered;
they attend to the visual equivalent and not to the sound of the words,
and they read them off usually as from a long imaginary strip of paper,
such as is unwound from telegraphic instruments."
The reader will find further details in Mr. Galton s
Inquiries into Human Faculty, pp. 83-114.* I have
myself for many years collected from each and all of my
psychology-students descriptions of their own visual
imagination ; and found (together with some curious idio
syncrasies) corroboration of all the variations which Mr.
Galton reports. As examples, I subjoin extracts from two
cases near the ends of the scale. The writers are first cous
ins, grandsons of a distinguished man of science. The one
who is a good visualizer says :
" This morning s breakfast-table is both dim and bright; it is dim if
I try to think of it when my eyes are open upon any object; it is per
fectly clear and bright if I think of it with my eyes closed. All the
objects are clear at once, yet when I confine my attention to any one
object it becomes far more distinct. I have more power to recall color
than any other one thing: if, for example, I were to recall a plate deco
rated with flowers I could reproduce in a drawing the exact tone, etc.
The color of anything that was on the table is perfectly vivid. There
is very little limitation to the extent of my images: I can see all four
sides of a room, I can see all four sides of two, three, four, even more
rooms with such distinctness that if you should ask me what was in any
particular place in any one, or ask me to count the chairs, etc. , I could
do it without the least hesitation. The more I learn by heart the more
clearly do I see images of my pages. Even before I can recite the lines
I see them so that I could give them very slowly word for word, but
my mind is so occupied in looking at my printed image that I have no
idea of what I am saying, of the sense of it, etc. When I first found
myself doing this I used to think it was merely because I knew the lines
imperfectly; but I have quite convinced myself that I really do see an
image. The strongest proof that such is really the fact is, I think, the
following:
"I can look down the mentally seen page and see the words that
commence all the lines, and from any one of these words I can continue
* See also McCosh and Osborne, Princeton Review, Jan. 1884. There
are some good examples of high development of the Faculty in the London
Spectator, Dec. 28, 1878, pp. 1631, 1634, Jan. 4, 11, 25, and March 18, 1879.
IMAGINATION. 57
the line. I find this much easier to do if the words begin in a straight
line than if there are breaks. Example :
Etantfait
Tons
A des
Quefit
Ceres
Avec
Unfleur
Comme
(La Fontaine 8. iv.)"
The poor visualizer says :
" My ability to form mental images seems, from what I have studied
of other people s images, to be defective, and somewhat peculiar. The
process by which I seem to remember any particular event is not by a
series of distinct images, but a sort of panorama, the faintest impres
sions of which are perceptible through a thick fog. I cannot shut my
eyes and get a distinct image of anyone, although I used to be able to a
few years ago, and the faculty seems to have gradually slipped away.
In my most vivid dreams, where the events appear like the most real
facts, I am often troubled with a dimness of sight which causes the
images to appear indistinct. To come to the question of the breakfast-
table there is nothing definite about it. Everything is vague. I can
not say what I see. I could not possibly count the chairs, but I happen
to know that there are ten. I see nothing in detail. The chief thing is a
general impression that I cannot tell exactly what I do see. The color
ing is about the same, as far as I can recall it, only very much washed
out. Perhaps the only color I can see at all distinctly is that of the table
cloth, and I could probably see the color of the wall-paper if I could
remember what color it was."
A person whose visual imagination is strong finds it
hard to understand how those who are without the faculty
can think at all. Some people undoubtedly have no visual
images at aU worthy of the name* and instead of seeing their
breakfast-table, they tell you that they remember it or know
what was on it. This knowing and remembering takes
* Take the following report from one of my students : "I am unable
to form in my mind s eye any visual likeness of the table whatever. After
many trials, I can only get a hazy surface, with nothing on it or about it.
I can see no variety in color, and no positive limitations in extent, while I
cannot see whaf T see well enough to determine its position in respect to
my eye, or to endow it with any quality of size. I am in the same position
as to the word dog. I cannot see it in my mind s eye at all ; and so cannot
tell whether I should have to run my eye along it, if I did see it. "
58 PSYCHOLOGY.
place undoubtedly by means of verbal images, as was ex
plained already in Chapter IX, pp. 265-6.
The study of Aphasia (see p. 54) has of late years shown
how unexpectedly great are the differences between individuals in
respect of imagination. And at the same time the discrepan
cies between lesion and symptom in different cases of
the disease have been largely cleared up. In some indi-1
viduals the habitual thought-stuff, if one may so call it, j
is visual ; in others it is auditory, articulatory, or motor ; 1
in most, perhaps, it is evenly mixed. The same local cerebral
injury must needs work different practical results in per
sons who differ in this way. In one it will throw a much-
used brain-tract out of gear ; in the other it may affect an
unimportant region. A particularly instructive case was
published by Charcot in 1883.* The patient was
Mr. X., a merchant, born in Vienna, highly educated, master of
German, Spanish, French, Greek, and Latin. Up to the beginning of
the malady which took him to Professor Charcot, he read Homer at
sight. He could, starting from any verse out of the first book of the
Iliad, repeat the following verses without hesitating, by heart. Virgil
and Horace were familiar. He also knew enough of modern Greek for
business purposes. Up to within a year (from the time Charcot saw
him) he enjoyed an exceptional visual memory. He no sooner thought
of persons or things, but features, forms, and colors arose with the
same clearness, sharpness, and accuracy as if the objects stood before
him. When he tried to recall a fact or a figure in his voluminous
polyglot correspondence, the letters themselves appeared before him
with their entire content, irregularities, erasures and all. At school he
recited from a mentally seen page which he read off line by line and
letter by letter. In making computations, he ran his mental eye down
imaginary columns of figures, and performed in this way the most
varied operations of arithmetic. He could never think of a passage in
a play without the entire scene, stage, actors, and audience appearing
to him. He had been a great traveller. Being a good draughtsman,
he used to sketch views which pleased him; and his memory always
brought back the entire landscape exactly. If he thought of a conver
sation, a saying, an engagement, the place, the people, the entire scene
rose before his mind.
His auditory memory was always deficient, or at least secondary
He had no taste for music.
* Progres Medical, 21 juillet. I abridge from the German report ot
the case in Wilbrand: Die Seelenblindheit (1887).
LdAUlNATION. 59
A year aud a half previous to examination, after business-anxieties,
loss of sleep, appetite, etc., he noticed suddenly one day an extraordi
nary change in himself. After complete confusion, there came a violent
contrast between his old and his new state. Everything about him
seemed so new and foreign that at first he thought he must be going
mad. He was nervous and irritable. Although he saw all things dis
tinct, he had entirely lost his memory for forms and colors. On ascer
taining this, he became reassured as to his sanity. He soon discovered
that he could carry on his affairs by using his memory in an altogether
new way. He can now describe clearly the difference between his two
conditions.
Every time he returns to A., from which place business often calls
him, he seems to himself as if entering a strange city. He views the
monuments, houses, and streets with the same surprise as if he saw
them for the first time. Gradually, however, his memory returns, and
he finds himself at home again. When asked to describe the principal
public place of the town, he answered, " I know that it is there, but it
is impossible to imagine it, and I can tell you nothing about it. " He has
often drawn the port of A. To-day he vainly tries to trace its principal
outlines. Asked to draw a minaret, he reflects, says it is a square
tower, and draws, rudely, four lines, one for ground, one for top, and
two for sides. Asked to draw an arcade, he says, I remember that it
contains semi-circular arches, and that two of them meeting at an angle
make a vault, but how it looks I am absolutely unable to imagine." The
profile of a man which he drew by request was as if drawn by a little
child; and yet he confessed that he had been helped to draw it by look
ing at the bystanders. Similarly he drew a shapeless scribble for a
tree.
He can no more remember his wife s and children s faces than he
can remember the port of A. Even after being with them some time
they seem unusual to him. He forgets his own face, and once spoke
to his image in a mirror, taking it for a stranger. He complains of his
loss of feeling for colors. " My wife has black hair, this I know; but
I can no more recall its color than I can her person and features. *
This visual amnesia extends to dating objects from his childhood s
years paternal mansion, etc., forgotten.
No other disturbances but this loss of visual images. Now when he
seeks something in his correspondence, he must rummage among the
letters like other men, until he meets the passage. He can recall only
the first few verses of the Iliad, and must grope to read Homer, Virgil,
and Horace. Figures which he adds he must now whisper to himself.
He realizes clearly that he must help his memory out with auditory
images, which he does with effort. The words and expressions which
he recalls seem now to echo in his ear, an altogether novel sensation for
him. If he wishes to learn by heart anything, a series of phrases for
example, he must read them several times aloud, so as to impress his
ear. When later he repeats the thing in question, the sensation of in-
60 PSYCHOLOGY.
ward hearing which precedes articulation rises up in his mind. This
feeling was formerly unknown to him. He speaks French fluently; but
affirms that he can no longer think in French; but must get his French
words by translating them from Spanish or German, the languages of
his childhood. He dreams no more in visual terms, but only in words,
usually Spanish words. A certain degree of verbal blindness affects
him he is troubled by the Greek alphabet, etc.*
If this patient had possessed the auditory type of imag
ination from the start, it is evident that the injury, what
ever it was, to his centres for optical imagination, would
have affected his practical life much less profoundly.
u The auditory type" says M. A. Binet,f " appears to be rarer than
the visual. Persons of this type imagine what they think of in the
language of sound. In order to remember a lesson they impress upon
their mind, not the look of the page, but the sound of the words.
They reason, as well as remember, by ear. In performing a mental ad
dition they repeat verbally the names of the figures, and add, as it
were, the sounds, without any thought of the graphic signs. Imag
ination also takes the auditory form. When I write a scene, said
Legouve to Scribe, I hear ; but you see. In each phrase which I write,
the voice of tiie personage who speaks strikes my ear. Vous, qui etes le
theatre meme, your actors walk, gesticulate before your eyes ; I am a
listener, you a spectator. Nothing more true, 1 said Scribe ; do you
know where I am when I write a piece ? In the middle of the parterre.
It is clear that the pure audile, seeking to develop only a single one of
his faculties, may, like the pure visualizer, perform astounding feats
of memory Mozart, for example, noting from memory the Miserere of
the Sistine Chapel after two hearings ; the deaf Beethoven, composing
and inwardly repeating his enormous symphonies. On the other hand,
the man of auditory type, like the visual, is exposed to serious dangers ;
for if he lose his auditory images, he is without resource and breaks
do"Wn completely.
" It is possible that persons with hallucinations of hearing, and in-
* In a letter to Charcot this interesting patient adds that his character
also is changed : "I was formerly receptive, easily made enthusiastic, and
possessed a rich fancy. Now I am quiet and cold, and fancy never carries
my thoughts away. ... I am much less susceptible than formerly to
anger r sorrow. I lately lost my dearly-beloved mother; but felt far less
grief at the bereavement than if I had been able to see in my mind s eye
her physiognomy and the phases of her suffering, and especially less than
if 1 had been able to witness in imagination the outward effects of her un
timely loss upon the members of the family. "
f Psychologie du Raisonneinent (1886), p. 25.
IMAGINATION. 61
dividuals afflicted with the mania that they are victims of persecution,
may all belong to the auditory type ; and that the predominance of a
certain kind of imagination may predispose to a certain order of hal
lucinations, and perhaps of delirium.
: The motor type remains perhaps the most interesting of all,
and certainly the one of which least is known. Persons who belong to
this type [les moteurs, in French, motiles, as Mr. Galton proposes to
call them in English] make use, in memory, reasoning, and all their
intellectual operations, of images derived from movement. In order to
understand this important point, it is enough to remember that all
our perceptions, and in particular the important ones, those of sight
and touch, contain as integral elements the movements of our eyes and
limbs ; and that, if movement is ever an essential factor in our really
seeing an object, it must be an equally essential factor when we see the
same object in imagination (Ribot).* For example, the complex im
pression of a ball, which is there, in our hand, is the resultant of optical
impressions of touch, of muscular adjustments of the eye, of the move
ments of our fingers, and of the muscular sensations which these yield.
When we imagine the ball, its idea must include the images of these
muscular sensations, just as it includes those of the retinal and epider
mal sensations. They form so many motor images. If they were not
earlier recognized to exist, that is because our knowledge of the muscu
lar sense is relatively so recent. In older psychologies it never was
mentioned, the number of senses being restricted to five.
There are persons who remember a drawing better when they have
followed its outlines with their finger. Lecoq de Boisbaudran used this
means in his artistic teaching, in order to accustom his pupils to draw
from memory. He made them follow the outlines of figures with a
pencil held in the air, forcing them thus to associate muscular with
visual memory. Galton quotes a curious corroborative fact. Colonel
Moncrieff often observed in North America young Indians who, visit
ing occasionally his quarters, interested themselves greatly in the
engravings which were shown them. One of them followed with care
with the point of his knife the outline of a drawing in the Illustrated
London News, saying that this was to enable him to carve it out the
better on his return home. In this case the motor images were to
* [I am myself a very poor visualizer, and find that I can seldom call to
mind even a single letter of the alphabet in purely retinal terms. I must
trace the letter by running my mental eye over its contour in order that
the image of it shall have any distinctness at all. On questioning a large
number of other people, mostly students, I find that perhaps half of them
say they have no such difficulty in seeing letters mentally. Many affirm
that they can see an entire word at once, especially a short one like dog,
with no such feeling of creating the letters successively by tracing them
with the eye. W. J.]
62 PSYCHOLOGY.
reinforce the visual ones. The young savage was a motor* . . . When
one s motor images are destroyed, one loses one s remembrance of move
ments, and sometimes, more curiously still, one loses the power of exe
cuting them. Pathology gives us examples in motor aphasia, agraphia,
etc. Take the case of agraphia. An educated man, knowing how to
write, suddenly loses this power, as a result of cerebral injury. His
hand and arm are in no way paralytic, yet he cannot write. Whence
this loss of power ? He tells us himself : he no longer knows how. He
has forgotten how to set about it to trace the letters, he has lost the
memory of the movements to be executed, he has no longer the motor
images which, when formerly he wrote, directed his hand. . . . Other
patients, affected with word-blindness, resort to these motor images
precisely to make amends for their other deficiency. . . . An individ
ual affected in this way cannot read letters which are placed before his
eyes, even although his sight be good enough for the purpose. This loss
of the power of reading by sight may, at a certain time, be the only
trouble the patient has. Individuals thus mutilated succeed in reading
by an ingenious roundabout way which they often discover themselves :
it is enough that they should trace the letters with their finger to under
stand their sense. What happens in such a case ? How can the hand
supply the place of the eye? The motor image gives the key to the
problem. If the patient can read, so to speak, with his fingers, it is
because in tracing the letters he gives himself a certain number of mus
cular impressions which are those of writing. In one word, the patient
reads by writing (Charcot): the feeling of the graphic movements sug
gests the sense of what is being written as well as sight would." f
The imagination of a blind-deaf mute like Laura Bridg-
man must be confined entirely to tactile and motor material.
All blind persons must belong to the l tactile and motile* types of
the French authors. When the young man whose cataracts
were removed by Dr. Franz was shown different geometric
figures, he said he " had not been able to form from them
the idea of a square and a disk until he perceived a sensa
tion of what he saw in the points of his fingers, as if he
really touched the objects." %
Professor Strieker of Vienna, who seems to have the
motile form of imagination developed in unusual strength,
* It is hardly needful to say that in modern primary education, in which
the blackboard is so much used, the children are taught their letters, etc.,
by all possible channels at once, sight, hearing, and movement.
f See an interesting case of a similar sort, reported by Farges, in l En
cephale, 7me An nee, p. 545.
| Philosophical Transactions, 1841, p. 65.
IMAGINATION. 63
given a very careful analysis of "his own case in a
couple of monographs with which all students should be
come familiar.* His recollections both of his own move
ments and of those of other things are accompanied
invariably by distinct muscular feelings in those parts of
his body which would naturally be used in effecting or in
following the movement. In thinking of a soldier march
ing, for example, it is as if he were helping the image to
march by marching himself in his rear. And if he sup
presses this sympathetic feeling in his own legs, and con
centrates all his attention on the imagined soldier, the latter
becomes, as it were, paralyzed. In general his imagined
movements, of whatsoever objects, seem paralyzed the
moment no feelings of movement either in his own eyes or
in his own limbs accompany them.f The movements of
articulate speech play a predominant part in his mental
life.
"When after my experimental work I proceed to its description,
as a rule I reproduce in the first instance only words, which I had
already associated with the perception of the various details of the ob
servation whilst the latter was going on. For speech plays in all my
observing so important a part that I ordinarily clothe phenomena in
words as fast as I observe them. " \
Most persons, on being asked in what sort of terms they
imagine ivords, will say in terms of hearing. It is not until
their attention is expressly drawn to the point that they
find it difficult to say whether auditory images or motor
images connected with the organs of articulation predomi
nate. A good way of bringing the difficulty to consciousness
is that proposed by Strieker : Partly open your mouth and
then imagine any word with labials or dentals in it, such as
bubble, * toddle. Is your image under these conditions
distinct ? To most people the image is at first * thick, as
the sound of the word would be if they tried to pronounce
it with the lips parted. Many can never imagine the words
* Studien tlber die Sprachvorstellungen (1880), and Studien ilber die
Bewegungsvorstellungen (1882).
f Prof. Strieker admits that by practice he has succeeded in making
his eye-movements act vicariously for his leg-movements in imagining
men walking.
t Bewegungsvorstellungen, p. 6.
64 PSYCHOLOGY.
clearly with the mouth open ; others succeed after a few
preliminary trials. The experiment proves how dependent
our verbal imagination is on actual feelings in lips, tongue,
iaroat, larynx, etc.
" When we recall the impression of a word or sentence, if we do not
speak it out, we feel the twitter of the organs just about to come to
that pc nt. The articulating parts the larynx, the tongue, the lips
are all sensitly excited ; a suppressed articulation is in fact the mate
rial of our recollection, the intellectual manifestation, the idea of
speech."*
The open mouth in Strieker s experiment not only pre
vents actual articulation of the labials, but our feeling of
its openness keeps us from imagining their articulation,
just as a sensation of glaring light will keep us from
strongly imagining darkness. In persons whose auditory
imagination is weak, the articulatory image seems to con
stitute the whole material for verbal thought. Professor
Strieker says that in his own case no auditory image enters-
into the words of which he thinks. t Like most psycholo
gists, however, he makes of his personal peculiarities a rule,
and says that verbal thinking is normally and univer
sally an exclusively motor representation. I certainly get
auditory images, both of vowels and of consonants, in
addition to the articulatory images or feelings on which
this author lays such stress. And I find that numbers of
my students, after repeating his experiments, come to this
conclusion. There is at first a difficulty due to the open
mouth. That, however, soon vanishes, as does also the
difficulty of thinking of one vowel whilst continuously
sounding another. What probably remains true, however, j
is that most men have a less auditory and a more articu-l
latory verbal imagination than they are apt to be aware of./
* Ba;a : Senses and Intellect, p. 339.
7 Studien iibe Sprachvorstellungen, 28, 31, etc. Cf. pp. 49-50, etc.
A.gaiust Strieker, see Stumpf, Tonpsychol., 155-162, and Revue Phi-
losophique, xx. 617. See also Paulhan, Rev. Philosophique, xvi. 405
Strieker replies to Paulhan in vol. xvm. p. 685. P. retorts in vol. xix
p. 118. Strieker reports that out of 100 persons questioned he found only
one who had no feeling in his lips when silently thinking the letters M B,
P; and out of 60 only two who were conscious of no internal articulation
whilst reading (pp 59-60).
IMAGINATION. 65
Professor Strieker himself has acoustic images, and can
imagine the sounds of musical instruments, and the pecul
iar voice of a friend. A statistical inquiry on a large scale,
into the variations of acoustic, tactile, and motor imagina
tion, would probably bear less fruit than Galton s inquiry
into visual images. A few monographs by competent ob
servers, like Strieker, about their own peculiarities, would
give much more valuable information about the diversities
which prevail.*
Toitch-images are very strong in some people. The most
vivid touch-images come when we ourselves barely escape
local injury, or when we see another injured. The place
* I think it must be admitted that some people have no vivid substan
tive images in any department of their sensibility. One of my students,
an intelligent youth, denied so pertinaciously that there was anything in his
mind at all when he thought, that I was much perplexed by his case. I my
self certainly have no such vivid play of nascent movements or motor images
as Professor Strieker describes. When I seek to represent a row of soldiers
marching, all I catch is a view of stationary legs first in one phase of
movement and then in another, and these views are extremely imperfect
and momentary. Occasionally (especially when I try to stimulate my
imagination, as by repeating Victor Hugo s lines about the regiment,
" Leur pas est si correct, sans tarder ni courir,
Qu on croit voir des ciseaux se fermer et s ouvrir,")
I seem to get an instantaneous glimpse of an actual movement, but it is to
the last degree dim and uncertain. All these images seem at first as if
purely retinal. 1 think, however, that rapid eye-movements accompany
them, though these latter give rise to such slight feelings that they are
almost impossible of detection. Absolutely no leg-movements of my own
are there ; in fact, to call such up arrests my imagination of the soldiers.
My optical images are in general yery dim, dark, fugitive, and contracted.
It would be utterly impossible to draw from them, and yet I perfectly well
distinguish one from the other. My auditory images are excessively inade
quate reproductions of their originals. I have no images of taste or smell.
Touch-imagination is fairly distinct, but comes very little into play with
most objects thought of. Neither is all my thought verbalized; for I have
shadowy schemes of relation, as apt to terminate in a nod of the head or an
expulsion of the breath as in a definite word. On the whole, vague images
or sensations of movement inside of my head towards the various parts of
space in which the terms I am thinking of either lie or are momentarily sym
bolized to lie together with movements of the breath through my pharynx
and nostrils, form a by no means inconsiderable part of my thought-stuff.
I doubt whether my difficulty in giving a clearer account is wholly a mat
ter of inferior power of introspective attention, though that doubtless pluya
its part. Attention, ceteris pcvribu*, must always be inferior in proportion
to the feebleness of the internal images which are offered it to hold on to
66 PSYCHOLOGY.
may then actually tingle with the imaginary sensation
perhaps not altogether imaginary, since goose-flesh, pal
ing or reddening, and other evidences of actual muscular
contraction in the spot may result.
" An educated man," says a writer who must always be quoted when
it is question of the powers of imagination,* " told me once that on
entering his house one day he received a shock from crushing the finger
of one of his little children in the door. At the moment of his fright
he felt a violent pain in the corresponding finger of his own body,
and this pain abode with him three days."
The same author makes the following discrimination,
which probably most men could verify :
" On the skin I easily succeed in bringing out suggested sensation*
wherever I will. But because it is necessary to protract the mental ef
fort I can only awaken such sensations as are in their nature prolonged,
as warmth, cold, pressure. Fleeting sensations, as those of a prick, a
cut, a blow, etc., I am unable to call up, because I cannot imagine them
ex abrupto with the requisite intensity. The sensations of the former
order I can excite upon any part of the skin; and they may become so
lively that, whether I will or not, I have to pass my hand over the place
just as if it were a real impression on the skin." \
Meyer s account of his own visual images is very interest
ing ; and with it we may close our survey of differences be
tween the normal powers of imagining in different indi
viduals.
" With much practice," he says, " I have succeeded in making it
possible for me to call up subjective visual sensations at will. I tried
all my experiments by day or at night with closed eyes. At first it
was very difficult. In the first experiments which succeeded the whole
picture was luminous, the shadows being given in a somewhat less strong
bluish light. In later experiments I saw the objects dark, with
bright outlines, or rather I saw outline drawings of them, bright on a
dark ground. I can compare these drawings less to chalk drawings on
a blackboard than to drawings made with phosphorus on a dark wall
at night, though the phosphorus would show luminous vapors which
were absent from my lines. If I wished, for example, to see a face,
without intending that of a particular person, I saw the outline of a
profile against the dark background. When I tried to repeat an ex-
* Geo. Herm. Meyer, Untersuchungen ub. d. Physiol. d. Nervenf:
(1848), p. 233. For other cases see Tuke s Influence of Mind upon Body
chaps, n and vn.
f Meyer, op. dt. p. 238.
IMAGINATION. 67
periment of the elder Darwin I saw only the edges of the die as bright
lines on a dark ground. Sometimes, however, I saw the die really white
and its edges black ; it was then on a paler ground. I could soon at
will change between a white die with black borders on a light field, and
a black die with white borders on a dark field ; and I can do this at any
moment now. After long practice . . . these experiments succeeded
better still. I can now call before my eyes almost any object which I
please, as a subjective appearance, and this in its own natural color and
illumination. I see them almost always on a more or less light or dark,
mostly dimly changeable ground. Even known faces I can see quite
sharp, with the true color of hair and cheeks. It is odd that I see
these faces mostly in profile, whereas those described [in the previous
extract] were all full-face. Here are some of the final results of these
experiments :
" 1) Some time after the pictures have arisen they vanish or change
into others, without my being able to prevent it.
1 2) When the color does not integrally belong to the object, I cannot
always control it. A face, e.g., never seems to me blue, but always in
its natural color ; a red cloth, on the other hand, I can sometimes
change to a blue one.
" 3) I have sometimes succeeded in seeing pure colors without objects;
they then fill the entire field of view.
" 4) I often fail to see objects which are not known to me, mere fic
tions of my fancy, and instead of them there will appear familiar ob
jects of a similar sort ; for instance, I once tried to see a brass sword-
hilt with a brass guard, instead of which the more familiar picture of a
rapier-guard appeared.
44 5) Most of these subjective appearances, especially when they were
bright, left after-images behind them when the eyes were quickly
opened during their presence. For example, I thought of a silver stir
rup, and after I had looked at it a while I opened my eyes and for a
long while afterwards saw its after-image.
k These experiments succeeded best when I lay quietly on my back
and closed my eyes. I could bear no noise about me, as this kept the
vision from attaining the requisite intensity. The experiments succeed
with me now so easily that I am surprised they did not do so at first,
and I feel as though they ought to succeed with everyone. The im
portant point in them is to get the image sufficiently intense by the ex
clusive direction of the attention upon it, and by the removal of all
disturbing impressions." *
The negative after-images ivhich succeeded upon Meyer s
imagination when he opened his eyes are a highly interest
ing, though rare, phenomenon. So far as I know there is
Meyer, op. cit. pp. 238-41.
68 PSYCHOLOGY.
only one other published report of a similar experience.* It
would seem that in such a case the neural process corre
sponding to the imagination must be the entire tract con
cerned in the actual sensation, even down as far as the
retina. This leads to a new question to which we may
now turn of what is
THE NEURAL PROCESS "WHICH UNDERLIES IMAGINATION P
The commonly-received idea is that it is only a milder
degree of the same process which took place when the
thing now imagined was sensibly perceived. Professor
Bain writes:
" Since a sensation in the first instance diffuses nerve-currents
through the interior of the brain outwards to the organs of expression
and movement, the persistence of that sensation, after the outward
exciting cause is withdrawn, can be but a continuance of the same dif
fusive currents, perhaps less intense, but not otherwise different. The
shock remaining in the ear and brain, after the sound of thunder, must
pass through the same circles, and operate in the same way as during
the actual sound. We can have no reason for believing that, in this
self-sustaining condition, the impression changes its seat, or passes into
some new circles that have the special property of retaining it. Every
part actuated after the shock must have been actuated by the shock,
only more powerfully. With this single difference of intensity, the mode
of existence of a sensation existing after the fact is essentially the same
as its mode of existence during the fact. . . . Now if this be the case
with impressions persisting when the cause has ceased, what view are
we to adopt concerning impressions reproduced by mental causes alone,
or without the aid of the original, as in ordinary recollection ? What
is the manner of occupation of the brain with a resuscitated feeling of
resistance, a smell or a sound ? There is only one answer that seems
admissable. The renewed feeling occupies the very same parts, and in
the same manner, as the original feeling, and no other parts, nor in
any other assignable manner. I imagine that if our present knowledge
of the brain had been present to the earliest speculators, this is the only
* That of Dr. Ch. Fere in the Revue Philosophique, xx. 364. Johannes
Mtiller s account of hypnagogic hallucinations floating before the eyes for
a few moments after these had been opened, seems to belong more to the
category of spontaneous hallucinations (see his Physiology, London, 1842,
p. 1394). It is impossible to tell whether the words in Wundt s Vorle-
sungen, i. 387, refer to a personal experience of his own or not ; probably
not. 11 va sans dire that an inferior visualizer like myself can get no such
after-images. Nor have I as yet succeeded in getting report of any from
my students.
IMAGINATION. 69
hypothesis that would have occurred to them. For where should a
past feeling be embodied, if not in the same organs as the feeling when
present ? It is only in this way that its identity can be preserved ; a
feeling differently embodied would be a different feeling." *
It is not plain from Professor Bain s text whether by
the * same parts he means only the same parts inside the
brain, or the same peripheral parts also, as those occupied by
the original feeling. The examples which he himself pro
ceeds to give are almost all cases of imagination of move
ment, in which the peripheral organs are indeed affected,
for actual movements of a weak sort are found to accom
pany the idea. This is what we should expect. All cur
rents tend to run forward in the brain and discharge into
the muscular system ; and the idea of a movement tends to
do this with peculiar facility. But the question remains :
Do currents run backward, so that if the optical centres
(for example) are excited by association and a visual ob
ject is imagined, a current runs down to the retina also,
and excites that sympathetically with the higher tracts ?
In other words, can peripheral sense-organs be excited from
above, or only from without ? Are they excited in imagi
nation ? Professor Bain s instances are almost silent as to
this point. All he says is this :
" We might think of a blow on the hand until the skin were actually
irritated and inflamed. The attention very much directed to any part
of the body, as the great toe, for instance, is apt to produce a distinct
feeling in the part, which we account for only by supposing a revived
nerve-current to flow there, making a sort of false sensation, an influ
ence from within mimicking the influences from without in sensation
proper. (See the writings of Mr. Braid, of Manchester, on Hypnotism,
etc.)"
If I may judge from my own experience, all feelings of
this sort are consecutive upon motor currents invading the
skin and producing contraction of the muscles there, the
muscles whose contraction gives goose-flesh when it takes
place on an extensive scale. I never get a feeling in the;
skin, however strongly I imagine it, until some actual
change in the condition of the skin itself has occurred, j
The truth seems to be that the cases where peripheral
* Senses and Intellect, p. 338.
70 PSYCHOLOGY.
sense-organs are directly excited in consequence of imagi
nation are exceptional rarities, if they exist at all. In com
mon cases of imagination it tvould seem more natural to suppose
that the seat of the process is purely cerebral, and that the sense-
organ is left out. Reasons for such a conclusion would be
briefly these :
1) In imagination the starting-point of the process must
be in the brain. Now we know that currents usually flow
one way in the nervous system ; and for the peripheral sense-
organs to be excited in these cases, the current would have
to flow backward.
2) There is between imagined objects and felt objects
a difference of conscious quality which may be called al
most absolute. It is hardly possible to confound the live
liest image of fancy with the weakest real sensation. The
felt object has a plastic reality and outwardness which the
imagined object wholly lacks. Moreover, as Fechner says ?
in imagination the attention feels as if drawn backwards to
the brain ; in sensation (even of after-images) it is directed
forward towards the sense-organ.* The difference between
the two processes feels like one of kind, and not like a mere
more or less of the same.f If a sensation of sound
were only a strong imagination, and an imagination a weak
sensation, there ought to be a border-line of experience
where we never could tell whether we were hearing a weak
sound or imagining a strong one. In comparing a present
sensation felt with a past one imagined, it will be remem
bered that we often judge the imagined one to have been ike
stronger (see above, p. 500, note). This is inexplicable if
the imagination be simply a weaker excitement of the sen
sational process.
To these reasons the following objections may be made :
To 1) : The current demonstrably does flow backward
* See above, Vol. II. p. 50, note.
t V. Kandinsky (Kritische u. klinische Betrachtungen im Gebiete der
Sinnestauschungen (Berlin, 1885), p. 135 if.) insists that in even the live
liest pseudo-hallucinations (see below, Chapter XX), which may be re
garded as the intensest possible results of the imaginative process, there
Is no outward objectivity perceived in the thing represented, and that a
garner Abgrund separates these ideas from true hallucination and objec
tive perception.
IMAGINATION. 71
down the optic nerve in Meyer s and Fere s negative after
image. Therefore it can flow backward ; therefore it may
flow backward in some, however slight, degree, in all imag
ination.*
To 2) : The difference alleged is not absolute, and sensa
tion and imagination are hard to discriminate where the
sensation is so weak as to be just perceptible. At m<?ht
hearing a very faint striking of the hour by a far-off clock,
our imagination reproduces both rhythm and sound, and it
is often difficult to tell which was the last real stroke. So
of a baby crying in a distant part of the house, we are un
certain whether we still hear it, or only imagine the sound
Certain violin-players take advantage of this in diminuendo
terminations. After the pianissimo has been reached
they continue to bow as if still playing, but are careful not
to touch the strings. The listener hears in imagination a
* It seems to also flow backwards in certain hypnotic hallucinations.
Suggest to a Subject in the hypnotic trance that a sheet of paper has a
red cross upou it, then pretend to remove the imaginary cross, whilst you
tell the Subject to look fixedly at a dot upon the paper, and he will pres
ently tell you that he sees a bluish-green cross. The genuineness of the
result has been doubted, but there seems no good reason for rejecting M
Binet s account (Le Maguetisme Animal, 1887, p. 188). M. Biuet, following
M. Parinaud, and on the faith of a certain experiment, atone time believed,
the optical brain-centres and not the retina to be the seat of ordinary nega
tive after-images. The experiment is this: Look fixedly, with one eye
open, at a colored spot on a white background. Then close that eye and
look fixedly with the other eye at a plain surface. A negative after-image
of the colored spot will presently appear. (Psychologic du liaison nement,
1886, p. 45.) But Mr. Delabarre has proved (American Journal of Psy
chology, ii. 326) that this after-image is due, not to a higher cerebral pro
cess, but to the fact that the retinal process in the closed eye affects
consciousness at certain moments, and that its object is then projected
into the field seen by the eye which is open. M. Binet informs me that
he is converted by the proofs given by Mr. Delabarre.
The fact remains, however, that the negative after-images of Herr Meyer,
M. Fere, and the hypnotic subjects, form an exception to all that we know
of nerve-currents, if they are due to a reilueut centrifugal current to the
retina. It may be that they will hereafter be explained in some other way.
Meanwhile we can only write them down as a paradox. Sig. Sergi s theory
thai there is always a refluent wave in perception hardly merits serious con
sideration (Psychologic Physiologique, pp. 99, 189). Sergi s theory has
recently been reaffirmed with almost incredible crudity by Lombroso and
Ottolenghi in the Revue Philosophique, xxix. 70 (Jan. 1890),
72 PSYCHOLOGY.
degree of sound fainter still than the preceding pianissimo,
This phenomenon is not confined to hearing :
" If we slowly approach our finger to a surface of water, we often
deceive ourselves about the moment in which the wetting occurs. The
apprehensive patient believes himself to feel the knife of the surgeon
whilst it is still at some distance." *
Visual perception supplies numberless instances in which
the same sensation of vision is perceived as one object or
another according to the interpretation of the mind. Many
of these instances will come before us in the course of the
next two chapters ; and in Chapter XIX similar illusions
will be described in the other senses. Taken together, all
these facts would force us to admit that the subjective
difference between imagined and felt objects is less absolute
than has been claimed, and that the cortical processes which
underlie imagination and sensation are not quite as discrete
as one at first is tempted to suppose. That peripheral sen
sory processes are ordinarily involved in imagination seems
improbable ; that they may sometimes be aroused from the cortex
downwards cannot, however, be dogmatically denied.
The imagination-process CAN then pass over into the sensa
tion-process. In other words, genuine sensations can be
centrally originated. When we come to study hallucina
tions in the chapter on Outer Perception, we shall see that
this is by no means a thing of rare occurrence. At present,
however, we must admit that normally the two processes do
KOT pass over into each other; and we must inquire why.
One of two things must be the reason. Either
1. Sensation-processes occupy a different locality from
imagination-processes ; or
2. Occupying the same locality, they have an intensity
which under normal circumstances currents from other
cortical regions are incapable of arousing, and to produce
which currents from the periphery are required.
It seems almost certain (after what was said in Chapter
II. pp. 4951) that the imagination-process differs from the
sensation-process by its intensity rather than by its locality.
However it may be with lower animals, the assumption that
* Lotze, Med. Psych, p. 509.
IMAGINATION. 73
ideational and sensorial centres are locally distinct appears
to be supported by no facts drawn from the observation of
human beings. After occipital destruction, the hemianop-
sia which results in man is sensorial blindness, not mere
loss of optical ideas. Were there centres for crude optical
sensation below the cortex, the patients in these cases
would still feel light and darkness. Since they do not pre
serve even this impression on the lost half of the field, we
must suppose that there are no centres for vision of any
sort whatever below the cortex, and that the corpora quadri-
gemina and other lower optical ganglia are organs for reflex
movement of eye-muscles and not for conscious sight.
Moreover there are no facts which oblige us to think that,
within the occipital cortex, one part is connected with sen
sation and another with mere ideation or imagination. The
pathological cases assumed to prove this are all better ex
plained by disturbances of conduction between the optical
and other centres (see p. 50). In bad cases of hemianopsia
the patient s images depart from him together with his sen
sibility to light. They depart so completely that he does not
even know what is the matter with him. To perceive that
one is blind to the right half of the field of view one must
have an idea of that part of the field s possible existence.
But the defect in these patients has to be revealed to them
by the doctor, they themselves only knowing that there is
< something wrong with their eyes. What you have no idea
of you cannot miss ; and their not definitely missing this
great region out of their sight seems due to the fact that their
very idea and memory of it is lost along with the sensation.
A man blind of his eyes merely, sees darkness. A man blind
of his visual brain-centres can no more see darkness out of
the parts of his retina which are connected with the brain-
lesion ttian he can see it out of the skin of his back. He
cannot see at all in that part of the field ; and he cannot
think of the light which he ought to be feeling there, for the
very notion of the existence of that particular there is
cut out of his mind.*
* See an important article by Binet in the Revue Philosophique, xxn.
481 (1888) ; also Dufour, in Revue Med. de la Suisse Roinande, 1889, No.
S, cited in the Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1890, p. 48.
74 PSYCHOLOGY.
Now if we admit that sensation and imagination are due
to the activity of the same centres in the cortex, we can see a
very good teleological reason why they should correspond
to discrete kinds of process in these centres, and why the
process which gives the sense that the object is really there
ought normally to be arousable only by currents entering
from the periphery and not by currents from the neighbor
ing cortical parts. We can see, in short, why the sensational
process OUGHT TO be discontinuous with all normal ideational
processes, however intense. For, as Dr. Miinsterberg justly
observes :
" Were there not this peculiar arrangement we should not distinguish
reality and fantasy, our conduct would not be accommodated to the
facts about us, but would be inappropriate and senseless, and we could
not keep ourselves alive. . . . That our thoughts and memories should
be copies of sensations with their intensity greatly reduced is thus a
consequence deducible logically from the natural adaptation of the
cerebral mechanism to its environment."*
Mechanically the discontinuity between the ideational
and the sensational kinds of process must mean that when
the greatest ideational intensity has been reached, an order
of resistance presents itself which only a new order of force
can break through. The current from the periphery is the
new order of force required ; and what happens after the
resistance is overcome is the sensational process. We may
suppose that the latter consists in some new and more vio
lent sort of disintegration of the neural matter, which now
explodes at a deeper level than at other times.
Now how shall we conceive of the * resistance which
prevents this sort of disintegration from taking place, this
sort of intensity in the process from being attained, so
much of the time ? It must be either an intrinsic resist
ance, some force of cohesion in the neural molecules them
selves ; or an extrinsic influence, due to other cortical cells.
When we come to study the process of hallucination we
shall see that both factors must be taken into account.
There is a degree of inward molecular cohesion in our
brain-cells which it probably takes a sudden inrush of
* Die Willenshandlung (1888), pp. 129-40.
IMAGINATION. 76
j destructive energy to spring apart. Incoming peripheral
j currents possess this energy from the outset. Currents
from neighboring cortical regions might attain to it if they
could accumulate within the centre which we are supposed
to be considering. But since during waking hours every
centre communicates with others by association-paths,
no such accumulation can take place. The cortical cur
rents which run in run right out again, awakening the next
ideas ; the level of tension in the cells does not rise to the
higher explosion-point ; and the latter must be gained by a
sudden current from the periphery or not at all.
CHAPTEE XIX.
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS.
PEKCEPTION AND SENSATION COMPAEED.
A PUKE sensation we saw above, p. 7, to be an abstrac
tion never realized in adult life. Any quality of a thing
which affects our sense-organs does also more than that :
it arouses processes in the hemispheres which are due to
the organization of that organ by past experiences, and the
result of which in consciousness are commonly described
as ideas which the sensation suggests. The first of these
ideas is that of the thing to which the sensible quality
belongs. The consciousness of particular material things
present to sense is nowadays called perception.* The con
sciousness of such things may be more or less complete ;
it may be of the mere name of the thing and its other essen
tial attributes, or it may be of the thing s various remoter
relations. It is impossible to draw any sharp line of dis
tinction between the barer and the richer consciousness,
because the moment we get beyond the first crude sensa
tion all our consciousness is a matter of suggestion, and
the various suggestions shade gradually into each other,
being one and all products of the same psychological
machinery of association. In the directer consciousness
fewer, in the remoter more, associative processes are
brought into play.
* The word Perception, however, has been variously used. For histor
ical notices, see Hamilton s Lectures on Metaphysics, n. 96. For Hamil
ton perception is the consciousness of external objects (ib. 28). Spencer
defines it oddly enough as "a discerning of the relation or relations be
tween states of consciousness partly presentative and partly representative ;
which states of consciousness must be themselves known to the extent in
volved in the knowledge of their relations " (Psychol., 355).
76
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 77
Perception thus differs from sensation by the consciousness
of farther facts associated with the object of the sensation :
" When I lift my eyes from the paper on which I am writing I see
the chairs and tables and walls of my room, each of its proper shape
and at its proper distance. I see, from my window, trees and mead
ows, and horses and oxen, and distant hills. I see each of its proper
size, of its proper form, and at its proper distance ; and these particu
lars appear as immediate informations of the eye, as the colors which I
see by means of it. Yet philosophy has ascertained that we derive noth
ing from the eye whatever but sensations of color. . . . How, then, is it
that we receive accurate information, by the eye, of size and shape and
distance ? By association merely. The colors upon a body are different,
according to its figure, its shape, and its size. But the sensations of
color and what we may here, for brevity, call the sensations of ex
tension, of figure, of distance, have been so often united, felt in con
junction, that the sensation of the color is never experienced without
raising the ideas of the extension, the figure, the distance, in such inti
mate union with it, that they not only cannot be separated, but are ac
tually supposed to be seen. The sight, as it is called, of figure, cr dis
tance, appearing as it does a simple sensation, is in reality a complex
state of consciousness a sequence in which the antecedent, a sensation
of color, and the consequent, a number of ideas, are so closely com
bined by association that they appear not one idea, but one sensation."
This passage from James Mill * gives a clear statement
of the doctrine which Berkeley in his Theory of Vision
made for the first time an integral part of Psychology.
Berkeley compared our visual sensations to the words of a
language, which are but signs or occasions for our intel
lects to pass to what the speaker means. As the sounds
called words have no inward affinity with the ideas they
signify, so neither have our visual sensations, according to
Berkeley, any inward affinity with the things of whose
presence they make us aware. Those things are tangibles;
their real properties, such as shape, size, mass, consistency,
position, reveal themselves only to touch. But the visible
signs and the tangible significates are by long custom so
" closely twisted, blended, and incorporated together, and
the prejudice is so confirmed and riveted in our thoughts
by a long tract of time, by the use of language, and want of
reflection," f that we think we see the whole object, tangible
and visible alike, in one simple indivisible act.
* Analysis, i. 97.
f Theory of Vision, 51.
uf! ^y^
78 PSYCHOLOGY.
Sensational and reproductive brain-processes combined, then,
are what give us the content of our perceptions. Every con
crete particular material thing is a conflux of sensible
qualities, with which we have become acquainted at vari
ous times. Some of these qualities, since they are more
constant, interesting, or practically important, we regard as
essential constituents of the thing. In a general way, such
are the tangible shape, size, mass, etc. Other properties,
being more fluctuating, we regard as more or less acciden
tal or inessential. We call the former qualities the reality,
the latter its appearances. Thus, I hear a sound, and say
* a horse-car ; but the sound is not the horse-car, it is
one of the horse-car s least important manifestations. The
real horse-car is a feelable, or at most a feelable and visi
ble, thing which in my imagination the sound calls up. So
when I get, as now, a brown eye-picture with lines not
parallel, and with angles unlike, and call it my big solid
rectangular walnut library-table, that picture is not the
table. It is not even like the table as the table is for vision,
when rightly seen. It is a distorted perspective view of three
of the sides of what I mentally perceive (more or less) in its
totality and undistorted shape. The back of the table, its
square corners, its size, its heaviness, are features of which
I am conscious when I look, almost as I am conscious of
its name. The suggestion of the name is of course due to
mere custom. But no less is that of the back, the size,
weight, squareness, etc.
Nature, as Reid says, is frugal in her operations, and
will not be at the expense of a particular instinct to give
us that knowledge which experience and habit will soon
produce. Reproduced sights and contacts tied together
with the present sensation in the unity of a thing with a
name, these are the complex objective stuff out of which
my actually perceived table is made. Infants must go
through a long education of the eye and ear before they
can perceive the realities which adults perceive. Every
perception is an acquired perception.*
* The educative process is particularly obvious in the case of the ear,
for all sudden sounds seem alarming to babies. The familiar noises of
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. . 79
Perception may then be defined, in Mr. Sully s words, as
that process by which the mind
" supplements a sense-impression by an accompaniment or escort of re
vived sensations, the whole aggregate of actual and revived sensations
being solidified or integrated into the form of a percept, that is, an
apparently immediate apprehension or cognition of an object now
present in a particular locality or region of space." *
Every reader s mind will supply abundant examples of
the process here described ; and to write them down would
be therefore both unnecessary and tedious. In the chapter
on Space we have already discussed some of the more inter
esting ones ; for in our perceptions of shape and position it
is really difficult to decide how much of our sense of the ob
ject is due to reproductions of past experience, and how
much to the immediate sensations of the eye. I shall ac
cordingly confine myself in the rest of this chapter to cer
tain additional generalities connected with the perceptive
process.
The first point is relative to that solidification or in
tegration, whereof Mr. Sully speaks, of the present with
the absent and merely represented sensations. Cerebrally
taken, these words mean no more than this, that the pro
cess aroused in the sense-organ has shot into various
paths which habit has already organized in the hemi
spheres, and that instead of our having the sort of con
sciousness which would be correlated with the simple sen-
sorial process, we have that which is correlated with this
more complex process. This, as it turns out, is the con
sciousness of that more complex object, the whole thing,
instead of being the consciousness of that more simple
object, the few qualities or attributes which actually im
press our peripheral nerves. This consciousness must have!
the unity which every section of our stream of thought !
retains so long as its objective content does not sensibly
house and street keep them in constant trepidation until such time as they
have either learned the objects which emit them, or have become blunted
to them by frequent experience of their innocuity.
* Outlines, p. 153.
80 PSYCHOLOGY.
change. More than this we cannot say ; we certainly
ought not to say what usually is said by psychologists, and
treat the perception as a sum of distinct psychic entities,
the present sensation namely, plus a lot of images from the
past, all integrated together in a way impossible to de
scribe. The perception is one state of mind or nothing as
I have already so often said.
In many cases it is easy to compare the psychic results
of the sensational with those of the perceptive process. We
then see a marked difference in the way in which the im
pressed portions of the object are felt, in consequence of
being cognized along with the reproduced portion, in the
higher state of mind. Their sensible quality changes un
der our very eye. Take the already-quoted catch, Pas de
lieu Rhone que nous : one may read this over and over again
without recognizing the sounds to be identical with those
of the words paddle your own canoe. As we seize the
English meaning the sound itself appears to change.
Verbal sounds are usually perceived with their meaning at
the moment of being heard. Sometimes, however, the
associative irradiations are inhibited for a few moments
(the mind being preoccupied with other thoughts) whilst
the words linger on the ear as mere echoes of acoustic sen
sation. Then, usually, their interpretation suddenly occurs.
But at that moment one may often surprise a change in the
very feel of the word. Our own language would sound
very different to us if we heard it without understanding,
as we hear a foreign tongue. Kises and falls of voice, odd
sibilants and other consonants, would fall on our ear in a
way of which we can now form no notion. Frenchmen say
that English sounds to them like the gazouillement des oiseaux
an impression which it certainly makes on no native ear.
Many of us English would describe the sound of Russian
in similar terms. All of us are conscious of the strong in
flections of voice and explosives and gutturals of German
speech in a way in which no German can be conscious of
them.
This is probably the reason why, if we look at an isolated
printed word and repeat it long enough, it ends by assuming
an entirely unnatural aspect. Let the reader try this with
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 81
any word on this page. He will soon begin to wonder if it
can possibly be the word he has been using all his life with
that meaning. It stares at him from the paper like a glass
eye, with no speculation in it. Its body is indeed there, but
its soul is fled. It is reduced, by this new way of attending
to it, to its sensational nudity. We never before attended to
it in this way, but habitually got it clad with its meaning
the moment we caught sight of it, and rapidly passed from
it to the other words of the phrase. We apprehended it,
in short, with a cloud of associates, and thus perceiving it,
we felt it quite otherwise than as we feel it now divested
and alone.
Another well-known change is when we look at a land
scape with our head upside down. Perception is to a cer
tain extent baffled by this manoeuvre ; gradations of dis
tance and other space-determinations are made uncertain ;
the reproductive or associative processes, in short, decline ;
and, simultaneously with their diminution, the colors grow
richer and more varied, and the contrasts of light and shade
more marked. The same thing occurs when we turn a
painting bottom upward. We lose much of its meaning,
but, to compensate for the loss, we feel more freshly the
value of the mere tints and shadings, and become aware of
any lack of purely sensible harmony or balance which they
may show.* Just so, if we lie on the floor and look up at
the mouth of a person talking behind us. His lower lip
here takes the habitual place of the upper one upon our
retina, and seems animated by the most extraordinary and
unnatural mobility, a mobility which now strikes us be
cause (the associative processes being disturbed by the un
accustomed point of view) we get it as a naked sensation
and not as part of a familiar object perceived.
On a later page other instances will meet us. For the
present these are enough to prove our point. Once more
we find ourselves driven to admit that when qualities of an
object impress our sense and we thereupon perceive the
object, the sensation as such of those qualities does not
* Cf . Helmholtz, Optik, pp. 433, 723, 728, 772 , and Spencer. Psychol
ogy, vol. ii. p. 249, note.
^vx^J
PSYCHOLOGY.
still exist inside of the perception and form a constituent
thereof. The sensation is one thing and the perception
another, and neither can take place at the same time with
the other, because their cerebral conditions are not the
same. They may resemble each other, but in no respect are
they identical states of mind.
PERCEPTION IS OF DEFINITE AND PROBABLE THINGS.
The chief cerebral conditions of perception are the paths
of association irradiating from the sense-impression, which
may have been already formed. If a certain sensation be
strongly associated with the attributes of a certain thing,
that thing is almost sure to be perceived when we get the
sensation. Examples of such things would be familiar
people, places, etc., which we recognize and name at a
glance. But where the sensation is associated with more than
one reality, so that either of two discrepant sets of resid-
ual properties may arise, the perception is doubtful and
vacillating, and the most that can then be said of it is that it
will be of a PROBABLE thing, of the thing which would most
usually have given us that sensation.
In these ambiguous cases it is interesting to note that
perception is rarely abortive ; some perception takes place.
The two discrepant sets of associates do not neutralize each
other or mix and make a blur. What we more commonly
get is first one object in its completeness, and then the other
in its completeness. In other words, all brain-processes are
such as give rise to ivhat we may call FIGURED consciousness. If
paths are irradiated at all, they are irradiated in consistent
systems, and occasion thoughts of definite objects, not mere
hodge-podges of elements. Even where the brain s func
tions are half thrown out of gear, as in aphasia or dropping
asleep, this law of figured consciousness holds good. A
person who suddenly gets sleepy whilst reading aloud will
read wrong ; but instead of emitting a mere broth of sylla
bles, he will make such mistakes as to read supper-time
instead of sovereign, overthrow instead of opposite,
or indeed utter entirely imaginary phrases, composed of
several definite words, instead of phrases of the book. So
in aphasia : where the disease is mild the patient s inis-
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 83
takes consist in using entire wrong words instead of right
ones. Only in the gravest lesions does he become quite in
articulate. These facts show how subtle is the associative
link ; how delicate yet how strong that connection among
brain-paths which makes any number of them, once excited
together, thereafter tend to vibrate as a systematic whole. A
small group of elements, * this, common to two systems, A
and B, may touch off A or B according as accident decides
the next step (see Fig. 47). If it happen that a single point
leading from * this to B is momentarily a little more per
vious than any leading from * this to A, then that little
advantage will upset the equilibrium in favor of the entire
system B. The currents will sweep first through that point
FIG. 47.
and thence into all the paths of B, each increment of ad
vance making A more and more impossible. The thoughts
correlated with A and B, in such a case, will have objects
different, though similar. The similarity will, however,
consist in some very limited feature if the * this be small.
Thus the faintest sensations ivill give rise to the perception
of definite things if only they resemble those ivhich the things
are wont to arouse. In fact, a sensation must be strong and
distinct in order not to suggest an object and, if it is a non
descript feeling, really to seem one. The aurse of epilepsy,
globes of light, fiery vision, roarings in the ears, the sensa
tions which electric currents give rise to when passed through
the head, these are unfigured because they are strong.
Weaker feelings of the same sort would probably suggest
objects. Many years ago, after reading Maury s book, Le
Sommeil et les R/ves, I began for the first time to observe
those ideas which faintly flit through the mind at all times,
words, visions, etc., disconnected with the main stream of
thought, but discernible to an attention on the watch for
84 PSYCHOLOGY.
them. A horse s head, a coil of rope, an anchor, are, for
example, ideas which have come to me unsolicited whilst I
have been writing these latter lines. They can often be
explained by subtle links of association, often not at all.
But I have not a few times been surprised, after noting
some such idea, to find, on shutting my eyes, an after
image left on the retina by some bright or dark object
recently looked at, and which had evidently suggested
the idea. Evidently, I say, because the general shape,
size, and position of object thought-of and of after-image
were the same, although the idea had details which the
retinal image lacked. We shall probably never know just
what part retinal after-images play in determining the train
of our thoughts. Judging by my own experiences I should
suspect it of being not insignificant.*
*Tlie more or less geometrically regular phantasms which are pro
duced by pressure on the eyeballs, congestion of the head, inhalation of
anaesthetics, etc., might again be cited to prove that faint and vague excite
ments of sense-organs are transformed into figured objects by the brain,
only the facts are not quite clearly interpretable ; and the figuring may
possibly be due to some retinal peculiarity, as yet unexplored. Beautiful
patterns, which would do for wall-papers, succeed each other when the
eyeballs are long pressed. Goethe s account of his own phantasm of a
flower is well known. It came in the middle of his visual field whenever
he closed his eyes and depressed his head, "unfolding itself and develop
ing from its interior new flowers, formed of colored or sometimes green
leaves, not natural but of fantastic forms, and symmetrical as the rosettes
of sculptors," etc. (quoted in Miiller s Physiology, Baly s tr., p. 1397). The
fortification- and zigzag-patterns, which are well-known appearances in the
field of view in certain functional disorders, have characteristics (steadiness,
coerciveness, blotting out of other objects) suggestive of a retinal origin
this is why the entire class of phenomena treated of in this note seem to me
still doubtfully connected with the cerebral factor in perception of which
the text treats. I copy from Taiue s book on Intelligence (vol. i. p. 61)
the translation of an interesting observation by Prof. M. Lazarus, in which
the same effect of an after-image is seen. Lazarus himself proposes the
name of visionary illusions for such modifications of ideal pictures by
peripheral stimulations (Lehre von den Sinnestauschungeu, 1867, p. 19).
" I was on the Kaltbad terrace at Rigi, on a very clear afternoon, and
attempting to make out the Waldbruder, a rock which stands out from
the midst of the gigantic wall of mountains surrounding it, on whose sum
mits we see like a crown the glaciers of Titlis, Uri-Rothsdock, etc. 1 was
looking alternately with the naked eye and with a spy-glass ; but could not
distinguish it with the naked eye. For the space of six to ten minutes I
had gazed steadfastly upon the mountains, whose color varied according
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS 85
ILLUSIONS.
Let us now, for brevity s sake, treat A and B in Fig. 47
as if they stood for objects instead of brain-processes. And
let us furthermore suppose that A and B are, both of them,
objects which might probably excite the sensation which I
have called * this, but that on the present occasion A and
not B is the one which actually does so. If, then, on this
occasion * this suggests A and not B, the result is a correct
perception. But if, on the contrary, this suggests B and
not A, the result is & false perception, or, as it is technically
called, an illusion. But the process is the same, whether
the perception be true or false.
to their several altitudes or declivities between violet, brown, and dark
green, and I had fatigued myself to no purpose, when I ceased looking
and turned away. At that moment I saw before me (I cannot recollect
whether. my eyes were shut or open) the figure of an absent friend, like a
corpse. ... I asked myself at once how I had come to think of my absent
friend. In a few seconds I regained the thread of my thoughts, which
my looking for the Waldbruder had interrupted, and readily found that the.
idea of my friend had by a very simple necessity introduced itself among
them. My recollecting him was thus naturally accounted for. But in
addition to this, he had appeared as a corpse. How was this ? At this
moment, whether through fatigue or in order to think, I closed my eyes,
and found at once the whole field of sight, over a considerable extent,
covered with the same corpse-like hue, a greenish-yellow gray. I thought
at once that I had here the principle of the desired explanation, and
attempted to recall to memory the forms of other persons. And, in fact,
these forms too appeared like corpses ; standing or sitting, as I wished, all
had a corpse -like tint. The persons whom I wished to see did not all ap
pear to me as sensible phantoms ; and again, when my eyes were open, I
did not see phantoms, or at all events only saw them faintly, of no deter
mined color. I then inquired how it was that phantoms of persons were
affected by and colored like the visual field surrounding them, how their
outlines were traced, and if their faces and clothes were of the same color.
But it was then too late, or perhaps the influence of reflection and exa^n-
nation had been too powerful. All grew suddenly pale, and the subjective
phenomenon, which might have lasted some minutes longer, had disap
peared. It is plain that here an inward reminiscence, arising in accordance
with the laws of association, had combined with an optical after-image.
The excessive excitation of the periphery of the optic nerve. I mean the
long-continued preceding sensation of my eyes when contemplating the
color of the mountain, had indirectly provoked a subjective and durable
sensation, that of the complemenatry color ; and my reminiscence, incor
porating itself with this subjective sensation, became the corpse-like phan
tom I have described."
86 PSYCHOLOGY.
Note that in every illusion what is false is what is in
ferred, not what is immediately given. The this, if it
were felt by itself alone, would be all right, it only becomes
misleading by what it suggests. If it is a sensation of
sight, it may suggest a tactile object, for example, which
later tactile experiences prove to be not there. The so-called
fallacy of the senses, of which the ancient sceptics made so
much account, is not fallacy of the senses proper, but rather of
the intellect, which interprets wrongly what the senses give.*
So much premised, let us look a little closer at these
illusions. They are due to two main causes. The wrong
object is perceived either because
1) Although not on this occasion the real cause, it is yet the
habitual, inveterate, or most probable cause of this ; or because
2) The mind is temporarily full of the thought of that object,
and therefore this is peculiarly prone to suggest it at this
moment.
I will give briefly a number of examples under each
head. The first head is the more important, because it
includes a number of constant illusions to which all men
are subject, and which can only be dispelled by much
experience.
Illusions of the First Type.
One of the oldest instances dates from Aristotle. Cross
two fingers and roll a pea, pen
holder, or other small object be
tween them. It will seem double.
Professor Groom Eobertson has
given the clearest analysis of this
illusion. He observes that if
FIG. 48. the object be brought into con
tact first with the forefinger and next with the second finger,
the two contacts seem to come in at different points of space.
* Cf. Th. Reid s Intellectual Powers, essay n. chap, xxn, and A. Binet,
in Mind, ix. 206. M. Binet points out the fact that what is fallaciously
inferred is always an object of some other sense than the this. Optical
illusions are generally errors of touch and muscular sensibility, and the
fallaciously perceived object and the experiences which correct it are both
tactile in these cases.
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 87
ine forefinger-touch seems higher, though the finger is
really lower ; the second-finger-touch seems lower, though
the finger is really higher. " We perceive the contacts as
double because we refer them to two distinct parts of
space." The touched sides of the two fingers are normally
not together in space, and customarily never do touch one
thing ; the one thing which now touches them, therefore,
seems in two places, i.e. seems two things.*
There is a whole batch of illusions which come from
optical sensations interpreted by us in accordance with our
usual rule, although they are now produced by an unusual
object. The stereoscope is an example. The eyes see a
picture apiece, and the two pictures are a little disparate,
the one seen by the right eye being a view of the object
taken from a point slightly to the right of that from which
the left eye s picture is taken. Pictures thrown on the two
eyes by solid objects present this identical disparity.
Whence we react on the sensation in our usual way, and
perceive a solid. If the pictures be exchanged we perceive
a hollow mould of the object, for a hollow mould would
cast just such disparate pictures as these. Wheatstone s
instrument, the pseudoscope, allows us to look at solid
objects and see with each eye the other eye s picture. We
then perceive the solid object hollow, if it be an object which
might probably be hollow, but not otherwise. A human face,
e.g., never appears hollow to the pseudoscope. In this
irregularity of reaction on different objects, some seem
hollow, others not ; the perceptive process is true to its!
law, which is always to react on the sensation in a deter -\
minate and figured fashion if possible, and in as probable |
a fashion as the case admits. To couple faces and hollow
* The converse illusion is hard to bring about. The points a and b,
being normally in contact, mean to us the same space, and hence it might
be supposed that when simultaneously touched, as by a pair of callipers,
we should feel but one object, whilst as a matter of fact we feel two. It
should be remarked in explanation of this that an object placed between
the two fingers in their normal uncrossed position always awakens the sense
of two contacts. When the fingers are pressed together we feel one object to
be between them. And when the fingers are crossed, and their correspond
ing points a and b simultaneously pressed, we do get something like tha
illusion of singleness that is, we get a very doubtful doubleness.
88 PSYCHOLOGY.
ness violates all our habits of association. For the same
reason it is very easy to make an intaglio cast of a face, or
the painted inside of a pasteboard mask, look convex, in
stead of concave as they are.
Our sense of the position of things with respect to our
eye consists in suggestions of how we must move our hand
to touch them. Certain places of the image on the retina,
certain actively-produced positions of the eyeballs, are
normally linked with the sense of every determinate posi
tion which an outer thing may come to occupy. Hence we
perceive the usual position, even if the optical sensation be
artificially brought from a different part of space. Prisms
warp the light-rays in this way, and throw upon the retina
the image of an object situated, say, at spot a of space in the
same manner in which (without the prisms) an object situ
ated at spot b would cast its image Accordingly we feel
for the object at b instead of a. If the prism be before one
eye only we see the object at b with that eye, and in its
right position a with the other in other words, we see it
double. If both eyes be armed with prisms with their angle
towards the right, we pass our hand to the right of all objects
when we try rapidly to touch them. And this illusory
sense of their position lasts until a new association is fixed,
when on removing the prisms a contrary illusion at first
occurs. Passive or unintentional changes in the position
of the eyeballs seem to be no more kept account of by the
mind than prisms are ; so we spontaneously make no allow
ance for them in our perception of distance and movements.
Press one of the eyeballs into a strained position with the
finger, and objects move and are translocated accordingly,
just as when prisms are used.
Curious illusions of movement in objects occur whenever
the eyeballs move without our intending it. We shall learn
in the following chapter that the original visual feeling of
movement is produced by any image passing over the retina.
Originally, however, this sensation is definitely referred
neither to the object nor to the eyes. Such definite refer
ence grows up later, and obeys certain simple laws. We
believe objects to move : 1) whenever we get the retinal
movement-feeling, but think our eyes are still ; and 2) when-
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 89
ever we think that our eyes move, but fail to get the retinal
movement-feeling. We believe objects to be still, on the
contrary, 1) whenever we get the retinal movement-feeling,
but think jur eyes are moving ; and 2) whenever we neither
think our eyes are moving, nor get the retinal movement-
feeling. Thus the perception of the object s state of motion
or rest depends on the notion we frame of our own eye s
movement. Now many sorts of stimulation make our eyes
move without our knowing it. If we look at a waterfall,
river, railroad train, or any body which continuously passes
in front of us in the same direction, it carries our eyes with
it. This movement can be noticed in our eyes by a by
stander. If the object keep passing towards our left, our
eyes keep following whatever moving bit of it may have
caught their attention at first, until that bit disappears
from view. Then they jerk back to the right again, and
catch a new bit, which again they follow to the left, and so
on indefinitely. This gives them an oscillating demeanor,
slow involuntary rotations leftward alternating with rapid
voluntary jerks rightward. But the oscillations continue for
a while after the object has come to a standstill, or the
eyes are carried to a new object, and this produces the illu
sion that things now move in the opposite direction. For
we are unaware of the slow leftward automatic movements
of our eyeballs, and think that the retinal movement-sen
sations thereby aroused must be due to a rightward motion
of the object seen; whilst the rapid voluntary rightward
movements of our eyeballs we interpret as attempts to pur
sue and catch again those parts of the object which have
been slipping away to the left.
Exactly similar oscillations of the eyeballs are produced
in giddiness, with exatly similar results. Giddiness is easi
est produced by whirling on our heels. It is a feeling of
the movement of our own head and body through space,
and is now pretty well understood to be due to the irrita
tion of the semi-circular canals of the inner ear.* When,
* Purkinje, Mach, and Breuer are the authors to whom we mainly owe
the explanation of the feeling of vertigo. I have found (American Jour
nal of Otology, Oct. 1882) that in deaf-mutes (whose semi-circular canals
or entire auditory nerves must often be disorganized) there very frequently
exists no susceptibility to giddiness or whirling.
90 PSYCHOLOGY.
after whirling, we stop, we seem to be spinning in the reverse
direction for a few seconds, and then objects appear to con
tinue whirling in the same direction in which, a moment
previous, our body actually whirled. The reason is that
our eyes normally tend to maintain their field of view- If we
suddenly turn our head leftwards it is hard to make the
eyes follow. They roll in their orbits rightwards, by a
sort of compensating inertia. Even though we falsely
think our head to be moving leftwards, this consequence
occurs, and our eyes move rightwards as may be observed
in any one with vertigo after whirling. As these move
ments are unconscious, the retinal movement-feelings which
they occasion are naturally referred to the objects seen.
And the intermittent voluntary twitches of the eyes towards
the left, by which we ever and anon recover them from the
extreme rightward positions to which the reflex movement
brings them, simply confirm and intensify our impression
of a leftward-whirling field of view : we seem to ourselves
to be periodically pursuing and overtaking the objects in
their leftward flight. The whole phenomenon fades out
after a few seconds. And it often ceases if we voluntarily
fix our eyes upon a given point. *
Optical vertigo, as these illusions of objective movement
are called, results sometimes from brain-trouble, intoxica
tions, paralysis, etc. A man will awaken with a weakness
of one of his eye-muscles. An intended orbital rotation
will then not produce its expected result in the way of
retinal movement-feeling whence false perceptions, of
which one of the most interesting cases will fall to be
discussed in later chapters.
There is an illusion of movement of the opposite sort,
with which every one is familiar at railway stations. Habit
ually, when we ourselves move forward, our entire field of
view glides backward over our retina. When our move
ment is due to that of the windowed carriage, car, or boat
* The involuntary continuance of the eye s motions is not the only cause
of the false perception in these cases. There is also a true negative after
image of the original retinal movement-sensations, as we shall eee in
Chapter XX.
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 91
in which we sit, all stationary objects visible through the
window give us a sensation of gliding in the opposite
direction. Hence, whenever we get this sensation, of a
window with all objects visible through it moving in one
direction, we react upon it in our customary way, and per
ceive a stationary field of view, over which the window, and
we ourselves inside of it, are passing by a motion of our
own. Consequently when another train comes alongside
of ours in a station, and fills the entire window, and, after
standing still awhile, begins to glide away, we judge that it
is our train which is moving, and that the other train is still.
If, however, we catch a glimpse of any part of the station
through the windows, or between the cars, of the other train,
the illusion of our own movement instantly disappears, and
we perceive the other train to be the one in motion. This,
again, is but making the usual and probable inference from
our sensation.*
Another illusion due to movement is explained by Helm-
holtz. Most wayside objects, houses, trees, etc., look small
when seen out of the windows of a swift train. This is be
cause we perceive them in the first instance unduly near.
And we perceive them unduly near because of their extra
ordinarily rapid parallactic flight backwards. When we
ourselves move forward all objects glide backwards, as
aforesaid ; but the nearer they are, the more rapid is this
apparent translocation. Relative rapidity of passage back
wards is thus so familiarly associated with nearness that
when we feel it we perceive nearness. But with a given
size of retinal image the nearer an object is, the smaller do
we judge its actual size to be. Hence in the train, the
faster we go, the nearer do the trees and houses seem, and
the nearer they seem, the smaller do they look.f
Other illusions are due to the feeling of convergence being
wrongly interpreted. When we converge our eyeballs we
perceive an approximation of whatever thing we may be
looking at. Whatever things do approach whilst we look
* We never, so far as I know, get the converse illusion at a railroad sta
tion and believe the other train to move v/hen it is still,
t Helmholtz : Physiol. Optik, 365.
92 PSYCHOLOGY.
at them oblige us, so long as they are not very distant, to
converge our eyes. Hence approach of the thing is the prob
able objective fact when we feel our eyes converging. Now in
most persons the internal recti muscles, to which converg
ence is due, are weaker than the others ; and the entirely
passive position of the eyeballs, the position which they
assume when covered and looking at nothing in particular,
is either that of parallelism or of slight divergence. Make
a person look with both eyes at some near object, and then
screen the object from one of his eyes by a card or book.
The chances are that you will see the eye thus screened
turn just a little outwards. Eemove the screen, and you
will now see it turn in as it catches sight of the object again.
The other eye meanwhile keeps as it was at first. To most
persons, accordingly, all objects seem to come nearer when,
after looking at them with one eye, both eyes are used ;
and they seem to recede during the opposite change. "With
persons whose external recti muscles are insufficient, the
illusions may be of the contrary kind.
The size of the retinal image is a fruitful source of illusions.
Normally, the retinal image grows larger as the object draws
near. But the sensation yielded by this enlargement is
also given by any object which really grows in size^with-
out changing its distance. Enlargement of retinal image
is therefore an ambiguous sign. An opera-glass enlarges
the moon. But most persons will tell you that she looks
smaller through it, only a great deal nearer and brighter.
They read the enlargement as a sign of approach ; and the
perception of approach makes them actually reverse the
sensation which suggests it by an exaggeration of our
habitual custom of making allowance of the apparent en
largement of whatever object approaches us, and reducing
it in imagination to its natural size. Similarly, in the theatre
the glass brings the stage near, but hardly seems to mag
nify the people on it.
The well-known increased apparent size of the moon on the
horizon is a result of association and probability. It is seen
through vaporous air, and looks dimmer and duskier than
when it rides on high ; and it is seen over fields, trees,
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. . 93
hedges, streams, and the like, which break up the interven
ing space and make us the better realize the latter s extent.
Both these causes make the moon seem more distant from
us when it is low ; and as its visual angle grows no less, we
deem that it must be a larger body, and we so perceive it
It looks particularly enormous when it comes up directly
behind some well-known large object, as a house or tree,
distant enough to subtend an angle no larger than that of
the moon itself.*
The feeling of accommodation also gives rise to false per
ceptions of size. Usually we accommodate our.eyes for an
object as it approaches us. Usually under these circum
stances the object throws a larger retinal image. But
believing the object to remain the same, we make allowance
for this and treat the entire eye-feeling which we receive
as significant of nothing but approach. When we relax our
accommodation and at the same time the retinal image
grows smaller, the probable cause is always a receding
object. The moment we put on convex glasses, however,
the accommodation relaxes, but the retinal image grows
larger instead of less. This is what would happen if our
object, whilst receding, grew. Such a probable object we
accordingly perceive, though with a certain vacillation as
to the recession, for the growth in apparent size is also a
probable sign of approach, and is at moments interpreted
accordingly. Atropin paralyzes the muscles of accommo
dation. It is possible to get a dose which will weaken
these muscles without laming them altogether. When a
known near object is then looked at we have to make the
same voluntary strain to accommodate, as if it were a great
deal nearer ; but as its retinal image is not enlarged in pro
portion to this suggested approach, we deem that it must
have grown smaller than usual. In consequence of this
so-called micropsy, Aubert relates that he saw a man ap
parently no larger than a photograph. But the small size
again made the man seem farther off. The real distance
* Cf . Berkeley s Theory of Vision, 67-79 ; Helmholtz : Physiologische
Optik, pp. 630-1 ; Lechalas in Reuve Philosophique, xxvi. 49.
94 PSYCHOLOGY.
was two or three feet, and he seemed against the wall of
the room.* Of these vacillations we shall have to speak
again in the ensuing chapter, t
Mrs. C. L. Franklin has recently described and explained
with rare acuteness an illusion of which the most curious
thing is that it was never noticed before. Take a single
pair of crossed lines (Fig. 49), hold them in a horizontal plane
1.2. before the eyes, and look along them, at such a
distance that with the right eye shut, 1, and with
the left eye shut, 2, looks like the projection of a
vertical line. Look steadily now at the point of
intersection of the lines with both eyes open, and
you will see a third line sticking up like a pin
through the paper at right angles to the plane of the
FIG. 49. two first lines. The explanation of this illusion is
very simple, but so circumstantial that I must refer for it to
Mrs. Franklin s own account.:): Suffice it that images of the
two lines fall on corresponding rows of retinal points,
and that the illusory vertical line is the only object capable
of throwing such images. A variation of the experiment
is this :
" In Fig. 50 the lines are all drawn so as to pass through a common
point. With a little trouble one eye can be put into the position of this
point it is only necessary that the paper be held so that, with one eye
shut, the other eye sees all the lines leaning neither to the right nor to
the left. After a moment one can fancy the lines to be vertical staffs
standing out of the plane of the paper. . . . This illusion [says Mrs.
Franklin] I take to be of purely mental origin. When a line lies any
where in a plane passing through the apparent vertical meridian of one
eye, and is looked at with that eye only. ... we have no very good
means of knowing how it is directed in that plane. . . . Now of the
lines in nature which lie anywhere within such a plane, by far the
* Physiol. Optik, p. 602.
t It seems likely that the strains in the recti muscles have something to
do with the vacillating judgment in these atropin cases. The internal recti
contract whenever we accommodate. They squint and produce double
vision when the innervation for accommodation is excessive. To see
singly, when straining the atropinized accommodation, the contraction of
our internal recti must be neutralized by a correspondingly excessive con
traction of the external recti. But this is a sign of the object s recession, etc,
| American Journal of Psychology, i. 101 ff.
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 95
greater number are vertical lines. Hence we are peculiarly inclined to
think that a line which we perceive to be in such a plane is a vertical
line. But to see a lot of lines at once, all ready to throw their images
FIG. 50.
upon the vertical meridian, is a thing that has hardly ever happened to
us, except when they all have been vertical lines. Hence when that
happens we have a still stronger tendency to think that what we see
before us is a group of vertical lines."
In other words, we see, as always, the most probable
object.
The foregoing may serve as examples of the first type
of illusions mentioned on page 86. I could cite of course
many others, but it would be tedious to enumerate all the
thaumatropes and zoetropes, dioramas, and juggler s tricks
in which they are embodied. In the chapter on Sensation
we saw that many illusions commonly ranged under this
type are, physiologically considered, of another sort al
together, and that associative processes, strictly so called,
have nothing to do with their production.
Illusions of the Second Type.
We may now turn to illusions of the second of the two
types discriminated on page 86. In this type we perceive a
wrong object because our mind is full of the thought of it
at the time, and any sensation which is in the least degree
connected with it touches off, as it were, a train already
laid, and gives us a sense that th 3 object is really before
us. Here is a familiar example :
"If a sportsman, while shooting woodcock in cover, sees a bird
about the size and color of a woodcock get up and fly through the foil-
96 PSYCHOLOGY.
age, not having time to see more than that it is a bird of such a size-
and color, he immediately supplies by inference the other qualities of a
woodcock, and is afterwards disgusted to find that he has shot a thrush.
I have done so myself, and could hardly believe that the thrush was the
bird I had fired at, so complete was my mental supplement to my visual
perception."*
As with game, so with enemies, ghosts, and the like.
Anyone waiting in a dark place and expecting or fearing
strongly a certain object will interpret any abrupt sensa
tion to mean that object s presence. The boy playing * I
spy, the criminal skulking from his pursuers, the supersti
tious person hurrying through the woods or past the church
yard at midnight, the man lost in the woods, the girl who
tremulously has made an evening appointment with her
swain, all are subject to illusions of sight and sound which
make their hearts beat till they are dispelled. Twenty
times a day the lover, perambulating the streets with his
preoccupied fancy, will think he perceives his idol s bonnet
before him.
The Proof-reader s Illusion. I remember one night in
Boston, whilst waiting for a Mount Auburn car to bring
me to Cambridge, reading most distinctly that name upon
the signboard of a car on which (as I afterwards learned)
* North Avenue was painted. The illusion was so vivid
that I could hardly believe my eyes had deceived me. All
reading is more or less performed in this way.
" Practised novel- or newspaper-readers could not possibly get on so
fast if they had to see accurately every single letter of every word in
order to perceive the words. More than half of the words come out of
their mind, and hardly half from the printed page. Were this not so,
did we perceive each letter by itself, typographic errors in well-knowii
words would never be overlooked. Children, whose ideas are not yet
ready enough to perceive words at a glance, read them wrong if they
are printed wrong, that is, right according to the way of printing. In
a foreign language, although it may be printed with the same letters,
we read by so much the more slowly as we do not understand, or are
sinable promptly to perceive the words. But we notice misprints all the-
more readily. For this reason Latin and Greek and, still better,
Hebrew works are more correctly printed, because the proofs are better
corrected, than in German works. Of two friends of mine, one knew
much Hebrew, the other little ; the latter, however, gave instruction m
* Romanes, Mental Evolution in Animals, D. 324.
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 97
Hebrew in a gymnasium ; and when he called the other to help correct
his pupils exercises, it turned out that he could find out all sorts of
little errors better than his friend, because the latter s perception of the
words as totals was too swift."
Testimony to personal identity is proverbially fallacious for
similar reasons. A man has witnessed a rapid crime or
accident, and carries away his mental image. Later he is
confronted by a prisoner whom he forthwith perceives in
the light of that image, and recognizes or identifies as a
participant, although he may never have been near the
spot. Similarly at the so-called < materializing seances
which fraudulent mediums give : in a dark room a man
sees a gauze-robed figure who in a whisper tells him she is
the spirit of his sister, mother, wife, or child, and falls upon
his neck. The darkness, the previous forms, and the ex
pectancy have so filled his mind with piemonitory images
that it is no wonder he perceives what is suggested. These
fraudulent seances would furnish most precious docu
ments to the psychology of perception, if they could only
be satisfactorily inquired into. In the hypnotic trance any
suggested object is sensibly perceived. In certain subjects
this happens more or less completely after waking from
the trance. It would seem that under favorable conditions
a somewhat similar susceptibility to suggestion may exist
in certain persons who are not otherwise entranced at all.
This suggestibility is greater in the lower senses than
in the higher. A German observer writes :
" We know that a weak smell or taste may be very diversely inter
preted by us, and that the same sensation will now be named as one
thing and the next moment as another. Suppose an agreeable smell of
flowers in a room : A visitor will notice it, seek to recognize what it is,
* M. Lazarus : Das Leben d. Seele, n (1857), p. 32. In the ordinary
hearing of speech half the words we seem to hear are supplied out of our
own head. A language with which we are perfectly familiar is under
stood, even when spoken in low tones and far off. An unfamiliar language
is unintelligible under these conditions. If we do not get a very good seat
at a foreign theatre, we fail to follow the dialogue ; and what gives trouble
to most of us when abroad is not only that the natives speak so fast, but
that they speak so indistinctly and so low. The verbal objects for inter
preting the sounds by are not alert and ready made in our minds, as they
are in our familiar mother-tongue, and do not start up at so faint a cue.
98 PSYCHOLOGY.
and at last perceive more and more distinctly that it is the perfume of
roses until after all he discovers a bouquet of violets. Then suddenly
he recognizes the violet-smell, and wonders how he could possibly have
hit upon the roses. Just so it is with taste. Try some meat whose
visible characteristics are disguised by the mode of cooking, and you
will perhaps begin by taking it for venison, and end by being quite
certain that it is venison, until you are told that it is mutton ; where
upon you get distinctly the mutton flavor. In this wise one may make
a person taste or smell what one will, if one only makes sure that he
shall conceive it beforehand as we wish, by saying to him : Doesn t
that taste just like, etc.? or Doesn t it smell just like, etc.? One
can cheat whole companies in this way ; announce, for instance, at a
meal, that the meat tastes high, and almost every one who is not
animated by a spirit of opposition will discover a flavor of putrescence
which in reality is not there at all.
."In the sense of feeling this phenomenon is less prominent, because
we get so close to the object that our sensation of it is never incomplete.
Still, examples may be adduced from this sense. On superficially feel
ing of a cloth, one may confidently declare it for velvet, whilst it is
perhaps a long-haired cloth ; or a person may perhaps not be able to
decide whether he has put on woolen or cotton stockings, and, trying
to ascertain this by the feeling on the skin of the feet, he may become
aware that he gets the feeling of cotton or wool according as he thinks
of the one or the other. When the feeling in our fingers is somewhat
blunted by cold, we notice many such phenomena, being then more ex
posed to confound objects of touch with one another." *
High authorities have doubted this power of imagination
to falsify present impressions of sense, t Yet it unquestion
ably exists. Within the past fortnight I have been annoyed
by a smell, faint but unpleasant, in my library. My annoy
ance began by an escape of gas from the furnace below
stairs. This seemed to get lodged in my imagination as a
sort of standard of perception; for, several days after the
furnace had been rectified, I perceived the same smell
again. It was traced this time to a new pair of India rubber
shoes which had been brought in from the shop and laid on
a table. It persisted in coming to me for several days,
however, in spite of the fact that no other member of the
family or visitor noticed anything unpleasant. My impres
sion during part of this time was one of uncertainty whether
* G. H. Meyer, Untersuchungen, etc., pp. 242-3.
f Helmholtz, P. O. 438. The question will soon come before us again
in the chapter on the Perception of Space.
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 99
the smell was imaginary or real ; and at last it faded out.
Everyone must be able to give instances like this from the
smell-sense. When we have paid the faithless plumber for
pretending to mend our drains, the intellect inhibits the
nose from perceiving the same unaltered odor, until per
haps several days go by. As regards the ventilation or
heating of rooms, we are apt to feel for some time as we
think we ought to feel. If we believe the ventilator is shut,
we feel the room close. On discovering it open, the oppres
sion disappears.
An extreme instance is given in the following extract :
"A patient called at my office one day in a state of great excitement
from the effects of an offensive odor in the horse-car she had come in,
and which she declared had probably emanated from some very sick
person who must have been just carried in it. There could be no doubt
that something had affected her seriously, for she was very pale, with
nausea, difficulty in breathing, and other evidences of bodily and mental
distress. I succeeded, after some difficulty and time, in quieting her,
and she left, protesting that the smell was unlike anything she had ever
before experienced and was something dreadful. Leaving my office
soon after, it so happened that I found her at the street-corner, waiting
for a car: we thus entered the car together. She immediately called
my attention to the same sickening odor which she had experienced in
the other car, and began to be affected the same as before, when I
pointed out to her that the smell was simply that which always emanates
from the straw which has been in stables. She quickly recognized it as
the same, when the unpleasant effects which arose while she was possessed
with another perception of its character at once passed away." *
It is the same with touch. Everyone must have felt the
sensible quality change under his hand, as sudden contact
with something moist or hairy, in the dark, awoke a shock
of disgust or fear which faded into calm recognition of some
familiar object? Even so small a thing as a crumb of po
tato on the table-cloth, which we pick up, thinking it a
crumb of bread, feels horrible for a few moments to our
fancy, and different from what it is.
"Weight or muscular feeling is a sensation ; yet who has
not heard the anecdote of some one to whom Sir Humphry
Davy showed the metal sodium which he had just dis
covered? "Bless me, how heavy it is!" said the man;
* C. F Taylor, Sensation and Pain, p. 37 (N. Y., 1882).
100 PSYCHOLOGY.
showing that his idea of what metals as a class ought to be
had falsified the sensation he derived from a very light
substance.
In the sense of hearing, similar mistakes abound. I
have already mentioned the hallucinatory effect of mental
images of very faint sounds, such as distant clock-strokes
(above, p. 71). But even when stronger sensations of sound
have been present, everyone must recall some experience
in which they have altered their acoustic character as soon
as the intellect referred them to a different source. The
other day a friend was sitting in my room, when the clock,
which has a rich low chime, began to strike. " Hollo ! " said
he, "hear that hand-organ in the garden," and was sur
prised at finding the real source of the sound. I had myself
some years ago a very striking illusion of the sort. Sitting
reading late one night, I suddenly heard a most formidable
noise proceeding from the upper part of the house, which
it seemed to fill. It ceased, and in a moment renewed it
self. I went into the hall to listen, but it came no more.
Kesuming my seat in the room, however, there it was again,
low, mighty, alarming, like a rising flood or the avant-
courier of an awful gale. It came from all space. Quite
startled, I again went into the hall, but it had already
ceased once more. On returning a second time to the room,
I discovered that it was nothing but the breathing of a little
Scotch terrier which lay asleep on the floor. The note
worthy thing is that as soon as I recognized what it was, I
was compelled to think it a different sound, and could not
then hear it as I had heard it a moment before.
In the anecdotes given by Delboeuf and Eeid, this was
probably also the case, though it is not so stated. Keid
" I remember that once lying abed, and having been put into a fright,
I heard my own heart beat; but I took it to be one knocking at the
door, and arose and opened the door oftener than once, before I dis
covered that the sound was in my own breast," (Inquiry, chap. iv.
1.)
