Chapter 12

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' reproduce elements which no particular experience originally contained? This is the point by which Helmholtz's 'empiristic' theory, as atheory, 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 distinguishing the content of experience from that form—space, course—which is given it by the peculiar faculties of the mind.[275]But elsewhere, again,[276]speaking of sensationalistic theories which would connect spatially determinate feelingsdirectlywith certain neural events, he says it is better to assume only such simple psychic activities as weknowto exist, and gives the association of ideas as an instance of what he means. Later,[277]he reinforces this remark by confessing that he does not see how any neural processcangive rise without antecedent experience to a ready-made (fertige) perception of space. And, finally, in a single momentous sentence, he speaks of sensations oftouchas if they might be the original material of our space-percepts—which thus, from the optical point of view, 'may be assumed asgiven.'[278]

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 thegeneralquestion of how space-consciousness enters the mind. They simply deny that it enters with thefirst optical sensations.[279]Our own account has affirmed stoutly that it entersthen; but no more than Helmholtz have we pretended to showwhy. Who calls a thing a first sensation admits he has no theory of its production. Helmholtz, 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 reproduce 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 logical series, whichneednot appear spatial, and that wherever it does so appear, this must be accounted a 'fact,' due merely 'to the nature of the soul.'[280]

Lipps, and almost all the anti-sensationalist theorists except Helmholtz, seem guilty of that confusion which Mr.Shadworth Hodgson has 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, defining extension as an 'aggregate of relations of coexistent position,' says "every cognition of magnitude is a cognition of relations of position,"[281]and "no idea of extension can arise from the simultaneous excitation" of many nerves "unless there is a knowledge of their relative positions."[282]Just so Prof. Bain insists that the verymeaningof space is scope for movement,[283]and that therefore distance and magnitudecanbe no original attributes of the eye's sensibility. Similarly because movement is analyzable into positions occupied at successive moments by the mover, philosophers (e.g. Schopenhauer, as quoted above) have repeatedly denied the possibility ofitsbeing 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 definite direction the impossibility of perceiving it without perceiving its direction has been decreed—a decree which the simplest experiment overthrows.[284]It is a case of what I have called the 'psychologist's fallacy': mere acquaintance with space is treated as tantamount to every sort of knowledge about it, the conditions of the latter are demanded of the former state of mind, and all sorts of mythological processes are brought in to help.[285]As well might one say that because the world consists of all its parts, thereforewe 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 metaphysically 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, Le Conte, and Schön. 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 thesoi-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 Encyclopædia 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 ageneralway.[286]

[140]Reprinted, with considerable revision, from 'Mind' for 1887.

[141]Prof. Jastrow has found that invariably we tend tounderestimatethe 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 affected, 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. Cf. Jastrow: Mind, xi. 546-7; American Journal of Psychology, iii. 53.

[142]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) audibility 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.

[143]Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th Edition, article Psychology, pp. 46, 58.

[144]Philosophical Transactions (1841).

[145]Hermann's Handb. d. Physiol., Bd. iii. 1, §. 575.

[146]Loc. cit.§. 572.

[147]Elemente der Psychophysik, ii. 475-6.

[148]See Foster's Text-book of Physiology, bk. iii. c. vi. § 2.

[149]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 movements in the eyes play a considerable part in them, though I am hardly conscious of the peculiar feelings in the scalp which Fechner goes on to describe 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 contraction 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 contraction of the muscles of the scalp. This harmonizes very well with the expressions,sich den Kopf zerbrechen, den Kopf zusammennehmen. 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, ii, 490-91.)

[150]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 whosemembranæ tympaniare quite normal, but one of whose ears is almost totally deaf, feels the presence and withdrawal of objects as well at one ear as at the other.

[151]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 extreme points, with the interval between them unexcited, this interval will seem 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.

[152]Classen, Physiologie des Gesichtssinnes, p. 114; see also A. Riehl, Der Philosophische Kriticismus, ii. p. 149.

