{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_57628/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_57628","id":"gutenberg_57628","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57628","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Psychiatry/Psychology","Psychology"],"text":"THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY\n\nBY\n\nWILLIAM JAMES\n\nPROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY\n\n\nIN TWO VOLUMES\n\nVOL. I\n\n\nNEW YORK\nHENRY HOLT AND COMPANY\n\n1918\n\n\n\n\n                                  TO\n                            MY DEAR FRIEND\n                           FRAN\u00c7OIS PILLON.\n                       AS A TOKEN OF AFFECTION,\n                  AND AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF WHAT I OWE\n                                TO THE\n                        CRITIQUE PHILOSOPHIQUE.\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nThe treatise which follows has in the main grown up in connection with\nthe author's class-room instruction in Psychology, although it is true\nthat some of the chapters are more 'metaphysical,' and others fuller of\ndetail, than is suitable for students who are going over the subject\nfor the first time. The consequence of this is that, in spite of the\nexclusion of the important subjects of pleasure and pain, and moral and\n\u00e6sthetic feelings and judgments, the work has grown to a length which\nno one can regret more than the writer himself. The man must indeed be\nsanguine who, in this crowded age, can hope to have many readers for\nfourteen hundred continuous pages from his pen. But _wer Vieles bringt\nwird Manchem etwas bringen_; and, by judiciously skipping according to\ntheir several needs, I am sure that many sorts of readers, even those\nwho are just beginning the study of the subject, will find my book of\nuse. Since the beginners are most in need of guidance, I suggest for\ntheir behoof that they omit altogether on a first reading chapters 6,\n7, 8, 10 (from page 330 to page 371), 12, 13, 15, 17, 20, 21, and 28.\nThe better to awaken the neophyte's interest, it is possible that the\nwise order would be to pass directly from chapter 4 to chapters 23, 24,\n25, and 26, and thence to return to the first volume again. Chapter\n20, on Space-perception, is a terrible thing, which, unless written\nwith all that detail, could not be fairly treated at all. An abridgment\nof it, called 'The Spatial Quale,' which appeared in the Journal of\nSpeculative Philosophy, vol. xiii, p. 64, may be found by some persons\na useful substitute for the entire chapter.\n\nI have kept close to the point of view of natural science throughout\nthe book. Every natural science assumes certain data uncritically, and\ndeclines to challenge the elements between which its own 'laws' obtain,\nand from which its own deductions are carried on. Psychology, the\nscience of finite individual minds, assumes as its data (1) _thoughts\nand feelings_, and (2) _a physical world_ in time and space with which\nthey coexist and which (3) _they know_. Of course these data themselves\nare discussable; but the discussion of them (as of other elements) is\ncalled metaphysics and falls outside the province of this book. This\nbook, assuming that thoughts and feelings exist and are vehicles of\nknowledge, thereupon contends that psychology when she has ascertained\nthe empirical correlation of the various sorts of thought or feeling\nwith definite conditions of the brain, can go no farther--can go\nno farther, that is, as a natural science. If she goes farther she\nbecomes metaphysical. All attempts to _explain_ our phenomenally given\nthoughts as products of deeper-lying entities (whether the latter be\nnamed 'Soul,' 'Transcendental Ego,' 'Ideas,' or 'Elementary Units\nof Consciousness') are metaphysical. This book consequently rejects\nboth the associationist and the spiritualist theories; and in this\nstrictly positivistic point of view consists the only feature of it\nfor which I feel tempted to claim originality. Of course this point of\nview is anything but ultimate. Men must keep thinking; and the data\nassumed by psychology, just like those assumed by physics and the other\nnatural sciences, must some time be overhauled. The effort to overhaul\nthem clearly and thoroughly is metaphysics; but metaphysics can only\nperform her task well when distinctly conscious of its great extent.\nMetaphysics fragmentary, irresponsible, and half-awake, and unconscious\nthat she is metaphysical, spoils two good things when she injects\nherself into a natural science. And it seems to me that the theories\nboth of a spiritual agent and of associated 'ideas' are, as they figure\nin the psychology-books, just such metaphysics as this. Even if their\nresults be true, it would be as well to keep them, _as thus presented_,\nout of psychology as it is to keep the results of idealism out of\nphysics.\n\nI have therefore treated our passing thoughts as integers, and\nregarded the mere laws of their coexistence with brain-states as the\nultimate laws for our science. The reader will in vain seek for any\nclosed system in the book. It is mainly a mass of descriptive details,\nrunning out into queries which only a metaphysics alive to the weight\nof her task can hope successfully to deal with. That will perhaps be\ncenturies hence; and meanwhile the best mark of health that a science\ncan show is this unfinished-seeming front.\n\nThe completion of the book has been so slow that several chapters\nhave been published successively in Mind, the Journal of Speculative\nPhilosophy, the Popular Science Monthly, and Scribner's Magazine.\nAcknowledgment is made in the proper places.\n\nThe bibliography, I regret to say, is quite unsystematic. I have\nhabitually given my authority for special experimental facts; but\nbeyond that I have aimed mainly to cite books that would probably\nbe actually used by the ordinary American college-student in his\ncollateral reading. The bibliography in W. Volkmann von Volkmar's\nLehrbuch der Psychologie (1875) is so complete, up to its date,\nthat there is no need of an inferior duplicate. And for more recent\nreferences, Sully's Outlines, Dewey's Psychology, and Baldwin's\nHandbook of Psychology may be advantageously used.\n\nFinally, where one owes to so many, it seems absurd to single out\nparticular creditors; yet I cannot resist the temptation at the end of\nmy first literary venture to record my gratitude for the inspiration I\nhave got from the writings of J. S. Mill, Lotze, Renouvier, Hodgson,\nand Wundt, and from the intellectual companionship (to name only five\nnames) of Chauncey Wright and Charles Peirce in old times, and more\nrecently of Stanley Hall, James Putnam, and Josiah Royce.\n\nHARVARD UNIVERSITY, August 1890.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nTHE SCOPE OF PSYCHOLOGY,\n\nMental Manifestations depend on Cerebral Conditions, 1. Pursuit of ends\nand choice are the marks of Mind's presence.\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nTHE FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN\n\nReflex, semi-reflex, and voluntary acts. The Frog's nerve-centres.\nGeneral notion of the hemispheres. Their Education--the Meynert\nscheme. The phrenological contrasted with the physiological\nconception. The localization of function in the hemispheres.\nThe motor zone. Motor Aphasia. The sight-centre. Mental\nblindness. The hearing-centre. Sensory Aphasia. Centres\nfor smell and taste. The touch-centre. Man's Consciousness\nlimited to the hemispheres. The restitution of function. Final\ncorrection of the Meynert scheme. Conclusions.\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nON SOME GENERAL CONDITIONS OF BRAIN-ACTIVITY\n\nThe summation of Stimuli. Reaction-time. Cerebral blood-supply,\n97. Cerebral Thermometry. Phosphorus and Thought.\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nHABIT\n\nDue to plasticity of neural matter. Produces ease of action.\nDiminishes attention, 115. Concatenated performances. Ethical\nimplications and pedagogic maxims.\n\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nTHE AUTOMATON-THEORY\n\nThe theory described. Reasons for it. Reasons against it.\n\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\nTHE MIND-STUFF THEORY\n\nEvolutionary Psychology demands a Mind-dust. Some alleged proofs\nthat it exists. Refutation of these proofs. Self-compounding\nof mental facts is inadmissible. Can states of mind be\nunconscious? Refutation of alleged proofs of unconscious thought.\nDifficulty of stating the connection between mind and brain.\n'The Soul' is logically the least objectionable hypothesis.\nConclusion.\n\n\nCHAPTER VII.\n\nTHE METHODS AND SNARES OF PSYCHOLOGY\n\nPsychology is a natural Science. Introspection, 185. Experiment.\nSources of error. The 'Psychologist's fallacy'.\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\n\nTHE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS\n\nTime relations: lapses of Consciousness--Locke _v_. Descartes. The\n'unconsciousness' of hysterics not genuine. Minds may split into\ndissociated parts. Space-relations: the Seat of the Soul.\nCognitive relations. The Psychologist's point of view. Two\nkinds of knowledge, acquaintance and knowledge about.