Delboeuf s story is as follows :
" The illustrious P. J. van Beneden, senior, was walking one evening
with a friend along a woody hill near Chaudfontaine. Don t you
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 101
hear, said the friend, the noise of a hunt on the mountain ? M. van
Beneden listens and distinguishes in fact the giving-tongue of the dogs.
They listen some time, expecting from one moment to another to see a
deer bound by; but the voice of the dogs seems neither to recede nor
approach. At last a countryman comes by, and they ask him who it is
that can be hunting at this late hour. But he, pointing to some puddles
of water near their feet, replies: l Yonder little animals are what you
hear And there there were in fact a number of toads of the species
BomUnator igneus. . . . This batrachian emits at the pairing season a
silvery or rather crystalline note. ... Sad and pure, it is a voice m
nowise resembling that of hounds giving chase." !
The sense of sight, as we have seen in studying Space,
is pregnant with illusions of both the types considered.
No sense gives such fluctuating impressions of the same
object as sight does. With no sense are we so apt to treat
the sensations immediately given as mere signs ; with none
is the invocation from memory of a thing, and the conse
quent perception of the latter, so immediate. The thing
which we perceive always resembles, as we have seen, the
object of some absent sensation, usually another optical
figure which in our mind has come to be the standard of
reality ; and it is this incessant reduction of our optical
objects to more real forms which has led some authors
into the mistake of thinking that the sensations which
first apprehend them are originaUy and natively of no
form at alLf
Of accidental and occasional illusions of sight many
amusing examples might be given. Two will suffice. One
is a reminiscence of my own. I was lying in my berth m
a steamer listening to the sailors holystone the deck out
side ; when, on turning my eyes to the window, I perceived
with perfect distinctness that the chief-engineer of the ves
sel had entered my state-room, and was standing looking
through the window at the men at work upon the guards.
Surprised at his intrusion, and also at his intentness and
* Examen Critique de la Loi Psychophysique (1883), p. 81.
f Compare A. W Volkmann s essay Ueber Ursprilngliches und Erwor-
benes in den Raumanschauungen, on p. 139 of his Untersuchungen im
Oebiete der Optik ; and Chapter xm of Hering s contribution t
mann s Handbuch der Physiologic, vol. m.
102 PSYCHOLOGY.
immobility, I remained watching him and wondering how
long he would stand thus. At last I spoke ; but getting no
reply, sat up in my berth, and then saw that what I had
taken for the engineer was my own cap and coat hanging
on a peg beside the window. The illusion was complete ;
the engineer was a peculiar-looking man ; and I saw him
unmistakably ; but after the illusion had vanished 1 found
it hard voluntarily to make the cap and coat look like him
at all.
The following story, which I owe to my friend Prof.
Hyatt, is of a probably not uncommon class :
" During the winter of 1858, while in Venice, I had tfoe somewhat
peculiar illusion which you request me to relate. I remember the cir
cumstances very accurately because I have often repeated the story,
and have made an effort to keep all the attendant circumstances clear
of exaggeration. I was travelling with my mother, and we had taken
rooms at a hotel which had been located in an old palace. The room
in which I went to bed was large and lofty. The moon was shining
brightly, and I remember standing before a draped window, thinking
of the romantic nature of the surroundings, remnants of old stories of
knights and ladies, and the possibility that even in that room itself
love-scenes and sanguinary tragedies might have taken place. The
night was so lovely that many of the people were strolling through the
narrow lanes or so-called streets, singing as they went, and I laid awake
for some time listening to these patrols of serenaders, and of course
finally fell asleep. I became aware that some one was leaning over me
closely, and that my own breathing was being interfered with; a decided
feeling of an unwelcome presence of some sort awakened me. As I
opened my eyes I saw, as distinctly as I ever saw any living person, a
draped head about a foot or eighteen inches to the right, and just above
my bed. The horror which took possession of my young fancy was
beyond anything 1 have ever experienced. The head was covered by a
long black veil which floated out into the moonlight, the face itself was
pale and beautiful, and the lower part swathed in the white band com
monly worn by the nuns of Catholic orders. My hair seemed to rise
up, and a profuse perspiration attested the genuineness of the terror
which I felt. For a time I lay in this way, and then gradually gaining
more command over my superstitious terrors, concluded to try to grap
ple with the apparition. It remained perfectly distinct until I reached
at it sharply with my hand, and then disappeared, to return again,
however, as soon as I sank back into the pillow. The second or third
grasp which I made at the head was not followed by a reappearance,
and I then saw that the ghost was not a real presence, but depended
upon the position of my head. If I moved my eyes either to the left or
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 103
right of the original position occupied by my head when I awakened, the
ghost disappeared, and by returning to about the same position, I could
make it reappear with nearly the same intensity as at first. I presently
satisfied myself by these experiments that the illusion arose from the
effect of the imagination, aided by the actual figure made by a visual
section of the moonbeams shining through the lace curtains of the win
dow. If I had given way to the first terror of the situation and cov
ered up my head, I should probably have believed in the reality of the
apparition, since I have not by the slightest word, so far as I know, ex
aggerated the vividness of my feelings."
THE PHYSIOLOGICAL PROCESS IN PERCEPTION.
Enough has now been said to prove the general law of
perception, which is this, that whilst part of what we per
ceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another
part (and it may be the larger part) always comes (in Laza
rus s phrase) out of our own head.
At bottom this is only one case (and that the simplest
case) of the general fact that our nerve-centres are an organ
for reacting on sense-impressions, and that our hemispheres,
in particular, are given us in order that records of our private
past experience may co-operate in the reaction. Of course
such a general way of stating the fact is vague ; and all those
who follow the current theory of ideas will be prompt to
throw this vagueness at it as a reproach. Their way of de
scribing the process goes much more into detail. The sen
sation, they say, awakens images of other sensations asso
ciated with it in the past. These images fuse, or are com
bined by the Ego with the present sensation into a new
product, the percept, etc., etc. Something so indistinguish
able from this in practical outcome is what really occurs,
that one may seem fastidious in objecting to such a state
ment, specially if have no rival theory of the elementary
processes to propose. And yet, if this notion of images,
rising and flocking and fusing be mythological (and we have
all along so considered it), why should we entertain it unless
confessedly as a mere figure of speech? As such, of course,
it is convenient and welcome to pass. But if we try to put
an exact meaning into it, all we find is that the brain reacts
by paths which previous experiences have worn, and makes
us usually perceive the probable thing, i.e., the thing by
104 PSYCHOLOGY.
which on previous occasions the reaction was most frequent
ly aroused.
But we can, I think, without danger of being too
speculative, be a little more exact than this, and conceive
of a physiological reason why the felt quality of an object
changes when, instead of being apprehended in a mere sen
sation, the object is perceived as a thing. All consciousness
seems to depend on a certain slowness of the process in the
cortical cells. The rapider currents are, the less feeling
they seem to awaken. If a region A, then, be so connected
with another region B that every current which enters A
immediately drains off into B, we shall not be very strongly
conscious of the sort of object that A can make us feel.
If B, on the contrary, has no such copious channel of dis
charge, the excitement will linger there longer ere it diffuses
itself elsewhere, and our consciousness of the sort of ob
ject that B makes us feel will be strong. Carrying this to
an ideal maximum, we may say that if A offer no resistance
to the transmission forward of the current, and if the cur
rent terminate in B, then, no matter what causes may initiate
the current, we shall get no consciousness of the object-
peculiar to A, but on the contrary a vivid sensation of the
object peculiar to B. And this will be true though at other
times the connection between A and B might lie less open,
and every current then entering A might give us a strong con
sciousness of A s peculiar object. In other words, just in
proportion as associations are habitual, will the qualities of
the suggested thing tend to substitute themselves in con
sciousness for those of the thing immediately there; or,
more briefly, just in proportion as an experience is probable
will it tend to be directly felt. In all such experiences the
paths lie wide open from the cells first affected to those
concerned with the suggested ideas. A circular after-image
on the receding wall or ceiling is actually seen as an ellipse,
a square after-image of a cross there is seen as slant-legged,
etc., because only in the process correlated with the vision
of the latter figures do the inward currents find a pause
(see the next chapter).
We must remember this when, in dealing with the eye,
we come to point out the erroneousness of the principle laid
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 106
down * Beid and Helmholtz that true sensations can
never be changed by the suggestions of experience.
A certain illusion of which I have not yet spoken affords
an additional illustration of this. When we ivill to execute a
movement and the movement for some reason does not occur,
unless the sensation of the part s NOT moving is a strong one, ice
are apt to fed as if the movement had actually taken place.
This seems habitually to be the case in anaesthesia of the
moving parts. Close the patient s eyes, hold his anaesthetic
arm still, and tell him to raise his hand to his head ; and
when he opens his eyes he will be astonished to find that
the movement has not taken place. All reports of anaesthetic
cases seem to mention this illusion. Sternberg who wrote on
the subject in 1885,* lays it down as a law that the intention
to move is the same thing as the feeling of the motion. We
shall later see that this is i e alse (Chapter XXV) ; but it
certainly may suggest the feeling of the motion with hallu
cinatory intensity. Sternberg gives the following experi
ment, which I find succeeds with at least half of those who
try it : Eest your palm on the edge of the table with your
forefinger hanging over in a position of extreme flexion,
and then exert your will to flex it still more. The position
of the other fingers makes this impossible, and yet if we do
not look to see the finger, we think we feel it move. He
quotes from Exner a similar experiment with the jaws : Put
some hard rubber or other unindentable obstacle between
* In the Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research, pp.
253-4. I have tried to account for some of the variations in this conscious
ness. Out of 140 persons whom I found to feel their lost foot, some did so
dubiously. Either they only feel it occasionally, or only when it pains
them, or only when they try to move it; or they only feel it when they
think a good deal about it and make an effort to conjure it up. When
they grow inattentive, the feeling flies back or jumps back, to the
stump. Every degree of consciousness, from complete and permanent hal
lucination down to something hardly distinguishable from ordinary fancy,
seems represented in the sense of the missing extremity which these
patients say they have. Indeed I have seldom seen a more plausible lot of
evidence for the view that imagination and sensation are but differences of
vividness in an identical process than these confessions, taking them alto
gether, contain. Many patients say they can hardly tell whether they
feel or fancy the limb. "
106 PSYCHOLOGY.
your back teeth and bite hard : you think you ft v .xie jaw
move and the front teeth approach each other, though in
the nature of things no movement can occur. * The visu
al suggestion of the path traversed by the finger-tip as the
locus of the movement-feeling in the joint, which we dis
cussed on page 41, is another example of this semi-hallu
cinatory power of the suggested thing. Amputated people,
as we have learned, still feel their lost feet, etc. This is a
necessary consequence of the law of specific energies, for if
the central region correlated with the foot give rise to any
feeling at all it must give rise to the feeling of a foot.f But
the curious thing is that many of these patients can will the
foot to move, and when they have done so, distinctly feel the
movement to occur. They can, to use their own language,
* work or wiggle their lost toes. J
Now in all these various cases we are dealing with data
which in normal life are inseparably joined. Of all possi
ble experiences, it is hard to imagine any pair more uni
formly and incessantly coupled than the volition to move,
on the one hand, and the feeling of the changed position of
the parts, on the other. From the earliest ancestors of ours
which had feet, down to the present day, the movement of
the feet must always have accompanied the will to move
them ; and here, if anywhere, habit s consequences ought
to be found. J The process of the willing ought, then, to pour
into the process of feeling the command effected, and ought
to awaken that feeling in a maximal degree provided no
other positively contradictory sensation come in at the same
time. In most of us, when the will fails of its effect there
is a contradictory sensation. We discern a resistance or
the unchanged position of the limb. But neither in anaes
thesia nor in amputation can there be any contradictory
sensation in the foot to correct us ; so imagination has all
the + orce of fact.
* Pfliiger s Archiv, xxxvii. 1.
f Not all patients have this additional illusion.
} I ought to say that in almost all cases the volition is followed by
actual contraction of muscles in the *tumv.
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 10?
APPERCEPTION.
In Germany since Herbart s time Psychology has always
had a great deal to say about a process called Apperception*
The incoming ideas or sensations are said to be apper-
ceived by * masses of ideas already in the mind. It is plain
that the process we have been describing as perception is,
at this rate, an apperceptive process. So are all recogni
tion, classing, and naming ; and passing beyond these sim
plest suggestions, all farther thoughts about our percepts are
apperceptive processes as well. I have myself not used the
word apperception because it has carried very different mean-
ings in the history of philosophy,f and psychic reaction,
interpretation, conception, assimilation/ elaboration,
or simply * thought, are perfect synonyms for its Herbartian
meaning, widely taken. It is, moreover, hardly worth while
to pretend to analyze the so-called apperceptive perform-
ances beyond the first or perceptive stage, because their varia
tions and degrees are literally innumerable. Apperception *
is a name for the sum-total of the effects of what we have
studied as association ; and it is obvious that the things
which a given experience will suggest to a man depend on
what Mr. Lewes calls his entire psychostatical conditions,
bis nature and stock of ideas, or, in other words, his charac
ter, habits, memory, education, previous experience, and
momentary mood. We gain no insight into what reall 7 oc
curs either in the mind or in the brain by calling all these
things the apperceiving mass, though of course this may
upon occasion be convenient. On the whole I am inclined
to think Mr. Lewes s term of assimilation the most fruit
ful one yet used4
Professor H. Steinthal has analyzed apperceptive pro
cesses with a sort of detail which is simply burdensome.
* Cf. Herbart, Psychol als. Wissenschaft, 125.
f Compare the historical reviews by K. Lange : Ueber Apperception
(Plauen, 1879), pp. 12-14; by Staude in Wundt s Philosophische Studicn, i.
149; and by Marty in Vierteljsch. f. wiss. Phil., x. 347 ff.
t Problems, vol. I. p. 118 ff.
See his Einleitung in die Psychologic u. Sprachwissenschaft (188H
p. 166 ff.
108 PSYCHOLOGY.
His introduction of the matter may, however, be quoted,
He begins with an anecdote from a comic paper.
" In the compartment of a railway-carriage six persons unknown to
each other sit in lively conversation. It becomes a matter of regret that
one of the company must alight at the next station. One of the others
says that he of all things prefers such a meeting with entirely unknown
persons, and that on such occasions he is accustomed neither to ask who
or what his companions may be nor to tell who or what he is. Another
thereupon says that he will undertake to decide this question, if they
-each and all will answer him an entirely disconnected question. They
began. He drew five leaves from his note-book, wrote a question on
*each, and gave one to each of his companions with the request that he
write the answer below. When the leaves were returned to him, he
turned, after reading them, without hesitation to the others, and said to
the first, You are a man of science ; to the second, You are a so),
dier ; to the third, You are a philologer ; to the fourth, You are a
journalist ; to the fifth, You are a farmer. All admitted that he
was right, whereupon he got out arid left the five behind. Each
wished to know what question the others had received; and behold, he
had given the same question to each. It ran thus :
u * What being destroys what it has itself brought forth ?
"To this the naturalist had answered, vital force ; the soldier,
war ; the philologist, Kronos ; the publicist, revolution ; the
farmer, a boar . This anecdote, methinks, if not true, is at least
splendidly well invented. Its narrator makes the journalist go on to
say : * Therein consists the joke. Each one answers the first thing that
occurs to him,* and that is whatever is most newly related to his pur
suit in life. Every question is a hole-drilling experiment, and the an
swer is an opening through which one sees into our interiors. ... So
do we all. We are all able to recognize the clergyman, the soldier, the
scholar, the business man, not only by the cut of their garments and
the attitude of their body, but by what they say and how they express
it. We guess the place in life of men by the interest which they show
and the way in which they show it, by the objects of which they speak,
by the point of view from which they regard things, judge them, conceive
them, in short by their mode of apperceiving. . . .
I Every man has one group of ideas which relate to his own person
and interests, and another which is connected with society. Each has
his group of ideas about plants, religion, law, art, etc., and more
especially about the rose, epic poetry, sermons free trade, and the like.
Thus the mental content of every individual, even of the uneducated
* One of my colleagues, asking himself the question after reading the
anecdote, tells me that he replied * Harvard College, the faculty of that body
having voted, a few days previously, to keep back the degrees of memben
of the graduating class who might be disorderly on class-day night. W. J.
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 109
and of children, consists of masses or circles of knowledge of which,
each lies within some larger circle, alongside of others similarly in
cluded, and of which each includes smaller circles within itself. . . .
The perception of a thing like a horse ... is a process between the
present horse s picture before our eyes, on the one hand, and those fused
or interwoven pictures and ideas of all the horses we have ever seen, on
the other; ... a process between two factors or momenta, of which
one existed before the process and was an old possession of the mind
(the group of ideas, or concept, namely), whilst the other is but just
presented to the mind, and is the immediately supervening factor (the
sense-impression). The former apperceives the latter; the latter is
apperceived by the former. Out of their combination an apperception-
product arises: the knowledge of the perceived being as a horse. The
earlier factor is relatively to the later one active and a priori ; the super
vening factor is given, a posteriori, passive. ... We may then define
Apperception as the movement of two masses of consciousness (Vorstel-
lungsmassen) against each other so as to produce a cognition.
4k The a priori factor we called active, the a posteriori factor passive,
but this is only relatively true. . . . Although the a priori rc iment
commonly shows itself to be the more powerful, apperception- processes
can perfectly well occur in which the new observation transforms or en
riches the apperceiving group of ideas. A child who hitherto has seen
none but four-cornered tables apperceives a round one as a table; but
by this the apperceiving mass ( table ) is enriched. To his previous
knowledge of tables comes this new feature that they need not be four-
cornered, but may be round. In the history of science it has happened
often enough that some discovery, at the same time that it was apper
ceived, i.e. brought into connection with the system of our knowledge,
transformed the whole system. In principle, however, we must maintain
that, although either factor is both active and passive, the a priori factor
is almost always the more active of the two." *
This account of Steinthal s brings out very clearly the
difference between our psychological conceptions and ivliat are^
called concepts in logic. In logic a concept is unalterable ; but
what are popularly called our ( conceptions of things alter
by being used. The aim of Science is to attain concep
tions so adequate and exact that we shall never need to
change them. There is an everlasting struggle in every
mind between the tendency to keep unchanged, and the
tendency to renovate, its ideas. Our education is a cease
less compromise between the conservative and the pro
gressive factors. Every new experience must be disposed
* Op. cit. pp. 166-171.
110 PSYCHOLOGY.
of under some old head. The great point is to find the head
which has to be least altered to take it in. Certain Polyne
sian natives, seeing horses for the first time, called them
pigs, that being the nearest head. My child of two played
for a week with the first orange that was given him, calling
it a ball. He called the first whole eggs he saw potatoes,
having been accustomed to see his eggs broken into a
glass, and his potatoes without the skin. A folding pocket-
corkscrew he unhesitatingly called bad-scissors. Hardly
any one of us can make new heads easily when fresh expe
riences come. Most of us grow more and more enslaved to
the stock conceptions with which we have once become
familiar, and less and less capable of assimilating impres
sions in any but the old ways. Old-fogyism, in short, is the
inevitable terminus to which life sweeps us on. Objects
which violate our established habits of apperception are
simply not taken account of at all ; or, if on some occasion
we are forced by dint of argument to admit their existence,
twenty-four hours later the admission is as if it were not,
and every trace of the unassimilable truth has vanished
from our thought. Genius, in truth, means little more than
the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
On the other hand, nothing is more congenial, from
babyhood to the end of life, than to be able to assimilate
the new to the old, to meet each threatening violator or
burster of our well-known series of concepts, as it comes
in, see through its unwontedness, and ticket it off as an old
friend in disguise. This victorious assimilation of the new
is in fact the type of all intellectual pleasure. The lust for
it is curiosity. The relation of the new to the old, before
the assimilation is performed, is wonder. We feel neither
curiosity nor wonder concerning things so far beyond us
that we have no concepts to refer them to or standards by
which to measure them.* The Fuegians, in Darwin s voy-
* The great maxim in pedagogy is to knit every new piece of knowl
edge on to a pre-existing curiosity i.e., to assimilate its matter in some
way to what is already known. Hence the advantage of " comparing all
that is far off and foreign to something that is near home, of making the
unknown plain by the example of the known, and of connecting all the
instruction with the personal experience of the pupil. ... If the teacher is
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. Ill
age. wondered at the small boats, but took the big ship as
a matter of course. Only what we partly know already
inspires us with a desire to know more. The more elabo
rate textile fabrics, the vaster works in metal, to most of
us are like the air, the water, and the ground, absolute ex
istences which awaken no ideas. It is a matter of course
that an engraving or a copper-plate inscription should pos
sess that degree of beauty. But if we are shown a pen-
drawing of equal perfection, our personal sympathy with
the difficulty of the task makes us immediately wonder at
the skill. The old lady admiring the Academician s picture,
says to him : " And is it really all done by hand ?"
IS PEBCEPTION UNCONSCIOUS INPEKENCE ?
A widely-spread opinion (which has been held by such
men as Schopenhauer, Spencer, Hartmann, Wundt, Helm-
holtz, and lately interestingly pleaded for by M. Binet *)
will have it that perception should be called a sort of reasoning
operation, more or less unconsciously and automatically per
formed. The question seems at first a verbal one, depend
ing on how broadly the term reasoning is to be taken. If,
every time a present sign suggests an absent reality to our
mind, we make an inference ; and if every time we make an
inference we reason ; then perception is indubitably reason
ing. Only one sees no room in it for any unconscious part.
Both associates, the present sign and the contiguous things
which it suggests, are above-board, and no intermediary
to explain the distance of the sun from the earth, let him ask ... If any
one there in the sun fired off a cannon straight at you, what should you
do ? Get out of the way would be the answer. No need of that,
the toacher might reply. You may quietly go to sleep in your room,
and get up again, you may wait till your confirmation-day, you may learn
a trade, and grow as old as I am, then only will the cannon-ball be get
ting near, then you may jump to one side! See, so great as that is the sun s
distance! " (K. Lange, Ueber Apperception, 1879, p. 76 a charming
though prolix little work.)
* A. Schopenhauer, Sat/, vom Grunde, chap. iv. H. Spencer. Psychol.,
part VT. chaps, ix, x. E. v. Hartmann, Phil, of the Unconscious (B),
chaps, vii, vin. W. Wundt, Beitrage, pp. 422 If.; Vorlesuugen, iv, xiu.
H. Helmholtz, Physiol Optik, pp. 430, 447. A. Binet, Psychol. du Rai-
sonnemeut, chaps, in, v. Wundt and Helmholtz have more recently
4 recanted. See above, vol i. p. 169 note.
PSYCHOLOGY.
ideas are required. Most of those who have upheld the
thesis in question have, however, made a more complex
supposition. What they have meant is that perception is
a mediate inference, and that the middle term is unconscious.
When the sensation which I have called * this (p. 83, supra)
is felt, they think that some process like the following runs
through the mind :
This is M ;
but M is A ;
therefore this is A.*
Now there seem no good grounds for supposing this
additional wheelwork in the mind. The classification of
this as M is itself an act of perception, and should, if all
perception were inference, require a still earlier syllogism for
its performance, and so backwards in infinitum. The only
extrication from this coil would be to represent the process
in altered guise, thus :
This is like those;
Those are A ;
Therefore this is A.
The major premise here involves no association by conti
guity, no naming of those as M, but only a suggestion of
unnamed similar images, a recall of analogous past sensa
tions with which the characters that make up A were habit
ually conjoined. But hers again, what grounds of fact are
there for admitting this recall ? We are quite unconscious
of any such images of the past. And the conception of all
the forms of association as resultants of the elementary fact
of habit-worn paths in the brain makes such images entirely
superfluous for explaining the phenomena in point. Since
the brain-process of this, the sign of A, has repeatedly
been aroused in company with the process of the full object
A, direct paths of irradiation from the one to the other must
be already established. And although roundabout paths
may also be possible, as from this to those, and then
* When not all M, but only some M, is A, when, in other words, M is
undistributed the conclusion is liable to error. Illusions would thus be
logical fallacies, if true perceptions were valid syllogisms. They would
draw false conclusions from undistributed middle terms.
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 113
from those to * A (paths which would lead to practically
the same conclusion as the straighter ones), yet there is no
ground whatever for assuming them to be traversed now,
especially since appearances point the other way. In
explicit reasoning, such paths are doubtless traversed , in
perception they are in all probability closed. So far, then,
from perception being a species of reasoning properly so
called, both it and reasoning are co-ordinate varieties of that
deeper sort of process known psychologically as the asso
ciation of ideas, and physiologically as the law of habit in
the brain. To call perception unconscious reasoning is thus
either a useless metaphor, or a positively misleading confusion
between two different things.
One more point and we may leave the subject of Per
ception. Sir Wm. Hamilton thought thai he had discovered a
1 great law which had been wholly overlooked by psycholo
gists, and which, simple and universal, is this: " Knowl
edge and Feeling, Perception and Sensation, though al
ways coexistent, are always in the inverse ratio of each
other." Hamilton wrote as if perception and sensation
were two coexistent elements entering into a single state
of consciousness. Spencer refines upon him by contending
that they are two mutually exclusive states of conscious-,
ness, not two elements of a single state. If sensation be
taken, as both Hamilton and Spencer mainly take it in this
discussion, to mean the feeling of pleasure or pain, there is
no doubt that the law, however expressed, is true ; and that
the mind which is strongly conscious of the pleasantness or
painfulness of an experience is ipso facto less fitted to
observe and analyze its outward cause. * Apart from pleas
ure and pain, however, the law seems but a corollary of the
fact that the more concentrated a state of consciousness is,
the more vivid it is. When feeling a color, or listening to
a tone per se, we get it more intensely, notice it better, than
when we are aware of it merely as one among many other
properties of a total object. The more diffused cerebral
excitement of the perceptive state is probably incompatible
* See Spencer, Psychol., n. p. 250, note, for a physiological hypothesis
to account for this fact.
114 PSYCHOLOGY.
with quite as strong an excitement of separate parts as
the sensational state comports. So we come back here to
our own earlier discrimination between the perceptive and
the sensational processes, and to the examples which we
gave on pp. 80, 81.*
HALLUCINATIONS.
Between normal perception and illusion we have seen
that there is no break, the process being identically the same
in both. The last illusions we considered might fairly be
called hallucinations. We must now consider the false
perceptions more commonly called by that name.f In or-
* Here is another good example, taken from Helmholtz s Optics, p. 435:
"The sight of a man walking is a familiar spectacle to us. We perceive
it as a connected whole, and at most notice the most striking of its pecu
liarities. Strong attention is required, and a special choice of the point of
view, in order to feel the perpendicular and lateral oscillations of such a
walking figure. We must choose fitting points or lines in the background
with which to compare the positions of its head. But if a distant walking
man be looked at through an astronomical telescope (which inverts the
object), what a singular hopping and rocking appearance he presents ! No
difficulty now in seeing the body s oscillations, and many other details of
the gait. . . . But, on the other hand, its total character, whether light or
clumsy, dignified or graceful, is harder to perceive than in the upright po
sition."
f Illusions and hallucinations must both be distinguished from delusions.
A delusion is a false opinion about a matter of fact, which need not neces
sarily involve, though it often does involve, false perceptions of sensible
things. We may, for example, have religious delusions, medical delusions,
delusions about our own importance, about other peoples characters, etc.,
ad libitum. The delusions of the insane are apt to affect certain typical
forms, often very hard to explain. But in many cases they are certainly
theories which the patients invent to account for their abnormal bodily
sensations. In other cases they are due to hallucinations of hearing and of
sight. Dr. Clouston (Clinical Lectures on Mental Disease, lecture in ad
fin.} gives the following special delusions as having been found in about
a hundred melancholy female patients who were afflicted in this way.
There were delusions of
general persecution; being destitute;
general suspicion; being followed by the police;
being poisoned; being very wicked;
being killed; impending death;
being conspired against; impending calamity;
being defrauded; the soul being lost;
being preached against in church; having no stomach;
being pregnant; having no inside;
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 115
dinar y parlance hallucination is held to differ from illusion in
that, whilst there is an object really there in illusion, inhattu**
cination there is no objective stimulus at all. We shall presently
see that this supposed absence of objective stimulus in hal
lucination is a mistake, and that hallucinations are often
only extremes of the perception process, in which the secon
dary cerebral reaction is out of all normal proportion to the
peripheral stimulus which occasions the activity. Hallu
cinations usually appear abruptly and have the character of
being forced upon the subject. But they possess various
degrees of apparent objectivity. One mistake in limine must
be guarded against. They are often talked of as mental
images projected outwards by mistake. But where an hallu
cination is complete, it is much more than a mental image.
An hallucination is a strictly sensational form of consciousness,
as good and true a sensation as if there were a real object there.
The object happens not to be there, that is all.
The milder degrees of hallucination have been desig
nated as pseudo-hallucinations. Pseudo-hallucinations and
hallucinations have been sharply distinguished from each
having a bone in the throat; having neither stomach nor brains;
having lost much money; being covered with vermin;
being unfit to live; letters being written about her;
that she will not recover; property being stolen;
that she is to be murdered; her children being killed;
that she is to be boiled alive; having committed theft;
that she is to be starved; the legs being made of glass;
that the flesh is boiling; having horns on the head;
that the head is severed from the being chloroformed;
bod y; having committed murder;
that children are burning; fear of being hanged ;
that murders take place around; being called names by persons;
that it is wrong to take food; being acted on by spirits-
being in hell; being a man;
being tempted of the devil; the body being transformed;
being possessed of the devil; insects coming from the body
having committed an unpwdoo- rape being practised on her;
able sin; having a venereal disease;
unseen agencies working, being a fish;
her own identity; being dead;
being on fire; having committed suicide of the ami*
116 PSYCHOLOGY.
other only within a few years. Dr. Kandinsky writes of
their difference as follows :
- l In carelessly questioning a patient we may confound his pseudo-
hallucinatory perceptions with hallucinations. But to the unconfused
consciousness of the patient himself, even though he be imbecile, the
identification of the two phenomena is impossible, at least in the sphere
of vision. At the moment of having a pseudo-hallucination of sight
the patient feels himself in an entirely different relation to this subjec
tive sensible appearance, from that in which he finds himself whilst
subject to a true visual hallucination. The latter is reality itself ; the
former, on the contrary, remains always a subjective phenomenon
which the individual commonly regards either as sent to him as a sign
of God s grace, or as artificially induced by his secret persecutors . . .
If he knows by his own experience what a genuine hallucination is, it is
quite impossible for him to mistake the pseudo-hallucination for it. ...
A concrete example will make the difference clear :
"Dr. N. L. . . . heard one day suddenly amongst the voices of his
persecutors ( coming from a hollow space in the midst of the wall ) a
rather loud voice impressively saying to him : Change your national
allegiance. Understanding this to mean that his only hope consisted
in ceasing to be subject to the Czar of Eussia, he reflected a moment
what allegiance would be better, and resolved to become an English sub
ject. At the same moment he saw a pseudo-hallucinatory lion of
natural size, which appeared and quickly laid its fore-paws on his
shoulders. He had a lively feeling of these paws as a tolerably painful
local pressure (complete hallucination of touch). Then the same voice
from the wall said : Now you have a lion now you will rule, where
upon the patient recollected that the lion was the national emblem of
England. The lion appeared to L. very distinct and vivid, but he never
theless remained conscious, as he afterwards expressed it, that he saw the
animal, not with his bodily but with his mental eyes. (After his re
covery he called analogous apparitions by the name of expressive-plastic
ideas. ) Accordingly he felt no terror, even though he felt the contact of
the claws. . . . Had the lion been a complete hallucination, the patient,
as he himself remarked after recovery, would have felt great fear, and
very likely screamed or taken to flight. Had it been a simple image of
the fancy he would not have connected it with the voices, of whose ob
jective reality he was at the time quite convinced." *
From ordinary images of memory and fancy, pseudo-
hallucinations differ in being much more vivid, minute, de-
* V. Kandinsky : Kritische u. Klinische Betrachtungen im Gebiete d.
Sinnestauschungen (1885), p. 42.
THE PERCEPTION ^V THINGS. 117
tailed, steady, abrupt, and spontaneous, in the sense that
all feeling of our own activity in producing them is lacking.
Dr. Kandinsky had a patient who, after taking opium or
liaschisch, had abundant pseudo-hallucinations and hallu
cinations. As he also had strong visualizing power and
was an educated physician, the three sorts of phenomena
could be easily compared. Although projected outwards
(usually not farther than the limit of distinctest vision, a
foot or so) the pseudo-hallucinations lacked the character of
objective reality which the hallucinations possessed, but,
unlike the pictures of imagination, it was almost impossible
to produce them at will. Most of the voices which people
hear (whether they give rise to delusions or not) are pseudo-
hallucinations. They are described as inner voices, al
though their character is entirely unlike the inner speech
of the subject with himself. I know two persons who hear
such inner voices making unforeseen remarks whenever they
grow quiet and listen for them. They are a very common
incident of delusional insanity, and at last grow into vivid
hallucinations. The latter are comparatively frequent oc
currences in sporadic form ; and certain individuals are
liable to have them often. From the results of the Census
of Hallucinations, which was begun by Edmund Gurney, it
would appear that, roughly speaking, one person at least
in every ten is likely to have had a vivid hallucination at
some time in his life.* The following cases from healthy
people will give an idea of what these hallucinations are :
4 When a girl of eighteen, I was one evening engaged in a very
painful discussion with an elderly person. My distress was so great
that I took up a thick ivory knitting-needle that was lying on the man
telpiece of the parlor and broke it into small pieces as I talked. In the
midst of the discussion T was very wishful to know the opinion of a
brother with whom I had an unusually close relationship. I turned
round and saw him sitting at the further side of a centre- table, with his
arms folded (an unusual position with him), but, to my dismay, I per-
* See Proceedings of Soc. for Psych. Research, Dec. 1889, pp. 7, 183.
The International Congress for Experimental Psychology has now charge
of the Census, and the present writer is its agent for America,
118 F.8 V 3HOLOG7.
ceired from the sarcastic expression of his mouth that he was not in
sympathy with me, was not taking my side, as I should then have
expressed it. The surprise cooled me, and the discussion was dropped.
"Some minutes after, having occasion to speak to my brother, I
turned towards him, but he was gone. I inquired when he left the
room, and was told that he had not been in it, which I did not believe,
thinking that he had come in for a minute and had gone out without
being noticed. About an hour and a half afterwards he appeared, and
convinced me, with some trouble, that he had never been near the
house that evening. He is still alive and well."
Here is another case :
One night in March 1873 or 74, I cannot recollect which year,
I was attending on the sick-bed of my mother. About eight o clock in
the evening I went into the dining room to fix a cup of tea, and on turn
ing from the sideboard to the table, on the other side of the table before
the fire, which was burning brightly, as was also the gas, I saw standing
with his hand clasped to his side in true military fashion a soldier of
about thirty years of age, with dark, piercing eyes looking directly into
mine. He wore a small cap with standing feather ; his costume was
also of a soldierly style. He did not strike me as being a spirit, ghost,
or anything uncanny, only a living man ; but after gazing for fully a
minute I realized that it was nothing of earth, for he neither moved
his eyes nor his body, and in looking closely I could see the fire beyond.
I was of course startled, and yet did not run out of the room. I felt
stunned. I walked out rapidly, however, and turning to the servant
in the hall asked her if she saw anything. She said not. I went into
my mother s room and remained talking for about an hour, but never
mentioned the above subject for fear of exciting her, and finally forgot
it altogether, returning to the dining-room, still in forgetfulness of
what had occurred, but repeating, as above, the turning from sideboard
to table in act of preparing more tea. I looked casually towards the
fire, and there I saw the soldier again. This time I was entirely alarmed,
and fled from the room in haste. I called to my father, but when he
came he saw nothing."
Sometimes more than one sense is affected. The fol
lowing is a case :
" In response to your request to write out my experience of Oct. 30,
1886, I will inflict on you a letter.
" On the day above mentioned, Oct. 30, 1886, I was in ,
where I was teaching. I had performed my regular routine work for
the day, and was sitting in my room working out trigonometrical for-
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 119
mulae. I was expecting every day to hear of the confinement of my wife,
and naturally my thoughts for some time had been more or less with
her. She was, by the way, in B , some fifty miles from me.
" At the time, however, neither she nor the expected event was in my
mind ; as I said, I was working out trigonometrical formula), and I had
been working on trigonometry the entire evening. About eleven
o clock, as I sat there buried in sines, cosines, tangents, cotangents,
secants, and cosecants, I felt very distinctly upon my left shoulder a
touch, and a slight shake, as if somebody had tried to attract my at
tention by other means and had failed. Without rising I turned my
head, and there between me and the door stood my wife, dressed exactly
as I last saw her, some five weeks before. As I turned she said : It
is a little Herman ; he has come. 1 Something more was said, but this
is the only sentence 1 can recall. To make sure that I was not asleep
and dreaming, I rose from the chair, pinched myself and walked toward
the figure, which disappeared immediately as I rose. I can give no in
formation as to the length of time occupied by this episode, but I know
I was awake, in my usual good health. The touch was very distinct,
the figure was absolutely perfect, stood about three feet from the door,
which was closed, and had not been opened during the evening. The
sound of the voice was unmistakable, and I should have recognized it as
my wife s voice even if I had not turned and had not seen the figure
at all. The tone was conversational, just as if she would have said
the same words had she been actually standing there.
" In regard to myself, I would say, as I have already intimated, I was
in my usual good health ; I had not been sick before, nor was I after
the occurrence, not so much as a headache having afflicted me.
" Shortly after the experience above described, I retired for the night
and, as I usually do, slept quietly until morning. T did not speculate
particularly about the strange appearance of the night before, and
though I thought of it some, I did not tell anybody. The following
morning I rose, not conscious of having dreamed anything, but I was
very firmly impressed with the idea that there was something for me at
the telegraph-office. I tried to throw off the impression, for so far as I
knew there was no reason for it. Having nothing to do, I went out for
a walk ; and to help throw off the impression above noted, I walked
away from the telegraph-office. As T proceeded, however, the impres
sion became a conviction, and I actually turned about and went to the
very place I had resolved not to visit, the telegraph -office. The first
person I saw on arriving at said office was the telegraph -operator, who
being on terms of intimacy with me, remarked : Hello, papa, I ve got
a telegram for you. The telegram announced the birth of a boy,
weighing nine pounds, and that all were doing well. Now, then, I have
no theory at all about the events narrated above ; I never had any such
experience before nor since ; I am no believer in spiritualism, am not in
the least superstitious, know very little about * thought-transference,
120 PSYCHOLOGY.
1 unconscious cerebration, etc., etc., but I am absolutely certain about
what I have tried to relate.
" In regard to the remark which I heard, It is a little Herman, etc.,
I would add that we had previously decided to call the child, if a boy,
Herman my own name, by the way."*
The hallucination sometimes carries a change of the
general consciousness with it, so as to appear more like a
sudden lapse into a dream. The following case was given
me by a man of 43, who had never anything resembling it
before :
" While sitting at my desk this A. M. reading a circular of the Loyal
Legion a very curious thing happened to me, such as I have never ex
perienced. It was perfectly real, so real that it took some minutes to
recover from. It seems to me like a direct intromission into some other
world. I never had anything approaching it before save when dream
ing at night. I was wide awake, of course. But this was the feeling. I
had only just sat down and become interested in the circular, when I
seemed to lose myself for a minute and then found myself in the top
story of a high building very white and shining and clean, with a
noble window immediately at the right of where I sat. Through this
window I looked out upon a marvellous reach of landscape entirely new.
I never had before such a sense of infinity in nature, such superb
stretches of light and color and cleanness. I know that for the space
of three minutes I was entirely lost, for when I began to come to, so to
speak, sitting in that other world, I debated for three or four minutes
more as to which was dream and which was reality. Sitting there I got
a faint sense of C ... [the town in which the writer was], away off
and dim at first. Then I remember thinking Why, I used to live in
C. . . . ; perhaps I am going back. Slowly C. . . . did come back, and
I found myself at my desk again. For a few minutes the process of
determining where I was was very funny. But the whole experience
was perfectly delightful, there was such a sense of brilliancy and
clearness and lightness about it. I suppose it lasted in all about seven
minutes or ten minutes."
The hallucinations of fever-delirium are a mixture of
pseudo-hallucination, true hallucination, and illusion.
Those of opium, hasheesh, and belladonna resemble them
* This case is of the class which Mr. Myers terms veridical. In a
subsequent letter the writer informs me that his vision occurred some flv*
hours before the child was born.
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 121
in this respect. The following vivid account of a fit of
hasheesh-delirium has been given me by a friend :
" I was reading a newspaper, and the indication of the approaching
delirium was an inability to keep my mind fixed on the narrative. Di
rectly I lay down upon a sofa there appeared before my eyes several
rows of human hands, which oscillated for a moment, revolved and then
changed to spoons. The same motions were repeated, the objects chang
ing to wheels, tin soldiers, lamp-posts, brooms, and countless other
absurdities. This stage lasted about ten minutes, and during that
time it is safe to say that I saw at least a thousand different objects.
These whirling images did not appear like the realities of life, but had
the character of the secondary images seen in the eye after looking at
some brightly-illuminated object. A mere suggestion from the person
who was with me in the room was sufficient to call up an image of the
thing suggested, while without suggestion there appeared all the com
mon objects of life and many unreal monstrosities, which it is abso
lutely impossible to describe, and which seemed to be creations of the
brain.
" The character of the symptoms changed rapidly. A sort of wave
seemed to pass over me, and I became aware of the fact that my pulse
was beating rapidly. I took out my watch, and by exercising consider
able will-power managed to time the heart-beats, 135 to the minute.
" I could feel each pulsation through my whole system, and a curi
ous twitching commenced, which no effort of the mind could stop.
" There were moments of apparent lucidity, when it seemed as if I
could see within myself, and watch the pumping of my heart. A
strange fear came over me, a certainty that I should never recover from
the effects of the opiate, which was as quickly followed by a feeling of
great interest in the experiment, a certainty that the experience was
the most novel and exciting that I had ever been through.
My mind was in an exceedingly impressionable state. Any place
thought of or suggested appeared with all the distinctness of the reality.
I thought of the Giant s Causeway in Staffa, and instantly I stood
within the portals of Fingal s Cave. Great basaltic columns rose on all
sides*- while huge waves rolled through the chasm and broke in silence
upon the rocky shore. Suddenly there was a roar and blast of sound,
and the word 4 Ishmaral was echoing up the cave. At the enunciation
of this remarkable word the great columns of basalt changed into whirl
ing clothes pins and I laughed aloud at the absurdity.
" (I may here state that the word Ishmaral seemed to haunt my
other hallucinations, for I remember that I heard it frequently there
after.) I next enjoyed a sort of metempsychosis. Any animal or
thing that I thought of could be made the being which held my mind.
I thought of a fox, and instantly I was transformed into that animal. I
could distinctly feel myself a fox, could see my long ears and bushy
122 PSYCHOLOGY.
tail, and by a sort of introvision felt that my complete anatomy was
that of a fox. Suddenly the point of vision changed. My eyes seemed
to be located at the back of my mouth ; I looked out between the parted
lips, saw the two rows of pointed teeth, and, closing my mouth with a
snap, saw nothing.
" I was next transformed into a bombshell, felt my size, weight, and
thickness, and experienced the sensation of being shot up out of a giant
mortar, looking down upon the earth, bursting and falling back in a
shower of iron fragments.
** Into countless other objects was I transformed, many of them so
absurd that I am unable to conceive what suggested them. For ex
ample, I was a little china doll, deep down in a bottle of olive oil, next
moment a stick of twisted candy, then a skeleton inclosed in a whirl
ing coffin, and so on ad infinitum.
" Towards the end of the delirium the whirling images appeared
again, and I was haunted by a singular creation of the brain, which re
appeared every few moments. It was an image of a double-faced doll,
with a cylindrical body running down to a point like a peg-top.
" It was always the same, having a sort of crown on its head, and
painted in two colors, green and brown, on a background of blue. The
expression of the Janus-like profiles was always the same, as were the
adornments of the body. After recovering from the effects of the
drug I could not picture to myself exactly how this singular monstros
ity appeared, but in subsequent experiences I was always visited by
this phantom, and always recognized every detail of its composition.
It was like visiting some long-forgotten spot and seeing some sight that
had faded from the memory, but which appeared perfectly familiar as
soon as looked upon.
" The effects of the drug lasted about an hour and a half, leaving
me a trifle tipsy and dizzy ; but after a ten-hour sleep I was myself
again, save for a slight inability to keep my mind fixed on any piece of
work for any length of time, which remained with me during most of
the next day."
THE NEUBAL PBOCESS IN HALLUCINATION.
Examples of these singular perversions of perception
might be multiplied indefinitely, but I have no more space.
Let us turn to the question of what the physiological pro
cess may be to which they are due. It must, of course,
consist of an excitement from within of those centres which
are active in normal perception, identical in kind and de
gree with that which real external objects are usually
needed to induce. The particular process which cur-
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS.
rents from the sense-organs arouse would seem under
normal circumstances to be arousable in no other way. On
p. 72 ff. above, we saw that the centres aroused by incom
ing peripheral currents are probably identical with the
centres used in mere imagination ; and that the vividness
of the sensational kind of consciousness is probably cor
related with a discrete degree of intensity in the process
therein aroused. Keferring the reader back to that pas
sage and to what was more lately said on p. 103 ff., I now
proceed to complete my theory of the perceptive process
by an analysis of what may most probably be believed to
take place in hallucination strictly so called.
We have seen (p. 75) that the free discharge of cells
into each other through associative paths is a likely reason
why the maximum intensity of function is not reached
when the cells are excited by their neighbors in the cortex.
At the end of Chapter XXV we shall return to this concep
tion, and whilst making it still more precise, use it for ex
plaining certain phenomena connected with the will. The
idea is that the leakage forward along these paths is too
rapid for the inner tension in any centre to accumulate to
the maximal explosion-point, unless the exciting currents
are greater than those which the various portions of the
cortex supply to each other. Currents from the periphery
are (as it seems) the only currents whose energy can van
quish the supra-ideational resistance (so to call it) of the
cells, and cause the peculiarly intense sort of disintegra
tion with which the sensational quality is linked. If, how
ever, the leakage forward were to stop, the tension inside cer
tain cells might reach the explosion-point, even though the
influence which excited them came only from neighboring
cortical parts. Let an empty pail with a leak in its bottom,
tipped up against a support so that if it ever became full
of water it would upset, represent the resting condition of
the centre for a certain sort of feeling. Let water poured
into it stand for the currents which are its natural stimulus ;
then the hole in its bottom will, of course, represent the
paths by which it transmits its excitement to other asso
ciated cells. Now let two other vessels have the function
124 PSYCHOLOGY.
of supplying it with water. One of these vessels stands
for the neighboring cortical cells, and can pour in hardly
any more water than goes out by the leak. The pail conse-
sequently never upsets in consequence of the supply from
this source. A current of water passes through it and does
work elsewhere, but in the pail itself nothing but what
stands for ideatio .ial activity is aroused. The other vessel,
however, stands for the peripheral sense-organs, and sup
plies a stream of water so copious that the pail promptly
fills up in spite of the leak, and presently upsets ; in other
words, sensational activity is aroused. But it is obvious that
if the leak were plugged, the slower stream of supply
would also end by upsetting the pail.
To apply this to the brain and to thought, if we take a
series of processes ABODE, associated together in that
order, and suppose that the current through them is very
fluent, there will be little intensity anywhere until, perhaps,
a pause occurs at E. But the moment the current is blocked
-anywhere, say between C and D, the process in C must
grow more intense, and might even be conceived to explode
so as to produce a sensation in the mind instead of an idea.
It would seem that some hallucinations are best to be
explained in this way. We have in fact a regular series of
facts which can all be formulated under the single law that the
substantive strength of a state of consciousness bears an inverse
proportion to its suggestiveness. It is the halting-places of
our thought which are occupied with distinct imagery.
Most of the words we utter have no time to awaken images
a t ^BL they simply awaken the following words. But when
th<3Btence st P s > an ima e Dwells for awhile before the
TRye (see Vol. I. p. 243). Again, whenever the asso-
- e processes are reduced and impeded by the approach
^ ^consciousness, as in falling asleep, or growing faint, or
becoming narcotized, we find a concomitant increase in the
intensity of whatever partial consciousness may survive. In
some people what M. Maury has called hypnagogic hal
lucinations * are the regular concomitant of the process of
* Le Sommeil et les R6ves (1865), chaps, in, iv.
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 125
falling asleep. Trains of faces, landscapes, etc., pass before
the mental eye, first as fancies, then as pseudo-hallucina
tions, finally as full-fledged hallucinations forming dreams.
If we regard association-paths as paths of drainage, then the
shutting off of one after another of them as the encroaching
cerebral paralysis advances ought to act like the plugging
GA the hole in the bottom of the pail, and make the activity
more intense in those systems of cells that retain any
activity at all. The level rises because the currents are
not drained away, until at last the full sensational explosion
may occur.
The usual explanation of hypnagogic hallucinations is
that they are ideas deprived of their ordinary reductives. In
somnolescence, sensations being extinct, the mind, it is said,
then having no stronger things to compare its ideas with,
ascribes to these the fulness of reality. At ordinary times
the objects of our imagination are reduced to the status of
subjective facts by the ever-present contrast of our sensa
tions with them. Eliminate the sensations, however, this
view supposes, and the images are forthwith projected
into the outer world and appear as realities. Thus is the
illusion of dreams also explained. This, indeed, after a
fashion gives an account of the facts.* And yet it certainly
fails to explain the extraordinary vivacity and completeness
of so many of our dream-fantasms. The process of imagin
ing must (in these cases at least f) be not merely relatively,
but absolutely and in itself more intense than at other
times. The fact is, it is not a process of imagining, but a
genuine sensational process ; and the theory in quesfcp. is
therefore false as far as that point is concerned.
Dr. Hugblmgs Jackson s explanation of the tic
seizure is acknowledged to be masterly. It
ng, but i
uesjjftp i
it;
inv^Hei
This theory of incomplete rectification of the inner images by their
usual reductives is most brilliantly stated by M. Taine in his work on
Intelligence, book u. chap. i.
f Not, of course, in all cases, because the cells remaining active are them
selves on the way to be overpowered by the general (unknown) condition to
which sleep is due.
126 PSYCHOLOGY.
principles exactly like those which I am bringing forward
here. The loss of consciousness in epilepsy is due to the
most highly organized brain-processes being exhausted
and thrown out of gear. The less organized (more instinc
tive) processes, ordinarily inhibited by the others, are then
exalted, so that we get as a mere consequence of relief from
the inhibition, the meaningless or maniacal action which
so often follows the attack. *
Similarly the subsultus tendinorum or jerking of the
muscles which so often startles us when we are on the point
* For a full account of Jackson s theories, see his Croonian Lectures
published in the Brit. Med. Journ. for 1884. Of. also his remarks in the
Discussion of Dr. Mercier s paper on Inhibition in Brain, xi. 361.
The loss of vivacity in the images in the process of waking, as well as
the gain of it in falling asleep, are both well described by M. Taine, who
writes (on Intelligence, i. 50, 58) that often in the daytime, when fatigued
and seated in a chair, it is sufficient for him to close one eye with a hand
kerchief, when, " by degrees, the sight of the other eye becomes vague,
and it closes. All external sensations are gradually effaced, or cease, at all
events, to be remarked ; the internal images, on the other hand, feeble and
rapid during the state of complete wakefulness, become intense, distinct,
colored, steady, and lasting : there is a sort of ecstasy, accompanied by a
feeling of expansion and of comfort. Warned by frequent experience, I
know that sleep is coming on, and that I must not disturb the rising
vision ; I remain passive, and in a few minutes it is complete. Architecture,
landscapes, moving figures, pass slowly by, and sometimes remain, with
incomparable clearness of form and fulness of being ; sleep comes on, and
I know no more of the real world I am in. Many times, like M. Maury,
I have caused myself to be gently roused at different moments of this state,
and have thus been able to mark its characters. The intense image which
seems an external object is but a more forcible continuation of the feeble
image which an instant before I recognized as internal ; some scrap of a
forest, ^jke house, some person which I vaguely imagined on closing my
eyes, hUro a minute become present to me with full bodily details, so as to
change into a complete hallucination. Then, waking up on a hand touch
ing me, I feel the figure decay, lose color, and evaporate ; what had ap
peared a substance is reduced to a shadow. . . . In such a case, I have of ten
seen, for a passing moment, the image grow pale, waste away, and evapo
rate ; sometimes, on opening the eyes, a fragment of landscape or the skirt
of a dress appears still to float over the fire-irons or on the black hearth."
This persistence of dream-objects for a few moments after the eyes are
opened seems to be no extremely rare experience. Many cases of it have
been reported to me directly. Compare Mtiller s Physiology, Baly s tr.,
p 945.
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 127
of failing asleep, may be interpreted as due to the rise (in
certain lower motor centres) of the ordinary < tonic tension
to the explosion-point, when the inhibition commonly ex
erted by the higher centres falls too suddenly away.
One possible condition of hallucination then stands
revealed, whatever other conditions there may be. When
the normal paths of association between a centre and other centres
are thrown out of gear, any activity ivhich may exist in the
first centre tends to increase in intensity until finally the pwnt
may be reached at which the last inward resistance is overcome,
and the full sensational process explodes* Thus it will happen
that causes of an amount of activity in brain-cells which
would ordinarily result in a weak consciousness may pro
duce a very strong consciousness when the overflow of these
cells is stopped by the torpor of the rest of the brain. A
slight peripheral irritation, then, if it reaches the centres of
consciousness at all during sleep, will give rise to the dream
of a violent sensation. All the books about dreaming are
full of anecdotes which illustrate this. For example, M.
Maury s nose and lips are tickled with a feather while he
sleeps. He dreams he is being tortured by having a pitch-
plaster applied to his face, torn off, lacerating the skin of
nose and lips. Descartes, on being bitten by a flea, dreams
of being run through by a sword. A friend tells me, as I
write this, of his hair changing its position in his forehead
just as he dozed off in his chair a few days since. In
stantly he dreamed that some one had struck him a blow.
Examples can be quoted ad libitum, but these are enough, f
* I say the normal paths, because hallucinations are not incompatible
with some paths of association being left- Some hypnotic patients will
not only have hallucinations of objects suggested to them, but will amplify
them and act out the situation. But the paths here seem excessively nar
row, and the reflections which ought to make the hallucination incredible
dp not occur to the subject s miud. In general, the narrower a train of
ideas is, the vivider the consciousness is of each. Under ordinary cir
cumstances, the entire brain probably plays a part in draining any centre
which may be ideationally active. When the drainage is reduced in any
way it probably makes the active process more intense.
f M. A. Maury gives a number: op. cit. pp. 136-8.
PSYCHOLOGY.
We seem herewith to have an explanation for a certain
number of hallucinations. Whenever the normal fonvard
irradiation of intra-cortical excitement through association-paths
is checked, any accidental spontaneous activity or any peripheral
stimulation (hoiuever inadequate at other times) by which a brain-
centre may be visited, sets up a process of full sensational inten
sity therein.
In the hallucinations artificially produced in hypnotic
subjects, some degree of peripheral excitement seems usu
ally to be required. The brain is asleep as far as its own
spontaneous thinking goes, and the words of the magneti-
zer then awaken a cortical process which drafts off into
itself any currents of a related sort which may come in
from the periphery, resulting in a vivid objective percep
tion of the suggested thing. Thus, point to a dot on a
sheet of paper, and call it * General Grant s photograph,
and your subject will see a photograph of the General
there instead of the dot. The dot gives objectivity to the
appearance, and the suggested notion of the General gives
it form. Then magnify the dot by a lens ; double it by a
prism or by nudging the eyeball ; reflect it in a mirror ;,
turn it upside down ; or wipe it out ; and the subject will
tell you that the photograph has been enlarged, doubled,
reflected, turned about, or made to disappear. In M. Binet s
language, * the dot is the outward point de repere which is
needed to give objectivity to your suggestion, and without
which the latter will only produce a conception in the
subject s mind.t M. Binet has shown that such a periphe-
* M. Bluet s highly important experiments, which were first published
in vol. xvii of the Revue Philosophique (1884), are also given in full in
chapter ix of his and Fere s work on Animal Magnetism in the Inter
national Scientific Series. Where there is no dot on the paper, nor any
other visible mark, the subject s judgment about the portrait would
seem to be guided by what he sees happening to the entire sheet.
f It is a difficult thing to distinguish in a hypnotic patient between a
genuine sensorial hallucination of something suggested and a conception
of it merely, coupled with belief that it is there. I have been surprised at the
vagueness with which such subjects will often trace upon blank paper the
outlines of the pictures which they say they see thereupon. On the other
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS.
ral point de repere is used in an enormous number, not only
of hypnotic hallucinations, but of hallucinations of the
insane. These latter are often unilateral ; that is, the patient
hears the voices always on one side of him, or sees the,
figure only when a certain one of his eyes is open. In
many of these cases it has been distinctly proved that a
morbid irritation in the internal ear, or an opacity in the
humors of the eye, was the starting point of the current
which the patient s diseased acoustic or optical centres
clothed with their peculiar products in the way of ideas.
Hallucinations produced in this way are ILLUSIONS ; and M.
Binet s theory, that all hallucinations must start in the periphery,
may be called an attempt to reduce hallucination and illusion to
one physiological type, the type, namely, to which normal per
ception belongs, In every case, according to M. Binet,
whether of perception, of hallucination, or of illusion, we
get the sensational vividness by means of a current from
the peripheral nerves. It may be a mere trace of a cur
rent. But that trace is enough to kindle the maximal or
supra-ideational process so that the object perceived will
have the character of externality. What the nature of the
object shall be will depend wholly on the particular sys
tem of paths in which the process is kindled. Part of the
thing in all cases comes from the sense-organ, the rest is
furnished by the mind. But we cannot by introspection
distinguish between these parts ; and our only formula for
the result is that the brain has reacted on the impression in
the normal way. Just so in the dreams which we have
considered, and in the hallucinations of which M. Binet
tells, we can only say that the brain has reacted in an abnor
mal way.
M. Binetfs theory accounts indeed for a multitude of cases,
but certainly not for all. The prism does not always double
hand, you will hear them say that they find no difference between a real
flower which you show them and an imaginary flower which you tell
them is beside it. When told that one is imaginary and that they must
pick out the real one, they sometimes say the choice is Impossible, ai: 1
sometimes they point to the imaginary flower.
130 PSYCHOLOGY.
the false appearance,* nor does the latter always disappear
when the eyes are closed. Dr. Hack Tuke t gives several
examples in sane people of well-exteriorized hallucinations
which did not respond to Binet s tests ; and Mr. Edmund
Gurney J gives a number of reasons why intensity in a cor
tical process may be expected to result from local patho
logical activity just as much as its peculiar nature does.
For Binet, an abnormally or exclusively active part of the
cortex gives the nature of what shall appear, whilst a pe
ripheral sense-organ alone can give the intensity sufficient to
make it appear projected into real space. But since this
intensity is after all but a matter of degree, one does not see
why, under rare conditions, the degree in question might
not be attained by inner causes exclusively. In that case
we should have certain hallucinations centrally initiated
alongside of the peripherally initiated hallucinations, which
are the only sort that M. Binet s theory allows. It seems
probable on the whole, therefore, that centrally initiated hallu
cinations can exist. How often they do exist is another ques
tion. The existence of hallucinations which affect more
than one sense is an argument for central initiation. For
grant that the thing seen may have its starting point in the
outer world, the voice which it is heard to utter must be
due to an influence from the visual region, i.e. must be of
central origin.
Sporadic cases of hallucination, visiting people only
once in a lifetime (which seem to be by far the most fre
quent type), are on any theory hard to understand in detail.
They are often extraordinarily complete ; and the fact that
many of them are reported as veridical^ that is, as coincid
ing with real events, such as accidents, deaths, etc., of the
persons seen, is an additional complication of the phe
nomenon. The first really scientific study of hallucination
* Only the other day, in three hypnotized girls, I failed to double afi
hallucination with a prism. Of course it may not have been a fully-
developed hallucination.
t Brain, xi. 441.
iMind, x. 161, 316 ; and Phantasms of the Living (1886), I. 47(M88
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 131
in all its possible bearings, on the basis of a large mass of
empirical material, was begun by Mr. Edmund Gurney and
is continued by other members of the Society for Psy
chical Eesearch ; and the Census is now being applied
to several countries under the auspices of the International
Congress of Experimental Psychology. It is to be hoped
that out of these combined labors something solid will
eventually grow. The facts shade off into the phenomena
of motor automatism, trance, etc.; and nothing but a wide
comparative study can give really instructive results.*
The part played by the peripheral sense-organ in hallucina
tion is just as obscure as we found it in the case of imagina
tion. The things seen often seem opaque and hide the
background upon which they are projected. It does not
follow from this, however, that the retina is actually in
volved in the vision. A contrary process going on in the
visual centres would prevent the retinal impression made
by the outer realities from being felt, and this would in
mental terms be equivalent to the hiding of them by the
imaginary figure. The negative after-images of mental
pictures reported by Meyer and Fere, and the negative after
images of hypnotic hallucinations reported by Binet and
others so far constitute the only evidence there is for the
retina being involved. But until these after-images are
explained in some other way we must admit the possibility
of a centrifugal current from the optical centres downwards
into the peripheral organ of sight, paradoxical as the course
of such a current may appear.
PEBCEPTION-TIME.
The, time which the perceptive process occupies has been
inquired into by various experimenters. Some call it per
ception-time, some choice-time, some discrimination-time.
The results have been already given in Chapter XIII (voL
I, p. 523 ff.), to which the reader is consequently referred
* In Mr. Gurney s work, just cited, a very large number of veridical
cases are critically discussed.
PSYCHOLOGY.
Dr. Bomanes gives an interesting variation of these
time-measurements. He found *
"an astonishing difference between different individuals with respect
to the rate at which they are able to read. Of course reading implies
enormously, intricate processes of perception both of the sensuous and
of the intellectual order ; but if we choose for these observations per
sons who have been accustomed to read much, we may consider that
they are all very much on a par with respect to the amount of practice
which they have had, so that the differences in their rates of reading
may fairly be attributed to real differences in their rates of forming
complex perceptions in rapid succession, and not to any merely acci
dental differences arising from greater or less facility acquired by
special practice.
" My experiments consisted in marking a brief printed paragraph in
a book which had never been read by any of the persons to whom it
was to be presented. The paragraph, which contained simple state
ments of simple facts, was marked on the margin with pencil. The
book was then placed before the reader open, the page, however, being
covered with a sheet of paper. Having pointed out to the reader upon
this sheet of paper what part of the underlying page the marked para
graph occupied, I suddenly removed the sheet of paper with one hand,
while I started a chronograph with the other. Twenty seconds being
allowed for reading the paragraph (ten lines octavo), as soon as the
time was up I again suddenly placed the sheet of paper over the printed
page, passed the book on to the next reader, and repeated the experi
ment as before. Meanwhile, the first reader, the moment after the
book had been removed, wrote down all that he or she could remember
having read. And so on with all the other readers.
4 Now the results of a number of experiments conducted on this
method were to show, as I have said, astonishing differences in the
maximum rate of reading which is possible to different individuals, all
of whom have been accustomed to extensive reading. That is to say,
the difference may amount to 4 to 1 ; or, otherwise stated, in a given
time one individual may be able to read four times as much as another.
Moreover, it appeared that there was no relationship between slowness
of reading and power of assimilation ; on the contrary, when all the
efforts are directed to assimilating as much as possible in a given time,
the rapid readers (as shown by their written notes) usually give a bet
ter account of the portions of the paragraph which have been com
passed by the slow readers than the latter are able to give ; and the
most rapid reader 1 have found is also the best at assimilating. I
should further say that there is no relationship between rapidity of
perception as thus tested and intellectual activity as tested by the gen
eral results of intellectual work ; for I have tried the experiment witb
Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 136.
THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 133
several highly distinguished men in science and literature, most of
whom I found to be slow readers."*
* Literature. The best treatment of perception with which I am ac
quainted is that in Mr. James Sully s book on Illusions in the Interna
tional Scientific Series. On hallucinations the literature is large. Gurney,
Kandinsky (as already cited), and some articles by Kraepelin in the
Vierteljahrschrift fur Wissenschaftliche Philosophic, vol. v (1881), are
the most systematic studies recently made. All works on Insanity treat
of them. Dr. W. W. Ireland s works, The Blot upon the Brain (1886) and
Through the Ivory Gate (1890) have much information on the subject.
Gurney gives pretty complete references to older literature. The most
important thing on the subject from the point of view of theory is the
article by Mr. Myers on the Demon of Socrates in the Proceedings of the
Society for Psychical Research for 1889, p. 522.
CHAPTEK XX.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE.*
THE FEELING OF CRUDE EXTENSITY.
IN the sensations of hearing, touch, sight, and pain we are
accustomed to distinguish from among the other elements the
element of voluminousness. We call the reverberations of a
thunderstorm more voluminous than the squeaking of a
slate-pencil ; the entrance into a warm bath gives our skin
a more massive feeling than the prick of a pin ; a little
neuralgic pain, fine as a cobweb, in the face, seems less ex
tensive than the heavy soreness of a boil or the vast discom
fort of a colic or a lumbago ; and a solitary star looks smaller
than the noonday sky. In the sensation of dizziness or
subjective motion, which recent investigation has proved
to be connected with stimulation of the semi-circular canals
of the ear, the spatial character is very prominent. Whether
the * muscular sense directly yields us knowledge of space
is still a matter of litigation among psychologists. Whilst
some go so far as to ascribe our entire cognition of exten
sion to its exclusive aid, others deny to it all extensive
quality whatever. Under these circumstances we shall do
better to adjourn its consideration ; admitting, however, that
it seems at first sight as if we felt something decidedly
more voluminous when we contract our thigh-muscles than
when we twitch an eyelid or some small muscle in the face.
It seems, moreover, as if this difference lay in the feeling
of the thigh-muscles themselves.
In the sensations of smell and taste this element of
varying vastness seems less" prominent but not altogether
absent. Some tastes and smells appear less extensive than
complex flavors, like that of roast meat or plum pudding,
on the one hand, or heavy odors like musk or tuberose, on
* Reprinted, with considerable revision, from Mind for 1887.
134
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 135
the other. The epithet sharp given to the acid class would
seem to show that to the popular mind there is something
narrow and, as it were, streaky, in the impression they
make, other flavors and odors being bigger and rounder.
The sensations derived from the inward organs are also
distinctly more or less voluminous. Eepletion and empti
ness, suffocation, palpitation, headache, are examples of
this, and certainly not less spatial is the consciousness we
have of our general bodily condition in nausea, fever, heavy
drowsiness, and fatigue. Our entire cubic content seems
then sensibly manifest to us as such, and feels much larger
than any local pulsation, pressure, or discomfort. Skin
and retina are, however, the organs in which the space-
element plays the most active part. Not only does the
maximal vastness yielded by the retina surpass that yielded
by any other organ, but the intricacy with which our atten
tion can subdivide this vastness and perceive it to be com
posed of lesser portions simultaneously coexisting along
side of each other is without a parallel elsewhere.* The
ear gives a greater vastness than the skin, but is consider
ably less able to subdivide it.f
Noiv my first thesis is that this element, discernible in each
and every sensation, though more developed in some than in
others, is the original sensation of space, out of which all the
exact knowledge about space that we afterwards come to
have is woven by processes of discrimination, association,
and selection. Extensity, as Mr. James Ward calls it,J
* Prof. Jastrow has found that invariably we tend to underestimate the
amount of our skin which may be stimulated by contact with an object
when we express it in terms of visual space; that is, when asked to mark
on paper the extent of skin alfected, we always draw it much too small.
This shows that the eye gets as much space-feeling from the smaller line as
the skin gets from the larger one. Of. Jastrow : Mind, xi. 546-7; Ameri
can Journal of Psychology, in. 53.
f Amongst sounds the graver ones seem the most extensive. Stumpf
gives three reasons for this : 1) association with bigger causes; 2) wider
reverberation of the hand and body when grave notes are sung; 3) audi
bility at a greater distance. He thinks that these three reasons dispense us
from supposing an immanent extensity in the sensation of sound as such.
See his remarks in the Tonpsychologie, i. 207-211.
\ Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th Edition, article Psychology, pp. 46, 53.
136 PSYCHOLOGY.
on this view, becomes an element in each sensation just as
intensity is. The latter every one will admit to be a dis
tinguishable though not separable ingredient of the sensible
quality. In like manner extensity, being an entirely pecul
iar kind of feeling indescribable except in terms of itself,
and inseparable in actual experience from some sensational
quality which it must accompany, can itself receive no
other name than that of sensational element.
It must now be noted that the vastness hitherto spoken of
is as great in one direction as in another. Its dimensions are
so vague that in it there is no question as yet of surface
as opposed to depth ; volume being the best short name
for the sensation in question. Sensations of different orders
are roughly comparable, inter se, with respect to their volumes.
This shows that the spatial quality in each is identical
wherever found, for different qualitative elements, e.g.
warmth and odor, are incommensurate. Persons born
blind are reported surprised at the largeness with which
objects appear to them when their sight is restored. Franz
says of his patient cured of cataract : "He saw everything
much larger than he had supposed from the idea obtained
by his sense of touch. Moving, and especially living,
objects appeared very large." * Loud sounds have a cer
tain enormousness of feeling. It is impossible to conceive
of the explosion of a cannon as filling a small space. In
general, sounds seem to occupy all the room between us
and their source ; and in the case of certain ones, the
cricket s song, the whistling of the wind, the roaring of the
surf, or a distant railway train, to have no definite start
ing point.
In the sphere of vision we have facts of the same order.
Glowing bodies, as Hering says, give us a perception
"which seems roomy (raumhaft) in comparison with that
of strictly surface color. A glowing iron looks luminous
through and through, and so does a flame." t A luminous
fog, a band of sunshine, affect us in the same way. As
Hering urges :
* Philosophical Transactions (1841).
f Hermann s Handb d. Physiol., Bd. in. 1, S 575.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 137
" We must distinguish roomy from superficial, as well as distinctly
from indistinctly bounded, sensations. The dark which with closed eyes
one sees before one is, for example, a roomy sensation. We do not see
a black surface like a wall in front of us, but a space filled with dark
ness, and even when we succeed in seeing this darkness as terminated
by a black wall there still remains in front of this wall the dark space.
The same thing happens when we find ourselves with open eyes in an
absolutely dark room. This sensation of darkness is also vaguely
bounded. An example of a distinctly bounded roomy sensation is that
of a clear and colored fluid seen in a glass ; the yellow of the wine is
seen not only on the bounding surface of the glass ; the yellow sensa
tion fills the whole interior of the glass. By day the so-called empty
space between us and objects seen appears very different from what it
is by night. The increasing darkness settles not only upon the things
but also between us and the things, so as at last to cover them com
pletely and fill the space alone. If I look into a dark box I find it filled
with darkness, and this is seen not merely as the dark-colored sides or
walls of the box. A shady corner in an otherwise well-lighted room is
full of a darkness which is not only on the walls and floor but between
them in the space they include. Every sensation is there where I ex
perience it, and if I have it at once at every point of a certain roomy
space, it is then a voluminous sensation. A cube of transparent green
glass gives us a spatial sensation ; an opaque cube painted green, on
the contrary, only sensations of surfa.ce." *
There are certain quasi-motor sensations in the head when
we change the direction of the attention, which equally seem
to involve three dimensions. If with closed eyes we think
of the top of the house and then of the cellar, of the distance
in front of us and then of that behind us, of space far to the
right and then far to the left, we have something far stronger
than an idea, an actual feeling, namely, as if something in
the head moved into another direction. Fechner was, I
believe, the first to publish any remarks on these feelings.
He writes as follows :
" When we transfer the attention from objects of one sense to those
of another we have an indescribable feeling (though at the same time
one perfectly determinate and reproducible at pleasure) of altered direc
tion, or differently localized tension (Spannung). We feel a strain for
ward in the eyes, one directed sideways in the ears, increasing with
the degree of our attention, and changing according as we look at an
object carefully, or listen to something attentively ; wherefore we speak
of straining the attention. The difference is most plainly felt when
* Loc. cit. S. 572.
138 PSYCHOLOGY.
the attention vibrates rapidly between eye and ear. This feeling local-
izes itself with most decided difference in regard to the various sense-
organs according as we wish to discriminate a thing delicately by touch,
taste, or smell.
* But now I have, when I try to vividly recall a picture of memory
or fancy, a feeling perfectly analogous to that which I experience when
I seek to grasp a thing keenly by eye or ear ; and this analogous feeling
is very differently localized. While in sharpest possible attention to
real objects (as well as to after-images) the strain is plainly forwards,
and, when the attention changes from one sense to another, only alters
its direction between the sense-organs, leaving the rest of the head free
from strain, the case is different in memory or fancy ; for here the feel
ing withdraws entirely from the external sense-organs, and seems rather
to take refuge in that part of the head which the brain fills. If I wish,
for example, to recall a place or person, it will arise before me with
vividness, not according as I strain my attention forwards, but rather
in proportion as I, so to speak, retract it backwards. " *
It appears probable that the feelings which Fechner de
scribes are in part constituted by imaginary semi-circular
canal sensations. t These undoubtedly convey the most
delicate perception of change in direction ; and when, as
here, the changes are not perceived as taking place in the
external world, they occupy a vague internal space located
within the head.J
* Elemente der Psychophysik, n. 475-6.
f See Foster s Text-book of Physiology, bk. m. c. vr. 2.
j Fechner, who was ignorant of the but lately discovered function of
the semi-circular canals, gives a different explanation of the organic seat of
these feelings. They are probably highly composite. -With me, actual move
ments in the eyes play a considerable part in them, though I am hardly con
scious of the peculiar feelings in the scalp which Fechner goes on to de
scribe thus : The feeling of strained attention in the different sense-organs
seems to be only a muscular one produced in using these various organs
by setting in motion, by a sort of reflex action, the set of muscles which
belong to them. One can ask, then, with what particular muscular con
traction the sense of strained attention in the effort to recall something is
associated ? On this question my own feeling gives me a decided answer ;
it comes to me distinctly not as a sensation of tension in the inside of the
head, but as a feeling of strain and contraction in the scalp, with a pressure
from outwards in over the whole cranium, undoubtedly caused by a con
traction of the muscles of the scalp. This harmonizes very well with the
expressions, sich den Kopf zerbrecTien, den Kopf zusammenneJimen. In a
former illness, when I could not endure the slightest effort after continuous
thought, and had no theoretical bias on this question, the muscles of the
scalp, especially those of the back-head, assumed a fairly morbid degree of
sensibility whenever I tried to think." (Elem. der Psychophysik, 11.
490-91.)
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 139
In the skin itself there is a vague form of projection
into the third dimension to which Bering has called atten
tion.
* Heat is not felt only against the cutaneous surface, but when com
municated through the air may appear extending more or less out from
the surface into the third dimension of surrounding space. . . . We
can determine in the dark the place of a radiant body by moving the
hand to and fro, and attending to the fluctuation of our feeling of
warmth. The feeling itself, however, is not projected fully into the
spot at which we localize the hot body, but always remains in the
neighborhood of the hand."
The interior of one s mouth-cavity feels larger when ex
plored by the tongue than when looked at. The crater of a
newly-extracted tooth, and the movements of a loose tooth
in its socket, feel quite monstrous. A midge buzzing
against the drum of the ear will often seem as big as a but
terfly. The spatial sensibility of the tympanic membrane
has hitherto been very little studied, though the subject
will well repay much trouble. If we approach it by intro
ducing into the outer ear some small object like the tip of
a rolled-up tissue-paper lamplighter, we are surprised at
the large radiating sensation which its presence gives us,
and at the sense of clearness and openness which comes
when it is removed. It is immaterial to inquire whether
the far-reaching sensation here be due to actual irradiation
upon distant nerves or not. We are considering now, not
the objective causes of the spatial feeling, but its subjective
varieties, and the experiment shows that the same object
gives more of it to the inner than to the outer cuticle of
the ear. The pressure of the air in the tympanic cavity
upon the membrane gives an astonishingly large sensation.
We can increase the pressure by holding our nostrils and
closing our mouth and forcing air through our Eustachian
tubes by an expiratory effort ; and we can diminish it by
either inspiring or swallowing under the same conditions of
closed mouth and nose. In either case we get a large round
tridimensional sensation inside of the head, which seems
as if it must come from the affection of an organ much
larger than the tympanic membrane, whose surface hardly
exceeds that of one s little-finger-nail.
140 PSYCHOLOGY.
The tympanic membrane is furthermore able to render
sensible differences in the pressure of the external atmos
phere, too slight to be felt either as noise or in this more
violent way. If the reader will sit with closed eyes and let
a friend approximate some solid object, like a large book,
noiselessly to his face, he will immediately become aware
of the object s presence and position likewise of its de
parture. -A friend of the writer, making the experiment
for the first time, discriminated unhesitatingly between the
three degrees of solidity of a board, a lattice-frame, and a
sieve, held close to his ear. Now as this sensation is never
used by ordinary persons as a means of perception, we may
fairly assume that its felt quality, in those whose attention
is called to it for the first time, belongs to it qua sensation,
and owes nothing to educational suggestions. But this felt
quality is most distinctly and unmistakably one of vague
spatial vastness in three dimensions quite as much so as
is the felt quality of the retinal sensation when we lie on
our back and fill the entire field of vision with the empty
blue sky. When an object is brought near the ear we im
mediately feel shut in, contracted ; when the object is
removed, we suddenly feel as if a transparency, clearness,
openness, had been made outside of us. And the feeling
will, by any one who will take the pains to observe it, be
acknowledged to involve the third dimension in a vague,
unmeasured state.*
The reader will have noticed, in this enumeration of
facts, that voluminousness of the feeling seems to bear very little
relation to the size of the organ that yields it The ear and
eye are comparatively minute organs, yet they give us feel
ings of great volume. The same lack of exact proportion
between size of feeling and size of organ affected obtains
within the limits of particular sensory organs. An object
appears smaller on the lateral portions of the retina than it
does on the fovea, as may be easily verified by holding the
* That the sensation in question is one of tactile rather than of acoustic
sensibility would seem proved by the fact that a medical friend of the
writer, both of whose membrana tympani are quite normal, but one of
whose ears is almost totally deaf, feels the presence and withdrawal of ob
jects as well at one ear as at the other.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 141
two forefingers parallel and a couple of inches apart, and
transferring the gaze of one eye from one to the other.
Then the finger not directly looked at will appear to shrink,
and this whatever be the direction of the fingers. On the
tongue a crumb, or the calibre of a small tube, appears
larger than between the fingers. If two points kept equi
distant (blunted compass- or scissors-points, for example)
be drawn across the skin so as really to describe a pair of
parallel lines, the lines will appear farther apart in some
spots than in others. If, for example, we draw them hori
zontally across the face, so that the mouth falls between
them, the person experimented upon will feel as if they
began to diverge near the mouth and to include it in a well-
marked ellipse. In like manner, if we keep the compass-
Fio. 51 (after Weber).
points one or two centimetres apart, and draw them down
the forearm over the wrist and palm, finally drawing one
along one finger, the other along its neighbor, the appear
ance will be that of a single line, soon breaking into two,
which become more widely separated below the wrist, to
contract again in the palm, and finally diverge rapidly
again towards the finger-tips. The dotted lines in Figs.
51 and 52 represent the true path of the compass-points ;
the full lines their apparent path.
The same length of skin, moreover, will convey a more
extensive sensation according to the manner of stimulation.
If the edge of a card be pressed against the skin, the dis
tance between its extremities will seem shorter than that be
tween two compass-tips touching the same terminal points.*
* The skin seems to obey a different law from the eye here. If a given
retinal tract be excited, first by a series of points, and next by the two
142
PSYCHOLOGY.
In the eye, intensity of nerve-stimulation seems to in
crease the volume of the feeling as well
as its brilliancy. If we raise and lower
the gas alternately, the whole room and
all the objects in it seem alternately to
enlarge and contract. If we cover half
a page of small print with a gray glass, the
print seen through the glass appears
decidedly smaller than that seen outside
of it, and the darker the glass the greater
the difference. When a circumscribed
opacity in front of the retina keeps off
part of the light from the portion which
it covers, objects projected on that
portion may seem but half as large as
when their image falls outside of it.*
The inverse effect seems produced by
certain drugs and anaesthetics. Mor
phine, atropine, daturine, and cold blunt
the sensibility of the skin, so that dis
tances upon it seem less. Haschish pro
duces strange perversions of the general
sensibility. Under its influence one s
body may seem either enormously en
larged or strangely contracted. Some
times a single member will alter its
proportion to the rest ; or one s back,
for instance, will appear entirely absent,
as if one were hollow behind. Objects
comparatively near will recede to a vast
distance, a short street assume to the
eye an immeasurable perspective. Ether and chloroform
b c a>
FIG. 52 (after Weber).
extreme points, with the interval between themun excited, this interval will
seein considerably less in the second case than it seemed in the first. In
the skin the unexcited interval feels the larger. The reader may easily
verify the facts in this case by taking a visiting-card, cutting one edge of
it into a saw-tooth pattern, and from the opposite edge cutting out all but
the two corners, and then comparing the feelings aroused by the two edges
when held against the skin.
* Classen, Physiologic des Gesichtssinnes, p. 114 ; see also A. Riehl, Der
Philosophische Kriticismus, 11. p. 149.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE.
occasionally produce not wholly dissimilar results. Panum,
the German physiologist, relates that when, as a boy, he
was etherized for neuralgia, the objects in the room grew
extremely small and distant, before his field of vision dark
ened over and the roaring in his ears began. He also men
tions that a friend of his in church, struggling in vain to
keep awake, saw the preacher grow smaller and smaller
and more and more distant. I myself on one occasion
observed the same recession of objects during the begin
ning of chloroformization. In various cerebral diseases
we find analogous disturbances.
Can ive assign the physiological conditions which make the
elementary sensible largeness of one sensation vary so much from
that of another ? Only imperfectly. One factor in the re
sult undoubtedly is the number of nerve-terminations
simultaneously excited by the outward agent that awakens
the sensation. When many skin-nerves are warmed, or
much retinal surface illuminated, our feeling is larger than
when a lesser nervous surface is excited. The single sen
sation yielded by two compass-points, although it seems
simple, is yet felt to be much bigger and blunter than that
yielded by one. The touch of a single point may always
be recognized by its quality of sharpness. This page looks
much smaller to the reader if he closes one eye than if both
eyes are open. So does the moon, which latter fact shows I
that the phenomenon has nothing to do with parallax.}
The celebrated boy couched for the cataract by Cheselden
thought, after his first eye was operated, " all things he saw
extremely large," but being couched of his second eye,
said " that objects at first appeared large to this eye, but
not so large as they did at first to the other ; and looking
upon the same object with both eyes, he thought it looked
about twice as large as with the first couched eye only, but
not double, that we can anyways discover."
The greater extensiveness that the feeling of certain
parts of the same surface has over other parts, and that
one order of surface has over another (retina over skin, for
example), may also to a certain extent be explained by the
operation of the same factor. It is an anatomical fact that
the most spatially sensitive surfaces (retina, tongue, finger-
144 PSYCHOLOGY.
tips, etc.) are supplied by nerve-trunks of unusual thick
ness, which must supply to every unit of surface-area an
unusually large number of terminal fibres. But the varia
tions of felt extension obey probably only a very rough law
of numerical proportion to the number of fibres. A sound
is not twice as voluminous to two ears as to one ; and the
above-cited variations of feeling, when the same surface is
excited under different conditions, show that the feeling is.
a resultant of several factors of which the anatomical one
is only the principal. Many ingenious hypotheses have
been brought forward to assign the co-operating factors
where different conditions give conflicting amounts of felt
space. Later we shall analyze some of these cases in de
tail, but it must be confessed here in advance that many of
them resist analysis altogether. *
* It is worth while at this point to call attention with some emphasis to
the fact that, though the anatomical condition of the feeling resembles the
feeling itself, such resemblance cannot be taken by our understanding to
explain why the feeling should be just what it is. We hear it untiringly
reiterated by materialists and spiritualists alike that we can see no possible
inward reason why a certain brain-process should produce the feeling of
redness and another of anger : the one process is no more red than the
other is angry, and the coupling of process and feeling is, as far as our
understanding goes, a juxtaposition pure and simple. But in the matter of
spatial feeling, where the retinal patch that produces a triangle in the mind
is itself a triangle, etc., it looks at first sight as if the sensation might be a
direct cognition of its own neural condition. Were this true, however, our
sensation should be one of multitude rather than of continuous extent ; for
the condition is number of optical nerve-termini, and even this is only a
remote condition and not an immediate condition. The immediate condi
tion of the feeling is not the process in the retina, but the process in the
brain; and the process in the brain may, for aught we know, be as unlike
a triangle, nay, it probably is so, as it is unlike redness or rage. It is
simply a coincidence that in the case of space one of the organic conditions,
viz. , the triangle impressed on the skin or the retina, should lead to a rep
resentation in the mind of the subject observed similar to that which it
produces in the psychological observer. In no other kind of case is the
coincidence found. Even should we admit that we cognize triangles in
space because of our immediate cognition of the triangular shape of our
excited group of nerve-tips, the matter would hardly be more transparent,
for the mystery would still remain, why are we so much better cognizant
of triangles on our finger-tips than on the nerve-tips of our back, on our
eye than on our ear, and on any of these parts than in our brain ? Thos.
Brown very rightly rejects the notion of explaining the shape of the space
perceived by the shape of the nervous expansion affected. "If this
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 145
THE FEBCEPTION OF SPATIAL OKDEK.
So far, all we have established or sought to establish is
the existence of the vague form or quote of spatiality as an
inseparable element bound up with the other peculiarities
of each and every one of our sensations. The numerous
examples we have adduced of the variations of this extensive
element have only been meant to make clear its strictly
sensational character. In very few of them will the reader
have been able to explain the variation by an added intel
lectual element, such as the suggestion of a recollected ex
perience. In almost all it has seemed to be the immediate
psychic effect of a peculiar sort of nerve-process excited ;
and all the nerve-processes in question agree in yielding
what space they do yield, to the mind, in the shape of a
simple total vastness, in which, primitively at least, no order
of parts or of subdivisions reigns.
Let no one be surprised at this notion of a space without
order. There may be a space without order just as there
may be an order without space.* And the primitive percep
tions of space are certainly of an unordered kind. The
order which the spaces first perceived potentially include
must, before being distinctly apprehended by the mind, be
woven into those spaces by a rather complicated set of in
tellectual acts. The primordial largenesses which the sen
sations yield must be measured and subdivided by conscious
ness, and added together, before they can form by theii
synthesis what we know as the real Space of the objective]
world. In these operations, imagination, association, at
tention, and selection play a decisive part ; and although
they nowhere add any new material to the space-data of
sense, they so shuffle and manipulate these data and hide
alone were necessary, we should have square inches and half inches, and
various other forms, rectilinear and curvilinear, of fragance and sound."