[153]It is worth while at this point to call attention with some emphasis to the fact that, though the anatomical condition of the feelingresemblesthe feeling itself, such resemblance cannot be taken by our understanding to explainwhythe 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 ofspatialfeeling, 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 ofmultituderather than of continuous extent; for the condition isnumberof optical nerve-termini, and even this is only a remote condition and not an immediate condition. The immediate condition 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 acoincidencethat in the case of space one of the organic conditions, viz., the triangle impressed on the skin or the retina, should lead to a representation 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 alone were necessary, we should have square inches and half inches, and various other forms, rectilinear and curvilinear, of fragrance and sound." (Lectures, XXII.)

[154]Musical tones, e.g., have an order of quality independent either of their space- or time-order. Music comes from the time-order of the notes upsetting their quality-order. In general, ifa b c d e f g h i j k, etc., stand for an arrangement of feelings in the order of their quality, they may assumeanyspace-order or time-order, asd e f a h g, etc., and still the order of quality will remain fixed and unchanged.

[155]The whole science of geometry may be said to owe its being to the exorbitant interest which the human mind takes inlines. We cut space up in every direction in order to manufacture them.

[156]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 determinations, that is, have their parts defined with relationto each otherby the same law, and so must beconceivedas identical, he showed that the impossibility of their mutual superposition obliges us to assign to each figure of a symmetrical pair a peculiar difference of its own which can only consist in anoutwarddetermination 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 "through the relation to right and left, which is a matter of immediate intuition." In these last words (welches unmittelbar auf Anschauung geht—Prolegomena, § 12) Kant expresses all that we have meant by speaking of up and down, right and left, assensations. 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.

[157]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 dealaboutany relation, say that between two points: we may divide the line which joins these, and distinguish it, and classify it, and find outitsrelations by drawing or representing new lines, and so on. But all this further industry has naught to do with ouracquaintancewith the relation itself, in its first intention. So cognized, the relationisthe 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 grosser 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 ofsuchsensible qualities, we may end by thinking of it as something which cannot be defined except as the negation of all sensible quality whatever, and which needs to be putintothe sensations by a mysterious act of 'relating thought.'Another reason why we get to feel as if a space-relation must be something 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 indefinite 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.

Another reason why we get to feel as if a space-relation must be something 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 indefinite 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.

[158]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 'Empfindungskreis.'

[159]Vierordt, Grundriss der Physiologie, 5te Auflage (1877), pp. 326, 436.

[160]Vorlesungen üb. 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.

[161]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 (Menschen- 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, we are wholly unconscious. We see the sky as bright blue all over, the modifications of the blue sensation being interpreted by us, not as differences in the objective color, but as distinctions in its locality. Lotze (Medizinische Psychologie, 333, 355), on the other hand, has pointed out the peculiar tendency which each particular 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 thefovea. 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 immanentqualiaof feeling characterizing each locality. Acute as his remarks are, they quite fail to convince me. On the skin thequaliaare evident, I 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.

[162]1852, p. 331.

[163]Maybe the localization of intracranial pain is itself due to such association as this of local signs with each other, rather than to their qualitative 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.

[164]Unless, indeed, the foot happen to be spontaneously tingling or something 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.

[165]It is true that the inside of the forearm, though its discriminative sensibility is often less than that of the outside, usually rises very prominently into consciousness when the latter is touched. Itsæstheticsensibility to contact is a good deal finer. We enjoy stroking it from the extensor 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 forearm feels an object against it.

[166]These facts were first noticed by Wundt: see his Beiträge, p. 140, 202. See also Lamansky, Pflüger's Archiv, xi. 418.