\n\n\nCHAPTER IX.\n\nTHE STREAM OF THOUGHT, 224\n\nConsciousness tends to the personal form. It is in constant\nchange. It is sensibly continuous. 'Substantive' and\n'transitive' parts of Consciousness. Feelings of relation.\nFeelings of tendency. The 'fringe' of the object. The feeling\nof rational sequence. Thought possible in any kind of mental\nmaterial. Thought and language. Consciousness is cognitive.\nThe word Object. Every cognition is due to one integral pulse\nof thought. Diagrams of Thought's stream. Thought is always\nselective.\n\n\nCHAPTER X.\n\nTHE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF\n\nThe Empirical Self or Me. Its constituents. The material\nself. The Social Self. The Spiritual Self. Difficulty of\napprehending Thought as a purely spiritual activity. Emotions of\nSelf. Rivalry and conflict of one's different selves. Their\nhierarchy. What Self we love in 'Self-love'. The Pure Ego.\nThe verifiable ground of the sense of personal identity. The\npassing Thought is the only Thinker which Psychology requires.\nTheories of Self-consciousness: 1) The theory of the Soul. 2) The\nAssociationist theory. 3) The Transcendentalist theory. The\nmutations of the Self. Insane delusions. Alternating selves.\nMediumships or possessions. Summary.\n\n\nCHAPTER XI.\n\nATTENTION\n\nIts neglect by English psychologists. Description of it.\nTo how many things can we attend at once? Wundt's experiments\non displacement of date of impressions simultaneously attended to.\nPersonal equation. The varieties of attention. Passive\nattention. Voluntary attention. Attention's effects on\nsensation;--on discrimination;--on recollection;--on\nreaction-time. The neural process in attention: 1) Accommodation\nof sense-organ. 2) Preperception. Is voluntary attention a\nresultant or a force? The effort to attend can be conceived as a\nresultant. Conclusion. Acquired Inattention.\n\n\nCHAPTER XII.\n\nCONCEPTION\n\nThe sense of sameness. Conception defined. Conceptions are\nunchangeable. Abstract ideas, 468. Universals. The conception\n'of the same' is not the 'same state' of mind.\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII.\n\nDISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON\n\nLocke on discrimination. Martineau _ditto_. Simultaneous\nsensations originally fuse into one object. The principle of\nmediate comparison. Not all differences are differences of\ncomposition. The conditions of discrimination. The sensation\nof difference. The transcendentalist theory of the perception\nof differences uncalled for. The process of analysis. The\nprocess of abstraction. The improvement of discrimination by\npractice. Its two causes. Practical interests limit our\ndiscrimination. Reaction-time after discrimination. The\nperception of likeness, 528. The magnitude of differences. The\nmeasurement of discriminative sensibility: Weber's law. Fechner's\ninterpretation of this as the psycho-physic law. Criticism\nthereof.\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV.\n\nASSOCIATION\n\nThe problem of the connection of our thoughts. It depends on\nmechanical conditions. Association is of objects thought of,\nnot of 'ideas'. The rapidity of association. The 'law of\ncontiguity'. The elementary law of association. Impartial\nredintegration. Ordinary or mixed association. The law of\ninterest. Association by similarity. Elementary expression of\nthe difference between the three kinds of association. Association\nin voluntary thought. Similarity no elementary law. History\nof the doctrine of association.\n\n\nCHAPTER XV.\n\nTHE PERCEPTION OF TIME, 605\n\nThe sensible present. Its duration is the primitive\ntime-perception. Accuracy of our estimate of short durations.\nWe have no sense for empty time. Variations of our time-estimate.\nThe feeling of past time is a present feeling. Its cerebral\nprocess.\n\n\nCHAPTER XVI.\n\nMEMORY\n\nPrimary memory. Analysis of the phenomenon of memory.\nRetention and reproduction are both caused by paths of association\nin the brain. The conditions of goodness in memory. Native\nretentiveness is unchangeable. All improvement of memory consists\nin better _thinking_. Other conditions of good memory.\nRecognition, or the sense of familiarity. Exact measurements of\nmemory. Forgetting. Pathological cases. Professor Ladd\ncriticised.\n\n\nINDEX.\n\n\n\n\nPSYCHOLOGY.\n\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nTHE SCOPE OF PSYCHOLOGY.\n\n\nPsychology is the Science of Mental Life, both of its phenomena\nand of their conditions. The phenomena are such things as we call\nfeelings, desires, cognitions, reasonings, decisions, and the like;\nand, superficially considered, their variety and complexity is such as\nto leave a chaotic impression on the observer. The most natural and\nconsequently the earliest way of unifying the material was, first,\nto classify it as well as might be, and, secondly, to affiliate the\ndiverse mental modes thus found, upon a simple entity, the personal\nSoul, of which they are taken to be so many facultative manifestations.\nNow, for instance, the Soul manifests its faculty of Memory, now of\nReasoning, now of Volition, or again its Imagination or its Appetite.\nThis is the orthodox 'spiritualistic' theory of scholasticism and of\ncommon-sense. Another and a less obvious way of unifying the chaos is\nto seek common elements in the divers mental facts rather than a common\nagent behind them, and to explain them constructively by the various\nforms of arrangement of these elements, as one explains houses by\nstones and bricks. The 'associationist' schools of Herbart in Germany,\nand of Hume the Mills and Bain in Britain have thus constructed a\n_psychology without a soul_ by taking discrete 'ideas,' faint or\nvivid, and showing how, by their cohesions, repulsions, and forms\nof succession, such things as reminiscences, perceptions, emotions,\nvolitions, passions, theories, and all the other furnishings of an\nindividual's mind may be engendered. The very Self or _ego_ of the\nindividual comes in this way to be viewed no longer as the pre-existing\nsource of the representations, but rather as their last and most\ncomplicated fruit.\n\nNow, if we strive rigorously to simplify the phenomena in either of\nthese ways, we soon become aware of inadequacies in our method. Any\nparticular cognition, for example, or recollection, is accounted for\non the soul-theory by being referred to the spiritual faculties of\nCognition or of Memory. These faculties themselves are thought of as\nabsolute properties of the soul; that is, to take the case of memory,\nno reason is given why we should remember a fact as it happened, except\nthat so to remember it constitutes the essence of our Recollective\nPower. We may, as spiritualists, try to explain our memory's failures\nand blunders by secondary causes. But its _successes_ can invoke no\nfactors save the existence of certain objective things to be remembered\non the one hand, and of our faculty of memory on the other. When,\nfor instance, I recall my graduation-day, and drag all its incidents\nand emotions up from death's dateless night, no mechanical cause can\nexplain this process, nor can any analysis reduce it to lower terms or\nmake its nature seem other than an ultimate _datum_, which, whether we\nrebel or not at its mysteriousness, must simply be taken for granted if\nwe are to psychologize at all. However the associationist may represent\nthe present ideas as thronging and arranging themselves, still, the\nspiritualist insists, he has in the end to admit that _something_,\nbe it brain, be it 'ideas,' be it 'association,' _knows_ past time\n_as_ past, and fills it out with this or that event. And when the\nspiritualist calls memory an 'irreducible faculty,' he says no more\nthan this admission of the associationist already grants.\n\nAnd yet the admission is far from being a satisfactory simplification\nof the concrete facts. For why should this absolute god-given Faculty\nretain so much better the events of yesterday than those of last\nyear, and, best of all, those of an hour ago? Why, again, in old\nage should its grasp of childhood's events seem firmest? Why should\nillness and exhaustion enfeeble it? Why should repeating an experience\nstrengthen our recollection of it? Why should drugs, fevers, asphyxia,\nand excitement resuscitate things long since forgotten? If we content\nourselves with merely affirming that the faculty of memory is so\npeculiarly constituted by nature as to exhibit just these oddities,\nwe seem little the better for having invoked it, for our explanation\nbecomes as complicated as that of the crude facts with which we\nstarted. Moreover there is something grotesque and irrational in the\nsupposition that the soul is equipped with elementary powers of such an\ningeniously intricate sort. Why _should_ our memory cling more easily\nto the near than the remote? Why should it lose its grasp of proper\nsooner than of abstract names? Such peculiarities seem quite fantastic;\nand might, for aught we can see _a priori_, be the precise opposites of\nwhat they are. Evidently, then, _the faculty does not exist absolutely,\nbut works under conditions_; and _the quest of the conditions_ becomes\nthe psychologist's most interesting task.