(Lectures, xxn.)
* Musical tones, e.g., have an order of quality independent either off
their space- or time-order. Music comes from the time-order of the notes
upsetting their quality- order. In general, if a b c d efg h ij k, etc., stand
for an arrangement of feelings in the order of their quality, they may as
sume any space-order or time-order, as def a hg, etc., and still the order
of quality will remain fixed and unchanged.
146 PSYCHOLOGY.
present ones behind imagined ones that it is no wonder if
some authors have gone so far as to think that the sense-
data have no spatial worth at all, and that the intellect,
since it makes the subdivisions, also gives the spatial
quality to them out of resources of its own.
As for ourselves, having found that all our sensations
(however as yet unconnected and undiscriminated) are oi {
extensive objects, our next problem is : How do we ARRANGE
these at first chaotically given spaces into the one regular and^
orderly world of space which we now know ?
To begin with, there is no reason to suppose that the
several sense-spaces of which a sentient creature may
become conscious, each filled with its own peculiar content,
should tend, simply because they are many, to enter into
any definite spatial intercourse with each other, or lie in
any particular order of positions. Even in ourselves we
can recognize this. Different feelings may coexist in us
without assuming any particular spatial order. The sound
of the brook near which I write, the odor of the cedars, the
comfort with which my breakfast has filled me, and my in
terest in this paragraph, all lie distinct in my consciousness,
but in no sense outside or alongside of each other. Their
spaces are interfused and at most fill the same vaguely ob
jective world. Even where the qualities are far less dis
parate, we may have something similar. If we take our
subjective and corporeal sensations alone, there are moments
when, as we lie or sit motionless, we find it very difficult to
feel distinctly the length of our back or the direction of our
feet from our shoulders. By a strong effort we can succeed
in dispersing our attention impartially over our whole per
son, and then we feel the real shape of our body in a sort
of unitary way. But in general a few parts are strongly
emphasized to consciousness and the rest sink out of notice ;
and it is then remarkable how vague and ambiguous our
perception of their relative order of location is. Obviously,
for the orderly arrangement of a multitude of sense-spaces
in consciousness, something more than their mere separate
existence is required. What is this further condition ?
If a number of sensible extents are to be perceived alongside
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 147
of each other and in definite order they must appear as parts in
a vaster sensible extent which can enter the mind simply and all
at once. I think it will be seen that the difficulty of esti-
mating correctly the form of one s body by pure feeling >
arises from the fact that it is very hard to feel its totality as .,
a unit at all. The trouble is similar to that of thinking for
wards and backwards simultaneously. When conscious of
our head we tend to grow unconscious of our feet, and there
enters thus an element of time-succession into our percep
tion of ourselves which transforms the latter from an act of
intuition to one of construction. This element of con-
structiveness is present in a still higher degree, and carries
with it the same consequences, when we deal with objective
spaces too great to be grasped by a single look. The rela
tive positions of the shops in a town, separated by many
tortuous streets, have to be thus constructed from data ap
prehended in succession, and the result is a greater or less
degree of vagueness.
That a sensation be discriminated as a part from out of ail
larger enveloping space is then the conditio sine qua non of itsn
being apprehended in a definite spatial order. The problem
of ordering our feelings in space is then, in the first instance,
a problem of discrimination, but not of discrimination pure
and simple ; for then not only coexistent sights but coex
istent sounds would necessarily assume such order, which
they notoriously do not. Whatever is discriminated will
appear as a small space within a larger space, it is true, but
this is but the very rudiment of order. For the location of
it within that space to become precise, other conditions still
must supervene ; and the best way to study what they are
will be to pause for a little and analyze what the expression
spatial order* means.
Spatial order is an abstract term. The concrete percep
tions which it covers are figures, directions, positions, mag
nitudes, and distances. To single out any one of these
things from a total vastness is partially to introduce order
into the vastness. To subdivide the vastness into a multi
tude of these things is to apprehend it in a completely
orderly way. Now what are these things severally ? To
148 PSYCHOLOGY.
begin with, no one can for an instant hesitate to say that
some of them are qualities of sensation, just as the total
vastness is in which they lie. Take figure : a square, a
circle, and a triangle appear in the first instance to the eye
simply as three different kinds of impressions, each so pecul
iar that we should recognize it if it were to return. When
Nunnely s patient had his cataracts removed, and a cube and
a sphere were presented to his notice, he could at once
perceive a difference in their shapes ; and though he could
not say which was the cube and which the sphere, he saw
they were not of the same figure. So of lines : if we can
notice lines at all in our field of vision, it is inconceivable
that a vertical one should not affect us differently from an
horizontal one, and should not be recognized as affecting us
similarly when presented again, although we might not yet
know the name * vertical, or any of its connotations, beyond
this peculiar affection of our sensibility. So of angles : an
obtuse one affects our feeling immediately in a different way
from an acute one. Distance-apart, too, is a
tion the sensation of a line joining the two distant points :
lengthen the line, you alter the feeling and with it the
distance felt.
Space-relations.
But with distance and direction we pass to the category
of ^pace-relations , and are immediately confronted by an
opinion which makes of all relations something toto ccdo
different from all facts of feeling or imagination whatsoever.
A relation, for the Platonizing school in psychology, is an
energy of pure thought, and, as such, is quite incommen
surable with the data of sensibility between which it may
be perceived to obtain.
We may consequently imagine a disciple of this school
to say to us at this point : " Suppose you have made a sep
arate specific sensation of each line and each angle, what
boots it? You have still the order of directions and of
distances to account for ; you have still the relative magni
tudes ot all these felt figures to state ; you hve their re
spective positions to define before you can be said to have
brought order into your space. And not one of these de-
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 149
terminations can be effected except through an act of re
lating thought, so that your attempt to give an account of
space in terms of pure sensibility breaks down almost at
the very outset. Position, for example, can never be a sen
sation, for it has nothing intrinsic about it ; it can only
obtain between a spot, line, or other figure and extraneous
co-ordinates, and can never be an element of the sensible
datum, the line or the spot, in itself. Let us then confess
that Thought alone can unlock the riddle of space, and
that Thought is an adorable but unfathomable mystery."
Such a method of dealing with the problem has the
merit of shortness. Let us, however, be in no such hurry,
but see whether we cannot get a little deeper by patiently
considering what these space-relations are.
Eelation is a very slippery word. It has so many
different concrete meanings that the use of it as an abstract
universal may easily introduce bewilderment into our
thought. We must therefore be careful to avoid ambiguity
by making sure, wherever we have to employ it, what its
precise meaning is in that particular sphere of application.
At present we have to do with space-relations, and no others.
Most relations are feelings of an entirely different order
from the terms they relate. The relation of similarity, e.g.,
may equally obtain between jasmine and tuberose, or be
tween Mr. Browning s verses and Mr. Story s ; it is itself
neither odorous nor poetical, and those may well be pardoned
who have denied to it all sensational content whatever.
But just as, in the field of quantity, the relation between
two numbers is another number, so in the field of space the
relations are facts of the same order with the facts they relate.
If these latter be patches in the circle of vision, the former
are certain other patches between them. When we speak of
the relation of direction of two points toward each other,
we mean simply the sensation of the line that joins the two
points together. The line is the relation; feel it and you
feel the relation, see it and you see the relation ; nor can
you in any conceivable way think the latter except by im
agining the former (however vaguely), or describe or indi
cate the one except by pointing to the other. And the
moment you have imagined the line, the relation stands
150 PSYCHOLOGY.
before you in all its completeness, with nothing further to
be done. Just so the relation of direction between two lines
is identical with the peculiar sensation of shape of the
space enclosed between them. This is commonly called
an angular relation.
If these relations are sensations, no less so are the rela
tions of position. The relation of position between the top and
bottom points of a vertical line is that line, and nothing else.
The relations of position between a point and a horizontal
line below it are potentially numerous. There is one more
important than the rest, called its distance. This is the
sensation, ideal or actual, of a perpendicular drawn from the
point to the line.* Two lines, one from each extremity of
the horizontal to the point, give us a peculiar sensation of
triangularity. This feeling may be said to constitute the
locus of all the relations of position of the elements in ques
tion, tightness and leftness, upness and downness, are again
pure sensations differing specifically from each other, and
generically from everything else. Like all sensations, they
can only be indicated, not described. If we take a cube and
label one side top, another bottom, a third front, and a fourth
back, there remains no form of words by which we can de
scribe to another person which of the remaining sides is right
and which left. We can only point and say here is right
and there is left, just as we should say this is red and that
blue. Of two points seen beside each other at all, one isjj
always affected by one of these feelings, and the other by|
the opposite ; the same is true of the extremities of anyl
line.t
* The whole science of geometry may be said to owe its being to the
exorbitant interest which the human mind takes in lines. We cut space
up in every direction in order to manufacture them.
f Kant was, I believe, the first to call attention to this last order of facts.
After pointing out that two opposite spherical triangles, two gloves of a
pair, two spirals wound in contrary directions, have identical inward de
terminations, that is, have their parts defined with relation to each other by
the same law, and so must be conceived as identical, he showed that the im
possibility of their mutual superposition obliges us to assign to each figure
of a symmetrical pair a peculiar difference of its own which can only con
sist in an outward determination or relation of its parts, no^longer to each
other, but to the whole of an objectively outlying space with its points of the
compass given absolutely. This inconceivable difference is perceived only
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 151
Thus it appears indubitable that all space-relations ex
cept those of magnitude are nothing more or less than pure
sensational objects. But magnitude appears to outstep this
narrow sphere. We have relations of muchness and little-
. /id*
ness between times, numbers, intensities, and qualities," as
well as spaces. It is impossible, then, that such relations
should form a particular kind of simply spatial feeling.
This we must admit : the relation of quantity is generic
and occurs in many categories of consciousness, whilst the
other relations we have considered are specific and occur
in space alone. "When our attention passes from a shorter
line to a longer, from a smaller spot to a larger, from a
feebler light to a stronger, from a paler blue to a richer,
from a march tune to a galop, the transition is accompanied
in the synthetic field of consciousness by a peculiar feeling
of difference which is what we call the sensation of more,
more length, more expanse, more light, more blue, more
motion. This transitional sensation of more must be iden
tical with itself under all these different accompaniments,
or we should not give it the same name in every case. We
get it when we pass from a short vertical line to a long
horizontal one, from a small square to a large circle, as
well as when we pass between those figures whose shapes
are congruous. But when the shapes are congruous our
consciousness Q| the relation is a good deal more distinct,
and it is most distiact of all when, in the exercise of our
analytic attention, we notice, first, a part, and then the
whole, of a single line or shape. Then the more of the whole
actually sticks out, as a separate piece of space, and is so
envisaged. The same exact sensation of it is given when
we are able to superpose one line or figure on another. This
indispensable condition of exact measurement of the more
has led some to think that the feeling itself arose in every
case from original experiences of superposition. This is
through the relation to right and left, which is a matter of immediate
intuition." In these last words (welcfos unmittelbar auf Anschauung geht
Prolegomena, 12) Kant expresses all that we have meant by speaking
of up and down, right and left, as sensations. He is wrong, however, in
invoking relation to extrinsic total space as essential to the existence of
these contrasts in figures. Relation to our own body is enough.
152 PSYCHOLOGY.
probably not aii absolutely true opinion, but for our pres
ent purpose that is immaterial. So far as the subdivisions
of a sense-space are to be measured exactly against each
other, objective forms occupying one subdivision must
directly or indirectly be superposed upon the other, and
the mind must get the immediate feeling of an outstanding
plus. And even where we only feel one subdivision to be
vaguely larger or less, the mind must pass rapidly between
it and the other subdivision, and receive the immediate sen
sible shock of the more.
We seem thus to have accounted for all space-relations, and
made them clear to our understanding. They are nothing but
sensations of particular lines .particular angles, particular forms
of transition, or (in the case of a distinct more) of particular
outstanding portions of space after two figures have been super
posed. These relation-sensations may actually be produced
as such, as when a geometer draws new lines across a figure
with his pencil to demonstrate the relations of its parts,
or they may be ideal representations of lines, not really
drawn. But in either case their entrance into the mind is
equivalent to a more detailed subdivision, cognizance, and
measurement of the space considered. The bringing of sub-
divisions to consciousness constitutes, then, the entire process
by which we pass from our first vague feeling of a total
vastness to a cognition of the vastness in detail. The more
numerous the subdivisions are, the more elaborate and per
fect the cognition becomes. But inasmuch as all the sub
divisions are themselves sensations, and even the feeling
of more or less is, where not itself a figure, at least a
sensation of transition between two sensations of figure,
it follows, for aught we can as yet see to the contrary,
that all spatial knowledge is sensational at bottom, and that,
as the sensations lie together in the unity of consciousness,
no new material element whatever comes to them from a
supra-sensible source.*
* In the eyes of many it will have seemed strange to call a relation a
mere line, and a line a mere sensation. We may easily learn a great deal
about any relation, say that between two points: we may divide the line
which joins these, and distinguish it, and classify it, and find out its rela-
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 153
The bringing of subdivisions to consciousness ! This, then,
is our next topic. They may be brought to consciousness
under three aspects in respect of their locality, in respect
of their size, in respect of their shape.
The Meaning of Localization.
Confining ourselves to the problem of locality for the pres
ent, let us begin with the simple case of a sensitive surface,
only two points of which receive stimulation from without.
How, first, are these two points felt as alongside of each
other with an interval of space between them ? We must
be conscious of two things for this : of the duality of the ex
cited points, and of the extensiveness of the unexcited
interval. The duality alone, although a necessary, is not a
sufficient condition of the spatial separation. We may,
for instance, discern two sounds in the same place, sweet
and sour in the same lemonade, warm and cold, round and
pointed contact in the same place on the skin, etc.* In all
discrimination the recognition of the duality of two feelings
by the mind is the easier the more strongly the feelings are
tions by drawing or representing new lines, and so on. But all this
further industry has naught to do with our acquaintance with the relation
itself, in its first intention. So cognized, the relation is the line and nothing
more. It would indeed be fair to call it something less; and in fact it is
easy to understand how most of us come to feel as if the line were a much
&^osser thing than the relation. The line is broad or narrow, blue or red,
made by this object or by that alternately, in the course of our experience;
it is therefore independent of any one of these accidents; and so, from
viewing it as no one of such sensible qualities, we may end by thinking of
it as something which cannot be defined except as the negation of all sen-
^Voie quality whatever, and which needs to be put into the sensations by a
mysterious act of relating thought.
Another reason why we get to feel as if a space-relation must be some
thing other than the mere feeling of a line or angle is that between two
positions we can potentially make any number of lines and angles, or find,
to suit our purposes, endlessly numerous relations. The sense of this indefi
nite potentiality cleaves to our words when we speak in a general way of
relations of place, and misleads us into supposing that not even any
single one of them can be exhaustively equated by a single angle or a
single line.
* This often happens when the warm and cold points, or the round and
pointed ones, are applied to the skin within the limits of a single Em-
pfindungskreis.
154 PSYCHOLOGY.
contrasted in quality. If our two excited points awaken
identical qualities of sensation, they must, perforce, appear
to the mind as one ; and, not distinguished at all, they are,
a fortiori, not localized apart. Spots four centimetres dis
tant on the back have no qualitative contrast at all, and fuse
into a single sensation. Points less than three thousandths
of a millimetre apart awaken on the retina sensations so
contrasted that we apprehend them immediately as two.
Now these unlikenesses which arise so slowly when we pass
from one point to another in the back, so much faster on
the tongue and finger-tips, but with such inconceivable
rapidity on the retina, what are they ? Can we discover
anything about their intrinsic nature ?
The most natural and immediate answer to make is that
they are unlikeness of place pure and simple. In the words
of a German physiologist,* to whom psychophysics owes
much:
" The sensations are from the outset (von vornhereiri) localized. . . .
Every sensation as such is from the very beginning affected with the
spatial quality, so that this quality is nothing like an external attribute
coming to the sensation from a higher faculty, but must be regarded as
something immanently residing in the sensation itself."
And yet the moment we reflect on this answer an insu
perable logical difficulty seems to present itself. No single
quale of sensation can, by itself, amount to a consciousness
of position. Suppose no feeling but that of a single point
ever to be awakened. Could that possibly be the feeling
of any special whereness or thereness ? Certainly not. Only
when a second point is felt to arise can the first one acquire
a determination of up, down, right or left, and these determina
tions are all relative to that second point. Each point, so far as
it is placed, is then only by virtue of what it is not, namely,
by virtue of another point. This is as much as to say that
position has nothing intrinsic about it ; and that, although a
feeling of absolute bigness may, a feeling of place cannot^
possibly form an immanent element in any single isolated sensa
tion. The very writer we have quoted has given heed to
this objection, for he continues (p. 335) by saying that the
* Vierordt, Grundriss der Physiologic, 5te Auflage (1877), pp. 326, 436.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE.
sensations thus originally localized " are only so in them
selves, but not in the representation of consciousness, which
is not yet present. . . . They are, in the first instance, de
void of all mutual relations with each other." But such a
localization of the sensation in itself would seem to mean
nothing more than the susceptibility or potentiality of being
distinctly localized when the time came and other conditions
became fulfilled. Can we now discover anything about such
susceptibility in itself before it has borne its ulterior fruits
in the developed consciousness ?
Local Signs.
To begin with, every sensation of the skin and every vis
ceral sensation seems to derive from its topographic seat
a peculiar shade of feeling, which it would not have in
another place. And this feeling per se seems quite another
thing from the perception of the place. Says Wundt * :
" If with the finger we touch first the cheek and then the palm,
exerting each time precisely the same pressure, the sensation shows not
withstanding a distinctly marked difference in the two cases. Similarly,
when we compare the palm with the back of the hand, the nape of the
neck with its anterior surface, the breast with the back ; in short, any
two distant parts of the skin with each other. And moreover, we easily
remark, by attentively observing, that spots even tolerably close
together differ in respect of the quality of their feeling. If we pass
from one point of our cutaneous surface to another, we find a perfectly
gradual and continuous alteration in our feeling, notwithstanding the
objective nature of the contact has remained the same. Even the sen
sations of corresponding points on opposite sides of the body, though
similar, are not identical. If, for instance, we touch first the back of one
hand and then of the other, we remark a qualitative unlikeness of
sensation. It must not be thought that such differences are mere mat
ters of imagination, and that we take the sensations to be different
because we represent each of them to ourselves as occupying a different
place. With sufficient sharpening of the attention, we may, confining
ourselves to the quality of the feelings alone, entirely abstract from
their locality, and yet notice the differences quite as markedly. "
*Vorlesungen iib. Menschen- u. Thierseele (Leipzig, 1863), i. 214. See
also Ladd s Physiological Psychology, pp. 396-8, and compare the account
by G. Stanley Hall (Mind, x. 571) of the sensations produced by moving
a blunt point lightly over the skin. Points of cutting pain, quivering,
thrilling, whirling, tickling, scratching, and acceleration, alternated with
each other along the surface.
156 PSYCHOLOGY.
Whether these local contrasts shade into each other
with absolutely continuous gradations, we cannot say. But
we know (continues Wuiidt) that
" they change, when we pass from one point of the skin to its neigh
bor, with very different degrees of rapidity. On delicately-feeling
parts, used principally for touching, such as the finger-tips, the dif
ference of sensation between two closely approximate points is already
strongly pronounced ; whilst in parts of lesser delicacy, as the arm, the
back, the legs, the disparities of sensation are observable only between
distant spots."
The internal organs, too, have their specific qualia of sen
sation. An inflammation of the kidney is different from
one of the liver ; pains in joints and muscular insertions
are distinguished. Pain in the dental nerves is wholly
unlike the pain of a burn. But very important and curious
similarities prevail throughout these differences. Internal
pains, whose seat we cannot see, and have no means of
knowing unless the character of the pain itself reveal it,
are felt where they belong. Diseases of the stomach,
kidney, liver, rectum, prostate, etc., of the bones, of the
brain and its membranes, are referred to their proper posi
tion. Nerve-pains describe the length of the nerve. Such
localizations as those of vertical, frontal, or occipital head
ache of intracranial origin force us to conclude that parts
which are neighbors, whether inner or outer, may possess
by mere virtue of that fact a common peculiarity of feeling,
a respect in which their sensations agree, and which serves
as a token of their proximity. These local colorings are,
moreover, so strong that we cognize them as the same,
throughout all contrasts of sensible quality in the accom
panying perception. Cold and heat are wide as the poles
asunder ; yet if both fall on the cheek, there mixes with
them something that makes them in that respect identical ;
just as, contrariwise, despite the identity of cold with itself
wherever found, when we get it first on the palm and then
on the cheek, some difference comes, which keeps the two
experiences for ever asunder.*
* Of the anatomical and physiological conditions of these facts we know
as yet but little, and that little need not here be discussed. Two principal
hypotheses have been invoked in the case of the retina. Wundt (Men-
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 157
And now let us revert to the query propounded a
moment since : Can these differences of mere quality in feeling,
varying according to locality yet having each sensibly and in
trinsically and by itself nothing to do with position, constitute
the susceptibilities we mentioned, the conditions of being per
ceived in position, of the localities to ivhich they belong ? The
numbers on a row of houses, the initial letters of a set of
words, have no intrinsic kinship with points of space, and
yet they are the conditions of our knowledge of where any
house is in the row, or any word in the dictionary. Can the
modifications of feeling in question be tags or labels of this
kind which in no wise originally reveal the position of the
spot to which they are attached, but guide us to it by what
Berkeley would call a customary tie ? Many authors have
unhesitatingly replied in the affirmative ; Lotze, who in his
Medizinische Psychologic* first described the sensations in
this way, designating them, thus conceived, as local-signs.
This term has obtained wide currency in Germany, and in
speaking of the LOCAL-SIGN THEORY hereafter, I shall always
mean the theory ivhich denies that there can be in a sensation any
element of actual locality, of inherent spatial order, any tone as
schen-u. Thierseele, i. 214) called attention to the changes of color-sensibility
which the retina displays as the image of the colored object passes from the
fovea to the periphery. The color alters and becomes darker, and the
change is more rapid in certain directions than in others. This alteration
in general, however, is one of which, as such, \ve are wholly unconscious.
We see the sky as bright blue all over, the modifications of the blue sensa
tion being interpreted by us, not as differences in the objective color, but
as distinctions in its locality. Lotze (Medizinische Psychologic, 333, 355), on
the other hand, has pointed out the peculiar tendency which each particu
lar point of the retina has to call forth that movement of the eyeball which
will carry the image of the exciting object from the point in question to
the fovea. With each separate tendency to movement (as with each actual
movement) we may suppose a peculiar modification of sensibility to be
conjoined. This modification would constitute the peculiar local tingeing
of the image by each point. See also Sully s Psychology, pp. 118-121.
Prof. B. Erdman has quite lately (Vierteljahrsschrift f. wiss. Phil., x.
324-9) denied the existence of all evidence for such immanent qualia of
feeling characterizing each locality. Acute as his remarks are, they quite
fail to convince me. On the skin the qualia are evident, 1 should say.
Where, as on the retina, they are less so (Kries and Auerbach), this may
well be a mere difficulty of discrimination not yet educated to the
analysis.
* 1852, p. 331.
158 PSYCHOLOGY.
it were which cries to us immediately and without further
ado, I am here, or I am there.
If, as may well be the case, we by this time find our
selves tempted to accept the Local-sign theory in a general
way, we have to clear up several farther matters. If a sign
is to lead us to the thing it means, we must have some other
source of knowledge of that thing. Either the thing has
been given in a previous experience of which the sign also
formed part they are associated ; or it is what Reid calls a
natural sign, that is, a feeling which, the first time it
enters the mind, evokes from the native powers thereof a
cognition of the thing that hitherto had lain dormant. In
both cases, however, the sign is one thing, and the thing
another. In the instance that now concerns us, the sign is
a quality of feeling and the thing is a position. Now we have
seen that the position of a point is not only revealed, but
created, by the existence of other points to which it stands
in determinate relations. If the sign can by any machinery
which it sets in motion evoke a consciousness either of the other
points, or of the relations, or of both, it would seem to fulfil its
function, and reveal to us the position we seek.
But such a machinery is already familiar to us. It is
neither more nor less than the law of habit in the nervous
system. When, any point of the sensitive surface has been
frequently excited simultaneously with, or immediately
before or after, other points, and afterwards comes to be
excited alone, there will be a tendency for its perceptive
nerve-centre to irradiate into the nerve-centres of the other
points. Subjectively considered, this is the same as if we
said that the peculiar feeling of the first point SUGGESTS the
feeling of the entire region with whose stimulation its own ex
citement has been habitually ASSOCIATED.
Take the case of the stomach. When the epigastrium
is heavily pressed, when certain muscles contract, etc., the
stomach is squeezed, and its peculiar local sign awakes in
consciousness simultaneously with the local signs of the
other squeezed parts. There is also a sensation of total
vastness aroused by the combined irritation, and someiuhere
in this the stomach-feeling seems to lie. Suppose that
later a pain arises in the stomach from some non-mechani-
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 159
cal cause. It will be tinged by the gastric local sign, and.
the nerve-centre supporting this latter feeling will excite
the centre supporting the dermal and muscular feelings
habitually associated with it when the excitement was
mechanical. From the combination the same peculiar
vastness will again arise. In a word, something in the
stomach-sensation reminds us of a total space, of which
the diaphragmatic and epigastric sensations also form a
part, or, to express it more briefly still, suggests the neigh
borhood of these latter organs.*
Revert to the case of two excited points on a surface with
an unexcited space between them. The general result of
previous experience has been that when either point was
impressed by an outward object, the same object also
touched the immediately neighboring parts. Each point,
together with its local sign, is thus associated with a circle
of surrounding points, the association fading in strength as
the circle grows larger. Each will revive its own circle ;
but when both are excited together, the strongest revival
will be that due to the combined irradiation. Now the tract
joining the two excited points is the only part common to the
two circles. And the feelings of this whole tract will there
fore awaken with considerable vividness in the imagination
when its extremities are touched by an outward irritant.
The mind receives with the impression of the two distinct
points the vague idea of a line. The twoness of the points
comes from the contrast of their local signs : the line conies
from the associations into which experience has wrought
these latter. If no ideal line arises we have duality with
out sense of interval ; if the line be excited actually rather
* Maybe the localization of intracranial pain is itself due to such asso
ciation as this of local signs with each other, rather than to their qualita
tive similarity in neighboring parts (supra, p. 19); though it is conceivable
that association and similarity itself should here have one and the same
neural basis. If we suppose the sensory nerves from those parts of the
body beneath any patch of skin to terminate in the same sensorial brain-
tract as those from the skin itself, and if the excitement of any one fibre
tends to irradiate through the whole of that tract, the feelings of all fibres
going to that tract would presumably both have a similar intrinsic quality,
and at the same time tend each to arouse the other. Since the same nerve-
trunk in most cases supplies the skin and the parts beneath, the anatomical
hypothesis presents nothing improbable.
10U PSYCHOLOGY.
than ideally, we have the interval given with its ends, in
the form of a single extended object felt. E. H. Weber, in
the famous article in which he laid the foundations of all
our accurate knowledge of these subjects, laid it down as
the logical requisite for the perception of two separated points,
that the mind should, along with its consciousness of them, be
come aware of an unexcited interval as such. I have only tried
to show how the known laws of experience may cause this requi
site to be fulfilled. Of course, if the local signs of the entire
region offer but little qualitative contrast inter se, the line
suggested will be but dimly denned or discriminated in
length or direction from other possible lines in its neighbor
hood. This is what happens in the back, where conscious
ness can sunder two spots, whilst only vaguely apprehend
ing their distance and direction apart.
The relation of position of the two points is the sug
gested interval or line. Turn now to the simplest case,
that of a single excited spot. Hoiv can it suggest its position ?
Not by recalling any particular line unless experience have
constantly been in the habit of marking or tracing some one
line from it towards some one neighboring point. Now
on the back, belly, viscera, etc., no such tracing habitually
occurs. The consequence is that the only suggestion is
that of the whole neighboring circle ; i.e., the spot simply
recalls the general region in which it happens to lie. By a pro
cess of successive construction, it is quite true that we can
also get the feeling of distance between the spot and some
other particular spot. Attention, by reinforcing the local
sign of one part of the circle, can awaken a new circle
round this part, and so de proche en proche we may slide our
feeling down from our cheek, say, to our foot. But when
we first touched our cheek we had no consciousness of the
foot at all.* In the extremities, the lips, the tongue and
other mobile parts, the case is different. We there have
an instinctive tendency, when a part of lesser discriminative
* Unless, indeed, the foot happen to be spontaneously tingling or some
thing of the sort at the moment. The whole surface of the body is always
in a state of semi-conscious irritation which needs only the emphasis of
attention, or of some accidental inward irritation, to become strong at any
point.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 161
sensibility is touched, to move the member so that the
touching object glides along it to the place where sensi
bility is greatest. If a body touches our hand we move the
hand over it till the finger-tips are able to explore it. If
the sole of our foot touches anything we bring it towards
the toes, and so forth. There thus arise lines of habitual
passage from all points of a member to its sensitive tip.
These are the lines most readily recalled when any point
is touched, and their recall is identical with the conscious
ness of the distance of the touched point from the tip. I
think anyone must be aware when he touches a point of
his hand or wrist that it is the relation to the finger-tips of
which he is usually most conscious. Points on the fore
arm suggest either the finger-tips or the elbow (the latter
being a spot of greater sensibility*). In the foot it is the
toes, and so on. A point can only be cognized in its rela
tions to the entire body at once by awakening a visual
image of the whole body. Such awakening is even more
obviously than the previously considered cases a matter of
pure association.
This leads us to the eye. On the retina the fovea and the
yellow spot about it form a focus of exquisite sensibility,
towards which every impression falling on an outlying por
tion of the field is moved by an instinctive action of the
muscles of the eyeball. Few persons, until their attention
is called to the fact, are aware how almost impossible it is
to keep a conspicuous visible object in the margin of the
field of view. The moment volition is relaxed we find that
without our knowing it our eyes have turned so as to bring
it to the centre. This is why most persons are unable to
keep the eyes steadily converged upon a point in space with
nothing in it. The objects against the walls of the room
* It is true that the inside of the fore- arm, though its discriminative
sensibility is often less than that of the outside, usually rises very promi
nently into consciousness when the latter is touched. Its esthetic sensi
bility to contact is a good deal finer. We enjoy stroking it from the ex
tensor to the flexor surface around the ulnar side more than in the reverse
direction. Pronating movements give rise to contacts in this order, and
are frequently indulged in when the back of the fore-arm feels an object
against it.
162 PSYCHOLOGY.
invincibly attract the foveae to themselves. If we contem
plate a blank wall or sheet of paper, we always observe in
a moment that we are directly looking at some speck upon it
which, unnoticed at first, ended by catching our eye. Thus
ivhenever an image falling on the point P of the retina excites
attention, it more habitually moves from that point toivards the
fovea than in any one other direction. The line traced thus by
the image is not always a straight line. When the direction
of the point from the fovea is neither vertical nor horizon
tal but oblique, the line traced is often a curve, with its con
cavity directed upwards if the direction is upwards, down
wards if the direction is downwards. This may be verified
by anyone who will take the trouble to make a simple ex
periment with a luminous body like a candle-flame in a dark
enclosure, or a star. Gazing first at some point remote
from the source of light, let the eye be suddenly turned full
upon the latter. The luminous image will necessarily fall
in succession upon a continuous series of points, reaching
from the one first affected to the fovea. But by virtue of
the slowness with which retinal excitements die away, the
entire series of points will for an instant be visible as an
after-image, displaying the above peculiarity of form ac
cording to its situation.* These radiating lines are neither
regular nor invariable in the same person, nor, probably,
equally curved in different individuals. We are incessant
ly drawing them between the fovea and every point of the
field of view. Objects remain in their peripheral indistinct
ness only so long as they are unnoticed. The moment we
attend to them they grow distinct through one of these mo
tions which leads to the idea prevalent among uninstructed
persons that we see distinctly all parts of the field of view
at once. The result of this incessant tracing of radii is that
whenever a local sign P is awakened by a spot of light falling
upon it, it recalls forthwith, even though the eyeball be unmoved,
the local signs of all the other points ivhich lie between P and
the fovea. It recalls them in imaginary form, just as the
normal reflex movement would recall them in vivid form ;
and with their recall is given a consciousness more or less
* These facts were first noticed by Wundt: see his Beitrage, p. 140, 202
See also Larnansky, Pfliiger s Archiv, xi. 418.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 163
faint of the whole line on which they lie. In other words,
no ray of light can fall on any retinal spot without the lo
cal sign of that spot revealing to us, by recalling the line
of its most habitual associates, its direction and distance
from the centre of the field. The fovea acts thus as the
origin of a system of polar co-ordinates, in relation to which
each and every retinal point has through an incessantly-re
peated process of association its distance and direction de
termined. Were P alone illumined and all the rest of the
field dark we should still, even with motionless eyes, know
whether P lay high or low, right or left, through the ideal
.streak, different from all other streaks, which P alone
has the power of awakening.*
* So far all has been plain sailing, but our course begins to be so tortu
ous when we descend into minuter detail that I will treat of the more pre
cise determination of locality in a long note. When P recalls an ideal line
leading to the fovea the line is felt in its entirety and but vaguely ; whilst
P, which we supposed to be a single star of actual light, stands out in strong
distinction from it. The ground of the distinction between P and the
ideal line which it terminates is manifest P being vivid while the line is
faint ; but why should P hold the particular position it does, at the end of tlie
line, rather than anywhere else for example, in its middle? That seems
something not at all manifest.
To clear up our thoughts about this latter mystery, let us take the case
of an actual line of light, none of whose parts is ideal. The feeling of
the line is produced, as we know, when a multitude of retinal points are
excited together, each of which when excited separately would give rise to
one of the feelings called local signs. Each of these signs is the feeling of
a small space. From their simultaneous arousal we might well suppose a
feeling of larger space to result. But why is it necessary that in this
larger spaciousness the sign a should appear always at one end of the line,
2 at the other, and m in the middle ? For though the line be a unitary
streak of light, its several constituent points can nevertheless break out
from it, and become alive, each for itself, under the selective eye of atten
tion.
The uncritical reader, giving his first careless glance at the subject, will
say that there is no mystery in this, and that of course local signs must
appear alongside of each other, each in its own place; there is no other
way possible. But the more philosophic student, whose business it is to
discover difficulties quite as much as to get rid of them, will reflect that it
is conceivable that the partial factors might fuse into a larger space, and
yet not each be located within it any more than a voice is located in a
chorus. He will wonder how, after combining into the line, the points
can become severally alive again : the separate puffs of a sirene no longer
strike the ear after they have fused into a certain pitch of sound. He will
recall the fact that when, after looking at things with one eye closed, we
PSYCHOLOGY.
And with this we can close the first great division of
our subject. We have shown that, within the range of
double^bVopening the other eye, the number of retinal points affected,
the new retinal sensations do not as a rule appear alongside of the
old ones and additional to them, but merely make the old ones seem
laro-er and nearer. Why should the affection of new points on the same
retina have so different a result? In fact, he will see no sort of logical
connection between (1) the original separate local signs, (2) the line as a
unit (3) the line with the points discriminated in it, and (4) the various
nerve-processes which subserve all these different things. He will suspect
our local sign of being a very slippery and ambiguous sort of creature.
Positionless at first, it no sooner appears in the midst of a gang of compan
ions than it is found maintaining the strictest position of its own, and as
signing place to each of its associates. How is this possible? Must we
accept what we rejected a while ago as absurd, and admit the points each
to have position in se ? Or must we suspect that our whole construction
has been fallacious, and that we have tried to conjure up, out of association,
qualities which the associates never contained?
There is no doubt a real difficulty here; and the shortest way of dealing
with it would be to confess it insoluble and ultimate. Even if position be
not an intrinsic character of any one of those sensations we have calle
local signs we must still admit that there is something about everyone of
them that stands for the potentiality of position, and is the ground why tl
local sign when it gets placed at all, gets placed Aero rather than there.
something be interpreted as a physiological something, as a mere nerve-
process it is easy to say in a blank way that when it is excited alone, it
an ultimate fact (1) that a positionless spot will appear; that when il
excited together with other similar processes, but without Ithe process o
discriminative attention, it is another ultimate fact (2) that a unitary line
will come- and that the final ultimate fact (3) is that, when the nerve-
process is excited in combination with that other process which subserves
the feeling of attention, what results will be the line with the local sign
inside of it determined to a particular place. Thus we should escape the
responsibility of explaining, by falling back on the everlasting inscruta
bility of the psycho-neural nexus. The moment we call the ground of 1
calization physiological, we need only point out how, in those cases i
which localization occurs, the physiological process differs from those 11
which it does not, to have done all we can possibly do in the matter,
would be unexceptionable logic, and with it we might let the matter drop,
satisfied that there was no self-contradiction in it, but only the universal
psychological puzzle of how a new mode of consciousness emerges when
ever a fundamentally new mode of nervous action occurs.
But blameless as such tactics would logically be on our part, let us see
whether we cannot push our theoretic insight a little farther. It seems t
me we can We cannot, it is true, give a reason why the line we feel when
process (2) awakens should have its own peculiar shape; nor can we explain
the essence of the process of discriminative attention. But we can s.
why if the brute facts be admitted that a line may have one of its parts
singled out by attention at all, and that that part may appear in relation to
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 165
every sense, experience takes ab initio the spatial form. We
have also shown that in the cases of the retina and skin
other parts at all, the relation must be in the line itself, for the line and
the parts are the only things supposed to be in consciousness. And we can
furthermore suggest a reason why parts appearing thus in relation to each
other in a line should fall into an immutable order, and each within that
order keep its characteristic place.
If a lot of such local signs all have any quality which evenly augments
as we pass from one to the other, we can arrange them in an ideal serial
order, in which any one local sign must lie below those with more, above
those with less, of the quality in question. It must divide the series into
two parts, unless indeed it have a maximum or minimum of the quality,
when it either begins or ends it.
Such an ideal series of local signs in the mind is, however, not yet iden
tical with the feeling of a line in space. Touch a dozen points on the skin
successively, and there seems no necessary reason why the notion of a defi
nite line should emerge, even though we be strongly aware of a gradation
of quality among the touches. We may of course symbolically arrange
them in a line in our thought, but we can always distinguish between a
line symbolically thought aud a line directly felt.
But note now the peculiarity of the nerve-processes of all these local
signs: though they may give no line when excited successively, when ex
cited together they do give the actual sensation of a line in space. The
sum of them is the neural process of that line; the sum of their feelings
is the feeling of that line; and if we begin to single out particular points
from the line, and notice them by their rank, it is impossible to see how
this rank can appear except as an actual fixed space-position sensibly felt
as a bit of the total line. The scale itself appearing as a line, rank in it
must appear as a definite part of the line. If the seven notes of an octave,
when heard together, appeared to the sense of hearing as an outspread
line of sound which it is needless to say they do not why then no one
note could be discriminated without being localized, according to its pitch,
in the line, either as one of its extremities or as some part between.
But not alone the gradation of their quality arranges the local-sign
feelings in a scale. Our movements arrange them also in a towd-scale.
Whenever a stimulus passes from point a of the skin or retina to point/,
it awakens the local -sign feelings in the perfectly definite time-order abcdef.
It cannot excite/ until cde have been successively aroused. The feeling c
sometimes is preceded by ab, sometimes followed by ba, according to the
movement s direction; the result of it all being that we never feel either a,
c, or/, without there clinging to it faint reverberations of the various time-
orders of transition in which, throughout past experience, it has been
aroused. To the local sign a there clings the tinge or tone, the penumbrn
or fringe, of the transition bed. To/ to c, there cling quite different tones.
Once admit the principle that a feeling may be tinged by the reproductive
consciousness of an habitual transition, even when the transition is not
made, and it seems entirely natural to admit that, if the transition be habit
ually in the order abcdef, and if a, c, and/ be felt separately at all, a will
be felt with an essential earliness, /with an essential lateness, and that c will
166 PSYCHOLOGY.
every sensible total may be subdivided by discriminative
attention into sensible parts, which are also spaces, and
into relations between the parts, these being sensible spaces
too. Furthermore, we have seen (in a foot-note) that differ
ent parts, once discriminated, necessarily fall into a deter
minate order, both by reason of definite gradations in their
quality, and by reason of the fixed order of time-succes
sion in which movements arouse them. But in all this
nothing has been said of the comparative measurement of
one sensible space- total against another, or of the way
in which, by summing our divers simple sensible space-
experiences together, we end by ronstructing what we re
gard as the unitary, continuous, and infinite objective Space
of the real world. To this more difficult inquiry we next
THE CONSTRUCTION OF HEAL SPACE,
The problem breaks into two subordinate problems <
(1) How is the subdivision and measurement of the several
sensorial spaces completely effected ? and
(2) Now do their mutual addition and fusion and reduction
to the same scale, in a ivord, hoiv does their synthesis, occur ?
I think that, as in the investigation just finished, we
found ourselves able to get along without invoking any data
but those that pure sensibility on the one hand, and the
ordinary intellectual powers of discrimination and recollec-
fall between. Thus those psychologists who set little store by local signs
and great store by movements in explaining space-perception, would have
a perfectly definite time-order, due to motion, by which to account for
the definite order of positions that appears when sensitive spots are excited
all at once. Without, however, the preliminary admission of the * ulti
mate fact that this collective excitement shall feel like a line and nothing
else, it can never be explained why the new order should needs be an
order of positions, and not of merely ideal serial rank. We shall hereafter
have any amount of opportunity to observe how thoroughgoing is the par
ticipation of motion in all our spatial measurements. Whether the local
signs have their respective qualities evenly graduated or not, the feelings
of transition must be set down as among the verce causa in localization.
But the gradation of the local signs is hardly to be doubted ; so we may be
lieve ourselves really to possess two sets of reasons for localizing any point
we may happen to distinguish from out the midst of any line or any larger
space.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 167
tion on the other, were able to yield ; so here we shall
emerge from our more complicated quest with the convic
tion that all the facts can be accounted for on the supposi
tion that no other mental forces have been at work save
those we find everywhere else in psychology : sensibility,
namely, for the data ; and discrimination, association,
memory, and choice for the rearrangements and combina
tions which they undergo.
1. The Subdivision of the Original Sense-spaces.
How are spatial subdivisions brought to consciousness ?
in other words, How does spatial discrimination occur?
The general subject of discrimination has been treated in
a previous chapter. Here we need only inquire what are
the conditions that make spatial discrimination so much
finer in sight than in touch, and in touch than in hearing,
smell, or taste.
The first great condition is, that different points of the
surface shall differ in the quality of their immanent sensibility r ,
that is, that each shall carry its special local-sign. If the
skin felt everywhere exactly alike, a foot-bath could be dis
tinguished from a total immersion, as being smaller, but
never distinguished from a wet face. The local-signs are
indispensable ; two points which have the same local-sign
will always be felt as the same point. "We do not judge
them two unless we have discerned their sensations to be
different.* Granted none but; homogeneous irritants, that
organ would then distinguish the greatest multiplicity of
irritants would count most stars or compass-points, or
best compare the size of two wet surfaces whose local
sensibility was the least even. A skin whose sensibility
shaded rapidly off from a focus, like the apex of a boil,
would be better than a homogeneous integument for spatial
perception. The retina, with its exquisitely sensitive fovea,
has this peculiarity, and undoubtedly owes to it a great part
*M. Binet (Revue Philosophique, Sept. 1880, page 291) says we judge
them locally different as soon as their sensations differ enough for us to
distinguish them as qualitatively different when successively excited. This
is not strictly true. Skin-sensations, different enough to be discriminated
when successive, may still fuse locally if excited both at once.
168 PSYCHOLOGY.
* of the minuteness with which we are able to subdivide the
total bigness of the sensation it yields. On its periphery
the local differences do not shade off very rapidly, and we
can count there fewer subdivisions.
But these local differences of feeling, so long as the surface
is unexcited from without, are almost null. I canot feel them
by a pure mental act of attention unless they belong to quite
distinct parts of the body, as the nose and the lip, the finger
tip and the ear ; their contrast needs the reinforcement of
outward excitement to be felt. In the spatial muchness of
a colic or, to call it by the more spacious-sounding verna
cular, of a bellyache one can with difficulty distinguish
the north-east from the south-west corner, but can do so
much more easily if, by pressing one s finger against the
former region, one is able to make the pain there more in
tense.
The local differences require then an adventitious sensa
tion, superinduced upon them, to awaken the attention. After
the attention has once been awakened in this way, it may
continue to be conscious of the unaided difference ; just as
a sail on the horizon may be too faint for us to notice until
someone s finger, placed against the spot, has pointed it out
to us, but may then remain visible after the finger has been
withdrawn. But all this is true only on condition that
separate points of the surface may be exclusively stimulated.
If the whole surface at once be excited from without, and
homogeneously, as, for example, by immersing the body in
salt water, local discrimination is not furthered. The local-
signs, it is true, all awaken at once ; but in such multitude
that no one of them, with its specific quality, stands out in
contrast with the rest. If, however, a single extremity be
immersed, the contrast between the wet and dry parts is
strong, and, at the surface of the water especially, the local-
signs attract the attention, giving the feeling of a ring sur
rounding the member. Similarly, two or three wet spots
separated by dry spots, or two or three hard points against
the skin, will help to break up our consciousness of the
latter s bigness. In cases of this sort, where points re
ceiving an identical kind of excitement are, nevertheless,
felt to be locally distinct, and the objective irritants are also
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 169
judged multiple, e.g., compass-points on skin or stars ou
retina, the ordinary explanation is no doubt just, and we
judge the outward causes to be multiple because we have
discerned the local feelings of their sensations to be dif
ferent.
Capacity for partial stimulation is thus the second condi
tion favoring discrimination. A sensitive surface which has to
be excited in all its parts at once can yield nothing but a
sense of undivided largeness. This appears to be the case
with the olfactory, and to all intents and purposes with the
gustatory, surfaces. Of many tastes and flavors, even sim
ultaneously presented, each affects the totality of its re
spective organ, each appears with the whole vastness given
by that organ, and appears interpenetrated by the rest*
* It may. however, be said that even iu the tongue there is a determina
tion of bitter flavors to the back and of acids to the front edge of the organ.
Spices likewise affect its sides and front, and a taste like that of alum
localizes itself, by its styptic effect on the portion of mucous membrane,
which it immediately touches, more sharply than roast pork, for example,
which stimulates all parts alike. The pork, therefore, tastes more spacious
than the alum or the pepper. In the nose, too, certain smells, of which
viuegar may be taken as the type, seem less spatially extended than heavy,
suffocating odors, like musk. The reason of this appears to be that the
former inhibit inspiration by their sharpness, whilst the latter are drawn
into the lungs, and thus excite an objectively larger surface. The asc? p-
tion of height and depth to certain notes seems due, not to any localization
of the sounds, but to the fact that a feeling of vibration in the chest and
tension in the gullet accompanies the singing of a bass note, whilst, when
we sing high, the palatine mucous membrane is drawn upon by the muscles
which move the larynx, and awakens a feeling in the roof of the mouth.
The only real objection to the law of partial stimulation laid down in
the text is one that might be drawn from the organ of hearing; for, ac
cording to modern theories, the cochlea may have its separate nerve-termini
exclusively excited by sounds of differing pitch, and yet the sounds seem
all to fill a common space, and not necessarily to be arranged alongside of
each other. At most the high note is felt as a thinner, brighter streak
against a darker background. In an article on Space, published in the
Journal of Speculative Philosophy for January, 1879, 1 ventured to suggest
that possibly the auditory nerve termini might be "excited all at once by
sounds of any pitch, as the whole retina would be by every luminous point
if there were no dioptric apparatus affixed." And I added : "Notwith
standing the brilliant conjectures of the last few years which assign differ
ent acoustic end-organs to different rates of air-wave, we are still greatly
in the dark about the subject ; and I, for my part, would much more con
fidently reject a theory of hearing which violated the principles advanced in
170 PSYCHOLOGY.
I should have been willing some years ago to name with
out hesitation a third condition of discrimination saying it
would be most developed in that organ which is susceptible
of the most various qualities of feeling. The retina is un
questionably such an organ. The colors and shades it
perceives are infinitely more numerous than the diversities
of skin -sensation. And it can feel at once white and black,
whilst the ear can in nowise so feel sound and silence. But
the late researches of Donaldson, Blix, and Goldscheider, *
on specific points for heat, cold, pressure, and pain in the
skin ; the older ones of Czermak (repeated later by Klug
in Ludwig s laboratory), showing that a hot and a cold
compass-point are no more easily discriminated as two than
two of equal temperature ; and some unpublished experi
ments of my own all disincline me to make much of this
condition now.t There is, however, one quality of sensa-
tliis article than give up those principles for the sake of any hypothesis
hitherto published about either organs of Corti or basilar membrane."
Professor Rutherford s theory of hearing, advanced at the meeting of the
British Association for 1886, already furnishes an alternative view which
would make hearing present no exception to the space-theory I defend
and which, whether destined to be proved true or false, ought, at any rate
to make us feel that the Helmholtzian theory is probably not the last wora
in the physiology of hearing. Stepano, ff. (Hermann und Schwalbe s Jahres-
bericht, xv. 404. Literature 1886) reports a case in which more than the
upper half of one cochlea was lost without any such deafness to deep notes
on that side as Helmholtz s theory would require.
* Donaldson, in Mind, x. 399, 577; Goldscheider, in Archiv f . (Anat u.)
Physiologie; Blix, in Zeitschrift fur Biologic. A good resume may be
found in Ladd s Physiol. Psychology, part n. chap. TV. 21-23.
fl tried on nine or ten people, making numerous observations on each,
what difference it made in the discrimination of two points to have them
alike or unlike. The points chosen were (1) two large needle-heads, (2)
two screw-heads, and (3) a needle-head and a screw- head. The distance
of the screw-heads was measured from their centres. I found that when
the points gave diverse qualities of feeling (as in 3), this facilitated the
discrimination, but much less strongly than I expected The difference,
in fact, would often not be perceptible twenty times running When,
however, one of the points was endowed with a rotary movement, the
other remaining still, the doubleness of the points became much more evi
dent than before. To observe this I took an ordinary pair of compasses with
one point blunt, and the movable leg replaced by a metallic rod which could,
at any moment, be made to rotate in situ by a dentist s drilling-machine, to
which it was attached. The compass had then its points applied to the skin
at such a distance apart as to be felt as one impression. Suddenly rotating
the drill-apparatus then almost always made them seem as two.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 171
tion which is particularly exciting, and that is the feeling
of motion over any of our surfaces. The erection of this
into a separate elementary quality of sensibility is one of
the most recent of psychological achievements, and is
worthy of detaining us a while at this point.
The Sensation of Motion over Surfaces.
The feeling of motion has generally been assumed by
physiologists to be impossible until the positions of terminus
a quo and terminus ad quern are severally cognized, and the
successive occupancies of these positions by the moving
body are perceived to be separated by a distinct interval of
time.* As a matter of fact, however, we cognize only the
very slowest motions in this way. Seeing the hand of a
clock at XII and afterwards at VI, we judge that it has
moved through the interval. Seeing the sun now in the
east and again in the west, I infer it to have passed over
my head. But we can only infer that which we already
generically know in some more direct fashion, and it is ex
perimentally certain that we have the feeling of motion
given us as a direct and simple sensation. Czermak long ago
pointed out the difference between seeing the motion of the
second-hand of a watch, when we look directly at it, and
noticing the fact of its having altered its position when we
fix our gaze upon some other point of the dial-plate. In
the first case we have a specific quality of sensation which
is absent in the second. If the reader will find a portion
of his skin the arm, for example where a pair of com
pass-points an inch apart are felt as one impression, and if
he will then trace lines a tenth of an inch long on that spot
with a pencil-point, he will be distinctly aware of the point s
motion and vaguely aware of the direction of the motion.
The perception of the motion here is certainly not derived
from a pre-existing knowledge that its starting and ending
points are separate positions in space, because positions in
space ten times wider apart fail to be discriminated as such
* This is only another example of what I call the psychologist s fal
lacy thinking that the mind he is studying must necessarily be conscious
of the object after the fashion in which the psychologist himself is con
scious of it.
172 PSYCHOLOGY.
when excited by the dividers. It is the same with the
retina. One s fingers when cast upon its peripheral portions
cannot be counted that is to say, the five retinal tracts
which they occupy are not distinctly apprehended by the
mind as five separate positions in space and yet the slight
est movement of the fingers is most vividly perceived as
movement and nothing else. It is thus certain that our
sense of movement, being so much more delicate than our
sense of position, cannot possibly be derived from it. A
curious observation by Exner * completes the proof that move
ment is a primitive form of sensibility, by showing it to be
much more delicate than our sense of succession in time.
This very able physiologist caused two electric sparks to
appear in rapid succession, one beside the other. The
observer had to state whether the right-hand one or the
left-hand one appeared first. When the interval was re
duced to as short a time as 0.044" the discrimination of
temporal order in the sparks became impossible. But
Exner found that if the sparks were brought so close to
gether in space that their irradiation-circles overlapped, the
eye then felt their flashing as if it were the motion of a
single spark from the point occupied by the first to the
point occupied by the second, and the time-interval might
then be made as small as 0.015" before the mind began to
be in doubt as to whether the apparent motion started
from the right or from the left. On the skin similar ex
periments gave similar results.
Vierordt, at almost the same time,^ called atttention to cer
tain persistent illusions, amongst which are these : If another
person gently trace a line across our wrist or finger, the
latter being stationary, it will feel to us as if the mem
ber were moving in the opposite direction to the tracing
point. If, on the contrary, we move our limb across a fixed
point, it will be seen as if the point were moving as well.
If the reader will touch his forehead with his forefinger
kept motionless, and then rotate the head so that the skin
of the forehead passes beneath the finger s tip, he will Lave
*Sitzb. der. k. Akad. Wien, Bd. LXXII., Abth. 3 (1875).
f Zeitschrift fttr Biologie, xii. 226 (1876).
TEE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 173
an irresistible sensation of the latter being itself in motion
in the opposite direction to the head. So in abducting the
fingers from each other ; some may move and the rest be still
still, but the still ones will feel as if they were actively sep
arating from the rest. These illusions, according to Vierordt,
are survivals of a primitive form of perception, when
motion was felt as such, but ascribed to the whole content
of consciousness, and not yet distinguished as belonging ex
clusively to one of its parts. When our perception is fully
developed we go beyond the mere relative motion of thing
and ground, and can ascribe absolute motion to one of these
components of our total object, and absolute rest to another.
When, in vision for example, the whole background moves
together, we think that it is ourselves or our eyes which
are moving ; and any object in the foreground which may
move relatively to the background is judged by us to be
still. But primitively this discrimination cannot be per
fectly made. The sensation of the motion spreads over all
that we see and infects it. Any relative motion of object
and retina both makes the object seem to move, and makes
us feel ourselves in motion. Even now when our whole ob
ject moves we still get giddy ; and we still see an apparent
motion of the entire field of view, whenever we suddenly
jerk our head and eyes or shake them quickly to and fro.
Pushing our eyeballs gives the same illusion. We knoiv in
all these cases what really happens, but the conditions are
unusual, so our primitive sensation persists unchecked. So
it does when clouds float by the moon. We know the moon
is still ; but we see it move even faster than the clouds.
Even when we slowly move our eyes the primitive sensation
persists under the victorious conception. If we notice
closely the experience, we find that any object towards
which we look appears moving to meet our eye.
But the most valuable contribution to the subject is
the paper of G. H. Schneider,* who takes up the matter
zoologically, and shows by examples from every branch of
the animal kingdom that movement is the quality by which
animals most easily attract each other s attention. The in-
* Vierteljahrsch. ftir wiss. Philos., n. 377.
174 PSYCHOLOGY.
stinct of shamming death is no shamming of death at all,
but rather a paralysis through fear, which saves the insect,
crustacean, or other creature from being noticed at oil by his
enemy. It is parallelled in the human race by the breath-
Jiolding stillness of the boy playing I spy, to whom the
seeker is near ; and its obverse side is shown in our invol
untary waving of arms, jumping up and down, and so forth,
when we wish to attract someone s attention at a distance.
Creatures stalking their prey and creatures hiding from
their pursuers alike show how immobility diminishes con-
spicuity. In the woods, if we are quiet, the squirrels aiid
birds will actually touch us. Flies will light on stuffed
birds and stationary frogs.* On the other hand, the tre
mendous shock of feeling the thing we are sitting on begin
to move, the exaggerated start it gives us to have an insect
unexpectedly pass over our skin, or a cat noiselessly come
and snuffle about our hand, the excessive reflex effects of
tickling, etc., show how exciting the sensation of motion is
per se. A kitten cannot help pursuing a moving ball. Im
pressions too faint to be cognized at all are immediately
felt if they move. A fly sitting is unnoticed, we feel it the
moment it crawls. A shadow may be too faint to be per
ceived. As soon as it moves, however, we see it. Schneider
found that a shadow, with distinct outline, and directly fix
ated, could still be perceived when moving, although its
objective strength might be but half as great as that of a
stationary shadow so faint as just to disappear. With a
blurred shadow in indirect vision the difference in favor
of motion was much greater namely, 13.3 : 40.7. If we
hold a finger between our closed eyelid and the sunshine
we shall not notice its presence. The moment we move it
to and fro, however, we discern it. Such visual perception
as this reproduces the conditions of sight among the
radiates, t
* Bxner tries to show that the structure of the faceted eye of articulates
adapts it for perceiving motions almost exclusively.
f Schneider tries to explain why a sensory surface is so much more ex
cited when its impression moves. It has long since been noticed how much
more acute is discrimination of successive than of simultaneous differences.
But in the case of a moving impression, say on the retina, we have a sum-
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 175
Enough has now been said to show that in the education
of spatial discrimination the motions of impressions across sen
sory surfaces must have been the principal agent in breaking
up our consciousness of the surfaces into a consciousness
of their parts. Even to-day the main function of the pe
ripheral regions of our retina is that of sentinels, which,
when beams of light move over them, cry Who goes there ?
and call the fovea to the spot. Most parts of the skin do
but perform the same office for the finger-tips. Of course
finger-tips and fovea leave some power of direct perception
to marginal retina and skin respectively. But it is worthy
of note that such perception is best developed on the skin of
the most movable parts (the labors of Vierordt and his
pupils have well shown this) ; and that in the blind, whose
skin is exceptionally discriminative, it seems to have become
so through the inveterate habit which most of them possess
of twitching and moving it under whatever object may
touch them, so as to become better acquainted with the con
formation of the same. Czermak was the first to notice this.
It may be easily verified. Of course movement of surface
und&r object is (for purposes of stimulation) equivalent to move
ment of object over surface. In exploring the shapes and
mation of both sorts of difference ; whereof the natural effect must be to
produce the most perfect discrimination of all.
Fio. 68.
In the left-hand figure let the dark spot B move, for example, from
right to left. At the outset there is the simultaneous contrast of black and
white in B and A. When the motion has occurred so that the right-hand
figure is produced, the same contrast remains, the black and the white
having changed places. But in addition to it there is a double suc
cessive contrast, first in A, which, a moment ago white, has now become
black ; and second in B, which, a moment ago black, has now become
white. If we make each single feeling of contrast = 1 (a supposition tar
too favorable to the state of rest), the sum of contrasts in the case of motion
will be 3, as against 1 in the state of rest. That is, our attention will be
called by a treble force to the difference of color, provided the color be
gin to move. (Cf. also Fleischl, Physiologische Optische Notizen, 2te
Mittheilung, Wiener Sitzungsberichte, 1882.)
176 PSYCHOLOGY.
sizes of things by either eye or skin the movements of these
organs are incessant and unrestrainable. Every such move
ment draws the points and lines of the object across the
surface, imprints them a hundred times more sharply,
and drives them home to the attention. The immense part
thus played by movements in our perceptive activity is held
by many psychologists* to prove that the muscles are them
selves the space-perceiving organ. Not surface-sensibility,
but the muscular sense, is for these writers the original
and only revealer of objective extension. But they have
all failed to notice with what peculiar intensity muscular
contractions call surface-sensibilities into play, and that the
mere discrimination of impressions (quite apart from any
question of measuring the space between them) largely
depends on the mobility of the surface upon which they
fall, t
* Brown, Bain, J. 8. Mill, and in a modified manner Wundt, Helmholtz,
Sully, etc.
fM. Ch. Dunan, in his forcibly written essay 1 Espace Visuel et
1 Espace Tactile in the Revue Philosophique for 1888, endeavors to prove
that surfaces alone give no perception of extent, by citing the way in
which the blind go to work to gain an idea of an object s shape. If surfaces
were the percipient organ, he says, " both the seeing and the blind ought
to gain an exact idea of the size (and shape) of an object by merely laying
their hand flat upon it (provided of course that it were smaller than the
hand), and this because of their direct appreciation of the amount of tactile
surface affected, and with no recourse to the muscular sense. . . . But the
fact is that a person born blind never proceeds in this way to measure ob
jective surfaces. The only means which he has of getting at the size of a
body is that of running his finger along the lines by which it is bounded.
For instance, if you put into the hands of one born blind a book whose
dimensions are unknown to him, he will begin by resting it against his
chest so as to hold it horizontal ; then, bringing his two hands together at
the middle of the edge opposite to the one against his body, he will draw
them asunder till they reach the ends of the edge in question . and then,
and not till then, will he be able to say what the length of the object is "
(vol. xxv. p. 148). I think that anyone who will try to appreciate the size
and shape of an object by simply laying his hand flat upon it will find
that the great obstacle is that he feels the contours so imperfectly. The
moment, however, the hands move, the contours are emphatically and dis
tinctly felt. All perception of shape and size is perception of contours, and
first of all these must be made sharp. Motion does this ; and the impulse
to move our organs in perception is primarily due to the craving which we
feel to get our surface-sensations sharp. When it comes to the naming and
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. Ill
2. The Measurement of the sense-spaces against each other.
What precedes is all we can say in answer to the problem
of discrimination. Turn now to that of measurement of the
several spaces against each other, that being the first step
in our constructing out of our diverse space-experiences the
one space we believe in as that of the real world.
The first thing that seems evident is that we have no
immediate power of comparing together with any accuracy
the extents revealed by different sensations. Our mouth-
cavity feels indeed to itself smaller, and to the tongue
larger, than it feels to the finger or eye, our tympanic
membrane feels larger than our finger-tip, our lips feel
larger than a surface equal to them on our thigh. So much
comparison is immediate ; but it is vague ; and for anything
exact we must resort to other help.
The great agent in comparing the extent felt by one sensory
surface with that felt by another, is superposition superposition
of one surface upon another, and superposition of one outer
thing upon many surfaces. Thus are exact equivalencies and
common measures introduced, and the way prepared for
numerical results.
Could we not superpose one part of our skin upon an
other, or one object on both parts, we should hardly suc
ceed in coming to that knowledge of our own form which
we possess. The original differences of bigness of our dif
ferent parts would remain vaguely operative, and we should
have no certainty as to how much lip was equivalent to so
much forehead, how much finger to so much back.
But with the power of exploring one part of the surface
by another we get a direct perception of cutaneous equiva
lencies. The primitive differences of bigness are over
powered when we feel by an immediate sensation that a
certain length of thigh-surface is in contact with the entire
palm and fingers. And when a motion of the opposite finger
tips draws a line first along this same length of thigh and
measuring of objects in terms of some common standard we shall see pres
ently how movements help also , but no more in this case than the other
do they help, because the quality of extension itself is contributed by iha
muscular sense.
178 PSYCHOLOGY,
then along the whole of the hand in question, we get a new
manner of measurement, less direct but confirming the
equivalencies established by the first. In these ways, by
superpositions of parts and by tracing lines on different
parts by identical movements, a person deprived of sight
can soon learn to reduce all the dimensions of his body to a
homogeneous scale. By applying the same methods to
objects of his own size or smaller, he can with equal ease
make himself acquainted with their extension stated in
terms derived from his own bulk, palms, feet, cubits, spans,
paces, fathoms (armspreads), etc. In these reductions it is
to be noticed that when the resident sensations of largeness
of two opposed surfaces conflict, one of the sensations is chosen
as the trite standard and the other treated as illusory. Thus
an empty tooth-socket is believed to be really smaller than
the finger-tip which it will not admit, although it may feel
larger ; and in general it may be said that the hand, as the
almost exclusive organ of palpation, gives its own magnitude
to the other parts, instead of having its size determined by
them. In general, it is, as Fechner says, the extent felt by
the more sensitive part to which the other extents are re
duced. *
But even though exploration of one surface by another
were impossible, we could always measure our various
surfaces against each other by applying the same extended
object first to one and then to another. We should of
course have the alternative of supposing that the object
itself waxed and waned as it glided from one place to
another (cf. above, p. 141) ; but the principle of simplifying
as much as possible our world would soon drive us out of
that assumption into the easier one that objects as a rule
* Fechner describes (Psychophysik, i. 132) a method of equivalents
for measuring the sensibility of the skin. Two compasses are used, one on
the part A another on the part B, of the surface The points on B must
be adjusted so that their distance apart appears equal to that between the
points on A With the place A constant, the second pair of points must be
varied a great deal for every change in the place B though for the snrne A
and B the relation of the two compasses is remarkably constant, and con
tinues unaltered for mouths provided but few experiments are made on
each day. If, however, we practise dally their difference grows less, in
accordance with the law given tn the text
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 179
keep their sizes, and that most of our sensations are
affected by errors for which a constant allowance must be
made.
In the retina there is no reason to suppose that the
bignesses of two impressions (lines or blotches) falling on
different regions are primitively felt to stand in any exact
mutual ratio. It is only when the impressions come from
the same object that we judge their sizes to be the same.
And this, too, only when the relation of the object to the
eye is believed to be on the whole unchanged. When the
object by moving changes its relations to the eye the sensa
tion excited by its image even on the same retinal region
becomes so fluctuating that we end by ascribing no absolute
import whatever to the retinal space-feeling which at any
moment we may receive. So complete does this overlook
ing of retinal magnitude become that it is next to impossi
ble to compare the visual magnitudes of objects at different
distances without making the experiment of superposition.
We cannot say beforehand how much of a distant house or
tree our finger will cover. The various answers to the
familiar question, How large is the moon ? answers which
vary from a cartwheel to a wafer illustrate this most
strikingly. The hardest part of the training of a young
draughtsman is his learning to feel directly the retinal (i.e.
primitively sensible) magnitudes which the different objects
in the field of view subtend. To do this he must recover
what Buskin calls the innocence of the eye that is, a
sort of childish perception of stains of color merely as
such, without consciousness of what they mean.
With the rest of us this innocence is lost. Out of all the ^JUi
visual magnitudes of each known object we have selected one as
the REAL one to think of, and degraded all the others to serve as
its signs. This real magnitude is determined by aesthetic
and practical interests. It is that which we get when the
object is at the distance most propitious for exact visual
discrimination of its details. This is the distance at which
we hold anything we are examining. Farther than this we
see it too small, nearer too large. And the larger and the
smaller feeling vanish in the act of suggesting this one,
their more important meaning. As I look along the dining-
180 PSYCHOLOGY.
table I overlook the fact that the farther plates and glasses
feel so much smaller than my own, for I know that they are
all equal in size ; and the feeling of them, which is a present
sensation, is eclipsed in the glare of the knowledge, which
is a merely imagined one.
If the inconsistencies of sight-spaces inter se can thus be
reduced, of course there can be no difficulty in equating
sight-spaces with spaces given to touch. In this equation
it is probably the touch-feeling which prevails as real and
the sight which serves as sign a reduction made necessary
not only by the far greater constancy of felt over seen
magnitudes, but by the greater practical interest which the
sense of touch possesses for our lives. As a rule, things
only benefit or harm us by coming into direct contact with
our skin : sight is only a sort of anticipatory touch ; the
latter is, in Mr. Spencer s phrase, the mother-tongue of
thought, and the handmaid s idiom must be translated
into the language of the mistress before it can speak clearly
to the mind.*
Later on we shall see that the feelings excited in the
joints when a limb moves are used as signs of the path
traversed by the extremity. But of this more anon. As
for the equating of sound-, smell-, and taste-volumes with
those yielded by the more discriminative senses, they are
too vague to need any remark. It may be observed of
pain, however, that its size has to be reduced to that of the
normal tactile size of the organ which is its seat. A finger
with a felon on it, and the pulses of the arteries therein, both
feel larger than we believe they really are.
* Prof. Jastrow gives as the result of his experiments this general
conclusion (Am. Journal of Psychology, in. 53) : "The space-perceptions
of disparate senses are themselves disparate, and whatever harmony
there is amongst them we are warranted in regarding as the result
of experience. The spacial notions of one deprived of the sense of sight
and reduced to the use of the other space-senses must indeed be different
from our own." But he continues: "The existence of the striking
disparities between our visual and our other space-perceptions without
confusing us, and, indeed, without usually being noticed, can only be
explained by the tendency to interpret all dimensions into their visual
equivalents." But this author gives no reasons for saying visual rather
than tactile ; and I must continue to think that probabilities point the
other way so far as what we call real magnitudes are concerned.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 181
It will have been noticed in the account given that
when two sensorial space-impressions, believed, to come from the
same object, differ, then THE ONE MOST INTERESTING, practically
or aesthetically, is JUDGED TO BE THE TRUE ONE. This law of
interest holds throughout though a permanent interest,
like that of touch, may resist a strong but fleeting one like
that of pain, as in the case just given of the felon.
3. The Summation of the Sense-spaces.
Now for the next step in our construction of real space :
How are the various sense-spaces added together into a
consolidated and unitary continuum ? For they are, in man
at all events, incoherent at the start.
Here again the first fact that appears is that primitively
our space-experiences form a chaos, out of which we have no
immediate faculty for extricating them. Objects of different
sense-organs, experienced together, do not in the first instance
appear either inside or alongside or far outside of each other,
neither spatially continuous nor discontinuous, in any definite
sense of these words. The same thing is almost as true of
objects felt by different parts of the same organ before
discrimination has done its finished work. The most we
an say is that all our space-experiences together form an
objective total and that this objective total is vast.
Even now the space inside our mouth, which is so inti
mately known and accurately measured by its inhabitant
the tongue, can hardly be said to have its internal direc
tions and dimensions known in any exact relation to those
of the larger world outside. It forms almost a little world
by itself. Again, when the dentist excavates a small cavity
in one of our teeth, we feel the hard point of his instrument
scraping, in distinctly differing directions, a surface which
seems to our sensibility vaguely larger than the subsequent
use of the mirror tells us it really is. And though the
directions of the scraping differ so completely inter se, not
one of them can be identified with the particular direction
in the outer world to which it corresponds. The space of
the tooth-sensibility is thus really a little world by itself,
which can only become congruent with the outer space-
182 PSYCHOLOGY.
world by farther experiences which shall alter its bulk,
identify its directions, fuse its margins, and finally imbed it
as a definite part within a definite whole. And even though
every joint s rotations should be felt to vary inter se as so
many differences of direction in a common room ; even
though the same were true of diverse tracings on the skin,
and of diverse tracings on the retina respectively, it would
still not follow that feelings of direction, on these different
surfaces, are intuitively comparable among each other, or
with the other directions yielded by the feelings of the
semi-circular canals. It would not follow that we should
immediately judge the relations of them all to each other
in one space-world.
If with the arms in an unnatural attitude we feel
things, we are perplexed about their shape, size, and
position. Let the reader lie on his back with his arms
stretched above his head, and it will astonish him to find
how ill able he is to recognize the geometrical relations of
objects placed within reach of his hands. But the geomet
rical relations here spoken of are nothing but identities
recognized between the directions and sizes perceived in
this way and those perceived in the more usual ways.
The two ways do not fit each other intuitively.
How lax the connection between the system of visual and
the system of tactile directions is in man, appears from the
facility with which microscopists learn to reverse the move
ments of their hand in manipulating things on the stage of
the instrument. To move the slide to the seen left they
must draw it to ihefelt right. But in a very few days the
habit becomes a second nature. So in tying our cravat,
shaving before a mirror, etc., the right and left sides are
inverted, and the directions of our hand movements are the
opposite of what they seem. Yet this never annoys us.
Only when by accident we try to tie the cravat of another
person do we learn that there are two ways of combining
sight and touch perceptions. Let any one try for the first
time to write or draw while looking at the image of his
hand and paper in a mirror, and he will be utterly bewil
dered. But a very short training will teach him to undo
in this respect the associations of his previous lifetime.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 183
Prisms show this in an even more striking way. If the
eyes be armed with spectacles containing slightly prismatic
glasses with their bases turned, for example, towards the
right, every object looked at will be apparently translocated
to the left ; and the hand put forth to grasp any such object
will make the mistake of passing beyond it on the left side.
But less than an hour of practice in wearing such spectacles
rectifies the judgment so that no more mistakes are made.
In fact the new-formed associations are already so strong,
that when the prisms are first laid aside again the opposite
error is committed, the habits of a lifetime violated, and
the hand now passed to the right of every object which it
seeks to touch.
The primitive chaos thus subsists to a great degree
through life so far as our immediate sensibility goes. We
feel our various objects and their bignesses, together or in
succession ; but so soon as it is a question of the order and
relations of many of them at once our intuitive apprehension
remains to the very end most vague and incomplete.
Whilst we are attending to one, or at most to two or three
objects, all the others lapse, and the most we feel of them is
that they still linger on the outskirts and can be caught
again by turning in a certain way. Nevertheless throughout
all this confusion we conceive of a world spread out in a perfectly
fixed and orderly fashion, and we believe in its existence. The
question is : How do this conception and this belief arise ? How
is the chaos smoothed and straightened out ?
Mainly by two operations : Some of the experiences are
apprehended to exist out- and alongside of each other, and
others are apprehended to interpenetrate each other, and
to occupy the same room. In this way what was incoherent
and irrelative ends by being coherent and definitely related ;
nor is it hard to trace the principles, by which the mind is
guided in this arrangement of its perceptions, in detail.
In the first place, following the great intellectual law of
economy, we simplify, unify, and identify as much as we
possibly can. Whatever sensible data can be attended to together
we locate together. Their several extents seem one extent. The
place at which each appears is held to be the same with the place
184 PSYCHOLOGY.
at which the others appear. They become, in short, so many
properties of ONE AND THE SAME EEAL THING. This is the first
and great commandment, the fundamental act by which
our world gets spatially arranged.
In this coalescence in a thing, one of the coalescing
sensations is held to be the thing, the other sensations are
taken for its more or less accidental properties, or modes of
appearance.* The sensation chosen to be the thing essen
tially is the most constant and practically important of the
lot ; most often it is hardness or weight. But the hardness
or weight is never without tactile bulk ; and as we can
always see something in our hand when we feel something
there, we equate the bulk felt with the bulk seen, and thence
forward this common bulk is also apt to figure as of the
essence of the thing. Frequently a shape so figures,
sometimes a temperature, a taste, etc. ; but for the most part
temperature, smell, sound, color, or whatever other phenom
ena may vividly impress us simultaneously with the bulk
felt or seen, figure among the accidents. Smell and sound
impress us, it is true, when we neither see nor touch the
thing ; but they are strongest when we see or touch, so we
locate the source of these properties within the touched or
seen space, whilst the properties themselves we regard as
overflowing in a weakened form into the spaces filled by
other things. In all this, it will be observed, the sense-data
whose spaces coalesce into one are yielded by different sense-
organs. Such data have no tendency to displace each other
from consciousness, but can be attended to together all at
once. Often indeed they vary concomitantly and reach a
maximum together. We may be sure, therefore, that the
general rule of our mind is to locate IN each other all sensa
tions which are associated in simultaneous experience, and
do not interfere with each other s perception. t
* Cf. Lipps on Complication, Grundtatsachen, etc., p. 579.
f Ventriloquism shows this very prettily. The ventriloquist talks with
out moving his lips, and at the same time draws our attention to a doll, a
box, or some other object. We forthwith locate the voice within this
object. On the stage an actor ignorant of music sometimes has to sing,
or play on the guitar or violin. He goes through the motions before our
eyes, whilst in the orchestra or elsewhere the music is performed. But
because as we listen we see the actor, it is almost impossible not to hear the
music as if coming from where he sits or stands.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 185
Different impressions on the same sense-organ do interfere
with each other s perception, and cannot well be attended
to at once. Hence we do not locate them in each other s spaces,
but arrange them in a serial order of exteriority, each alongside
of the rest, in a space larger than that which any one sensation
brings. This larger space, however, is an object of concep
tion rather than of direct intuition, and bears all the marks
of being constructed piecemeal by the mind. The blind
man forms it out of tactile, locomotor, and auditory experi
ences, the seeing man out of visual ones almost exclusively.
As the visual construction is the easiest to understand,
let us consider that first.
Every single visual sensation or field of view is
limited. To get a new field of view for our object the old
one must disappear. But the disappearance may be only
partial. Let the first field of view be A B C. If we carry
our attention to the limit C, it ceases to be the limit, and
becomes the centre of the field, and beyond it appear fresh
parts where there were none before : * ABC changes, in
short, to C D E. But although the parts A B are lost to
sight, yet their image abides in the memory ; and if we think
of our first object A B C as having existed or as still existing
at all, we must think of it as it was originally presented,
namely, as spread out from C in one direction just as C D E
is spread out in another. A B and D E can never coalesce
in one place (as they could were they objects of different
senses) because they can never be perceived at once : we
must lose one to see the other. So (the letters standing
now for things ) we get to conceive of the successive fields
of things after the analogy of the several things which we /\ Q
perceive in a single field. They must be out- and along
side of each other, and we conceive that their juxtaposed
spaces must make a larger space. A B C -f- C D E must,
in short, be imagined to exist in the form of A B C D E or
not imagined at all.
We can usually recover anything lost from sight by
moving our attention and our eyes back in its direction ; and
* Cf. Slmiid, in Mind, xm. 340.
186 PSYCHOLOGY.
through these constant changes every field of seen things
comes at last to be thought of as always having a fringe
of other things possible to be seen spreading in all directions
round about it. Meanwhile the movements concomitantly
with which the various fields alternate are also felt and re
membered ; and gradually (through association) this aud
that movement come in our thought to suggest this or that
extent of fresh objects introduced. Gradually, too, since
the objects vary indefinitely in kind, we abstract from
their several natures and think separately of their mere
extents, of which extents the various movements remain as
the only constant introducers and associates. More and
more, therefore, do we think of movement and seen extent
as mutually involving each other, until at last (with Bain
and J. S. Mill) we may get to regard them as synonymous,
and say, " What is the meaning of the word extent, unless it
be possible movement?"* We forget in this conclusion
that (whatever intrinsic extensiveness the movements may
appear endowed with), that seen spreadoutness which is
the pattern of the abstract extensiveness which we imagine
came to us originally from the retinal sensation.
The muscular sensations of the eyeball signify this sort
of visible spreadoutness, just as this visible spreadoutness
may come in later experience to signify the real bulks,
distances, lengths and breadths known to touch and loco
motion, t To the very end, however, in us seeing men,
the quality, the nature, the sort of thing we mean by exten
siveness, would seem to be the sort of feeling which our re
tinal stimulations bring.
In one deprived of sight the principles by which the
notion of real space is constructed are the same. Skin-
feelings take in him the place of retinal feelings in giving
* See, e.g., Bain s Senses and Intellect, pp. 366-7, 371.
f When, for example, a baby looks at Its own moving hand, it sees
one object at the same time that it feels another. Both interest its
attention, and it locates them together. But the felt object s size is the I
more constant size, just as the felt object is, on the whole, the more in
teresting and important object ; and so the retinal sensations become re- j
garded as its signs and have their real space- values interpreted in]
tangible terms.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 187
the quality of lateral spreadoutness, as our attention passes
from one extent of them to another, awakened by an object
sliding along. Usually the moving object is our hand ;
and feelings of movement in our joints invariably accom
pany the feelings in the skin. But the feeling of the skin
is what the blind man means by his skin ; so the size of the
skin-feelings stands as the absolute or real size, and the
size of the joint-feelings becomes a sign of these. Suppose,
for example, a blind baby with (to make the description
shorter) a blister on his toe, exploring his leg with his
finger-tip and feeling a pain shoot up sharply the instant
the blister is touched. The experiment gives him four
different kinds of sensation two of them protracted, two
sudden. The first pair are the movement-feeling in the
joints of the upper limb, and the movement-feeling on
the skin of the leg and foot. These, attended to together,
have their extents identified as one objective space
the hand moves through the same space in which the
leg lies. The second pair of objects are the pain in the
blister, and the peculiar feeling the blister gives to the
finger. Their spaces also fuse ; and as each marks the end
of a peculiar movement-series (arm moved, leg stroked),
the movement-spaces are emphatically identified with each
other at that end. Were there other small blisters dis
tributed down the leg, there would be a number of these
emphatic points ; the movement-spaces would be iden
tified, not only as totals, but point for point. *
*The incoherence of the different primordial sense-spaces inter e
is often made a pretext for denying to the primitive bodily feelings any
spatial quality at all. Nothing is commoner than to hear it said : "Babies
have originally no spatial perception ; for when a baby s toe aches he does
not place the pain in the toe. He makes no definite movements of defence,
and may be vaccinated without being held." The facts are true enough ;
but the interpretation is all wrong. What really happens is that the baby
does not place his toe in the pain ; for he knows nothing of his toe as
yet. He has not attended to it as a visual object ; he has not handled it
with his fingers ; nor have its normal organic sensations or contacts vet
become interesting enough to be discriminated from the whole massive
feeling of the foot, or even of the leg to which it belongs. In short, the
toe is neither a member of the babe s optical space, of his hand-movement
space, nor an independent member of his leg-and-foot space. It has ac
tually no mental existence yet save as this little pain-space. What wonder,
188 PSYCHOLOGY.
Just so with spaces beyond the body s limits. Continu
ing the joint-feeling beyond the toe, the baby hits another
object, which he can still think of when he brings his hand
back to its blister again. That object at the end of that
joint-feeling means a new place for him, and the more such
objects multiply in his experience the wider does the space
of his conception grow. If, wandering through the woods
to-day by a new path, I find myself suddenly in a glade
which affects my senses exactly as did another I reachedx
last week at the end of a different walk, I believe the two!
Identical affections to present the same persisting glade, \
and infer that I have attained it by two differing roads.
The spaces walked over grow congruent by their extremi
ties ; though apart from the common sensation which those
extremities give me, I should be under no necessity of con
necting one walk with another at all. The case in no whit
differs when shorter movements are concerned. If, moving
first one arm and then another, the blind child gets the
same kind of sensation upon the hand, and gets it again
as often as he repeats either process, he judges that he has
touched the same object by both motions, and concludes
that the motions terminate in a common place. From place
to place marked in this way he moves, and adding the
places moved through, one to another, he builds up his no
tion of the extent of the outer world. The seeing man s
process is identical ; only his units, which may be succes
sive bird s-eye views, are much larger than in the case of
the blind.
then, if the pain seem a little space-world all by itself? But let the pain
once associate itself with these other space -worlds, and its space will be
come part of their space. Let the baby feel the nurse stroking the
limb and awakening the pain every time her finger passes towards the
toe ; let him look on and see her finger on the toe every time the pain
shoots up ; let him handle his foot himself and get the pain whenever
the toe comes into his fingers or his mouth ; let moving the leg exacerbate
the pain, and all is changed. The space of the pain becomes identified
with that part of each of the other spaces which gets felt when it
awakens ; and by their identity with it these parts are identified with each
other, and grow systematically connected as members of a larger extensive
whole.
TEE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 189
FEELINGS IN JOINTS AND FEELINGS IN MUSCLES.
1. Feelings of Movement in Joints.
I have been led to speak of feelings which arise in
joints. As these feelings have been too much neglected in
Psychology hitherto, in entering now somewhat minutely
into their study I shall probably at the same time freshen
the interest of the reader, which under the rather dry ab
stractions of the previous pages may presumably have
flagged.
When, by simply flexing my right forefinger on its meta-
carpal joint, I trace with its tip an inch on the palm of my
left hand, is my feeling of the size of the inch purely and
simply a feeling in the skin of the palm, or have the mus
cular contractions of the right hand and forearm anything
to do with it ? In the preceding pages I have constantly
assumed spatial sensibility to be an affair of surfaces. At
first starting, the consideration of the muscular sense as
a space-measurer was postponed to a later stage. Many
writers, of whom the foremost was Tli^m&sjirown, in his
Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, and of whom
the latest is no less a Psychologist than Prof. Delboeuf,*
hold that the consciousness of active muscular motion,!)
aware of its own amount, is the fons et origo of all spatiaM
measurement. It would seem to follow, if this theory were
true, that two skin-feelings, one of a large patch, one of a
small one, possess their difference of spatiality, not as an
immediate element, but solely by virtue of the fact that the
large one, to get its points successively excited, demands
more muscular contraction than the small one does. Fixed
associations with the several amounts of muscular contrac
tion required in this particular experience would thus ex-
* Pourquoi les Sensations visuelles sont elles etendues? in Revue
Philosophique, iv. 167. As the proofs of this chapter are being corrected,
I receive the third Heft of Miinsterberg s Beitra ge zur Experimentellen.
Psychologic, in which that vigorous young psychologist reaffirms (if I
understand him after so hasty a glance) more radically than ever the doc
trine that muscular sensation proper is our one means of measuring exten
sion. Unable to reopen the discussion here, I am in duty bound to call
the attention of the reader to Herr M. s work.
190 PSYCHOLOGY.
plain the apparent sizes of the skin-patches, which sizes
would consequently not be primitive data but derivative re
sults.
It seems to me that no evidence of the muscular measure
ments in question exists; but that all the facts may be ex
plained by surface-sensibility, provided we take that of the
joint-surfaces also into account.
The most striking argument, and the most obvious one,
which an upholder of the muscular theory is likely to pro
duce is undoubtedly this fact : if, with closed eyes, we trace
figures in the air with the extended forefinger (the motions
may occur from the metacarpal-, the wrist-, the elbow-, or
the shoulder-joint indifferently), what we are conscious of in
each case, and indeed most acutely conscious of, is the
geometric path described by the finger-^. Its angles, its
subdivisions, are all as distinctly felt as if seen by the eye ;
and yet the surface of the finger-tip receives no impression
at all.* But with each variation of the figure, the muscular
contractions vary, and so do the feelings which these yield.
Are not these latter the sens.ible data that make us aware of
the lengths and directions we discern in the traced line ?
Should we be tempted to object to this supposition of
the advocate of perception by muscular feelings, that we
have learned the spatial significance of these feelings by
reiterated experiences of seeing what figure is drawn when
each special muscular grouping is felt, so that in the last
resort the muscular space feelings would be derived from
retinal- surf ace feelings, our opponent might immediately
hush us by pointing to the fact that in persons born blind
the phenomenon in question is even more perfect than ir
ourselves.