[167]So far all has been plain sailing, but our course begins to be so tortuous when we descend into minuter detail that I will treat of the more precise determination of locality in a long note. WhenPrecalls an ideal line leading to the fovea the line is felt in its entirety and but vaguely; whilstP, which we supposed to be a single star of actual light, stands out in strong distinction from it. The ground of the distinction betweenPand the ideal line which it terminates is manifest—Pbeing vivid while the line is faint;but why should P hold the particular position it does, at the end of the 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 whichwhen excited separatelywould give rise tooneof 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 thatinthis larger spaciousness the signashould appear always at one end of the line,zat the other, andmin 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 attention.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 islocatedin a chorus. He will wonder how, after combining into the line, the pointscanbecome 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 double, by opening the other eye, the number of retinal points affected, the new retinal sensations do not as a rule appearalongsideof the old ones and additional to them, but merely make the old ones seem larger and nearer. Why should the affection of new points on thesameretina 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 companions than it is found maintaining the strictest position of its own, and assigning 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 positionin 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 called local signs, we must still admit that there issomething aboutevery one of them that stands for the potentiality of position, and is thegroundwhy the local sign, when it gets placed at all, gets placedhererather thanthere. If this '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 is an 'ultimate fact' (1) that a positionless spot will appear; that when it is excited together with other similar processes, butwithoutthe process of 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 excitedin combination withthat 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 inscrutability of the psycho-neural nexus. The moment we call the ground of localization physiological, we need only point outhow, in those cases in which localization occurs, the physiological processdiffersfrom those in which it does not, to have done all we can possibly do in the matter. This 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 whenever 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 to 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 see 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 other parts at all, the relation must bein 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 identical with the feeling of a line in space. Touch a dozen points on the skinsuccessively, and there seems no necessary reason why the notion of a definite 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 and 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 excitedtogetherthey 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 canappearexcept 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 outspreadlineof 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,inthe 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. Ourmovementsarrange them also in a time-scale. Whenever a stimulus passes from pointaof the skin or retina to pointf, it awakens the local-sign feelings in the perfectly definite time-orderabcdef. It cannot excitefuntilcdehave been successively aroused. The feelingcsometimes is preceded byab, sometimes followed byba, according to the movement's direction; the result of it all being that we never feel eithera, c,orf, 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 signathere clings the tinge or tone, the penumbra or fringe, of the transitionbcd. Tof, toc, 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 habitually in the orderabcdef, and ifa, c,andfbe felt separately at all,awill be felt with an essentialearliness,fwith an essentiallateness, and thatcwill 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 'ultimate fact' that this collective excitement shall feel like alineand nothing else, it can never be explained why the new order should needs be an order ofpositions, and not of merely ideal serial rank. We shall hereafter have any amount of opportunity to observe how thoroughgoing is the participation 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 theveræ causæin localization. But the gradation of the local signs is hardly to be doubted; so we may believe 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.

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 whichwhen excited separatelywould give rise tooneof 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 thatinthis larger spaciousness the signashould appear always at one end of the line,zat the other, andmin 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 attention.