\n\nHowever firmly he may hold to the soul and her remembering faculty, he\nmust acknowledge that she never exerts the latter without a _cue_, and\nthat something must always precede and _remind_ us of whatever we are\nto recollect. \"An _idea_,\" says the associationist, \"an idea associated\nwith the remembered thing; and this explains also why things repeatedly\nmet with are more easily recollected, for their associates on the\nvarious occasions furnish so many distinct avenues of recall.\" But this\ndoes not explain the effects of fever, exhaustion, hypnotism, old age,\nand the like. And in general, the pure associationist's account of our\nmental life is almost as bewildering as that of the pure spiritualist.\nThis multitude of ideas, existing absolutely, yet clinging together,\nand weaving an endless carpet of themselves, like dominoes in ceaseless\nchange, or the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope,--whence do they get\ntheir fantastic laws of clinging, and why do they cling in just the\nshapes they do?\n\nFor this the associationist must introduce the order of experience in\nthe outer world. The dance of the ideas is a copy, somewhat mutilated\nand altered, of the order of phenomena. But the slightest reflection\nshows that phenomena have absolutely no power to influence our ideas\nuntil they have first impressed our senses and our brain. The bare\nexistence of a past fact is no ground for our remembering it. Unless\nwe have seen it, or somehow _undergone_ it, we shall never know of its\nhaving been. The expediences of the body are thus one of the conditions\nof the faculty of memory being what it is. And a very small amount\nof reflection on facts shows that one part of the body, namely, the\nbrain, is the part whose experiences are directly concerned. If the\nnervous communication be cut off between the brain and other parts,\nthe experiences of those other parts are non-existent for the mind.\nThe eye is blind, the ear deaf, the hand insensible and motionless.\nAnd conversely, if the brain be injured, consciousness is abolished or\naltered, even although every other organ in the body be ready to play\nits normal part. A blow on the head, a sudden subtraction of blood, the\npressure of an apoplectic hemorrhage, may have the first effect; whilst\na very few ounces of alcohol or grains of opium or hasheesh, or a whiff\nof chloroform or nitrous oxide gas, are sure to have the second. The\ndelirium of fever, the altered self of insanity, are all due to foreign\nmatters circulating through the brain, or to pathological changes in\nthat organ's substance. The fact that the brain is the one immediate\nbodily condition of the mental operations is indeed so universally\nadmitted nowadays that I need spend no more time in illustrating it,\nbut will simply postulate it and pass on. The whole remainder of the\nbook will be more or less of a proof that the postulate was correct.\n\nBodily experiences, therefore, and more particularly brain-experiences,\nmust take a place amongst those conditions of the mental life of which\nPsychology need take account. _The spiritualist and the associationist\nmust both be 'cerebralists'_, to the extent at least of admitting that\ncertain peculiarities in the way of working of their own favorite\nprinciples are explicable only by the fact that the brain laws are a\ncodeterminant of the result. Our first conclusion, then, is that a\ncertain amount of brain-physiology must be presupposed or included in\nPsychology.[1]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn still another way the psychologist is forced to be something of a\nnerve-physiologist. Mental phenomena are not only conditioned _a parte\nante_ by bodily processes; but they lead to them _a parte post_. That\nthey lead to _acts_ is of course the most familiar of truths, but I do\nnot merely mean acts in the sense of voluntary and deliberate muscular\nperformances. Mental states occasion also changes in the calibre of\nblood-vessels, or alteration in the heart-beats, or processes more\nsubtle still, in glands and viscera. If these are taken into account,\nas well as acts which follow at some _remote period_ because the mental\nstate was once there, it will be safe to lay down the general law\nthat _no mental modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or\nfollowed by a bodily change_. The ideas and feelings, _e.g_., which\nthese present printed characters excite in the reader's mind not only\noccasion movements of his eyes and nascent movements of articulation in\nhim, but will some day make him speak, or take sides in a discussion,\nor give advice, or choose a book to read, differently from what would\nhave been the case had they never impressed his retina. Our psychology\nmust therefore take account not only of the conditions antecedent to\nmental states, but of their resultant consequences as well.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBut actions originally prompted by conscious intelligence may grow\nso automatic by dint of habit as to be apparently unconsciously\nperformed. Standing, walking, buttoning and unbuttoning, piano-playing,\ntalking, even saying one's prayers, may be done when the mind is\nabsorbed in other things. The performances of animal _instinct_ seem\nsemi-automatic, and the _reflex acts_ of self-preservation certainly\nare so. Yet they resemble intelligent acts in bringing about the\n_same ends_ at which the animals' consciousness, on other occasions,\ndeliberately aims. Shall the study of such machine-like yet purposive\nacts as these be included in Psychology?\n\nThe boundary-line of the mental is certainly vague. It is better not\nto be pedantic, but to let the science be as vague as its subject,\nand include such phenomena as these if by so doing we can throw any\nlight on the main business in hand. It will ere long be seen, I trust,\nthat we can; and that we gain much more by a broad than by a narrow\nconception of our subject. At a certain stage in the development\nof every science a degree of vagueness is what best consists with\nfertility. On the whole, few recent formulas have done more real\nservice of a rough sort in psychology than the Spencerian one that\nthe essence of mental life and of bodily life are one, namely, 'the\nadjustment of inner to outer relations.' Such a formula is vagueness\nincarnate; but because it takes into account the fact that minds\ninhabit environments which act on them and on which they in turn\nreact; because, in short, it takes mind in the midst of all its\nconcrete relations, it is immensely more fertile than the old-fashioned\n'rational psychology,' which treated the soul as a detached existent,\nsufficient unto itself, and assumed to consider only its nature and\nproperties. I shall therefore feel free to make any sallies into\nzoology or into pure nerve-physiology which may seem instructive\nfor our purposes, but otherwise shall leave those sciences to the\nphysiologists.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nCan we state more distinctly still the manner in which the mental life\nseems to intervene between impressions made from without upon the body,\nand reactions of the body upon the outer world again? Let us look at a\nfew facts.\n\nIf some iron filings be sprinkled on a table and a magnet brought near\nthem, they will fly through the air for a certain distance and stick\nto its surface. A savage seeing the phenomenon explains it as the\nresult of an attraction or love between the magnet and the filings.\nBut let a card cover the poles of the magnet, and the filings will\npress forever against its surface without its ever occurring to them\nto pass around its sides and thus come into more direct contact with\nthe object of their love. Blow bubbles through a tube into the bottom\nof a pail of water, they will rise to the surface and mingle with the\nair. Their action may again be poetically interpreted as due to a\nlonging to recombine with the mother-atmosphere above the surface. But\nif you invert a jar full of water over the pail, they will rise and\nremain lodged beneath its bottom, shut in from the outer air, although\na slight deflection from their course at the outset, or a re-descent\ntowards the rim of the jar when they found their upward course impeded,\nwould easily have set them free.\n\nIf now we pass from such actions as these to those of living things,\nwe notice a striking difference. Romeo wants Juliet as the filings\nwant the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by\nas straight a line as they. But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built\nbetween them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against\nits opposite sides like the magnet and the filings with the card. Romeo\nsoon finds a circuitous way, by scaling the wall or otherwise, of\ntouching Juliet's lips directly. With the filings the path is fixed;\nwhether it reaches the end depends on accidents. With the lover it is\nthe end which is fixed, the path may be modified indefinitely.\n\nSuppose a living frog in the position in which we placed our bubbles\nof air, namely, at the bottom of a jar of water. The want of breath\nwill soon make him also long to rejoin the mother-atmosphere, and he\nwill take the shortest path to his end by swimming straight upwards.