If we suggest that the blind may have originally traced
the figures on the cutaneous surface of cheek, thigh, or palm,
and may now remember the specific figure which each pres
ent movement formerly caused the skin- surf ace to per
ceive, he may reply that the delicacy of the motor percep-
* Even if the figure be drawn on a board instead of in the air, the vari
ations of contact on the finger s surface will be much simpler than the pe
culiarities of the traced figure itself.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 191
tion far exceeds that of most of the cutaneous surfaces ;
that, in fact, we can feel a figure traced only in its differen
tials, so to speak, a figure which we merely start to trace by
our finger-tip, a figure which, traced in the same way on our
finger-tip by the hand of another, is almost if not wholly
unrecognizable.
The champion of the muscular sense seems likely to be
triumphant until we invoke the articular cartilages, as in
ternal surfaces whose sensibility is called in play by every
movement we make, however delicate the latter may be.
To establish the part they play in our geometrizing, it
is necessary to review a few facts. It has long been known
by medical practitioners that, in patients with cutaneous
anaesthesia of a limb, whose muscles also are insensible to
the thrill of the faradic current, a very accurate sense of the
way in which the limb may be flexed or extended by the
hand of another may be preserved.* On the other hand,
we may have this sense of movement impaired when the tac
tile sensibility is well preserved. That the pretended feeling
of outgoing innervation can play in these cases no part, is
obvious from the fact that the movements by which the
limb changes its position are passive ones, imprinted on it
by the experimenting physician. The writers who have
sought a rationale of the matter have consequently been
driven by way of exclusion to assume the articular surfaces
to be the seat of the perception in question, f
That the joint-surfaces are sensitive appears evident from
the fact that in inflammation they become the seat of excru
ciating pains, and from the perception by everyone who
lifts weights or presses against resistance, that every in
crease of the force opposing him betrays itself to his con
sciousness principally by the starting-out of new feelings
or the increase of old ones, in or about the joints. If the
structure and mode of mutual application of two articular
surfaces be taken into account, it will appear that, granting
the surfaces to be sensitive, no more favorable mechanical
* See for example Duchenne, Electrisation localised, pp. 727, 770, Ley-
den; Virchow s Archiv, Bd. XLVII. (1869).
t E.g., Eulenburg, Lehrb. d. Nervenkrankheiten (Berlin), 1878, i. 3.
192 PSYCHOLOGY.
conditions could be possible for the delicate calling of the
sensibility into play than are realized in the minutely grad
uated rotations and firmly resisted variations of pressure
involved in every act of extension or flexion. Nevertheless
it is a great pity that we have as yet no direct testimony,
no expressions from patients with healthy joints accident
ally laid open, of the impressions they experience when the
cartilage is pressed or rubbed.
The first approach to direct evidence, so far as I know,
is contained in the paper of Lewinski,* published in 1879.
This observer had a patient the inner half of whose leg
was anaesthetic. When this patient stood up, he had a
curious illusion about the position of his limb, which dis
appeared the moment he lay down again : he thought him
self knock-kneed. If, as Lewinski says, we assume the inner
half of the joint to share the insensibility of the corre
sponding part of the skin, then he ought to feel, when the
joint-surfaces pressed agamsi each other in the act of
standing, the outer half of the joint most strongly. But
this is the feeling he would also get whenever it was by any
chance sought to force his leg into a knock-kneed attitude.
Lewinski was led by this case to examine the feet of cer
tain ataxic patients with imperfect sense of position. He
found in every instance that when the toes were flexed and
draivn upon at the same time (the joint-surfaces drawn
asunder) all sense of the amount of flexion disappeared.
On the contrary, when he pressed a toe in, whilst flexing it,
the patient s appreciation of the amount of flexion was
much improved, evidently because the artificial increase of
articular pressure made up for the pathological insensibil
ity of the parts.
Since Lewinski s paper an important experimental re
search by A. Goldscheider f has appeared, which completely
establishes our point. This patient observer caused his
fingers, arms, and legs to be passively rotated upon their
various joints in a mechanical apparatus which registered
both the velocity of movement impressed and the amount
* Ueber den Kraftsinn/ Virchow s Archiv, Bd. LXXVII. 134.
f Archiv f. (Anat. u) Physiologic (1889), pp. 369, 540.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 193
of angular rotation. No active muscular contraction took
place. The minimal felt amounts of rotation were in all cases
surprisingly small, being much less than a single angular de
gree in all the joints except those of the fingers. Such dis
placements as these, the author says (p. 490), can hardly be
detected by the eye. The point of application of the force
which rotated the limb made no difference in the result.
Kotations round the hip- joint, for example, were as deli
cately felt when the leg was hung by the heel as when it
was hung by the thigh whilst the movements were per
formed. Anaesthesia of the skin produced by induction-cur
rents also had no disturbing effect on the perception, nor
did the various degrees of pressure of the moving force
upon the skin affect it. It became, in fact, all the more
distinct in proportion as the concomitant pressure-feelings
were eliminated by artificial anaesthesia. When the joints
themselves, however, were made artificially anaesthetic the
perception of the movement grew obtuse and the angular
rotations had to be much increased before they were per
ceptible. All these facts prove according to Herr Gold-
scheider, that the joint surfaces and these alone are the start
ing point of the impressions by ivhich the movements of our
members are immediately perceived.
Applying this result, which seems invulnerable, to the
case of the tracing finger-tip, we see that our perception of
the latter gives no countenance to the theory of the mus
cular sense. We indubitably localize the finger-tip at the suc
cessive points of its path by means of the sensations which we
receive from our joints. But if this is so, it may be asked,
why do we feel the figure to be traced, not within the joint
itself, but in such an altogether different place ? And why
do we feel it so much larger than it really is ?
I will answer these questions by asking another : Why
do we move our joints at all ? Surely to gain something
more valuable than the insipid joint-feelings themselves.
And these more interesting feelings are in the main pro
duced upon the skin of the moving part, or of some other
part over which it passes, or upon the eye. With move
ments of the fingers we explore the configuration of all real
objects with which we have to deal, our own body as well as
194 PSYCHOLOGY.
foreign things. Nothing that interests us is located in the
joint ; everything that interests us either is some part of
our skin, or is something that we see as we handle it. The
cutaneously felt and the seen extents come thus to figure
as the important things for us to concern ourselves with.
Every time the joint moves, even though we neither see,
nor feel cutaneously, the reminiscence of skin-events and
sights which formerly coincided with that extent of move
ment, ideally awaken as the movement s import, and the
mind drops the present sign to attend to the import alone.
The joint-sensation itself, as such, does not disappear in
the process. A little attention easily detects it, with all
its fine peculiarities, hidden beneath its vaster suggestions ;
so that really the mind has two space-perceptions before
it, congruent in form but different in scale and place, either
of which exclusively it may notice, or both at once, the
joint-space which it feels and the real space which it means.
The joint-spaces serve so admirably as signs because of
their capacity for parallel variation to all the peculiarities
of external motion. There is not a direction in the real
world nor a ratio of distance which cannot be matched by
some direction or extent of joint-rotation. Joint- feelings,
like all feelings, are roomy. Specific ones are contrasted
inter se as different directions are contrasted within the
same extent. If I extend my arm straight ont at the
shoulder, the rotation of the shoulder- joint will give me one
feeling of movement ; if then I sweep the arm forward, the
same joint will give me another feeling of movement.
Both these movements are felt to happen in space, and
differ in specific quality. Why shall not the specificness
of the quality just consist in the feeling of a peculiar direc
tion ? * Why may not the several joint-feelings be so many
perceptions of movement in so many different directions ?
That we cannot explain why they should is no presumption
that they do not, for we never can explain why any sense-
organ should awaken the sensation it does.
* Direction in its first intention, of course ; direction with which so
far we merely become acquainted, and about which we know nothing save
perhaps its difference from another direction a moment ago experienced in
the same way !
THE PKRCEPTTON OF SPACE. 195
But if the joint-feelings are directions and extents,
standing in relation to each other, the task of association in
interpreting their import in eye- or skin-terms is a good deal
simplified. Let the movement be, of a certain joint, derive
its absolute space-value from the cutaneous feeling it is
always capable of engendering ; then the longer movement
jbcd of the same joint will be judged to have a greater
space-value, even though it may never have wholly merged
with a skin-experience. So of differences of direction : so
much joint- difference = so much skin-difference ; therefore,
more joint-difference = more skin-difference. In fact, the
joint-feeling can excellently serve as a map on a reduced scale, of
a reality which the imagination can identify at its pleasure
with this or that sensible extension simultaneously knoivn in
some other way.
When the joint-feeling in itself acquires an emotional
interest, which happens whenever the joint is inflamed
and painful, the secondary suggestions fail to arise, and
the movement is felt where it is, and in its intrinsic scale oi
magnitude.*
The localization of the joint-feeling in a space simulta
neously known otherwise (i.e. to eye or skin), is what is
commonly called the extradition or eccentric projection of the
feeling. In the preceding chapter I said a good deal on this
subject ; but we must now see a little more closely just what
happens in this instance of it. The content of the joint-
fueling, to begin with, is an object, and is in itself a place.
I >r it to be placed, say in the elbow, the elbow as seen or han-
dlea must already have become another object for the mind,
* I have said hardly anything about associations with visual space in
the foregoing account, because I wished to represent a process which the
blind and the seeing man might equally share. It is to be noticed that
the space suggested to the imagination when the joint moves, and pro
jected to the distance of the finger-tip, is not represented as any specific
skin-tract. What the seeing man imagines is a visible path; what the blind
man imagines is rather a generic image, an abstraction from many skin-
spaces whose local signs have neutralized each other, and left nothing but
their common vastness behind. We shall see as we go on that this generic
abstraction of space-magnitude from the various local peculiarities of feel
ing which accompanied it when it was for the first time felt, occurs on a
considerable scale in the acquired perceptions of blind as well as of seeing
men.
196 PSYCHOLOGY.
and with its place as thus known, the place which the joint-
feeling fills must coalesce. That the latter should be felt
in the elbow is therefore a projection of it into the place
of another object as much as its being felt in the finger-tip
or at the end of a cane can be. But when we say projec
tion we generally have in our mind the notion of a there as
contrasted with a here. What is the here when we say that the
joint-feeling is there ? The here seems to be the spot
which the mind has chosen for its own post of observation,
usually some place within the head, but sometimes within
the throat or breast not a rigorously fixed spot, but a
region from any portion of which it may send forth its vari
ous acts of attention. Extradition from either of these
regions is the common law under which we perceive the
whereabouts of the north star, of our own voice, of the con
tact of our teeth with each other, of the tip of our finger,
of the point of our cane on the ground, or of a movement
in our elbow- joint.
But for the distance betiveen the here and the there to be
felt, the entire intervening space must be itself an object of per
ception. The consciousness of this intervening space is the
sine qua non of the joint-feeling s projection to the farther
end of it. When it is filled by our own bodily tissues (as
where the projection only goes as far as the elbow or fin
ger-tip) we are sensible of its extent alike by our eye, by
our exploring movements, and by the resident sensations
which fill its length. When it reaches beyond the limits
of our body, the resident sensations are lacking, but limbs
and hand and eye suffice to make it known. Let me, for
example, locate a feeling of motion coming from my elbow-
joint in the point of my cane a yard beyond my hand.
Either I see this yard as I flourish the cane, and the seen
end of it then absorbs my sensation just as my seen elbow
might absorb it, or I am blind and imagine the cane as an
object continuing my arm, either because I have explored
both arm and cane with the other hand, or because I have
pressed them both along my body and leg. If I project my
joint-feeling farther still, it is by a conception rather than a
distinct imagination of the space. I think: farther, thrice
as far/ etc.; and thus get a symbolic image of a distant
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 197
patli at which I point. * But the * absorption of the joint-
feeling by the distant spot, in whatever terms the latter
may be apprehended, is never anything but that coales
cence into one thing already spoken of on page 184, of
whatever different sensible objects interest our attention at
once.
2. feelings of Muscular Contraction.
Readers versed in psychological literature will have
missed, in our account thus far, the usual invocation of
the muscular sense. This word is used with extreme
vagueness to cover all resident sensations, whether of
motion or position, in our members, and even to designate
the supposed feeling of efferent discharge from the brain.
We shall later see good reason to deny the existence of the
latter feeling. We have accounted for the better part at least
of the resident feelings of motion in limbs by the sensibility
of the articular surfaces. The skin and ligaments also must
have feelings awakened as they are stretched or squeezed
in flexion or extension. And I am inclined to think that
the sensations of our contracting muscles themselves probably play
<is small a part in building up our exact knowledge of space as
any class of sensations which we possess. The muscles, indeed,
play an all-important part, but it is through the remote
effect of their contractions on other sensitive parts, not
through their own resident sensations being aroused. In
other words, muscular contraction is only indirectly instru
mental, in giving us space-perceptions, by its effects on surfaces.
In skin and retina it produces a motion of the stimulus
upon the surface ; in joints it produces a motion of the
surfaces upon each other such motion being by far the
* The ideal enlargement of a system of sensations by the mind is noth
ing exceptional. Vision is full of it ; and in the manual arts, where a
workman gets a tool larger than the one he is accustomed to and has sud
denly to adapt all his movements to its scale, or where he has to execute
a familiar set of movements in an unnatural position of body; where a
piano-player meets an instrument with unusually broad or narrow keys:
where a man has to alter the size of his handwriting we see how promptly
the mind multiplies once for all, as it were, the whole series of its opera
tions by a constant factor, and has not to trouble itself after that with fur
ther adjustment of the details.
198 PSYCHOLOGY.
most delicate manner of exciting the surfaces in question
One is tempted to doubt whether the muscular sensibility
as such plays even a subordinate part as sign of these
more immediately geometrical perceptions which are so
uniformly associated with it as effects of the contraction
objectively viewed.
For this opinion many reasons can be assigned. First,
it seems a priori improbable that such organs as muscles
should give us feelings whose variations bear any exact
proportion to the spaces traversed when they contract.
As G. E. Miiller says,* their sensory nerves must be excited
either chemically or by mechanical compression whilst the
contractions last, and in neither case can the excitement be
proportionate to the position into which the limb is thrown.
The chemical state of the muscle depends on the previous
work more than on the actually present contraction ; and
the internal pressure of it depends on the resistance offered
more than on the shortening attained. The intrinsic mus
cular sensations are likely tJierefore to be merely those of massive
strain or fatigue, and to carry no accurate discrimination with
them of lengths of path moved through.
Empirically we find this probability confirmed by many
facts. The judicious A. W. Yolkman observes t that :
" Muscular feeling gives tolerably fine evidence as to the existence
of movement, but hardly any direct information about its extent or
direction. We are not aware that the contractions of a supinator
longus have a wider range than those of a supinator brevis; and that
the fibres of a bipenniform muscle contract in opposite directions is a fact
of which the muscular feeling itself gives not the slightest intimation.
Muscle-feeling belongs to that class of general sensations which tell us
of our inner states, but not of outer relations ; it does not belong among
the space-perceiving senses."
E. H. Weber in his article Tastsinn called attention
to the fact that muscular movements as large and strong
as those of the diaphragm go on continually without our
perceiving them as motion.
G. H. Lewes makes the same remark. When we think
of our muscular sensations as movements in space, it is
* Pflilger s Archiv, XLV. 65.
f Untersuchungen im Gebiete der Optik, Leipzig (1863), p. 188
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 199-
because we have ingrained with them in our imagination a
movement on a surface simultaneously felt.
" Thus whenever we breathe there is a contraction of the muscles
of the ribs and the diaphragm. Since we see the chest expanding, we
know it as a movement and can only think of it as such. But the dia
phragm itself is not seen, and consequently by no one who is not physi
ologically enlightened on the point is this diaphragm thought of in
movement. Nay, even when told by a physiologist that the diaphragm
moves at each breathing, every one who has not seen it moving down
ward pictures it as an upward movement, because the chest moves
upward." *
A personal experience of my own seems strongly to cor
roborate this view. For years I have been familiar, during
the act of gaping, with a large, round, smooth sensation in
the region of the throat, a sensation characteristic of gap
ing and nothing else, but which, although I had often
wondered about it, never suggested to my mind the motion
of anything. The reader probably knows from his own
experience exactly what feeling I mean. It was not till one
of my students told me, that I learned its objective cause.
If we look into the mirror while gaping, we see that at the
moment we have this feeling the hanging palate rises by
the contraction of its intrinsic muscles. The contraction
of these muscles and the compression of the palatine mu
cous membrane are what occasion the feeling ; and I was
at first astonished that, coming from so small an organ,
it could appear so voluminous. Now the curious point is
this that no sooner had I learned by the eye its objective
space -significance, than I found myself enabled mentally to
fed, it as a movement upwards of a body in the situation of
the uvula. When I now have it, my fancy injects it, so to
speak, with the image of the rising uvula ; and it absorbs
the image easily and naturally. In a word, a muscular
contraction gave me a sensation whereof I was unable dur
ing forty years to interpret a motor meaning, of which two
glances of the eye made me permanently the master. To my
mind no further proof is needed of the fact that muscular
contraction, merely as such, need not be perceived directly
as so much motion through space.
* Problems of Life and Mind, prob. vi. chap. iv. 46.
200 PSYCHOLOGY.
Take again the contractions of the muscles which make
the eyeball rotate. The feeling of these is supposed by
many writers to play the chief part in our perceptions of
extent. The space seen between two things means, accord
ing to these authors, nothing but the amount of contraction
which is needed to carry ihefovea from the first thing to the
second. But close the eyes and note the contractions in
^ themselves (even when coupled as they still are with the
delicate surface sensations of the eyeball rolling under the
lids), and we are surprised at finding how vague their space-
import appears. Shut the eyes and roll them, and you can
with no approach to accuracy tell the outer object which
shall first be seen when you open them again.* Moreover, ii
our eye-muscle-contractions had much to do with giving us
our sense of seen extent, we ought to have a natural illusion
of which we find no trace. Since the feeling in the muscles
grows disproportionately intense as the eyeball is rolled
into an extreme eccentric position, all places on the extreme
margin of the field of view ought to appear farther from
the centre than they really are, for the fovea cannot get to
them without an amount of this feeling altogether in excess
of the amount of actual rotation, t When we turn to the
* Volkinann, op. cit. p. 189. Compare also what Hering says of the in
ability in his own case to make after-images seem to move when he rolls
his closed eyes in their sockets ; and of the insignificance of his feelings of
convergence for the sense of distance (Beitrage zur Physiologic, 1861-2,
pp. 31, 141). Helmholtz also allows to the muscles of convergence a very
feeble share in producing our sense of the third dimension (Physiologische
Optik, 649-59).
f Compare Lipps, Psychologische Studien (1885), p. 18, and the other
arguments given on pp. 12 to 27. The most plausible reasons for contrac
tions of the eyeball-muscles being admitted as original contributors to the
perception of extent, are those of Wuudt, Physiologische Psychologic, n.
96-100. They are drawn from certain constant errors in our estimate of
lines uud angles ; which, however, are susceptible, all of them, of different
interpretations (see some of them further on). Just as my MS. goes
to the printer, Herr Miinsterberg s Beitrage zur experiraentellen Psy
chologic, Heft 2, comes into my hands with experiments on the measure
ment of space recorded in it, which, in the author s view, prove the feeling
of muscular strain to be a principal factor in our vision of extent. As
Muusterberg worked three hours a day for a year and a half at comparing
the length of lines, seen with his eyes in different positions ; and as he care
fully averaged and percented 20, 000 observations, his conclusion must be
listened to with great respect. Briefly it is this, that " our judgments of
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 201
muscles of the body at large we find the same vagueness.
Goldscheider found that the minimal perceived rotation of
size depend on a comparison of the intensity of the feelings of movement
which arise in our eyeball-muscles as we glance over the distance, and
which fuse with the sensations of light " (p. 142). The facts upon which
the conclusion is based are certain constant errors which Miinsterberg
found according as the standard or given interval was to the right or the
left of the interval to be marked off as equal to it, or as it was above or
below it, or stood in some more complicated relation still. He admits that
he cannot explain all the errors in detail, and that we "stand before results
which seem surprising and not to be unravelled, because we cannot analyze
the elements which enter into the complex sensation which we receive."
But he has no doubt whatever of the general fact "that the movements of
the eyes and the sense of their position when fixed exert so decisive an
influence on our estimate of the spaces seen, that the errors cannot possi
bly be explained by anything else than the movement-feelings and their
reproductions in the memory" (pp. 166, 167). It is presumptuous to doubt
a man s opinion when you haven t had his experience ; and yet there are a
number of points which make me feel like suspending judgment in regard
to Herr M. s dictum. He found, for example, a constant tendency to under
estimate intervals lying to the right, and to overestimate intervals lying
to the left. He ingeniously explains this as a result of the habit of read
ing, which trains us to move our eyes easily along straight lines from left
to right, whereas in looking from right to left we move them in curved
lines across the page. As we measure intervals as straight lines, it costs
more muscular effort to measure from right to left than the other way,
and an interval lying to the left seems to us consequently longer than it
really is. Now I have been a reader for more years than Herr Munster-
berg; and yet with me there is a strongly pronounced error the other way.
It is the rightward-lying interval which to me seems longer than it really
is. Moreover, Herr M. wears concave spectacles, and looked through them
with his head fixed. May it not be that some of the errors were due to dis
tortion of the retinal image, as the eye looked no longer through the centre
but through the margin of the glass ? In short, with all the presumptions
which we have seen against muscular contraction being definitely felt as
length, I think that there may be explanations of Herr M. s results which
have escaped even his sagacity ; and I call for a suspension of judgment
until they shall have been confirmed by other observers. I do not myself
doubt that our feeling of seen extent may be altered by concomitant mus
cular feelings. In Chapter XVII (pp. 28-80) we saw many examples of
similar alterations, interferences with, or exaltations of, the sensory effect
of one nerve -process by another. I do not see why currents from the
muscles or eyelids, coming in at the same time with a retinal impression,
might not make the latter seem bigger, in the same way that a greater in
tensity in the retinal stimulation makes it seem bigger ; or in the way that
a greater extent of surface excited makes the color of the surface seem
stronger, or if it be a skin-surface, makes its heat seem greater ; or in the
way that the coldness of the dollar on the forehead (in "Weber s old experi
ments) made the dollar seem heavier. But this is a physiological way : and
202 PSYCHOLOGY.
a limb about a joint was no less when the movement was
* active or produced by muscular contraction than when it
was passively impressed.* The consciousness of active
movement became so blunt when the joint (alone!) was
made anaesthetic by faradization, that it became evident
that the feeling of contraction could never be used for
fine discrimination of extents. And that it was not used
for coarse discriminations appeared clear to Goldscheider
from certain other results which are too circumstantial
for me to quote in detail. t His general conclusion is that
we feel our movements exclusively in our articular sur
faces, and that our muscular contractions in all probability
hardly occasion this sort of perception at all. %
My conclusion is that the muscular sense must fall
back to the humble position from which Charles Bell raised
it, and no longer figure in Psychology as the leading organ
in space-perception which it has been so long * cracked up
to be.
Before making a minuter study of Space as apprehended
by the eye, we must turn to see what we can discover of
space as known to the blind. But as we do so, let us cast
a glance upon the results of the last pages, and ask our
selves once more whether the building up of orderly
space-perceptions out of primitive incoherency requires
any mental powers beyond those displayed in ordinary in
tellectual operations. I think it is obvious granting the
spacial quale to exist in the primitive sensations that dis
crimination, association, addition, multiplication, and divi
sion, blending into generic images, substitution of similars,
selective emphasis, and abstraction from uninteresting de
tails, are quite capable of giving us all the space-percep-
.
the bigness gained is that of the retinal image after all. If I understand
Milnsterberg s meaning, it is quite different from this: the bigness be
longs to the muscular feelings, as such, and is merely associated with those
of the retina. This is what I deny.
* Archiv f. (Anat. u.) Physiol. (1889), p. 542.
f Ibid. p. 496.
j Ibid. p. 497. Goldscheider thinks that our muscles do not even give
us the feeling of resistance, that being also due to the articular surfaces :
whilst weight is due to the tendons. Ibid. p. 541.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 203
tions we have so far studied, without the aid of any mys
terious mental chemistry or power of synthesis to create
elements absent from the original data of feeling. It can
not be too strongly urged in the face of mystical attempts,
however learned, that there is not a landmark, not a length,
not a point of the compass in real space which is not some
OTIC of our feelings, either experienced directly as a presen
tation or ideally suggested by another feeling which has
come to serve as its sign. In degrading some sensations
to the rank of signs and exalting others to that of realities
signified, we smooth out the wrinkles of our first chaotic
impressions and make a continuous order of what was a
rather incoherent multiplicity. But the content of the order
remains identical with that of the multiplicity sensational
both, through and through.
HOW THE BLIND PEKCBIVE SPACE.
The blind man s construction of real space differs from
that of the seeing man most obviously in the larger part
which synthesis plays in it, and the relative subordination
of analysis. The seeing baby s eyes take in the whole
room at once, and discriminative attention must arise in
him before single objects are visually discerned. The blind
child, on the contrary, must form his mental image of the
room by the addition, piece to piece, of parts which he
learns to know successively. With our eyes we may ap
prehend instantly, in an enormous bird s-eye view, a land
scape which the blind man is condemned to build up bit
by bit after weeks perhaps of exploration. We are exactly
in his predicament, however, for spaces which exceed our
visual range. We think the ocean as a whole by multiply
ing mentally the impression we get at any moment when at
sea. The distance between New York and San Francisco
is computed in days journeys ; that from earth to sun is so
many times the earth s diameter, etc. ; and of longer dis
tances still we may be said to have no adequate mental
image whatever, but only numerical verbal symbols.
But the symbol will often give us the emotional effect
of the perception. Such expressions as the abysmal vault
of heaven, the endless expanse of ocean, etc., summarize
204 PSYCHOLOGY.
many computations to the imagination, and give the sense
of an enormous horizon. So it seems with the blind. They
multiply mentally the amount of a distinctly felt freedom
to move, and gain the immediate sense of a vaster freedom
still. Thus it is that blind men are never without the con
sciousness of their horizon. They all enjoy travelling, es
pecially with a companion who can describe to them the
objects they pass. On the prairies they feel the great open
ness ; in valleys they feel closed in ; and one has told ine
that he thought few seeing people could enjoy the view
from a mountain-top more than he. A blind person on
entering a house or room immediately receives, from the
.reverberations of his voice and steps, an impression of its
dimensions, and to a certain extent of its arrangement.
The tympanic sense noticed on p. 140, supra, comes in to
help here, and possibly other forms of tactile sensibility not
yet understood. Mr. W. Hanks Levy, the blind author of
"* Blindness and the Blind (London), gives the following ac-
oount of his powers of perception :
"Whether within a house or in the open air, whether walking 01
standing still, I can tell, although quite blind, when I am opposite an
object, and can perceive whether it be tall or short, slender or bulky.
I can also detect whether it be a solitary object or a continuous fence ;
whether it be a close fence or composed of open rails ; and often whether
it be a wooden fence, a brick or stone wall, or a quick-set hedge. I
cannot usually perceive objects if much lower than my shoulder, but
sometimes very low objects can be detected. This may depend on the
nature of the objects, or on some abnormal state of the atmosphere.
The currents of air can have nothing to do with this power, as the state
of the wind does not directly affect it ; the sense of hearing has nothing
to do with it, as when snow lies thickly on the ground objects are more
distinct, although the footfall cannot be heard. I seem to perceive
objects through the skin of my face, and to have the impressions im
mediately transmitted to the brain. The only part of my body possess
ing this power is my face ; this I have ascertained by suitable experi
ments. Stopping my ears does not interfere with it, but covering my
face with a thick veil destroys it altogether. None of the five senses
have anything to do with the existence of this power, and the circum
stances above named induce me to call this unrecognized sense by the
name of facial perception. . . . When passing along a street I can
distinguish shops from private houses, and even point out the doors and
windows, etc., and this whether the doors be shut or open. When a
window consists of one entire sheet of glass, it is more difficult to dis
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 205
cover than one composed of a number of small panes. From this it
would appear that glass is a bad conductor of sensation, or at any rate
of the sensation specially connected with this sense. When objects
below the face are perceived, the sensation seems to come in an oblique
iine from the object to the upper part of the face. While walking with
a friend in Forest Lane, Stratford, I said, pointing to a fence which
separated the road from a field, Those rails are not quite as high as
my shoulder. He looked at them, and said they were higher. We.
however, measured, and found them about three inches lower than my
shoulder. At the time of making this observation I was about four
feet from the rails. Certainly in this instance facial perception was
more accurate than sight. When the lower part of a fence is brick
work, and the upper part rails, the fact can be detected, and the line
where the two meet easily perceived. Irregularities in height, and pro
jections and identations in walls, can also be discovered."
According to Mr. Levy, this power of seeing with the
face is diminished by a fog, but not by ordinary dark
ness. At one time he could tell when a cloud obscured the
horizon, but he has now lost that power, which he has
known several persons to possess who are totally blind.
These effects of aqueous vapor suggest immediately that
fluctuations in the heat radiated by the objects may be the
source of the perception. One blind gentleman, Mr. Kil-
burne, an instructor in the Perkins Institution in South
Boston, who has the power spoken of in an unusual degree,
proved, however, to have no more delicate a sense of tem
perature in his face than ordinary persons. He himself
supposed that his ears had nothing to do with the faculty
until a complete stoppage of them, not only with cotton
but with putty on top of it, by abolishing the perception
entirely, proved his first impression to be erroneous. Many
blind men say immediately that their ears are concerned
in the matter.
Sojuids certainly play a far more prominent part in
the mental life of the blind than in our own. In taking a
walk through the country, the mutations of sound, far and
near, constitute their chief delight. And to a great extent
their imagination of distance and of objects moving from
one distant spot to another seems to consist in thinking
how a certain sonority would be modified by the change
of place. It is unquestionable that the semi-circular-canal
feelings play a great part in defining the points of the com-
206 PSYCHOLOGY.
pass and the direction of distant spots, in the blind as in
us. We start towards them by feelings of this sort ; and so
many directions, so many different-feeling starts.*
The only point that offers any theoretic difficulty is the
prolongation into space of the direction, after the start. "W e
saw, ten pages back, that for extradition to occur beyond the
skin, the portion of skin in question and the space beyond
must form a common object for some other sensory surface.
The eyes are for most of us this sensory surface ; for the
blind it can only be other parts of the skin, coupled or not
with motion. But the mere gropings of the hands in every
direction must end by surrounding the whole body with a
sphere of felt space. And this sphere must become en
larged with every movement of locomotion, these move- r
ments gaining their space-values from the semi-circular-
canal feelings which accompany them, and from the farther
and farther parts of large fixed objects (such as the bed,
the wainscoting, or a fence) which they bring within the
grasp. It might be supposed that a knowledge of space
acquired by so many successive discrete acts would always
retain a somewhat jointed and so to speak, granulated char
acter. When we who are gifted with sight think of a space
too large to come into a single field of view, we are apt to
imagine it as composite, and filled with more or less jerky
stoppings and startings (think, for instance, of the space
from here to San Francisco), or else we reduce the scale
symbolically and imagine how much larger on a map the
distance would look than others with whose totality we are
familiar.
I am disposed to believe, after interrogating many blind
persons, that the use of imaginary maps on a reduced scale
is less frequent with them than with the rest of us Possi
bly the extraordinary changeableness of the visual magni
tudes of things makes this habit natural to us, while the
fixity of tactile magnitudes keeps them from falling into it.
(When the blind young man operated on by Dr, Franz was
* " Whilst the memories which we seeing folks preserve of a man all
centre round a certain exterior form composed of his image, his height,
his gait, in the blind all these memories are referred to something quite
different, namely, the sound of his voice" (Dunan, Kev. Phil., xxv. 357.)
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 207
shown a portrait in a locket, he was vastly surprised that
the face could be put into so small a compass : it would
have seemed to him, he said, as impossible as to put a bushel
into a pint.) Be this as it may, however, the space which
each blind man feels to extend beyond his body is felt by
him as one smooth continuum all trace of those muscular
startings and stoppings and reversals which presided over
its formation having been eliminated from the memory. It
seems, in other words, a generic image of the space-element
common to all these experiences, with the unessential par
ticularities of each left out. In truth, where in this space
a start or a stop may have occurred was quite accidental.
It may never occur just there again, and so the attention
lets it drops altogether. Even as long a space as that
traversed in a several-mile walk will not necessarily appear
to a blind man s thought in the guise of a series of locomo-
tor acts. Only where there is some distinct locomotor diffi
culty, such as a step to ascend, a difficult crossing, or a
disappearance of the path, will distinct locomotor images
constitute the idea. Elsewhere the space seems continuous,
and its parts may even alLseem coexistent ; though, as a
very intelligent blind friend once remarked to me, To
think of such distances involves probably more mental
wear and tear and brain- waste in the blind than in the see
ing. This seems to point to a greater element of succes
sive addition and construction in the blind man s idea.
Our own visual explorations go on by means of innum
erable stoppings and startings of the eyeballs. Yet these
are all effaced from the final space-sphere of our visual
imagination. They have neutralized each other. We can
even distribute our attention to the right and left sides
simultaneously, and think of those two quarters of space
as coexistent. Does the smoothing out of the locomotor
interruptions from the blind man s tactile space-sphere
offer any greater paradox ? Surely not. And it is curious
to note that both in him and in us there is one particular
locomotor feeling that is apt to assert itself obstinately to
the last. We and he alike spontaneously imagine space as
lying in front of us, for reasons too obvious to enumerate.
If we think of the space behind us, we, as a rule, have to
aOH PSYCHOLOGY.
turn round mentally, and in doing so the front space van
ishes. But in this, as in the other things of which we have
been talking, individuals differ widely. Some, in imagin
ing a room, can think of all its six surfaces at once. Others
mentally turn round, or, at least, imagine the room in sev
eral successive and mutually exclusive acts (cf. p. 54, above).
Sir William Hamilton, and J. S. Mill after him, have
quoted approvingly an opinion of Platner (an eighteenth-
century philosopher) regarding the space-perceptions of
the blind. Platner says :
4 The attentive observation of a person born blind . . . has con
vinced me that the sense of touch by itself is altogether incompetent to
afford us the representation of extension and space. ... In fact, to
those born blind, time serves instead of space. Vicinity and distance
mean in their mouths nothing more than the shorter or longer time
. . . necessary to attain from some one feeling to some other."
After my own observation of blind people, I should
hardly have considered this as anything but an eccentric
opinion, worthy to pair off with that other belief that color
is primitively seen without extent, had it not been for the
remarkable Essay on Tactile and Visual Space by M. Ch.
Dunan, which appeared in the Eevue Philosophique for
1888. This author quotes * three very competent witnesses,
all officials in institutions for the blind [it does not appear
from the text that more than one of them was blind him
self], who say that blind people only live in time. M.
Dunan himself does not share exactly this belief, but he
insists that the blind man s and the seeing man s represen
tation of space have absolutely naught in common, and that
we are deceived into believing that what they mean by
space is analogous to what we mean, by the fact that so many
of them are but semi-blind and still think in visual terms,
and from the farther fact that they all talk in visual terms
just like ourselves. But on examining M. Dunan s reasons
one finds that they all rest on the groundless logical as
sumption that the perception of a geometrical form which
we get with our eyes, and that which a blind man gets with
*Vol. xxv. pp. 357-6.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE.
his fingers, must either be absolutely identical or absolutely
unlike. They cannot be similar in diversity, " for they are
simple notions, and it is of the essence of such to enter the
mind or leave it all at once, so that one who has a simple no
tion at all, possesses it in all its completeness. . . . There
fore, since it is impossible that the blind should have of
the forms in question ideas completely identical with our see
ing ones, it follows that their ideas must be radically dif
ferent from and ivholly irreducible to our own" * Hereupon
M. Dunan has no difficulty in finding a blind man who still
preserves a crude sensation of diffused light, and who says
when questioned that this light has no extent. Having * no
extent appears, however, on farther questioning, to signify
merely not enveloping any particular tactile objects, nor
being located within their outline; so that (allowing for
latitude of expression) the result tallies perfectly with our
own view. A relatively stagnant retinal sensation of diffused
light, not varying when different objects are handled, would
naturally remain an object quite apart. If the word ex
tent were habitually used to denote tactile extent, this sen
sation, having no tactile associates whatever, would natu
rally have extent denied of it. And yet all the while it
would be analogous to the tactile sensations in having the
quality of bigness. Of course it would have no other tac
tile qualities, just as the tactile objects have no other opti
cal qualities than bigness. All sorts of analogies obtain
between the spheres of sensibility. Why are sweet and
soft used so synonymously in most languages ? and why
are both these adjectives applied to objects of so many
sensible kinds. Eough sounds, heavy smells, hard lights,
cold colors, are other examples. Nor does it follow from
such analogies as these that the sensations compared need
be composite and have some of their parts identical. We
saw in Chapter XIII that likeness and difference are an ele
mentary relation, not to be resolved in every case into a
mixture of absolute identity and absolute heterogeneity of
content (cf. Vol. I, pp. 492-3).
I conclude, then, that although in its more superficial
*p.
210 PSYCHOLOGY.
determinations the blind man s space is very different from
our space, yet a deep analogy remains between the two.
Big and * little, far and near, are similar contents of con-
sciousness in both of us. But the measure of the bigness and
the farness is very different in him and in ourselves. He, for
example, can have no notion of what we mean by objects
appearing smaller as they move away, because he must
always conceive of them as of their constant tactile size.
Nor, whatever analogy the two extensions involve, should
we expect that a blind man receiving sight for the first
time should recognize his new-given optical objects by their
familiar tactile names. Molyneux wrote to Locke :
" Suppose a man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch
to distinguish between a cube and a sphere, ... so as to tell, when he
felt one and the other, which is the cube, which the sphere. Suppose
then the cube and sphere placed on a table and the blind man to be
made to see ; query, whether by his sight, before he touched them, he
could now distinguish and tell which is the globe, which the cube ?"
This has remained in literature as Molyneux s query. 1
Molyneux answered No. And Locke says :*
" I agree with this thinking gentleman whom I am proud to call my
friend, and am of opinion that the blind man at first sight would not be
able to say which was the globe, which the cube, whilst he only saw
them ; though he could unerringly name them by his touch and
certainly distinguish them by the difference of their figures felt."
This opinion has not lacked experimental confirmation.
From Chesselden s case downwards, patients operated for
congenital cataract have been unable to name at first the
things they saw. " So, Puss, I shall know you another time,"
said Ghesselden s patient, after catching the cat, looking at
her steadfastly, and setting her down. Some of this inca
pacity is unquestionably due to general mental confusion at
the new experience, and to the excessively unfavorable con
ditions for perception which an eye with its lens just extir
pated affords. That the analogy of inner nature between
the retinal and tactile sensations goes beyond mere exten-
sity is proved by the cases where the patients were the most
intelligent, as in the young man operated on by Dr. Franz*
* Essay cone. Hum. Und., bk. IT. chap. ix. 8.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 211
who named circular, triangular, and quadrangular figures
at first sight.*
VISUAL SPACE.
It is when we come to analyze minutely the conditions
of visual perception that difficulties arise which have made
psychologists appeal to new and gmm-mythical mental
powers. But I firmly believe that even here exact investi
gation will yield the same verdict as in the cases studied
hitherto. This subject will close our survey of the facts ;
and if it give the result I foretell, we shall be in the best of
positions for a few final pages of critically historical review.
If a common person is asked how he is enabled to see
things as they are, he will simply reply, by opening his
eyes and looking. This innocent answer has, however,
long since been impossible for science. There are various
paradoxes and irregularities about what we appear to per
ceive under seemingly identical optical conditions, which
immediately raise questions. To say nothing now of the
time-honored conundrums of why we see upright with an
inverted retinal picture, and why we do not see double ;
and to leave aside the whole field of color-contrasts and
ambiguities, as not directly relevant to the space-problem,
it is certain that the same retinal image makes us see quite
differently-sized and differently -shaped objects at different
times, and it is equally certain that the same ocular move
ment varies in its perceptive import. It ought to be pos
sible, were the act of perception completely and simply
intelligible, to assign for every distinct judgment of size,
shape, and position a distinct optical modification of some
kind as its occasion. And the connection between the two
ought to be so constant that, given the same modification,
we should always have the same judgment. But if we
* Philosophical Transactions, 1841. In T. K. Abbot s Sight and Touch
there is a good discussion of these cases. Obviously, positive cases are of
more importance than negative. An under- witted peasant, Noe M., whose
case is described by Dr. Dufour of Lausanne (Guerison d un Aveugle ne
1876) is much made of by MM. Naville and Dunan ; but it seems to me
only to show how little some people can deal with new experiences in which
others find themselves quickly at home. This man could not even tell
whether one of his first objects of sight moved or stood still (p. 9).
PSYCHOLOGY.
study the facts closely we soon .find no such constant con
nection between either judgment and retinal modification, or
judgment and muscular modification, to exist. The judgment
seems to result from the combination of retinal, muscular
and intellectual factors with each other ; and any one of
them may occasionally overpower the rest in a way which
seems to leave the matter subject to no simple law.
The scientific study of the subject, if we omit Descartes,
began with Berkeley, and the particular perception he
analyzed in his New Theory of Yision was that of distance
or depth. Starting with the physical assumption that a
difference in the distance of a point can make no difference
in the nature of its retinal image, since "distance being a
line directed endwise to the eye, it projects only one point
in the fund of the eye which point remains invariably the
same, whether the distance be longer or shorter," he con
cluded that distance could not possibly be a visual sensation,
but must be an intellectual * suggestion from * custom *
of some non-visual experience. According to Berkeley this
experience was tactile. His whole treatment of the subject
was excessively vague, no shame to him, as a breaker of
fresh ground, but as it has been adopted and enthusiasti-
ally hugged in all its vagueness by nearly the whole line of
British psychologists who have succeeded him, it will be
well for us to begin our study of vision by refuting his
notion that depth cannot possibly be perceived in terms of
purely visual feeling.
The Third Dimension.
Berkeleyaus unanimously assume that no retinal sensa
tion can primitively be of volume ; if it be of extension at
all (which they are barely disposed to admit), it can be only
of two-, not of three-, dimensional extension. At the begin
ning of the present chapter we denied this, and adduced
facts to show that all objects of sensation are voluminous
in three dimensions (cf. p. 136 ff.). It is impossible to lie
on one s back on a hill, to let the empty abyss of blue fill
one s whole visual field, and to sink deeper and deeper into
the merely sensational mode of consciousness regarding it,
without feeling that an indeterminate, palpitating, circling
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 213
depth is as indefeasibly one of its attributes as its breadth.
We may artificially exaggerate this sensation of depth.
Eise and look from the hill-top at the distant view ; repre
sent to yourself as vividly as possible the distance of the
uttermost horizon ; and then with inverted head look at the
same. There will be a startling increase in the perspective,
a most sensible recession of the maximum distance ; and
as you raise the head you can actually see the horizon-
line again draw near.*
Mind, I say nothing as yet about our estimate of the
real amount of this depth or distance. I only want to
confirm its existence as a natural and inevitable optical
consort of the two other optical dimensions. The field of
view is always a volume-unit. Whatever be supposed to be
its absolute and real size, the relative sizes of its dimen
sions are functions of each other. Indeed, it happens per
haps most often that the breadth- and height-feeling take
their absolute measure from the depth-feeling. If we plunge
our head into a wash-basin, the felt nearness of the bottom
makes us feel the lateral expanse to be small. If, on the
contrary, we are on a mountain-top, the distance of the
horizon carries with it in our judgment a proportionate
* What may be the physiological process connected with this increased
sensation of depth is hard to discover. It seems to have nothing to do with
the parts of the retina affected, since the mere inversion of the picture (by
mirrors, reflecting prisms, etc.), without inverting the head, does not seem
to bring it about ; nothing with sympathetic axial rotation of the eyes
which might enhance the perspective through exaggerated disparity of
the two retinal images (see J. J. Mailer, Raddrehung u. Tiefendimen-
Bioii, Leipzig Acad. Berichte, 1875, page 124), for one-eyed persons get
it as strongly as those with two eyes. I cannot find it to be connected
with any alteration in the pupil or with any ascertainable strain in the
muscles of the eye, sympathizing with those of the body. The exaggera
tion of distance is even greater when we throw the head over backwards
and contract our superior recti in getting the view, than when we bend
forward and contract the inferior recti. Making the eyes diverge slightly
by weak prismatic glasses has no such effect. To me, and to all whom I
have asked to repeat the observation, the result is so marked that I do not
well understand how such an observer as Helmholtz, who has carefully
cammed vision with inverted head, can have overlooked it (See hi
Phys. Optik, pp. 433, 723, 728. 772.) I cannot help thinking that anyone
who can explain the exaggeration of the depth-sensation in this case will
at the same time throw much light on its normal constitution.
214 PSYCHOLOGY.
height and length in the mountain-chains that bound it to
our view. But as aforesaid, let us not consider the ques
tion of absolute size now, it must later be taken up in a
thorough way. Let us confine ourselves to the way in
which the three dimensions which are seen, get their values
fixed relatively to each other.
Reid, in his Inquiry into the Human Mind, has a section
* Of the Geometry of Visibles, in which he assumes to
trace what the perceptions would be of a race of Idome-
nians reduced to the sole sense of sight. Agreeing with
Berkeley that sight alone can give no knowledge of the third
dimension, he humorously deduces various ingenious ab
surdities in their interpretations of the material appear
ances before their eyes.
Now I firmly believe, on the contrary, that one of Reid s
Idomenians would frame precisely the same conception of
the external world that we do, if he had our intellectual
powers.* Even were his very eyeballs fixed and not mov
able like ours, that would only retard, not frustrate, his
education. For the same object, by alternately covering in
its lateral movements different parts of his retina, would
determine the mutual equivalencies of the first two dimen
sions of the field of view ; and by exciting the physiological
cause of his perception of depth in various degrees, it would
establish a scale of equivalency between the first two and
the third.
First of all, one of the sensations given by the object
is chosen to represent its real size and shape, in accord
ance with the principles laid down on pp. 178 and 179.
One sensation measures the thing present, and the thing then
measures the other sensations. The peripheral parts of the
retina are equated with the central by receiving the image
of the same object. This needs no elucidation in case the
* " In Froriep s Notizen (1838, July), No. 133, is to be found a detailed
account, with a picture, of an Esthonian girl, Eva Lauk, then fourteen
years old, born with neither arms nor legs, which concludes with the
following words : According to the mother, her intellect developed quite
as fast as that of her brother and sisters ; in particular, she came as quickly
to a right judgment of the size and distance of visible objects, although,
of course, she had no use of hands. " (Schopenhauer, Welt als Wille, 11
44.)
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE.
object does not change its distance or its front. But sup
pose, to take a more complicated case, that the object is a
stick, seen first in its whole length, and then rotated round
one of its ends ; let this fixed end be the one near the eye.
In this movement the stick s image will grow progressively
shorter ; its farther end will appear less and less sepa
rated laterally from its fixed near end ; soon it will be
screened by the latter, and then reappear on the opposite
side, and finally on that side resume its original length.
Suppose this movement to become a familiar experience ;
the mind will presumably react upon it after its usual fash
ion (which is that of unifying all data which it is in any
way possible to unify), and consider it the movement of a
constant object rather than the transformation of a fluctuat
ing one. Now, the sensation of depth which it receives dur
ing the experience is awakened more by the far than by the
near end of the object. But how much depth ? What shall
measure its amount ? Why, at the moment the far end is
ready to be eclipsed, the difference of its distance from the
near end s distance must be judged equal to the stick s
whole length ; but that length has already been judged
equal to a certain optical sensation of breadth. Thus ive
find that given amounts of the visual depth-feeling become signs
of fixed amounts of the visual breadth-feeling. The measure
ment of distance is, as Berkeley truly said, a result of sugges
tion and experience. But visual experience alone is adequate
to produce it, and this he erroneously denied.
Suppose a colonel in front of his regiment at dress-
parade, and suppose he walks at right angles towards the
midmost man of the line. As he advances, and surveys
the line in either direction, he looks more and more down
it and less and less at it, until, when abreast of the mid
most man, he feels the end men to be most distant ; then
when the line casts hardly any lateral image on his retina
at all. what distance shall he judge to be that of the end
men? Why, half the length of the regiment as it wae
originally seen, of course ; but this length was a moment
ago a retinal object spread out laterally before his sight.
He has now merely equated a retinal depth -feeling with a
retinal breadth-feeling. If the regiment moved, and the
216 PSYCHOLOGY.
colonel stood still, the result would be the same. In such
ways as these a creature endowed with eyes alone could
hardly fail of measuring out all three dimensions of the
space he inhabited. And we ourselves, I think, although
we may often l realize distance in locomotor terms
(as Berkeley says we must always do), yet do so no less
often in terms of our retinal map, and always in this way
the more spontaneously. Were this not so, the three visual
dimensions could not possibly feel to us as homogeneous as
they do, nor as commensurable inter se.
Let us then admit distance to be at least as genuinely optical
a content of consciousness as either height or breadth. The
question immediately returns, Can any of them be said in any
strictness to be optical sensations ? We have contended all
along for the affirmative reply to this question, but must
now cope with difficulties greater than any that have as
sailed us hitherto.
Helmholtz and Eeid on Sensations.
A sensation is, as we have seen in Chapter XVII,
the mental affection that follows most immediately upon
the stimulation of the sense-tract. Its antecedent is di
rectly physical, no psychic links, no acts of memory, infer
ence, or association intervening. Accordingly, if we sup
pose the nexus between neural process in the sense-organ,
on the one hand, and conscious affection, on the other, to
be by nature uniform, the same process ought always to give
the same sensation ; and conversely, if what seems to be a sen
sation varies whilst the process in the sense-organ remains un
changed, the reason is presumably that it is realty not a sensa
tion but a higher mental product, whereof the variations depend
on events occurring in the system of higher cerebral centres.
Now the size of the field of view varies enormously in all
three dimensions, without our being able to assign with any
definiteness the process in the visual tract on which the
variation depends. We just saw how impossible such
assignment was in the case where turning down the head
produces the enlargement. In general, the maximum feel
ing of depth or distance seems to take the lead in deter
mining the apparent magnitude of the whole field, and the
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 217
two other dimensions seem to follow. If, to use the former
instance, I look close into a wash-basin, the lateral extent
of the field shrinks proportionately to its nearness. If I
look from a mountain, the things seen are vast in height
and breadth, in proportion to the farness of the horizon.
But when we ask ivJiat changes in the eye determine how great
this maximum feeling of depth or distance (which is undoubt
edly felt as a unitary vastness) shall be, we find ourselves
unable to point to any one of them as being its absolutely regular
concomitant. Convergence, accommodation, double and
disparate images, differences in the parallactic displacement
when we move our head, faintness of tint, dimness of out
line, and smallness of the retinal image of objects named
and known, are all processes that have something to do with
the perception of far and of near ; but the effect of
each and any one of them in determining such a perception
at one moment may at another moment be reversed by the
presence of some other sensible quality in the object, that
makes us, evidently by reminding us of past experience,
judge it to be at a different distance and of another shape.
If we paint the inside of a pasteboard-mask like the out
side, and look at it with one eye, the accommodation- and
parallax-feelings are there, but fail to make us see it hollow,
as it is. Our mental knowledge of the fact that human
faces are always convex overpowers them, and we directly
perceive the nose to be nearer to us than the cheek instead
of farther of.
The other organic tokens of farness and nearness are
proved by similar experiments (of which we shall ere long
speak more in detail) to have an equally fluctuating import.
They lose all their value whenever the collateral circum
stances favor a strong intellectual conviction that the object
presented to the gaze is improbable cannot be either what
or where they would make us perceive it to be.
Now the query immediately arises : Can the feelings of
these processes in the eye, since they are so easilj neutralized and
reversed by intellectual suggestions, ever have been direct sensa
tions of distance at all ? Ought we not rather to assume,
since the distances which we see in spite of them are con
clusions from past experience, that the distances which we
218 PSYCHOLOGY.
see by means of them are equally such conclusions ? Ought
we not, in short, to say unhesitatingly that distance must be
an intellectual and not a sensible content of consciousness ?
and that each of these eye-feelings serves as a mere signal
to awaken this content, our intellect being so framed that
sometimes it notices one signal more readily and sometimes
another ?
Reid long ago (Inquiry, c. vi. sec. 17) said :
4 It may be taken for a general rule that things which are produced
by custom may be undone or changed by disuse or by contrary custom.
On the other hand, it is a strong argument that an effect is not owing
to custom, but to the constitution of nature, when a contrary custom is
found neither to change nor to weaken it. "
More briefly, a way of seeing things that can be un
learned was presumably learned, and only what we cannot
unlearn is instinctive.
This seems to be Helmholtz s view, for he confirms
Reid s maxim by saying in emphatic print :
4 No elements in our perception can be sensational which may be
overcome or reversed by factors of demonstrably experimental origin.
Whatever can be overcome by suggestions of experience must be re
garded as itself a product of experience and custom. If we follow this
rule it will appear that only qualities are sensational, whilst almost all
spatial attributes are results of habit and experience."*
This passage of Helmholtz s has obtained, it seems to
me, an almost deplorable celebrity. The reader will please
observe its very radical import. Not only would he, and
does he, for the reasons we have just been ourselves con
sidering, deny distance to be an optical sensation ; but,
extending the same method of criticism to judgments of
size, shape, and direction, and finding no single retinal or
muscular process in the eyes to be indissolubly linked with
any one of these, he goes so far as to say that all optical
space-perceptions whatsoever must have an intellectual
* Physiol. Optik, p 438. Helmholtz s reservation of qualities is in
consistent. Our judgments of light and color vary as much as our judg
ments of size, shape, and place, and ought by parity of reasoning to be
called intellectual products and not sensations. In other places he does
treat color as if it were an intellectual product.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 219
origin, and a content that no items of visual sensibility can
account for.*
As Wundt and others agree with Helmholtz here, and
as their conclusions, if true, are irreconcilable with all the
sensationalism which I have been teaching hitherto, it
clearly devolves upon me to defend my position against this
new attack. But as this chapter on Space is already so
overgrown with episodes and details, I think it best to
reserve the refutation of their general principle for the next
chapter, and simply to assume at this point its untenability.
This has of course an arrogant look ; but if the reader will
bear with me for not very many pages more, I shall hope to
appease his mind. Meanwhile I affirm confidently that
the same outer objects actually FEEL different to us according as
our brain reacts on them in one way or another by making us
perceive them as this or as that sort of thing. So true is this
that one may well, with Stumpf,t reverse Helmholtz s query,
and ask : " What would become of our sense-perceptions
in case experience were not able so to transform them ? "
Stumpf adds : " All wrong perceptions that depend on
peculiarities in the organs are more or less perfectly cor
rected by the influence of imagination following the guid
ance of experience."
If, therefore, among the facts of optical space-perception
(which we must now proceed to consider in more detail) we
find instances of an identical organic eye-process, giving us
different perceptions at different times, in consequence of
different collateral circumstances suggesting different objec
tive facts to our imagination, we must not hastily conclude,
with the school of Helmholtz and Wundt, that the organic
eye-process pure and simple, without the collateral circum
stances, is incapable of giving us any sensation of a spatial
kind at all. We must rather seek to discover by icliat means
the circumstances can so have transformed a space-sensa
tion, which, but for their presence, would probably have
been felt in its natural purity. And I may as well say
* It is needless at this point to consider what Helmholtz s views of the
nature of the intellectual space-yielding process may be. He vacillates
we shall later see how.
\ Op. cit. p. 214.
220 PSYCHOLOGY.
now in advance that we shall find the means to be nothing
more or less than association the suggestion to the mind of
optical objects not actually present, but more habitually asso
ciated with the * collateral circumstances than the sensa
tion which they now displace and being imagined now with
a quasi-hallucinatory strength. But before this conclu
sion emerges, it will be necessary to have reviewed the
most important facts of optical space-perception, in relation
to the organic conditions on which they depend. Readers
acquainted with German optics will excuse what is already
familiar to them in the following section.*
* Before embarking on this new topic it will be well to shelve, once for
all, the problem of what is the physiological process that underlies the
distance-feeling, Since one-eyed people have it, and are inferior to the
two-eyed only in measuring its gradations, it can have no exclusive connec
tion with the double and disparate images produced by binocular parallax.
Since people with closed e} r es, looking at an after-image, do not usually
see it draw near or recede with varying convergence, it cannot be simply
constituted by the convergence-feeling. For the same reason it would
appear non-identical with the feeling of accommodation. The differ
ences of apparent parallactic movement between far and near objects as
we move our head cannot constitute the distance-sensation, for such dif
ferences may be easily reproduced experimentally (in the movements of
visible spots against a background) without engendering any illusion of per
spective. Finally, it is obvious that visible faintness, dirnness, and small-
ness are not per se the feeling of visible distance, however much in the
case of well-known objects they may serve as signs to suggest it.
A certain maximum distance-value, however, being given to the field of
view of the moment, whatever it be, the feelings that accompany the pro
cesses just enumerated become so many local signs of the gradation of
distances within this maximum depth. They help us to subdivide and
measure it. Itself, however, is felt as a unit, a total distance-value, deter
mining the vastness of the whole field of view, which accordingly appears
as an abyss of a certain volume. And the question still persists, what
neural process is it that underlies the sense of this distance-value ?
Hering, who has tried to explain the gradations within it by the inter
action of certain native distance-values belonging to each point of the two
retinae, seems willing to admit that the absolute scale of the space-volume
within which the natively fixed relative distances shall appear is not fixed,
but determined each time by experience in the widest sense of the word
(Beitrage, p. 344). What he calls the Kernpunkt of this space-volume is
the point we are momentarily fixating. The absolute scale of the whole
volume depends on the absolute distance at which this Kernpunkt is judged
to lie from the person of the looker. " By an alteration of the localization
of the Kernpunkt, the inner relations of the seen space are nowise altered ;
this space in its totality is as a fixed unit, so to speak, displaced with re-
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 221
Let us begin the long and rather tedious inquiry by the
most important case. Physiologists have long sought for
spect to the self of the looker" (p. 345). But what constitutes the localiza
tion of the Kernpunkt itself at any given time, except Experience, i.e.,
higher cerebral and intellectual processes, involving memory, Hering does
not seek to define.
Stumpf, the other sensationalist writer who has best realized the difnV
culties of the problem, thinks that the primitive sensation of distance
must have an immediate physical antecedent, either in the shape of "an
organic alteration accompanying the process of accommodation, or else
given directly in the specific energy of the optic nerve." In contrast with
Hering, however, he thinks that it is the absolute distance of the spot
fixated which is thus primitively, immediately, and physiologically given,
and not the relative distances of other things about this spot. These, he
thinks, are originally seen in what, broadly speaking, may be termed one
plane with it. Whether the distance of this plane, considered as a phe
nomenon of our primitive sensibility, be an invariable datum, or suscepti
ble of fluctuation, he does not, if I understand him rightly, undertake
dogmatically to decide, but inclines to the former view. For him then,
as for Hering, higher cerebral processes of association, under the name of
Experience, are the authors of fully one-half part of the distance-percep
tions which we at any given time may have.
He-ring s and Stumpf s theories are reported for the English reader by
Mr. Sully (in Mind, m. pp. 172-6). Mr. Abbott, in his Sight and Touch
(pp. 96-8), gives a theory which is to me so obscure that I only refer the
reader to its place, adding that it seems to make of distance a fixed func
tion of retinal sensation as modified by focal adjustment. Besides these
three authors I am ignorant of any, except Panum, who may have attempt
ed to define distance as in any degree an immediate sensation. And with
them the direct sensational share is reduced to a very small proportional
part, in our completed distance-judgments.
Professor Lipps, in his singularly acute Psychologische Studien (p. 69
ff.),argues, as Ferrier, in his review of Berkeley (Philosophical Remains, n.
330 ff . ), had argued before him, that it is logically impossible we should
perceive the distance of anything from the eye by sight; for &seen distance
can only be between seen termini ; and one of the termini, in the case of dis
tance from the eye, is the eye itself, which is not seen. Similarly of the
distance of two points behind each other : the near one hides the far one,
no space is seen between them. For the space between two objects to be
seen, both must appear beside each other, then the space in question will be
visible. On no other condition is its visibility possible. The conclusion is
that things can properly be seen only in what Lipps calls a surface, and
that our knowledge of the third dimension must needs be conceptual, not
sensational or visually intuitive.
But no arguments in the world can prove a feeling which actually
exists to be impossible. The feeling of depth or distance, of faruess or
awayness, does actually exist as a fact of our visual sensibility. All that
Professor Lipps s reasonings prove concerning it is that it is not linear iu
222
PSYCHOLOGY.
a simple law by which to connect the seen direction and
distance of objects with the retinal impressions they pro
duce. Two principal theories have been held of this mat
ter, the theory of identical points, and the theory of pro
jection, each incompatible with the other, and each
beyond certain limits becoming inconsistent with the
facts.
The Theory of Identical Points.
This theory starts from the truth that on both retinae
an impression on the upper half makes us perceive an ob
ject as below, on the lower half as above, the horizon ; and
FIG. 54.
on the right half an object to the left, on the left half one
to the right, of the median line. Thus each quadrant of one
retina corresponds as a whole to the similar quadrant of
its character, or in its immediacy fully homogeneous and consubstantial
with the feeling of literal distance between two seen termini ; in short,
,hat there are two sorts of optical sensation, each inexplicably due to a
peculiar neural process. The neural process is easily discovered, in the
case of lateral extension or spreadoutness, to be the number of retinal
nerve-ends affected by the light ; in the case of protension or mere farness
it is more complicated and, as we have concluded, is still to seek. The
two sensible qualities unite in the primitive visual bigness. The measure
ment of their various amounts against each other obeys the general laws
of all such measurements. We discover their equivalencies by means
of objects, apply the same units to both, and translate them into each other
so habitually that at last they get to seem to us even quite similar in kind.
This final appearance of homogeneity may perhaps be facilitated by the
fact that in binocular vision two points situated on the prolongation of the
optical axis of one of the eyes, so that the near one hides the far one, are by
the other eye seen laterally apart. Each eye has in fact a foreshortened
lateral view of the other s line of sight. In The London Times for Feb. 8,
1884, is an interesting letter by J. D. Dougal, who tries to explain by this
reason why two-eyed rifle- shooting has such advantages over shootiug with
one eye closed.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 223
the other ; and within two similar quadrants, at and ar for
example, there should, if the correspondence were consist
ently carried out, be geometrically similar points which, if
impressed at the same time by light emitted from the same
object, should cause that object to appear in the same direc
tion to either eye. Experiment verifies this surmise. If
we look at the starry vault with parallel eyes, the stars all
seem single ; and the laws of perspective show that under
the circumstances the parallel light-rays coming from each
star must impinge on points within either retina which are
geometrically similar to each other. The same result may
be more artificially obtained. If we take two exactly simi
lar pictures, smaller, or at least no larger, than those on an
ordinary stereoscopic slide, and if we look at them as
stereoscopic slides are looked at, that is, at one with each
eye (a median partition confining the view of either eye to
the picture opposite it), we shall see but one flat picture,
all of whose p arts appear sharp and single.* Identical
points being impressed, both eyes see their object in the
same direction, and the two objects consequently coalesce
into one.
The same thing may be shown in still another way.
With fixed head converge the eyes upon some conspicuous
objective point behind a pane of glass ; then close either
eye alternately and make a little ink-mark on the glass,
1 covering the object as seen by the eye which is momen
tarily open. On looking now with both eyes the ink-marks
will seem single, and in the same direction as the objective
point. Conversely, let the eyes converge on a single ink-
* Just so, a pair of spectacles held an inch or so from the eyes seem
like one large median glass. The faculty of seeing stereoscopic slides single
without an instrument is of the utmost utility to the student of physio
logical optics, and persons with strong eyes can easily acquire it. The
only difticulty lies in dissociating the degree of accommodation from the
degree of convergence which it usually accompanies. If the right picture
is focussed by the right eye, the left by the left eye, the optic axes must
either be parallel or converge upon an imaginary point some distance
behind the plane of the pictures, according to the size and distance apart
of the pictures. The accommodation, however, has to be made for the
plane of the pictures itself, and a near accommodation with a far-off con
vergence is something which the ordinary use of our eyes never teaches us
to effect.
224 PSYCHOLOGY.
spot on the glass, and then by alternate shutting of them
let it be noted what objects behind the glass the spot
covers to the right and left eye respectively. Now with
both eyes open, both these objects and the spot will
appear in the same place, one or other of the three becom
ing more distinct according to the fluctuations of retinal
attention.*
Now what is the direction of this common place ? The
only way of defining the direction of an object is by point
ing to it. Most people, if asked to look at an object over
the horizontal edge of a sheet of paper which conceals their
hand and arm, and then to point their finger at it (raising
the hand gradually so that at last a finger-tip will appear
above the sheet of paper), are found to place the finger not
between either eye and the object, but between the latter
and the root of the nose, and this whether both eyes or
either alone be used. Hering and Helmholtz express this
by saying that we judge of the direction of -objects as they
would appear to an imaginary cyclopean eye, situated be
tween our two real eyes, and with its optical axis bisecting
the angle of convergence of the latter. Our two retinae act,
according to Hering, as if they were superposed in the
place of this imaginary double-eye ; we see by the corre
sponding points of each, situated far asunder as they really
are, just as we should see if they were superposed and could
both be excited together.
The judgment of objective singleness and that of identi
cal direction seem to hang necessarily together. And that
of identical direction seems to carry with it the necessity of
a common origin, between the eyes or elsewhere, from which
all the directions felt may seem to be estimated. This is
why the cyclopean eye is really a fundamental part of the
formulation of the theory of identical retinal points, and
why Hering, the greatest champion of this theory, lays so
much stress upon it.
It is an immediate consequence of the law of identical pro-
* These two observations prove the law of identical direction only for
objects which excite the foveae or lie in the line of direct looking. Ob
servers skilled in indirect vision can, however, more or less easily verify the
law for outlying retinal points.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE.
225
jection of images on geometrically similar points that images
which fall upon geometrically DISPARATE points of the two retina
should be projected in DISPAKATE directions, and that their objects
should consequently appear in TWO places, or LOOK DOUBLE.
Take the parallel rays from a star falling upon two eyes
which converge upon a near object, O, instead of being
parallel, as in the previously instanced case. If SL and SK
in Fig. 55 be the parallel rays, each of them will fall upon
the nasal half of the retina which it strikes.
FIG. 55.
But the two nasal halves are disparate, geometrically
symmetrical, not geometrically similar. The image on the
left one will therefore appear as if lying in a direction left
ward of the cyclopean eye s line of sight ; the image of the
right one will appear far to the right of the same direction.
The star will, in short, be seen double, homonymously :
double.
Conversely, if the star be looked at directly with parallel
axes, O will be seen double, because its images will affect
the outer or cheek halves of the two retinae, instead of one
outer and one nasal half. The position of the images will
here be reversed from that of the previous case. The right
226 PSYCHOLOGY:
ye s image will now appear to the left, the left eye s to the
right the double images will be heteronymous.
The same reasoning and the same result ought to apply
where the object s place with respect to the direction of the
two optic axes is such as to make its images fall not on non-
similar retinal halves, but on non- similar parts of similar
halves. Here, of course, the directions of projection will
be less widely disparate than in the other case, and the
double images will appear to lie less widely apart.
Careful experiments made by many observers according
to the so-called haploscopic method confirm this law, and
show that corresponding points, of single visual direction, exist
upon the two retinae. For the detail of these one must con
sult the special treatises.
Note now an important consequence. If we take a
stationary object and allow the eyes to vary their direction
and convergence, a purely geometrical study will show that
there will be some positions in which its two images impress
corresponding retinal points, but more in which they im
press disparate points. The former constitute the so-called
horopter, and their discovery has been attended with great
mathematical difficulty. Objects or parts of objects which
lie in the eyes horopter at any given time cannot appear
double. Objects lying out of the horopter ivould seem, if the
theory of identical points were strictly trite, necessarily and al
ways to appear double.
Here comes the first great conflict of the identity-theory
with experience. Were the theory true, we ought all to
have an intuitive knowledge of the horopter as the line of
distinctest vision. Objects placed elsewhere ought to seem,
if not actually double, at least blurred. And yet no living
man makes any such distinction between the parts of his
field of vision. To most of us the whole field appears single,
and it is only by rare accident or by special education that
we ever catch a glimpse of a double image. In 1838, Wheat-
stone, in his truly classical memoir on binocular vision and
the stereoscope,* showed that the disparateness of the
* This essay, published in the Philosophical Transactions, contains the
germ of almost all the methods applied since to the study of optical percep
tion. It seems a pity that England, leading off so brilliantly the modern
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 227
points on which the two images of an object fall does not
within certain limits affect its seen singleness at all, but
rather the distance at which it shall appear. Wheatstone
made an observation, moreover, which subsequently became
the bone of much hot contention, in which he strove to
show that not only might disparate images fuse, but im
ages on corresponding or identical points might be seen
double.*
I am unfortunately prevented by the weakness of my
own eyes from experimenting enough to form a decided
personal opinion on the matter. It seems to me, however,
that the balance of evidence is against the Wheatstonian
interpretation, and that disparate points may fuse, without
identical points for that reason ever giving double images.
The two questions, "Can we see single with disparate
points?" and "Can we see double with identical points?"
although at the first blush they may appear, as to Helm-
holtz they appear, to be but two modes of expressing the
same inquiry, are in reality distinct. The first may quite
well be answered affirmatively and the second negatively.
Add to this that the experiment quoted from Helmholtz
above by no means always succeeds, but that many indi
viduals place their finger between the object and one of
their eyes, oftenest the right ; t finally, observe that the
epoch of this study, should- so quickly have dropped out of the field.
Almost all subsequent progress has been made in Germany, Holland, and,
longo intervallo , America.
* This is no place to report this controversy, but a few bibliographic
references may not be inappropriate. Wheatstone s own experiment is in
section 12 of his memoir. In favor of his interpretation see Helmholtz,
Phys. Opt., pp. 737-9 ; Wundt, Physiol. Psychol., SteAurl. p. 144; Nagel,
Sehen mit zwei Augen, pp. 78-82 Against Wheatstone see Volkmann,
Arch. f. Ophth., v. 2-74. and Untersuchungen, p. 266 ; Hering, Beitragezur
Physiologic, 29-45, also in Hermann s Hdbch. d Physiol., Bd. m. 1 Th.
p. 435 ; Aubert, Physiologic d Netzhaut, p. 322 ; Schon. Archiv f. Ophthal.,
xxiv. 1. pp. 56-65 ; andloonders, ibid, xm 1. p. 15 and note.
f When we see the finger the whole time, we usually put it in the line
joining object and left eye if it be the left finger, joining object and right
eye if it be the right finger. Microscopists, marksmen, or persons one of
whose eyes is much better than the other, almost always refer directions to
H single eye, as may be seen by the position of the shadow on their face
when they point at a candle-flame.
228 L SYCUOLOQY.
identity-theory, with its Cyclopean starting point fur ail
lines of direction, gives by itself no ground for the distance
on any line at which an object shall appear, and has to be
helped out in this respect by subsidiary hypotheses, which,
in the hands of Hering and others, have become so complex
as easily to fall a prey to critical attacks ; and it will soon
seem as if the law of identical seen directions by corresponding
points, although a simple formula for expressing concisely many
fundamental phenomena, is by no means an adequate account of
the whole matter of retinal perception. *
The Projection- Theory.
Does the theory of projection fare any better? This
theory admits that each eye sees the object in a different
direction from the other, along the line, namely, passing
from the object through the middle of the pupil to the
retina. A point directly fixated is thus seen on the optical
axes of both eyes. There is only one point, however,
which these two optical axes have in common, and that is
the point to which they converge. Everything directly
looked at is seen at this point, and is thus seen both single
and at its proper distance. It is easy to show the incom
patibility of this theory with the theory of identity. Take
an objective point (like O in Fig. 50, when the star is looked
at) casting its images R and I/ on geometrically dissimilar
parts of the two retinae and affecting the outer half of each
eye. On the identity-theory it ought necessarily to appear
double, whilst on the projection-theory there is no reason
whatever why it should not appear single, provided only
it be located by the judgment on each line of visible direc-
* Professor Joseph Le Conte, who believes strongly in the identity-
theory, has embodied the latter in a pair of laws of the relation between
positions seen single and double, near or far, on the one hand, and con
vergences and retinal impressions, on the other, which, though compli
cated, seems to me by far the best descriptive formulation yet made of the
normal facts of vision. His account is easily accessible to the reader in his
volume Sight in the International Scientific Series, bk. n. c. 3, so I say
no more about it now, except that it does not solve any of the difficulties
we are noting in the identity-theory, nor account for the other fluctuating
perceptions of which we go on to treat.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE.
229
tion, neither nearer nor farther than its point of intersection
with the other line.
Every point in the field of vieiv ought, in truth, if the pro
jection-theory were uniformly valid, to appear single, entirely
irrespective of the varying positions of the eyes, for from
every point of space two lines of visible direction pass to
the two retinae ; and at the intersection of these lines, or
just where the point is, there, according to the theory, it
should appear. The objection to this theory is thus precisely
the reverse of the objection to the identity -theory. If the latter
ruled, we ought to see most things double all the time. If the
projection-theory ruled, we ought never to see anything double.
As a matter of fact we get too few double images for the iden
tity-theory, and too many for the projection-theory.
The partisans of the projection-theory, beginning with
FIG. 56.
Aguilonius, have always explained double images as the
result of an erroneous judgment of the distance of the object,
the images of the latter being projected by the imagination
along the two lines of visible direction either nearer or
farther than the point of intersection of the latter. A
diagram will make this clear.
230 PSYCHOLOGY.
Let O be the point looked at, M an object farther, and
N an object nearer, than it. Then M and N will send the
lines of visible direction MM and NN to the two retinas.
If N be judged as far as O, it must necessarily lie where
the two lines of visible direction NN intersect the plane of
the arrow, or in two places, at N and at N". If M be
judged as near as O, it must for the same reason form two
images at M and M".
It is, as a matter of fact, true that we often misjudge
the distance in the way alleged. If the reader will hold his
forefingers, one beyond the other, in the median line, and
fixate them alternately, he will see the one not looked at,
double ; and he will also notice that it appears nearer to the
plane of the one looked at, whichever the latter may be,
than it really is. Its changes of apparent size, as the con
vergence of the eyes alter, also prove the change of appa
rent distance. The distance at which the axes converge
seems, in fact, to exert a sort of attraction upon objects
situated elsewhere. Being the distance of which we are
most acutely sensible, it invades, so to speak, the whole
field of our perception. If two half-dollars be laid on the
table an inch or two apart, and the eyes fixate steadily the
point of a pen held in the median line at varying dis
tances between the coins and the face, there will come a
distance at which the pen stands between the left half-
dollar and the right eye, and the right half-dollar and the
left eye. The two half-dollars will then coalesce into one ;
and this one will show its apparent approach to the pen-
point by seeming suddenly much reduced in size.*
Yet, in spite of this tendency to inaccuracy, we are never
actually mistaken about the half-dollar being behind the
pen-point. It may not seem far enough off, but still it is
farther than the point. In general it may be said that
where the objects are known to us, no such illusion of dis
tance occurs in any one as the theory would require. And
in some observers, Bering for example, it seems hardly to
occur at all. If I look into infinite distance and get my
finger in double images, they do not seem infinitely far off.
* Naturally it takes a smaller object at a less distance to cover by its
image a constant amount of retinul surface.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE.
231
To make objects at different distances seem equidistant,
careful precautions must be taken to have them alike in
appearance, and to exclude all outward reasons for ascrib
ing to the one a different location from that ascribed to the
other. Thus Donders tries to prove the law of projection
by taking two similar electric sparks, one behind the other
on a dark ground, one seen double ; or an iron rod placed
so near to the eyes that its double images seem as broad as
that of a fixated stove-pipe, the top and bottom of the objects
being cut off by screens, so as to prevent all suggestions
of perspective, etc. The three objects in each experiment
seem in the same plane.*
Add to this the impossibility, recognized by all observ
ers, of ever seeing double with the fovece, and the fact that
authorities as able as those quoted in the note on Wheat-
stone s observation deny that they can see double then with
identical points, and we are forced to conclude that the
projection-theory, like its predecessor, breaks doivn. Neither
formulates exactly or exhaustively a law for all our perceptions.
Ambiguity of Retinal Impressions.
WJmt does each theory try to do ? To make of seen location
a fixed function of retinal impression. Other facts may be
Fio. 57.
brought forward to show how far from fixed are the perceptive
functions of retinal impressions. We alluded a while ago to
the extraordinary ambiguity of the retinal image as a re-
vealer of magnitude. Produce an after-image of the sun
and look at your finger-tip : it will be smaller than your
nail. Project it on the table, and it will be as big as a
strawberry; on the wall, as large as a plate; on yonder
mountain, bigger than a house. And yet it is an unchanged
*Archiv f. Ophthal., Bd. xvn. Abth. 2, pp. 44-6 (1871).
232
PSYCHOLOGY.
retinal impression. Prepare a sheet with the figures shown
in Fig. 57 strongly marked upon it, and get by direct fixa
tion a distinct after-image of each.
Project the after-image of the cross upon the upper left-
hand part of the wall, it will appear as in Fig. 58 ; on the
upper right-hand it will appear as in Fig. 59. The circle
FIG. 58.
Fia. 59.
similarly projected will be distorted into two different
ellipses. If the two parallel lines be projected upon the
ceiling or floor far in front, the farther ends will diverge ;
and if the three parallel lines be thrown on the same sur
faces, the upper pair will seem farther apart than the lower.
Adding certain lines to others has the same distorting
effect. In what is known as Zollner s pattern (Fig. 60), the
long parallels tip towards each other the moment we draw
the short slanting lines over them yet their retinal images
/
/ /
/
/ /
V V V X
X
/
N N
\ N
FIG. 60.
N N
A similar distortion of
are the same they always were.
parallels appears in Fig 61.
Drawing a square inside the circle (Fig. 52) gives to the
outline of the latter an indented appearance where the
square s corners touch it. Drawing the radii inside of one
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE.
233
FIG. 61.
FIG. 62.
Fio. 63.
234 PSYCHOLOGY.
of the right angles in the same figure makes it see larger
than the other. In Fig. 63, the retinal image of the space
between the extreme dots is in all three lines the same, yet
it seems much larger the moment it is filled up with other
dots.
In the stereoscope certain pairs of lines which look
single under ordinary circumstances immediately seem
double when we add certain other lines to them.*
Ambiguous Import of Eye-movements.
These facts show the indeterminateness of the space-
import of various retinal impressions. Take now the eye s
movements, and we find a similar vacillation. When >ve
follow a moving object with our gaze, the motion is volun
tary ; when our eyes oscillate to and fro after we have
made ourselves dizzy by spinning around, it is reflex ;
and when the eyeball is pushed with the finger, it is pas
sive. Now, in all three of these cases we get a feeling
from the movement as it effects itself. But the objective
perceptions to which the feeling assists us are by no means
the same. In the first case we may see a stationary field
of view with one moving object in it ; in the second, the
total field swimming more or less steadily in one direction ;
in the third, a sudden jump or twist of the same total
field.
The feelings of convergence of the eyeballs permit of the
same ambiguous interpretation. When objects are near we
converge strongly upon them in order to see them ; when
far, we set our optic axes parallel. But the exact degree of
convergence fails to be felt ; or rather, being felt, fails to
tell us the absolute distance of the object we are regarding.
Wheatstone arranged his stereoscope in such a way that the
size of the retinal images might change without the con
vergence altering ; or conversely, the convergence might
change without the retinal image altering. Under these
circumstances, he says,t the object seemed to approach or
recede in the first case, without altering its size , in the
second, to change its size without altering its distance just
* A. W. Volkmaun, Uiitersuckungen, p. 253.
f Philosophical Transactions, 1852, p. 4.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 235
the reverse of what might have been expected. Wheatstone
adds, however, that fixing the attention converted each of
these perceptions into its opposite. The same perplexity
occurs in looking through prismatic glasses, which alter the
eyes convergence. We cannot decide whether the object
has come nearer, or grown larger, or both, or neither ; and
our judgment vacillates in the most surprising way. We
may even make our eyes diverge, and the object will none
the less appear at a finite distance. When we look through
the stereoscope, the picture seems at no determinate dis
tance. These and other facts have led Helmholtz to deny
that the feeling of convergence has any very exact value as
a distance-measurer.*
With the feelings of accommodation it is very much the
same. Donders has shown t that the apparent magnifying
power of spectacles of moderate convexity hardly depends at
all upon their enlargement of the retinal image, but rather
oil the relaxation they permit of the muscle of accommoda
tion. This suggests an object farther off, and consequently
a much larger one, since its retinal size rather increases
than diminishes. But in this case the same vacillation of
judgment as in the previously mentioned case of converg
ence takes place. The recession made the object seem
larger, but the apparent growth in size of the object now
makes it look as if it came nearer instead of receding. The
effect thus contradicts its own cause. Everyone is conscious,
on first putting on a pair of spectacles, of a doubt whether
the field of view draws near or retreats.:);
There is still another deception, occurring in persons ivho
have had one eye-muscle suddenly paralyzed. This deception
* Physiol. Optik, 649-664. Later this author is led to value converg
ence more highly. Arch. f. (Anat. u.) Physiol. (1878), p. 322.
f Anomalies of Accommodation and Refraction (New Sydenham Soc.
Transl., London, 1864), p. 155.
| These strange contradictions have been called by Aubert secondary
deceptions of judgment. See Grundziige d. Physiologischeu Optik (Leip
zig, 1876), pp. 601, 615, 627. One of the best examples of them is the small
size of the moon as first seen through a telescope. It is larger and brighter,
so we see its details more distinctly and judge it nearer. But because we
judge it so much nearer we think it must have grown smaller. Cf. Char-
pentier in Jahresbericht, x. 430.
236 PSYCHOLOGY.
has led Wundt to affirm that the eyeball-feeling proper, the
incoming sensation of effected rotation, tells us only of the
direction of our eye-movements, but not of their whole ex
tent.* For this reason, and because not only Wundt, but
many other authors, think the phenomena in these partial
paralyses demonstrate the existence of a feeling of innerva
tion, a feeling of the outgoing nervous current, opposed to
every afferent sensation whatever, it seems proper to note
the facts with a certain degree of detail.
Suppose a man wakes up some morning with the exter
nal rectus muscle of his right eye half paralyzed, what will
be the result ? He will be enabled only with great effort
to rotate the eye so as to look at objects lying far off to the
right. Something in the effort he makes will make him feel
as if the object lay much farther to the right than it really
is. If the left and sound eye be closed, and he be asked
to touch rapidly with his finger an object situated towards
his right, he will point the finger to the right of it. T4ie
current explanation of the something in the effort which
causes this deception is that it is the sensation of the out
going discharge from the nervous centres, the feeling of
innervation, to use Wundt s expression, requisite for bring
ing the open eye with its weakened muscle to bear upon
the object to be touched. If that object be situated 20
degrees to the right, the patient has now to innervate as
powerfully to turn the eye those 20 degrees as formerly
he did to turn the eye 30 degrees. He consequently
believes as before that he has turned it 30 degrees ; until,
by a newly-acquired custom, he learns the altered spatial
import of all the discharges his brain makes into his right
abducens nerve. The feeling of innervation, maintained
to exist by this and other observations, plays an immense
part in the space-theories of certain philosophers, especial
ly Wundt. I shall elsewhere try to show that the observa
tions by no means warrant the conclusions drawn from
them, and that the feeling in question is probably a wholly
fictitious entity. t Meanwhile it suffices to point out that
even those who set most store by it are compelled, by the
* Revue Philosophique, in. 9, p. 220.
f See Chapter XXIV.
TEE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 237
readiness with which the translocation of the field of view
becomes corrected and further errors avoided, to admit
that the precise space-import of the supposed sensation of
outgoing energy is as ambiguous and indeterminate as that of
any other of the eye-feelings we have considered hitherto.
I have now given what no one will call an understate
ment of the facts and arguments by which it is sought to
banish the credit of directly revealing space from each and
every kind of eye-sensation taken by itself. The reader
will confess that they make a very plausible show, and
most likely wonder whether my own theory of the matter
can rally from their damaging evidence. But the case is
far from being hopeless ; and the introduction of a discrimi
nation hitherto unmade will, if I mistake not, easily vindi
cate the view adopted in these pages, whilst at the same
time it makes ungrudging allowance for all the ambiguity
and illusion on which so much stress is laid by the advo
cates of the intellectualist-theory.
The Choice of the Visual Reality.
We have native and fixed optical space-sensations ; but
experience leads us to select certain ones from among them to be
the exclusive bearers of reality : the rest become mere signs and
suggesters of these. The factor of selection, on which we have
already laid so much stress, here as elsewhere is the solving
word of the enigma. If Helmholtz, Wundt, and the rest,
with an ambiguous retinal sensation before them, meaning
now one size and distance, and now another, had not con
tented themselves with merely saying : The size and dis
tance are not this sensation, they are something beyond it
which it merely calls up, and whose own birthplace is afar
in synthesis (Wundt) or in experience (Helmholtz) as
the case may be ; if they had gone on definitely to ask and
definitely to answer the question, What are the size and
distance in their proper selves ? they would not only have
escaped the present deplorable vagueness of their space-
theories, but they woul d have seen that the objective
spatial attributes signified are simply and solely certain
238 PS TCEOL OOT.
otJier optical sensations noiu absent, but which the present
sensations suggest.
What, for example, is the slant-legged cross which we
think we see on the wall when we project the rectangular
after-image high up towards our right or left (Figs. 58 and
59) ? Is it not in very sooth a retinal sensation itself ? An
imagined sensation, not a felt one, it is true, but none the
less essentially and originally sensational or retinal for that,
the sensation, namely, which we should receive if a real
slant-legged cross stood on the wall in front of us and threw
its image on our eye. That image is not the one our retina
now holds. Our retina now holds the image which a cross
of square shape throws when in front, but which a cross of
the slant-legged pattern ivould throw, provided it were
actually on the wall in the distant place at which we look.
Call this actual retinal image the square image. The
square image is then one of the innumerable images the
slant-legged cross can throw. Why should another one,
and that an absent one, of those innumerable images be
picked out to represent exclusively the slant-legged cross s
true shape ? Why should that absent and imagined
slant-legged image displace the present and felt square
image from our mind? Why, when the objective cross
gives us so many shapes, as it varies its position, should we
think we feel the true shape only when the cross is directly
in front ? And when that question is answered, how can
the absent and represented feeling of a slant-legged figure
so successfully intrude itself into the place of a presented
square one?