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 islocatedin a chorus. He will wonder how, after combining into the line, the pointscanbecome 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 double, by opening the other eye, the number of retinal points affected, the new retinal sensations do not as a rule appearalongsideof the old ones and additional to them, but merely make the old ones seem larger and nearer. Why should the affection of new points on thesameretina 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 companions than it is found maintaining the strictest position of its own, and assigning 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 positionin 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 called local signs, we must still admit that there issomething aboutevery one of them that stands for the potentiality of position, and is thegroundwhy the local sign, when it gets placed at all, gets placedhererather thanthere. If this '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 is an 'ultimate fact' (1) that a positionless spot will appear; that when it is excited together with other similar processes, butwithoutthe process of 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 excitedin combination withthat 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 inscrutability of the psycho-neural nexus. The moment we call the ground of localization physiological, we need only point outhow, in those cases in which localization occurs, the physiological processdiffersfrom those in which it does not, to have done all we can possibly do in the matter. This 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 whenever 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 to 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 see 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 other parts at all, the relation must bein 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 identical with the feeling of a line in space. Touch a dozen points on the skinsuccessively, and there seems no necessary reason why the notion of a definite 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 and 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 excitedtogetherthey 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 canappearexcept 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 outspreadlineof 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,inthe 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. Ourmovementsarrange them also in a time-scale. Whenever a stimulus passes from pointaof the skin or retina to pointf, it awakens the local-sign feelings in the perfectly definite time-orderabcdef. It cannot excitefuntilcdehave been successively aroused. The feelingcsometimes is preceded byab, sometimes followed byba, according to the movement's direction; the result of it all being that we never feel eithera, c,orf, 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 signathere clings the tinge or tone, the penumbra or fringe, of the transitionbcd. Tof, toc, 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 habitually in the orderabcdef, and ifa, c,andfbe felt separately at all,awill be felt with an essentialearliness,fwith an essentiallateness, and thatcwill 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 'ultimate fact' that this collective excitement shall feel like alineand nothing else, it can never be explained why the new order should needs be an order ofpositions, and not of merely ideal serial rank. We shall hereafter have any amount of opportunity to observe how thoroughgoing is the participation 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 theveræ causæin localization. But the gradation of the local signs is hardly to be doubted; so we may believe 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.

[168]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 whensuccessive, may still fuse locally if excited both at once.

[169]It may, however, be said that even in the tongue there is a determination 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 vinegar 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 ascription 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, according 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, I 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: "Notwithstanding the brilliant conjectures of the last few years which assign different 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 confidently reject a theory of hearing which violated the principles advanced in this 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 word in the physiology of hearing. Stepano, ff. (Hermann und Schwalbe's Jahresbericht, 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.

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, according 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, I 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: "Notwithstanding the brilliant conjectures of the last few years which assign different 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 confidently reject a theory of hearing which violated the principles advanced in this 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 word in the physiology of hearing. Stepano, ff. (Hermann und Schwalbe's Jahresbericht, 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.

[170]Donaldson, in Mind, x. 399, 577; Goldscheider, in Archiv f. (Anat. u.) Physiologie; Blix, in Zeitschrift für Biologie. A good résumé may be found in Ladd's Physiol. Psychology, part ii. chap. iv. §§ 21-23.

[171]I 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 evident 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 rotatein situby 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.

[172]This is only another example of what I call 'the psychologist's fallacy'—thinking that the mind he is studying must necessarily be conscious of the object after the fashion in which the psychologist himself is conscious of it.

[173]Sitzb. der. k. Akad. Wien, Bd. lxxii., Abth. 8 (1875).

[174]Zeitschrift für Biologie, xii. 226 (1876).

[175]Vierteljahrsch. für wiss. Philos., ii. 377.

[176]Exner tries to show that the structure of the faceted eye of articulates adapts it for perceiving motions almost exclusively.

[177]Schneider tries to explain why a sensory surface is so much more excited 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 summation of both sorts of difference; whereof the natural effect must be to produce the most perfect discrimination of all.Fig.53.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 successive 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 far 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 begin to move.—(Cf. also Fleischl, Physiologische Optische Notizen, 2te Mittheilung, Wiener Sitzungsberichte, 1882.)

Fig.53.

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 successive 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 far 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 begin to move.—(Cf. also Fleischl, Physiologische Optische Notizen, 2te Mittheilung, Wiener Sitzungsberichte, 1882.)

[178]Brown, Bain, J. S. Mill, and in a modified manner Wundt, Helmholtz, Sully, etc.

[179]M. Ch. Dunan, in his forcibly written essay 'l'Espace Visuel et l'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 objective 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 hefeels the contoursso imperfectly. The moment, however, the hands move, the contours are emphatically and distinctly felt. All perception of shape and size is perception of contours, and first of all these must be madesharp. 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 measuring of objects in terms of some common standard we shall see presently 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 the 'muscular sense.'

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