\nBut if a jar full of water be inverted over him, he will not, like the\nbubbles, perpetually press his nose against its unyielding roof, but\nwill restlessly explore the neighborhood until by re-descending again\nhe has discovered a path round its brim to the goal of his desires.\nAgain the fixed end, the varying means!\n\nSuch contrasts between living and inanimate performances end by leading\nmen to deny that in the physical world final purposes exist at all.\nLoves and desires are to-day no longer imputed to particles of iron or\nof air. No one supposes now that the end of any activity which they\nmay display is an ideal purpose presiding over the activity from its\noutset and soliciting or drawing it into being by a sort of _vis a\nfronte_. The end, on the contrary, is deemed a mere passive result,\npushed into being _a tergo_, having had, so to speak, no voice in its\nown production. Alter the pre-existing conditions, and with inorganic\nmaterials you bring forth each time a different apparent end. But\nwith intelligent agents, altering the conditions changes the activity\ndisplayed, but not the end reached; for here the idea of the yet\nunrealized end co-operates with the conditions to determine what the\nactivities shall be.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_The pursuance of future ends and the choice of means for their\nattainment are thus the mark and criterion of the presence of\nmentality_ in a phenomenon. We all use this test to discriminate\nbetween an intelligent and a mechanical performance. We impute no\nmentality to sticks and stones, because they never seem to move for\n_the sake of_ anything, but always when pushed, and then indifferently\nand with no sign of choice. So we unhesitatingly call them senseless.\n\nJust so we form our decision upon the deepest of all philosophic\nproblems: Is the Kosmos an expression of intelligence rational in its\ninward nature, or a brute external fact pure and simple? If we find\nourselves, in contemplating it, unable to banish the impression that it\nis a realm of final purposes, that it exists for the sake of something,\nwe place intelligence at the heart of it and have a religion. If,\non the contrary, in surveying its irremediable flux, we can think\nof the present only as so much mere mechanical sprouting from the\npast, occurring with no reference to the future, we are atheists and\nmaterialists.\n\nIn the lengthy discussions which psychologists have carried on about\nthe amount of intelligence displayed by lower mammals, or the amount\nof consciousness involved in the functions of the nerve-centres of\nreptiles, the same test has always been applied: Is the character of\nthe actions such that we must believe them to be performed _for the\nsake_ of their result? The result in question, as we shall hereafter\nabundantly see, is as a rule a useful one,--the animal is, on the\nwhole, safer under the circumstances for bringing it forth. So far\nthe action has a teleological character; but such mere outward\nteleology as this might still be the blind result of _vis a tergo_.\nThe growth and movements of plants, the processes of development,\ndigestion, secretion, etc., in animals, supply innumerable instances\nof performances useful to the individual which may nevertheless be,\nand by most of us are supposed to be, produced by automatic mechanism.\nThe physiologist does not confidently assert conscious intelligence\nin the frog's spinal cord until he has shown that the useful result\nwhich the nervous machinery brings forth under a given irritation\n_remains the same when the machinery is altered_. If, to take the stock\ninstance, the right knee of a headless frog be irritated with acid, the\nright foot will wipe it off. When, however, this foot is amputated,\nthe animal will often raise the _left_ foot to the spot and wipe the\noffending material away.\n\nPfl\u00fcger and Lewes reason from such facts in the following way: If the\nfirst reaction were the result of mere machinery, they say; if that\nirritated portion of the skin discharged the right leg as a trigger\ndischarges its own barrel of a shot-gun; then amputating the right\nfoot would indeed frustrate the wiping, but would not make the _left_\nleg move. It would simply result in the right stump moving through\nthe empty air (which is in fact the phenomenon sometimes observed).\nThe right trigger makes no effort to discharge the left barrel if the\nright one be unloaded; nor does an electrical machine ever get restless\nbecause it can only emit sparks, and not hem pillow-cases like a\nsewing-machine.\n\nIf, on the contrary, the right leg originally moved for the _purpose_\nof wiping the acid, then nothing is more natural than that, when the\neasiest means of effecting that purpose prove fruitless, other means\nshould be tried. Every failure must keep the animal in a state of\ndisappointment which will lead to all sorts of new trials and devices;\nand tranquillity will not ensue till one of these, by a happy stroke,\nachieves the wished-for end.\n\nIn a similar way Goltz ascribes intelligence to the frog's optic\nlobes and cerebellum. We alluded above to the manner in which a sound\nfrog imprisoned in water will discover an outlet to the atmosphere.\nGoltz found that frogs deprived of their cerebral hemispheres would\noften exhibit a like ingenuity. Such a frog, after rising from the\nbottom and finding his farther upward progress checked by the glass\nbell which has been inverted over him, will not persist in butting\nhis nose against the obstacle until dead of suffocation, but will\noften re-descend and emerge from under its rim as if, not a definite\nmechanical propulsion upwards, but rather a conscious desire to reach\nthe air by hook or crook were the main-spring of his activity. Goltz\nconcluded from this that the hemispheres are not the sole seal of\nintellect in frogs. He made the same inference from observing that a\nbrainless frog will turn over from his back to his belly when one of\nhis legs is sewed up, although the movements required are then very\ndifferent from those excited under normal circumstances by the same\nannoying position. They seem determined, consequently, not merely by\nthe antecedent irritant, but by the final end,--though the irritant of\ncourse is what makes the end desired.\n\nAnother brilliant German author, Liebmann,[2] argues against the\nbrain's mechanism accounting for mental action, by very similar\nconsiderations. A machine as such, he says, will bring forth right\nresults when it is in good order, and wrong results if out of repair.\nBut both kinds of result flow with equally fatal necessity from their\nconditions. We cannot suppose the clock-work whose structure fatally\ndetermines it to a certain rate of speed, noticing that this speed is\ntoo slow or too fast and vainly trying to correct it. Its conscience,\nif it have any, should be as good as that of the best chronometer, for\nboth alike obey equally well the same eternal mechanical laws--laws\nfrom behind. But if the _brain_ be out of order and the man says \"Twice\nfour are two,\" instead of \"Twice four are eight,\" or else \"I must go to\nthe coal to buy the wharf,\" instead of \"I must go to the wharf to buy\nthe coal,\" instantly there arises a consciousness of error. The wrong\nperformance, though it obey the same mechanical law as the right, is\nnevertheless condemned,--condemned as contradicting the inner law--the\nlaw from in front, the purpose or ideal for which the brain _should_\nact, whether it do so or not.\n\nWe need not discuss here whether these writers in drawing their\nconclusion have done justice to all the premises I involved in the\ncases they treat of. We quote their arguments only to show how they\nappeal to the principle that _no actions but such as are done for an\nend, and show a choice of means, can be called indubitable expressions\nof Mind_.\n\nI shall then adopt this as the criterion by which to circumscribe the\nsubject-matter of this work so far as action enters into it. Many\nnervous performances will therefore be unmentioned, as being purely\nphysiological. Nor will the anatomy of the nervous system and organs of\nsense be described anew. The reader will find in H. N. Martin's 'Human\nBody,' in G. T. Ladd's 'Physiological Psychology,' and in all the other\nstandard Anatomies and Physiologies, a mass of information which we\nmust regard as preliminary and take for granted in the present work.[3]\nOf the functions of the cerebral hemispheres, however, since they\ndirectly subserve consciousness, it will be well to give some little\naccount.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[1] _Cf._ Geo. T. Ladd: Elements of Physiological Psychology (1887),\npt. iii, chap. iii, \u00a7\u00a7 9, 12.\n\n[2] Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit, p. 489.\n\n[3] Nothing is easier than to familiarize one's self with the mammalian\nbrain. Get a sheep's head, a small saw, chisel, scalpel and forceps\n(all three can best be had from a surgical-instrument maker), and\nunravel its parts either by the aid of a human dissecting book, such as\nHolden's 'Manual of Anatomy,' or by the specific directions _ad hoc_\ngiven in such books as Foster and Langley's 'Practical Physiology'\n(Macmillan) or Morrell's 'Comparative Anatomy and Dissection of\nMammalia' (Longmans).