Before answering either question, let us be doubly sure
about our facts, and see how true it is that in our dealings
with objects ive always do pick out one of the visual images they
yield, to constitute the real form or size.
The matter of size has been already touched upon, so
that no more need be said of it here. As regards shape,
almost all the retinal shapes that objects throw are perspec
tive distortions. Square table-tops constantly present two
acute and two obtuse angles ; circles drawn on our wall
papers, our carpets, or on sheets of paper, usually show like
ellipses ; parallels approach as they recede ; human bodies
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 239
are foreshortened ; and the transitions from one to another
of these altering forms are infinite and continual. Out of
the flux, however, one phase always stands prominent. It
is the form the object has when we see it easiest and best :
and that is when our eyes and the object both are in what
may be called the normal position. In this position our
head is upright and our optic axes either parallel or sym
metrically convergent ; the plane of the object is perpen
dicular to the visual plane ; and if the object is one containing
many lines it is turned so as to make them, as far as possible,
either parallel or perpendicular to the visual plane. In this
situation it is that we compare all shapes with each other ;
here every exact measurement and decision is made.*
It is very easy to see why the normal situation should have
this extraordinary pre-eminence. First, it is the position in
which we easiest hold anything we are examining in our
hands ; second, it -is a turning-point between all right- and
all left-hand perspective views of a given object ; third, it
is the only position in which symmetrical figures seem sym
metrical and equal angles seem equal ; fourth, it is often
that starting-point of movements from which the eye is
least troubled by axial rotations, by which superposition f of
the retinal images of different lines and different parts of
the same line is easiest produced, and consequently by
which the eye can make the best comparative measure
ments in its sweeps. All these merits single the normal
position out to be chosen. No other point of view offers
so many aesthetic and practical advantages. Here we be
lieve we see the object as it is ; elsewhere, only as it seems.
Experience and custom soon teach us, however, that the
seeming appearance passes into the real one by continuous
gradations. They teach us, moreover, that seeming and
being may be strangely interchanged. Now a real circle
may slide into a seeming ellipse ; now an ellipse may, by
sliding in the same direction, become a seeming circle ; now
* The only exception seems to be when we expressly wish to abstract from
particulars, and to judge of the general effect. Witness ladies trying on
new dresses with their heads inclined and their eyes askance ; or painters in
the same attitude judging of the values in their pictures.
\ The importance of Superposition will appear later on.
240 PSYCHOLOGY.
a rectangular cross grows slant-legged ; now a slant-legged
one grows rectangular.
Almost any form in oblique vision may be thus a deriva
tive of almost any other in primary vision ; and we must
learn, when we get one of the former appearances, to trans
late it into the appropriate one of the ] attei la AS ; we must
learn of what optical reality ; s optical signs.
Having learned this, we do but, obey cuai xu,w of economy
or simplification which dominates our whole psychic life,
when we attend exclusively to the reality and ignore as
much as our consciousness will let us the sign by which
we came to apprehend it. The signs of each probable real
thing being multiple and the thing itself one and fixed,
we gain the same mental relief by abandoning the former
for the latter that we do when we abandon mental images,
with all their fluctuating characters, for the definite and
unchangeable names which they suggest. The selection of
the several normal appearances from out of the jungle
of our optical experiences, to serve as the real sights of
which we shall think, is psychologically a parallel phenom
enon to the habit of thinking in words, and has a like use.
Both are substitutions of terms few and fixed for terms
manifold and vague.
Sensations which we Ignore.
This service of sensations as mere signs, to be ignored
when they have evoked the other sensations which are their
significates, was noticed first by Berkeley and remarked in
many passages, as the following :
Signs, being little considered in themselves, or for their own sake,
but only in their relative capacity and for the sake of those things
whereof they are signs, it comes to pass that the mind overlooks them,
so as to carry its attention immediately on to the things signified . . .
which in truth and strictness are not seen, but only suggested and ap
prehended by means of the proper objects of sight which alone are
seen." (Divine Visual Language, 12.)
Berkeley of course erred in supposing that the thing
suggested was not even originally an object of sight, as the
sign now is which calls it up. Reid expressed Berkeley s
principle in yet clearer language :
" The visible appearances of objects are intended by nature only as
signs or indications, and the mind passes instantly to the things sig-
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 241
nified, without making the least reflection upon the sign, or even per
ceiving that there is any such thmg. . . . The mind has acquired aeon-
firmed and inveterate habit of inattention to them (the signs). For
they no sooner appear than, quick as lightning, the thing signified suc
ceeds and engrosses all our regard. They have no name in language ;
and although we are conscious of them when they pass through the
mind, yet their passage is so quick and so familiar that it is absolutely
unheeded ; nor do they leave any footsteps of themselves, either in the
memory or imagination." (Inquiry, chap. v. 2, 3.)
If we review the facts we shall find every grade of non-
attention between the extreme form of overlooking men
tioned by Keid (or forms even more extreme still) and com
plete conscious perception of the sensation present. Some
times it is literally impossible to become aware of the latter.
Sometimes a little artifice or effort easily leads us to discern
it together, or in alternation, with the object it reveals.
Sometimes the present sensation is held to be the object or
to reproduce its features in undistorted shape, and then, of
course, it receives the mind s full glare.
The deepest inattention is to subjective optical sensa
tions, strictly so called, or those which are not signs of
outer objects at all. Helmholtz s treatment of these phe
nomena, muscce volitantes, negative after-images, double
images, etc., is very satisfactory. He says :
" We only attend with any ease and exactness to our sensations in so
far forth as they can be utilized for the knowledge of outward things ;
and we are accustomed to neglect all those portions of them which have
no significance as regards the external world. So much is this the case
that for the most part special artifices and practice are required for
the observation of these latter more subjective feelings. Although it
might seem that nothing should be easier than to be conscious of one s
own sensations, experience nevertheless shows that often enough either a
special talent like that showed in eminent degree by Purkinje, or acci
dent or theoretic speculation, are necessary conditions for the discovery
of subjective phenomena. Thus, for example, the blind spot on the
retina was discovered by Mariotte by the theoretic way ; similarly by
me the existence of summation -tones in acoustics. In the majority
of cases accident is what first led observers whose attention was espe
cially exercised on subjective phenomena to discover this one or that ;
only where the subjective appearances are so intense that they inter
fere with the perception of objects are they noticed by all men alike.
But if they have once been discovered it is for the most part easy for
subsequent observers who place themselves in proper conditions and
bend their attention in the right direction to perceive them. But in
242 PSYCHOLOGY.
many cases for example, in the phenomena of the blind spot, in the
discrimination of over-tones and combination-tones from the ground-
tone of musical sounds, etc. such a strain of the attention is required,
even with appropriate instrumental aids, that most persons fail. The
very after-images of bright objects are by most men perceived only
under exceptionally favorable conditions, and it takes steady practice
to see the fainter images of this kind. It is a commonly recurring ex
perience that persons smitten with some eye-disease which impairs
vision suddenly remark for the first time the muscce volitantes which
all through life their vitreous humor has contained, but which they now
firmly believe to have arisen since their malady ; the truth being that
the latter has only made them more observant of all their visual sensa
tions. There are also cases where one eye has gradually grown blind,
and the patient lived for an indefinite time without knowing it, until,
through the accidental closure of the healthy eye alone, the blindness
of the other was brought to attention.
"Most people, when first made aware of binocular double images,
are uncommonly astonished that they should never have noticed them
before, although all through their life they had been in the habit of see
ing singly only those few objects which were about equally distant with
the point of fixation, and the rest, those nearer and farther, which con
stitute the great majority, had always been double.
"We must then learn to turn our attention to our particular sensa
tions, and we learn this commonly only for such sensations as are means
of cognition of the outer world. Only so far as they serve this end have
our sensations any importance for us in ordinary life. Subjective
feelings are mostly interesting only to scientific investigators ; were
they remarked in the ordinary use of the senses, they could only cause
disturbance. Whilst, therefore, we reach an extraordinary degree of
firmness and security in objective observation, we not only do not reach
this where subjective phenomena are concerned, but we actually attain
in a high degree the faculty of overlooking these altogether, and keep
ing ourselves independent of their influence in judging of objects, even
in cases where their strength might lead them easily to attract our at
tention." (Physiol. Optik, pp. 431-2.)
Even where the sensation is not merely subjective, as in
the cases of which Helmholtz speaks, but is a sign of some
thing outward, we are also liable, as Reid says, to overlook
its intrinsic quality and attend exclusively to the image of
the * thing it suggests. But here everyone caw easily notice
the sensation itself if he will. Usually we see a sheet of
paper as uniformly white, although a part of it may be in
shadow. But we can in an instant, if we please, notice the
shadow as local color. A man walking towards us does
not usually seem to alter his size ; but we can, by setting
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 243
our attention in a peculiar way make him appear to do so.
The whole education of the artist consists in his learning
to see the presented signs as well as the represented things.
No matter what the field of view means, he sees it also as
it feels that is, as a collection of patches of color bounded
by lines the whole forming an optical diagram of whose
intrinsic proportions one who is not an artist has hardly a
conscious inkling. The ordinary man s attention passes
over them to their import ; the artist s turns back and
dwells upon them for their own sake. Don t draw the
thing as it is, but as it looks / is the endless advice of every
teacher to his pupil ; forgetting that what it is is what it
would also look, provided it were placed in what we have
called the normal situation for vision. In this situation
the sensation as sign and the sensation as object co
alesce into one, and there is no contrast between them.
Sensations which seem Suppressed.
But a great difficulty has been made of certain peculiar
cases which we must now turn to consider. They are cases
in which a present sensation, whose existence is supposed to be
proved by its outward conditions being there, seems absolutely
suppressed or changed by the image of the thing it suggests.
This matter carries us back to what was said on p. 218.
The passage there quoted from Helmholtz refers to these
cases. He thinks they conclusively disprove the original
and intrinsic spatiality of any of our retinal sensations ;
for if such a one, actually present, had an immanent and
essential space-determination of its own, that might well
be added to and overlaid or even momentarily eclipsed by
suggestions of its signification, but how could it possibly
be altered or completely suppressed thereby ? Of actually
present sensations, he says, being suppressed by suggestions
of experience
" We have not a single well-attested example. In all those illusions
which are provoked by sensations in the absence of their usually excit
ing objects, the mistake never vanishes by the better understanding of
the object really present, and by insight into the cause of deception.
Phosphenes provoked by pressure on the eyeball, by traction on the en
trance of the optic nerve, after-images, etc., remain projected into their
apparent place in the field of vision, just as the image projected from
244 PSYCHOLOGY.
a mirror s surface continues to be seen behind the mirror, although we
know that to all these appearances no outward reality corresponds.
True enough, we can remove our attention, and keep it removed, from
sensations that have no reference to the outer world, those, e.g., of the
weaker after-images, and of entoptic objects, etc. . . . But what would
become of our perceptions at all if we had the power not only of ignor
ing, but of transforming into their opposites, any part of them that
differed from that outward experience, the image of which, as that of
a present reality, accompanies them in the mind ? " *
And again :
u On the analogy of all other experience, we should expect that the
conquered feelings would persist to our perception, even if only in the
shape of recognized illusions. But this is not the case. One does not
see how the assumption of originally spatial sensations can explain our
optical cognitions, when in the last resort those who believe in these
very sensations find themselves obliged to assume that they are over
come by our better judgment, based on experience. "
These words, coming from such a quarter, necessarily
carry great weight. But the authority even of a Helmholtz
ought not to shake one s critical composure. And the mo
ment one abandons abstract generalities and comes to close
quarters with the particulars, I think one easily sees that
no such conclusions as those we have quoted follow from
the latter. But profitably to conduct the discussion ive
must divide the alleged instances into groups.
(a) With Helmholtz, color-perception is equally with space-
perception an intellectual affair. The so-called simulta
neous color-contrast, by which one color modifies another
alongside of which it is said, is explained by him as an
unconscious inference. In Chapter XYII we discussed the
color-contrast problem ; the principles which applied to its
solution will prove also applicable to part of the present
problem. In my opinion, Hering has definitively proved
that, when one color is laid beside another, it modifies the
sensation of the latter, not by virtue of any mere mental
suggestion, as Helmholtz would have it, but by actually
exciting a new nerve -process, to which the modified feeling
of color immediately corresponds. The explanation is
physiological, not psychological. The transformation of
*Physiol. Optik, p. 817.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE.
245
the original color by the inducing color is due to the dis
appearance of the physiological conditions under which the
first color was produced, and to the induction, under the
new conditions, of a genuine new sensation, with which the
suggestions of experience have naught to do.
FIG. 64.
That processes in the visual apparatus propagate them
selves laterally, if one may so express it, is also shown by
the phenomena of contrast which occur after looking upon
motions of various kinds. Here are a few examples. If,
over the rail of a moving vessel, we look at the water rush
ing along the side, and then transfer our gaze to the deck, a
band of planks will appear to us, moving in the opposite
246 PSYCHOLOGY.
direction to that in which, a moment previously, we had
been seeing the water move, whilst on either side of this
band another band of planks will move as the water did.
Looking at a waterfall, or at the road from out of a car-
window in a moving train, produces the same illusion, which
may be easily verified in the laboratory by a simple piece
of apparatus. A board with a window five or six inches
wide and of any convenient length is supported upright on
two feet. On the back side of the board, above and below
the window, are two rollers, one of which is provided with
a crank. An endless band of any figured stuff is passed
over these rollers (one of which can be so adjusted on its
bearings as to keep the stuff always taut and not liable to
slip), and the surface of the front board is also covered with
stuff or paper of a nature to catch the eye. Turning the
crank now sets the central band in continuous motion,
whilst the margins of the field remain really at rest, but
after a while appear moving in the contrary way. Stopping
the crank results in an illusory appearance of motion in
reverse directions all over the field.
A disk with an Archimedean spiral drawn upon it,
whirled round on an ordinary rotating machine, produces
still more startling effects.
FIG. 65.
"If the revolution is in the direction in which the spiral line
Approaches the centre of the disk the entire surface of the latter seems
to expand during revolution and to contract after it has ceased ; *nd
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 247
vice versd if the movement of revolution is in the opposite direction. If
in the former case the eyes of the observers are turned from the rotat
ing disk towards any familiar object e.g. the face of a friend the latter
seems to contract or recede in a somewhat striking manner, and to
expand or approach after the opposite motion of the spiral. " *
An elementary form of these motor illusions seems to be
the one described by Helmholtz on pp. 568-571 of his
Optik, The motion of anything in the field of vision along
an acute angle towards a straight line sensibly distorts
1>
I
^--""~ H
FIG. 66.
that line. Thus in Fig. 66 : Let AB be a line drawn on
paper, CDE the tracing made over this line by the point
of a compass steadily followed by the eye, as it moves. As
the compass-point passes from C to D, the line appears to
move downwards ; as it passes from D to E, the line appears
to move upwards ; at the same time the whole line seems
to incline itself in the direction FG during the first half
of the compass s movement ; and in the direction HI dur
ing its last half ; the change from one inclination to an
other being quite distinct as the compass-point passes
over D.
Any line across which we draw a pencil-point appears
to be animated by a rapid movement of its own towards
the pencil-point. This apparent movement of both of two
things in relative motion to each other, even when one of
them is absolutely still, reminds us of the instances quoted
* Bowditch and Hall, in Journal of Physiology, vol. in. p. 299. Helm
holtz tries to explain this phenomenon by unconscious rotations of the eye
ball. But movements of the eyeball can only explain such appearances
of movements as are the same over the whole field. In the windowed
board one part of the field seems to move in one way, another part in an
other. The same is true when we turn from the spiral to look at the wall
the centre of the field alone swells out or contracts, the margin does the
reverse or remains at rest. Mach and Dvorak have beautifully proved the
impossibility of eye-rotations in this case (Sitzungsber. d. Wiener Akad.,
Bd. LXI.). See also Bowditch and Hall s paper as above, p. 300.
248 PSYCHOLOGY.
from Vierordt on page 188, and seems to take us back to a
primitive stage of perception, in which the discriminations
we now make when we feel a movement have not yet been
made. If we draw the point of a pencil through Zollner s
pattern (Fig. 60, p. 232), and follow it with the eye, the
whole figure becomes the scene of the most singular
apparent unrest, of which Helmholtz has very carefully
noted the conditions. The illusion of Zollner s figure van
ishes entirely, or almost so, with most people, if they
steadily look at one point of it with an unmoving eye ; and
the same is the case with many other illusions.
Now all these facts taken together seem to show vaguely
it is true, but certainly that present excitements and after
effects of former excitements may alter the result of processes
occurring simultaneously at a distance from them in the retina
or other portions of the apparatus for optical sensation. In
the cases last considered, the moving eye, as it sweeps the
fovea over certain parts of the figure, seems thereby to
determine a modification in the feeling which the other parts
confer, which modification is the figure s distortion. It is
true that this statement explains nothing. It only keeps
the cases to which it applies from being explained spuri
ously. The spurious account of these illusions is that they are
intellectual, not sensational, that they are secondary, not primary,
mental facts. The distorted figure is said to be one which
the mind is led to imagine, by falsely drawing an uncon
scious inference from certain premises of which it is not
distinctly aware. And the imagined figure is supposed to
be strong enough to suppress the perception of whatever
real sensations there may be. But Helmholtz, Wundt,
Delbceuf, Zollner, and all the advocates of unconscious in
ference are at variance with each other when it comes to
the question what these unconscious premises and infer
ences may be.
That small angles look proportionally larger than larger
ones is, in brief, the fundamental illusion to which almost all
authors would reduce the peculiarity of Fig. 67, as of Figs.
60, 61, 62 (pp. 232, 233). This peculiarity of small angles
is by Wundt treated as the case of a filled space seeming
larger than an empty one, as in Fig. 68 ; and this, according
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE.
249
to both Delboauf and Wundt, is owing to the fact that more
muscular innervation is needed for the eye to traverse a
filled space than an empty one, because the points and lines
FIG. 67.
in the filled space inevitably arrest and constrain the eye,
and this makes us feel as if it were doing more work, i.e.
traversing a longer distance.* When, however, we recol-
FIG. 68.
lect that muscular movements are positively proved to have
no share in the waterfall and revolving-spiral illusions, and
that it is hard to see how Wundt s and Delboeuf s particular
form of muscle-explanation can possibly apply to the com
pass-point illusion considered a moment ago, we must con
clude that these writers have probably exaggerated, to say
the least, the reach of their muscle-explanation in the case
* Bulletins de 1 Acad. de Belgique, xxi. 2; Revue Philosophique, vi.
pp. 223-5 ; Physiologische Psychologic, 2te Aufl. p. 103. Compare Mttn-
aterberg s views, Beitrage, Heft 2, p. 174.
250 PSYCHOLOGY.
of the subdivided angles and lines. Never do we get such
strong muscular feelings as when, against the course of na
ture, we oblige our eyes to be still ; but fixing the eyes on
one point of the figure, so far from making that part of the
latter seem larger, dispels, in most persons, the illusion of
these diagrams altogether.
As for Helmholtz, he invokes, to explain the enlarge
ment of small angles,* what he calls a law of contrast
between directions and distances of lines, analogous to that
between colors and intensities of light. Lines cutting
another line make the latter seem more inclined away from
them than it really is. Moreover, clearly recognizable mag
nitudes appear greater than equal magnitudes which we
but vaguely apprehend. But this is surely a sensational-
istic law, a native function of our seeing-apparatus. Quite
as little as the negative after-image of the revolving spiral
could such contrast be deduced from any association of
ideas or recall of past objects. The principle of contrast
is criticised by Wundt, f who says that by it small spaces
ought to appear to us smaller, and not larger, than they
really are. Helmholtz might have retorted (had not the
retort been as fatal to the uniformity of his own principle
as to Wundt s) that if the muscle-explanation were true, it
ought not to give rise to just the opposite illusions in the
skin. We saw on p. 141 that subdivided spaces appear!
shorter than empty ones upon the skin. To the instances!
there given add this : Divide a line on paper into equal
halves, puncture the extremities, and make punctures all
along one of the halves ; then, with the finger-tip on the
opposite side of the paper, follow the line of punctures ;
the empty half will seem much longer than the punctured
half. This seems to bring things back to unanalyzable|
laws, by reason of which our feeling of size is determined!
differently in the skin and in the retina, even when the!
objective conditions are the same. Bering s explanation
of Zollner s figure is to be found in Hermann s Handb. d.
Physiologie, m. 1. p. 579. Lipps t gives another reason
* Physiol. Optik, pp. 562-71.
f Physiol. Psych., pp. 107-8.
Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens, pp. 526-30.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE.
why lines cutting another line make the latter seem to
bend away from them more than is really the case. If,
he says, wo draw (Fig. 69) the line pm upon the line ab,
and follow the latter with our eye, we shall, on reaching
the point m, tend for a moment to slip off ab and to follow
mp, without distinctly realizing that we are not still on the
main line. This makes us feel as if the remainder nib of
the main line were bent a little away from its original direc
tion. The illusion is apparent in the shape of a seeming
FIG. 69.
approach of the ends 5, 6, of the two main lines. This to
my mind would be a more satisfactory explanation of this
class of illusions than any of those given by previous au
thors, were it not again for what happens in the skin.
Considering all the circumstances, I fed justified in dis
carding his entire batch of illusions as irrelevant to our pres
ent inquiry. Whatever they may prove, they do not prove
that our visual percepts of form and movement may not be
sensations strictly so called. They much more probably
fall into line with the phenomena of irradiation and of
color-contrast, and with Vierordt s primitive illusions of
movement. They show us, if anything, a realm of sen
sations in which our habitual experience has not yet made
traces, and which persist in spite of our better knowledge,
imsuggestive of those other space-sensations which we all
the time know from extrinsic evidence to constitute the real
space-determinations of the diagram. Yery likely, if these
sensations were as frequent and as practically important as
they now are insignificant and rare, we should end by sub
stituting their significates the real space-values of the
diagrams for them. These latter we should then seem to
252
PSYCHOLOGY.
see directly, and the illusions would disappear like that of
the size of a tooth-socket when the tooth has been out a
week.
(b) Another batch of cases which we may discard is that of
double images. A thoroughgoing anti-sensationalist ought
to deny all native tendency to see double images when
disparate retinal points are stimulated, because, he should
say, most people never get them, but see all things single
which experience has led them to believe to be single.
" Can a doubleness, so easily neutralized by our knowledge,
ever be a datum of sensation at all? " such an anti-sensa
tionalist might ask.
To which the answer is that it is a datum of sensation,
but a datum which, like many other data, must first be
discriminated. As a rule, no sensible qualities are dis
criminated without a motive.* And those that later we
learn to discriminate were originally felt confused. As
well pretend that a voice, or an odor, which we have
learned to pick out, is no sensation now. One may easily
acquire skill in discriminating double images, though, as
Hering somewhere says, it is an art of which one cannot
become master in one year or in two. For masters like
Hering himself, or Le Conte, the ordinary stereoscopic dia
grams are of little use. Instead of combining into one solid
appearance, they simply cross each other with their doubled
Fro. 70.
lines. Volkmann has shown a great variety of ways in
which the addition of secondary lines, differing in the two
* Of. supra, p. 515 if.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 253
fields, helps us to see the primary lines double. The effect
is analogous to that shown in the cases which we despatched
a moment ago, where given lines have their space-value
changed by the addition of new lines, without our being
able to say why, except that a certain mutual adhesion of
the lines and modification of the resultant feeling takes
place by psychophysiological laws. Thus, if in Fig. 70, I
and r be crossed by an horizontal line at the same level,
and viewed stereoscopically, they appear as a single pair of
lines, 5, in space. But if the horizontal be at different
levels, as in I , r , three lines appear, as in s .*
Let us then say no more about double images. All that
the facts prove is what Yolkmann says,t that, although
there may be sets of retinal fibres so organized as to give
an impression of two separate spots, yet the excitement of
other retinal fibres may inhibit the effect of the first ex
citement, and prevent us from actually making the dis
crimination. Still farther retinal processes may, however,
bring the doubleness to the eye of attention; and, once
there, it is as genuine a sensation as any that our life
affords.J
(c) These groups of illusions being eliminated, either as cases
of defective discrimination, or as changes of one space-
sensation into another when the total retinal process
changes, there remain but tivo other groups to puzzle us. The
first is that of the after-images distorted by projection on to
oblique planes ; the second relates to the instability of
our judgments of relative distance and size by the eye,
and includes especially what are known as pseudoscopic
illusions.
* See Archiv f . Ophthalm. , v. 2, 1 (1859), where many more examples
are given.
f Untersuchungen, p. 250 ; see also p. 242.
j 1 pass over certain difficulties about double images, drawn from the
perceptions of a few squinters (e.g. by Schweigger, Klin. Untersuch liber
das Schielen, Berlin, 1881 ; by Javal, Annales d Oculistique, LXXXV.
p. 217), because the facts are exceptional at best and very difficult of inter
pretation. In favor of the sensationalistic or nativistic view of one such
case, see the important paper by Von Kries, Archiv f. Ophthalm., xxiv.
4, p. 117.
254
PSYCHOLOGY.
The phenomena of the first group were described on
page 232. A. W. Yolkmann has studied them with his
accustomed clearness and care. * Even an imaginarily
inclined wall, in a picture, will, if an after-image be thrown
upon it, distort the shape thereof, and make us see a form
of which our after-image would be the natural projection
on the retina, were that form laid upon the wall. Thus a
signboard is painted in perspective on a screen, and the
eye, after steadily looking at a rectangular cross, is turned
to the painted signboard. The after-image appears as an
oblique-legged cross upon the signboard. It is the converse
phenomenon of a perspective drawing like Fig. 71, in which
FIG. 71.
really oblique-legged figures are seen as rectangular crosses.
The unstable judgments of relative distance and size
were also mentioned on pp. 231-2. Whatever the size may
be of the retinal image which an object makes, the object is
seen as of its own normal size. A man moving towards us
is not sensibly perceived to grow, for example ; and my
finger, of which a single joint may more than conceal him
from my view, is nevertheless seen as a much smaller object
than the man. As for distances, it is often possible to make
the farther part of an object seem near and the nearer part
far. A human profile in intaglio, looked at steadily with
one eye, or even both, soon appears irresistibly as a bas-
relief. The inside of a common pasteboard mask, painted
like the outside, and viewed with one eye in a direct light,
also looks convex instead of hollow. So strong is the illu-
* Physiologische Untersuclmngen im Gebiete der Optik, v.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE.
255
sion, after long fixation, that a friend who painted such a
mask for me told me it soon became difficult to see how to
apply the brush. Bend a visiting-card across the middle,
so that its halves form an angle of 90 more or less ; set it
upright on the table, as in Fig. 72, and view it with one eye.
FIG. 72.
You can make it appear either as if it opened towards you
or away from you. In the former case, the angle ab lies
upon the table, b being nearer to you than a ; in the latter
case ab seems vertical to the table as indeed it really is
with a nearer to you than b* Again, look,with either one or
* Cf. E. Mach, Beitrage zur Analyse der Einptindungen, p. 87.
256
PSYCHOLOGY.
two eyes, at the opening of a wine-glass or tumbler (Fig.
73), held either above or below the eye s level. The retinal
image of the opening is an oval, but we can see the oval in
either of two ways, as if it were the perspective view of a>
circle whose edge b were farther from us than its edge a
(in which case we should seem to be looking down on the
circle), or as if its edge a were the more distant edge (in
which case we should be looking up at it through the b side
of the glass). As the manner of seeing the edge changes,
the glass itself alters its form in space and looks straight
or seems bent towards or from the eye,* according as the
latter is placed beneath or above it.
Plane diagrams also can be conceived as solids, and that
in more than one way. Figs. 74, 75, 76, for example, are am-
FTG. 74.
FIG. 75.
FIG.
biguous perspective projections, and may each of them re
mind us of two different natural objects. Whichever of these
* Cf. V. Egger, Revue Pbilos., xx. 488.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 257
objects we conceive clearly at the moment of looking at the
figure, we seem to see in all its solidity before us. A little prac
tice will enable us to flap the figures, so to speak, backwards
and forwards from one object to the other at will. We need
only attend to one of the angles represented, and imagine it
either solid or hollow pulled towards us out of the plane
of the paper, or pushed back behind the same and the
whole figure obeys the cue and is instantaneously trans
formed beneath our gaze.*
The peculiarity of all these cases is the ambiguity of
the perception to which the fixed retinal impression gives
rise. With our retina excited in exactly the same way,
whether by after-image, mask or diagram, we see now this
object and now that, as if the retinal image per se had no
essential space-import. Surely if form and length were
originally retinal sensations, retinal rectangles ought not to
become acute or obtuse, and lines ought not to alter their
relative lengths as they do. If relief were an optical
feeling, it ought not to flap to and fro, with every optical con
dition unchanged. Here, if anywhere, the deniers of space-
sensation ought to be able to make their final stand, t
It must be confessed that their plea is plausible at first
sight. But it is one thing to throw out retinal sensibility
altogether as a space-yielding function the moment we find
an ambiguity in its deliverances, and another thing to
examine candidly the conditions which may have brought
the ambiguity about. The former way is cheap, wholesale,
shallow; the latter difficult and complicated, but full of
instruction in the end. Let us try it for ourselves.
In the case of the diagrams 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, the real
object, lines meeting or crossing each other on a plane, is
* Loeb (Pfliiger s Archiv, XL. 274) has proved that muscular changes
of adaptation in the eye for near and far distance are what determine the
form of the relief.
f The strongest passage in Helmholtz s argument against sensations of
space is relative to these fluctuations of seen relief: "Ought one not to
conclude that if sensations of relief exist at all, they must be so faint and
vague as to have no influence compared with that of past experience?
Ought we not to believe that the perception of the third dimension may
have arisen without them, since we now see it taking place as well againtt
them as with them?" (Physiol. Optik, p. 817.)
258 PSYCHOLOGY.
replaced by an imagined solid which we describe as seen,
fieally it is not seen but only so vividly conceived as to
approach a vision of reality. We feel all the while, however,
that the solid suggested is not solidly there. The reason
why one solid may seem more easily suggested than
another, and why it is easier in general to perceive the
diagram solid than flat, seems due to probability * Those
lines have countless times in our past experience been
drawn on our retina by solids for once that we have seen
them flat on paper. And hundreds of times we have
looked down upon the upper surface of parallelepipeds,
stairs and glasses, for once that we have looked upwards
at their bottom hence we see the solids easiest as if from
above.
Habit or probability seems also to govern the illusion of
the intaglio profile, and of the hollow mask. We have never
seen a human face except in relief hence the case with
which the present sensation is overpowered. Hence, too,
the obstinacy with which human faces and forms, and
other extremely familiar convex objects, refuse to appear
hollow when viewed through Wheatstone s pseudoscope.
Our perception seems wedded to certain total ways of
seeing certain objects. The moment the object is suggested
at all, it takes possession of the mind in the fulness of its
stereotyped habitual form. This explains the suddenness
of the transformations when the perceptions change. The
object shoots back and forth completely from this to that
familiar thing, and doubtful, indeterminate, and composite
things are excluded, apparently because we are unused to
their existence.
W^hen we turn from the diagrams to the actual folded
visiting-card and to the real glass, the imagined form seems
fully as real as the correct one. The card flaps over ; the
glass rim tilts this way or that, as if some inward spring
suddenly became released in our eye. In these changes the
actual retinal image receives different complements from the
mind. But the remarkable thing is that the complement
* Cf. E. Mach, Beitrage, etc., p. 90, and the preceding chapter of the
present work, p. 86 ff.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 259
and the image combine so completely that the twain are
one flesh, as it were, and cannot be discriminated in the
result. If the complement be, as we have called it (on pp.
237-8), a set of imaginary absent eye-sensations, they seem
no whit less vividly there than the sensation which the eye
now receives from without.
The case of the after-images distorted by projection upon
an oblique plane is even more strange, for the imagined
perspective figure, lying in the plane, seems less to combine
with the one a moment previously seen by the eye than to
suppress it and take its place.* The point needing explana
tion, then, in all this, is how it comes to pass that, when
imagined sensations are usually so inferior in vivacity to real
ones, they should in these few experiences prove to be
almost or quite their match.
The mystery is solved when we note the class to which
all these experiences belong. They are * perceptions of
definite things, definitely situated in tridimensional space.
The mind uniformly uses its sensations to identify things by.
The sensation is invariably apperceived by the idea, name,
or normal aspect (p. 238) of the thing. The peculiarity of
the optical signs of things is their extraordinary mutability.
A * thing which we follow with the eye, never doubting of
its physical identity, will change its retinal image inces
santly. A cross, a ring, waved about in the air, will pass
through every conceivable angular and elliptical form. All
the while, however, as we look at them, we hold fast to the
perception of their real shape, by mentally combining
the pictures momentarily received with the notion of peculiar
positions in space. It is not the cross and ring pure and
simple which we perceive, but the cross so held, the ring so
hdd. From the day of our birth we have sought every hour
of our lives to correct the apparent form of things, and trans-
* I ought to say that I seem always able to see the cross rectangular at
will. But this appears to come from an imperfect absorption of the
rectangular after-image by the inclined plane at which the eyes look. The
cross, with me, is apt to detach itself from this and then look square. I get the
illusion better from the circle, whose after-image becomes in various ways
elliptical on being projected upon the different surfaces of the room, and
cannot then be easily made to look circular again.
260 PSYCHOLOGY.
late it into the real form by keeping note of the way they
are placed or held. In no other class of sensations does
this incessant correction occur. What wonder, then, that
the notion so placed should invincibly exert its habitual
corrective effect, even when the object with which it com
bines is only an after-image, and make us perceive the latter
under a changed but more real form ? The * real form
is also a sensation conjured up by memory ; but it is one so
probable, so habitually conjured up when we have just this
combination of optical experiences, that it partakes of the
invincible freshness of reality, and seems to break through
that law which elsewhere condemns reproductive processes
to being so much fainter than sensations.
Once more, these cases form an extreme. Somewhere, in
the list of our imaginations of absent feelings, there must be found
the vividest of all. These optical reproductions of real form are
the vividest of all. It is foolish to reason from cases lower
in the scale, to prove that the scale can contain no such ex
treme cases as these ; and particularly foolish since we can
definitely see why these imaginations ought to be more
vivid than any others, whenever they recall the forms of
habitual and probable things. These latter, by incessantly
repeated presence and reproduction, will plough deep
grooves in the nervous system. There will be developed,
to correspond to them, paths of least resistance, of unstable
equilibrium, liable to become active in their totality when
any point is touched off. Even when the objective stimulus
is imperfect, we shall still see the full convexity of a human
face, the correct inclination of an angle or sweep of a curve,
or the distance of two lines. Our mind will be like a poly
hedron, whose facets are the attitudes of perception in which
it can most easily rest. These are worn upon it by habitual
objects, and from one of these it can pass only by tumbling
over into another.*
Bering has well accounted for the sensationally vivid
character of these habitually reproduced forms. He says,
* In Chapter XVIII, p. 74, I gave a reason why imaginations ought not
to be as vivid as sensations. It should be borne in mind that that reason
does not apply to these complemental imaginings of the real shape of
things actually before our eyes.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 261
after reminding us that every visual sensation is correlated
to a physical process in the nervous apparatus :
** If this psychophysical process is aroused, as usually happens, by
light-rays impinging on the retina, its form depends not only on the na
ture of these rays, but on the constitution of the entire nervous appa
ratus which is connected with the organ of vision, and on the state in
which it finds itself. The same stimulus may excite widely different
sensations according to this state.
u The constitution of the nervous apparatus depends naturally in
part upon innate predisposition ; but the ensemble of effects wrought by
stimuli upon it in the course of life, whether these come through the eyes
or from elsewhere, is a co-factor of its development. To express it
otherwise, involuntary and voluntary experience and exercise assist in
determining the material structure of the nervous organ of vision, and
hence the ways in which it may react on a retinal image as an outward
stimulus. That experience and exercise should be possible at all in
vision is a consequence of the reproductive power, or memory, of its
nerve-substance. Every particular activity of the organ makes it more
suited to a repetition of the same ; ever slighter touches are required to
make the repetition occur. The organ habituates itself to the repeated
activity. . . .
u Suppose now that, in the first experience of a complex sensation
produced by a particular retinal image, certain portions were made the
special objects of attention. In a repetition of the sensible experience
it will happen that notwithstanding the identity of the outward stimulus
these portions will be more easily and strongly reproduced ; and when
this happens a hundred times the inequality with which the various
constituents of the complex sensation appeal to consciousness grows
ever greater.
"Now in the present state of our knowledge we cannot assert that
in both the first and the last occurrence of the retinal image in question
the same pure sensation is provoked, but that the mind interprets it
differently the last time in consequence of experience ; for the only
given things we know are on the one hand the retinal image which is
both times the same, and on the other the mental percept which is both
times different ; of a third thing, such as a pure sensation, interpolated
between image and percept, we know nothing. We ought, therefore,
if we wish to avoid hypotheses, simply to say that the nervous apparatus
reacts the last time differently from the first, and gives us in conse
quence a different group of sensations.
" But not only by repetition of the same retinal image, but by that
of similar ones, will the law obtain. Portions of the image common to
the successive experiences will awaken, as it were, a stronger echo in
the nervous apparatus than other portions. Hence it results that repro
duction is usually elective : the more strongly reverberating parts of the
picture yield stronger feelings than the rest. This may result in the
262 PSYCHOLOGY.
latter being quite overlooked and, as it were, eliminated from perception.
It may even come to pass that instead of these parts eliminated by elec
tion a feeling of entirely different elements comes to consciousness
elements not objectively contained in the stimulus. A group of sensa
tions, namely, for which a strong tendency to reproduction has become,
by frequent repetition, ingrained in the nervous system will easily revive
as a whole when, not its whole retinal image, but only an essential part
thereof, returns. In this case we get some sensations to which no ade
quate stimulus exists in the retinal image, and which owe their being
solely to the reproductive power of the nervous apparatus. This is
complementary (erganzende) reproduction.
"Thus a few points and disconnected strokes are sufficient to make
us see a human face, and without specially directed attention we fail to
note that we see much that really is not drawn on the paper. Attention
will show that the outlines were deficient in spots where we thought
them complete. . . . The portions of the percept supplied by comple
mentary reproduction depend, however, just as much as its other por
tions, on the reaction of the nervous apparatus upon the retinal image,
indirect though this reaction may, in the case of the supplied portions,
be. And so long as they are present, we have a perfect right to call
them sensations, for they differ in no wise from such sensations as cor
respond to an actual stimulus in the retina. Often, however, they are
not persistent ; many of them may be expelled by more close observa
tion, but this is not proved to be the case with all. ... In vision with
one eye . . . the distribution of parts within the third dimension is
essentially the work of this complementary reproduction, i.e. of former
experience. . . . When a certain way of localizing a particular group
of sensations has become with us a second nature, our better knowl
edge, our judgment, our logic, are of no avail. . . . Things actually
diverse may give similar or almost identical retinal images; e.g., an
object extended in three dimensions, and its flat perspective picture.
In such cases it often depends on small accidents, and especially on our
will, whether the one or the other group of sensations shall be excited.
... We can see a relief hollow, as a mould, or vice versa; for a relief
illuminated from the left can look just like its mould illuminated from
the right. Reflecting upon this, one may infer from ttie direction of
the shadows that one has a relief before one, and the idea of the relief
will guide the nerve-processes into the right path, so that the feeling of
the relief is suddenly aroused. . . . Whenever the retinal image is of
such a nature that two diverse modes of reaction on the part of the
nervous apparatus are, so to speak, equally, or nearly equally, immi
nent, it must depend on small accidents whether the one or the other
reaction is realized. In these cases our previous knowledge often has a
decisive effect, and helps the correct perception to victory. The bare
idea of the right object is itself a feeble reproduction which with the
help of the proper retinal picture develops into clear and lively sensa
tion. But if there be not already in the nervous apparatus a disposi-
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE.
263
tion to the production of that percept which our judgment tells us is
right, our knowledge strives in vain to conjure up the feeling of it ;
we then know that we see something to which no reality corresponds,
but we see it all the same." *
Note that no object not probable, no object which we are not
incessantly practised in reproducing, can acquire this vividness
in imagination. Objective corners are ever changing their
angles to the eyes, spaces their apparent size, lines their
distance. But by no transmutation of position in space
does an objective straight line appear bent, and only in one
position out of an infinity does a broken line look straight.
Accordingly, it is impossible by projecting the after-image
A B
FIG. 77.
>/ a straight line upon two surfaces which make a solid
angle with each other to give the line itself a sensible
kink. Look with it at the corner of your room: the
after-image, which may overlap all three surfaces of the
corner, still continues straight. Volkmann constructed a
complicated surface of projection like that drawn in Fig.
77, but he found it impossible so to throw a straight after
image upon it as to alter its visible form.
* Hermann s Handb. der Physiologie. in. 1, p. 565-71.
264
PSYCHOLOGY.
One of the situations in which we oftenest see things is
spread out on the ground before us. We are incessantly
drilled in making allowance for this perspective, and reduc
ing things to their real form in spite of optical foreshorten
ing. Hence if the preceding explanations are true, we
ought to find this habit inveterate. The lower half of the
retina, which habitually sees the fartfor half of things
spread out on the ground, ought to have acquired a habit
of enlarging its pictures by imagination, so as to make
them more than equal to those which fall on the upper
retinal surface ; and this habit ought to be hard to escape
from, even when both halves of the object are equidistant
from the eye, as in a vertical line on paper. Delboauf has
found, accordingly, that if we try to bisect such a line we
place the point of division about -fa of its length too high.*
Similarly, a square cross, or a square, drawn on paper,
should look higher than it is broad. And that this is actu
ally the case, the reader may verify by a glance at Fig. 78.
FIG. 78.
For analogous reasons the upper and lower halves of the
letter S, or of the figure 8, hardly seem to differ. But when
turned upside down, as g, g> the upper half looks much the
larger, f
* Bulletin de 1 Academic de Belgique, 2me Serie, xix. 2.
f Wundt seeks to explain all these illusions by the relatively stronger
feeling of innervation needed to move the eyeballs upwards, a careful
study of the muscles concerned is taken to prove this, and a consequently
greater estimate of the distance traversed. It suffices to remark, however,
with Lipps, that were the innervation all, a column of S s placed on top
of each other should look each larger than the one below it, and a weather
cock on a steeple gigantic, neither of which is the case. Only the halves
of the same object look different in size, because the customary correction
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 265
Hering has tried to explain our exaggeration of small
angles in the same way. We have more to do with right
angles than with any others : right angles, in fact, have an
altogether unique sort of interest for the human mind.
Nature almost never begets them, but we think space by
means of them and put them everywhere. Consequently
obtuse and acute ones, liable always to be the images of
right ones foreshortened, particularly easily revive right
ones in memory. It is hard to look at such figures as
a, b, c, in Fig. 79, without seeing them in perspective, as
a i
FIG. 79.
approximations, at least, to foreshortened rectangular
forms. *
At the same time the genuine sensational form of the
lines before us can, in all the cases of distortion by sug
gested perspective, be felt correctly by a mind able to ab
stract from the notion of perspective altogether. Individ
uals differ in this abstracting power. Artistic training im
proves it, so that after a little while errors in vertical bi
section, in estimating height relatively to breadth, etc., be
come impossible. In other words, we learn to take the
optical sensation before us pure, f
for foreshortening bears only on the relations of the parts of special things
spread out before us. Cf. Wundt, Physiol. Psych., 2te Aufl. 11. 96-8;
Th. Lipps, Grundtatsachen, etc., p. 535.
* Hering would partly solve in this way the mystery of Figs. 60, 61, and
67. No doubt the explanation partly applies ; but the strange cessation of
the illusion when we fix the gaze fails to be accounted for thereby.
f Helmholtz has sought (Physiol. Optik, p. 715) to explain the diverg
ence of the apparent vertical meridians of the two retinae, by the manner
in which an identical line drawn on the ground before us in the median
plane will throw its images on the two eyes respectively. The matter is
too technical for description here ; the unlearned reader may be referred
for it to J. Le Conte s Sight in the Internat. Scient. Series, p. 198 ff. But, for
the benefit of those to whom verbum sat, I cannot help saying that it seems
to me that the exactness of the relation of the two meridians whether diver-
266 PSYCHOLOGY.
We may then sum up our study of illusions by saying that
they in no wise undermine our view that every spatial determi
nation of things is originally given in the shape of a sensation
of the eyes. They only show how very potent certain
imagined sensations of the eyes may become.
These sensations, so far as they bring definite forms to
the mind, appear to be retinal exclusively. The move
ments of the eyeballs play a great part in educating our
perception, it is true ; but they have nothing to do with
constituting any one feeling of form. Their function is
limited to exciting the various feelings of form, by tracing
retinal streaks ; and to comparing them, and measuring them
off against each other, by applying different parts of the
retinal surface to the same objective thing. Helmholtz s
analysis of the facts of our * measurement of the field of vieiv*
is, bating a lapse or two, masterly, and seems to prove that
the movements of the eye have had some part in bringing
our sense of retinal equivalencies about equivalencies, mind,
of different retinal forms and sizes, not forms and sizes
themselves. Superposition is the way in which the eve-
movements accomplish this result. An object traces the
line AB on a peripheral tract of the retina. Quickly we
move the eye so that the same object traces the line ah on
a central tract. Forthwith, to our mind, AB and ab are
judged equivalent. But, as Helmholtz admits, the equiv
alence-judgment is independent of the way in which we
may feel the form and length of the several retinal pic
tures themselves :
"The retina is like a pair of compasses, whose points we apply in
succession to the ends of several lines to see whether they agree or not in
length. All we need know meanwhile about the compasses is that the
distance of their points remains unchanged. What that distance is, and
what is the shape of the compasses, is a matter of no account."*
gent or not, for their divergence differs in individuals and often in one in
dividual at diverse times precludes its being due to the mere habitual
falling-oil of the image of one objective line on both. Le Conte, e.g.,
measures their positiou down to a sixth of a degree, others to tenths. This
indicates an organic identity in the sensations of the two retinae, which the
experience of median perspective horizontals may roughly have agreed
with, but hardly can have engendered. Wundt explains the divergence as
usual, by the Innervatiomgefuhl (op. cit. n. 99 if.).
* Physiol. Optik, p. 547.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 2( ,T
Measurement implies a stuff to measure. Retinal sensa
tions give the stuff; objective things form the yard-stick ; mo
tion does the measuring operation; which can, of course, be
well performed only where it is possible to make the same
object fall on many retinal tracts. This is practically im
possible where the tracts make a wide angle with each
other. But there are certain directions in the field of view,
certain retinal lines, along which it is particularly easy to
make the image of an object slide. The object then be
comes a ruler for these lines, as Helmholtz puts it,*
making them seem straight throughout if the object looked
straight to us in that part of them at which it was most
distinctly seen.
But all this need of superposition shows how devoid of
exact space-import the feelings of movement are per se. As
we compare the space-value of two retinal tracts by super
posing them successively upon the same objective line, so
we also have to compare the space-value of objective angles
and lines by superposing them on the same retinal tract.
Neither procedure would be required if our eye-movements
were apprehended immediately, by pure muscular feeling
or innervation, for example, as distinct lengths and direc
tions in space. To compare retinal tracts, it would then
suffice simply to notice how it feels to move any image over
them. And two objective lines could be compared as
well by moving different retinal tracts along them as by
laying them along the same. It would be as easy to com-
* "We can with a short ruler draw a line as long as we please on a
plane surface by first drawing one as long as the ruler permits, and then
sliding the ruler somewhat along the drawn line and drawing again, etc.
If the ruler is exactly straight, we get in this way a straight line. If it is
somewhat curved we get a circle. Now, instead of the sliding ruler we
use in the field of sight the central spot of distinctest vision impressed with
a rinear sensation of sight, which at times may be intensified till it becomes
an after-image. We follow, in looking, the direction of this line, and in
so doing we slide the line along itself and get a prolongation of its length.
On a plane surface we can carry on this procedure on any sort of a straight
or curved ruler, but in the field of vision there is for each direction and
movement of the eye only one sort of line which it is possible for us to-
slide along in its own direction continually." These are what Helmholtz
calls the circles of direction of the visual field lines which he has
studied with his usual care. Cf. Physiol. Optih, p. 548 ff.
268 PSYCHOLOGY.
pare non-parallel figures as it now is to judge of those
which are parallel.* Those which it took the same amount
of movement to traverse would be equal, in whatever direc
tion the movement occurred.
GENERAL SUMMARY.
With this we may end our long and, I fear to many
readers, tediously minute survey. The facts of vision form
a jungle of intricacy ; and those who penetrate deeply into
physiological optics will be more struck by our omissions
than by our abundance- of detail. But for students who
may have lost sight of the forest for the trees, I will re
capitulate briefly the points of our whole argument from
the beginning, and then proceed to a short historical survey,
which will set them in relief.
All our sensations are positively and inexplicably exten
sive wholes.
The sensations contributing to space-perception seem
exclusively to be the surface of skin, retina, and joints.
1 Muscular feelings play no appreciable part in the genera
tion of our feelings of form, direction, etc.
The total bigness of a cutaneous or retinal feeling soon
becomes subdivided by discriminative attention.
Movements assist this discrimination by reason of the
peculiarly exciting quality of the sensations which stimuli
moving over surfaces arouse.
Subdivisions, once discriminated, acquire definite rela
tions of position towards each other within the total space.
These relations are themselves feelings of the subdivis
ions that intervene. When these subdivisions are not the
seat of stimuli, the relations are only reproduced in imagi
nary form.
The various sense-spaces are, in the first instance, inco
herent with each other ; and primitively both they and
their subdivisions are but vaguely comparable in point of
bulk and form. *
The education of our space-perception consists largely
of two processes reducing the various sense-feelings to a
* Cf. Heriug in Hermann s Handb. der Pnysiol., m. 1, pp. 553-4.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 269
common measure, and adding them together into the single
all-including space of the real world.
Both the measuring and the adding are performed bj
the aid of things.
The imagined aggregate of positions occupied by all the
actual or possible, moving or stationary, things which we
know, is our notion of real space a very incomplete
and vague conception in all minds.
The measuring of our space-feelings against each other
mainly comes about through the successive arousal of dif
ferent ones by the same thing, by our selection of certain
ones as feelings of its real size and shape, and by the deg
radation of others to the status of being merely signs of
these.
For the successive application of the same thing to dif
ferent space-giving surfaces motion is indispensable, and
hence plays a great part in our space-education, especially
in that of the eye. Abstractly considered, the motion of
the object over the sensitive surface would educate us quite
as well as that of the surface over the object. But the self-
mobility of the organ carrying the surface accelerates im
mensely the result.
In completely educated space-perception, the present
sensation is usually just what Helmholtz (Physiol. Optik,
p. 797) calls it, a sign, the interpretation of whose mean
ing is left to the understanding. But the understanding is
exclusively reproductive and never productive in the pro
cess ; and its function is limited to the recall of previous
space-sensations with which the present one has been as
sociated and which may be judged more real than it.
Finally, this reproduction may in the case of certain
visual forms be as vivid, or almost so, as actual sensation is.
The third dimension forms an original element of all
our space-sensations. In the eye it is subdivided by various
discriminations. The more distant subdivisions are often
shut out altogether, and, in being suppressed, have the
effect of diminishing the absolute space-value of the total
field of view.*
* This shrinkage and expansion of the absolute space-value of the total
optical sensation remains to my mind the most obscure part of the whole
270 PSYCHOLOGY.
HISTORICAL.
Let 118 now close with a brief historical survey. The
first achievement of note in the study of space-perception
was Berkeley s theory of vision. This undertook to establish
two points, first that distance was not a visual but a tactile
form of consciousness, suggested by visual signs ; secondly,
that there is no one quality or * idea common to the sensa
tions of touch and sight, such that prior to experience one
might possibly anticipate from the look of an object any
thing about its felt size, shape, or position, or from the
touch of it anything about its look.
In other words, that primitively chaotic or semi-chaotic
-condition of our various sense-spaces which we have
demonstrated, was established for good by Berkeley; and
he bequeathed to psychology the problem of describing the
manner in which the deliverances are harmonized so as all
to refer to one and the same extended world.
His disciples in Great Britain have solved this problem
after Berkeley s own fashion, and to a great extent as we
have done ourselves, by the ideas of the various senses sug
gesting each other in consequence of Association. But, either
because they were intoxicated with the principle of associa
tion, or because in the number of details they lost their
general bearings, they have forgotten, as a rule, to state under
what sensible form the primitive spatial experiences are found
which later became associated with so many other sensible
signs. Heedless of their master Locke s precept, that the
mind can frame unto itself no one new simple idea, they
seem for the most part to be trying to explain the extensive
quality itself, account for it, and evolve it, by the mere asso
ciation together of feelings which originally possessed it not.
They first evaporate the nature of extension by making it
tantamount to mere * coexistence, and then they explain
coexistence as being the same thing as succession, provided it
subject. It is a real optical sensation, seeming introspectively to have
nothing to do with locomotor or other suggestions. It is easy to say that
the Intellect produces it, but what does that mean? The investigator
who will throw light on this one point will probably clear up other diffi
culties as well.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 271
be aii extremely rapid or a reversible succession, Space-
perception thus emerges without being anywhere postulated.
The only things postulated are unextended feelings and 1 ime.
Says Thomas Brown (lecture xxm.) : " I am inclined to re
verse exactly the process commonly supposed ; and instead
of deriving the measure of time from extension, to derive
the knowledge and original measure of extension from time."
Brown and both the Mills think that retinal sensations,
colors, in their primitive condition, are felt with no extension
and that the latter merely becomes inseparably associated
with them. John Mill says : " Whatever may be the retinal
impression conveyed by a line which bounds two colors, I
see no ground for thinking that by the eye alone we could
acquire the conception of what we now mean when we say
that one of the colors is outside [beside] the other." *
Whence does the extension come which gets so insepa
rably associated with these non-extended colored sensations ?
From the sweep and movements of the eye from mus
cular feelings. But, as Prof. Bain says, if movement-feel
ings give us any property of things, " it would seem to be
not space, but time." t And John Mill says that " the idea
of space is, at bottom, one of time." | Space, then, is not to
be found in any elementary sensation, but, in Bain s words,
" as a quality, it has no other origin and no other meaning
than the association of these different [non-spatial] motor
and sensitive effects."
This phrase is mystical-sounding enough to one who
understands association as producing nothing, but only as
knitting together things already produced in separate ways.
The truth is that the English Associationist school, in trying
to show how much their principle can accomplish, have
altogether overshot the mark and espoused a kind of theory
in respect to space-perception which the general tenor of
their philosophy should lead them to abhor. Keally there
are but three possible kinds of theory concerning space.
Either (1) there is no spatial quality of sensation at all, and
* Examination of Hamilton, 3d ed. p. 283.
f Senses and Intellect, 3d ed. p. 183.
j Exam, of Hamilton, 3d ed. p. 283.
Senses and Intellect, p. 372.
272 PSYCHOLOGY.
space is a mere symbol of succession ; or (2) there is an ex
tensive quality given immediately in certain particular sen
sations ; or, finally, (3) there is a quality produced out of the
inward resources of the mind, to envelop sensations which,
as given originally, are not spatial, but which, on being
cast into the spatial form, become united and orderly. This
last is the Kantian view. Stumpf admirably designates it
as the * psychic stimulus theory, the crude sensations being
considered as goads to the mind to put forth its slumbering
power.
Brown, the Mills, and Bain, amid these possibilities,
seem to have gone astray like lost sheep. With the * men
tal chemistry of which the Mills speak precisely the
same thing as the * psychical synthesis of Wundt, which,
as we shall soon see, is a principle expressly intended to do
what Association can never perform they hold the third
view, but again in other places imply the first. And, be
tween the impossibility of getting from mere association
anything not contained in the sensations associated and the
dislike to allow spontaneous mental productivity, they
flounder in a dismal dilemma. Mr. Sully joins them there
in what I must call a vague and vacillating way. Mr.
Spencer of course is bound to pretend to evolve all
mental qualities out of antecedents different from them
selves, so that we need perhaps not wonder at his refusal
to accord the spatial quality to any of the several elemen
tary sensations out of which our space-perception grows.
Thus (Psychology, n. 168, 172, 218) :
" No idea of extension can arise from a simultaneous excitation " of
a multitude of nerve-terminations like those of the skin or the retina,
since this would imply a " knowledge of their relative positions v that
is, "a pre-existent idea of a special extension, which is absurd. 11 " No
relation between successive states of consciousness gives in itself any
idea of extension." " The muscular sensations accompanying motion
are quite distinct from the notions of space and time associated with
them.
Mr. Spencer none the less inveighs vociferously against
the Kantian position that space is produced by the mind s
own resources. And yet he nowhere denies space to be a
specific affection of consciousness different from time !
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 273
Such incoherency is pitiful. The fact is that, at bottom,
all these authors are really psychical stimulists, or Kant-
ists. The space they speak of is a super- sensational mental
product. This position appears to me thoroughly mytho
logical. But let us see how it is held by those who know
more definitely what they mean. Schopenhauer expresses
the Kantian view with more vigor and clearness than any
one else. He says :
A man must be forsaken by all the gods to dream that the world we
see outside of us, filling space in its three dimensions, moving down the
inexorable stream of time, governed at each step by Causality s invariable
l aw? but in all this only following rules which we may prescribe for it
in advance of all experience, to dream, I say, that such a world should
stand there outside of us, quite objectively real with no complicity of
ours, and thereupon by a subsequent act, through the instrumentality
of mere sensation, that it should enter our head and reconstruct a dupli
cate of itself as it was outside. For what a poverty-stricken thing is this
mere sensation ! Even in the noblest organs of sense it is nothing more
than a local and specific feeling, susceptible within its kind of a few
variations, but always strictly subjective and containing in itself noth
ing objective, nothing resembling a perception. For sensation of every
sort is and remains a process in the organism itself. As such it is limited
to the territory inside the skin and can never, accordingly, per se con
tain anything that lies outside the skin or outside ourselves. . . . Only
when the Understanding ... is roused to activity and brings its
sole and only form, the law of Causality, into play, only then does the
mighty transformation take place which makes out of subjective sensa
tion objective intuition. The Understanding, namely, grasps by means
of its innate, a priori, ante-experiential form, the given sensation of the
body as an effect which as such must necessarily have a cause. At the
same time the Understanding summons to its aid the form of the outer
sense which similarly lies already preformed in the intellect (or brain),
and which is Space, in order to locate that cause outside of the organ
ism. ... In this process the Understanding, as I shall soon show, takes
note of the most minute peculiarities of the given sensation in order to
construct in the outer space a cause which shall completely account for
them. This operation of the Understanding is, however, not one that
takes place discursively, reflectively, in abstracto, by means of words
and concepts ; but is intuitive and immediate. . . . Thus the Under
standing must first create the objective world ; never can the latter,
already complete in se, simply promenade into our heads through the
senses and organic apertures. For the senses yield us nothing further
than the raw material which must be first elaborated into the objective
conception of an orderly physical world-system by means of the afore
said simple forms of Space, Time, and Causality. . . . Let me show thee
274 PSYCHOLOGY.
great chasm between sensation and perception by showing how raw the
material is out of which the fair structure is upreared. Only two senses
serve objective perception : touch and sight. They alone furnish the
data on the basis whereof the Understanding, by the process indicated,
erects the objective world. . . . These data in themselves are still no
perception ; that is the Understanding s work. If I press with my hand
against the table, the sensation I receive has no analogy with the idea
of the firm cohesion of the parts of this mass : only when my Under
standing passes from the sensation to its cause does it create for itself
a body with the properties of solidity, impenetrability, and hardness.
When in the dark I lay my hand on a surface, or grasp a ball of three
inches diameter, in either case the same parts of the hand receive the
impression : but out of the different contraction of the hand in the two
cases my Understanding constructs the form of the body whose contact
caused the feeling, and confirms its construction by leading me to move
my hand over the body. If one born blind handles a cubical body, the
sensations of his hand are quite uniform on all sides and in all direc
tions. only the corners press upon a smaller part of his skin. In these
sensations, as such, there is nothing whatever analogous to a cube. But
from the felt resistance his Understanding infers immediately and
intuitively a cause thereof, which now presents itself as a solid body;
and from the movements of exploration which the arms made whilst
the feelings of the hands remained constant he constructs, in thesp ace
known to him a priori, the body s cubical shape. Did he not bring
with him ready-made the idea of a cause and of a space, with the laws
thereof, there never could arise, out of those successive feelings in his
hand, the image of a cube. If we let a string run through our closed
hand, we immediately construct as the cause of the friction and its dura
tion in such an attitude of the hand, a long cylindrical body moving
uniformly in one direction. But never out of the pure sensation in the
hand could the idea of movement, that is, of change of position in space
by means of time, arise : such a content can never lie in sensation, nor
come out of it. Our Intellect, antecedently to all experience, must bear
in itself the intuitions of Space and Time, and therewithal of the possi
bility of motion, and no less the idea of Causality, to pass from the
empirically given feeling to its cause, and to construct the latter as a
so moving body of the designated shape. For how great is the abyss
between the mere sensation in the hand and the ideas of causality,
materiality, and movement through Space, occurring in Time! The
feeling in the hand, even with different contacts and positions, is some
thing far too uniform and poor in content for it to be possible to con
struct out of it the idea of Space with its three dimensions, of the
action of bodies on each other, with the properties of extension, impen
etrability, cohesion, shape, hardness, softness, rest, and motion in
short, the foundations of the objective world. This is only possible
through Space, Time, and Causality . . . being preformed in the
Intellect itself, . . - from whence it again follows that the perception
THh! PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 275
of the external world is essentially an intellectual process, a work of the
Understanding, to which sensation furnishes merely the occasion, and
the data to be interpreted in each particular case." *
I call this view mythological, because I am conscious of
no such Kantian machine-shop in my mind, and feel no
call to disparage the powers of poor sensation in this merci
less way. I have no introspective experience of mentally
producing or creating space. My space-intuitions occur
not in two times but in one. There is not one moment of
passive inextensive sensation, succeeded by another of ac
tive extensive perception, but the form I see is as immedi
ately felt as the color which fills it out. That the higher
parts of the mind come in, who can deny ? They add and
subtract, they compare and measure, they reproduce and
abstract. They inweave the space-sensations with intel
lectual relations ; but these relations are the same when they
obtain between the elements of the space-system as when
they obtain between any of the other elements of which the
world is made.
The essence of the Kantian contention is that there are
not spaces, but Space one infinite continuous Unit and
that our knowledge of this cannot be a piecemeal sensa
tional affair, produced by summation and abstraction. To
which the obvious reply is that, if any known thing bears
on its front the appearance of piecemeal construction and
abstraction, it is this very notion of the infinite unitary
space of the world. It is a notion, if ever there was one ;
and no intuition. Most of us apprehend it in the barest
symbolic abridgment : and if perchance we ever do try to
make it more adequate, we just add one image of sensible
extension to another until we are tired. Most of us are
obliged to turn round and drop the thought of the space in
front of us when we think of that behind. And the space
represented as near to us seems more minutely subdivisible
than that we think of as lying far away.
The other prominent German writers on space are also
* psychical stimulists. Herbart, whose influence has been
widest, says the resting eye sees no space, t and ascribes
* Vierfache Wurzel desSatzes vom zureicheudeii Gruiide, pp.
f Pay chol. als Wissenschaft, 8 111.
276 PSYCHOLOGY.
visual extension to the influence of movements combining
with, the non-spatial retinal feelings so as to form gradated
series of the latter. A given sensation of such a series
reproduces the idea of its associates in regular order, and
its idea is similarly reproduced by any one of them with
the order reversed. Out of the fusion of these two con
trasted reproductions comes the form of space* Heaven
knows how.
The obvious objection is that mere serial order is a genus,
and space-order a very peculiar species of that genus ; and
that, if the terms of reversible series became by that fact
coexistent terms in space, the musical scale, the degrees of
warmth and cold, and all other ideally graded series ought
to appear to us in the shape of extended corporeal aggre
gates, which they notoriously do not, though we may of
course symbolize their order by a spatial scheme. W.
Volkmann von Yolkmar, the Herbartian, takes the bull here
by the horns, and says the musical scale is spatially ex
tended, though he admits that its space does not belong to
the real world. t I am unacquainted with any other Her
bartian so bold.
To Lotze we owe the much-used term local sign. He
insisted that space could not emigrate directly into the
mind from without, but must be reconstructed by the soul ;
and he seemed to think that the first reconstructions of it
by the soul must be super-sensational. But why sensa
tions themselves might not be the soul s original spatial re
constructive acts Lotze fails to explain.
Wundt has all his life devoted himself to the elaboration
of a space-theory, of which the neatest and most final ex
pression is to be found in his Logik (n. 457-60). He says :
"In the eye, space-perception has certain constant peculiarities
which prove that no single optical sensation by itself possesses the ex
tensive form, but that every where in our perception of space heterogene-
* Psychol. als Wissenschaft, 113.
f Lehrbuch d. Psychol., 2te Auflage, Bd. n. p. 66. Volkmann s fifth,
chapter contains a really precious collection of historical notices concern
ing space-perception theories.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 277
ous feelings combine. If we simply suppose that luminous sensations
per se feel extensive, our supposition is shattered by that influence of
movement in vision which is so clearly to be traced in many normal
errors in the measurement of the field of view. If we assume, on the
other hand, that the movements and their feelings are alone possessed
of the extensive quality, we make an unjustified hypothesis, for the
phenomena compel us, it is true, to accord an influence to movement,
but give us no right to call the retinal sensations indifferent, for there
are no visual ideas without retinal sensations. If then we wish rigor
ously to express the given facts, we can ascribe a spatial constitution
only to combinations of retinal sensations with those of movement. "
Thus Wundt, dividing theories into * nativistic and
* genetic, calls his own a genetic theory. To distinguish it
from other theories of the same class, he names it a * theory
of complex local signs.
" It supposes two systems of local signs, whose relations taking the
eye as an example we may think as ... the measuring of the mani
fold local-sign system of the retina by the simple local-sign system of
the movements. In its psychological nature this is a process of associa
tive synthesis : it consists in the fusion of both groups of sensations
into a product, whose elementary components are no longer separable
from each other in idea. In melting wholly away into the product
which they create they become consciously undistinguishable, and the
mind apprehends only their resultant, the intuition of space. Thus
there obtains a certain analogy between this psychic synthesis and that
chemical synthesis which out of simple bodies generates a compound
that appears to our immediate perception as a homogeneous whole with
new properties."
Now let no modest reader think that if this sounds ob
scure to him it is because he does not know the full con
text ; and that if a wise professor like Wundt can talk so
fluently and plausibly about combination and psychic
synthesis, it must surely be because those words convey a
so much greater fulness of positive meaning to the scholar
ly than to the unlearned mind. Really it is quite the re
verse ; all the virtue of the phrase lies in its mere sound
and skin. Learning does but make one the more sensible of
its inward unintelligibility. Wundt s theory is the flim
siest thing in the world. It starts by an untrue assump
tion, and then corrects it by an unmeaning phrase. Retinal
sensations are spatial ; and were they not, no amount of
* synthesis with equally spaceless motor sensations could
PSYCHOLOGY.
intelligibly make them so. Wundt s theory is, in short,
but an avowal of impotence, and an appeal to the inscru
table powers of the soul.* It confesses that we cannot
analyze the constitution or give the genesis of the spatial
quality in consciousness. But at the same time it says the
antecedents thereof are psychical and not cerebral facts.
In calling the quality in question a sensational quality, ourj
own account equally disclaimed ability to analyze it, but!
said its antecedents were cerebral, not psychical in othetf
words, that it was & first psychical thing. This is merely
a question of probable fact, which the reader may decide]
And now what shall be said of Helmholtz? Can I find
fault with a book which, on the whole, I imagine to be one
of the four or five greatest monuments of human genius in
the scientific line? If truth impels I must fain try, and
take the risks. It seems to me that Helmholtz s genius-
moves most securely when it keeps close to particular facts.
At any rate, it .shows least strong in purely speculative
passages, which in the Optics, in spite of many beauties,
seem to me fundamentally vacillating and obscure. The
empiristic view which Helmholtz defends is that the
space-determinations we perceive are in every case pro
ducts of a process of unconscious inference, f The infer-
.ence is similar to one from induction or analogy. J We al
ways see that form before us which habitually would have
caused the sensation we now have. But the latter sensa
tion can never be intrinsically spatial, or its intrinsic space-
determinations would never be overcome as they are so
often by the illusory space-determinations it so often
suggests.) Since the illusory determination can be traced
to a suggestion of Experience, the real one must also be
such a suggestion : so that all space intuitions are due sole-
* Why talk of genetic theories ? when we have in the next breath to
write as Wundt does: If then we must regard the intuition of space as a
product that simply emerges from the conditions of our mental and physi
cal organization, nothing need stand in the way of our designating it asone
of the a priori functions with which consciousness is endowed " (Loirik
ii. 460.)
t P. 430. % Pp. 430, 449. P. 428. | P. 442.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE.
ly to Experience.* The only psychic activity required for
this is the association of ideas, f
But how, it may be asked, can association produce a
space- quality not in the things associated ? How can we
by induction or analogy infer what we do not already
generically know ? Can suggestions of experience repro
duce elements which no particular experience originally
contained ? This is the point by which Helmholtz s em-
piristic theory, as a tfoory, must be judged. No theory is
worthy of the name which leaves such a point obscure.
Well, Helmholtz does so leave it. At one time he seems
to fall back on inscrutable powers of the soul, and to range
himself with the psychical stimulists. He speaks of Kant
as having made the essential step in the matter in dis
tinguishing the content of experience from that form
space, course which is given it by the peculiar faculties
of the mind. ;f But elsewhere, again, speaking of sensa
tion alistic theories which would connect spatially determi
nate feelings directly with certain neural events, he says it
is better to assume only such simple psychic activities as
we know to exist, and gives the association of ideas as an
instance of what he means. Later, || he reinforces this re
mark by confessing that he does not see how any neural
process can give rise without antecedent experience to a
ready-made (fertige) perception of space. And, finally, in
a single momentous sentence, he speaks of sensations of
touch as if they might be the original material of our space-
percepts which thus, from the optical point of view, may
be assumed as given. ^
Of course the eye-man has a right to fall back on the
skin-man for help at a pinch. But doesn t this mean that
he is a mere eye-man and not a complete psychologist ? In
other words, Helmholtz s Optics and the empiristic theory
therein professed must not be understood as attempts at
answering the general question of how space-consciousness
enters the mind. They simply deny that it enters with the
* Pp. 442, 818. f P. 798. Of. also Popular Scientific Lectures, pp. 301-3
J P. 456; see also 428, 441. P. 797. || P. 812.
|f Bottom of page 797.
280 PSYCHOLOGY.
first optical sensations.* Our own account lias affirmed
stoutly that it enters then ; but no more than Helmholtz
have we pretended to show why. Who calls a thing a first
sensation admits he has no theory of its production. Helm
holtz, though all the while without an articulate theory,
makes the world think he has one. He beautifully traces
the immense part which reproductive processes play in our
vision of space, and never except in that one pitiful little
sentence about touch does he tell us just what it is they
reproduce. He limits himself to denying that they repro
duce originals of a visual sort. And so difficult is the
subject, and so magically do catch-words work on the
popular-scientist ear, that most likely, had he written
physiological instead of nativistic, and spiritualistic
instead of empiristic (which synonyms Hering suggests),
numbers of his present empirical evolutionary followers
would fail to find in his teaching anything worthy of praise.
But since he wrote otherwise, they hurrah for him as a sort
of second Locke, dealing another death-blow at the old
bugaboo of innate ideas. His nativistic adversary
Hering they probably imagine Heaven save the mark !-
to be a scholastic in modern disguise.
After Wundt and Helmholtz, the most important anti-
sensationalist space-philosopher in Germany is Professor
Lipps, whose deduction of space from an order of non-
spatial differences, continuous yet separate, is a wonderful
piece of subtlety and logic. And yet he has to confess that
continuous differences form in the first instance only a logi
cal series, which need not appear spatial, and that wher
ever it does so appear, this must be accounted a fact, due
merely to the nature of the soul. t
Lipps, and almost all the anti-sensationalist theorists
except Helmholtz, seem guilty of that confusion which Mr.
*In fact, to borrow a simile from Prof. G. E. Miiller (Theorie der sinnl.
Aufmerksamkeit, p. 38), the various senses bear in the Helinholtzian phi
losophy of perception the same relation to the object perceived by their
means that a troop of jolly drinkers bear to the landlord s bill, when no
one has any money, but each hopes that one of the rest will pay.
fGrundtatsachen des Seelenlebens (1883), pp. 480, 591-2. Psycholo-
gische Studien (1885), p. 14.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 281
Shadworth Hodgson lias done so much to clear away, viz.,
the confounding the analysis of an idea with the means of
its production. Lipps, for example, finds that every space
we think of can be broken up into positions, and concludes
that in some undefined way the several positions must have
pre-existed in thought before the aggregate space could
have appeared to perception. Similarly Mr. Spencer, de
fining extension as an aggregate of relations of coexistent
position, says " every cognition of magnitude is a cogni
tion of relations of position,"* and " no idea of extension
can arise from the simultaneous excitation " of many nerves
"unless there is a knowledge of their relative positions. "f
Just so Prof. Bain insists that the very meaning of space is
scope for movement, J and that therefore distance and mag
nitude can be no original attributes of the eye s sensibility.
Similarly because movement is analyzable into positions
occupied at successive moments by the mover, philoso
phers (e.g. Schopenhauer, as quoted above) have repeatedly
denied the possibility of its being an immediate sensation.
We have, however, seen that it is the most immediate of all
our space-sensations. Because it can only occur in a defi
nite direction the impossibility of perceiving it without
perceiving its direction has been decreed a decree which
the simplest experiment overthrows. It is a case of what
I have called the psychologist s fallacy : mere acquaint
ance with space is treated as tantamount to every sort of
knowledge about it, the conditions of the latter are de
manded of the former state of mind, and all sorts of mytho
logical processes are brought in to help. || As well might
one say that because the world consists of all its parts, there-
* Psychology, ir. p. 174.
\Ibid. p. 168.
i Senses and Intellect, 3d ed. pp. 366-75.
Of. Hall and Donaldson in Mind, x. 559.
I As other examples of the confusion, take Mr. Sully : " The fallacious
assumption that there can be an idea of distance in general, apart from
particular distances" (Mind, in. p. 177); and Wundt : "An indefinite
localization, which waits for experience to give it its reference to real
space, stands in contradiction with the very idea of localization, which
means the reference to a determinate point of space " (Physiol. Psych.,
Ite Aufl. p. 480).
282 PSYCHOLOGY.
fore we can only apprehend it at all by having unconsciously
summed these up in our head. It is the old idea of our
actual knowledge being drawn out from a pre-existent
potentiality, an idea which, whatever worth it may meta
physically possess, does no good in psychology.
My own sensationalistic account has derived most aid
and comfort from the writings of Hering, A. W. Volkmann,
Stumpf, Leconte, and Schon. All these authors allow
ample scope to that Experience which Berkeley s genius
saw to be a present factor in all our visual acts. But they
give Experience some grist to grind, which the soi-distant
empiristic school forgets to do. Stumpf seems to me the
most philosophical and profound of all these writers ; and
I owe him much. I should doubtless have owed almost as
much to Mr. James Ward, had his article on Psychology in
the Encyclopaedia Britannica appeared before my own
thoughts were written down. The literature of the question
is in all languages very voluminous. I content myself with
referring to the bibliography in Helmholtz s and Aubert s
works on Physiological Optics for the visual part of the
subject, and with naming in a note the ablest works in the
English tongue which have treated of the subject in a gen
eral way.*
* G. Berkeley : Essay towards a new Theory of Vision ; Samuel Bailey :
A Review of Berkeley s Theory of Vision (1842) ; J. S. Mill s Review of
Bailey, in his Dissertations and Disquisitions, vol. n ; Jas. Ferrier : Re
view of Bailey, in Philosophical Remains, vol. n ; A. Bain : Senses and
Intellect, Intellect, chap. I ; H. Spencer : Principles of Psychology, pt.
vi. chaps, xiv, xvi ; J. S. Mill : Examination of Hamilton, chap, xui
(the best statement of the so-called English empiricist position) ; T. K.
Abbott : Sight and Touch, 1861 (the first English book to go at all mi
nutely into facts; Mr. Abbott maintaining retinal sensations to be originally
of space in three dimensions) ; A. C. Fraser : Review of Abbott, in North
British Review for Aug. 1864 ; another review in Macmillan s Magazine,
Aug. 1866 ; J. Sully : Outlines of Psychology, chap, vi ; J. Ward : En-
cyclop. Britannica, 9th Ed., article Psychology, pp. 53-5 ; J. E. Walter:
The Perception of Space and Matter (1879). I may also refer to a discus
sion between Prof. G, Croorn Robertson, Mr. J. Ward, and the present
writer, in Mind, vol. xm. The present chapter is only the filling out with
detail of an article entitled The Spatial Quale, which appeared in the
Journal of Speculative Philosophy for January 1879 (xin. 64).
CHAPTEE XXL*
THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY.
BELIEF.
EVERYONE knows the difference between imagining a
thing and believing in its existence, between supposing a
proposition and acquiescing in its truth. In the case of
acquiescence or belief, the object is not only apprehended
by the mind, but is held to have reality. Belief is thus th&
mental state or function of cognizing reality. As used in
the following pages, Belief will mean every degree of as*
surance, including the highest possible certainty and con
viction.
There are, as we know, two ways of studying every
psychic state. First, the way of analysis: What does it
consist in? What is its inner nature? Of what sort of
mind-stuff is it composed ? Second, the way of history :
What are its conditions of production, and its connection
with other facts ?
Into the first way we cannot go very far. In its inner
nature, belief, or the sense of reality, is a sort of feeling more
allied to the emotions than to anything else. Mr. Bagehot dis
tinctly calls it the emotion of conviction. I just now
spoke of it as acquiescence. It resembles more than any
thing what in the psychology of volition we know as con
sent. Consent is recognized by all to be a manifestation
of our active nature. It would naturally be described by
such terms as * willingness or the * turning of our dispo
sition. What characterizes both consent and belief is the
cessation of theoretic agitation, through the advent of an
idea which is inwardly stable, and fills the mind solidly to
the exclusion of contradictory ideas. When this is the
case, motor effects are apt to follow. Hence the states of
* Reprinted, with additions, from Mind for July 1889.
284 PSYCHOLOGY.
consent and belief, characterized by repose on the purely
intellectual side, are both intimately connected with subse
quent practical activity. This inward stability of the mind s
content is as characteristic of disbelief as of belief. But we
shall presently see that we never disbelieve anything ex
cept for the reason that we believe something else which
contradicts the first thing.* Disbelief is thus an incidental
complication to belief, and need not be considered by itself.
The true opposites of belief, psychologically considered,
are doubt and inquiry, not disbelief. In both these states the
content of our mind is in unrest, and the emotion engen
dered thereby is, like the emotion of belief itself, perfectly
distinct, but perfectly indescribable in words. Both sorts
of emotion may be pathologically exalted. One of the
charms of drunkenness unquestionably lies in the deepen
ing of the sense of reality and truth which is gained therein.
In whatever light things may then appear to us, they seem
more utterly what they are, more utterly utter than when
we are sober. This goes to a fully unutterable extreme
in the nitrous oxide intoxication, in which a man s very soul
will sweat with conviction, and he be all the while unable
to tell what he is convinced of at all.t The pathological
state opposed to this solidity and deepening has been called
the questioning mania ( Grubelsucht by the Germans). It is
sometimes found as a substantive affection, paroxysmal or
chronic, and consists in the inability to rest in any concep
tion, and the need of having it confirmed and explained.
* Why do I stand here where I stand ? Why is a glass a
glass, a chair a chair ? How is it that men are only of
the size they are ? Why not as big as houses, etc., etc.J
* Compare this psychological fact with the corresponding logical truth
that all negation rests on covert assertion of something else than the thing
denied. (See Bradley s Principles of Logic, bk. i. ch. 3.)
f See that very remarkable little work, The Anaesthetic Revelation and
the Gist of Philosophy, by Benj. P. Blood (Amsterdam, N. Y., 1874).
Compare also Mind, vn. 206.
J "To one whose mind is healthy thoughts come and go unnoticed;
with me they have to be faced, thought about in a peculiar fashion, and
then disposed of as finished, and this often when I am utterly wearied and
would be at peace ; but the call is imperative. This goes on to the hiu-
THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 285
There is, it is true, another pathological state which is as
far removed from doubt as from belief, and which some
may prefer to consider the proper contrary of the latter
state of mind. I refer to the feeling that everything is
hollow, unreal, dead. I shall speak of this state again
upon a later page. The point I wish to notice here is sim
ply that belief and disbelief are but two aspects of one
psychic state.
John Mill, reviewing various opinions about belief,
comes to the conclusion that no account of it can be given :
" What," he says, "is the difference to our minds between thinking
of a reality and representing to ourselves an imaginary picture ? I con
fess I can see no escape from the opinion that the distinction is ultimate
and primordial. There is no more difficulty in holding it to be so than
in holding the difference between a sensation and an idea to be primor
dial. It seems almost another aspect of the same difference. ... I
cannot help thinking, therefore, that there is in the remembrance of a
real fact, as distinguished from that of a thought, an element which
does not consist ... in a difference between the mere ideas which are
present to the mind in the two cases. This element, howsoever we de
fine it, constitutes belief, and is the difference between Memory and
Imagination. From whatever direction we approach, this difference
seems to close our path. When we arrive at it, we seem to have reached,
as it were, the central point of our intellectual nature, presupposed and
built upon in every attempt we make to explain the more recondite
phenomena of our mental being."*
drance of all natural action. If I were told that the staircase was on tire
and I had only a minute to escape, and the thought arose Have they
sent for fire-engines? Is it probable that the man who has the key is on
hand ? Is the man a careful sort of person ? Will the key be hanging on
a peg? Am I thinking rightly? Perhaps they don t lock the depot -
my foot would be lifted to go down ; I should be conscious to excitement
that I was losing my chance ; but I thould be unable to stir until all these
absurdities were entertained and disposed of. In the most critical moments
of my life, when I ought to have been so engrossed as to leave no room for
any secondary thoughts, I have been oppressed by the inability to be at
peace. And in the most ordinary circumstances it is all the same. Let me
instance the other morning I went to walk. The day was biting cold, but
I was unable to proceed except by jerks. Once I got arrested, my feet in
a muddy pool. One foot was lifted to go, knowing that it was not good to
be standing in water, but there I was fast, the cause of detention being the
discussing with myself the reasons why I should not stand in that pool."
(T. S. Clouston, Clinical Lectures on Mental Diseases, 1883, p. 43. See
niao Berger, in Archiv f. Psychiatric, vi. 217.)
* Note to Jas. Mill s Analysis, i. 412-423.
286 PSYCHOLOGY.
If the words of Mill be taken to apply to the mere sub
jective analysis of belief to the question, What does it
feel like when we have it ? they must be held, on the whole,
to be correct. Belief, the sense of reality, feels like itself
that is about as much as we can say.
Prof. Brentano, in an admirable chapter of his Psycho
logic, expresses this by saying that conception and belief
(which he names judgment) are two different fundamental
psychic phenomena. What I myself have called (Yol. I, p.
275) the object of thought may be comparatively simple,
like "Ha! what a pain," or "It-thunders"; or it may be
complex, like "Columbus-discovered-America-in-1492," or
" There- exists-an-all-wise-Creator-of- the- world." In either
case, however, the mere thought of the object may exist as
something quite distinct from the belief in its reality. The
belief, as Brentano says, presupposes the mere thought :
"Every object comes into consciousness in a twofold way, as simply
thought of \yorgestellt} and as admitted [anerkannt] or denied. The
relation is analogous to that which is assumed by most philosophers
(by Kant no less than by Aristotle) to obtain between mere thought and
desire. Nothing is ever desired without being thought of; but the
desiring is nevertheless a second quite new and peculiar form of rela
tion to the object, a second quite new way of receiving it into
consciousness. No more is anything judged [i. e., believed or disbelieved]
which is not thought of too. But we must insist that, so soon as the
object of a thought becomes the object of an assenting or rejecting
judgment, our consciousness steps into an entirely new relation to
wards it. It is then twice present in consciousness, as thought of, and
as held for real or denied ; just as when desire awakens for it, it is both
thought and simultaneously desired." (P. 266.)
The commonplace doctrine of * judgment is that it
consists in the combination of * ideas by a * copula into
a proposition/ which may be of various sorts, as affir
mative, negative, hypothetical, etc. But who does not see
that in a disbelieved or doubted or interrogative or condi
tional proposition, the ideas are combined in the same
identical way in which they are in a proposition which is
solidly believed ? The way in which the ideas are combined is
a part of the inner constitution of the thought s object or content.
That object is sometimes an articulated whole with relations
between its parts, amongst which relations, that of predicate
THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 287
to subject may be one. But when we have got our object
with its inner constitution thus defined in a proposition,
then the question comes up regarding the object as a whole :
Is it a real object ? is this proposition a true proposition
or not ? And in the answer Yes to this question lies that
new psychic act which Brentano calls judgment, but which
1 prefer to call belief.
In every proposition, then, so far as it is believed, ques
tioned, or disbelieved, four elements are to be distinguished,
the subject, the predicate, and their relation (of whatever
sort it be) these form the object of belief and finally the
psychic attitude in which our mind stands towards the
proposition taken as a whole and this is the belief itself.*
Admitting, then, that this attitude is a state of conscious
ness sui generis, about which nothing more can be said in
the way of internal analysis, let us proceed to the second
way of studying the subject of belief : Under what circum
stances do we, think things real ? We shall soon see how much
matter this gives us to discuss.
THE VABIOTTS OBDEBS OF BEALITY.
Suppose a new-born mind, entirely blank and waiting
for experience to begin. Suppose that it begins in the
form of a visual impression (whether faint or vivid is im
material) of a lighted candle against a dark background,
and nothing else, so that whilst this image lasts it consti
tutes the entire universe known to the mind in question.
Suppose, moreover (to simplify the hypothesis), that the
candle is only imaginary, and that no original of it is
recognized by us psychologists outside. Will this hallu
cinatory candle be believed in, will it have a real existence
for the mind ?
What possible sense (for that mind) would a suspicion
have that the candle was not real ? What would doubt or
disbelief of it imply ? When we, the onlooking psycholo
gists, say the candle is unreal, we mean something quite
definite, viz., that there is a world known to us which is
* For an excellent account of the history of opinion on this subject
tee A. Marty, in Vierteljahrsch. f. wiss. Phil., vin. 101 if. (1884).
288 PSYCHOLOGY.
real, and to which we perceive that the candle does not
belong ; it belongs exclusively to that individual mind, has
no status anywhere else, etc. It exists, to be sure, in a
fashion, for it forms the content of that mind s hallucina
tion ; but the hallucination itself, though unquestionably
it is a sort of existing fact, has no knowledge of other facts ;
and since those other facts are the realities par excellence for
us, and the only things we believe in, the candle is simply
outside of our reality and belief altogether.
By the hypothesis, however, the mind ivhich sees the candle
can spin no such considerations as these about it, for of
other facts, actual or possible, it has no inkling whatever.
That candle is its all, its absolute. Its entire faculty of
attention is absorbed by it. It is, it is that ; it is there ; no
other possible candle, or quality of this candle, no other
possible place, or possible object in the place, no alterna
tive, in short, suggests itself as even conceivable ; so how
can the mind help believing the candle real ? The suppo
sition that it might possibly not do so is, under the sup
posed conditions, unintelligible.*
This is what Spinoza long ago announced :
"Let us conceive a boy," he said, u imagining to himself a horse,
and taking note of nothing else. As this imagination involves the ex
istence of the horse, and the boy has no perception which annuls its
existence, he will necessarily contemplate the horse as present, nor will
he be able to doubt of its existence, however little certain of it he may
be. I deny that a man in so far as he imagines [percipif] affirms noth
ing. For what is it to imagine a winged horse but to affirm that the
horse [that horse, namely] has wings ? For if the mind had nothing
before it but the winged horse it would contemplate the same as pres
ent, would have no cause to doubt of its existence, nor any power of
dissenting from its existence, unless the imagination of the winged
horse were joined to an idea which contradicted [tollit] its existence."
(Ethics, ii. 49, Scholium.)
The sense that anything we think of is unreal can only
come, then, when that thing is contradicted by some other
* We saw near the end of Chapter XIX that a candle-image taking ex
clusive possession of the mind in this way would probably acquire the
sensational vividness. But this physiological accident is logically im
material to the argument in the text, which ought to apply as well to the
dimmest sort of mental image as to the brightest sensation.
THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 289
thing of which we think. Any object which remains uncon-
tradicted is ipso facto believed and posited as absolute reality.
Now, how comes it that one thing though 4 ; of can be con
tradicted by another ? It cannot unless it begins the quar
rel by saying something inadmissible about that other.
Take the mind with the candle, or the boy with the horse.
If either of them say, That candle or that horse, even when
I don t see it, exists in the outer tvorld, he pushes into * the
outer world an object which may be incompatible with
everything which he otherwise knows of that world. If so,
he must take his choice of which to hold by, the present
perceptions or the other knowledge of the world. If he
holds to the other knowledge, the present perceptions are
contradicted, so far as their relation to that world goes. Can
dle and horse, whatever they may be, are not existents in
outward space. They are existents, of course ; they are
mental objects ; mental objects have existence as mental
objects. But they are situated in their own spaces, the
space in which they severally appear, and neither of those
spaces is the space in which the realities called the outer
world exist.
Take again the horse with wings. If I merely dream of
a horse with wings, my horse interferes with nothing else
and has not to be contradicted. That horse, its wings, and
its place, are all equally real. That horse exists no other
wise than as winged, and is moreover really there, for that
place exists no otherwise than as the place of that horse,
and claims as yet no connection with the other places of
the world. But if with this horse I make an inroad into
the world otherwise knoivn, and say, for example, That is
my old mare Maggie, having grown a pair of wings where
she stands in her stall, the whole case is altered ; for now
the horse and place are identified with a horse and place
otherwise known, and what is known of the latter objects is
incompatible with what is perceived with the former.
Maggie in her stall with wings ! Never ! The wings are
unreal, then, visionary. I have dreamed a lie about Mag
gie in her stall.
The reader will recognize in these two cases the two
sorts of judgment called in the logic-books existential and
290 PSYCHOLOGY.
attributive respectively. * The candle exists as an outer
reality is an existential, My Maggie has got a pair of
wings is an attributive, proposition ;* and it follows from
what was first said that all propositions, whether attributive
or existential, are believed through the very fact of being con
ceived, unless they clash with other propositions believed, at the
same time, by affirming that their terms are the same with the,
terms of these other propositions. A dream-candle has exist
ence, true enough ; but not the same existence (existence
for itself, namely, or extra mentem meam) which the candles
of waking perception have. A dream-horse has wings ; but
then neither horse nor wings are the same with any horses
or wings known to memory. That we can at any moment
think of the same thing which at any former moment we
thought of is the ultimate law of our intellectual constitu
tion. But when we now think of it incompatibly with our
other ways of thinking it, then we must choose which way
to stand by, for we cannot continue to think in two contra
dictory ways at once. The whole distinction of real and un
real, the whole psychology of belief, disbelief, and doubt, is thus
grounded on two mental facts first, that we are liable to think
differently of the same ; and second, that ivhen we have done so,
we can choose which way of thinking to adhere to and ivhich to
disregard.
The subjects adhered to become real subjects, the at
tributes adhered to real attributes, the existence adhered
to real existence ; whilst the subjects disregarded become
imaginary subjects, the attributes disregarded erroneous
* In both existential and attributive judgments a synthesis is repre
sented. The syllable ex in the word Existence, da in the word Dasein, ex
press it. The candle exists is equivalent to The candle is over there"
And the over there means real space, space related to other reals. The
proposition amounts to saying : The candle is in the same space with
other reals. It affirms of the candle a very concrete predicate namely,
this relation to other particular concrete things. Their real existence, as
we shall later see, resolves itself into their peculiar relation to ourselves.
Existence is thus no substantive quality when we predicate it of any ob
ject ; it is a relation, ultimately terminating in ourselves, and at the mo
ment when it terminates, becoming a practical relation. But of this more
anon., I only wish now to indicate the superficial nature of the distinction
between the existential and the attributive proposition.
THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 291
attributes, and the existence disregarded an existence in
no man s land, in the limbo where footless fancies dwell.
The real things are, in M. Taine s terminology, the reduc-
tives of the things judged unreal.
THE MATOTT WORLDS.
Habitually and practically we do not count these disre
garded things as existents at all. For them Fee victis is the
law in the popular philosophy ; they are not even treated as
appearances ; they are treated as if they were mere waste,
equivalent to nothing at all. To the genuinely philosophic
mind, however, they still have existence, though not the
same existence, as the real things. As objects of fancy, as
errors, as occupants of dreamland, etc., they are in their
way as indefeasible parts of life, as undeniable features of
the Universe, as the realities are in their way. The total
world of which the philosophers must take account is thus
composed of the realities plus the fancies and illusions.
Two sub-universes, at least, connected by relations
which philosophy tries to ascertain ! Eeally there are more
than two sub-universes of which we take account, some of
us of this one, and others of that. For there are various
categories both of illusion and of reality, and alongside of
the world of absolute error (i.e., error confined to single
individuals) but still within the world of absolute reality
(i.e., reality believed by the complete philosopher) there is
the world of collective error, there are the worlds of abstract
reality, of relative or practical reality, of ideal relations,
and there is the supernatural world. The popular mind
conceives of all these sub-worlds more or less discon
nectedly ; and when dealing with one of them, forgets for
the time being its relations to the rest. The complete phi
losopher is he who seeks not only to assign to every given
object of his thought its right place in one or other of these
sub-worlds, but he also seeks to determine the relation of
each sub-world to the others in the total world which is.
The most important sub-universes commonly discrimi
nated from each other and recognized by most of us as
existing, each with its own special and separate style of
existence, are the following :
PS TCHOL OOT.
(1) The world of sense, or of physical things as we
instinctively apprehend them, with such qualities as heat,
color, and sound, and such forces as life, chemical affinity,
gravity, electricity, all existing as such within or on the
surface of the things.
(2) The world of science, or of physical things as the
learned conceive them, with secondary qualities and forces
(in the popular sense) excluded, and nothing real but solids
and fluids and their laws (i.e., customs) of motion.*
(3) The world of ideal relations, or abstract truths be
lieved or believable by all, and expressed in logical, mathe
matical, metaphysical, ethical, or aesthetic propositions.
(4) The world of idols of the tribe, illusions or preju
dices common to the race. All educated people recognize
these as forming one sub-universe. The motion of the sky
round the earth, for example, belongs to this world. That
motion is not a recognized item of any of the other worlds ;
but as an idol of the tribe it really exists. For certain
philosophers * matter * exists only as an idol of the tribe.
For science, the secondary qualities of matter are but
* idols of the tribe.
(5) The various supernatural worlds, the Christian
heaven and hell, the world of the Hindoo mythology, the
world of Swedenborg s visa et audita, etc. Each of these is
a consistent system, with definite relations among its own
parts. Neptune s trident, e.g., has no status of reality what
ever in the Christian heaven ; but within the classic Olym
pus certain definite things are true of it, whether one believe
in the reality of the classic mythology as a whole or not.
The various worlds of deliberate fable may be ranked with
these worlds of faith the world of the Iliad, that of King
Lear, of the Pickwick Papers, etc.f
* I define the scientific universe here in the radical mechanical way.
Practically, it is oftener thought of in a mongrel way and resembles in
more points the popular physical world.
f It thus comes about that we can say such things as that Ivanhoe
did not really marry Rebecca, as Thackeray falsely makes him do. The
real Ivanhoe-world is the one which Scott wrote down for us. In that
world Ivanhoe does not marry Rebecca. The objects within that world
are knit together by perfectly definite relations, which can be affirmed
or denied. "Whilst absorbed in the novel, we turn our backs on all other
THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 293
(6) The various worlds of individual opinion, as numer
ous as men are.
(7) The worlds of sheer madness and vagary, also in
definitely numerous.
Every object we think of gets at last referred to one world or
another of this or of some similar list. It settles into our be
lief as a common-sense object, a scientific object, an abstract
object, a mythological object, an object of some one s mis
taken conception, or a madman s object ; and it reaches
this state sometimes immediately, but often only after be
ing hustled and bandied about amongst other objects until
it finds some which will tolerate its presence and stand in
relations to it which nothing contradicts. The molecules
and ether-waves of the scientific world, for example, simply
kick the object s warmth and color out, they refuse to
Lave any relations with them. But the world of < idols of
the tribe stands ready to take them in. Just so the world
of classic myth takes up the winged horse ; the world of
individual hallucination, the vision of the candle ; the
world of abstract truth, the proposition that justice is
kingly, though no actual king be just. The various worlds
themselves, however, appear (as aforesaid) to most men s
minds in no very definitely conceived relation to each
other, and our attention, when it turns to one, is apt to
drop the others for the time being out of its account. Pro
positions concerning the different worlds are made from
1 different points of view ; and in this more or less chaotic
state the consciousness of most thinkers remains to the
end. Each world whilst it is attended to is real after its own
fashion ; only the reality lapses with the attention.
THE WORLD OP PRACTICAL REALITIES.
Each thinker, however, has dominant habits of atten
tion ; and these practically elect from among the various
worlds some one to be for him the world of ultimate realities.
From this world s objects he does not appeal. Whatever
worlds, and, for the time, the Ivanhoe-world remains our absolute reality.
When we wake from the spell, however, we find a still more real world,
which reduces Ivanhoe, and all things connected with him, to the fictive
atatus, and relegates them to one of the sub-universes grouped under No. 5.
PSYCHOLOGY.
positively contradicts them must get into another world or
die. The horse, e.g., may have wings to its heart s content,
so long as it does not pretend to be the real world s horse
that horse is absolutely wingless. For most men, as we shall
immediately see, the things of sense hold this prerogative
position, and are the absolutely real world s nucleus. Other
things, to be sure, may be real for this man or for that
things of science, abstract moral relations, things of the
Christian theology, or what not. But even for the special
man, these things are usually real with a less real reality
than that of the things of sense. They are taken less
seriously ; and the very utmost that can be said for any
one s belief in them is that it is as strong as his * belief in
his own senses. *
In all this the everlasting partiality of our nature shows
itself, our inveterate propensity to choice. For, in the
strict and ultimate sense of the word existence, everything
which can be thought of at all exists as some sort of object,
whether mythical object, individual thinker s object, or ob
ject in outer space and for intelligence at large. Errors,
fictions, tribal beliefs, are parts of the whole great Universe
which God has made, and He must have meant all these
things to be in it, each in its respective place. But for us
finite creatures, " tis to consider too curiously to consider
* The world of dreams is our real world whilst we are sleeping, because
our attention then lapses from the sensible world. Conversely, when we
wake the attention usually lapses from the dream-world and that becomes
unreal. But if a dream haunts us and compels our attention during the
day it is very apt to remain figuring in our consciousness as a sort of sub-
universe alongside of the waking world. Most people have probably had
dreams which it is hard to imagine not to have been glimpses into an
actually existing region of being, perhaps a corner of the spiritual world.
And dreams have accordingly in all ages been regarded as revelations, and
have played a large part in furnishing forth mythologies and creating
themes for faith to lay hold upon. The larger universe, here, which
helps us to believe both in the dream and in the waking reality which is
its immediate reductive, is the total universe, of Nature plus the Super
natural. The dream holds true, namely, in one half of that universe ; the
waking perceptions in the other half. Even to-day dream-objects figure
among the realities in which some psychic- researchers are seeking to rouse
our belief . All our theories, not only those about the supernatural, but
our philosophic and scientific theories as well, are like our dreams in rous
ing such different degrees of belief in different minds.
THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 295
so." The mere fact of appearing as an object at all is not
enough to constitute reality. That may be metaphysical
reality, reality for God ; but what we need is practical
reality, reality for ourselves ; and, to have that, an object
must not only appear, but it must appear both interesting
and important. The worlds whose objects are neither in
teresting nor important we treat simply negatively, we
brand them as unreal.
In the relative sense, then, the sense in which ^e contrast
reality with simple unreality, and in which one thing is
said to have more reality than another, and to be more be
lieved, reality means simply relation to our emotional and
active life. This is the only sense which the word ever has
in the mouths of practical men. In this sense, whatever ex
cites and stimulates our interest is real ; whenever an object
so appeals to us that we turn to it, accept it, fill our mind
with it, or practically take account of it, so far it is real for
us, and we believe it. Whenever, on the contrary, we
ignore it, fail to consider it or act upon it, despise it, reject
it, forget it, so far it is unreal for us and disbelieved.
Hume s account of the matter was then essentially correct,
when he said that belief in anything was simply the having
the idea of it in a lively and active manner :
" I say, then, that belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible,
firm, steady conception of an object than the imagination alone is ever
able to attain. ... It consists not in the peculiar nature or order of
the ideas, but in the manner of their conception and in their feeling to
the mind. I confess that it is impossible perfectly to explain this feel
ing or manner of conception. ... Its true and proper name ... is
belief, which is a term that everyone sufficiently understands in common
life. And in philosophy we can go no farther than assert that belief ia
something felt by themind, which distinguishes the idea of the judg
ment from the fictions of the imagination.* It gives them more weight
and influence ; makes them appear of greater importance ; enforces
them in the mind ; gives them a superior influence on the passions, and
renders them the governing principle in our actions. " t
* Distinguishes realities from unrealities, the essential from the rubbishy
and neglectable.
f Inquiry concerning Hum. Understanding, sec. v. pt. 2 (slightly trans
posed in my quotation).
296 PSYCHOLOGY.
Or as Prof. Bain puts it : "In its essential character,
belief is a phase of our active nature otherwise called the
Will." *
The object of belief, then, reality or real existence, is
something quite different from all the other predicates which
a subject may possess. Those are properties intellectually
or sensibly intuited. When we add any one of them to the
subject, we increase the intrinsic content of the latter, we
enrich its picture in our mind. But adding reality does
not enrich the picture in any such inward way ; it leaves it
inwardly as it finds it, and only fixes it and stamps it in to
us.
" The real," as Kant says, "contains no more than the possible. A
hundred real dollars do not contain a penny more than a hundred pos
sible dollars. ... By whatever, and by however many, predicates I
may think a thing, nothing is added to it if I add that the thing exists.
Whatever, therefore, our concept of an object may contain, we
must always step outside of it in order to attribute to it existence." t
The stepping outside of it is the establishment either
of immediate practical relations between it and ourselves,
or of relations between it and other objects with which we
have immediate practical relations. Relations of this sort,
which are as yet not transcended or superseded by others,
are ipso facto real relations, and confer reality upon their
objective term. Thefons et origo of oil reality, whether from
* Note to Jas. Mill s Analysis, i. 394.
f Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Muller, u. 515-17. Hume also :
"When, after the simple conception of anything, we would conceive it as
existent, we in reality make no addition to, or alteration of, our first idea.
Thus, when we affirm that God is existent, we simply form the idea of
such a being as He is represented to us ; nor is the existence which we at
tribute to Him conceived by a particular idea, which we join to His other
qualities, and can again separate and distinguish from them. . . . The be
lief of the existence joins no new idea to those which compose the ideas of
the object. When I think of God, when I think of Him as existent, and
when I believe Him to be existent, my idea of Him neither increases nor
diminishes. But as tis certain there is a great difference betwixt the sim
ple conception of the existence of an object and the belief of it, and as this
difference lies not in the facts or compositions of the idea which we con
ceive, it follows that it must lie in the manner in which we conceive it."
(Treatise of Human Nature, pt. in. sec. 7.)
THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 297
the absolute or the practical point of view, is thus subjective, is
ourselves. As bare logical thinkers, without emotional re
action, we give reality to whatever objects we think of, for
they are really phenomena, or objects of our passing
thought, if nothing more. But, as thinkers ivith emotional
reaction, we give what seems to us a still higher degree of
reality to whatever things we select and emphasize and turn
to WITH A WILL. These are our living realities; and not
only these, but all the other things which are intimately
connected with these. Keality, starting from our Ego,
thus sheds itself from point to point first, upon all objects
which have an immediate sting of interest for our Ego in
them, and next, upon the objects most continuously related
with these. It only fails when the connecting thread is
lost. A whole system may be real, if it only hang to our
Ego by one immediately stinging term. But what contra
dicts any such stinging term, even though it be another
stinging term itself, is either not believed, or only believed
after settlement of the dispute.
We reach thus the important conclusion that our own
reality, that sense of our own life which ive at every moment pos
sess, is the ultimate of ultimates for our belief. As sure as I
exist ! this is our uttermost warrant for the being of all
other things. As Descartes made the indubitable reality
of the cogito go bail for the reality of all that the cogito in
volved, so we all of us, feeling our own present reality with
absolutely coercive force, ascribe an all but equal degree
of reality, first to whatever things we lay hold on with a
sense of personal need, and second, to whatever farther
things continuously belong with these. " Mein Jetzt und
Hier," as Prof. Lipps says, " ist der letzte Angelpunkt fur
alle Wirklichkeit, also alle Erkenntniss."
The world of living realities as contrasted with unreali
ties is thus anchored in the Ego, considered as an active
and emotional term.* That is the hook from which the
rest dangles, the absolute support. And as from a painted
* I use the notion of the Ego here, as common-sense uses it. Nothing
is prejudged as to the results (or absence of results) of ulterior attempts to
analyze the notion.
298 PSYCHOLOGY.
hook it has been said that one can only hang a painted
chain, so conversely, from a real hook only a real chain
can properly be hung. Whatever tilings have intimate and
continuous connection with my life are things of whose reality
I cannot doubt. Whatever things fail to establish this con
nection are things which are practically no better for me
than if they existed not at all.
In certain forms of melancholic perversion of the sensi
bilities and reactive powers, nothing touches us intimately,
rouses us, or wakens natural feeling. The consequence is
the complaint so often heard from melancholic patients,
that nothing is believed in by them as it used to be, and
that all sense of reality is fled from life. They are sheathed
in india-rubber ; nothing penetrates to the quick or draws
blood, as it were. According to Griesinger, " I see, I hear !"
such patients say, but the objects do not reach me, it is as
if there were a wall between me and the outer world !"
4k In such patients there often is an alteration of the cutaneous sen
sibility, such that things feel indistinct or sometimes rough and woolly.
But even were this change always present, it would not completely ex
plain the psychic phenomenon . . . which reminds us more of the altera
tion in our psychic relations to the outer world which advancing age on
the one hand, and on the other emotions and passions, may bring about.
In childhood we feel ourselves to be closer to the world of sensible
phenomena, we live immediately with them and in them; an intimately
vital tie binds us and them together. But with the ripening of reflec
tion this tie is loosened, the warmth of our interest cools, things look
differently to us, and we act more as foreigners to the outer world, even
though we know it a great deal better. Joy and expansive emotions in
general draw it nearer to us again. Everything makes a more lively
impression, and with the quick immediate return of this warm recep
tivity for sense impressions, joy makes us feel young again. In depress
ing emotions it is the other way. Outer things, whether living or in
organic, suddenly grow cold and foreign to us, and even our favorite
objects of interest feel as if. they belonged to us no more. Under these
circumstances, receiving no longer from anything a lively impression,
we cease to turn towards outer things, and the sense of inward loneliness
grows upon us. . . . Where there is no strong intelligence to control this
blase condition, this psychic coldness and lack of interest, the issue of
these states in which all seems so cold and hollow, the heart dried up,
the world grown dead and empty, is often suicide or the deeper forms
of insanity.*
* Griesinger, Mental Diseases, $ 50, 98. The neologism we so often.
THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 299
THE PARAMOUNT REALITY OF SENSATIONS.
But DOW we are met by questions of detail. What does
this stirring, this exciting power, this interest, consist in,
which some objects have ? which are those * intimate rela
tions with our life which give reality ? And what things
stand in these relations immediately, and what others are
so closely connected with the former that (in Hume s lan
guage) we carry our disposition also on to them ?
In a simple and direct way these questions cannot be
answered at all. The whole history of human thought is
but an unfinished attempt to answer them. For what have
men been trying to find out, since men were men, but just
those things : " Where do our true interests lie which re
lations shall we call the intimate and real ones which
things shall we call living realities and which not ?" A few
psychological points can, however, be made clear.
Any relation to our mind at all, in the absence of a stronger
relation, suffices to make an object real. The barest appeal
to our attention is enough for that. Eevert to the begin
ning of the chapter, and take the candle entering ifche vacant
mind. The mind was waiting for just some such object to
make its spring upon. It makes its spring and the candle
is believed. But when the candle appears at the same time
with other objects, it must run the gauntlet of their rivalry,
and then it becomes a question which of the various candi
dates for attention shall compel belief. As a rule we be
lieve as much as we can. We would believe everything if
we only could. When objects are represented by us quite
unsystematically they conflict but little with each other,
and the number of them which in this chaotic manner we
can believe is limitless. The primitive savage s mind is a
jungle in which hallucinations, dreams, superstitions, con
ceptions, and sensible objects all flourish alongside of each
other, unregulated except by the attention turning in this
way or in that. The child s mind is the same. It is only
as objects become permanent and their relations fixed that
hear, that an experience * gives us a realizing sense of the truth of some
proposition or other, illustrates the dependence of the sense of reality upon
excitement. Only what stirs us is realized.
300 PSYCHOLOGY.
discrepancies and contradictions are felt and must be set
tled in some stable way. As a rule, the success with which
a contradicted object maintains itself in our belief is pro
portional to several qualities which it must possess. Of
these the one which would be put first by most people,
because it characterizes objects of sensation, is its
(1) Coerciveness over attention, or the mere power to
consciousness : then follow
(2) Liveliness, or sensible pungency, especially in the
way of exciting pleasure or pain ;
(3) Stimulating effect upon the will, i.e., capacity to
arouse active impulses, the more instinctive the better ;
(4) Emotional interest, as object of love, dread, admira
tion, desire, etc. ;
(5) Congruity with certain favorite forms of contempla
tion unity, simplicity, permanence, and the like ;
(6) Independence of other causes, and its own causal
importance.
These characters run into each other. Coerciveness is
the result of liveliness or emotional interest. What is lively
and interesting stimulates eo ipso the will ; congruity holds
of active impulses as well as of contemplative forms ; causal
independence and importance suit a certain contemplative
demand, etc. I will therefore abandon all attempt at a
formal treatment, and simply proceed to make remarks in
the most convenient order of exposition.
As a whole, sensations are more lively and are judged
more real than conceptions ; things met with every hour
more real than things seen once ; attributes perceived when
awake, more real than attributes perceived in a dream.
But, owing to the diverse relations contracted by .the various
objects with each other, the simple rule that the lively and
permanent is the real is often enough disguised. A con
ceived thing may be deemed more real than a certain sen
sible thing, if it only be intimately related to other sensible
things more vivid, permanent, or interesting than the first
one. Conceived molecular vibrations, e.g., are by the
physicist judged more real than felt warmth, because so
intimately related to all those other facts of motion in the
THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 301
world which he has made his special study. Similarly, a
rare thing may be deemed more real than a permanent
thing if it be more widely related to other permanent
things. All the occasional crucial observations of science
are examples of this. A rare experience, too, is likely to
be judged more real than a permanent one, if it be more in
teresting and exciting. Such is the sight of Saturn through
a telescope ; such are the occasional insights and illumi
nations which upset our habitual ways of thought.
But no mere floating conception, no mere disconnected
rarity, ever displaces vivid things or permanent things from
our belief. A conception, to prevail, must terminate in the
world of orderly sensible experience. A rare phenomenon,
to displace frequent ones, must belong with others more
frequent still. The history of science is strewn with wrecks
and ruins of theory essences and principles, fluids and
forces once fondly clung to, but found to hang together
with no facts of sense. And exceptional phenomena solicit
our belief in vain until such time as we chance to conceive
them as of kinds already admitted to exist. What science
means by * verification is no more than this, that no object
of conception shall be believed which sooner or later has
not some permanent and vivid object of sensation for its
term. Compare what was said on pages 3-7, above.
Sensible objects are thus either our realities or the tests of our
realities. Conceived objects must show sensible effects or else be
disbelieved. And the effects, even though reduced to relative
unreality when their causes come to view (as heat, which
molecular vibrations make unreal), are yet the things on
which our knowledge of the causes rests. Strange mutual
dependence this, in which the appearance needs the reality
in order to exist, but the reality needs the appearance in
order to be known !
Sensible vividness or pungency is then the vital factor in
reality when once the conflict between objects, and the connecting
of them together in the mind, has begun. No object which
neither possesses this vividness in its own right nor is able
to borrow it from anything else has a chance of making
headway against vivid rivals, or of rousing in us that re
action in which belief consists. On the vivid objects we
302 PS YCHOLOG T.
pin, as the saying is, our faitli in all the rest ; and our
belief returns instinctively even to those of them from
which reflection has led it away. Witness the obduracy
with which the popular world of colors, sounds, and smjlls
holds its own against that of molecules and vibrations.
Let the physicist himself but nod, like Homer, and the
world of sense becomes his absolute reality again.*
That things originally devoid of this stimulating power
should be enabled, by association with other things which
have it, to compel our belief as if they had it themselves, is a
remarkable psychological fact, which since Hume s time it
has been impossible to overlook.
"The vividness of the first conception," he writes, "diffuses itself
along the relations and is conveyed, as by so many pipes or channels, to
every idea that has any communication with the primary one. . . .
Superstitious people are fond of the relics of saints and holy men, for the
same reason that they seek after types and images, in order to enliven
their devotion and give them a more intimate and strong conception of
those exemplary lives. . . . Now, tis evident one of the best relics a
devotee could procure would be the handiwork of a saint, and if his
clothes and furniture are ever to be considered in this light, tis because
they were once at his disposal, and were moved and affected by him; in
which respect they are ... connected with him by a shorter train of
consequences than any of those from which we learn the reality of his
* The way in which sensations are pitted against systematized concep
tions, and in which the one or the other then prevails according as the
sensations are felt by ourselves or merely known by report, is interestingly
illustrated at the present day by the state of public belief about spiritual
istic phenomena. There exist numerous narratives of movement without
contact on the part of articles of furniture and other material objects, in
the presence of certain privileged individuals called mediums. Such move
ment violates our memories, and the whole system of accepted physical
science. Consequently those who have not seen it either brand the
narratives immediately as lies or call the phenomena illusions of sense,
produced by fraud or due to hallucination. But one who has actually seen
such a phenomenon, under what seems to him sufficiently test-conditions,
will hold to his sensible experience through thick and thin, even though
the whole fabric of science should be rent in twain. That man would
be a weak-spirited creature indeed who should allow any fly blown gener
alities about the liability of the senses to be deceived to bully him out of
his adhesion to what for him was an indubitable experience of sight. A
man may err in this obstinacy, sure enough, in any particular case. But
the spirit that animates him is that on which ultimately the very life and
health of Science rest.
THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 303
existence. This phenomenon clearly proves that a present impression,
with a relation of causation, may enliven any idea, and consequently
produce belief or assent, according to the precedent definition of it. ...
It has been remarked among the Mahometans as well as Christians
that those pilgrims who have seen Mecca or the Holy Land are ever
after more faithful and zealous believers than those who have not had
that advantage. A man whose memory presents him with a lively
image of the Red Sea and the Desert and Jerusalem and Galilee can
never doubt of any miraculous events which are related either by Moses
or the Evangelists. The lively idea of the places passes by an easy
transition to the facts which are supposed to have been related to them
by contiguity, and increases the belief by increasing the vivacity of the
conception. The remembrance of those fields and rivers has the same
influence as a new argument. . . . The ceremonies of the Catholic
religion may be considered as instances of the same nature. The
devotees of that strange superstition usually plead in excuse for the
mummeries with which they are upbraided that they feel the good effect
of external motions and postures and actions in enlivening their
devotion and quickening their fervor, which otherwise would decay,
if directed entirely to distant and immaterial objects. We shadow out
the objects of our faith, say they, in sensible types and images, and
render them more present to us by the immediate presence of these
types than it is possible for us to do merely by an intellectual view and
contemplation." *
Hume s cases are rather trivial ; and the things which
associated sensible objects make us believe in are supposed
by him to be unreal. But all the more manifest for that is
the fact of their psychological influence. Who does not
* realize more the fact of a dead or distant friend s
existence, at the moment when a portrait, letter, garment
or other material reminder of him is found ? The whole
notion of him then grows pungent and speaks to us and
shakes us, in a manner unknown at other times. In chil
dren s minds, fancies and realities live side by side. But
however lively their fancies may be, they still gain help
from association with reality. The imaginative child
identifies its dramatis personal with some doll or other
material object, and this evidently solidifies belief, little as
it may resemble what it is held to stand for. A thing not
too interesting by its own real qualities generally does the
best service here. The most useful doll I ever saw was a
large cucumber in the hands of a little Amazonian-Indian
* Treatise of Human Nature, bk. i. pt. in. sec. 7.
304 PSYCHOLOGY.
girl ; she nursed it and washed it and rocked it to sleep in
a hammock, and talked to it all day long there was no
part in life which the cucumber did not play. Says Mr.
Tylor :
"An imaginative child will make a dog do duty for a horse, or a sol
dier for a shepherd, till at last the objective resemblance almost disap
pears, and a bit of wood may be dragged about, resembling a ship on the
sea or a coach on the road. Here the likeness of the bit of wood to a
ship or coach is very slight indeed; but it is a thing, and can be moved
about, . . . and is an evident assistance to the child in enabling it to
arrange and develop its ideas. ... Of how much use . . . may be
seen by taking it away, and leaving the child nothing to play with. . . .
In later years and among highly educated people the mental process
which goes on in a child s playing with wooden soldiers and horses,
though it never disappears, must be sought for in more complex phe
nomena. Perhaps nothing in after-life more closely resembles the effect
of a doll upon a child than the effect of the illustrations of a tale upon
a grown reader. Here the objective resemblance is very indefinite . . .
yet what reality is given to the scene by a good picture. . . . Mr. Back
house one day noticed in Van Diemen s Land a woman arranging
several stones that were flat, oval, and about two inches wide, and
marked in various directions with black and red lines. These, he
learned, represented absent friends, and one larger than the rest stood
for a fat native woman on Flinder s Island, known by the name of
Mother Brown. Similar practices are found among far higher races
than the ill-fated Tasmanians. Among some North American tribes a
mother who has lost a child keeps its memory ever present to her by
filling its cradle with black feathers and quills, and carrying it about
with her for a year or more. When she stops anywhere, she sets up the
cradle and talks to it as she goes about her work, just as she would
have done if the dead body had been still alive within it. Here we have
an image; but in Africa we find a rude doll representing the child, kept
as a memorial. . . . Bastian saw Indian women in Peru who had lost
an infant carrying about on their backs a wooden doll to represent it."*
To many persons among us, photographs of lost ones
seem to be fetishes. They, it is true, resemble ; but the
fact that the mere materiality of the reminder is almost as
important as its resemblance is shown by the popularity a
hundred years ago of the black taffeta silhouettes which
are still found among family relics, and of one of which
Fichte could write to his affianced : Die Farbe fehlt, das
Auge fehlt, es fehlt der himmlische Ausdruck deiner lieblichen
* Early Hist, of Mankind, p. 108-
TUB PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 305
Zilge and yet go on worshipping it all the same. The
opinion so stoutly professed by many, that language is es
sential to thought, seems to have this much of truth in it,
that all our inward images tend invincibly to attach them
selves to something sensible, so as to gain in corporeity and
life. Words serve this purpose, gestures serve it, stones,
straws, chalk-marks, anything will do. As soon as anyone
of these things stands for the idea, the latter seems to be
more real. Some persons, the present writer among the
number, can hardly lecture without a black-board : the ab
stract conceptions must be symbolized by letters, squares
or circles, and the relations between them by lines. All
this symbolism, linguistic, graphic, and dramatic, has other
uses too, for it abridges thought and fixes terms. But one
of its uses is surely to rouse the believing reaction and give
to the ideas a more living reality. As, when we are told a
story, and shown the very knife that did the murder, the
very ring whose hiding-place the clairvoyant revealed, the
whole thing passes from fairy -land to mother-earth, so here
we believe all the more, if only we see that the bricks are
alive to tell the tale.
So much for the prerogative position of sensations in
regard to our belief. But among the sensations themselves
all are not deemed equally real. The more practically
important ones, the more permanent ones, and the more
aesthetically apprehensible ones are selected from the mass,
to be believed in most of all ; the others are degraded to
the position of mere signs and suggestions of these. This
fact has already been adverted to in former chapters.*
The real color of a thing is that one color-sensation which
it gives us when most favorably lighted for vision. So
of its real size, its real shape, etc. these are but optical
sensations selected out of thousands of others, because
they have aesthetic characteristics which appeal to our
convenience or delight. But I will not repeat what I have
already written about this matter, but pass on to our
treatment of tactile and muscular sensations, as primary
* See Vol. I. pp. 285-6; Vol. II. pp. 237 ff.
306 PSYCHOLOGY.
qualities, more real than those secondary qualities which
eye and ear and nose reveal. "Why do we thus so markedly
select the tangible to be the real ? Our motives are not far
to seek. The tangible qualities are the least fluctuating.
"When we get them at all we get them the same. The other
qualities fluctuate enormously as our relative position to
the object changes. Then, more decisive still, the tactile
properties are those most intimately connected with our
weal or woe. A dagger hurts us only when in contact with
our skin, a poison only when we take it into our mouths,
and we can only use an object for our advantage when we
have it in our muscular control. It is as tangibles, then,
that things concern us most ; and the other senses, so far
as their practical use goes, do but warn us of what tangi
ble things to expect. They are but organs of anticipa
tory touch, as Berkeley has with perfect clearness ex
plained.*
Among all sensations, the most belief-compelling are
those productive of pleasure or of pain. Locke expressly
makes the pleasure- or pain-giving quality to be the ultimate
human criterion of anything s reality. Discussing (with a
supposed Berkeleyan before Berkeley) the notion that all
our perceptions may be but a dream, he says :
" He may please to dream that I make him this answer . . . that I
believe he will allow a very manifest difference between dreaming of
being in the fire and being actually in it. But yet if he be resolved to
appear so sceptical as to maintain that what I call being actually in the
fire is nothing but a dream, and that we cannot thereby certainly know
that any such thing as fire actually exists without us, I answer that we,
certainly finding that pleasure or pain [or emotion of any sort] follows
upon the application of certain objects to us, whose existence we per
ceive, or dream that we perceive by our senses, this certainly is as great
as our happiness or misery, beyond which we have no concernment to
know or to be." f
* See Theory of Vision, 59.
f Essay, bk. iv. chap. 2, 14. In another place: "He that sees a
candle burning and hath experimented the force of its flame by putting
his finger into it, will little doubt that this is something existing without
him, which does hirn harm and puts him to great pain. . . . And if our
dreamer pleases to try whether the glowing heat of a glass furnace be
barely a wandering imagination in a drowsy man s fancy by putting his
hand into it, he may, perhaps, be awakened into a certainty greater than
THE PERCEPTION OF EEALITT. 307
THE INFLUENCE OF EMOTION AND ACTIVE IMPULSE ON
BELIEF.
The quality of arousing emotion, of shaking, moving us
or inciting us to action, has as much to do with our belief in
an object s reality as the quality of giving pleasure or pain.
In Chapter XXIV I shall seek to show that our emotions
probably owe their pungent quality to the bodily sensations
which they involve. Our tendency to believe in emotionally
exciting objects (objects of fear, desire, etc.) is thus ex
plained without resorting to any fundamentally new prin
ciple of choice. Speaking generally, the more a conceived
object excites us, the more reality it has. The same object
excites us differently at different times. Moral and religious
truths come home to us far more on some occasions than
on others. As Emerson says, " There is a difference between
one and another hour of life in their authority and subse
quent effect. Our faith comes in moments, . . . yet there
is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to
ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences."
The depth is partly, no doubt, the insight into wider sys
tems of unified relation, but far more often than that it is
the emotional thrill. Thus, to descend to more trivial ex
amples, a man who has no belief in ghosts by daylight will
temporarily believe in them when, alone at midnight, he
feels his blood curdle at a mysterious sound or vision, his
heart thumping, and his legs impelled to flee. The thought
of falling when we walk along a curbstone awakens no emo
tion of dread ; so no sense of reality attaches to it, and we
are sure we shall not fall. On a precipice s edge, however,
the sickening emotion which the notion of a possible fall
engenders makes us believe in the latter s imminent reality,
and quite unfits us to proceed.
he could wish, that it is something more than bare imagination. So that
the evidence is as great as we can desire, being as certain to us as our pleas
ure or pain, i.e. happiness or misery; beyond which we have no concern
ment, either of knowledge or being. Such an assurance of the existence
of things without us is sufficient to direct us in the attaining the good and
avoiding the evil which is caused by them, which is the important con
cernment we have of being made acquainted with them. " (Ibid, bk. iv.
chap. 11, 8.)
308 PSYCHOLOGY.
The greatest proof that a man is sui compos is his ability
to suspend belief in presence of an emotionally exciting
idea. To give this power is the highest result of education.
In untutored minds the power does not exist. Every excit
ing thought in the natural man carries credence with it. To
conceive with passion is eo ipso to affirm. As Bagehot says :
"The Caliph Omar burnt the Alexandrian Library, saying: All
books which contain what is not in the Koran are dangerous. All which
contain what is in it are useless ! Probably no one ever had an intenser
belief in anything than Omar had in this. Yet it is impossible to
imagine it preceded by an argument. His belief in Mahomet, in the
Koran, and in the sufficiency of the Koran, probably came to him in
spontaneous rushes of emotion ; there may have been little vestiges of
argument floating here and there, but they did not justify the strength
of the emotion, still less did they create it, and they hardly even excused
it. ... Probably, when the subject is thoroughly examined, conviction
will be found to be one of the intensest of human emotions, and one
most closely connected with the bodily state, . . . accompanied or pre
ceded by the sensation that Scott makes his seer describe as the prelude
of a prophecy :
At length the fatal answer came,
In characters of living flame
Not spoke in words, nor blazed in scroll,
But borne and branded on my soul.
A hot flash seems to burn across the brain. Men in these intense states
of mind have altered all history, changed for better or worse the creed
of myriads, and desolated or redeemed provinces or ages. Nor is this
intensity a sign of truth, for it is precisely strongest in those points in
which men differ most from each other. John Knox felt it in his anti-
Catholicism ; Ignatius Loyola in his anti-Protestantism; and both, I
suppose, felt it as much as it is possible to feel it." *
The reason of the belief is undoubtedly the bodily com
motion which the exciting idea sets up. * Nothing which
I can feel like that can be false. All our religious and
supernatural beliefs are of this order. The surest warrant
for immortality is the yearning of our bowels for our dear
ones ; for God, the sinking sense it gives us to imagine no
such Providence or help. So of our political or pecuniary
hopes and fears, and things and persons dreaded and
* W. Bagehot, The Emotion of Conviction, Literary Studies, L
412-17.
THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 309
desired. " A grocer has a full creed as to foreign policy,
a young lady a complete theory of the sacraments, as to
which neither has any doubt. ... A girl in a country par
sonage will be sure that Paris never can be taken, or that
Bismarck is a wretch " all because they have either con
ceived these things at some moment with passion, or asso
ciated them with other things which they have conceived
with passion.
M. Kenouvier calls this belief of a thing for no other
reason than that we conceive it with passion, by the name
of mental vertigo.* Other objects whisper doubt or dis
belief ; but the object of passion makes us deaf to all but
itself, and we affirm it unhesitatingly. Such objects are the
delusions of insanity, which the insane person can at odd
moments steady himself against, but which again return to
sweep him off his feet. Such are the revelations of mysti
cism. Such, particularly, are the sudden beliefs which ani
mate mobs of men when frenzied impulse to action is
involved. Whatever be the action in point whether the
stoning of a prophet, the hailing of a conqueror, the burn
ing of a witch, the baiting of a heretic or Jew, the starting
of a forlorn hope, or the flying from a foe the fact that to
believe a certain object will cause that action to explode is a
sufficient reason for that belief to come. The motor im
pulse sweeps it unresisting in its train.
The whole history of witchcraft and early medicine is
a commentary on the facility with which anything which
chances to be conceived is believed the moment the belief
chimes in with an emotional mood. The cause of sickness?
When a savage asks the cause of anything he means to ask
exclusively * What is to blame ? The theoretic curiosity
starts from the practical life s demands. Let some one then
accuse a necromancer, suggest a charm or spell which has
been cast, and no more evidence is asked for. What evi
dence is required beyond this intimate sense of the culprit s
responsibility, to which our very viscera and limbs reply ? f
* Psychologic Rationnelle, cb. 12.
f Two examples out of a thousand :
Reid, Inquiry, ch. n. 9: "I remember, many years ago, a white ox
was brought into the country, of so enormous size that people came many
810 PSYCHOLOGY.
Human credulity in the way of therapeutics has similar
psychological roots. If there is anything intolerable (espe
cially to the heart of a woman), it is to do nothing when a
miles to see him. There happened, some months after, an uncommon
fatality among women in child-bearing. Two such uncommon events, fol
lowing one another, gave a suspicion of their connection, and occasioned
a common opinion among the country people that the white ox was the
cause of this fatality."
H. M. Stanley, Through the Dark Continent, 11. 888 : " On the third
day of our stay at Mowa, feeling quite comfortable amongst the people, on
account of their friendly bearing, I began to write in my note-book the
terms for articles, in order to improve my already copious vocabulary of
native words. I had proceeded only a few minutes when I observed i
strange commotion amongst the people who had been flocking about me,
and presently they ran away. In a short time we heard war-cries ringing
loudly and shrilly over the table-land. Two hours afterwards a long line
of warriors were seen descending the table-land and advancing towards
our camp. There may have been between five and six hundred of them.
We, on the other hand, had made but few preparations except such as.
would justify us replying to them in the event of the actual commence
ment of hostilities. But I had made many firm friends among them, and
I firmly believed that I should be able to avert an open rupture. When
they had assembled at about a hundred yards in front of our camp, Safeui
and I walked up towards them and sat down midway. Some half-dozen
of the Mowa people came near, and the shauri began.
" What is the matter, my friends? I asked. Why do you come
with guns in your hands, in such numbers, as though you were corning
to fight ? Fight ? fight us, your friends ! Tut ! this is some great mis
take, surely.
"Mundele," replied one of them, . . . our people saw you yesterday
make marks on some tara-tara [paper]. This is very bad. Our country
will waste, our goats will die, our bananas will rot, and our women will
dry up. What have we done to you that you should wish to kill us ?
We have sold you food and we have brought you wine each day. Your
people are allowed to wander where they please without trouble. Why is
the Mundele so wicked ? We have gathered together to fight you if you
do not burn that tara-tara now before our eyes. If you burn it we go
away, and shall be your friends as heretofore.
"I told them to rest there, and left Safeni in their hands as a pledge
that I should return. My tent was not fifty yards from the spot, but
while going towards it my brain was busy in devising some plan to foil
this superstitious madness. M.J note-book contained a vast number of val
uable notes. ... I could not sacrifice it to the childish caprice of savages.
As I was rummaging my book-box, I came across a volume of Shakespeare
[Chandos edition] much worn, and well thumbed, and which was of the
same size as my field-book ; its cover was similar also, and it might be
passed for the field-book, provided that no one remembered its appearance
THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 311
loved one is sick or in pain. To do anything is a relief.
Accordingly, whatever remedy may be suggested is a spark
on inflammable soil. The mind makes its spring towards
action on that cue, sends for that remedy, and for a day at
least believes the danger past. Blame, dread, and hope are
thus the great belief-inspiring passions, and cover among
them the future, the present, and the past.
These remarks illustrate the earlier heads of the list on
page 292. Whichever represented objects give us sensa
tions, especially interesting ones, or incite our motor im
pulses, or arouse our hate, desire, or fear, are real enough
for us. Our requirements in the way of reality terminate in
our own acts and emotions, our own pleasures and pains.
These are the ultimate fixities from which, as we formerly
observed, the whole chain of our beliefs depends, object
hanging to object, as the bees, in swarming, hang to each
other until, de proche en proche, the supporting branch, the
Self, is reached and held.
BELIEF IN OBJECTS OF THEORY.
Now the merely conceived or imagined objects which
our mind represents as hanging to the sensations (causing
them, etc.), filling the gaps between them, and weaving their
interrupted chaos into order are innumerable. Whole sys
tems of them conflict with other systems, and our choice of
too well. I took it to them. Is this the tara-tara, friends, that you wish
burned?
" Yes, yes, that is it.
" Well, take it, and burn it, or keep it.
M m. No, no, no. We will not touch it. It is fetish. You must
burn it.
I! Well, let it be so. I will do anything to please my good friends
of Mowa.
" We walked to the nearest fire. I breathed a regretful farewell to my
genial companion, which, during my many weary hours of night, had
assisted to relieve my mind when oppressed by almost intolerable woes,
and then gravely consigned the innocent Shakespeare to the flames, heap
ing the brush fuel over it with ceremonious care.
" A h-h, breathed the poor deluded natives sighing their relief. . . .
There is no trouble now. . . . And something approaching to a cheer
was shouted among them, which terminated the episode of the burning of
312 PSYCHOLOGY.
which system shall carry our belief is governed by princi
ples which are simple enough, however subtle and difficult
may be their application to details. The conceived system, to
pass for true, must at least include the reality of the sensible
objects in it, by explaining them as effects on us, if nothing more.
The system which includes the most of them, and definitely ex-
plains or pretends to explain the most of them, will, ceteris
paribus, prevail It is needless to say how far mankind still
is from having excogitated such a system. But the various
materialisms, idealisms, and hylozoisms show with what in
dustry the attempt is forever made. It is conceivable that
several rival theories should equally well include the actual
order of our sensations in their scheme, much as the one-
fluid and two-fluid theories of electricity formulated all the
common electrical phenomena equally well. The sciences
are full of these alternatives. Which theory is then to be
believed ? That theory will be most generally believed which,
besides offering us objects abk to account satisfactorily for our
sensible experience, also offers those which are most interesting,
those tvhich appeal most urgently to our cesthetic, emotional, and
active needs. So here, in the higher intellectual life, the
same selection among general conceptions goes on which
went on among the sensations themselves. ^ First, a word
of their relation to our emotional and active needs and
here I can do no better than quote from an article pub
lished some years ago :*
" A philosophy may be unimpeachable in other respects, but either
of two defects will be fatal to its universal acceptance. First, its ulti
mate principle must not be one that essentially baffles and disappoints
our dearest desires and most cherished powers. A pessimistic principle
like Schopenhauer s incurably vicious Will-substance, or Hartmann s
wicked jack-at-all-trades, the Unconscious, will perpetually call forth
essays at other philosophies. Incompatibility of the future with their
desires and active tendencies is, in fact, to most men a source of more
fixed disquietude than uncertainty itself. Witness the attempts to
overcome the problem of evil, the mystery of pain. There is no
problem of good.
" But a second and worse defect in a philosophy than that ot <
tradicting our active propensities is to give them no Object whatever
Rationality, Activity,, and Faith (Princeton Review, July 1882,
pp. 64-9).
THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 313
to press against. A philosophy whose principle is so incommensurate
with our most intimate powers as to deny them all relevancy in univer
sal affairs, as to annihilate their motives at one blow, will be even more
unpopular than pessimism. Better face the enemy than the eternal
Void ! This is why materialism will always fail of universal adoption,
however well it may fuse things into an atomistic unity, however
clearly it may prophesy the future eternity. For materialism denies
reality to the objects of almost all the impulses which we most cherish.
The real meaning of the impulses, it says, is something which has no
emotional interest for us whatever. But what is called extradition is
quite as characteristic of our emotions as of our sense. Both point to an
Object as the cause of the present feeling. What an intensely objective
reference lies in fear ! In like manner an enraptured man, a dreary-
feeling man, are not simply aware of their subjective states ; if they
were, the force of their feelings would evaporate. Both believe there
is outward cause why they should feel as they do : either It is a glad
world ! how good is life ! or What a loathsome tedium is existence !
Any philosophy which annihilates the validity of the reference by ex
plaining away its objects or translating them into terms of no emo
tional pertinency leaves the mind with little to care or act for. This
is the opposite condition from that of nightmare, but when acutely
brought home to consciousness it produces a kindred horror. In night
mare we have motives to act, but no power ; here we have powers, but
no motives. A nameless Uriheimliclikeit comes over us at the thought
of there being nothing eternal in our final purposes, in the objects of
those loves and aspirations which are our deepest energies. The mon
strously lopsided equation of the universe and its knower, which we
postulate as the ideal of cognition, is perfectly paralleled by the no less
lopsided equation of the universe and the doer. We demand in it a
character for which our emotions and active propensities shall be a
match. Small as we are, minute as is the point by which the Cosmos
impinges upon each one of us, each one desires to feel that his reaction
at that point is congruous with the demands of the vast whole, that he
balances the latter, so to speak, and is able to do what it expects of
him. But as his abilities to do lie wholly in the line of his natural
propensities ; as he enjoys reaction with such emotions as fortitude,
hope, rapture, admiration, earnestness, and the like ; and as he very
unwillingly reacts with fear, disgust, despair, or doubt, a philosophy
which should legitimate only emotions of the latter sort would be sure
to leave the mind a prey to discontent and craving.
" It is far too little recognized how entirely the intellect is built up
of practical interests. The theory of Evolution is beginning to do very
good service by its reduction of all mentality to the type of reflex action.
Cognition, in this view, is but a fleeting moment, a cross-section at a
certain point of what in its totality is a motor phenomenon. In the
lower forms of life no one will pretend that cognition is anything more
than a guide to appropriate action. The germinal question concerning
314 PSYCHOLOGY.
things brought for the first time before consciousness is not the theo
retic What is that ? but the practical Who goes there ? or rather, as
Horwicz has admirably put it, What is to be done? Was fang* ich
an ? iu all our discussions about the intelligence of lower animals the
only tebC we use is that of their acting as if for a purpose. Cognition,
in short, is incomplete until discharged in act. And although it is true
that the iater mental development, which attains its maximum through
the hypertrophied cerebrum of man, gives birth to a vast amount of
theoretic activity over and above that which is immediately ministerial
to practice, yet the earlier claim is only postponed, not effaced, and the
active nature asserts its rights to the end.
If there be any truth at all in this view, it follows that however
vaguely a philosopher may define the ultimate universal datum, he can
not be said to leave it unknown to us so long as he in the slightest
degree pretends that our emotional or active attitude towards it should
be of one sort rather than another. He who says, Life is real, life is
earnest, however much he may speak of the fundamental mysterious-
ness of things, gives a distinct definition to that mysteriousness by
ascribing to it the right to claim from us the particular mood called
seriousness, which means the willingness to live with energy, though
energy bring pain. The same is true of him who says that all is vanity.
Indefinable as the predicate vanity may be in se, it is clearly enough
something which permits anaesthesia, mere escape from suffering, to be
our rule of life. There is no more ludicrous incongruity than for
agnostics to proclaim with one breath that the substance of things is
unknowable, and with the next that the thought of it should inspire us
with admiration of its glory, reverence, and a willingness to add our co
operative push in the direction towards which its manifestations seem
to be drifting. The unknowable may be unfathomed, but if it make
such distinct demands upon our activity, we surely are not ignorant of
its essential quality.
" If we survey the field of history and ask what feature all great
periods of revival, of expansion of the human mind, display in common,
we shall find, I think, simply this : that each and all of them have said
to the human being, The inmost nature of the reality is congenial to
powers which you possess. In what did the emancipating message of
primitive Christianity consist, but in the announcement that God rec
ognizes those weak and tender impulses which paganism had so rudely
overlooked ? Take repentance : the man who can do nothing rightly can
at least repent of his failures. But for paganism this faculty of re
pentance was a pure supernumerary, a straggler too late for the fair.
Christianity took it and made it the one power within us which appealed
straight to the heart of God. And after the night of the Middle Ages
had so long branded with obloquy even the generous impulses of the flesh,
and defined the Reality to be such that only slavish natures could com
mune with it, in what did the Sursum corda ! of the Renaissance lie
but in the proclamation that the archetype of verity in things laid claim
THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 315
on the widest activity of our whole aesthetic being? What were
Luther s mission and Wesley s but appeals to powers which even the
meanest of men might carry with them, faith and self-despair, but
which were personal, requiring no priestly intermediation, and which
brought their owner face to face with God ? What caused the wild-fire
influence of Rousseau but the assurance he gave that man s nature
was in harmony with the nature of things, if only the paralyzing cor
ruptions of custom would stand from between ? How did Kant and
Fichte, Goethe and Schiller, inspire their time with cheer, except by
saying, Use all your powers ; that is the only obedience which the uni
verse exacts ? And Carlyle with his gospel of Work, of Fact, of Ve
racity, how does he move us except by saying that the universe imposes
no tasks upon us but such as the most humble can perform ? Emerson s
creed that everything that ever was or will be is here in the enveloping
Now ; that man has but to obey himself He who will rest in what he
is, is a part of Destiny is in like manner nothing but an exorcism of
all scepticism as to the pertinency of one s natural faculties.
" In a word, l Son of Man, stand upon thy feet and I will speak
unto thee ! is the only revelation of truth to which the solving epochs
have helped the disciple. But that has been enough to satisfy the
greater part of his rational need. In se and per se the universal essence
has hardly been more defined by any of these formula than by the
agnostic x; but the mere assurance that my powers, such as they are
are not irrelevant to it, but pertinent, that it speaks to them and will
in some way recognize their reply, that I can be a match for it if I will,
and not a footless waif, suffices to make it rational to my feeling m the
sense given above. Nothing could be more absurd than to hope for the
definitive triumph of any philosophy which should refuse to legitimate,
and to legitimate in an emphatic manner, the more powerful of our
emotional and practical tendencies. Fatalism, whose solving word in
all crises of behavior is * All striving is vain, will never reign supreme,
for the impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race!
Moral creeds which speak to that impulse will be widely successful m
spite of inconsistency, vagueness, and shadowy determination of expec
tancy. Man needs a rule for his will, and will invent one if one be not
given him."
After the emotional and active needs come the intellec
tual and aesthetic ones. The two great aesthetic principles,
of richness and of ease, dominate our intellectual as well
as our sensuous life. And, ceteris paribus, no system which
should not be rich, simple, and harmonious would have a
chance of being chosen for belief, if rich, simple, and har
monious systems were also there. Into the latter we should
unhesitatingly settle, with that welcoming attitude of the will
316 PSYCHOLOGY.
in which belief consists. To quote from a remarkable
book :
" This law that our consciousness constantly tends to the minimum
of complexity and to the maximum of definiteness, is of great impor
tance for all our knowledge. . . . Our own activity of attention will time
determine what we are to know and what we are to believe. If things
have more than a certain complexity, not only will our limited powers
of attention forbid us to unravel this complexity, but we shall strongly
desire to believe the things much simpler than they are. For oui
thoughts about them will have a constant tendency to become as simple
and definite as possible. Put a man into a perfect chaos of phenomena
-sounds, sights, feelings and if the man continued to exist, and 1
be rational at all, his attention would doubtless soon find for him away
to make up some kind of rhythmic regularity, which he would impute
to the things about him, so as to imagine that he had discovered some
laws of sequence in this mad new world. And thus, in every case
where we fancy ourselves sure of a simple law of Nature, we must re
member that a great deal of the fancied simplicity may be due, in the
given case, nqt to Nature, but to the ineradicable prejudice of our own
minds in favor of regularity and simplicity. All our thoughts are de
termined, in great measure, by this law of least effort, as it is found
exemplified in our activity of attention. ... The aim of the whole
process seems to be to reach as complete and united a conception of
reality as possible, a conception wherein the greatest fulness of data
shall be combined with the greatest simplicity of conception. The effort
of consciousness seems to be to combine the greatest richness of content
with the greatest definiteness of organization."*
The richness is got by including all the facts of sense
in the scheme ; the simplicity, by deducing them out of the
smallest possible number of permanent and independent
primordial entities : the definite organization, by assimi
lating these latter to ideal objects between which relations
of an inwardly rational sort obtain. What these ideal ob
jects and rational relations are will require a separate
chapter to show.f Meanwhile, enough has surely been said
to justify the assertion made above that no general offhand
answer can be given as to which objects mankind shall
choose as its realities. The fight is still under way. Our
minds are yet chaotic ; and at best we make a mixture and
* J. Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (Boston, 1885), pp
317-57.
\ Chapter XXVII.
THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 317
a compromise, as we yield to the claim of this interest or
that, and follow first one and then another principle in
turn. It is undeniably true that materialistic, or so-called
scientific, conceptions of the universe have so far gratified
the purely intellectual interests more than the mere senti
mental conceptions have. But, on the other hand, as
already remarked, they leave the emotional and active
interests cold. The perfect object of belief would be a God or
1 Soul of the World? represented both optimistically and moral-
istically (if such a combination could be), and withal so defi
nitely conceived as to shoiv us lohy our phenomenal experiences
should be sent to us by Him in just the very tuay in which they
come. All Science and all History would thus be accounted
for in the deepest and simplest fashion. The very room in
which I sit, its sensible walls and floor, and the feeling the
air and fire within it give me, no less than the scientific
conceptions w^hich I am urged to frame concerning the
mode of existence of all these phenomena when my back is
turned, would then all be corroborated, not de-realized, by
the ultimate principle of my belief. The AVorld-soul sends
me just those phenomena in order that I may react upon
them ; and among the reactions is the intellectual one of
spinning these conceptions. What is beyond the crude
experiences is not an alternative to them, but something
that means them for me here and now. It is safe to say
that, if ever such a system is satisfactorily excogitated,
mankind will drop all other systems and cling to that one
alone as real. Meanwhile the other systems coexist with
the attempts at that one, and, all being alike fragmentary,
each has its little audience and day.
I have now, I trust, shown sufficiently what the psycho
logic sources of the sense of reality are. Certain postulates
are given in our nature ; and whatever satisfies those pos
tulates is treated as if real.* I might therefore finish the
* Prof. Royce puts this well in discussing idealism and the reality of an
external world. " If the history of popular speculation on these topics
could be written, how much of cowardice and shuffling would be found in
the behavior of the natural mind before the question, How dost thou
know of an external reality ? Instead of simply and plainly answering:
I mean by the external world in the first place something that I accept
318 PSYCHOLOGY.
chapter here, were it not that a few additional words will
set the truth in a still clearer light.
DOUBT.
There is hardly a common man who (if consulted)
would not say that things come to us in the first instance
as ideas; and that if we take them for realities, it is because
we add something to them, namely, the predicate of having
also real existence outside of our thought. This notion that
a higher faculty than the mere having of a conscious con
tent is needed to make us know anything real by its means
has pervaded psychology from the earliest times, and is the
tradition of Scholasticism, Kantism, and Common-sense.
Just as sensations must come as inward affections and then
be extradited ; as objects of memory must appear at first
as presently unrealities, and subsequently be projected
backwards as past realities ; so conceptions must be entia
rationis till a higher faculty uses them as windows to look
beyond the ego, into the real extra-mental world ; so runs
the orthodox and popular account.
And there is no question that this is a true account of
the way in which many of our later beliefs come to pass.
The logical distinction between the bare thought of an object
and belief in the object s reality is often a chronological
distinction as well. The having and the crediting of an
or demand, that I posit, postulate, actively construct on the basis of sense-
data, the natural man gives us all kinds of vague compromise answers.
Where shall these endless turnings and twistings have an end? ...... All
these lesser motives are appealed to, and the one ultimate motive is
neglected. The ultimate motive with the man of every-day life is the will
to have an external world. Whatever consciousness contains, reason will
persist in spontaneously adding the thought: But there shall be something
beyond this. . . . The popular assurance of an external world is ikefsced
determination to make one, now and henceforth." (Religious Aspect of
Philosophy, p. 304 the italics are my own.) This immixture of the will
appears most flagrantly in the fact that although external matter is
doiibted commonly enough, minds external to our own are never doubted.
We need them too much, are too essentially social to dispense with them.
Semblances of matter may suffice to react upon, but not semblances of
communing souls. A psychic solipsism is too hideous a mockery of our
wants, and, so far as I know, has never been seriously entertained.--
Chapters ix and x of Prof. Royce s work are on the whole the clearest
account of the psychology ef belief with which lam acquainted.
THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 319
idea do not always coalesce ; for often we first suppose and
then believe ; first play with the notion, frame the hypoth
esis, and then affirm the existence, of an object of thought.
And we are quite conscious of the succession of the two
mental acts. But these cases are none of them primitive
cases. They only occur in minds long schooled to doubt
by the contradictions of experience. The primitive impulse
is to affirm immediately the reality of all that is conceived.*
When we do doubt, however, in what does the subsequent
resolution of the doubt consist? It either consists in a
purely verbal performance, the coupling of the adjectives
real or * outwardly existing (as predicates) to the thing
originally conceived (as subject) ; or it consists in the per
ception in the given case of that for which these adjectives, ab
stracted from other similar concrete cases, stand. But what
these adjectives stand for, we now know well. They stand
for certain relations (immediate, or through intermediaries)
to ourselves. Whatever concrete objects have hitherto stood
in those relations have been for us real, outwardly exist
ing. So that when we now abstractly admit a thing to be
real (without perhaps going through any definite percep-
* " The leading fact in Belief, according to my view of it, is our Primi
tive Credulity. We begin by believing everything ; whatever is, is true.
. . . The animal born in the morning of a summer day proceeds upon the
fact of daylight ; assumes the perpetuity of that fact. Whatever it is
disposed to do, it does without misgivings. If in the morning it began a
round of operations continuing for hours, under the full benefit of day
light, it would unhesitatingly begin the same round in the evening. Its
state of mind is practically one of unbounded confidence ; but, as yet, it
does not understand what confidence means.
The pristine assurance is soon met by checks ; a disagreeable experience
leading to new insight. To be thwarted and opposed is one of our earliest
and most frequent pains. It develops the sense of a distinction between
free and obstructed impulses ; the unconsciousness of an open way is ex
changed for consciousness ; we are now said properly to believe in what
has never been contradicted, as we disbelieve in what has been contradicted.
We believe that, after the dawn of day, there is before us a continuance
of light ; we do not believe that this light is to continue forever.
" Thus, the vital circumstance in belief is never to be contradicted never
to lose prestige. The number of repetitions counts for little in the process:
we are as much convinced after ten as after fifty ; we are more convinced
by ten unbroken than by fifty for and one against," (Bain ; The Emotions
and the Will, pp. 511, 512.)
320 PSYCHOLOGY.
tion of its relations), it is as if we said " it belongs in the
same world with those other objects." Naturally enough,
we have hourly opportunities for this summary process of
belief. All remote objects in space or time are believed in
this way. When I believe that some prehistoric savage
chipped this flint, for example, the reality of the savage and
of his act makes no direct appeal either to my sensation,
emotion, or volition. What I mean by my belief in it is
simply my dim sense of a continuity between the long dead
savage and his doings and the present world of which the
flint forms part. It is pre-eminently a case for applying
our doctrine of the fringe (see Vol I. p. 258). When I think
the savage with one fringe of relationship, I believe in him ;
when I think him without that fringe, or with another one
(as, e.g., if I should class him with * scientific vagaries in
general), I disbelieve him. The word real itself is, in
short, a fringe.
RELATIONS OF BELIEF AND -WILL.
We shall see in Chapter XXV that will consists in
nothing but a manner of attending to certain objects, or
consenting to their stable presence before the mind. The
objects, in the case of will, are those whose existence
depends on our thought, movements of our own body for
example, or facts which such movements executed in future
may make real. Objects of belief, on the contrary, are those
which do not change according as we think regarding them.
I will to get up early to-morrow morning ; I believe that I
got up late yesterday morning; I will that my foreign
bookseller in Boston shall procure me a German book and
write to him to that effect. I believe that he will make me
pay three dollars for it when it comes, etc. Now the im
portant thing to notice is that this difference between the
objects of will and belief is entirely immaterial, as far as
the relation of the mind to them goes. All that the mind
does is in both cases the same ; it looks at the object and
consents to its existence, espouses it, says it shall be my
reality. It turns to it, in short, in the interested active
emotional way. The rest is done by nature, which in some
cases makes the objects real which we think of in this-
THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 321
manner, and in other cases does not. Nature cannot change
the past to suit our thinking. She cannot change the stars
or the winds ; but she does change our bodies to suit our
thinking, and through their instrumentality changes much
besides ; so the great practical distinction between objects
which we may will or unwill, and objects which we can merely
believe or disbelieve, grows up, and is of course one of the
most important distinctions in the world. Its roots, how
ever, do not lie in psychology, but in physiology ; as the
chapter on Volition will abundantly make plain. Will and
Belief, in short, meaning a certain relation bettveen objects and
the Self, are tivo names for one and the same PSYCHOLOGICAL
phenomenon. All the questions which arise concerning one
are questions which arise concerning the other. The causes
and conditions of the peculiar relation must be the same
in both. The free-will question arises as regards belief.
If our wills are indeterminate, so must our beliefs be, etc.
The first act of free-will, in short, would naturally be to
believe in free-will, etc. In Chapter XXYI, I shall mention
this again.
A practical observation may end this chapter. If belief
consists in an emotional reaction of the entire man on an
object, how can we believe at will ? We cannot control our
emotions. Truly enough, a man cannot believe at will
abruptly. Nature sometimes, and indeed not very infre
quently, produces instantaneous conversions for us. She
suddenly puts us in an active connection with objects of
which she had till then left us cold. " I realize for the first
time," we then say, " what that means !" This happens often
with moral propositions. We have often heard them ; but
now they shoot into our lives ; they move us ; we feel their
living force. Such instantaneous beliefs are truly enough not
to be achieved by will. But gradually our will can lead us to
the same results by a very simple method : we need only
in cold blood ACT as if the thing in question were real, and keep
acting as if it were real, and it will infallibly end by growing
into such a connection with our life that it will become real.
It will become so knit with habit and emotion that our
interests in it will be those which characterize belief.
822 PSYCHOLOGY.
Those to whom God and Duty are now mere names
can make them much more than that, if they make a little
sacrifice to them every day. But all this is so well known
in moral and religious education that I need say no more.*
* Literature. D. Hume : Treatise on Human Nature, part in. vii-
x. A. Bain : Emotions and Will, chapter on Belief (also pp. 20 ff).
J. Sully: Sensation and Intuition, essay iv. J. Mill: Analysis of Human
Mind, chapter xi. Ch. Renouvier : Psychologic Rationnelle, vol. n.
pt. ii ; and Esquisse d une Classification systematique des Doctrines
Philosophiques, part vi. J. H. Newman: The Grammar of Assent. J.
Venn: Some Characteristics of Belief. V. Brochard : De 1 Erreur, part
n. chap, vi, ix ; and Revue Philosophique, xxvm. 1. E. Rabier : Psy
chologic, chap xxi, Appendix. OlleLaprune: La Certitude Morale (1881).
G. F. Stout: On Genesis of Cognition of Physical Reality, in Mind, Jan.
1890. J. Pikler: The Psychology of the Belief in Objective Existence
(London, 1890). Mill says that we believe present sensations ; and makes
our belief in all other things a matter of association with these. So far so
good; but as he makes no mention of emotional or volitional reaction, Bain
rightly charges him with treating belief as a purely intellectual state. For
Bain belief is rather an incident of our active life. When a thing is such
as to make us act on it, then we believe it, according to Bain. " But how
about past things, or remote things, upon which no reaction of ours is pos
sible? And how about belief in things which check action?" says Sully;
who considers that we believe a thing only when "the idea of it has an in
herent tendency to approximate in character and intensity to a sensation."
It is obvious that each of these authors emphasizes a true aspect of the
question. My own account has sought to be more complete, sensation,
association, and active reaction all being acknowledged to be concerned.
The most compendious possible formula perhaps would be that our belief
and attention are the same fact. For the moment, what we attend to is
reality ; Attention is a motor reaction; and we are so made that sensations
force attention from us. On Belief and Conduct see an article by Leslie
Stephen, Fortnightly Review, July 1888.
A set of facts have been recently brought to my attention which I
hardly know how to treat, so I say a word about them in this footnote. I
refer to a type of experience which has frequently found a place amongst
the Yes answers to the Census of Hallucinations, and which is gener
ally described by those who report it as an impression of the presence of
someone near them, although no sensation either of sight, hearing, or touch
is involved. From the way in which this experience is spoken of by those
who have had it, it would appear to be an extremely definite and positive
state of mind, coupled with a belief in the reality of its object quite as
strong as any direct sensation ever gives. And yet no sensation seems to
be connected with it at all. Sometimes the person whose nearness is thus
impressed is a known person, dead or living, sometimes an unknown one.
His attitude and situation are often very definitely impressed, and so, some
times (though not by way of hearing), are words which he wishes to say.
The phenomenon, would seem to be due to a pure conception becoming
THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY. 32U
saturated with the sort of stinging urgency which ordinarily only sensa
tions bring. But I cannot yet persuade myself that the urgency in ques
tion consists in concomitant emotional and motor impulses. The impres
sion may come quite suddenly and depart quickly; it may cany no
emotional suggestions, and wake no motor consequences beyond those
involved in attending to it. Altogether, the matter is somewhat paradoxical,
and no conclusion can be come to until more definite data are obtained.
Perhaps the most curious case of the sort which I have received is the
following. The subject of the observation, Mr. P., is an exceptionally
intelligent witness, though the words of the narrative are his wife s.
4 Mr. P. has all his life been the occasional subject of rather singular
delusions or impressions of various kinds. If I had belief in the existence
of latent or embryo faculties, other than the five senses, I should explain
them on that ground. Being totally blind, his other perceptions are
abnormally keen and developed, and given the existence of a rudimentary
sixth sense, it would be only natural that this also should be more acute in
him than in others. One of the most interesting of his experiences in this
line was the frequent apparition of a corpse some years ago, which may be
worth the attention of your Committee on that subject. At the time Mr.
P. had a music-room in Boston on Beacon Street, where he used to do
severe and protracted practice with little interruption. Now, all one season
it was a very familiar occurrence with him while in the midst of work to
feel a o^ld draft of air suddenly upon his face, with a prickling sensation
at the loots of his hair, when he would turn from the piano, and a figure
which he knew to be dead would come sliding under the crack of the door
from without, flattening itself to squeeze through and rounding out again
to the human form. It was of a middle-aged man, and drew itself along
the carpet on hands and knees, but with head thrown back till it reached
the sofa, upon which it stretched itself. It remained some moments, but
vanished always if Mr. P. spoke or made a decided movement. The most
singular point in the occurrence was its frequent repetition. He might
expect it on any day between two and four o clock, and it came always
heralded by the same sudden cold shiver, and was invariably the same fig
ure which went through the same movements. He afterwards traced the
whole experience to strong tea. He was in the habit of taking cold tea,
which always stimulates him, for lunch, and on giving up this practice he
never saw this or any other apparition again. However, even allowing, as
is doubtless true, that the event was a delusion of nerves first fatigued by
overwork and then excited by this stimulant, there is one point which is
still wholly inexplicable and highly interesting to me. Mr. P. has no
memory whatever of sight, nor conception of it. It is impossible for him
to form any idea of what we mean by light or color, consequently he has
no cognizance of any object which does not reach his sense of hearing or
of touch, though these are so acute as to give a contrary impression some
times to other people. When he becomes aware of the presence of a person
or an object, by means which seem mysterious to outsiders, he can always
trace it naturally and legitimately to slight echoes, perceptible only to his
keen ears, or to differences in atmospheric pressure, perceptible only to his
acute nerves of touch; but with the apparition described, for the only time
in his xperience, he was aware of presence, size, and appearance, without
324 PSYCHOLOGY.
the use of either of these mediums. The figure never produced the least
sound nor came within a number of feet of his person, yet he knew that it
was a man, that it moved, and in what direction, even that it wore a full
beard, which, like the thick curly hair, was partially gray; also that it was
dressed in the style of suit known as pepper and salt. These points were
jill perfectly distinct and invariable each time. If asked how he perceived
them, he will answer he cannot tell, he simply knew it, and so strongly and
so distinctly that it is impossible to shake his opinion as to the exact details
of the man s appearance. It would seem that in this delusion of the senses-
he really saw, as he has never done in the actual experiences of life, except
in the first two years of childhood."
On cross-examining Mr. P., I could not make out that there was any
thing like visual imagination involved, although he was quite unable to
describe in just what terms the false perception was carried on. It seemed
to be more like an intensely definite conception than anything else, a con-
ception to which the feeling of present reality was attached, but in no such
shape as easily to fall under the heads laid down in my text.
CHAPTER XXII *
REASONING.
WE talk of man being the rational animal ; and the tra
ditional intellectualist philosophy has always made a great
point of treating the brutes as wholly irrational creatures.
Nevertheless, it is by no means easy to decide just what is
meant by reason, or how the peculiar thinking process
called reasoning differs from other thought-sequences which
may lead to similar results.
Much of our thinking consists of trains of images sug
gested one by another, of a sort of spontaneous revery of
which it seems likely enough that the higher brutes should
be capable. This sort of thinking leads nevertheless to
rational conclusions, both practical and theoretical. The
links between the terms are either contiguity or similar
ity, and with a mixture of both these things we can hard
ly be very incoherent. As a rule, in this sort of irrespon
sible thinking, the terms which fall to be coupled together
are empirical concretes, not abstractions. A sunset may
call up the vessel s deck from which I saw one last summer,
the companions of my voyage, my arrival into port, etc.; or
it may make me think of solar myths, of Hercules and
Hector s funeral pyres, of Homer and whether he could
write, of the Greek alphabet, etc. If habitual contiguities
predominate, we have a prosaic mind ; if rare contiguities,
or similarities, have free play, we call the person fanciful,
poetic, or witty. But the thought as a rule is of matters
taken in their entirety. Having been thinking of one, we
find later that we are thinking of another, to which we haye
been lifted along, we hardly know how. If an abstract
* The substance of this chapter, and a good many pages of the text,
originally appeared in an article entitled Brute and Human Intellect, in
the Journal of Speculative Philosophy for July 1878 (vol. xn. p. 236).
325
326 PSYCHOLOGY.
quality figures in the procession, it arrests our attention
but for a moment, and fades into something else ; and is
never very abstract. Thus, in thinking of the sun-myths, we
may have a gleam of admiration at the gracefulness of the
primitive human mind, or a moment of disgust at the nar
rowness of modern interpreters. But, in the main, we
think less of qualities than of whole things, real or possi
ble, just as we may experience them.
The upshot of it may be that we are reminded of some
practical duty : we write a letter to a friend abroad, or we
take down the lexicon and study our Greek lesson. Our
thought is rational, and leads to a rational act, but it can
hardly be called reasoning in a strict sense of the term.
There are other shorter flights of thought, single coup
lings of terms which suggest one another by association,
which approach more to what would commonly be classed
as acts of reasoning proper. Those are where a present sign
suggests an unseen, distant, or future reality. Where the
sign and what it suggests are both concretes which have
been coupled together on previous occasions, the inference
is common to both brutes and men, being really nothing
more than association by contiguity. A and B, dinner-bell
and dinner, have been experienced in immediate succes
sion. Hence A no sooner falls upon the sense than B is
anticipated, and steps are taken to meet it. The whole
education of our domestic beasts, all the cunning added by
age and experience to wild ones, and the greater part of
our human knowingness consists in the ability to make a
mass of inferences of this simplest sort. Our perceptions/
or recognitions of what objects are before us, are inferences
of this kind. We feel a patch of color, and we say a dis
tant house, a whiff of odor crosses us, and we say a
skunk, a faint sound is heard, and we call it a railroad
train. Examples are needless ; for such inferences of sen
sations not presented form the staple and tissue of our
perceptive life, and our Chapter XIX was full of them,
illusory or veracious. They have been called unconscious
inferences. Certainly we are commonly unconscious that
we are inferring at all. The sign and the signified melt
into what seems to us the object of a single pulse of
REASONING. 327
thought. Immediate inferences would be a good name for
these simple acts of reasoning requiring but two terms,*
were it not that formal logic has already appropriated the
expression for a more technical use.
RECEPTS.
In these first and simplest inferences the conclusion
may follow so continuously upon the sign that the latter
is not discriminated or attended to as a separate object by the
mind. Even now we can seldom define the optical signs
which lead us to infer the shapes and distances of the ob
jects which by their aid we so unhesitatingly perceive.
The objects, too, when thus inferred, are general objects.
The dog crossing a scent thinks of a deer in general, or of
another dog in general, not of a particular deer or dog. To
these most primitive abstract objects Dr. G. J. Bomanes
gives the name of recepts or generic ideas, to distinguish
them from concepts and general ideas properly so called. f
They are not analyzed or defined, but only imagined.
u It requires but a slight analysis of our ordinary mental processes
to prove that all our simpler ideas are group-arrangements which have
been formed spontaneously or without any of that intentionally com
paring, sifting, and combining process which is required in the higher
departments of ideational activity. The comparing, sifting, and com
bining is here done, as it were, for the conscous agent, not by him.
Recepts are received ; it is only concepts that require to be conceived.
... If I am crossing a street and hear behind me a sudden shout, I
do not require to wait in order to predicate to myself that there is prob
ably a hansom-cab just about to run me down : a cry of this kind, and
in those circumstances, is so intimately associated in my mind with its
* I see no need of assuming more than two terms in this sort of reason
ing first, the sign, and second, the thing inferred from it. Either may
be complex, but essentially it is but A calling up B, and no middle term is
involved. M. Binet, in his most intelligent little book, La Psychologic du
Raisouuement, maintains that there are three terms. The present sensa
tion or sign must, according to him, first evoke from the past an image
which resembles it and fuses with it, and the things suggested or inferred
are always the contiguous associates of this intermediate image, and not of
the immediate sensation. The reader of Chapter XIX will see why I do
not believe in the image in question as a distinct psychic fact.
f Mental Evolution in Man (1889), chapters in and iv. See especially
pp. 68-80, and later 353, 396.
328 PSYCHOLOGY.
purpose, that the idea which it arouses need not rise above the level ot
a recept ; and the adaptive movements on my part which that idea im
mediately prompts are performed without any intelligent reflection.
Yet, on the other hand, they are neither reflex actions nor instinctive
actions ; they are what may be termed receptual actions, or actions de
pending on recepts." *
" How far can this kind of unnamed or non-conceptional
ideation extend ?" Dr. Romanes asks ; and answers by a
variety of examples taken from the life of brutes, for which
I must refer to his book. One or two of them, however, I
will quote :
" Houzeau writes that while crossing a wide and arid plain in Texas,
his two dogs suffered greatly from thirst, and that between thirty and
forty times they rushed down the hollows to search for water. The hol
lows were not valleys, and there were no trees in them, or any other
difference in the vegetation ; and as they were absolutely dry, there
could have been no smell of damp earth. The dogs behaved as if they
knew that a dip in the ground offered them the best chance of finding
water, and Houzeau has often witnessed the same behavior in other ani
mals. . . .
" Mr. Darwin writes : When I say to my terrier in an eager voice
(and I have made the trial many times), " Hi ! hi ! where is it ? " she at
once takes it as a sign that something is to be hunted, and generally
first looks quickly all round, and then rushes into the nearest thicket,
to scout for any game, but finding nothing she looks up into any neigh-
boring tree for a squirrel. Now do not these actions clearly show that
she had in her mind a general idea, or concept, that some animal is to
be discovered and hunted ? " f
They certainly show this. But the idea in question is
of an object about which nothing farther may be articulately
known. The thought of it prompts to activity, but to no
theoretic consequence. Similarly in the following ex
ample :
"Water-fowl adopt a somewhat different mode of alighting upon
land, or even upon ice, from that which they adopt when alighting
upon water; and those kinds which dive from a height (such as terns
and gannets) never do so upon land or upon ice. These facts prove
that the animals have one recept answering to a solid surface, and an
other answering to a fluid. Similarly a man will not dive from a height
over hard ground or over ice, nor will he jump into water in the same
way as he jumps upon dry land. In other words, like the water-fowl
* Loc. cit. p. 50. t P- 52.
REASONING. 329
he has two distinct recepts, one of which answers to solid ground, and
the other to an unresisting fluid. But unlike the water-fowl he is able
to bestow upon each of these recepts a name, and thus to raise them
both to the level of concepts. So far as the practical purposes of loco
motion are concerned, it is of course immaterial whether or not he thus
raises his recepts into concepts ; but ... for many other purposes it is
of the highest importance that he is able to do this. " *
IN REASONING, WE PICK OUT ESSENTIAL QUALITIES,
The chief of these purposes is predication, a theoretic
function which, though it always leads eventually to some
kind of action, yet tends as often as not to inhibit the imme
diate motor response to which the simple inferences of
which we have been speaking give rise. In reasoning, A
may suggest B ; but B, instead of being an idea which is
simply obeyed by us, is an idea which suggests the distinct
additional idea C. And where the train of suggestion is one
of reasoning distinctively so called as contrasted with mere
revery or * associative sequence, the ideas bear certain
inward relations to each other which we must proceed to
examine with some care.
The result C yielded by a true act of reasoning is apt
to be a thing voluntarily sought, such as the means to a
proposed end, the ground for an observed effect, or the
effect of an assumed cause. All these results may be
thought of as concrete things, but they are not suggested im
mediately by other concrete things, as in the trains of simply as
sociative thought. They are linked to the concretes which
precede them by intermediate steps, and these steps are
formed by general characters articulately denoted and ex
pressly analyzed out. A thing inferred by reasoning need
neither have been an habitual associate of the datum from
which we infer it, nor need it be similar to it. It may be
a thing entirely unknown to our previous experience, some
thing which no simple association of concretes could ever
have evoked. The great difference, in fact, between that
simpler kind of rational thinking which consists in the con
crete objects of past experience merely suggesting each
other, and reasoning distinctively so called, is this, that
* Loc. cit. p. 74.
330 PSYCHOLOGY.
whilst the empirical thinking is only reproductive, reason
ing is productive. An empirical, or l rule-of-thumb, thinker
can deduce nothing from data with whose behavior and
associates in the concrete he is unfamiliar. But put a
reasoner amongst a set of concrete objects which he has
neither seen nor heard of before, and with a little time, if
he is a good reasoner, he will make such inferences from
them as will quite atone for his ignorance. Reasoning
helps us out of unprecedented situations situations for
which all our common associative wisdom, all the educa
tion which we share in common with the beasts, leaves us
without resource.
Let us make this ability to deal with NOVEL data the tech
nical differentia of reasoning. This will sufficiently mark
it out from common associative thinking, and will immedi
ately enable us to say just what peculiarity it contains.
It contains analysis and abstraction. Whereas the merely
empirical thinker stares at a fact in its entirety, and remains
helpless, or gets * stuck, if it suggests no concomitant or
similar, the reasoner breaks it up and notices some one of
its separate attributes. This attribute he takes to be the
essential part of the whole fact before him. This attribute
has properties or consequences which the fact until then
was not known to have, but which, now that it is noticed
to contain the attribute, it must have.
Call the fact or concrete datum S ;
the essential attribute M ;
the attribute s property P.
Then the reasoned inference of P from S cannot be
made without M s intermediation. The * essence M is
thus that third or middle term in the reasoning which a
moment ago was pronounced essential, for his original
concrete S the reasoner substitutes its abstract property, M.
What is true of M, what is coupled with M, then holds
true of S, is coupled with S. As M is properly one of the
parts of the entire S, reasoning may then be very well defined
as the substitution of parts and their implications or consequences
for wholes. And the art of the reasoner will consist of two
stages :
REASONING. 331
First, sagacity* or the ability to discover what part, M,
lies embedded in the whole S which is before him ;
Second, learning, or the ability to recall promptly M s
consequences, concomitants, or implications. t
If we glance at the ordinary syllogism
MisP;
S isM;
. . S is P
* J. Locke, Essay cone. Hum. Understanding, bk. iv. chap. n. 3.
f To be sagacious is to be a good observer. J. S. Mill has a passage
which is so much in the spirit of the text that I cannot forbear to quote it.
"The observer is not he who merely sees the thing which is before his
eyes, but he who sees what parts that thing is composed of. To do this
well is a rare talent. One person, from inattention, or attending only in
the wrong place, overlooks half of what he sees ; another sets down much
more than he sees, confounding it with what he imagines, or with what
he infers ; another takes note of the kind of all the circumstances, but
being inexpert in estimating their degree, leaves the quantity of each
vague and uncertain ; another sees indeed the whole, but makes such
an awkward division of it into parts, throwing things into one mass
which require to be separated, and separating others which might more
conveniently be considered as one, that the result is much the same,
sometimes even worse, than if no analysis had been attempted at all. It
would be possible to point out what qualities of mind, and modes of
mental culture, fit a person for being a good observer : that, however, is
a question not of Logic, but of the Theory of Education, in the most en
larged sense of the term. There is not properly an Art of Observing.