\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nTHE FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN.\n\n\nIf I begin chopping the foot of a tree, its branches are unmoved by my\nact, and its leaves murmur as peacefully as ever in the wind. If, on\nthe contrary, I do violence to the foot of a fellow-man, the rest of\nhis body instantly responds to the aggression by movements of alarm or\ndefence. The reason of this difference is that the man has a nervous\nsystem whilst the tree has none; and the function of the nervous system\nis to bring each part into harmonious co-operation with every other.\nThe afferent nerves, when excited by some physical irritant, be this\nas gross in its mode of operation as a chopping axe or as subtle as\nthe waves of light, conveys the excitement to the nervous centres. The\ncommotion set up in the centres does not stop there, but discharges\nitself, if at all strong, through the efferent nerves into muscles\nand glands, exciting movements of the limbs and viscera, or acts of\nsecretion, which vary with the animal, and with the irritant applied.\nThese acts of response have usually the common character of being of\nservice. They ward off the noxious stimulus and support the beneficial\none; whilst if, in itself indifferent, the stimulus be a sign of some\ndistant circumstance of practical importance, the animal's acts are\naddressed to this circumstance so as to avoid its perils or secure its\nbenefits, as the case may be. To take a common example, if I hear the\nconductor calling 'All aboard!' as I enter the depot, my heart first\nstops, then palpitates, and my legs respond to the air-waves falling\non my tympanum by quickening their movements. If I stumble as I run,\nthe sensation of falling provokes a movement of the hands towards the\ndirection of the fall, the effect of which is to shield the body from\ntoo sudden a shock. If a cinder enter my eye, its lids close forcibly\nand a copious flow of tears tends to wash it out.\n\nThese three responses to a sensational stimulus differ, however, in\nmany respects. The closure of the eye and the lachrymation are quite\ninvoluntary, and so is the disturbance of the heart. Such involuntary\nresponses we know as 'reflex' acts. The motion of the arms to break the\nshock of falling may also be called reflex, since it occurs too quickly\nto be deliberately intended. Whether it be instinctive or whether it\nresult from the pedestrian education of childhood may be doubtful; it\nis, at any rate, less automatic than the previous acts, for a man might\nby conscious effort learn to perform it more skilfully, or even to\nsuppress it altogether. Actions of this kind, into which instinct and\nvolition enter upon equal terms, have been called 'semi-reflex.' The\nact of running towards the train, on the other hand, has no instinctive\nelement about it. It is purely the result of education, and is preceded\nby a consciousness of the purpose to be attained and a distinct mandate\nof the will. It is a 'voluntary act.' Thus the animal's reflex and\nvoluntary performances shade into each other gradually, being connected\nby acts which may often occur automatically, but may also be modified\nby conscious intelligence.\n\nAn outside observer, unable to perceive the accompanying consciousness,\nmight be wholly at a loss to discriminate between the automatic acts\nand those which volition escorted. But if the criterion of mind's\nexistence be the choice of the proper means for the attainment of a\nsupposed end, all the acts seem to be inspired by intelligence, for\n_appropriateness_ characterizes them all alike. This fact, now, has led\nto two quite opposite theories about the relation to consciousness of\nthe nervous functions. Some authors, finding that the higher voluntary\nones seem to require the guidance of feeling, conclude that over the\nlowest reflexes some such feeling also presides, though it may be a\nfeeling of which _we_ remain unconscious. Others, finding that reflex\nand semi-automatic acts may, notwithstanding their appropriateness,\ntake place with an unconsciousness apparently complete, fly to the\nopposite extreme and maintain that the appropriateness even of\nvoluntary actions owes nothing to the fact that consciousness attends\nthem. They are, according to these writers, results of physiological\nmechanism pure and simple. In a near chapter we shall return to this\ncontroversy again. Let us now look a little more closely at the brain\nand at the ways in which its states may be supposed to condition those\nof the mind.\n\n\nTHE FROG'S NERVE-CENTRES.\n\n\nBoth the minute anatomy and the detailed physiology of the brain are\nachievements of the present generation, or rather we may say (beginning\nwith Meynert) of the past twenty years. Many points are still obscure\nand subject to controversy; but a general way of conceiving the organ\nhas been reached on all hands which in its main feature seems not\nunlikely to stand, and which even gives a most plausible scheme of the\nway in which cerebral and mental operations go hand in hand.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 1.--_C H_, cerebral Hemispheres; _O Th_, Optic\nThalami; _O L_, Optic Lobes; _Cb_, Cerebellum; _M O_, Medulla\nOblongata; _S C_, Spinal cord.]\n\nThe best way to enter the subject will be to take a lower creature,\nlike a frog, and study by the vivisectional method the functions of\nhis different nerve-centres. The frog's nerve-centres are figured\nin the accompanying diagram, which needs no further explanation. I\nwill first proceed to state what happens when various amounts of the\nanterior parts are removed, in different frogs, in the way in which an\nordinary student removes them; that is, with no extreme precautions\nas to the purity of the operation. We shall in this way reach a very\nsimple conception of the functions of the various centres, involving\nthe strongest possible contrast between the cerebral hemispheres and\nthe lower lobes. This sharp conception will have didactic advantages,\nfor it is often very instructive to start with too simple a formula\nand correct it later on. Our first formula, as we shall later see,\nwill have to be softened down somewhat by the results of more careful\nexperimentation both on frogs and birds, and by those of the most\nrecent observations on dogs, monkeys, and man. But it will put us,\nfrom the outset, in clear possession of some fundamental notions and\ndistinctions which we could otherwise not gain so well, and none of\nwhich the later more completed view will overturn.\n\nIf, then, we reduce the frog's nervous system to the spinal cord\nalone, by making a section behind the base of the skull, between the\nspinal cord and the medulla oblongata, thereby cutting off the brain\nfrom all connection with the rest of the body, the frog will still\ncontinue to live, but with a very peculiarly modified activity. It\nceases to breathe or swallow; it lies flat on its belly, and does not,\nlike a normal frog, sit up on its fore paws, though its hind legs\nare kept, as usual, folded against its body and immediately resume\nthis position if drawn out. If thrown on its back, it lies there\nquietly, without turning over like a normal frog. Locomotion and voice\nseem entirely abolished. If we suspend it by the nose, and irritate\ndifferent portions of its skin by acid, it performs a set of remarkable\n'defensive' movements calculated to wipe away the irritant. Thus, if\nthe breast be touched, both fore paws will rub it vigorously; if we\ntouch the outer side of the elbow, the hind foot of the same side\nwill rise directly to the spot and wipe it. The back of the foot will\nrub the knee if that be attacked, whilst if the foot be cut away, the\nstump will make ineffectual movements, and then, in many frogs, a pause\nwill come, as if for deliberation, succeeded by a rapid passage of the\nopposite unmutilated foot to the acidulated spot.\n\nThe most striking character of all these movements, after their\nteleological appropriateness, is their precision. They vary, in\nsensitive frogs and with a proper amount of irritation, so little as\nalmost to resemble in their machine-like regularity the performances of\na jumping-jack, whose legs must twitch whenever you pull the string.\nThe spinal cord of the frog thus contains arrangements of cells and\nfibres fitted to convert skin irritations into movements of defence. We\nmay call it the _centre for defensive movements_ in this animal. We may\nindeed go farther than this, and by cutting the spinal cord in various\nplaces find that its separate segments are independent mechanisms,\nfor appropriate activities of the head and of the arms and legs\nrespectively. The segment governing the arms is especially active,\nin male frogs, in the breeding season; and these members alone with\nthe breast and back appertaining to them, everything else being cut\naway, will then actively grasp a finger placed between them and remain\nhanging to it for a considerable time.\n\nThe spinal cord in other animals has analogous powers. Even in man\nit makes movements of defence. Paraplegics draw up their legs when\ntickled; and Robin, on tickling the breast of a criminal an hour after\ndecapitation, saw the arm and hand move towards the spot. Of the lower\nfunctions of the mammalian cord, studied so ably by Goltz and others,\nthis is not the place to speak.\n\nIf, in a second animal, the cut be made just behind the optic lobes so\nthat the cerebellum and medulla oblongata remain attached to the cord,\nthen swallowing, breathing, crawling, and a rather enfeebled jumping\nand swimming are added to the movements previously observed.[4] There\nare other reflexes too. The animal, thrown on his back, immediately\nturns over to his belly. Placed in a shallow bowl, which is floated on\nwater and made to rotate, he responds to the rotation by first turning\nhis head and then waltzing around with his entire body, in the opposite\ndirection to the whirling of the bowl. If his support be tilted so that\nhis head points downwards, he points it up; he points it down if it be\npointed upwards, to the right if it be pointed to the left, etc. But\nhis reactions do not go farther than these movements of the head. He\nwill not, like frogs whose thalami are preserved, climb up a board if\nthe latter be tilted, but will slide off it to the ground.\n\nIf the cut be made on another frog between the thalami and the optic\nlobes, the locomotion both on land and water becomes quite normal, and,\nin addition to the reflexes already shown by the lower centres, he\ncroaks regularly whenever he is pinched under the arms. He compensates\nrotations, etc., by movements of the head, and turns over from his\nback; but still drops off his tilted board. As his optic nerves are\ndestroyed by the usual operation, it is impossible to say whether he\nwill avoid obstacles placed in his path.\n\nWhen, finally, a frog's cerebral hemispheres alone are cut off by a\nsection between them and the thalami which preserves the latter, an\nunpractised observer would not at first suspect anything abnormal\nabout the animal. Not only is he capable, on proper instigation, of\nall the acts already described, but he guides himself by sight, so\nthat if an obstacle be set up between him and the light, and he be\nforced to move forward, he either jumps over it or swerves to one\nside. He manifests sexual passion at the proper season, and, unlike an\naltogether brainless frog, which embraces anything placed between his\narms, postpones this reflex act until a female of his own species is\nprovided. Thus far, as aforesaid, a person unfamiliar with frogs might\nnot suspect a mutilation; but even such a person would soon remark the\nalmost entire absence of spontaneous motion--that is, motion unprovoked\nby any _present_ incitation of sense. The continued movements of\nswimming, performed by the creature in the water, seem to be the fatal\nresult of the contact of that fluid with its skin. They cease when a\nstick, for example, touches his hands. This is a sensible irritant\ntowards which the feet are automatically drawn by reflex action, and\non which the animal remains sitting. He manifests no hunger, and will\nsuffer a fly to crawl over his nose unsnapped at. Fear, too, seems\nto have deserted him. In a word, he is an extremely complex machine\nwhose actions, so far as they go, tend to self-preservation; but still\na _machine_, in this sense--that it seems to contain no incalculable\nelement. By applying the right sensory stimulus to him we are almost\nas certain of getting a fixed response as an organist is of hearing a\ncertain tone when he pulls out a certain stop.\n\nBut now if to the lower centres we add the cerebral hemispheres,\nor if, in other words, we make an intact animal the subject of our\nobservations, all this is changed. In addition to the previous\nresponses to present incitements of sense, our frog now goes through\nlong and complex acts of locomotion _spontaneously_, or as if moved by\nwhat in ourselves we should call an idea. His reactions to outward\nstimuli vary their form, too. Instead of making simple defensive\nmovements with his hind legs like a headless frog if touched, or of\ngiving one or two leaps and then sitting still like a hemisphereless\none, he makes persistent and varied efforts at escape, as if, not the\nmere contact of the physiologist's hand, but the notion of danger\nsuggested by it were now his spur. Led by the feeling of hunger, too,\nhe goes in search of insects, fish, or smaller frogs, and varies his\nprocedure with each species of victim. The physiologist cannot by\nmanipulating him elicit croaking, crawling up a board, swimming or\nstopping, at will. His conduct has become incalculable. We can no\nlonger foretell it exactly. Effort to escape is his dominant reaction,\nbut he _may_ do anything else, even swell up and become perfectly\npassive in our hands.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSuch are the phenomena commonly observed, and such the impressions\nwhich one naturally receives. Certain general conclusions follow\nirresistibly. First of all the following:\n\n_The acts of all the centres involve the use of the same muscles._ When\na headless frog's hind leg wipes the acid, he calls into play all the\nleg-muscles which a frog with his full medulla oblongata and cerebellum\nuses when he turns from his back to his belly. Their contractions are,\nhowever, _combined_ differently in the two cases, so that the results\nvary widely. We must consequently conclude that specific arrangements\nof cells and fibres exist in the cord for wiping, in the medulla for\nturning over, etc. Similarly they exist in the thalami for jumping\nover seen obstacles and for balancing the moved body; in the optic\nlobes for creeping backwards, or what not. But in the hemispheres,\nsince the presence of these organs _brings no new elementary form of\nmovement_ with it, but only _determines differently the occasions_\non which the movements shall occur, making the usual stimuli less\nfatal and machine-like; we need suppose no such machinery _directly_\nco-ordinative of muscular contractions to exist. We may rather\nassume, when the mandate for a wiping-movement is sent forth by the\nhemispheres, that a current goes straight to the wiping-arrangement in\nthe spinal cord, exciting this arrangement as a whole. Similarly, if an\nintact frog wishes to jump over a stone which he sees, all he need do\nis to excite from the hemispheres the jumping-centre in the thalami or\nwherever it may be, and the latter will provide for the details of the\nexecution. It is like a general ordering a colonel to make a certain\nmovement, but not telling him how it shall be done.[5]\n\n_The same muscle, then, is repeatedly represented at different\nheights;_ and at each it enters into a different combination with other\nmuscles to co-operate in some special form of concerted movement.\n_At each height the movement is discharged by some particular form\nof sensorial stimulus._ Thus in the cord, the skin alone occasions\nmovements; in the upper part of the optic lobes, the eyes are added;\nin the thalami, the semi-circular canals would seem to play a part;\nwhilst the stimuli which discharge the hemispheres would seem not so\nmuch to be elementary sorts of sensation, as groups of sensations\nforming determinate _objects_ or _things. Prey_ is not pursued nor are\n_enemies_ shunned by ordinary hemisphereless frogs. Those reactions\nupon complex circumstances which we call instinctive rather than\nreflex, are already in this animal dependent on the brain's highest\nlobes, and still more is this the case with animals higher in the\nzoological scale.\n\nThe results are just the same if, instead of a frog, we take a pigeon,\nand cut out his hemispheres as they are ordinarily cut out for a\nlecture-room demonstration. There is not a movement natural to him\nwhich this brainless bird cannot perform if expressly excited thereto;\nonly the inner promptings seem deficient, and when left to himself\nhe spends most of his time crouched on the ground with his head sunk\nbetween his shoulders as if asleep.\n\n\nGENERAL NOTION OF HEMISPHERES.\n\n\nAll these facts lead us, when we think about them, to some such\nexplanatory conception as this: _The lower centres act from present\nsensational stimuli alone; the hemispheres act from perceptions and\nconsiderations,_ the sensations which they may receive serving only as\nsuggesters of these. But what are perceptions but sensations grouped\ntogether? and what are considerations but expectations, in the fancy,\nof sensations which will be felt one way or another according as action\ntakes this course or that? If I step aside on seeing a rattlesnake,\nfrom considering how dangerous an animal he is, the mental materials\nwhich constitute my prudential reflection are images more or less vivid\nof the movement of his head, of a sudden pain in my leg, of a state of\nterror, a swelling of the limb, a chill, delirium, unconsciousness,\netc., etc., and the ruin of my hopes. But all these images are\nconstructed out of my past experiences. They are _reproductions_ of\nwhat I have felt or witnessed. They are, in short, _remote_ sensations;\nand the _difference between the hemisphereless animal and the whole\none_ may be concisely expressed by saying that the _one obeys absent,\nthe other only present, objects._\n\nThe hemispheres would then seem to be _the seat of memory_. Vestiges\nof past experience must in some way be stored up in them, and must,\nwhen aroused by present stimuli, first appear as representations of\ndistant goods and evils; and then must discharge into the appropriate\nmotor channels for warding off the evil and securing the benefits of\nthe good. If we liken the nervous currents to electric currents, we\ncan compare the nervous system, _C_, below the hemispheres to a direct\ncircuit from sense-organ to muscle along the line _S ... C ... M_ of\nFig. 2. The hemisphere, _H_, adds the long circuit or loop-line through\nwhich the current may pass when for any reason the direct line is not\nused.