There may be rules for observing. But these, like rules for inventing, are
properly instructions for the preparation of one s own mind ; for putting
it into the state in which it will be most fitted to observe, or most likely to
invent, They are, therefore, essentially rules of self-education, which is
a different thing from Logic. They do not teach how to do the thing,
but how to make ourselves capable of doing it. They are an art of
strengthening the limbs, not an art of using them. The extent and minute
ness of observation which may be requisite, and the degree of decomposi
tion to which it may be necessary to cany the mental analysis, depend on
the particular purpose in view. To ascertain the state of the whole uni
verse at any particular moment is impossible, but would also be useless.
In making chemical experiments, we do not think it necessary to note the
position of the planets ; because experience has shown, as a very superficial
experience is sufficient to show, that in such cases that circumstance is not
material to the result : and accordingly, in the ages when man believed in
the occult influences of the heavenly bodies, it might have been unphilo-
sophical to omit ascertaining the precise condition of those bodies at the
moment of the experiment." (Logic, bk. m. chap. vn. 1. Cf. also bk.
iv. chap. TI.)
332 PSYCHOLOGY.
we see that the second or minor premise, the subsump-
tion as it is sometimes called, is the one requiring the sa
gacity ; the first or major the one requiring the fertility, or
fulness of learning. Usually the learning is more apt to be
ready than the sagacity, the ability to seize fresh aspects
in concrete things, being rarer than the ability to learn old
rules ; so that, in most actual cases of reasoning, the minor
premise, or the way of conceiving the subject, is the one
that makes the novel step in thought. This is, to be sure,
not always the case ; for the fact that M carries P with it
may also be unfamiliar and now formulated for the first
time.
The perception that S is M is a mode of conceiving S.
The statement that M is P is an abstract or general proposi
tion. A word about both is necessary.
WHAT IS MEANT BY A MODE OP CONCEIVING.
When we conceive of S merely as M (of vermilion
merely as a mercury-compound, for example), we neglect
all the other attributes which it may have, and attend
exclusively to this one. We mutilate the fulness of
S s reality. Every reality has an infinity of aspects or
properties. Even so simple a fact as a line which you trace
in the air may be considered in respect to its form, its
length, its direction, and its location. When we reach
more complex facts, the number of ways in which we may
regard them is literally endless. Vermilion is not only a
mercury-compound, it is vividly red, heavy, and expensive,
it comes from China, and so on, in infinitum. All objects are
well-springs of properties, which are only little by little
developed to our knowledge, and it is truly said that to
know one thing thoroughly would be to know the whole
universe. Mediately or immediately, that one thing is re
lated to everything else ; and to know all about it, all its
relations need be known. But each relation forms one of
its attributes, one angle by which some one may conceive it,
and while so conceiving it may ignore the rest of it. A man
is such a complex fact. But out of the complexity all that
an army commissary picks out as important for his purposes
is his property of eating so many pounds a day ; the general,
REASONING. 333
of marching so many miles; the chair-maker, of having
such a shape ; the orator, of responding to such and such
feelings ; the theatre-manager, of being willing to pay just
such a price, and no more, for an evening s amusement.
Each of these persons singles out the particular side of the
entire man which has a bearing on Us concerns, and not till
this side is distinctly and separately conceived can the
proper practical conclusions for that reasoner be drawn ; and
when they are drawn the man s other attributes may be ig
nored.
All ways of conceiving a concrete fact, if they are true
ways at all, are equally true ways. There is no property
ABSOLUTELY essential to any one thing. The same property
which figures as the essence of a thing on one occasion be
comes a very inessential feature upon another. Now that
I am writing, it is essential that I conceive my paper as a
surface for inscription. If I failed to do that, I should have
to stop my work. But if I wished to light a fire, and no
other materials were by, the essential way of conceiving
the paper would be as combustible material ; and I need
then have no thought of any of its other destinations. It is
eally all that it is : a combustible, a writing surface, a thin
thing, a hydrocarbonaceous thing, a thing eight inches one
way and ten another, a thing just one furlong east of a certain
stone in my neighbor s field, an American thing, etc etc
ad infinitum. Whichever one of these aspects of its being I
temporarily class it under, makes me unjust to the other
aspects But as I always am classing it under one aspect
or another, I am always -unjust, always partial, always ex
clusive. My excuse is necessity the necessity which my
finite and practical nature lays upon me. My thinking is
first and last and always for the sake of my doing, and I
can only do one thing at a time. A God, who is supposed
to drive the whole universe abreast, may also be supposed,
without detriment to his activity, to see all parts of it at
once and without emphasis. But were our human attention
so to disperse itself we should simply stare vacantly at
things at large and forfeit our opportunity of doing any
particular act. Mr. Warner, in his Adirondack story, shot a
bear by aiming, not at his eye or heart, but at him gen-
334 PSYCHOLOGY.
erally. But we cannot aim generally at the universe ;
or if we do, we miss our game. Our scope is narrow, and
we must attack things piecemeal, ignoring the solid fulness
in which the elements of Nature exist, and stringing one
after another of them together in a serial way, to suit our
little interests as they change from hour to hour. In this,
the partiality of one moment is partly atoned for by the
different sort of partiality of the next. To me now, writing
these words, emphasis and selection seem to be the essence
of the human mind. In other chapters other qualities have
seemed, and will again seem, more important parts of psy
chology.
Men are so ingrainedly partial that, for common-sense
and scholasticism (which is only common-sense grown artic
ulate), the notion that there is no one quality genuinely,
-absolutely, and exclusively essential to anything is almost
unthinkable. " A thing s essence makes it what it is. With
out an exclusive essence it would be nothing in particular,
would be quite nameless, we could not say it was this
rather than that. What you write on, for example, why
talk of its being combustible, rectangular, and the like,
when you know that these are mere accidents, and that
what it really is, and was made to be, is just paper and
nothing else?" The reader is pretty sure to make some
such comment as this. But he is himself merely insisting
on an aspect of the thing which suits his own petty purpose,
that of naming the thing ; or else on an aspect which suits
the manufacturer s purpose, that of producing an article
for which there is a vulgar demand. Meanwhile the reality
overflows these purposes at every pore. Our usual purpose
with it, our commonest title for it, and the properties which
this title suggests, have in reality nothing sacramental.
They characterize us more than they characterize the thing.
But we are so stuck in our prejudices, so petrified intellec
tually, that to our vulgarest names, with their suggestions,
we ascribe an eternal and exclusive worth. The thing must
be, essentially, what the vulgarest name connotes; what
less usual names connote, it can be only in an < accidental
and relatively unreal sense.*
* Readers brought up on Popul^Science may think UMrtthemoieciilaii
REASONING. 335
Locke undermined the fallacy. But none of his succes
sors, so far as I know, have radically escaped it, or seen
that the only meaning of essence is teleological, and that classi
fication and conception are purely teleological weapons of the
mind. The essence of a thing is that one of its properties
which is so important for my interests that in comparison
with it I may neglect the rest. Amongst those other things
which have this important property I class it, after this
property I name it, as a thing endowed with this property
I conceive it ; and whilst so classing, naming, and conceiv
ing it, all other truths about it become to me as naught.*
The properties which are important vary from man to man
and from hour to hour.f Hence divers appellations and
structure of things is their real essence in an absolute sense, and that water
is H-O-H more deeply and truly than it is a solvent of sugar or a
slaker of thirst. Not a whit ! It is all of these things with equal reality,
and the only reason why /or the chemist it is H-O-H primarily, and only
secondarily the other things, is that for his purpose of deduction and com
pendious definition the H-O-H aspect of it is the more useful one to bear
in mind
* " We find that we take for granted irresistibly that each kind [of thing]
has some character which distinguishes it from other classes. . . . What
is the foundation of this postulate ? What is the ground of this assumption
that there must exist a definition which we have never seen, and which
perhaps no one has seen in a satisfactory form ?....! reply that our con
viction that there must needs be characteristic marks by which things can
be defined in words is founded upon the assumption of the necessary possi
bility of reasoning." (W. Whewell : Hist, of Scientific Ideas, bk. vin. chap
i, 9.)
f I may quote a passage from an article entitled The Sentiment of
Rationality, published in vol. iv of Mind, 1879 : "What is a conception*
It is a teleological instrument. It is a partial aspect of a thing which
for our purpose we regard as its essential aspect, as the representative
of the entire thing. In comparison with this aspect, whatever other
properties and qualities the thing may have are unimportant accidents
which we may without blame ignore. But the essence, the ground
of conception, varies with the end we have in view. A substance like
oil has as many different essences as it has uses to different individuals.
One man conceives it as a combustible, another as a lubricator, another as
a food ; the chemist thinks of it as a hydrocarbon ; the furniture maker
as a darkener of wood ; the speculator as a commodity whose market-price
to-day is this and to-morrow that. The soap-boiler, the physicist, the
clothes- scourer severally ascribe to it other essences in relation to their
needs. Ueberweg s doctrine that the essential quality of a thing is the
336 PSYCHOLOGY.
conceptions for the same thing. But many objects of daily
use as paper, ink, butter, horse-car have properties of
such constant unwavering importance, and have such stereo
typed names, that we end by believing that to conceive
them in those ways is to conceive them in the only true
way. Those are no truer ways of conceiving them than any
others ; they are only more important ways, more fre
quently serviceable ways.*
quality of most worth is strictly true ; but Ueberweg has failed to note
that the worth is wholly relative to the temporary interests of the conceiver.
And, even, when his interest is distinctly denned in his own mind, the
discrimination of the quality in the object which has the closest connection
with it is a thing which no rules can teach. The only a priori advice that
can be given to a man embarking on life with a certain purpose is the
somewhat barren counsel : Be sure that in the circumstances that meet
you, you attend to the right ones for your purpose. To pick out the right
ones is the measure of the man. Millions/ says Hartmann, stare at the
phenomenon before a genialer Kopf pounces on the concept. The genius
is simply he to whom, when he opens his eyes upon the world, the right
characters are the prominent ones. The fool is he who, with the same
purposes as the genius, infallibly gets his attention tangled amid the
accidents."
* Only if one of our purposes were itself truer than another, could one
of our conceptions become the truer conception. To be a truer purpose,
however, our purpose must conform more to some absolute standard of
purpose in things to which our purposes ought to conform. This shows
that the whole doctrine of essential characters is intimately bound up
with a teleological view of the world. Materialism becomes self-contra
dictory when it denies teleology, and yet in the same breath calls atoms, etc.,
the essential facts. The world contains consciousness as well as atoms and
the one must be written down as just as essential as the other, in the ab
sence of any declared purpose regarding them on the creator s part, or in
the absence of any creator. As far as we ourselves go, the atoms are worth
more for purposes of deduction, the consciousness for purposes of inspira
tion. We may fairly write the Universe in either way, thus : ATOMS-
producing-consciousness ; or CoNSCiousNESS-produced- by-atoms. Atoms
alone, or consciousness alone, are precisely equal mutilations of the truth.
If, without believing in a God, I still continue to talk of what the world
essentially is, I am just as much entitled to define it as a place in which
my nose itches, or as a place where at a certain corner I can get a mess
of oysters for twenty cents, as to call it an evolving nebula differentiating
and integrating itself. It is hard to say which of the three abstractions is
the more rotten or miserable substitute for the world s concrete fulness
To conceive it merely as God s work would be a similar mutilation of
it, so long as we said not what God, or what kind of work. The only real
truth about the world, apart from particular purposes, is the total truth.
REASONING. 33?
So much for what is implied, when the reasoner con
ceives of the fact S before him as a case of which the essence
is to be M. One word now as to what is involved in M s
having properties, consequences, or implications, and we
can go back to the study of the reasoning process again.
WHAT IS INVOLVED IN GENERAL PROPOSITIONS.
M is not a concrete, or self-sufficient, as Mr. Clay
would say. It is an abstract character which may exist,
embedded with other characters, in many concretes. Whe
ther it be the character of being a writing surface, of being
made in America or China, of being eight inches square, or
of being in a certain part of space, this is always true of it.
Now we might conceive of this being a world in which all
such general characters were independent of each other, so
that if any one of them were found in a subject S, we never
could be sure what others would be found alongside of it.
On one occasion there might be P with M, on another Q,
and so on. In such a world there would be no general
sequences or coexistences, and no universal laws. Each
grouping would be sui generis ; from the experience of the
past no future could be predicted ; and reasoning, as we
shall presently see, would be an impossibility.
But the world we live in is not one of this sort. Though
many general characters seem indifferent to each other,
there remain a number of them which affect constant habits
of mutual concomitance or repugance. They involve or
imply each other. One of them is a sign to us that the
other will be found. They hunt in couples, as it were ; and
such a proposition as that M is P, or includes P, or precedes
or accompanies P, if it prove to be true in one instance,
may very likely be true in every other instance which we
meet. This is, in fact, a world in which general laws obtain,
in which universal propositions are true, and in which rea
soning is therefore possible. Fortunately for us : for since
we cannot handle things as wholes, but only by conceiving
them through some general character which for the time
we call their essence, it would be a great pity if the matter
ended there, and if the general character, once picked out
au/i in our possession, helped us to no farther advance. In
338 PSYCHOLOGY.
Chapter XXVIII we shall have again to consider this har
mony between our reasoning faculty and the world in which
its lot is cast*
To revert now to our symbolic representation of the
reasoning process :
MisP
SisM
SisP
M is discerned and picked out for the time being to be
the essence of the concrete fact, phenomenon, or reality, 8.
But M in this world of ours is inevitably conjoined with P ;
so that P is the next thing that we may expect to find con
joined with the fact S. We may conclude or infer P,
through the intermediation of the M which our sagacity
began by discerning, when S came before it, to be the
essence of the case.
Now note that if P have any value or importance for us,
M was a very good character for our sagacity to pounce upon
and abstract. If, on the contrary, P were of no importance,
some other character than M would have been a better
essence for us to conceive of 8 by. Psychologically, as a
rule, P overshadows the process from the start. We are
seeking P, or something like P. But the bare totality of 8
does not yield it to our gaze ; and casting about for some
point in 8 to take hold of, which will lead us to P, we hit,
if we are sagacious, upon M, because M happens to be just
the character which is knit up with P. Had we wished Q
instead of P, and were N a property of 8 conjoined with Q,
we ought to have ignored M, noticed N, and conceived of 8
as a sort of N exclusively.
^Reasoning is always for a subjective interest, to attain
some particular conclusion, or to gratify some special
curiosity. It not only breaks up the datum placed before
it and conceives it abstractly ; it must conceive it rightly
too ; and conceiving it rightly means conceiving it by that
one particular abstract character which leads to the one
* Compare Lotze, Metaphysik, 58, 67, for some instructive remarks
on ways in which the world s constitution might differ from what it actu
ally is. Compare also Chapter XXVIII.
REASONING. 339
sort of conclusion which it is the reasoner s temporary in
terest to attain.*
The results of reasoning may be hit upon by accident
The stereoscope was actually a result of reasoning; it is
conceivable, however, that a man playing with pictures and
mirrors might accidentally have hit upon it. Cats have been
known to open doors by pulling latches, etc. But no cat,
if the latch got out of order, could open the door again,
unless some new accident of random fumbling taught her
to associate some new total movement with the total phe
nomenon of the closed door. A reasoning man, however,
would open the door by first analyzing the hindrance. He
would ascertain what particular feature of the door was
wrong. The lever, e.g., does not raise the latch sufficiently
from its slot case of insufficient elevation r^ loor
bodily on hinges ! Or door sticks at top by friction * J;
lintel press it bodily down! Now it is obvious t..
child or an idiot might without this reasoning learn the /
for opening that particular door. I remember a clock whic
the maid-servant had discovered would not go unless it
were supported so as to tilt slightly forwards. She had
stumbled on this method after many weeks of groping. The
reason of the stoppage was the friction of the pendulum-
bob against the back of the clock-case, a reason which an
educated man would have analyzed out in five minutes. I
* Sometimes, it must be confessed, the conceiver s purpose falls short of
reasoning and the only conclusion he cares to reach is the bare naming of
the datum. " What is that?" is our first question relative to any unknown
thing. And the ease with which our curiosity is quenched as soon as we
are supplied with any sort of a name to call the object by, is ridiculous
enough. To quote from an unpublished essay by a former student of
mine, Mr. R. W. Black : " The simplest end which a thing s predicate can
serve is the satisfaction of the desire for unity itself, the mere desire that
the thing shall be the same with something else. Why, the other day,
when I mistook a portrait of Shakespeare for one of Hawthorne, was I not,
on psychological principles, as right as if I had correctly named it ? the
two pictures had a common essence, bald forehead, mustache, flowing
hair. Simply because the only end that could possibly be served by naming
it Hawthorne was my desire to have it so. With reference to any other end
that classification of it would not serve. And every unity, every identity,
ever) 1 classification is rightly called fanciful unless it serves some other end
than the mere satisfaction, emotion , or inspiration caught by momentarily
believing in it."
340 PSYCHOLOGY.
have a student s lamp of which the flame vibrates most un
pleasantly unless the collar which bears the chimney be
raised about a sixteenth of an inch. I learned the remedy
after much torment by accident, and now always keep the
collar up with a small wedge. But my procedure is a mere
association of two totals, diseased object and remedy. One
learned in pneumatics could have named the cause of the
disease, and thence inferred the remedy immediately. By
many measurements of triangles one might find their area
always equal to their height multiplied by half their base,
and one might formulate an empirical law to that effect.
But a reasoner saves himself all this trouble by seeing that
it is the essence (pro hoc vice) of a triangle to be the half of
a parallelogram whose area is the height into the entire
base. To see this he must invent additional lines ; and the
geometer must often draw such to get at the essential prop
erty he may require in a figure. The essence consists in
some relation of the figure to the new lines, a relation not ob
vious at all until they are put in. The geometer s sagacity
lies in the invention of the new lines.
THUS, THERE ABE TWO GREAT POINTS IN REASONING:
First, an extracted character is taken as equivalent to the
entire datum from which it comes ; and,
Second, the character thus taken suggests a certain conse
quence more obviously than it was suggested by the total datum
as it originally came. Take them again, successively.
1. Suppose I say, when offered a piece of cloth, " I won t
buy that; it looks as if it would fade," meaning merely
that something about it suggests the idea of fading to my
mind, my judgment, though possibly correct, is not rea
soned, but purely empirical ; but, if I can say that into the
color there enters a certain dye which I know to be chemi
cally unstable, and that therefore the color will fade, my judg
ment is reasoned. The notion of the dye which is one of the
parts of the cloth, is the connecting link between the latter
and the notion of fading. So, again, an uneducated man
will expect from past experience to see a piece of ice melt
if placed near the fire, and the tip of his finger look coarse
REASONING. 341
if he views it through a convex glass. In neither of these
cases could the result be anticipated without full previous
acquaintance with the entire phenomenon. It is not a
result of reasoning.
But a man who should conceive heat as a mode of
motion, and liquefaction as identical with increased motion
of molecules ; who should know that curved surfaces bend
light-rays in special ways, and that the apparent size of
anything is connected with the amount of the bend of its
light-rays as they enter the eye, such a man would make
the right inferences for all these objects, even though he
had never in his life had any concrete experience of them ;
and he would do this because the ideas which we have
above supposed him to possess would mediate in his mind
between the phenomena he starts with and the conclusions
he draws. But these ideas or reasons for his conclusions
are all mere extracted portions or circumstances singled
out from the mass of characters which make up the entire
phenomena. The motions which form heat, the bending
of the light-waves, are, it is true, excessively recondite
ingredients ; the hidden pendulum I spoke of above is less
so ; and the sticking of a door on its sill in the earlier ex
ample would hardly be so at all. But each and all agree
in this, that they bear a more evident relation to the con
clusion than did the immediate data in their full totality.
The difficulty is, in each case, to extract from the im
mediate data that particular ingredient which shall have
this very evident relation to the conclusion. Every phe
nomenon or so-called fact has an infinity of aspects or
properties, as we have seen, amongst which the fool, or
man with little sagacity, will inevitably go astray. But no
matter for this point now. The first thing is to have seen
that every possible case of reasoning involves the extrac
tion of a particular partial aspect of the phenomena thought
about, and that whilst Empirical Thought simply associates
phenomena in their entirety, Seasoned Thought couples
them by the conscious use of this extract.
2. And, now, to prove the second point : Why are the
couplings, consequences, and implications of extracts more
342 PSYCHOLOGY.
evident and obvious than those of entire phenomena ? For
two reasons.
First, the extracted characters are more general than
the concretes, and the connections they may have are,
therefore, more familiar to us, having been more often
met in our experience. Think of heat as motion, and what
ever is true of motion will be true of heat ; but we have had
a hundred experiences of motion for every one of heat.
Think of the rays passing through this lens as bending
towards the perpendicular, and you substitute for the com
paratively unfamiliar lens the very familiar notion of a par
ticular change in direction of a line, of which notion every
day brings us countless examples.
The other reason why the relations of the extracted
characters are so evident is that their properties are so
few, compared with the properties of the whole, from which
we derived them. In every concrete total the characters
and their consequences are so inexhaustibly numerous
that we may lose our way among them before noticing
the particular consequence it behooves us to draw. But,
if we are lucky enough to single out the proper character,
we take in, as it were, by a single glance all its possible
consequences. Thus the character of scraping the sill
has very few suggestions, prominent among which is the
suggestion that the scraping will cease if we raise the door ;
whilst the entire refractory door suggests an enormous num
ber of notions to the mind.
Take another example. I am sitting in a railroad-car,
waiting for the train to start. It is winter, and the stove
fills the car with pungent smoke. The brakeman enters,
and my neighbor asks him to " stop that stove smoking/*
He replies that it will stop entirely as soon as the car begins
to move. "Why so?" asks the passenger. "It always
does," replies the brakeman. It is evident from this
* always that the connection between car moving and
smoke stopping was a purely empirical one in the brake-
man s mind, bred of habit. But, if the passenger had been
an acute reasoner, he, with no experience of what that stove
always did, might have anticipated the brakeman s reply,
and spared his own question. Had he singled out of all the
REASONING. 343
numerous points involved in a stove s not smoking the one
special point of smoke pouring freely out of the stove-pipe s
mouth, he would, probably, owing to the few associations
of that idea, have been immediately reminded of the law
that a fluid passes more rapidly out of a pipe s mouth if
another fluid be at the same time streaming over that
mouth ; and then the rapid draught of air over the stove
pipe s mouth, which is one of the points involved in the
car s motion, would immediately have occurred to him.
Thus a couple of extracted characters, with a couple of
their few and obvious connections, would have formed the
reasoned link in the passenger s mind between the phenom
ena, smoke stopping and car moving, which were only linked
as wholes in the brakeman s mind. Such examples may seem
trivial, but they contain the essence of the most refined and
transcendental theorizing. The reason why physics grows
more deductive the more the fundamental properties it as
sumes are of a mathematical sort, such as molecular mass
or wave-length, is that the immediate consequences of these
notions are so few that we can survey them all at once, and
promptly pick out those which concern us.
Sagacity ; or the Perception of the Essence.
To reason, then, we must be able to extract characters,
not any characters, but the right characters for our conclu
sion. If we extract the wrong character, it will not lead to
that conclusion. Here, then, is the difficulty: How are
Characters extracted, and why does it require the advent of a
genius in many cases before the fitting character is brought to
light ? Why cannot anybody reason as well as anybody
else ? Why does it need a Newton to notice the law of the
squares, a Darwin to notice the survival of the fittest ? To
answer these questions we must begin a new research, and
gee how our insight into facts naturally grows.
All our knowledge at first is vague. W T hen we say that
a thing is vague, we mean that it has no subdivisions ab in-
tra, nor precise limitations ab extra ; but still all the forms
of thought may apply to it. It may have unity, reality, ex
ternality, extent, and what not thinghood, in a word, but
344 PSYCHOLOGY.
tliinghood only as a whole.* In tins vague way, probably,
does the room appear to the babe who first begins to be
conscious of it as something other than his moving nurse.
It has no subdivisions in his mind, unless, perhaps, the
window is able to attract his separate notice. In this vague
way, certainly, does every entirely new experience appear
to the adult. A library, a museum, a machine-shop, are
mere confused wholes to the uninstructed, but the machin
ist, the antiquary, and the bookworm perhaps hardly no
tice the whole at all, so eager are they to pounce upon the
details. Familiarity has in them bred discrimination.
Such vague terms as grass, mould, and meat do not
exist for the botanist or the anatomist. They know too
much about grasses, moulds, and muscles. A certain per
son said to Charles Kingsley, who was showing him the dis
section of a caterpillar, with its exquisite viscera, " Why, I
thought it was nothing but skin and squash !" A layman
present at a shipwreck, a battle, or a fire is helpless. Dis
crimination has been so little awakened in him by expe
rience that his consciousness leaves no single point of the
complex situation accented aud standing out for him to be
gin to act upon. But the sailor, the fireman, and the gen
eral know directly at what corner to take up the business.
They see into the situation that is, they analyze it with
their first glance. It is full of delicately differenced ingre
dients which their education has little by little brought to
their consciousness, but of which the novice gains no clear
idea.
How this power of analysis was brought about we saw
in our chapters on Discrimination and Attention. We dis
sociate the elements of originally vague totals by attending
to them or noticing them alternately, of course. But what
determines which element we shall attend to first ? There
are two immediate and obvious answers : first, our practical
or instinctive interests ; and, second, our aesthetic interests.
The dog singles out of any situation its smells, and the horse
its sounds, bcause they may reveal facts of practical mo
ment, and are instinctively exciting to these several crea-
* See above, p. 8.
REASONING. 345
tures. The infant notices the candle-flame or the window,
and ignores the rest of the room, because those objects give
him a vivid pleasure. So, the country boy dissociates the
blackberry, the chestnut, and the wintergreen, from the
vague mass of other shrubs and trees, for their practical
uses, and the savage is delighted with the beads, the bits of
looking-glass, brought by an exploring vessel, and gives no
heed to the features of the vessel itself, which is too much
beyond his sphere. These aesthetic and practical interests,
then, are the weightiest factors in making particular ingre
dients stand out in high relief. What they lay their accent
on, that we notice ; but what they are in themselves, we can
not say. We must content ourselves here with simply ac
cepting them as irreducible ultimate factors in determining
the way our knowledge grows.
Now, a creature which has few instinctive impulses, or
interests, practical or aesthetic, will dissociate few charac
ters, and will, at best, have limited reasoning powers ;
whilst one whose interests are very varied will reason much
better. Man, by his immensely varied instincts, practical
wants, and aesthetic feelings, to which every sense contrib
utes, would, by dint of these alone, be sure to dissociate
vastly more characters than any other animal ; and accord
ingly we find that the lowest savages reason incomparably
better than the highest brutes. The diverse interests lead,
too, to a diversification of experiences, whose accumulation
becomes a condition for the play of that law of dissociation
by varying concomitants of which I treated in a former chap
ter (see Vol I. p. 506).
The Help given by Association by Similarity.
It is probable, also, that man s superior association by
similarity has much to do with those discriminations of
character on which his higher flights of reasoning are based.
As this latter is an important matter, and as little or noth
ing was said of it in the chapter on Discrimination, it be
hooves me to dwell a little upon it here.
What does the reader do when he wishes to see in what
the precise likeness or difference of two objects lies ? He
346 PSYCHOLOGY.
transfers his attention as rapidly as possible, backwards
and forwards, from one to the other. The rapid alteration
in consciousness shakes out, as it were, the points of dif
ference or agreement, which would have slumbered forever
unnoticed if the consciousness of the objects compared had
occurred at widely distant periods of time. What does
the scientific man do who searches for the reason or law
embedded in a phenomenon ? He deliberately accumu
lates all the instances he can find which have any analogy
to that phenomenon ; and, by simultaneously filling his
mind with them all, he frequently succeeds in detaching
from the collection the peculiarity which he was unable
to formulate in one alone ; even though that one had been
preceded in his former experience by all of those with
which he now at once confronts it. These examples show
that the mere general fact of having occurred at some time
in one s experience, with varying concomitants, is not by
itself a sufficient reason for a character to be dissociated
now. We need something more ; we need that the varying
concomitants should in all their variety be brought into
consciousness at once. Not till then will the character in
question escape from its adhesion to each and all of them
and stand alone. This will immediately be recognized by
those who have read Mill s Logic as the ground of Utility
in his famous four methods of experimental inquiry, the
methods of agreement, of difference, of residues, and of
concomitant variations. Each of these gives a list of
analogous instances out of the midst of which a sought-for
character may roll and strike the mind.
Now it is obvious that any mind in which association by
similarity is highly developed is a mind which will spon
taneously form lists of instances like this. Take a present
case A, with a character ra in it. The mind may fail at first
to notice this character m at all. But if A calls up C, D,
E, and F, these being phenomena which resemble A in
possessing m, but which may not have entered for months
into the experience of the animal who now experiences A,
why, plainly, such association performs the part of the
reader s deliberately rapid comparison referred to above,
and of the systematic consideration of like cases by the
REASONING. 347
scientific investigator, and may lead to the noticing of m
in an abstract way. Certainly this is obvious ; and no
conclusion is left to us but to assert that, after the few
most powerful practical and aesthetic interests, our chief
help towards noticing those special characters of phenom
ena, which, when once possessed and named, are used as
reasons, class names, essences, or middle terms, is this
association by similarity. Without it, indeed, the deliberate
procedure of the scientific man would be impossible : he
could never collect his analogous instances. But it oper
ates of itself in highly-gifted minds without any delibera
tion, spontaneously collecting analogous instances, uniting
in a moment what in nature the whole breadth of space and
time keeps separate, and so permitting a perception of
identical points in the midst of different circumstances,
which minds governed wholly by the law of contiguity
could never begin to attain.
FIG. 80
Figure 80 shows this. If m, in the present representa
tion A, calls up B, C, D, and E, which are similar to A in
possessing it, and calls them up in rapid succession, then
m, being associated almost simultaneously with such vary
ing concomitants, will * roll out and attract our separate
notice.
348 PSYCHOLOGY.
If so much is clear to the reader, he will be willing to
iidmit that the mind in which this mode of association most
prevails will, from its better opportunity of extricating
characters, be the one most prone to reasoned thinking ;
whilst, on the other hand, a mind in which we do not
detect reasoned thinking will probably be one in which
association by contiguity holds almost exclusive sway.
Geniuses are, by common consent, considered to diffei
from ordinary minds by an unusual development of associa
iion by similarity. One of Professor Bain s best strokes ol
work is the exhibition of this truth.* It applies to geniuses
in the line of reasoning as well as in other lines. And as the
genius is to the vulgarian, so the vulgar human mind is to
the intelligence of a brute. Compared with men, it is
probable that brutes neither attend to abstract characters,
nor have associations by similarity. Their thoughts prob
ably pass from one concrete object to its habitual concrete
successor far more uniformly than is the case with us. In
other words, their associations of ideas are almost exclu
sively by contiguity. It will clear up still farther oui
understanding of the reasoning process, if we devote a few
pages to
THE INTELLECTUAL CONTRAST BETWEEN BRUTE AND MAN
I will first try to show, by taking the best stories I cai
find of animal sagacity, that the mental process involved
may as a rule be perfectly accounted for by mere contigu
ous association, based on experience. Mr. Darwin, in his
1 Descent of Man, instances the Arctic dogs, described by
Dr. Hayes, who scatter, when drawing a sledge, as soon a&
the ice begins to crack. This might be called by some aik
exercise of reason. The test would be, Would the most
intelligent Eskimo dogs that ever lived act so when placed
upon ice for the first time together ? A band of men from
the tropics might do so easily. Recognizing cracking to
be a sign of breaking, and seizing immediately the partial
character that the point of rupture is the point of greatest
*See his Study of Character, chap, xv ; also Senses and Intellect,
Intellect/ chap, n, the latter half.
REASONING. 349
Btrain, and that the massing of weight at a given point con
centrates there the strain, a Hindoo might quickly infer that
scattering would stop the cracking, and, by crying out to
his comrades to disperse, save the party from immersion.
But in the dog s case we need only suppose that they
have individually experienced wet skins after cracking, that
they have often noticed cracking to begin when they were
huddled, together, and that they have observed it to cease
when they scattered. Naturally, therefore, the sound would
redintegrate all these former experiences, including that of
scattering, which latter they would promptly renew. It
would be a case of immediate suggestion or of that Logic
of Recepts as Mr. Eomanes calls it, of which we spoke
above on p. 327.
A friend of the writer gave as a proof of the almost
human intelligence of his dog that he took him one day
down to his boat on the shore, but found the boat full of
dirt and water. He remembered that the sponge was up at
the house, a third of a mile distant ; but, disliking to go back
himself, he made various gestures of wiping out the boat
and so forth, saying to his terrier, " Sponge, sponge ; go
fetch the sponge." But he had little expectation of a result,
since the dog had never received the slightest training with
the boat or the sponge. Nevertheless, off he trotted to the
house, and, to his owner s great surprise and admiration,
brought the sponge in his jaws. Sagacious as this was, it
required nothing but ordinary contiguous association of
ideas. The terrier was only exceptional in the minuteness
of his spontaneous observation. Most terriers would have
taken no interest in the boat-cleaning operation, nor no
ticed what the sponge was for. This terrier, in having
picked those details out of the crude mass of his boat-expe
rience distinctly enough to be reminded of them, was truly
enough ahead of his peers on the line which leads to human
reason. But his act was not yet an act of reasoning proper.
It might fairly have been called so if, unable to find the
sponge at the house, he had brought back a dipper or a
mop instead. Such a substitution would have shown that,
embedded in the very different appearances of these articles,
he had been able to discriminate the identical partial attri-
350 PSYCHOLOGY.
bute of capacity to take up water, and had reflected, "For
the present purpose they are identical." This, which the
dog did not do, any man but the very stupidest could not
fail to do.
If the reader will take the trouble to analyze the best
dog and elephant storier \e knows, he will find that, m most
cases, this simple contiguous calling up of one whole by
another is quite sufficient to explain the phenomena.
Sometimes, it is true, we have to suppose the recognition of
a property or character as such, but it is then always a char
acter which the peculiar practical interests of the animal
may have singled out. A dog, noticing his master s hat on its
peg, may possibly infer that he has not gone out. Intelligent
dogs recognize by the tone of the master s voice whether
the latter is angry or not. A dog will perceive whether
you have kicked him by accident or by design, and behave
accordingly. The character inferred by him, the particular
mental state in you, however it be represented in his
mind it is represented probably by a recept (p. 327) or
set of practical tendencies, rather than by a definite con
cept or idea is still a partial character extracted from the
totality of your phenomenal being, and is his reason for
crouching and skulking, or playing with you. Dogs, more
over, seem to have the feeling of the value of their master s
personal property, or at least a particular interest in objects
which their master uses. A dog left with his master s coat
will defend it, though never taught to do so. I know of a
dog accustomed to swim after sticks in the water, but who
always refused to dive for stones. Nevertheless, when a fish-
basket, which he had never been trained to carry, but mere
ly knew as his master s, fell over, he immediately dived after
it and brought it up. Dogs thus discern, at any rate so far
as to be able to act, this partial character of being valuable^
which lies hidden in certain things.* Stories are told of
* Whether the dog has the notion of your being angry or of your prop
erty being valuable in any such abstract way as we have these notions is
more than doubtful. The conduct is more likely an impulsive result of a
conspiracy of outward stimuli ; the beast feels like acting so when these
stimuli are present, though conscious of no definite reason why. The
distinction of recept and concept is useful here. Some breeds of dogs,
REASONING. 351
(togs carrying coppers to pastry-cooks to get buns, and it ia
said that a certain dog, if lie gave two coppers, would never
e.g. collies, seem instinctively to defend their master s property. The case
is similar to that of a dog s barking at people after dark, at whom he would
not bark in daylight. I have heard this quoted as evidence of the dog a
reasoning power. It is only, as Chapter III has shown us, the impulsive
result of a summation of stimuli, and has no connection with reasoning.
In certain stages of the hypnotic trance the subject seems to lapse into
the non-analytic state. If a sheet of ruled foolscap paper, or a paper with
a fine monotonous ornamental pattern printed on it, be shown to the sub
ject, and one of the ruled lines or elements of the pattern be pointed to for
an instant, and the paper immediately removed, he will then almost always,
when after a short interval the paper is presented to him again, pick out the
indicated line or element with infallible correctness. The operator, mean-
while, has either to keep his eye fixed upon it, or to make sure of its posi
tion by counting, in order not to lose its place. Just so we may remember
a friend s house in a street by the single character of its number rather
than by its general look. The trance-subject would seem, in these instan
ces, to surrender himself to the general look. He disperses his attention
impartially over the sheet. The place of the particular lino touched is part
of a total effect which he gets in its entirety, and which would be distort
ed if another line were touched instead. This total effect is lost upon the
normal looker-on, bent as he is on concentration, analysis, and emphasis.
What wonder, then, that, under these experimental conditions, the trance-
subject excels him in touching the right line again ? If he has time given
him to count the line, he will excel the trance-subject ; but if the time be too
short to count, he will best succeed by following the trance-metho 1, ab
staining from analysis, and being guided by the general look of the line s
place on the sheet. One is surprised at one s success in this the moment one
gives up one s habitually analytic state of mind.
Is it too much to say that we have in this dispersion of the attention
and subjection to the general effect something like a relapse into the
state of mind of brutes? The trance-subject never gives any other reason
for his optical discriminations, save that it looks so. So a man, on a road
once traversed inattentively before, takes a certain turn for no reason ex
cept that he feels as if it must be right. He is guided by a sum of impres
sions, not one of which is emphatic or distinguished from the rest, not one
of which is essential, not one of which is conceived, but all of which
together drive him to a conclusion to which nothing but that sum- total
leads. Are not some of the wonderful discriminations of animals expli
cable in the same way ? The cow finds her own stanchions in the long
stable, the horse stops at the house he has once stopped at in the monoto
nous street, because no other stanchions, no other house, yield impartially all
the impressions of the previous experience. The man, however, by seek
ing to make some one impression characteristic and essential, prevents the
rest from having their effect. So that, if the (for him) essential feature be
forgotten or changed, he is too apt to be thrown off altogether, and then
the brute or the trance-subject may seem to outstrip him in sagacity.
Dr. Romanes s already quoted distinction between receptual and
552 PSYCHOLOGY.
leave without two buns. This was probably mere con
tiguous association, but it is possible that the animal noticed
the character of duality, and identified it as the same
in the coin and the cake. If so, it is the maximum of
canine abstract thinking. Another story told to the writer
is this : a dog was sent to a lumber-camp to fetch a wedge,
with which he was known to be acquainted. After half an
hour, not returning, he was sought and found biting and
tugging at the handle of an axe which was driven deeply
into a stump. The wedge could not be found. The teller
of the story thought that the dog must have had a clear
perception of the common character of serving to split
which was involved in both the instruments, and, from their
identity in this respect, inferred their identity for the pur
poses required.
It cannot be denied that this interpretation is a possible
one, but it seems to me far to transcend the limits of ordi
nary canine abstraction. The property in question was not
one which had direct personal interest for the dog, such
as that of belonging to his master is in the case of the
coat or the basket. If the dog in the sponge story had re
turned to the boat with a dipper it would have been no
more remarkable. It seems more probable, therefore, that
this wood-cutter s dog had also been accustomed to carry
the axe, and now, excited by the vain hunt for the wedge,
had discharged his carrying powers upon the former instru
ment in a sort of confusion just as a man may pick up a
sieve to carry water in, in the excitement of putting out a
fire.*
conceptual thought (published since the body of my text and my note
were written) connotes conveniently the difference which I seek to point
out. See also his Mental Evolution in Man, p. 197 ff., for proofs of the
fact that in a receptual way brutes cognize the mental states of other brutes
and men.
* This matter of confusion is important and interesting. Since confu
sion is mistaking the wrong part of the phenomenon for the whole, whilst
reasoning is, according to our definition, based on the substitution of the
right part for the whole, it might be said that confusion and reasoning
are generically the same process. I believe that they are so, and that the
only difference between a muddle-head and a genius is that between ex
tracting wrong characters and right ones. In other words, a muddle-head-
REASONING. 353
Thus, then, the characters extracted by animals are
rery few, and always related to their immediate interests
or emotions. That dissociation by varying concomitants,
which in man is based so largely on association by similarity,
hardly seems to take place at all in the mind of brutes.
One total thought suggests to them another total thought,
and they find themselves acting with propriety, they know
not why. The great, the fundamental, defect of their minds
seems to be the inability of their groups of ideas to break
across in unaccustomed places. They are enslaved to
routine, to cut-and-dried thinking ; and if the most prosaic
of human beings could be transported into his dog s mind,
he would be appalled at the utter absence of fancy which
reigns there.* Thoughts will not be found to call up their
similars, but only their habitual successors. Sunsets will
not suggest heroes deaths, but supper-time. This is why
man is the only metaphysical animal. To wonder why the
universe should be as it is presupposes the notion of its being
different, and a brute, which never reduces the actual to
fluidity by breaking up its literal sequences in his imagina
tion, can never form such a notion. He takes the world
simply for granted, and never wonders at it at all.
Professor Striimpell quotes a dog-story which is prob
ably a type of many others. The feat performed looks like
abstract reasoning; but an acquaintance with all the cir
cumstances shows it to have been a random trick learned
by habit. The story is as follows :
44 1 have two dogs, a small, long-legged pet dog and a rather large
watch-dog. Immediately beyond the house-court is the garden, into
which one enters through a low lattice-gate which is closed by a latch
ed person is a genius spoiled in the making. I think it will be admitted
that all eminently muddle-headed persons have the temperament of genius.
They are constantly breaking away from the usual consecutions of con
cretes. A common associator by contiguity is too closely tied to routine to
get muddle-headed.
- The horse is a densely stupid animal, as far as everything goes except
contiguous association. We reckon him intelligent, partly because he
looks so handsome, partly because he has such a wonderful faculty of
contiguous association and can be so quickly moulded into a mass of set
habits. Had he anything of reasoning intelligence, he would be a less
faithful slave than he is.
354 PSYCHOLOGY.
^n the yard-side. This latch is opened by lifting it. Besides this,
moreover, the gate is fastened on the garden-side by a string nailed to
the gate-post Here, as often as one wished, could the following sight
be observed. If the little dog was shut in the garden and he wished to
get out, he placed himself before the gate and barked. Immediately
the large dog in the court would hasten to him and raise the latch with
his nose while the little dog on the garden-side leaped up and, catching
the string in his teeth, bit it through ; whereupon the big one wedged
his snout between the gate and the post, pushed the gate open, and the
little dog slipped through. Certainly reasoning seems here to prevail.
In face of it, however, and although the dogs arrived of themselves, and
without human aid, at their solution of the gate question, I am able to
point out that the complete action was pieced together out of accidental
experiences which the dogs followed, I might say, unconsciously. While
the large dog was young, he was allowed, like the little one, to go into
the garden, and therefore the gate was usually not latched, but simply
closed. Now if he saw anyone go in, he would follow by thrusting his
snout between gate and post, and so pushing the gate open. When he
was grown I forbade his being taken in, and had the gate kept latched.
But he naturally still tried to follow when anyone entered and tried m
the old fashion to open it, which he could no longer do. Now it fell
out that once, while making the attempt, he raised his nose higher than
usual and hit the latch from below so as to lift it off its hook, and the
gate unclosed. From thenceforth he made the same movement of the
head when trying to open it, and, of course, with the same result. He
now knew how to open the gate when it was latched.
The little dog had been the large one s teacher in many things,
especially in the chasing of cats and the catching of mice and moles; so
when the little one was heard barking eagerly, the other always has
tened to him. If the barking came from the garden, he opened the gate
to get inside. But meanwhile the little dog, who wanted to get out the
moment the gate opened, slipped out between the big one s legs, and so
the appearance of his having come with the intention of letting him out
arose. And that it was simply an appearance transpired from the fact
that when the little dog did not succeed at once in getting out, the large
one ran in and nosed about the garden, plainly showing that he had ex
pected to find something there. In order to stop this opening of the
gate I fastened a string on the garden-side which, tightly drawn, held
the gate firm against the post, so that if the yard dog raised the latch
and let go, it would every time fall back on to the hook. And this
device was successful for quite a time, until it happened one day that
on my return from a walk upon which the little dog had accompanied
me I crossed the garden, and in passing through the gate the dog re
mained behind, and refused to come to my whistle. As it was begin
ning to rain, and I knew how he disliked to get wet, I closed the gate
in order to punish him in this manner. But I had hardly reached the
house ere he was before the gate, whining and crying most piteously,
REASONING. 355
for the rain was falling faster and faster. The big dog, to whom the
rain was a matter of perfect indifference, was instantly on hand and
tried his utmost to open the gate, but naturally without success. Al
most in despair the little dog bit at the gate, at the same time springing
into the air in the attempt to jump over it, when he chanced to catch
the string in his teeth ; it broke, and the gate flew open. Now he
knew the secret and thenceforth bit the string whenever he wished to
get out, so that I was obliged to change it.
" That the big dog in raising the latch did not in the least know that
the latch closed the gate, that the raising of the same opened it, but that
he merely repeated the automatic blow with his snout which had once
had such happy consequences, transpires from the following : the gate
leading to the barn is fastened with a latch precisely like the one on
the garden-gate, only placed a little higher, still easily within the dog s
reach. Here, too, occasionally the little dog is confined, and when he
barks the big one makes every possible effort to open the gate, but it
has never occurred to him to push the latch up. The brute cannot
draw conclusions, that is, he cannot think. " *
Other classical differentia of man besides that of being
the only reasoning animal, also seem consequences of his
unrivalled powers of similar association. He has, e.g., been
called the laughing animal. But humor has often been
defined as the recognition of identities in things different.
When the man in Coriolanus says of that hero that " there
is no more mercy in him than there is milk in a male tiger, *
both the invention of the phrase and its enjoyment by the
hearer depend on a peculiarly perplexing power to associ
ate ideas by similarity.
Man is known again as the talking animal ; and lan-
* Th Schumann : Journal Daheim, No. 19, 1878. Quoted by Strum-
pel] ;: Die Geisteskrafte der Menschen verglichen mit denen der Thiere
(Leipzig, 1878), p. 39. Cats are notorious for the skill with which they will
open latches, locks, etc. Their feats are usually ascribed to their reason-
ing powers. But Dr. Romanes well remarks (Mental Evolution, etc., p.
351, note) that we ought first to be sure that the actions are not due to mere
nssociation. A cat is constantly playing with things with her paws ; a trick
accidentally hit upon may be retained. Romanes notes the fact that the
animals most skilled in this way need not be the most generally intelligent,
but those which have the best corporeal members for handling things
cat s paws, horse s lips, elephant s trunk, cow s horns. The monkey has
3th the corporeal and the intellectual superiority. And my deprecatory
remarks on animal reasoning in the text apply far less to the quadrumana
than to quadrupeds. -On the possible fallacies in interpreting animals
minds, compare C. L. Morgan in Mind, xi. 174 (1886)
356 PSYCHOLOGY.
guage is assuredly a capital distinction between man and
brute. But it may readily be shown how this distinction
merely flows from those we have pointed out, easy disso
ciation of a representation into its ingredients, and associa
tion by similarity.
Language is a system of signs, different from the things
signified, but able to suggest them.
No doubt brutes have a number of such signs. When
a dog yelps in front of a door, and his master, understand
ing his desire, opens it, the dog may, after a certain number
of repetitions, get to repeat in cold blood a yelp which was
at first the involuntary interjectional expression of strong
emotion. The same dog may be taught to beg for food,
and afterwards come to do so deliberately when hungry.
The dog also learns to understand the signs of men, and
the word rat uttered to a terrier suggests exciting
thoughts of the rat-hunt. If the dog had the varied im
pulse to vocal utterance which some other animals have,
he would probably repeat the word rat whenever he
spontaneously happened to think of a rat-hunt he no
doubt does have it as an auditory image, just as a parrot
calls out different words spontaneously from its repertory,
and having learned the name of a given dog will utter it on
the sight of a different dog. In each of these separate cases
the particular sign may be consciously noticed by the ani
mal, as distinct from the particular thing signified, and will
thus, so far as it goes, be a true manifestation of language.
But when we come to man we find a great difference. He
has a deliberate intention to apply a sign to everything. The
linguistic impulse is with him generalized and systematic.
For things hitherto unnoticed or unfelt, he desires a sign
before he has one. Even though the dog should possess
his yelp for this thing, his beg for that, and his audi
tory image rat for a third thing, the matter with him rests
there. If a fourth thing interests him for which no sign
happens already to have been learned, he remains tran
quilly without it and goes no further. But the man postu
lates it, its absence irritates him, and he ends by inventing
it This GENERAL PUHPOSE constitutes, I take it, the peculiarity
of human speech, and explains its prodigious development.
REASONING. 357
How, then, does the general purpose arise ? It arises
as soon as the notion of a sign as such, apart from any par
ticular import, is born ; and this notion is born by dis
sociation from the outstanding portions of a number of
concrete cases of signification. The yelp, the beg, the
* rat, differ as to their several imports and natures. They
agree only in so far as they have the same use to be signs,
to stand for something more important than themselves.
The dog whom this similarity could strike would have
grasped the sign per se as such, and would probably
thereupon become a general sign-maker, or speaker in
the human sense. But how can the similarity strike
him? Not without the juxtaposition of the similars (in
virtue of the law we have laid down (p. 506), that in order
to be segregated an experience must be repeated with
varying concomitants) not unless the yelp of the dog
at the moment it occurs recalls to him his beg, by the
delicate bond of their subtle similarity of use not till
then can this thought flash through his mind : " Why, yelp
and beg, in spite of all their unlikeness, are yet alike in
this : that they are actions, signs, which lead to important
boons. Other boons, any boons, may then be got by other
signs !" This reflection made, the gulf is passed. Animals
probably never make it, because the bond of similarity is
not delicate enough. Each sign is drowned in its import,
and never awakens other signs and other imports in jux
taposition. The rat-hunt idea is too absorbingly interest
ing in itself to be interrupted by anything so uncontiguoua
to it as the idea of the beg for food, or of the door-open
yelp, nor in their turn do these awaken the rat-hunt idea.
In the human child, however, these ruptures of contigu
ous association are very soon made ; far off cases of sign-
using arise when we make a sign now ; and soon language
is launched. The child in each case makes the discovery
for himself. No one can help him except by furnishing
him with the conditions. But as he is constituted, the con
ditions will sooner or later shoot together .into the result*
* There are two other conditions of language in the human being, addi
tional to association by similarity, that assist its action, or rather pave the
way for it. These are: first, the great natural loquacity; and, second, the
358 PSYCHOLOGY.
The exceedingly interesting account which Dr. Howe
gives of the education of his various blind-deaf mutes illus
trates this point admirably. He began to teach Laura
Bridgman by gumming raised letters on various familiar
articles. The child was taught by mere contiguity to pick
out a certain number of particular articles when made to
feel the letters. But this was merely a collection of par
ticular signs, out of the mass of which the general purpose
of signification had not yet been extracted by the child s
mind. Dr. Howe compares his situation at this moment to
that of one lowering a line to the bottom of the deep sea in
which Laura s soul lay, and waiting until she should spon
taneously take hold of it and be raised into the light. The
moment came, accompanied by a radiant flash of intelli
gence and glow of joy ; she seemed suddenly to become
aware of the general purpose imbedded in the different de
tails of all these signs, and from that moment her education
went on with extreme rapidity.
Another of the great capacities in which man has been
said to differ fundamentally from the animal is that of pos-
great imitativeness of man. The first produces the original reflex inter-
jectioual sign; the second (as Bleek has well shown) fixes it, stamps it, and
ends by multiplying the number of determinate specific signs which are a
requisite preliminary to the general conscious purpose of sign-making,
which I have called the characteristic human element in language. The
way in which imitativeness fixes the meaning of signs is this: When a pri
meval man has a given emotion, he utters his natural interjection; or when
(to avoid supposing that the reflex sounds are exceedingly determinate by
nature) a group of such men experience a common emotion, and one takes
the lead in the cry, the others cry like him from sympathy or imitative-
ness. Now, let one of the group hear another, who is in presence of the
experience, utter the cry; he, even without the experience, will repeat the
cry from pure imitativeness. But, as he repeats the sign, he will be re
minded by it of his own former experience. Thus, first, he has the sign
with the emotion; then, without it; then, with it again. It is " dissociated
by change of concomitants "; he feels it as a separate entity and yet as hav
ing a connection with the emotion. Immediately it becomes possible for
him to couple it deliberately with the emotion, in cases where the latter
would either have provoked no interjectional cry or not the same one. In
a word, his mental procedure tends to fix this cry on that emotion; and
when this occurs, in many instances, he is provided with a stock of signs,
like the yelp, beg, rat of the dog, each of -which suggests a determinate
image. On this stock, then, similarity works in the way above explained.
REASONING. 359
sessing self-consciousness or reflective knowledge of him
self as a thinker. But this capacity also flows from our
criterion, for (without going into the matter very deeply)
we may say that the brute never reflects on himself as a
thinker, because he has never clearly dissociated, in the
full concrete act of thought, the element of the thing
thought of and the operation by which he thinks it. They
remain always fused, conglomerated just as the interjec-
tional vocal sign of the brute almost invariably merges in
his mind with the thing signified, and is not independently
attended to in se*
Now, the dissociation of these two elements probably
occurs first in thb child s mind on the occasion of some
error or false expectation which would make him experience
the shock of difference between merely imagining a thing
and getting it. The thought experienced once with the
concomitant reality, and then without it or with opposite
concomitants, reminds the child of other cases in which the
same provoking phenomenon occurred. Thus the general
ingredient of error may be dissociated and noticed per se,
and from the notion of his error or wrong thought to that of
his thought in general the transition is easy. The brute, no
doubt, has plenty of instances of error and disappointment
in his life, but the similar shock is in him most likely al
ways swallowed up in the accidents of the actual case. An
expectation disappointed may breed dubiety as to the reali
zation of that particular thing when the dog next expects
it. But that disappointment, that dubiety, while they are
present in the mind, will not call up other cases, in which
the material details were different, but this feature of pos-
* See the Evolution of Self-consciousness in Philosophical Discus
sions, by Chauncey Wright (New York: Henry Holt & Co. , 1877). Dr. Ro,
manes, in the book from which I have already quoted, seeks to show that
the consciousness of truth as truth and the deliberate intention to predi
cate (which are the characteristics of higher human reasoning) presuppose
a consciousness of ideas as such, as things distinct from their objects ; and
that this consciousness depends on our having made signs for them by
language. My text seems to me to include Dr. Romanes s facts, and formu
lates them in what to me is a more elementary way, though the reader who
wishes to understand the matter better should go to his clear and patient
exposition also.
360 PSYCHOLOGY.
sible error was the same. The brute will, therefore, stop
short of dissociating the general notion of error per se, and
a fortiori will never attain the conception of Thought itself
as such.
We may then, we think, consider it proven that the most
elementary single difference between the human mind and that of
brutes lies in this deficiency on the brute s part to associate ideas
by similarity characters, the abstraction of which depends
on this sort of association, must in the brute always remain
drowned, swamped in the total phenomenon which they
help constitute, and never used to reason from. If a char
acter stands out alone, it is always some obvious sensible
quality like a sound or a smell which is instinctively excit
ing and lies in the line of the animal s propensities ; or it
is some obvious sign which experience has habitually
coupled with a consequence, such as, for the dog, the sight
of his master s hat on and the master s going out.
DIFFERENT ORDERS OF HUMAN GENIUS.
But, now, since nature never makes a jump, it is evident
that we should find the lowest men occupying in this respect
an intermediate position between the brutes and the highest
men. And so we do. Beyond the analogies which their own
minds suggest by breaking up the literal sequence of their
experience, there is a whole world of analogies which they
can appreciate when imparted to them by their betters, but
which they could never excogitate alone. This answers
the question why Darwin and Newton had to be waited for
so long. The flash of similarity between an apple and the
moon, between the rivalry for food in nature and the rivalry
for man s selection, was too recondite to have occurred to any
but exceptional minds. Genius, then, as has been already
said, is identical with the possession of similar association
to an extreme degree. Professor Bain says : " This I count
the leading fact of genius. I consider it quite impossible
to afford any explanation of intellectual originality except
on the supposition of unusual energy on this point." Alike
in the arts, in literature, in practical affairs, and in science,
association by similarity is the prime condition of success.
REASONING. 361
But as, according to our view, there are two stages in
reasoned thought, one where similarity merely operates to
call up cognate thoughts, and another farther stage, where
the^ bond of identity between the cognate thoughts is
noticed; so minds of genius may be divided into tivo main
sorts, those ivho notice the bond and those who merely obey it.
The first are the abstract reasoners, properly so called,
the men of science, and philosophers the analysts, in
a word ; the latter are the poets, the critics the artists,
in a ^ word, the men of intuitions. These judge rightly,
classify cases, characterize them by the most striking ana
logic epithets, but go no further. At first sight it might
seem that the analytic mind represented simply a higher
intellectual stage, and that the intuitive mind represented
an arrested stage of intellectual development ; but the dif
ference is not so simple as this. Professor Bain has said
that a man s advance to the scientific stage (the stage of
noticing and abstracting the bond of similarity) may often
be due to an absence of certain emotional sensibilities. The
sense of color, he says, may no less determine a mind away
from science than it determines it toward painting. There
must be a penury in one s interest in the details of particu
lar forms in order to permit the forces of the intellect to
be concentrated on what is common to many forms.* In
other words, supposing a mind fertile in the suggestion of
analogies, but, at the same time, keenly interested in the
particulars of each suggested image, that mind would be
far less apt to single out the particular character which
called up the analogy than one whose interests were less
generally lively. A certain richness of the sesthetic nature
may, therefore, easily keep one in the intuitive stage. All
the poets are examples of this. Take Homer :
" Ulysses, too, spied round the house to see if any man were still
alive and hiding, trying to get away from gloomy death. He found
hem all fallen in the blood and dirt, and in such number as the fish
the fishermen to the low shore, out of the foaming sea drag
with their meshy nets. These all, sick for the ocean water, are strewn
around the sands, while the blazing sun takes their life from them So
the suitors lay strewn round on one another." Or again :
* Study of Character, p. 317.
362 PSYCHOLOGY.
"And as when a Mseonian or a Carian woman stains ivory with
purple to be a cheek-piece for horses, and it is kept in the chamber, and
many horsemen have prayed to bear it off ; but it is kept a treasure for
a king, both a trapping for his horse and a glory to the driver in such
wise were thy stout thighs, Menelaos, and legs and fair ankles stained
with blood."*
A man in whom all the accidents of an analogy rise up
as vividly as this, may be excused for not attending to the
ground of the analogy. But he need not on that account
be deemed intellectually the inferior of a man of drier mind,
in whom the ground is not as liable to be eclipsed by the
general splendor. Karely are both sorts of intellect, the
splendid and the analytic, found in conjunction, Plato
among philosophers, and M. Taine, who cannot quote a
child s saying without describing the voix chantante,
etonnee, heureuse in which it is uttered, are only excep
tions whose strangeness proves the rule.
An often-quoted writer has said that Shakespeare pos
sessed more intellectual power than any one else that ever
lived. If by this he meant the power to pass from given
premises to right or congruous conclusions, it is no doubt
true. The abrupt transitions in Shakespeare s thought
astonish the reader by their unexpectedness no less than
they delight him by their fitness. Why, for instance, does
the death of Othello so stir the spectator s blood and leave
him with a sense of reconcilement? Shakespeare himself
could very likely not say why ; for his invention, though
rational, was not ratiocinative. Wishing the curtain to fall
upon a reinstated Othello, that speech about the turbaned
Turk suddenly simply flashed across him as the right end of
all that went before. The dry critic who comes after can,
however, point out the subtle bonds of identity that guided
Shakespeare s pen through that speech to the death of the
Moor. Othello is sunk in ignominy, lapsed from his
height at the beginning of the play. What better way
to rescue him at last from this abasement than to make
him for an instant identify himself in memory with the old
Othello of better days, and then execute justice on his pres
ent disowned body, as he used then to smite all enemies of
* Translated by my colleague, Professor G. H. Palmer.
REASONING. 363
the State ? But Shakespeare, whose mind supplied these
means, could probably not have told why they were so
effective.
But though this is true, and though it would be absurd
in an absolute way to say that a given analytic mind was
superior to any intuitional one, yet it is none the less true
that the former represents the higher stage. Men, taken
historically, reason by analogy long before they have learned
to reason by abstract characters. Association by similarity
and true reasoning may have identical results. If a philos
opher wishes to prove to you why you should do a certain
thing, he may do so by using abstract considerations exclu
sively ; a savage will prove the same by reminding you of a
similar case in which you notoriously do as he now pro
poses, and this with no ability to state the point in which
the cases are similar. In all primitive literature, in all
savage oratory, we find persuasion carried on exclusively
by parables and similes, and travellers in savage countries
readily adopt the native custom. Take, for example, Dr.
Livingstone s argument with the negro conjuror. The mis
sionary was trying to dissuade the savage from his fetichistic
ways of invoking rain. "You see," said he, "that, after all
your operations, sometimes it rains and sometimes it does
not, exactly as when you have not operated at all." " But,"
replied the sorcerer, "it is just the same with you doctors;
you give your remedies, and sometimes the patient gets well
and sometimes he dies, just as when you do nothing at all."
To that the pious missionary replied : " The doctor does his
duty, after which God performs the cure if it pleases Him."
" Well," rejoined the savage, " it is just so with me. I do
what is necessary to procure rain, after which God sends it
or withholds it according to His pleasure." *
This is the stage in which proverbial philosophy reigns
supreme. " An empty sack can t stand straight" will stand
for the reason why a man with debts may lose his honesty ;
and " a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" will serve
to back up one s exhortations to prudence. Or we answer
the question : " Why is snow white ?" by saying, " For the
* Quoted by Renouvier, Critique Philosophique, October 19, 1879.
364 PSYCHOLOGY.
same reason that soap-suds or whipped eggs are white"-
in other words, instead of giving the reason for a fact, we
give another example of the same fact. This offering a simi
lar instance, instead of a reason, has often been criticised
as one of the forms of logical depravity in men. But mani
festly it is not a perverse act of thought, but only an in
complete one. Furnishing parallel cases is the necessary
first step towards abstracting the reason imbedded in
them all.
As it is with reasons, so it is with words. The first
words are probably always names of entire things and en
tire actions, of extensive coherent groups. A new experi
ence in the primitive man can only be talked about by
him in terms of the old experiences which have received
names. It reminds him of certain ones from among them,
but the points in which it agrees with them are neither
named nor dissociated. Pure similarity must work before
the abstraction can work which is based upon it. The first
adjectives will therefore probably be total nouns embody
ing the striking character. The primeval man will say,,
not the bread is hard, but the bread is stone ; not
the face is round, but * the face is moon ; not the
fruit is sweet, but the fruit is sugar-cane. The first
words are thus neither particular nor general, but vaguely
concrete ; just as we speak of an oval face, a velvet
skin, or an iron will, without meaning to connote any
other attributes of the adjective-noun than those in which
it does resemble the noun it is used to qualify. After
a while certain of these adjectively-used nouns come only
to signify the particular quality for whose sake they are
oftenest used ; the entire thing which they originally meant
receives another name, and they become true abstract
and general terms. Oval, for example, with us suggests
only shape. The first abstract qualities thus formed are,
no doubt, qualities of one and the same sense found in
different objects as big, sweet ; next analogies between
different senses, as sharp of taste, high of sound, etc. ;
then analogies of motor combinations, or form ot relation,
as simple, confused, difficult, reciprocal, relative, spontane
ous, etc. The extreme degree of subtlety in analogy is
REASONING. 365
reached in such cases as when we say certain English art
critics writing reminds us of a close room in which pastilles
have been burning, or that the mind of certain Frenchmen
is like old Roquefort cheese. Here language utterly fails
to hit upon the basis of resemblance.
Over immense departments of our thought we are still,
all of us, in the savage state. Similarity operates in us, but
abstraction has not taken place. We know what the pres
ent case is like, we know what it reminds us of, we have an
intuition of the right course to take, if it be a practical mat
ter. But analytic thought has made no tracks, and we can
not justify ourselves to others. In ethical, psychological,
and aesthetic matters, to give a clear reason for one s judg
ment is universally recognized as a mark of rare genius.
The helplessness of uneducated people to account for their
likes and dislikes is often ludicrous. Ask the first Irish
girl why she likes this country better or worse than her
home, and see how much she can tell you. But if you ask
your most educated friend why he prefers Titian to Paul
Veronese, you will hardly get more of a reply ; and you will
probably get absolutely none if you inquire why Beethoven
reminds him of Michael Angelo, or how it comes that a
bare figure with unduly flexed joints, by the latter, can so
suggest the moral tragedy of life. His thought obeys a
nexus, but cannot name it. And so it is with all those judg
ments of experts, which even though unmotived are so valu
able. Saturated with experience of a particular class of
materials, an expert intuitively feels whether a newly-re
ported fact is probable or not, whether a proposed hypoth
esis is worthless or the reverse. He instinctively knows
that, in. a novel case, this and not that will be the promising
course of action. The well-known story of the old judge
advising the new one never to give reasons for his decisions,
" the decisions will probably be right, the reasons will surely
be wrong," illustrates this. The doctor will feel that the
patient is doomed, the dentist will have a premonition that
the tooth will break, though neither can articulate a reason
for his foreboding. The reason lies imbedded, but not yet
laid bare, in all the countless previous cases dimly sug
gested by the actual one, all calling up the same conclusion,
366 PSYCHOLOGY.
which the adept thus finds himself swept on to, he knows
not how or why.
A physiological conclusion remains to be drawn. If the
principles laid down in Chapter XIV are true, then it fol
lows that the great cerebral difference between habitual and
reasoned thinking must be this : that in the former an entire
system of cells vibrating at any one moment discharges in
its totality into another entire system, and that the order
of the discharges tends to be a constant one in time ; whilst
in the latter a part of the prior system still keeps vibrating
in the midst of the subsequent system, and the order
which part this shall be, and what shall be its concomitants
in the. subsequent system has little tendency to fixedness
in time. This physical selection, so to call it, of one part
to vibrate persistently whilst the others rise and subside,
we found, in the chapter in question, to be the basis of
similar association. (See especially pp. 578-81.) It would
seem to be but a minor degree of that still more urgent
and importunate localized vibration which we can easiest
conceive to underlie the mental fact of interest, attention,
or dissociation. In terms of the brain-process, then, all
these mental facts resolve themselves into a single peculi
arity: that of indeterminateness of connection between
the different tracts, and tendency of action to focalize
itself, so to speak, in small localities which vary infinitely
at different times, and from which irradiation may pro
ceed in countless shifting ways. (Compare figure 80, p.
347.) To discover, or (what more befits the present stage
of nerve-physiology) to adumbrate by some possible guess,
on what chemical or molecular-mechanical fact this instable
equilibrium of the human brain may depend, should be the
next task of the physiologist who ponders over the passage
from brute to man. Whatever the physical peculiarity in
question may be, it is the cause why a man, whose brain
has it, reasons so much, whilst his horse, whose brain lacks
it, reasons so little. We can but bequeath the problem to
abler hands than our own.
But, meanwhile, this mode of stating the matter suggests
a couple of other inferences. The first is brief. If focali-
REASONING. 36?
zation of brain-activity be the fundamental fact of reasonable
thought, we see why intense interest or concentrated pas
sion makes us think so much more truly and profoundly.
The persistent focalization of motion in certain tracts is the
cerebral fact corresponding to the persistent domination in
consciousness of the important feature of the subject.
When not focalized, we are scatter-brained; but when
thoroughly impassioned, we never wander from the point
None but congruous and relevant images arise. When
roused by indignation or moral enthusiasm, how trenchant
are our reflections, how smiting are our words ! The whole
network of petty scruples and by-considerations which, at
ordinary languid times, surrounded the matter like a cob
web, holding back our thought, as Gulliver was pinned to
the earth by the myriad Lilliputian threads, are dashed
through at a blow, and the subject stands with its essential
and vital lines revealed.
The last point is relative to the theory that what was
acquired habit in the ancestor may become congenital ten
dency in the offspring. So vast a superstructure is raised
upon this principle that the paucity of empirical evidence
for it has alike been matter of regret to its adherents, and
of triumph to its opponents. In Chapter XXVIII we shall
see what we may call the whole beggarly array of proof.
In the human race, where our opportunities for observation
are the most complete, we seem to have no evidence what
ever which would support the hypothesis, unless it possibly
be the law that city-bred children are more apt to be
near-sighted than country children. In the mental world
we certainly do not observe that the children of great
travellers get their geography lessons with unusual ease,
or that a baby whose ancestors have spoken German for
thirty generations will, on that account, learn Italian any
the less easily from its Italian nurse. But if the con
siderations we have been led to are true, they explain
perfectly well why this law should not be verified in the
human race, and why, therefore, in looking for evidence
on the subject, we should confine ourselves exclusively to
lower animals. In them fixed habit is the essential and
368 PSYCHOLOGY.
characteristic law of nervous action. The brain grows to
the exact modes in which it has been exercised, and the in
heritance of these modes then called instincts would
have in it nothing surprising. But in man the negation of
all fixed modes is the essential characteristic. He owes his
whole pre-eminence as a reasoner, his whole human quality
of intellect, we may say, to the facility with which a given
mode of thought in him may suddenly be broken up into
elements, which recombine anew. Only at the price of in
heriting no settled instinctive tendencies is he able to settle
every novel case by the fresh discovery by his reason of
novel principles. He is, par excellence, the educable animal.
If, then, the law that habits are inherited were found exem
plified in him, he would, in so far forth, fall short of his
human perfections ; and, when we survey the human races,
we actually do find that those which are most instinctive at
the outset are those which, on the whole, are least educated
in the end. An untutored Italian is, to a great extent, a
man of the world ; he has instinctive perceptions, tendencies
to behavior, reactions, in a word, upon his environment,
which the untutored German wholly lacks. If the latter be
not drilled, he is apt to be a thoroughly loutish personage ;
but, on the other hand, the mere absence in his brain of
definite innate tendencies enables him to advance by the de
velopment, through education, of his purely reasoned think
ing, into complex regions of consciousness that the Italian
may probably never approach.
We observe an identical difference between men as a
whole and women as a whole. A young woman of twenty re
acts with intuitive promptitude and security in all the usual
circumstances in which she may be placed.* Her likes
* Social and domestic circumstances, that is, not material ones. Per
ceptions of social relations seem very keen in persons whose dealings with
the material world are confined to knowing a few useful objects, princi
pally animals, plants, and weapons. Savages and boors are often as tact
ful and astute socially as trained diplomatists. In general, it is provable
that the consciousness of how one stands with other people occupies a rela
tively larger and larger part of the mind, the lower one goes in the scale
of culture. Woman s intuitions, so fine in the sphere of personal relations,
are seldom first-rate in the way of mechanics. All boys teach themselves
how a clock goes ; few girls. Hence Dr. Whately s jest, "Woman is the
unreasoning animal, and pokes the fire from on top!"
REASONING. 369
and dislikes are formed ; her opinions, to a great extent, the
same that they will be through life. Her character is, in
fact, finished in its essentials. How inferior to her is a boy
of twenty in all these respects ! His character is still gelat
inous, uncertain what shape to assume, trying it on in
every direction. Feeling his power, yet ignorant of the
manner in which he shall express it, he is, when compared
with his sister, a being of no definite contour. But this
absence of prompt tendency in his brain to set into particu
lar modes is the very condition which insures that it shall
ultimately become so much more efficient than the woman s.
The very lack of preappointed trains of thought is the
ground on which general principles and heads of classifi
cation grow up ; and the masculine brain deals with new
and complex matter indirectly by means of these, in a
manner which the feminine method of direct intuition, ad
mirably and rapidly as it performs within its limits, can
vainly hope to cope with.
In looking back over the subject of reasoning, one feels
how intimately connected it is with conception ; and one
realizes more than ever the deep reach of that principle of
selection on which so much stress was laid towards the close
of Chapter IX. As the art of reading (after a certain stage
in one s education) is the art of skipping, so the art of being
wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. The first effect
on the mind of growing cultivated is that processes once
multiple get to be performed by a single act. Lazarus has
called this the progressive condensation of thought.
But in the psychological sense it is less a condensation than
a loss, a genuine dropping out and throwing overboard of
conscious content. Steps really sink from sight. An ad
vanced thinker sees the relations of his topics in such
masses and so instantaneously that when he comes to
explain to younger minds it is often hard to say which
grows the more perplexed, he or the pupil. In every uni
versity there are admirable investigators who are notori
ously bad lecturers. The reason is that they never spon
taneously see the subject in the minute articulate way in
which the student needs to have it offered to his slow
370 PSYCHOLOGY.
reception. They grope for the links, but the links dc not
ome. Bowditch, who translated and annotated Laplace s
Mecanique Celeste, said that whenever his author prefaced
a proposition by the words it is evident, he knew that
many hours of hard study lay before him.
When two minds of a high order, interested in kindred
subjects, come together, their conversation is chiefly re-
markable for the summariness of its allusions and the
rapidity of its transitions. Before one of them is half
through a sentence the other knows his meaning and
replies. Such genial play with such massive materials,
such an easy flashing of light over far perspectives, such
careless indifference to the dust and apparatus that ordi
narily surround the subject and seem to pertain to its
essence, make these conversations seem true feasts for
gods to a listener who is educated enough to follow them
at all. His mental lungs breathe more deeply, in an atmos
phere more broad and vast than is their wont. On the
other hand, the excessive explicitness and short-windedness
of an ordinary man are as wonderful as they are tedious to
the man of genius. But we need not go as far as the ways
of genius. Ordinary social intercourse will do. There the
charm of conversation is in direct proportion to the possi
bility of abridgment and elision, and in inverse ratio to the
need of explicit statement. With old friends a word stands
for a whole story or set of opinions. With new-comers
everything must be gone over in detail. Some persons
have a real mania for completeness, they must express
every step. They are the most intolerable of companions,
and although their mental energy may in its way be great,
they always strike us as weak and second-rate. In short,
the essence of plebeianism, that which separates vulgarity
from aristocracy, is perhaps less a defect than an excess,
the constant need to animadvert upon matters which for
the aristocratic temperament do not exist. To ignore, to
disdain to consider, to overlook, are the essence of the
* gentleman. Often most provokingly so ; for the things
ignored may be of the deepest moral consequence. But in
the very midst of our indignation with the gentleman, we
have a consciousness that his preposterous inertia and neg*
REASONING. 371
ativeness in the actual emergency is, somehow or other,
allied with his general superiority to ourselves. It is not
only that the gentleman ignores considerations relative to
conduct, sordid suspicions, fears, calculations, etc., which
the vulgarian is fated to entertain ; it is that he is silent
where the vulgarian talks ; that he gives nothing but results
where the vulgarian is profuse of reasons ; that he does not
explain or apologize ; that he uses one sentence instead of
twenty ; and that, in a word, there is an amount of intersti
tial thinking, so to call it, which it is quite impossible to
get him to perform, but which is nearly all that the vul
garian mind performs at all. All this suppression of the
secondary leaves the field clear, for higher flights, should
they choose to come. But even if they never came, what
thoughts there were would still manifest the aristocratic
type and wear the well-bred form. So great is our sense
of harmony and ease in passing from the company of a phi-
listine to that of an aristocratic temperament, that we are
almost tempted to deem the falsest views and tastes as held
by a man of the world, truer than the truest as held by a
common person. In the latter the best ideas are choked,
obstructed, and contaminated by the redundancy of their
paltry associates. The negative conditions, at least, of an
atmosphere and a free outlook are present in the former.
I may appear to have strayed from psychological an
alysis into aesthetic criticism. But the principle of selec
tion is so important that no illustrations seem redundant
which may help to show how great is its scope. The
upshot of what I say simply is that selection implies rejec
tion as well as choice ; and that the function of ignoring, of
inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the
function of attention itself.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE PRODUCTION OF MOVEMENT.
THE reader will not have forgotten, in the jungle of
purely inward processes and products through which the
last chapters have borne him, that the final result of them
all must be some form of bodily activity due to the escape
of the central excitement through outgoing nerves. The
whole neural organism, it will be remembered, is, physio
logically considered, but a machine for converting stimuli
into reactions ; and the intellectual part of our life is knit
up with but the middle or * central portion of the machine s
operations. Let us now turn to consider the final or emer
gent operations, the bodily activities, and the forms of con
sciousness connected therewithal.
Every impression which impinges on the incoming
nerves produces some discharge down the outgoing ones,
whether we be aware of it or not. Using sweeping terms
and ignoring exceptions, we might say that every possible feel
ing produces a movement, and that the movement is a movement
of the entire organism, and of each and all its parts. What
happens patently when an explosion or a flash of lightning
startles us, or when we are tickled, happens latently with
every sensation which we receive. The only reason why we
do not feel the startle or tickle in the case of insignificant
sensations is partly its very small amount, partly our obtuse-
ness. Professor Bain many years ago gave the name of the
Law of Diffusion to this phenomenon of general discharge,
and expressed it thus : " According as an impression is ac
companied with Feeling, the aroused currents diffuse them
selves over the brain, leading to a general agitation of the
moving organs, as well as affecting the viscera."
372
THE PRODUCTION OF MOVEMENT. 373
In cases where the feeling is strong the law is too famil
iar to require proof. As Prof. Bain says :
" Each of us knows in our own experience that a sudden shock of
feeling is accompanied with movements of the body generally, and with
other effects. When no emotion is present, we are quiescent ; a slight
feeling is accompanied with slight manifestations ; a more intense shock
has a more intense outburst. Every pleasure and every pain, and every
mode of emotion, has a definite wave of effects, which our observation
makes known to us ; and we apply the knowledge to infer other men s
feelings from their outward display. . . . The organs first and promi
nently affected, in the diffused wave of nervous influence, are the mov
ing members, and of these, by preference, the features of the face (with
the ears in animals), whose movements constitute the expression of the
countenance. But the influence extends to all the parts of the moving
system, voluntary and involuntary ; while an important series of effects
are produced on the glands and viscera the stomach, lungs, heart , kid
neys, skin, together with the sexual and mammary organs. . . . The
circumstance is seemingly universal, the proof of it does not require a
citation of instances in detail ; on the objectors is thrown the burden of
adducing unequivocal exceptions to the law. " *
There are probably no exceptions to the diffusion of
every impression through the nerve-centres. The effect of
the wave through the centres may, however, often be to
interfere with processes, and to diminish tensions already
existing there ; and the outward consequences of such
inhibitions may be the arrest of discharges from the
inhibited regions and the checking of bodily activities
already in process of occurrence. When this happens it
probably is like the draining or siphoning of certain chan
nels by currents flowing through others. When, in walk
ing, we suddenly stand still because a sound, sight, smell, or
thought catches our attention, something like this occurs.
But there are cases of arrest of peripheral activity which
depend, not on central inhibition, but on stimulation of
centres which discharge outgoing currents of an inhibitory
sort. Whenever we are startled, for example, our heart
momentarily stops or slows its beating, and then palpitates
with accelerated speed. The brief arrest is due to an out
going current down the pneumogastric nerve. This nerve,
when stimulated, stops or slows the heart-beats, and this
* Emotions and Will, pp. 4, 5.
374 PSYCHOLOGY.
particular effect of startling fails to occur if the nerve
be cut.
In general, however, the stimulating effects of a sense-
impression preponderate over the inhibiting effects, so that
we may roughly say, as we began by saying, that the wave
of discharge produces an activity in all parts of the body.
The task of tracing out all the effects of any one incoming
sensation has not yet been performed by physiologists.
Kecent years have, however, begun to enlarge our informa
tion ; and although I must refer to special treatises for the
full details, I can briefly string together here a number of
separate observations which prove the truth of the law of
diffusion.
First take effects upon the circulation. Those upon the
heart we have just seen. Haller long ago recorded that
the blood from an open vein flowed out faster at the beat of
a drum.* In Chapter III. (p. 98) we learned how instan
taneously, according to Mosso, the circulation in the brain
is altered by changes of sensation and of the course of
thought. The effect of objects of fear, shame, and anger
upon the blood-supply of the skin, especially the skin of
the face, are too well known to need remark. Sensations of
the higher senses produce, according to Couty and Char-
pentier, the most varied effects upon the pulse-rate and
blood-pressure in dogs. Fig. 81, a pulse-tracing from these
authors, shows the tumultuous effect on a dog s heart of
hearing the screams of another dog. The changes of
blood-pressure still occurred when the pneumogastric
nerves were cut. showing the vaso-motor effect to be direct
and not dependent on the heart. When Mosso invented
that simple instrument, the plethysmograph, for recording
the fluctuations in volume of the members of the body, what
most astonished him, he says, "in the first experiments
which he made in Italy, was the extreme unrest of the
blood-vessels of the hand, which at every smallest emotion,
whether during waking or during sleep, changed their vol
ume in surprising fashion." t Figure 82 (from Fere $
* Of. Fere . Sensation et Mouvement (1887), p. 56.
f La Paura (1884), p. 117. Compare Fere : Sensation et Mouvement,
chap. xvn.
J Revue Philosophique, xxiv. 570.
THE PRODUCTION OF MOVEMENT.
375
X
376
PSYCHOLOGY.
shows the way in which the pulse of one subject was
modified by the exhibition of a red light lasting from the
moment marked a to that marked b.
FIG. 82.
The effects upon respiration of sudden sensory stimuli
are also too well known to need elaborate comment. We
catch our breath at every sudden sound. We * hold our
breath whenever our attention and expectation are strongly
Fio. 83.- Respiratory curve of B: a, with eyes open; 6, with eyes closed.
engaged, and we sigh when the tension of the situation is
relieved. When a fearful object is before us we pant and
cannot deeply inspire ; when the object makes us angry it
is, on the contrary, the act of expiration which is hard.
I subjoin a couple of figures from Fere which explain them-
THE PRODUCTION OF MOVEMENT.
selves. They show the effects of light upon the breathing
of two of his hysteric patients.*
Fio. 84.-Respiratory curve of L: a, with yellow light; 6, with green light; c, with red
light. The red has the strongest effect.
On the sweat-glands, similar consequences of sensorial
stimuli are observed. Tarchanoff, testing the condition of
the sweat-glands by the power of the skin to start a gal-
* Revue Phil., xxiv. pp. 566-7. For further information about the rela
tions between the brain and respiration, see Danilewsky s Essay in the Bio-
logisches Centralblatt, u. 690.
378 PSYCHOLOGY.
vanic current through electrodes applied to its surface,,
found that " nearly every kind of nervous activity, from the
simplest sensations and impressions, to voluntary motions
and the highest forms of mental exertion, is accompanied
by an increased activity in the glands of the skin."* On
the pupil observations are recorded by Sanders which show
that a transitory dilatation follows every sensorial stimulus
applied during sleep, even if the stimulus be not strong
enough to wake the subject up. At the moment of awak
ing there is a dilatation, even if strong light falls on the
eye.f The pupil of children can easily be observed to
dilate enormously under the influence of fear. It is said to
dilate in pain and fatigue ; and to contract, on the contrary,
in rage.
As regards effects on the abdominal viscera, they unques
tionably exist, but very few accurate observations have
been made4
The bladder, bowels, and uterus respond to sensations,
even indifferent ones. Mosso and Pellicani, in their plethys-
mographic investigations on the bladder of dogs, found
all sorts of sensorial stimuli to produce reflex contractions
of this organ, independent of those of the abdominal walls.
They call the bladder as good an sesthesiometer as the
iris, and refer to the not uncommon reflex effects of psy
chic stimuli in the human female upon this organ. M.
Fere has registered the contractions of the sphincter ani
which even indifferent sensations will produce. In some
pregnant women the foatus is felt to move after almost
every sensorial excitement received by the mother. The
only natural explanation is that it is stimulated at such
moments by reflex contractions of the womb.[ That the
glands are affected in emotion is patent enough in the case
of the tears of grief, the dry mouth, moist skin, or diar-
* Quoted from the report of Tarchanoff s paper (in Pflilger s Archiv,
XL vi. 46) in the American Journal of Psych. , n. 652.
f Archiv f. Psychiatrie, vn. 652 ; ix. 129.
| Sensation et Mouvement, 57-8.
R. Accad. dei Lincei (1881-2). I follow the report in Hofmann F.
Schwalbe s Jahresbericht, x. n. 93.
|| Cf. Fere, Sensation et Mouvement, chap. xiv.
THE PRODUCTION OF MOVEMENT. 379
rhoaa of fear, the biliary disturbances which sometimes
follow upon rage, etc. The watering of the mouth at the
sight of succulent food is well known. It is difficult to
follow the smaller degrees of all these reflex changes, but
it can hardly be doubted that they exist in some degree,
even where they cease to be traceable, and that all our
sensations have some visceral effects. The sneezing pro
duced by sunshine, the roughening of the skin (gooseflesh)
which certain strokings, contacts, and sounds, musical or
non-musical, provoke, are facts of the same order as the
shuddering and standing up of the hair in fear, only of less
degree.
Effects on Voluntary Muscles. Every sensorial stimulus
not only sends a special discharge into certain particular
muscles dependent on the special nature of the stimulus in
question some of these special discharges we have studied
in Chapter XI, others we shall examine under the heads
of Instinct and Emotion but it innervates the muscles
generally. M. Fere has given very curious experimental
proofs of this. The strength of contraction of the subject s
hand was measured by a self -registering dynamometer.
Ordinarily the maximum strength, under simple experimen
tal conditions, remains the same from day to day. But if
simultaneously with the contraction the subject received a
sensorial impression, the contraction was sometimes weak
ened, but more often increased. This reinforcing effect has
received the name of dynamogeny. The dynamogenic value of
simple musical notes seems to be proportional to their loud-
ness and height. Where the notes are compounded into sad
strains, the muscular strength diminishes. If the strains are
gay, it is increased. The dynamogenic value of colored lights
varies with the color. In a subject* whose normal strength
was expressed by 23, it became 24 when a blue light was
*The figures given are from an hysterical subject, and the differences
are greater than normal. M. Fere considers that the unstable nervous
system of the hysteric ( ces grenouilles de la psychologic ) shows the law
on a quantitatively exaggerated scale, without altering the qualitative rela
tions. The effects remind us a little of the influence of sensations upon
minimal sensations of other orders discovered by Urbantschitsch, and re
ported on page 29 of this volume.
PSYCHOLOGY.
thrown on the eyes, 28 for green, 30 for yellow, 35 for orange,
and 42 for red. Ked is thus the most exciting color.
Among tastes, sweet has the lowest value, next comes salt,
then bitter, and finally sour, though, as M. Fere remarks,
such a sour as acetic acid excites the nerves of pain and
smell as well as of taste. The stimulating effects of tobacco-
smoke, alcohol, beef-extract (which is innutritions), etc., etc.,
may be partly due to a dynamogenic action of this sort.
Of odors, that of musk seems to have a peculiar dynamo
genic power. Fig. 85 is a copy of one of M. Fere s dyna-
mographic tracings, which explains itself. The smaller
contractions are those without stimulus ; the stronger ones
are due to the influence of red rays of light.