\n\nThus, a tired wayfarer on a hot day throws himself on the damp earth\nbeneath a maple-tree. The sensations of delicious rest and coolness\npouring themselves through the direct line would naturally discharge\ninto the muscles of complete extension: he would abandon himself\nto the dangerous repose. But the loop-line being open, part of the\ncurrent is drafted along it, and awakens rheumatic or catarrhal\nreminiscences, which prevail over the instigations of sense, and\nmake the man arise and pursue his way to where he may enjoy his rest\nmore safely. Presently we shall examine the manner in which the\nhemispheric loop-line may be supposed to serve as a reservoir for such\nreminiscences as these. Meanwhile I will ask the reader to notice some\ncorollaries of its being such a reservoir.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 2.]\n\nFirst, no animal without it can deliberate, pause, postpone, nicely\nweigh one motive against another, or compare. Prudence, in a word,\nis for such a creature an impossible virtue. Accordingly we see that\nnature removes those functions in the exercise of which prudence is\na virtue from the lower centres and hands them over to the cerebrum.\nWherever a creature has to deal with complex features of the\nenvironment, prudence is a virtue. The higher animals have so to deal;\nand the more complex the features, the higher we call the animals. The\nfewer of his acts, then, can _such_ an animal perform without the help\nof the organs in question. In the frog many acts devolve wholly on the\nlower centres; in the bird fewer; in the rodent fewer still; in the dog\nvery few indeed; and in apes and men hardly any at all.\n\nThe advantages of this are obvious. Take the prehension of food as an\nexample and suppose it to be a reflex performance of the lower centres.\nThe animal will be condemned fatally and irresistibly to snap at it\nwhenever presented, no matter what the circumstances may be; he can no\nmore disobey this prompting than water can refuse to boil when a fire\nis kindled under the pot. His life will again and again pay the forfeit\nof his gluttony. Exposure to retaliation, to other enemies, to traps,\nto poisons, to the dangers of repletion, must be regular parts of his\nexistence. His lack of all thought by which to weigh the danger against\nthe attractiveness of the bait, and of all volition to remain hungry\na little while longer, is the direct measure of his lowness in the\nmental scale. And those fishes which, like our cunners and sculpins,\nare no sooner thrown back from the hook into the water, than they\nautomatically seize the hook again, would soon expiate the degradation\nof their intelligence by the extinction of their type, did not their\nexaggerated fecundity atone for their imprudence. Appetite and the acts\nit prompts have consequently become in all higher vertebrates functions\nof the cerebrum. They disappear when the physiologist's knife has left\nthe subordinate centres alone in place. The brainless pigeon will\nstarve though left on a corn-heap.\n\nTake again the sexual function. In birds this devolves exclusively\nupon the hemispheres. When these are shorn away the pigeon pays no\nattention to the billings and cooings of its mate. And Goltz found that\na bitch in heat would excite no emotion in male dogs who had suffered\nlarge loss of cerebral tissue. Those who have read Darwin's 'Descent of\nMan' know what immense importance in the amelioration of the breed in\nbirds this author ascribes to the mere fact of sexual selection. The\nsexual act is not performed until every condition of circumstance and\nsentiment is fulfilled, until time, place, and partner all are fit. But\nin frogs and toads this passion devolves on the lower centres. They\nshow consequently a machine-like obedience to the present incitement of\nsense, and an almost total exclusion of the power of choice. Copulation\noccurs _per fas aut nefas_, occasionally between males, often with dead\nfemales, in puddles exposed on the highway, and the male may be cut in\ntwo without letting go his hold. Every spring an immense sacrifice of\nbatrachian life takes place from these causes alone.\n\nNo one need be told how dependent all human social elevation is upon\nthe prevalence of chastity. Hardly any factor measures more than this\nthe difference between civilisation and barbarism. Physiologically\ninterpreted, chastity means nothing more than the fact that present\nsolicitations of sense are overpowered by suggestions of \u00e6sthetic and\nmoral fitness which the circumstances awaken in the cerebrum; and that\nupon the inhibitory or permissive influence of these alone action\ndirectly depends.\n\nWithin the psychic life due to the cerebrum itself the same general\ndistinction obtains, between considerations of the more immediate\nand considerations of the more remote. In all ages the man whose\ndeterminations are swayed by reference to the most distant ends has\nbeen held to possess the highest intelligence. The tramp who lives\nfrom hour to hour; the bohemian whose engagements are from day to day;\nthe bachelor who builds but for a single life; the father who acts\nfor another generation; the patriot who thinks of a whole community\nand many generations; and finally, the philosopher and saint whose\ncares are for humanity and for eternity,--these range themselves in\nan unbroken hierarchy, wherein each successive grade results from an\nincreased manifestation of the special form of action by which the\ncerebral centres are distinguished from all below them.\n\nIn the 'loop-line' along which the memories and ideas of the distant\nare supposed to lie, the action, so far as it is a physical process,\nmust be interpreted after the type of the action in the lower centres.\nIf regarded here as a reflex process, it must be reflex there as\nwell. The current in both places runs out into the muscles only after\nit has first run in; but whilst the path by which it runs out is\ndetermined in the lower centres by reflections few and fixed amongst\nthe cell-arrangements, in the hemispheres the reflections are many and\ninstable. This, it will be seen, is only a difference of degree and not\nof kind, and does not change the reflex type. The conception of _all_\naction as conforming to this type is the fundamental conception of\nmodern nerve-physiology. So much for our general preliminary conception\nof the nerve-centres! Let us define it more distinctly before we see\nhow well physiological observation will bear it out in detail.\n\n\nTHE EDUCATION OF THE HEMISPHERES.\n\n\nNerve-currents run in through sense-organs, and whilst provoking reflex\nacts in the lower centres, they arouse ideas in the hemispheres, which\neither permit the reflexes in question, check them, or substitute\nothers for them. All ideas being in the last resort reminiscences,\nthe question to answer is: _How can processes become organized in the\nhemispheres which correspond to reminiscences in the mind?_[6]\n\nNothing is easier than to conceive a _possible_ way in which this might\nbe done, provided four assumptions be granted. These assumptions (which\nafter all are inevitable in any event) are:\n\n1) The same cerebral process which, when aroused from without by a\nsense-organ, gives the perception of an object, will give an _idea_ of\nthe same object when aroused by other cerebral processes from within.\n\n2) If processes 1, 2, 3, 4 have once been aroused together or in\nimmediate succession, any subsequent arousal of any one of them\n(whether from without or within) will tend to arouse the others in the\noriginal order. [This is the so-called law of association.]\n\n3) Every sensorial excitement propagated to a lower centre tends to\nspread upwards and arouse an idea.\n\n4) Every idea tends ultimately either to produce a movement or to check\none which otherwise would be produced.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 3.]\n\nSuppose now (these assumptions being granted) that we have a baby\nbefore us who sees a candle-flame for the first time, and, by virtue\nof a reflex tendency common in babies of a certain age, extends his\nhand to grasp it, so that his fingers get burned. So far we have two\nreflex currents in play: first, from the eye to the extension movement,\nalong the line 1--1--1--1 of Fig. 3; and second, from the finger to the\nmovement of drawing back the hand, along the line 2--2--2--2. If this\nwere the baby's whole nervous system, and if the reflexes were once for\nall organic, we should have no alteration in his behavior, no matter\nhow often the experience recurred. The retinal image of the flame would\nalways make the arm shoot forward, the burning of the finger would\nalways send it back. But we know that 'the burnt child dreads the\nfire,' and that one experience usually protects the fingers forever.