FIG. 85.
Everyone is familiar with the patellar reflex, or jerk up
wards of the foot, which is produced by smartly tapping
the tendon below the knee-pan when the leg hangs over
the other knee. Drs. "Weir Mitchell and Lombard have
found that when other sensations come in simultaneously
with the tap, the jerk is increased.* Heat, cold, pricking,
itching, or faradic stimulation of the skin, sometimes strong
optical impressions, music, all have this dynamogenic effect,
which also results whenever voluntary movements are set
up in other parts of the body, simultaneously with the
tap.t
These dynamogenic effects, in which one stimulation
* Mitchell in (Philadelphia) Medical News (Feb. 13 and 20, 1886); Lom
bard in American Journal of Psychology (Oct. 1887).
f Prof. H. P. Bowditch has made the interesting discovery that if the
reinforcing movement be as much as 0.4 of a second late, the reinforce
ment fails to occur, and is transformed into a positive inhibition of the
knee-jerk for retardations of between 0.4 and 1.7 . The knee-jerk fails
to be modified at all by voluntary movements made later than 1.7 after
the patellar ligament is tapped (see Boston Med. and Surg. Journ., May ff \
1888).
THE PRODUCTION OF MOVEMENT. 381
simply reinforces another already under way, must not be
confounded with reflex acts properly so called, in which new
activities are originated by the stimulus. All instinctive
performances and manifestations of emotion are reflex acts.
But underneath those of which we are conscious there seem
to go on continually others smaller in amount, which
probably in most persons might be called fluctuations of
muscular tone, but which in certain neurotic subjects can
be demonstrated ocularly. M. Fere figures some of them
in the article to which I have already referred.*
Looking back over all these facts, it is hard to doubt the
truth of the law of diffusion, even where verification is be
yond reach. A process set up anywhere in the centres reverber
ates every ivhere, and in some way or other affects the organism
throughout, making its activities either greater or less. We
are brought again to the assimilation which was expressed
on a previous page of the nerve-central mass to a good con
ductor charged with electricity, of which the tension can
not be changed anywhere without changing it everywhere.
Herr Schneider has tried to show, by an ingenious and
suggestive zoological review,t that all the special movements
which highly evolved animals make are differentiated from
the two originally simple movements, of contraction and ex
pansion, in which the entire body of simple organisms takes
part. The tendency to contract is the source of all the
self-protective impulses and reactions which are later de
veloped, including that of flight. The tendency to expand
splits up, on the contrary, into the impulses and instincts of
an aggressive kind, feeding, fighting, sexual intercourse, etc.
Schneider s articles are well worth reading, if only for the
careful observations on animals which they embody. I cite
them here as a sort of evolutionary reason to add to the
mechanical a priori reason why there ought to be the
diffusive wave which our a posteriori instances have shown
to exist.
I will now proceed to a detailed study of the more im-
* Revue Phil., xxiv. 572 ff.
f In the Viertel jahrschrift filr wiss. Philos. , m. 294.
332 PSYCHOLOGY.
portant classes of movement consequent upon cerebro-
mental change. They may be enumerated as
1) Instinctive or Impulsive Performances ;
2) Expressions of Emotion ; and
3) Voluntary Deeds;
and each shall have a chapter to itsell
CHAPTER XXIV *
INSTINCT.
INSTINCT is usually defined as the faculty of acting in such a
way as to produce certain ends, without foresight of the ends,
and without previous education in the performance. That
instincts, as thus defined, exist on an enormous scale in the
animal kingdom needs no proof. They are the functional
correlatives of structure. With the presence of a certain
organ goes, one may say, almost always a native aptitude
for its use.
Has the bird a gland for the secretion of oil ? She knows instinc
tively how to press the oil from the gland, and apply it to the feather.
Has the rattlesnake the grooved tooth and gland of poison ? He knows
without instruction how to make both structure and function most ef
fective against his enemies. Has the silk- worm the function of secret
ing the fluid silk ? At the proper time she winds the cocoon such as she
has never seen, as thousands before have done ; and thus without in
struction, pattern, or experience, forms a safe abode for herself in the
period of transformation. Has the hawk talons ? She knows by in
stinct how to wield them effectively against the helpless quarry, "f
A very common way of talking about these admirably
definite tendencies to act is by naming abstractly the pur
pose they subserve, such as self-preservation, or defence, or
care for eggs and young and saying the animal has an in
stinctive fear of death or love of life, or that she has an in
stinct of self-preservation, or an instinct of maternity and
the like. But this represents the animal as obeying ab
stractions which not once in a million cases is it possible it
<;an have framed. The strict physiological way of interpret-
* This chapter has already appeared (almost exactly as now printed) in
the form of magazine articles in Scribner s Magazine and in the Popular
Science Monthly for 1887.
t P. A. Chadbourne : Instinct, p. 28 (New York, 1872).
384 PSYCHOLOGY.
ing the facts leads to far clearer results. The actions we call
instinctive all conform to the general reflex type ; they are called
forth by determinate sensory stimuli in contact with the
animal s body, or at a distance in his environment. The
cat runs after the mouse, runs or shows fight before the
dog, avoids falling from walls and trees, shuns fire and
water, etc., not because he has any notion either of life or
of death, or of self, or of preservation. He has probably at
tained to no one of these conceptions in such a way as to re
act definitely upon it. He acts in each case separately,
and simply because he cannot help it; being so framed that
when that particular running thing called a mouse appears
in his field of vision he must pursue ; that when that par
ticular barking and obstreperous thing called a dog appears
there he must retire, if at a distance, and scratch if close by ;
that he must withdraw his feet from water and his face
from flame, etc. His nervous system is to a great extent a
preorganized bundle of such reactions they are as fatal as
sneezing, and as exactly correlated to their special excitants
as it is to its own. Although the naturalist may, for his own
convenience, class these reactions under general heads, he
must not forget that in the animal it is a particular sensation
or perception or image which calls them forth.
At first this view astounds us by the enormous number
of special adjustments it supposes animals to possess ready-
made in anticipation of the outer things among which they
are to dwell. Can mutual dependence be so intricate and
go so far ? Is each thing born fitted to particular other
things, and to them exclusively, as locks are fitted to their
keys? Undoubtedly this must be believed to be so. Each
nook and cranny of creation, down to our very skin and
entrails, has its living inhabitants, with organs suited to
the place, to devour and digest the food it harbors and to
meet the dangers it conceals ; and the minuteness of adap
tation thus shown in the way of structure knows no bounds.
Even so are there no bounds to the minuteness of adapta
tion in the way of conduct which the several inhabitants
display.
The older writings on instinct are ineffectual wastes of
words, because their authors never came down to this defi-
INSTINCT. 385
nite and simple point of view, but smothered everything in
vague wonder at the clairvoyant and prophetic power of
the animals so superior to anything in man and at the
beneficence of God in endowing them with such a gift. But
God s beneficence endows them, first of all, with a nervous
system ; and, turning our attention to this, makes instinct
immediately appear neither more nor less wonderful than
all the other facts of life.
Every instinct is an impulse. "Whether we shall call such
impulses as blushing, sneezing, coughing, smiling, or dodg
ing, or keeping time to music, instincts or not, is a mere
matter of terminology. The process is the same through
out. In his delightfully fresh and interesting work, Der
Thierische Wille, Herr G. H. Schneider subdivides im
pulses (Triebe) into sensation-impulses, perception-im
pulses, and idea-impulses. To crouch from cold is a sen
sation-impulse ; to turn and follow, if we see people run
ning one way, is a perception-impulse ; to cast about for
cover, if it begins to blow and rain, is an imagination-im
pulse. A single complex instinctive action may involve
successively the awakening of impulses of all three classes.
Thus a hungry lion starts to seek prey by the awakening in
him of imagination coupled with desire ; he begins to stalk
it when, on eye, ear, or nostril, he gets an impression of its
presence at a certain distance ; he springs upon it, either
when the booty takes alarm and flees, or when the distance
is sufficiently reduced ; he proceeds to tear and devour it
the moment he gets a sensation of its contact with his
claws and fangs. Seeking, stalking, springing, and devour
ing are just so many different kinds of muscular contrac
tion, and neither kind is called forth by the stimulus ap
propriate to the other.
Schneider says of the hamster, which stores corn in its
hole:
" If we analyze the propensity of storing, we find that it consists of
three impulses : First, an impulse to pick up the nutritious object, due
to perception ; second, an impulse to carry it off into the dwelling-place,
due to the idea of this latter ; and third, an impulse to lay it down
there, due to the sight of the place. It lies in the nature of the ham
ster that it should never see a full ear of corn without feeling a desire
386 PSYCHOLOGY.
to strip it ; it lies in its nature to feel, as soon as its cheek-pouches are
filled, an irresistible desire to hurry to its home ; and finally, it lies in
its nature that the sight of the storehouse should awaken the impulse
to empty the cheeks" (p. 208).
In certain animals of a low order the feeling of having
executed one impulsive step is such an indispensable part
of the stimulus of the next one, that the animal cannot
make any variation in the order of its performance.
Now, why do the various animals do what seem to us such
strange things, in the presence of such outlandish stimuli ?
Why does the hen, for example, submit herself to the
tedium of incubating such a fearfully uninteresting set of
objects as a nestful of eggs, unless she have some sort of a
prophetic inkling of the result? The only answer is ad
hominem. We can only interpret the instincts of brutes by
what we know of instincts in ourselves. Why do men al
ways lie down, when they can, on soft beds rather than on
hard floors? Why do they sit round the stove on a cold
day? Why, in a room, do they place themselves, ninety-
nine times out of a hundred, with their faces towards its
middle rather than to the wall ? Why do they prefer saddle
of mutton and champagne to hard-tack and ditch-water ?
Why does the maiden interest the youth so that everything
about her seems more important and significant than any
thing else in the world ? Nothing more can be said than
that these are human ways, and that every creature likes its
own ways, and takes to the following them as a matter of
course. Science may come and consider these ways, and
find that most of them are useful. But it is not for the
sake of their utility that they are followed, but because at
the moment of following them we feel that that is the only
appropriate and natural thing to do. Not one man in a
billion, when taking his dinner, ever thinks of utility. He
eats because the food tastes good and makes him want
more. If you ask him why he should want to eat more of
what tastes like that, instead of revering you as a philoso
pher he will probably laugh at you for a fool. The con
nection between the savory sensation and the act it awakens
is for him absolute and selbstverstdndlich y an a priori syn-
INSTINCT. 3b7
thesis of the most perfect sort, needing no proof but its
own evidence. It takes, in short, what Berkeley calls a
mind debauched by learning to carry the process of making
the natural seem strange, so far as to ask for the why of any
instinctive human act. To the metaphysician alone can
such questions occur as : Why do we smile, when pleased,
and not scowl? Why are we unable to talk to a crowd
as we talk to a single friend? Why does a particular
maiden turn our wits so upside-down ? The common man
can only say, " Of course we smile, of course our heart pal
pitates at the sight of the crowd, of course we love the maiden,
that beautiful soul clad in that perfect form, so palpably
and flagrantly made from all eternity to be loved !"
And so, probably, does each animal feel about the par
ticular things it tends to do in presence of particular ob
jects. They, too, are a priori syntheses. To the lion it is
the lioness which is made to be loved ; to the bear, the she-
bear. To the broody hen the notion would probably seem
monstrous that there should be a creature in the world to
whom a nestful of eggs was not the utterly fascinating and
precious and never-to-be-too-much-sat-upon object which
it is to her.*
Thus we may be sure that, however mysterious some
animals instincts may appear to us, our instincts will appear
no less mysterious to them. And we may conclude that, to
the animal which obeys it, every impulse and every step of
every instinct shines with its own sufficient light, and seema
at the moment the only eternally right and proper thing to
do. ^ It is done for its own sake exclusively. What volup-
*"It would be very simple-minded to suppose that bees follow their
queen, and protect her and care for her, because they are aware that with
out her the hive would become extinct. The odor or the aspect of their
queen is manifestly agreeable to the bees that is why they love her so.
Does not all true love base itself on agreeable perceptions much more than
on representations of utility ?" (G. H. Schneider, Der Thierische Wille,
p. 187.) A priori, there is no reason to suppose that any sensation might not
in some animal cause any emotion and any impulse. To us it seems un
natural that an odor should directly excite anger or fear; or a color, lust.
Yet there are creatures to which some smells are quite as frightful as any
sounds, and very likely others to which color is as much a sexual irritant
as form.
388 PSYCHOLOGY.
tuous thrill may not shake a fly, when she at last discovers
the one particular leaf, or carrion, or bit of dung, that out
of all the world can stimulate her ovipositor to its dis
charge ? Does not the discharge then seem to her the only
fitting thing ? And need she care or know anything about
the future maggot and its food ?
Since the egg-laying instincts are simple examples to con
sider, a few quotations about them from Schneider may be
serviceable :
"The phenomenon so often talked about, so variously interpreted,
so surrounded with mystification, that an insect should always lay her
eggs in a spot appropriate to the nourishment of her young, is no more
marvellous than the phenomenon that every animal pairs with a mate
capable of bearing posterity, or feeds on materials capable of affording
him nourishment. . . . Not only the choice of a place for laying the
eggs, but all the various acts for depositing and protecting them, are
occasioned by the perception of the proper object, and the relation of
this perception to the various stages of maternal impulse. When the
burying beetle perceives a carrion, she is not only impelled to approach
it and lodge her eggs in it, but also to go through the movements re
quisite for burying it; just as a bird who sees his hen-bird is impelled
to caress her, to strut around her, dance before her, or in some other
way to woo her; just as a tiger, when he sees an antelope, is impelled
to stalk it, to pounce upon it, and to strangle it. When the tailor-bee
cuts out pieces of rose-leaf, bends them, carries them into a caterpillar-
or mouse-hole in trees or in the earth, covers their seams again with
other pieces, and so makes a thimble-shaped case when she fills this
with honey and lays an egg in it, all these various appropriate expres
sions of her will are to be explained by supposing that at the time when
the eggs are ripe within her, the appearance of a suitable caterpillar- or
mouse-hole and the perception of rose-leaves are so correlated in the
insect with the several impulses in question, that the performances fol
low as a matter of course when the perceptions take place. . . .
" The perception of the empty nest, or of a single egg, seems in birds
to stand in such a close relation to the physiological functions of ovipa-
ration, that it serves as a direct stimulus to these functions, while the
perception of a sufficient number of eggs has just the opposite effect.
It is well known that hens and ducks lay more eggs if we keep remov
ing them than if we leave them in the nest. The impulse to sit arises,
as a rule, when a bird sees a certain number of eggs in her nest. If
this number is not yet to be seen there, the ducks continue to lay,
although they perhaps have laid twice as many eggs as they are accus
tomed to sit upon. . . . That sitting, also, is independent of any idea of
purpose and is a pure perception-impulse is evident, among other things,
INSTINCT. 389
from the fact that many birds, e.g. wild ducks, steal eggs from each
other. . . . The bodily disposition to sit is, it is true, one condi
tion [since broody hens will sit where there are no. eggs], but the
perception of the eggs i? the other condition of the activity of
the incubating impulse. The propensity of the cuckoo and of the
cow-bird to lay their eggs in the nests of other species must also be
interpreted as a pure perception-impulse. These birds have no bodily
disposition to become broody, and there is therefore in them no connec
tion between the perception of an egg and the impulse to sit upon it.
Eggs ripen, however, in their oviducts, and the body tends to get rid of
them. And since the two birds just named do not drop their eggs any
where on the ground, but in nests, which are the only places where they
may preserve the species, it might easily appear that such preservation
of the species was what they had in view, and that they acted with full
consciousness of the purpose. But this is not so. ... The cuckoo is
simply excited by the perception of quite determinate sorts of nest,
which already contain eggs, to drop her own into them, and throw the
others out, because this perception is a direct stimulus to these acts.
It is impossible that she should have any notion of the other bird com-
ing and sitting on her egg." *
INSTINCTS NOT ALWAYS BLIND OB INVAKIABLB.
Remember that nothing is said yet of the origin of in
stincts, but only of the constitution of those that exist fully
formed. How stands it with the instincts of mankind ?
Nothing is commoner than the remark that Man differs
from lower creatures by the almost total absence of instincts,
and the assumption of their work in him by reason. A
fruitless discussion might be waged on this point by two
theorizers who were careful not to define their terms.
Reason might be used, as it often has been, since Kant,
not as the mere power of inferring, but also as a name for
the tendency to obey impulses of a certain lofty sort, such as
duty, or universal ends. And instinct might have its sig
nificance so broadened as to cover all impulses whatever,
even the impulse to act from the idea of a distant fact, as
well as the impulse to act from a present sensation. "Were
the word instinct used in this broad way, it would of course
be impossible to restrict it, as we began by doing, to actions
done with no prevision of an end. We must of course
avoid a quarrel about words, and the facts of the case are
* Der Thierische Wille, pp. 282-3.
390 PSYCHOLOGY.
really tolerably plain. Man has a far greater variety of
impulses than any lower animal ; and any one of these im
pulses, taken in itself, is as blind as the lowest instinct
can be ; but, owing to man s memory, power of reflection,
and power of inference, they come each one to be felt by
him, after he has once yielded to them and experienced
their results, in connection with a foresight of those results.
In this condition an impulse acted out may be said to be
acted out, in part at least, for the sake of its results. It is
obvious that every instinctive act, in an animal tvith memory,
must cease to be blind after being once repeated, and must be
accompanied with foresight of its end just so far as that
end may have fallen under the animal s cognizance. An
insect that lays her eggs in a place where she never sees
them hatched must always do so blindly ; but a hen who has
already hatched a brood can hardly be assumed to sit with
perfect blindness on her second nest. Some expectation
of consequences must in every case like this be aroused ;
and this expectation, according as it is that of something
desired or of something disliked, must necessarily either
re-enforce or inhibit the mere impulse. The hen s idea of
the chickens would probably encourage her to sit ; a rat s
memory, on the other hand, of a former escape from a trap
would neutralize his impulse to take bait from anything
that reminded him of that trap. If a boy sees a fat hop-
ping-toad, he probably has incontinently an impulse (espe
cially if with other boys) to smash the creature with a stone,
which impulse we may suppose him blindly to obey. But
something in the expression of the dying toad s clasped
hands suggests the meanness of the act, or reminds him of
sayings he has heard about the sufferings of animals being
like his own ; so that, when next he is tempted by a toad,
an idea arises which, far from spurring him again to the
torment, prompts kindly actions, and may even make him
the toad s champion against less reflecting boys.
It is plain, then, that, no matter how well endowed, an animal
may originally be in the way of instincts, his resultant actions
ivill be much modified if the instincts combine with experience,
if in addition to impulses he have memories, associations,
inferences, and expectations, on any considerable scale. An
INSTINCT. 391
object O, on which he has an instinctive impulse to react in
the manner A, would directly provoke him to that reaction.
But O has meantime become for him a sign of the nearness
of P, on which he has an equally strong impulse to react in
the manner B, quite unlike A. So that when he meets O
the immediate impulse A and the remote impulse B strug
gle in his breast for the mastery. The fatality and unifor
mity said to be characteristic of instinctive actions will be
so little manifest that one might be tempted to deny to him
altogether the possession of any instinct about the object
O. Yet how false this judgment would be ! The instinct
about O is there ; only by the complication of the associa
tive machinery it has come into conflict with another in
stinct about P.
Here we immediately reap the good fruits of our simple
physiological conception of what an instinct is. If it be a
mere excito-motor impulse, due to the pre-existence of a
certain reflex arc in the nerve-centres of the creature, of
course it must follow the law of all such reflex arcs. One
liability of such arcs is to have their activity inhibited, by
other processes going on at the same time. It makes no
difference whether the arc be organized at birth, or ripen
spontaneously later, or be due to acquired habit, it must
take its chances with all the other arcs, and sometimes
succeed, and sometimes fail, in drafting off the currents
through itself. The mystical view of an instinct would
make it invariable. The physiological view would require
it to show occasional irregularities in any animal in whom
the number of separate instincts, and the possible entrance
of the same stimulus into several of them, were great. And
such irregularities are what every superior animal s in
stincts do show in abundance.*
* In the instincts of mammals, and even of lower creatures, the uniform
ity and infallibility which, a generation ago, were considered as essential
characters do not exist. The minuter study of recent years has found con
tinuity, transition, variation, and mistake, wherever it has looked for them,
and decided that what is called an instinct is usually only a tendency to
act in a way of which the average is pretty constant, but which need not
be mathematically true. Cf. on this point Darwin s Origin of Species:
Romanes s Mental Evol., chaps, xi to xvi incl., and Appendix; W. L.
Lindsay s Mind in Lower Animals, vol. i. 133-141 ; n. chaps, v, xx ;
392 PSYCHOLOGY.
Wherever the mind is elevated enough to discriminate ;
wherever several distinct sensory elements must combine
to discharge the reflex-arc ; wherever, instead of plumping
into action instantly at the first rough intimation of what
sort of a thing is there, the agent waits to see which one of
its kind it is and what the circumstances are of its appearance;
wherever different individuals and different circumstances
can impel him in different ways ; wherever these are the
conditions we have a masking of the elementary constitu
tion of the instinctive life. The whole story of our dealings
with the lower wild animals is the history of our taking
advantage of the way in which they judge of everything by
its mere label, as it were, so as to ensnare or kill them.
Nature, in them, has left matters in this rough way, and
made them act always in the manner which would be
oftenest right. There are more worms unattached to hooks
than impaled upon them ; therefore, on the whole, says
Nature to her fishy children, bite at every worm and take
your chances. But as her children get higher, and their
lives more precious, she reduces the risks. Since what
seems to be the same object may be now a genuine food
and now a bait ; since in gregarious species each individual
may prove to be either the friend or the rival, according to
the circumstances, of another ; since any entirely unknown
object may be fraught with weal or woe, Nature implants
contrary impulses to act on many classes of things, and leaves
it to slight alterations in the conditions of the individual
case to decide which impulse shall carry the day. Thus,
greediness and suspicion, curiosity and timidity, coyness
and desire, bashfulness and vanity, sociability and pug
nacity, seem to shoot over into each other as quickly, and
to remain in as unstable equilibrium, in the higher birds
and mammals as in man. They are all impulses, congenital,
blind at first, and productive of motor reactions of a rigor
ously determinate sort. Each one of them, then, is an
instinct, as instincts are commonly defined. But they con
tradict each other experience in each particular oppor-
and K. Semper s Conditions of Existence in Animals, where a great many
instances will be found.
INSTINCT. 393
tunity of application usually deciding the issue. The animal
that exhibits them loses the l instinctive demeanor and appears
to lead a life of hesitation and choice, an intellectual life ;
not, however, because he has no instincts rather because he has
so many that they block each other s path.
Thus, then, without troubling ourselves about the words
instinct and reason, we may confidently say that however
uncertain man s reactions upon his environment may some
times seem in comparison with those of lower creatures, the
uncertainty is probably not due to their possession of any
principles of action which he lacks. On the contrary, man
possesses all the impulses that they have, and a great many more
besides. In other words, there is no material antagonism
between instinct and reason. Eeason, per se, can inhibit
no impulses ; the only thing that can neutralize an impulse
is an impulse the other way. Eeason may, however, make
an inference ivhich ivill excite the imagination so as to set loose
the impulse the other way ; and thus, though the animal
richest in reason might be also the animal richest in in
stinctive impulses too, he would never seem the fatal au
tomaton which a merely instinctive animal would be.
Let us now turn to human impulses with a little more
detail. All we have ascertained so far is that impulses of
an originally instinctive character may exist, and yet not
betray themselves by automatic fatality of conduct. But
in man what impulses do exist? In the light of what has
been said, it is obvious that an existing impulse may not
always be superficially apparent even when its object is
there. And we shall see that some impulses may be masked
by causes of which we have not yet spoken.
TWO PRINCIPLES OF NON-UNIFORMITY IN INSTINCTS.
Were one devising an abstract scheme, nothing would
be easier than to discover from an animal s actions just how
many instincts he possessed. He would react in one way
only upon each class of objects with which his life had to
deal ; he would react in identically the same way upon
every specimen of a class ; and he would react invariably
during his whole life. There would be no gaps among his
394 PSYCHOLOGY.
instincts ; all would come to light without perversion or
disguise. But there are no such abstract animals, and no
where does the instinctive life display itself in such a way.
Not only, as we have seen, may objects of the same class
arouse reactions of opposite sorts in consequence of slight
changes in the circumstances, in the individual object, or in
the agent s inward condition ; but two other principles of
which we have not yet spoken, may come into play and
produce results so striking that observers as eminent as
Messrs. D. A. Spalding and Komanes do not hesitate to
call them derangements of the mental constitution, and
to conclude that the instinctive machinery has got out
of gear.
These principles are those
1. Of the inhibition of instincts by habits; and
2. Of the transitoriness of instincts.
Taken in conjunction with the two former principles
that the same object may excite ambiguous impulses, or sug
gest an impulse different from that which it excites, by sug
gesting a remote object they explain any amount of de
parture from uniformity of conduct, without implying any
getting out of gear of the elementary impulses from which
the conduct flows.
1. The law of inhibition of instincts by habits is this :
When objects of a certain class elicit from an animal a certain
sort of reaction, it often happens that the animal becomes partial
to the first specimen of the class on which it has reacted, and ivill
not afterward react on any other specimen.
The selection of a particular hole to live in, of a partic
ular mate, of a particular feeding-ground, a particular variety
of diet, a particular anything, in short, out of a possible multi
tude, is a very wide-spread tendency among animals, even
those low down in the scale. The limpet will return to the
same sticking-place in its rock, and the lobster to its favorite
nook on the sea-bottom. The rabbit will deposit its dung in
the same corner ; the bird makes its nest on the same bough.
But each of these preferences carries with it an insensibility
to other opportunities and occasions an insensibility which
can only be described physiologically as an inhibition of
INSTINCT. 395
new impulses by the habit of old ones already formed.
The possession of homes and wives of our own makes us
strangely insensible to the charms of those of other people.
Few of us are adventurous in the matter of food ; in fact,
most of us think there is something disgusting in a bill of
fare to which we are unused. Strangers, we are apt to
think, cannot be woith knowing, especially if they come
from distant cities, etc. The original impulse which got us
homes, wives, dietaries, and friends at all, seems to exhaust
itself in its first achievements and to leave no surplus
energy for reacting on new cases. And so it comes about
that, witnessing this torpor, an observer of mankind might
say that no instinctive propensity toward certain objects ex
isted at all. It existed, but it existed miscellaneously, or as
an instinct pure and simple, only before habit was formed.
A habit, once grafted on an instinctive tendency, restricts
the range of the tendency itself, and keeps us from reacting
on any but the habitual object, although other objects
might just as well have been chosen had they been the first-
comers.
Another sort of arrest of instinct by habit is where the
same class of objects awakens contrary instinctive impulses.
Here the impulse first followed toward a given individual
of the class is apt to keep him from ever awakening the
opposite impulse in us. In fact, the whole class may be
protected by this individual specimen from the application
to it of the other impulse. Animals, for example, awaken in
a child the opposite impulses of fearing and fondling. But
if a child, in his first attempts to pat a dog, gets snapped at
or bitten, so that the impulse of fear is strongly aroused, it
may be that for years to come no dog will excite in him the
impulse to fondle again. On the other hand, the greatest
natural enemies, if carefully introduced to each other when
young and guided at the outset by superior authority, set
tle down into those happy families of friends which we
see in our menageries. Young animals, immediately after
birth, have no instinct of fear, but show their dependence
by allowing themselves to be freely handled. Later, how
ever, they grow wild, and, if left to themselves, will not
let man approach them. I am told by farmers in the
396 PSYCHOLOGY.
Adirondack wilderness that it is a very serious matter if a
cow wanders off and calves in the woods and is not found
for a week or more. The calf, by that time, is as wild and
almost as fleet as a deer, and hard to capture without vio
lence. But calves rarely show any particular wildness to
the men who have been in contact with them during the
first days of their life, when the instinct to attach them
selves is uppermost, nor do they dread strangers as they
would if brought up wild.
Chickens give a curious illustration of the same law.
Mr. Spalding s wonderful article on instinct shall supply us
with the facts. These little creatures show opposite in
stincts of attachment and fear, either of which may be
aroused by the same object, man. If a chick is born in the
absence of the hen, it
lk will follow any moving object. And, when guided by sight alone,
they seem to have no more disposition to follow a hen than to follow a
duck or a human being. Unreflecting lookers-on, when they saw chick
ens a day old running after me," says Mr. Spalding, "and older ones
following me for miles, and answering to my whistle, imagined that I
must have some occult power over the creatures : whereas I had simply
allowed them to follow me from the first. There is the instinct to follow;
and the ear, prior to experience, attaches them to the right object." *
But if a man presents himself for the first time when
the instinct of fear is strong, the phenomena are altogether
reversed. Mr. Spalding kept three chickens hooded until
they were nearly four days old, and thus describes their
behavior :
tk Each of them, on being unhooded, evinced the greatest terror to
me, dashing off in the opposite direction whenever I sought to approach
it. The table on which they were unhooded stood before a window, and
each in its turn beat against the window like a wild bird. One of them
darted behind some books, and r squeezing itself into a corner, remained
cowering for a length of time. We might guess at the meaning of this
strange and exceptional wildness ; but the odd fact is enough for my
present purpose. Whatever might have been the meaning of this
marked change in their mental constitution had they been unhooded
on the previous day they would have run to me instead of from me it
could not have been the effect of experience ; it must have resulted
wholly from changes in their own organizations." f
* Spalding, Macmillan s Magazine, Feb. 1873, p. 287.
f Ibid. p. 289.
INSTINCT. 397
Their case was precisely analogous to that of the Adi
rondack calves. The two opposite instincts relative to the
same object ripen in succession. If the first one engenders
a habit, that habit will inhibit the application of the second
instinct to that object. All animals are tame during the
earliest phase of their infancy. Habits formed then limit
the effects of whatever instincts of wildness may later be
evolved.
Mr. Romanes gives some very curious examples of the
way in which instinctive tendencies may be altered by the
habits to which their first * objects have given rise. The
cases are a little more complicated than those mentioned in
the text, inasmuch as the object reacted on not only starts
a habit which inhibits other kinds of impulse toward it (al
though such other kinds might be natural), but even modi
fies by its own peculiar conduct the constitution of the
impulse which it actually awakens.
Two of the instances in question are those of hens who
hatched out broods of chicks after having (in three previ
ous years) hatched ducks. They strove to coax or to com
pel their new progeny to enter the water, and seemed much
perplexed at their unwillingness. Another hen adopted a
brood of young ferrets which, having lost their mother,
were put under her. During all the time they were left
with her she had to sit on the nest, for they could not wan
der like young chicks. She obeyed their hoarse growling
as she would have obeyed her chickens peep. She combed
out their hair with her bill, and " used frequently to stop
and look with one eye at the wriggling nestful, with an in
quiring gaze, expressive of astonishment." At other times
she would fly up with a loud scream, doubtless because the
orphans had nipped her in their search for teats. Finally,
a Brahma hen nursed a young peacock during the enor
mous period of eighteen months, and never laid any eggs
during all this time. The abnormal degree of pride which
she showed in her wonderful chicken is described by Dr.
Romanes as ludicrous.*
* For the cases in full see Mental Evolution in Animals, pp. 213-217.
398 PSYCHOLOGY.
2. Tliis leads us to the law of transit oriness, which is
this : Many instincts ripen at a certain o,ge and then fade away.
A consequence of this law is that if, during the time of
such an instinct s vivacity, objects adequate to arouse it are
met with, a habit of acting on them is formed, which re
mains when the original instinct has passed away ; but that
if no such objects are met with, then no habit will be
formed; and, later on in life, when the animal meets the
objects, he will altogether fail to react, as at the earlier
epoch he would instinctively have done.
No doubt such a law is restricted. Some instincts are
far less transient than others those connected with feed
ing and self-preservation may hardly be transient at all,
and some, after fading out for a time, recur as strong as
ever, e.g., the instincts of pairing and rearing young. The
law, however, though not absolute, is certainly very wide
spread, and a few examples will illustrate just what it
means.
In the chickens and calves above mentioned, it is ob
vious that the instinct to follow and become attached fades
out after a few days, and that the instinct of flight then
takes its place, the conduct of the creature toward man be
ing decided by the formation or non-formation of a certain
habit during those days. The transiency of the chicken s
instinct to follow is also proved by its conduct toward the
hen. Mr. Spalding kept some chickens shut up till they
were comparatively old, and, speaking of these, he says :
" A chicken that has not heard the call of the mother till until eight
or ten days old then hears it as if it heard it not. I regret to find that
on this point my notes are not so full as I could wish, or as they might
have been. There is, however, an account of one chicken that could
not be returned to the mother when ten days old. The hen followed it,
and tried to entice it in every way ; still, it continually left her and ran
to the house or to any person of whom it caught sight. This it per
sisted in doing, though beaten back with a small branch dozens of
times, and, indeed, cruelly maltreated. It was also placed under the
mother at night, but it again left her in the morning."
The instinct of sucking is ripe in all mammals at birth,
and leads to that habit of taking the breast which, in the
human infant, may be prolonged by daily exercise long be-
INSTINCT. 399
yond its usual term of a year or a year and a half. But the
instinct itself is transient, in the sense that if, for any rea
son, the child be fed by spoon during the first few days of
its life and not put to the breast, it may be no easy matter
after that to make it suck at all. So of calves. If their
mother die, or be dry, or refuse to let them suck for a day
or two, so that they are fed by hand, it becomes hard to
get them to suck at all when a new nurse is provided. The
ease with which sucking creatures are weaned, by simply
breaking the habit and giving them food in a new way,
shows that the instinct, purely as such, must be entirely
extinct.
Assuredly the simple fact that instincts are transient,
and that the effect of later ones may be altered by the
habits which earlier ones have left behind, is a far more
philosophical explanation than the notion of an instinctive
constitution vaguely deranged or thrown out of gear.
I have observed a Scotch terrier, born on the floor of a
stable in December, and transferred six weeks later to a
carpeted house, make, when he was less than four months
old, a very elaborate pretence of burying things, such as
gloves, etc., with which he had played till he was tired.
He scratched the carpet with his forefeet, dropped the ob
ject from his mouth upon the spot, and then scratched all
about it (with both fore- and hind-feet, if I remember
rightly), and finally went away and let it lie. Of course, the
act was entirely useless. I saw him perform it at that age,
some four or five times, and never again in his life. The
conditions were not present to fix a habit which should last
when the prompting instinct died away. But suppose
meat instead of a glove, earth instead of a carpet, hunger-
pangs instead of a fresh supper a few hours later, and it is
easy to see how this dog might have got into a habit of
burying superfluous food, which might have lasted all his
life. Who can swear that the strictly instructive part of
the food-burying propensity in the wild Canidce may not be
as short-lived as it was in this terrier ?
A similar instance is given by Dr. H. D. Schmidt * of
New Orleans:
* Transactions of American Neurological Association, vol. i. p. 129
(1875).
400 PSYCHOLOGY.
" I may cite the example of a young squirrel which I had tamed, a
number of years ago, when serving in the army, and when I had suffi
cient leisure and opportunity to study the habits of animals. In the
autumn, before the winter sets in, adult squirrels bury as many nuts,
as they can collect, separately, in the ground. Holding the nut firmly
between their teeth, they first scratch a hole in the grond, and, after
pointing their ears in all directions to convince themselves that no
enemy is near, they ramthe head, with the nut still between the front
teeth, serving as a sledge-hammer the nut into the ground, and then fill
up the hole by means of their paws. The whole process is executed with
great rapidity, and, as it appeared to me, always with exactly the same
movements ; in fact, it is done so well that I could never discover the
traces of the burial-ground. Now, as regards the young squirrel, which,
of course, never had been present at the burial of a nut, I observed that,
after having eaten a number of hickory-nuts to appease its appetite, it
would take one between its teeth, then sit upright and listen in all
directions. Finding all right, it would scratch upon the smooth blanket
on which I was playing with it as if to make a hole, then hammer with
the nut between its teeth upon the blanket, and finally perform all the
motions required to fill up a hole in the air; after which it would
jump away, leaving the nut, of course, uncovered."
The anecdote, of course, illustrates beautifully the close
relation of instinct to reflex action a particular perception
calls forth particular movements, and that is all. Dr.
Schmidt writes me that the squirrel in question soon passed
away from his observation. It may fairly be presumed
that, if he had been long retained prisoner in a cage, he
would soon have forgotten his gesticulations over the hick
ory-nuts.
One might, indeed, go still further with safety, and ex
pect that, if such a captive squirrel were then set free, he
would never afterwards acquire this peculiar instinct of his
tribe.*
Leaving lower animals aside, and turning to human in
stincts, we see the law of transiency corroborated on the
* "Mr. Spalding," says Mr. Lewes (Problems of Life and Mind, prob.
I. chap. n. 22, note), "tells me of a friend of his who reared a gosling
in the kitchen, away from all water ; when this bird was some months
old, and was taken to a pond, it not only refused to go into the water, but
when thrown in scrambled out again, as a hen would have done. Here
was an instinct entirely suppressed." See a similar observation on duck
lings in T.R. R. Stebbing : Essays on Darwinism (London, 1871), p. 73.
INSTINCT. 401
widest scale by the alternation of different interests and
passions as human life goes on. With the child, life is all
play and fairy-tales and learning the external properties of
things ; with the youth, it is bodily exercises of a more
systematic sort, novels of the real world, boon-fellowship
and song, friendship and love, nature, travel and adven
ture, science and philosophy ; with the man, ambition and
policy, acquisitiveness, responsibility to others, and the
selfish zest of the battle of life. If a boy grows up alone
at the age of games and sports, and learns neither to play
ball, nor row, nor sail, nor ride, nor skate, nor fish, nor
shoot, probably he will be sedentary to the end of his days ;
and, though the best of opportunities be afforded him for
learning these things later, it is a hundred to one but he will
pass them by and shrink back from the effort of taking
those necessary first steps the prospect of which, at an
earlier age, would have filled him with eager delight. The
sexual passion expires after a protracted reign ; but it is
well known that its peculiar manifestations in a given in
dividual depend almost entirely on the habits he may form
during the early period of its activity. Exposure to bad
company then makes him a loose liver all his days;
chastity kept at first makes the same easy later on. In all
pedagogy the great thing is to strike the iron while hot,
and to seize the wave of the pupil s interest in each succes
sive subject before its ebb has come, so that knowledge
may be got and a habit of skill acquired a headway of in
terest, in short, secured, on which afterward the individual
may float. There is a happy moment for fixing skill in
drawing, for making boys collectors in natural history, and
presently dissectors and botanists ; then for initiating them
into the harmonies of mechanics and the wonders of physi
cal and chemical law. Later, introspective psychology
and the metaphysical and religious mysteries take their
turn ; and, last of all, the drama of human affairs and
worldly wisdom in the widest sense of the term. In each
of us a saturation-point is soon reached in all these things ;
the impetus of our purely intellectual zeal expires, and un
less the topic be one associated with some urgent personal
need that keeps our wits constantly whetted about it, we
402 PSYCHOLOGY.
settle into an equilibrium, and live on what we learned
when our interest was fresh and instinctive, without adding
to the store. Outside of their own business, the ideas
gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically
the only ideas they shall have in their lives. They cannot
get anything new. Disinterested curiosity is past, the
mental grooves and channels set, the power of assimilation
gone. If by chance we ever do learn anything about some
entirely new topic we are afflicted with a strange sense of
insecurity, and we fear to advance a resolute opinion. But,
with things learned in the plastic days of instinctive curi
osity we never lose entirely our sense of being at home.
There remains a kinship, a sentiment of intimate acquaint
ance, which, even when we know we have failed to keep
abreast of the subject, flatters us with a sense of power
over it, and makes us feel not altogether out of the pale.
Whatever individual exceptions might be cited to this
are of the sort that prove the rule.
To detect the moment of the instinctive readiness for
the subject is, then, the first duty of every educator. As
for the pupils, it would probably lead to a more earnest
temper on the part of college students if they had less be
lief in their unlimited future intellectual potentialities, and
could be brought to realize that whatever physics and polit
ical economy and philosophy they are now acquiring are, for
better or worse, the physics and political economy and
philosophy that will have to serve them to the end.
The natural conclusion to draw from this transiency of
instincts is that most instincts are implanted for the sake of
giving rise to habits, and that, this purpose once accomplished,
the instincts themselves, as such, have no raison d etre in the
psychical economy, and consequently fade away. That occa
sionally an instinct should fade before circumstances per
mit of a habit being formed, or that, if the habit be formed,
other factors than the pure instinct should modify its
course, need not surprise us. Life is full of the imperfect
adjustment to individual cases, of arrangements which, tak
ing the species as a whole, are quite orderly and regular.
Instinct cannot be expected to escape this general risk.
INSTINCT. 403
SPECIAL HUMAN INSTINCTS.
Let us now test our principles by turning to human
instincts in more detail. We cannot pretend in these pages
to be minute or exhaustive. But we can say enough to set
all the above generalities in a more favorable light. But
first, what kind of motor reactions upon objects shall we
count as instincts? This, as aforesaid, is a somewhat
arbitrary matter. Some of the actions aroused in us by
objects go no further than our own bodies. Such is the
bristling up of the attention when a novel object is per
ceived, or the expression on the face or the breathing
apparatus of an emotion it may excite. These movements
merge into ordinary reflex actions like laughing when
tickled, or making a wry face at a bad taste. Other actions
take effect upon the outer world. Such are flight from a
wild beast, imitation of what we see a comrade do, etc. On
the whole it is best to be catholic, since it is very hard to
draw an exact line ; and call both of these kinds of activity
instinctive, so far as either may be naturally provoked by
the presence of specific sorts of outward fact.
Professor Preyer, in his careful little work, Die Seele
des Kindes, says " instinctive acts are in man few in
number, and, apart from those connected with the sexual
passion, difficult to recognize after early youth is past."
And he adds, " so much the more attention should we pay
to the instinctive movements of new-born babies, suck
lings, and small children." That instinctive acts should be
easiest recognized in childhood would be a very natural
effect of our principles of transitoriness, and of the restric
tive influence of habits once acquired ; but we shall see how
far they are from being few in number in man. Professor
Preyer divides the movements of infants into impulsive,
reflex, and instinctive. By impulsive movements he means
random movements of limbs, body, and voice, with no aim,
and before perception is aroused. Among the first reflex
movements are crying on contact with the air, sneezing,
snuffling, snoring, coughing, sighing, sobbing, gagging, vomiting,
hiccuping, starting, moving the limbs when tickled, touched, or
Uoivn upon, etc., etc.
404 PSYCHOLOGY.
Of the movements called by him instinctive in the child,
Professor Preyer gives a full account. Herr Schneider does
the same ; and as their descriptions agree with each other
and with what other writers about infancy say, I will base
my own very brief statement on theirs.
Sucking : almost perfect at birth ; not coupled with any
congenital tendency to seek the breast, this being a later
acquisition. As we have seen, sucking is a transitory in
stinct.
Biting an object placed in the mouth, chewing and grind
ing the teeth ; licking sugar ; making characteristic grimaces
over bitter and sweet tastes ; spitting out.
Clasping an object which touches the fingers or toes.
Later, attempts to grasp at an object seen at a distance.
Pointing at such objects, and making a peculiar sound ex
pressive of desire t which, in my own three children, was the
first manifestation of speech, occurring many weeks before
other significant sounds.
Carrying to the mouth of the object, when grasped. This
instinct, guided and inhibited by the sense of taste, and
combined with the instincts of biting, chewing, sucking,
spitting-out, etc., and with the reflex act of swallowing,
leads in the individual to a set of habits which constitute
his function of alimentation, and which may or may not be
gradually modified as life goes on.
Crying at bodily discomfort, hunger, or pain, and at
solitude. Smiling at being noticed, fondled, or smiled at
by others. It seems very doubtful whether young infants
have any instinctive fear of a terrible or scowling face. 1
have been unable to make my own children, under a year
old, change their expression when I changed mine ; at most
they manifested attention or curiosity. Preyer instances a
protrusion of the lips, which, he says, may be so great as to
remind one of that in the chimpanzee, as an instinctive
expression of concentrated attention in the human infant.
Turning the head aside as a gesture of rejection, a gesture
usually accompanied with a frown and a bending back oi
the body, and with holding the breath.
Holding head erect.
Sitting up.
INSTINCT. 405
Standing.
Locomotion. The early movements of children s limbs
are more or less symmetrical. Later a baby will move his
legs in alternation if suspended in the air. But until the
impulse to walk awakens by the natural ripening of the
nerve-centres, it seems to make no difference how often the
child s feet may be placed in contact with the ground ; the
legs remain limp, and do not respond to the sensation of
contact in the soles by muscular contractions pressing down
wards. No sooner, however, is the standing impulse born,
than the child stiffens his legs and presses downward as
soon as he feels the floor. In some babies this is the first
locomotory reaction. In others it is preceded by the in
stinct to creep, which arises, as I can testify, often in a very
sudden way. Yesterday the baby sat quite contentedly
wherever he was put ; to-day it has become impossible to
keep him sitting at all, so irresistible is the impulse, aroused
by the sight of the floor, to throw himself forward upon his
hands. Usually the arms are too weak, and the ambitious
little experimenter falls on his nose. But his perseverance
is dauntless, and he ends in a few days by learning to travel
rapidly around the room in the quadrupedal way. The
position of the legs in creeping varies much from one
-child to another. My own child, when creeping, was often
observed to pick up objects from the floor with his mouth,
a phenomenon which, as Dr. O. W. Holmes has remarked,
like the early tendency to grasp with the toes, easily lends
itself to interpretation as a reminiscence of prehuman an
cestral habits.
The walking instinct may awaken with no less sudden
ness, and its entire education be completed within a week s
compass, barring, of course, a little grogginess in the
gait. Individual infants vary enormously ; but on the whole
it is safe to say that the mode of development of these
locomotor instincts is inconsistent with the account given
by the older English associationist school, of their being
results of the individual s education, due altogether to the
gradual association of certain perceptions with certain hap
hazard movements and certain resultant pleasures. Mr-
406 PSYCHOLOGY.
Bain has tried,* by describing the demeanor of new-born
lambs, to show that locomotion is learned by a very rapid
experience. But the observation recorded proves the
faculty to be almost perfect from the first ; and all others
who have observed new-born calves, lambs, and pigs agree
that in these animals the powers of standing and walking,
and of interpreting the topographical significance of sights
and sounds, are all but fully developed at birth. Often in
animals who seem to be learning to walk or fly the sem
blance is illusive. The awkwardness shown is not due to
the fact that experience has not yet been there to asso
ciate the successful movements and exclude the failures, but
to the fact that the animal is beginning his attempts before
the co-ordinating centres have quite ripened for their work.
Mr. Spalding s observations on this point are conclusive as
to birds.
" Birds," he says, " do not learn to fly. Two years ago I shut up
five unfledged swallows in a small box, not much larger than the nest
from which they were taken. The little box, which had a wire front,
was hung on the wall near the nest, and the young swallows were fed by
their parents through the wires. In this confinement, where they could
not even extend their wings, they were kept until after they were fully
fledged. ... On going to set the prisoners free, one was found
dead. . . . The remaining four were allowed to escape one at a time.
Two of these were perceptibly wavering and unsteady in their flight.
One of them, after a flight of some ninety yards, disappeared among
some trees." No. 3 and No. 4 "never flew against anything, nor was
there, in their avoiding objects, any appreciable difference between
them and the old birds. No. 3 swept round the Wellingtonia, and No.
4 rose over the hedge, just as we see the old swallows doing every hour
of the day. I have this summer verified these observations. Of two
swallows I had similarly confined, one, on being set free, flew a yard or
two close to the ground, rose in the direction of a beech-tree, which it
gracefully avoided ; it was seen for a considerable time sweeping round
the beeches and performing magnificent evolutions in the air high above
them. The other, which was observed to beat the air with its wings
more than usual, was soon lost to sight behind some trees. Titmice,
tomtite, and wrens I have made the subjects of similar observations, and
with similar results." *
In the light of this report, one may well be tempted to
make a prediction about the human child, and say that if a
* Senses and Intellect 3d ed. pp. 413-675.
t Nature, xn. 507 (1875).
INSTINCT. 407
baby were kept from getting on his feet for two or three
weeks after the first impulse to walk had shown itself in
him, a small blister on each sole would do the business,
he might then be expected to walk about as well, through
the mere ripening of his nerve-centres, as if the ordinary
process of * learning had been allowed to occur during all
the blistered time. It is to be hoped that some scientific
widower, left alone with his offspring at the critical moment,
may ere long test this suggestion on the living subject.
Climbing on trees, fences, furniture, banisters, etc., is a well-
marked instinctive propensity which ripens after the fourth
year.
Vocalization. This may be either musical or significant.
Yery few weeks after birth the baby begins to express its
spirits by emitting vowel sounds, as much during inspira
tion as during expiration, and will lie on its back cooing
and gurgling to itself for nearly an hour. But this singing
has nothing to do with speech. Speech is sound significant.
During the second year a certain number of significant
sounds are gradually acquired ; but talking proper does not
set in till the instinct to imitate sounds ripens in the nervous
system; and this ripening seems in some children to be
quite abrupt. Then speech grows rapidly in extent and
perfection. The child imitates every word he hears uttered,
and repeats it again and again with the most evident plea
sure at his new power. At this time it is quite impossible
to talk itiih him, for his condition is that of Echolalia,
instead of answering the question, he simply reiterates it.
The result is, however, that his vocabulary increases very
fast ; and little by little, with teaching from above, the
young prattler understands, puts words together to express
his own wants and perceptions, and even makes intelligent
replies. From a speechless, he has become a speaking,
animal. The interesting point with regard to this instinct
is the oftentimes very sudden birth of the impulse to imi
tate sounds. Up to the date of its awakening the child may
have been as devoid of it as a dog. Four days later his
whole energy may be poured into this new channel. The
habits of articulation formed during the plastic age of
childhood are in most persons sufficient to inhibit the for-
408 PSYCHOLOGY.
mation of new ones of a fundamentally different sort wit
ness the inevitable foreign accent which distinguishes
the speech of those who learn a language after early youth.
Imitation. The child s first words are in part vocables
of his own invention, which his parents adopt, and which v
as far as they go, form a new human tongue upon the earth ;
and in part they are his more or less successful imitations
of words he hears the parents use. But the instinct of
imitating gestures develops earlier than that of imitating
sounds, unless the sympathetic crying of a baby when it
hears another cry may be reckoned as imitation of a sound.
Professor Preyer speaks of his child imitating the protru
sion of the father s lips in its fifteenth week. The various
accomplishments of infancy, making pat-a-cake, saying
bye-bye, * blowing out the candle, etc., usually fall well
inside the limits of the first year. Later come all the various
imitative games in which childhood revels, playing horse,
soldiers, etc., etc. And from this time onward man is
essentially the imitative animal. His whole educability
and in fact the whole history of civilization depend on
this trait, which his strong tendencies to rivalry, jealousy,
and acquisitiveness reinforce. Humani nihil a me alienwn
puto, is the motto of each individual of the species ; and
makes him, whenever another individual shows a power
or superiority of any kind, restless until he can exhibit it
himself. But apart from this kind of imitation, of which
the psychological roots are complex, there is the more
direct propensity to speak and walk and behave like
others, usually without any conscious intention of so
doing. And there is the imitative tendency which shows
itself in large masses of men, and produces panics, and
orgies, and frenzies of violence, and which only the
rarest individuals can actively withstand. This sort of
imitativeness is possessed by man in common with other
gregarious animals, and is an instinct in the fullest sense
of the term, being a blind impulse to act as soon as a cer
tain perception occurs. It is particularly hard not to imi
tate gaping, laughing, or looking and running in a certain
direction, if we see others doing so. Certain mesmerized
subjects must automatically imitate whatever motion their
INSTINCT. 409
operator makes before their eyes.* A successful piece of
mimicry gives to both bystanders and mimic a peculiar
kind of aesthetic pleasure. The dramatic impulse, the ten
dency to pretend one is someone else, contains this pleasure
of mimicry as one of its elements. Another element seems
to be a peculiar sense of power in stretching one s own
personality so as to include that of a strange person. In
young children this instinct often knows no bounds. For
a few months in one of my children s third year, he liter
ally hardly ever appeared in his own person. It was
always, " Play I am So-and-so, and you are So-and-so, and
the chair is such a thing, and then we ll do this or that."
If you called him by his name, H., you invariably got the
reply, " I m not H., I m a hyena, or a horse-car," or what
ever the feigned object might be. He outwore this impulse
after a time ; but while it lasted, it had every appearance
of being the automatic result of ideas, often suggested by
perceptions, working out irresistible motor effects. Imita
tion shades into
Emulation or Rivalry, a very intense instinct, especially
rife with young children, or at least especially undisguised.
Everyone knows it. Nine-tenths of the work of the world
is done by it. We know that if we do not do the task some
one else will do it and get the credit, so we do it. It has
very little connection with sympathy, but rather more with
pugnacity, which we proceed in turn to consider.
Pugnacity; anger; resentment. In many respects man
is the most ruthlessly ferocious of beasts. As with all
gregarious animals, two souls, as Faust says, * dwell with
in his breast, the one of sociability and helpfulness, the
other of jealousy and antagonism to his mates. Though in
a general way he cannot live without them, yet, as regards
certain individuals, it often falls out that he cannot live
with them either. Constrained to be a member of a tribe,
he still has a right to decide, as far as in him lies, of which
other members the tribe shall consist. Killing off a few
* See, for some excellent pedagogic remarks about doing yourself what
you want to get your pupils to do, and not simply telling them to do it,
Baumann, Haudbuch der Moral (1879), p. 32 ff.
410 PSYCHOLOGY.
obnoxious ones may often better the chances of those that
remain. And killing off a neighboring tribe from whom
no good thing comes, but only competition, may materially
better the lot of the whole tribe. Hence the gory cradle,
the bellum omnium contra omnes, in which our race was
reared ; hence the fickleness of human ties, the ease with
which the foe of yesterday becomes the ally of to-day, the
friend of to-day the enemy of to-morrow ; hence the fact that
we, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of
one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more
pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with
us, ready at any moment to burst into flame, the smoulder
ing and sinister traits of character by means of which they
lived through so many massacres, harming others, but
themselves unharmed.
Sympathy is an emotion as to whose instinctiveness psy
chologists have held hot debate, some of them contending
that it is no primitive endowment, but, originally at least,
the result of a rapid calculation of the good consequences
to ourselves of the sympathetic act. Such a calculation,
at first conscious, would grow more unconscious as it be
came more habitual, and at last, tradition and association
aiding, might prompt to actions which could not be distin
guished from immediate impulses. It is hardly needful to
argue against the falsity of this view. Some forms of sym
pathy, that of mother with child, for example, are surely
primitive, and not intelligent forecasts of board and lodg
ing and other support to be reaped in old age. Danger to
the child blindly and instantaneously stimulates the mother
to actions of alarm or defence. Menace or harm to the
adult beloved or friend excites us in a corresponding
way, often against all the dictates of prudence. It is true
that sympathy does not necessarily follow from the mere
fact of gregariousness. Cattle do not help a wounded com
rade ; on the contrary, they are more likely to dispatch
him. But a dog will lick another sick dog, and even bring
him food ; and the sympathy of monkeys is proved by
many observations to be strong. In man, then, we may lay
it down that the sight of suffering or danger to others is
a direct exciter of interest, and an immediate stimulus, if
INSTINCT. 411
no complication hinders, to acts of relief. There is noth
ing unaccountable or pathological about this nothing to
justify Professor Bain s assimilation of it to the fixed
ideas of insanity, as clashing with the regular outgoings
of the will. It may be as primitive as any other outgo
ing, and may be due to a random variation selected, quite
as probably as gregariousness and maternal love are, even
in Spencer s opinion, due to such variations.
It is true that sympathy is peculiarly liable to inhibi
tion from other instincts which its stimulus may call forth.
The traveller whom the good Samaritan rescued may well
have prompted such instinctive fear or disgust in the priest
and Levite who passed him by, that their sympathy could
not come to the front. Then, of course, habits, reasoned
reflections, and calculations may either check or reinforce
one s sympathy ; as may also the instincts of love or hate,
if these exist, for the suffering individual. The hunting
and pugnacious instincts, when aroused, also inhibit our
sympathy absolutely. This accounts for the cruelty of
collections of men hounding each other on to bait or tor
ture a victim. The blood mounts to the eyes, and sympa
thy s chance is gone.*
The hunting instinct has an equally remote origin in the
evolution of the race.f The hunting and the fighting in-
* Sympathy has been enormously written about in books on Ethics. A
very good recent chapter is that by Thos. Fowler: The Principles of Morals
part n. chap. n.
f " I must now refer to a very general passion which occurs in boys who
are brought up naturally, especially in the country. Everyone knows
what pleasure a boy takes in the sight of a butterfly, fish, crab or other
animal, or of a bird s nest, and what a strong propensity he has for pulling
apart, breaking, opening, and destroying all complex objects, how he de-
ights in pulling out the wings and legs of flies, and tormenting one animal
>r another, how greedy he is to steal secret dainties, with what irresistible
strength the plundering of birds nests attracts him without his havino- the
least intention of eating the eggs or the young birds. This fact has long
been familiar, and is daily remarked by teachers; but an explanation of
these impulses which follow upon a mere perception of the objects, with-
t in most cases any representation being aroused of a future pleasure to
3e gained, has as yet been given by no one, and yet the impulses are very
easy to explain. In many cases it will be said that the boy pulls things
apart from curiosity. Quite correct : but whence comes this curiosity, thia
irresistible desire to open everything and see what is inside ? What makes
412 PSYCHOLOGY.
stinct combine in many manifestations. They both snpport
the emotion of anger ; they combine in the fascination which
stories of atrocity have for most minds ; and the utterly
blind excitement of giving the rein to our fury when our blood
is up (an excitement whose intensity is greater than that
of any other human passion save one) is only explicable as an
impulse aboriginal in character, and having more to do with
immediate and overwhelming tendencies to muscular dis
charge than to any possible reminiscences of effects of ex
perience, or association of ideas. I say this here, because
the pleasure of disinterested cruelty has been thought a
paradox, and writers have sought to show that it is no
primitive attribute of our nature, but rather a resultant
of the subtile combination of other less malignant ele
ments of mind. This is a hopeless task. If evolution and
the survival of the fittest be true at all, the destruction
of prey and of human rivals must have been among the
most important of man s primitive functions, the fighting
and the chasing instincts must have become ingrained.
Certain perceptions must immediately, and without the in
tervention of inferences and ideas, have prompted emotions
and motor discharges ; and both the latter must, from
the nature of the case, have been very violent, and therefore,
when unchecked, of an intensely pleasurable kind. It is just
because human bloodthirstiness is such a primitive part of
us that it is so hard to eradicate, especially where a fight
or a hunt is promised as part of the fun.*
the boy take the eggs from the nest and destroy them when he never thinks
of eating them ? These are effects of an hereditary instinct, so strong that
warnings and punishments are unable to counteract it " (Schneider: Der
Menschliche Wille, p. 224. See also Der Thierische W lle, pp. 180-2.)
* It is not surprising, in view of the facts of animal bistory and evolu
tion, that the very special object blood should have become the stimulus
for a very special interest and excitement. That the sight of it should
make people faint is strange. Less so that a child who sees his blood flow
should forthwith become much more frightened than by the mere feeling
of the cut. Horned cattle often, though not always, becoipe furiously
excited at the smell of blood. In some abnormal human being.* the sight
or thought of it exerts a baleful fascination. " B and his father v*ere at a
neighbor s one evening, and, while paring apples, the old man accidentally
cut his hand so severely as to cause the blood to flow profusely. B was
observed to become restless, nervous, pale, and to have undergone a peculiar
INSTINCT. 413
As Rochef oucauld says, there is something in the misfor
tunes of our very friends that does not altogether displease
us ; and an apostle of peace will feel a certain vicious thrill
run through him, and enjoy a vicarious brutality, as he turns
to the column in his newspaper at the top of which * Shock
ing Atrocity stands printed in large capitals. See how the
crowd flocks round a street-brawl ! Consider the enormous
annual sale of revolvers to persons, not one in a thousand
of whom has any serious intention of using them, but of
whom each one has his carnivorous self-consciousness
agreeably tickled by the notion, as he clutches the handle
of his weapon, that he will be rather a dangerous customer
to meet. See the ignoble crew that escorts every great
pugilist parasites who feel as if the glory of his brutality
rubbed off upon them, and whose darling hope, from day to
day, is to arrange some set-to of which they may share the
rapture without enduring the pains ! The first blows at a
prize-fight are apt to make a refined spectator sick ; but his
blood is soon up in favor of one party, and it will then seem
as if the other fellow could not be banged and pounded and
mangled enough the refined spectator would like to rein
force the blows himself. Over the sinister orgies of blood
of certain depraved and insane persons let a curtain be
drawn, as well as over the ferocity with which otherwise
fairly decent men may be animated, when (at the sacking of
a town, for instance), the excitement of victory long de-
change in demeanor. Taking advantage of the distraction produced by
the accident, B escaped from the house and proceeded to a neighboring
farm-yard, where he cut the throat of a horse, killing it." Dr. D. H. Tuke,
commenting on this man s case (Journal of Mental Science, October,
1885), speaks of the influence of blood upon him his whole life had been
one chain of cowardly atrocities and continues : " There can be no doubt
that with some individuals it constitutes a fascination. . . . We might
speak of a mania sanguinis. Dr. Savage admitted a man from France into
Bethlehem Hospital some time ago, one of whose earliest symptoms of in
sanity was the thirst for blood, which he endeavored to satisfy by going to
an abattoir in Paris. The man whose case I have brought forward had the
same passion for gloating over blood, but had no attack of acute mania.
The sight of blood was distinctly a delight to him, and at any time blood
aroused in him the worst elements of his nature. Instances will easily be
recalled in which murderers, undoubtedly insane, have described the in
tense pleasure they experienced in the warm blood of children."
414 PSYCHOLOGY.
layed, the sudden freedom of rapine and of lust, the con
tagion of a crowd, and the impulse to imitate and outdo, all
combine to swell the blind drunkenness of the killing-in
stinct, and carry it to its extreme. No ! those who try to
account for this from above downwards, as if it resulted from
the consequences of the victory being rapidly inferred, and
from the agreeable sentiments associated with them in the
imagination, have missed the root of the matter. Our fe
rocity is blind, and can only be explained from beloiv. Could
we trace it back through our line of descent, we should see
it taking more and more the form of a fatal reflex response,
and at the same time becoming more and more the pure
and direct emotion that it is.*
In childhood it takes this form. The boys who pull
out grasshoppers legs and butterflies wings, and disem
bowel every frog they catch, have no thought at all about the
matter. The creatures tempt their hands to a fascinating
occupation, to which they have to yield. It is with them
as with the boy-fiend Jesse Pomeroy, who cut a little
girl s throat, just to see how she d act. The normal pro
vocatives of the impulse are all living beasts, great and
small, toward which a contrary habit has not been formed
all human beings in whom we perceive a certain intent
towards us, and a large number of human beings who offend
us peremptorily, either by their look, or gait, or by some
circumstance in their lives which we dislike. Inhibited by
sympathy, and by reflection calling up impulses of an op
posite kind, civilized men lose the habit of acting out their
pugnacious instincts in a perfectly natural way, and a pass
ing feeling of anger, with its comparatively faint bodily ex-
" Bombonnel, having rolled with a panther to the border of a ravine,
gets his head awaj from the open mouth of the animal, and by a prodi
gious effort rolls her into the abyss. He gets up, blinded, spitting a mass of
blood, not knowing exactly what the situation is. He thinks only of one
thing, that he shall probably die of his wounds, but that before dying he
must take vengeance on the panther. I didn t think of my pain, he tells
us. Possessed entirely by the fury with which I was transported, I drew
my hunting-knife, and not understanding what had become of the beast, I
sought for her on every side in order to continue the struggle. It was in
this plight that the Arabs found me when they arrived. " (Quoted by
Guyan, La Morale sans Obligation, etc., p. 210.)
INSTINCT. 415
pressions, may be the limit of their physical combativeness.
Such a feeling as this may, however, be aroused by a wide
range of objects. Inanimate things, combinations of color
and sound, bad bills of fare, may in persons who combine
fastidious taste with an irascible temperament produce
real ebullitions of rage. Though the female sex is often
said to have less pugnacity than the male, the difference
seems connected more with the extent of the motor con
sequences of the impulse than with its frequency. Women
take offence and get angry, if anything, more easily than men,
but their anger is inhibited by fear and other principles of
their nature from expressing itself in blows. The hunting-
instinct proper seems to be decidedly weaker in them than
in men. The latter instinct is easily restricted by habit to
certain objects, which become legitimate game, while
other things are spared. If the hunting-instinct be not ex
ercised at all, it may even entirely die out, and a man may
enjoy letting a wild creature live, even though he might easily
kill it. Such a type is now becoming frequent ; but there
is no doubt that in the eyes of a child of nature such a
personage would seem a sort of moral monster.
Fear is a reaction aroused by the same objects that
arouse ferocity. The antagonism of the two is an interest
ing study in instinctive dynamics. We both fear, and wish
to kill, anything that may kill us ; and the question which
of the two impulses we shall follow is usually decided by
some one of those collateral circumstances of the particular
case, to be moved by which is the mark of superior mental
natures. Of course this introduces uncertainty into the
reaction ; but it is an uncertainty found in the higher
brutes as well as in men, and ought not to be taken as
proof that we are less instinctive than they. Fear has
bodily expressions of an extremely energetic kind, and
stands, beside lust and anger, as one of the three most ex
citing emotions of which our nature is susceptible. The
progress from brute to man is characterized by nothing so
much as by the decrease in frequency of proper occasions
for fear. In civilized life, in particular, it has at last be
come possible for large numbers of people to pass from the
cradle to the grave without ever having had a pang of genu-
416 PSYCHOLOGY.
ine fear. Many of us need an attack of mental disease to
teach us the meaning of the word. Hence the possibility
of so much blindly optimistic philosophy and religion.
The atrocities of life become like a tale of little meaning
though the words are strong ; we doubt if anything like us
ever really was within the tiger s jaws, and conclude that
the horrors we hear of are but a sort of painted tapestry
for the chambers in which we lie so comfortably at peace
with ourselves and with the world.
Be this as it may, fear is a genuine instinct, and one of
the earliest shown by the human child. Noises seem es
pecially to call it forth. Most noises from the outer world,
to a child bred in the house, have no exact significance.
They are simply startling. To quote a good observer, M.
Perez :
" Children between three and ten months are less often alarmed by
visual than by auditory impressions. In cats, from the fifteenth day,
the contrary is the case. A child, three and a half months old, in the
midst of the turmoil of a conflagration, in presence of the devouring
flames and ruined walls, showed neither astonishment nor fear, but
smiled at the woman who was taking care of him, while his parents
were busy. The noise, however, of the trumpet of the firemen, w r ho
were approaching, and that of the wheels of the engine, made him
start and cry. At this age I have never yet seen an infant startled at a
flash of lightning, even when intense; but I have seen many of them
alarmed at the voice of the thunder. . . . Thus fear comes rather by
the ears than by the eyes, to the child without experience. It is nat
ural that this should be reversed,. or reduced, in animals organized to
perceive danger afar. Accordingly, although I have never seen a child
frightened at his first sight of fire, I have many a time seen young dogs,
young cats, young chickens, and young birds frightened thereby. ... I
picked up some years ago a lost cat about a year old. Some months
afterward at the onset of cold weather I lit the fire in the grate of my
study, which was her reception-room. She first looked at the flame in
a very frightened way. I brought her near to it. She leaped away
and ran to hide under the bed. Although the fire was lighted every day,
it was not until the end of the winter that I could prevail upon her to
stay upon a chair near it. The next winter, however, all apprehension
had disappeared. . . . Let us, then, conclude that there are hereditary
dispositions to fear, which are independent of experience, but which
experiences may end by attenuating very considerably. In the human
infant I believe them to be particularly connected with the ear. 1 *
* Psychologic de 1 Enfant, pp. 72-74. In an account of a young gorilla
quoted from Falkenstein,by R. Hartmann ( Anthropoid Apes, International
INSTINCT. 417
The effect of noise in heightening any terror we may
feel in adult years is very marked. The howling of the
storm, whether on sea or land, is a principal cause of our
anxiety when exposed to it. The writer has been interested
in noticing in his own person, while lying in bed, and kept
awake by the wind outside, how invariably each loud gust
of it arrested momentarily his heart. A dog, attacking us,
is much more dreadful by reason of the noises he makes.
Strange men, and strange animals, either large or small,
excite fear, but especially men or animals advancing toward
us in a threatening way. This is entirely instinctive and
antecedent to experience. Some children will cry with
terror at their very first sight of a cat or dog, and it will
often be impossible for weeks to make them touch it.
Others will wish to fondle it almost immediately. Certain
kinds of vermin, especially spiders and snakes, seem to
excite a fear unusually difficult to overcome. It is impos
sible to say how much of this difference is instinctive and
how much the result of stories heard about these creatures.
That the fear of vermin ripens gradually, seemed to me
to be proved in a child of my own to whom I gave a live
frog once, at the age of six to eight months, and again when
he was a year and a half old. The first time he seized it
promptly, and holding it, in spite of its struggling, at last
got its head into his mouth. He then let it crawl up his
breast, and get upon his face, without showing alarm. But
the second time, although he had seen no frog and heard
no story about a frog between whiles, it was almost impos
sible to induce him to touch it. Another child, a year old,
eagerly took some very large spiders into his hand. At
present he is afraid, but has been exposed meanwhile to
the teachings of the nursery. One of my children from her
birth upwards saw daily the pet pug-dog of the house, and
never betrayed the slightest fear until she was (if I recol-
3cientific Series, vol. LII (New York, 1886), p. 265), it is said: "He very
much disliked strange noises. Thunder, the rain falling on the skylight,
and especially the long-drawn note of a pipe or trumpet, threw him into
such agitation as to cause a sudden affection of the digestive organs, and
it became expedient to keep him at a distance. When he was slightly in
disposed, we made use of this kind of music with results as successful as
if we had administered purgative medicine."
418 PSYCHOLOGY.
lect rightly) about eight months old. Then the instinct
suddenly seemed to develop, and with such intensity that
familiarity had no mitigating effect. She screamed when
ever the dog entered the room, and for many months re
mained afraid to touch him. It is needless to say that no
change in the pug s unfailingly friendly conduct had any
thing to do with this change of feeling in the child.
Preyer tells of a young child screaming with fear on
being carried near to the sea. The great source of terror
to infancy is solitude. The teleology of this is obvious, as
is also that of the infant s expression of dismay the never-
failing cry on waking up and finding himself alone.
Black tilings, and especially dark places, holes, caverns,
etc., arouse a peculiarly gruesome fear. This fear, as well
as that of solitude, of being l lost, are explained after a
fashion by ancestral experience. Says Schneider :
" It is a fact that men, especially in childhood, fear to go into a dark
cavern or a gloomy wood. This feeling of fear arises, to be sure,
partly from the fact that we easily suspect that dangerous beasts may
lurk in these localities a suspicion due to stories we have heard and
read. But, on the other hand, it is quite sure that this fear at a certain
perception is also directly inherited. Children who have been carefully
guarded from all ghost-stories are nevertheless terrified and cry if led
into a dark place, especially if sounds are made there. Even an adult
can easily observe that an uncomfortable timidity steals over him in a
lonely wood at night, although , he may have the fixed conviction that
not the slightest danger is near.
"This feeling of fear occurs in many men even in their own house
after dark, although it is much stronger in a dark cavern or forest. The
fact of such instinctive fear is easily explicable when we consider that
our savage ancestors through innumerable generations were accustomed
to meet with dangerous beasts in caverns, especially bears, and were
for the most part attacked by such beasts during the night and in the
woods, and that tnus an inseparable association between the perceptions
of darkness of caverns and woods, and fear took place, and was
inherited."*
High places cause fear of a peculiarly sickening sort,
though here, again, individuals differ enormously. The
utterly blind instinctive character of the motor impulses
here is shown by the fact that they are almost always
* Der Menschliche Wille, p. 224.
INSTINCT. 419
entirely unreasonable, but that reason is powerless to
suppress them. That they are a mere incidental peculiarity
of the nervous system, like liability to sea-sickness, or love
of music, with no teleological significance, seems more than
probable. The fear in question varies so much from one per
son to another, and its detrimental effects are so much more
obvious than its uses, that it is hard to see how it could be
a selected instinct. Man is anatomically one of the best
fitted of animals for climbing about high places. The best
psychical complement to this equipment would seem to be
a * level head when there, not a dread of going there at
all. In fact, the teleology of fear, beyond a certain
point, is very dubious. Professor Mosso, in his interesting
monograph, * La Paura (which has been translated into
French), concludes that many of its manifestations must be
considered pathological rather than useful ; Bain, in several
places, expresses the same opinion ; and this, I think, is
surely the view which any observer without a priori preju
dices must take. A certain amount of timidity obviously
adapts us to the world we live in, but the fear-paroxysm is
surely altogether harmful to him who is its prey.
Fear of the supernatural is one variety of fear. It is
difficult to assign any normal object for this fear, unless it
were a genuine ghost. But, in spite of psychical research-
societies, science has not yet adopted ghosts ; so we can only
say that certain ideas of supernatural agency, associated
with real circumstances, produce a peculiar kind of horror.
This horror is probably explicable as the result of a combi
nation of simpler horrors. To bring the ghostly terror to its
maximum, many usual elements of the dreadful must com
bine, such as loneliness, darkness, inexplicable sounds, espe
cially of a dismal character, moving figures half discerned
(or,if discerned, of dreadful aspect), and a vertiginous baffling
of the expectation. This last element, which is intellectual,
is very important. It produces a strange emotional
* curdle in our blood to see a process with which we are
familiar deliberately taking an unwonted course. Any
one s heart would stop beating if he perceived his chair
sliding unassisted across the floor. The lower animals
appear to be sensitive to the mysteriously exceptional as
420 PSYCHOLOGY.
well as ourselves. My friend Professor W. K Brooks, of
the Johns Hopkins University, told me of his large and
noble dog being frightened into a sort of epileptic fit by a
bone being drawn across the floor by a thread which the
dog did not see. Darwin and Eomanes have given similar
experiences.* The idea of the supernatural involves that
the usual should be set at naught In the witch and hob
goblin supernatural, other elements still of fear are brought
in caverns, slime and ooze, vermin, corpses, and the like.f
A human corpse seems normally to produce an instinctive
dread,which is no doubt somewhat due to its mysteriousness,
and which familiarity rapidly dispels. But, in view of the
fact that cadaveric, reptilian, and underground horrors play
so specific and constant a part in many nightmares and
forms of delirium, it seems not altogether unwise to ask
whether these forms of dreadful circumstance may not at a
former period have been more normal objects of the envi
ronment than now. The ordinary cock-sure evolutionist
ought to have no difficulty in explaining these terrors, and
the scenery that provokes them, as relapses into the
consciousness of the cave-men, a consciousness usually
overlaid in us by experiences of more recent date.
There are certain other pathological fears, and certain
peculiarities in the expression of ordinary fear, which
might receive an explanatory light from ancestral con
ditions, even infra-human ones. In ordinary fear, one may
* Cf. Romanes, Mental Evolution, etc., p. 156.
f In the Overland Monthly for 1887, a most interesting article on
Laura Bridgman s writings has been published by Mr. E. C. Sandford.
Among other reminiscences of her early childhood, while she still knew
nothing of the sign-language, the wonderful blind deaf-mute records the
following item in her quaint language : "My father [he was a farmer and
probably did his own butchering] used to enter his kitchen bringing some
killed animals in and deposited them on one of sides of the room many
times. As I perceived it it make me shudder with terror because I did not
know what the matter was. I hated to approach the dead. One morning
I went to take a short walk with my Mother. I went into a snug house for
some time. They took me into a room where there was a coffin. I put
my hand in the coffin & felt something so queer. It frightened me
unpleasantly. I found something dead wrapped in a silk h d k f so care
fully. It must have been a body that had had vitality. ... I did not like
to venture to examine the body for I was confounded."
INSTINCT 421
either run, or remain semi-paralyzed. The latter condition
reminds us of the so-called death-shamming instinct shown
by many animals. Dr. Lindsay, in his work Mind in
Animals, says this must require great self-command in
those that practise it. But it is really no feigning of death
at all, and requires no self-command. It is simply a terror-
paralysis which has been so useful as to become hereditary.
The beast of prey does not think the motionless bird, insect,
or crustacean dead. He simply fails to notice them at all ;
because his senses, like ours, are much more strongly
excited by a moving object than by a still one. It is the
same instinct which leads a boy playing I spy to hold
his very breath when the seeker is near, and which makes
the beast of prey himself in many cases motionlessly lie in
wait for his victim or silently stalk it, by rapid ap
proaches alternated with periods of immobility. It is the
opposite of the instinct which makes us jump up and down
and move our arms when we wish to attract the notice of
some one passing far away, and makes the shipwrecked
sailor frantically wave a cloth upon the raft where he is
floating when a distant sail appears. Now, may not the
statue-like, crouching immobility of some melancholiacs,
insane with general anxiety and fear of everything, be in
some way connected with this old instinct ? They can give
no reason for their fear to move ; but immobility makes them
feel safer and more comfortable. Is not this the mental
state of the * feigning animal ?
Again, take the strange symptom which has been de
scribed of late years by the rather absurd name of agora
phobia. The patient is seized with palpitation and ter
ror at the sight of any open place or broad street which
he has to cross alone. He trembles, his knees bend, he
may even faint at the idea. Where he has sufficient self-
command he sometimes accomplishes the object by keep
ing safe under the lee of a vehicle going across, or join
ing himself to a knot of other people. But usually he
slinks round the sides of the square, hugging the houses
as closely as he can. This emotion has no utility in a
civilized man, but when we notice the chronic agora
phobia of our domestic cats, and see the tenacious way
422 PSYCHOLOGY.
in which many wild animals, especially rodents, cling to
cover, and only venture on a dash across the open as a
desperate measure even then making for every stone or
bunch of weeds which may give a momentary shelter when
we see this we are strongly tempted to ask whether such an
odd kind of fear in us be not due to the accidental resur
rection, through disease, of a sort of instinct which may in
some of our ancestors have had a permanent and on the
whole a useful part to play ?
Appropriation or Acquisitiveness. The beginnings of ac
quisitiveness are seen in the impulse which very young
children display, to snatch at, or beg for, any object which
pleases their attention. Later, when they begin to speak,
among the first words they emphasize are me and mine. *
Their earliest quarrels with each other are about questions
of ownership ; and parents of twins soon learn that it con
duces to a quiet house to buy all presents in impartial du
plicate. Of the later evolution of the proprietary instinct I
need not speak. Everyone knows how difficult a thing it is
not to covet whatever pleasing thing we see, and how the
sweetness of the thing often is as gall to us so long as it is
another s. When another is in possession, the impulse to
appropriate the thing often turns into the impulse to harm
him what is called envy, or jealousy, ensues. In civilized
life the impulse to own is usually checked by a variety of
considerations, and only passes over into action under cir
cumstances legitimated by habit and common consent, an
additional example of the way in which one instinctive ten
dency may be inhibited by others. A variety of the propri
etary instinct is the impulse to form collections of the same
sort of thing. It differs much in individuals, and shows in
a striking way how instinct and habit interact. For, al-
* I lately saw a boy of five (who had been told the story of Hector and
Achilles) teaching his younger brother, aged three, how to play Hector,
wHle he himself should play Achilles, and chase him round the walls of
Troy. Having armed themselves, Achilles advanced, shouting "Where s
my Patroklos ? " Whereupon the would-be Hector piped up, quite distract
ed from his role, Where s my Patroklos ? I want a Patroklos ! I want a
Patroklos ! " and broke up the game. Of what kind of a thing a Patroklos
might be he had, of course, no notion enough that his brother had one,
for him to claim one too.
INSTINCT. 423
though a collection of any given thing like postage-stamps
need not be begun by any given person, yet the chances
are that if accidentally it be begun by a person with the col
lecting instinct, it will probably be continued. The chief
interest of the objects, in the collector s eyes, is that they
are a collection, and that they are his. Kivalry, to be sure,
inflames this, as it does every other passion, yet the objects
of a collector s mania need not be necessarily such as are
generally in demand. Boys will collect anything that they
see another boy collect, from pieces of chalk and peach-pits
up to books and photographs. Out of a hundred students
whom I questioned, only four or five had never collected
anything.*
The associationist psychology denies that there is any
blind primitive instinct to appropriate, and would explain all
acquisitiveness, in the first instance, as a desire to secure the
pleasures which the objects possessed may yield ; and, sec
ondly, as the association of the idea of pleasantness with the
holding of the thing, even though the pleasure originally got
by it was only gained through its expense or destruction.
Thus the miser is shown to us as one who has transferred
to the gold by which he may buy the goods of this life all
the emotions which the goods themselves would yield ; and
who thereafter loves the gold for its own sake, preferring
the means of pleasure to the pleasure itself. There can be
little doubt that much of this analysis a broader view of
the facts would have dispelled. The miser is an abstrac
tion. There are all kinds of misers. The common sort,
the excessively niggardly man, simply exhibits the psycho
logical law that the potential has often a far greater influ
ence over our mind than the actual. A man will not marry
now, because to do so puts an end to his indefinite potenti
alities of choice of a partner. He prefers the latter. He
will not use open fires or wear his good clothes, because the
day may come when he will have to use the furnace or
dress in a worn-out coat, and then where will he be ?
* In The Nation for September 3, 1886, President G. S. Hall has
given some account of a statistical research on Boston school-boys, by Miss
Wiltse, from which it appears that only nineteen out of two hundred and
twenty-nine had made no collections.
424 PSYCHOLOGY.
For him, better the actual evil than the fear of it ; and so
it is with the common lot of misers. Better to live poor
now, with the power of living rich, than to live rich at the
risk of losing the power. These men value their gold, not
for its own sake, but for its powers. Demonetize it, and see
how quickly they will get rid of it ! The associationist the
ory is, as regards them, entirely at fault : they care noth
ing for the gold in se.
With other misers there combines itself with this pref
erence of the power over the act the far more instinctive
element of the simple collecting propensity. Every one
collects money, and when a man of petty ways is smitten
with the collecting mania for this object he necessarily be
comes a miser. Here again the associationist psychology
is wholly at fault. The hoarding instinct prevails widely
among animals as well as among men. Professor Silliman
has thus described one of the hoards of the California
wood-rat, made in an empty stove of an unoccupied house :
" I found the outside to be composed entirely of spikes, all laid
with symmetry, so as to present the points of the nails outward. In the
centre of this mass was the nest, composed of finely-divided fibres of
hemp-packing. Interlaced with the spikes were the following : about
two dozen knives, forks, and spoons ; all the butcher s knives, three
in number ; a large carving-knife, fork, and steel ; several large plugs
of tobacco, ... an old purse containing some silver, matches, and
tobacco ; nearly all the small tools from the tool-closets, with several
large augers, ... all of which must have been transported some dis
tance, as they were originally stored in different parts of the house. . . .
The outside casing of a silver watch was disposed of -in one part of
the pile, the glass of the same watch in another, and the works
in still another."*
In every lunatic asylum we find the collecting instinct
developing itself in an equally absurd way. Certain pa
tients will spend all their time picking pins from the
floor and hoarding them. Others collect bits of thread,
buttons, or rags, and prize them exceedingly. Now, the
Miser par excellence of the popular imagination and of
melodrama, the monster of squalor and misanthropy, is
simply one of these mentally deranged persons. His in
tellect may in many matters be clear, but his instincts,
* Quoted in Lindsay, Mind in Lower Animals, vol. n. p. 151.
INSTINCT. 425
especially that of ownership, are insane, and their insanity
has no more to do with the association of ideas than with
the precession of the equinoxes. As a matter of fact his
hoarding usually is directed to money ; but it also includes
almost anything besides. Lately in a Massachusetts. town
there died a miser who principally hoarded newspapers.
These had ended by so filling all the rooms of his good-
sized house from floor to ceiling that his living-space was
restricted to a few narrow channels between them. Even
as I write, the morning paper gives an account of the
emptying of a miser s den in Boston by the City Board of
Health. What the owner hoarded is thus described :
u He gathered old newspapers, wrapping-paper, incapacitated um
brellas, canes, pieces of common wire, cast-off clothing, empty barrels,
pieces of iron, old bones, battered tin-ware, fractured pots, and bushels
of such miscellany as is to be found only at the city dump. The
empty barrels were filled, shelves were filled, every hole and corner was
filled, and in order to make more storage-room, the hermit covered
his store-room with a network of ropes, and hung the ropes as full as
they could hold of his curious collections. There was nothing one could
think of that wasn t in that room. As a wood-sawyer, the old man had
never thrown away a saw-blade or a wood-buck. The bucks were rheu
matic and couldn t stand up, and the saw-blades were worn down to
almost nothing in the middle. Some had been actually worn in two,
but the ends were carefully saved and stored away. As a coal-heaver,
the old man had never cast off a worn-out basket, and there were
dozens of the remains of the old things, patched up with canvas and
rope-yarns, in the store-room. There were at least two dozen old bats,
fur, cloth, silk, and straw," etc.
Of course there may be a great many * associations of
ideas in the miser s mind about the things he hoards. He
is a thinking being, and must associate things; but, without
an entirely blind impulse in this direction behind all his
ideas, such practical results could never be reached.*
Kleptomania, as it is called, is an uncontrollable impulse
to appropriate, occurring in persons whose associations
of ideas would naturally all be of a counteracting sort.
* Cf . Flint, Mind, vol. i. pp. 330-333 ; Sully, iUd. p. 567. Most
people probably have the impulse to keep bits of useless finery, old tools,
pieces of once useful apparatus, etc. ; but it is normally either inhibited at
the outset by reflection, or, if yielded to, the objects soon grow displeasing
%nd are thrown away.
426 PSYCHOLOGY.
Kleptomaniacs often promptly restore, or permit to be re
stored, what they have taken ; so the impulse need not be
to keep, but only to take. But elsewhere hoarding com
plicates the result. A gentleman, with whose case I am
acquainted, was discovered, after his death, to have a hoard
in his barn of all sorts of articles, mainly of a trumpery
sort, but including pieces of silver which he had stolen
from his own dining-room, and utensils which he had stolen
from his own kitchen, and for which he had afterward
bought substitutes with his own money.
Constructiveness is as genuine and irresistible an instinct
in man as in the bee or the beaver. Whatever things are
plastic to his hands, those things he must remodel into
shapes of his own, and th 