\nThe point is to see how the hemispheres may bring this result to pass.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 4.--The dotted lines stand for afferent paths,\nthe broken lines for paths between the centres; the entire lines for\nefferent paths.]\n\nWe must complicate our diagram (see Fig. 4). Let the current 1--1,\nfrom the eye, discharge upward as well as downward when it reaches the\nlower centre for vision, and arouse the perceptional process _s^1_ in\nthe hemispheres; let the feeling of the arm's extension also send up\na current which leaves a trace of itself, _m^1_; let the burnt finger\nleave an analogous trace, _s^2_; and let the movement of retraction\nleave _m^2_. These four processes will now, by virtue of assumption\n2), be associated together by the path _s^1--m^1--s^2--m^2_, running\nfrom the first to the last, so that if anything touches off _s^1_,\nideas of the extension, of the burnt finger, and of the retraction will\npass in rapid succession through the mind. The effect on the child's\nconduct when the candle-flame is next presented is easy to imagine.\nOf course the sight of it arouses the grasping reflex; but it arouses\nsimultaneously the idea thereof, together with that of the consequent\npain, and of the final retraction of the hand; and if these cerebral\nprocesses prevail in strength over the immediate sensation in the\ncentres below, the last idea will be the cue by which the final action\nis discharged. The grasping will be arrested in mid-career, the hand\ndrawn back, and the child's fingers saved.\n\nIn all this we assume that the hemispheres do not _natively_ couple\nany particular sense-impression with any special motor discharge. They\nonly register, and preserve traces of, such couplings as are already\norganized in the reflex centres below. But this brings it inevitably\nabout that, when a chain of experiences has been already registered and\nthe first link is impressed once again from without, the last link will\noften be awakened in _idea_ long before it can exist in _fact_. And\nif this last link were previously coupled with a motion, that motion\nmay now come from the mere ideal suggestion without waiting for the\nactual impression to arise. Thus an animal with hemispheres acts in\n_anticipation_ of future things; or, to use our previous formula, he\nacts from considerations of distant good and ill. If we give the name\nof _partners_ to the original couplings of impressions with motions\nin a reflex way, then we may say that the function of the hemispheres\nis simply to bring about _exchanges among the partners_. Movement\n_m^n_, which natively is sensation _s^n_'s partner, becomes through\nthe hemispheres the partner of sensation _s^1, s^2_, or _s^3_. It is\nlike the great commutating switch-board at a central telephone station.\nNo new elementary process is involved; no impression nor any motion\npeculiar to the hemispheres; but any number of combinations impossible\nto the lower machinery taken alone, and an endless consequent increase\nin the possibilities of behavior on the creature's part.\n\nAll this, as a mere scheme,[7] is so clear and so concordant with the\ngeneral look of the facts as almost to impose itself on our belief;\nbut it is anything but clear in detail. The brain-physiology of late\nyears has with great effort sought to work out the paths by which\nthese couplings of sensations with movements take place, both in the\nhemispheres and in the centres below.\n\nSo we must next test our scheme by the facts discovered m this\ndirection. We shall conclude, I think, after taking them all into\naccount, that the scheme probably makes the lower centres too\nmachine-like and the hemispheres not quite machine-like enough, and\nmust consequently be softened down a little. So much I may say in\nadvance. Meanwhile, before plunging into the details which await us, it\nwill somewhat clear our ideas if we contrast the modern way of looking\nat the matter with the _phrenological_ conception which but lately\npreceded it.\n\n\nTHE PHRENOLOGICAL CONCEPTION.\n\n\nIn a certain sense Gall was the first to seek to explain in detail\nhow the brain could subserve our mental operations. His way of\nproceeding was only too simple. He took the faculty-psychology as his\nultimatum on the mental side, and he made no farther psychological\nanalysis. Wherever he found an individual with some strongly-marked\ntrait of character he examined his head; and if he found the latter\nprominent in a certain region, he said without more ado that that\nregion was the 'organ' of the trait or faculty in question. The traits\nwere of very diverse constitution, some being simple sensibilities\nlike 'weight' or 'color;' some being instinctive tendencies like\n'alimentiveness' or 'amativeness;' and others, again, being complex\nresultants like 'conscientiousness,' 'individuality.' Phrenology fell\npromptly into disrepute among scientific men because observation\nseemed to show that large faculties and large 'bumps' might fail to\ncoexist; because the scheme of Gall was so vast as hardly to admit\nof accurate determination at all--who of us can say even of his own\nbrothers whether their perceptions of _weight_ and of _time_ are well\ndeveloped or not?--because the followers of Gall and Spurzheim were\nunable to reform these errors in any appreciable degree; and, finally,\nbecause the whole analysis of faculties was vague and erroneous from\na psychologic point of view. Popular professors of the lore have\nnevertheless continued to command the admiration of popular audiences;\nand there seems no doubt that Phrenology, however little it satisfy\nour scientific curiosity about the functions of different portions of\nthe brain, may still be, in the hands of intelligent practitioners, a\nuseful help in the art of reading character. A hooked nose and a firm\njaw are usually signs of practical energy; soft, delicate hands are\nsigns of refined sensibility. Even so may a prominent eye be a sign\nof power over language, and a bull-neck a sign of sensuality. But\nthe brain behind the eye and neck need no more be the _organ_ of the\nsignified faculty than the jaw is the organ of the will or the hand\nthe organ of refinement. These correlations between mind and body are,\nhowever, so frequent that the 'characters' given by phrenologists are\noften remarkable for knowingness and insight.\n\nPhrenology hardly does more than restate the problem. To answer the\nquestion, \"Why do I like children?\" by saying, \"Because you have a\nlarge organ of philoprogenitiveness,\" but renames the phenomenon\nto be explained. What _is_ my philoprogenitiveness? Of what mental\nelements does it consist? And how _can_ a part of the brain be its\norgan? A science of the mind must reduce such complex manifestations\nas 'philoprogenitiveness' to their _elements_. A science of the brain\nmust point out the functions of _its_ elements. A science of the\nrelations of mind and brain must show how the elementary ingredients\nof the former correspond to the elementary functions of the latter.\nBut phrenology, except by occasional coincidence, takes no account of\nelements at all. Its 'faculties,' as a rule, are fully equipped persons\nin a particular mental attitude. Take, for example, the 'faculty' of\nlanguage. It involves in reality a host of distinct powers. We must\nfirst have images of concrete things and ideas of abstract qualities\nand relations; we must next have the memory of words and then the\ncapacity so to associate each idea or image with a particular word\nthat, when the word is heard, the idea shall forthwith enter our mind.\nWe must conversely, as soon as the idea arises in our mind, associate\nwith it a mental image of the word, and by means of this image we must\ninnervate our articulatory apparatus so as to reproduce the word as\nphysical sound. To read or to write a language other elements still\nmust be introduced. But it is plain that the faculty of spoken language\nalone is so complicated as to call into play almost all the elementary\npowers which the mind possesses, memory, imagination, association,\njudgment, and volition. A portion of the brain competent to be the\nadequate seat of such a faculty would needs be an entire brain in\nminiature,--just as the faculty itself is really a specification of the\nentire man, a sort of homunculus.\n\nYet just such homunculi are for the most part the phrenological organs.\nAs Lange says:\n\n \"We have a parliament of little men together, each one of whom, as\n happens also in a real parliament, possesses but a single idea which\n he ceaselessly strives to make prevail\"--benevolence, firmness, hope,\n and the rest. \"Instead of one soul, phrenology gives us forty, each\n alone as enigmatic as the full aggregate psychic life can be. Instead\n of dividing the latter into effective elements, she divides it into\n personal beings of peculiar character.... 'Herr Pastor, sure there be\n a horse inside,' called out the peasants to X after their spiritual\n shepherd had spent hours in explaining to them the construction of the\n locomotive. With a horse inside truly everything becomes clear, even\n though it be a queer enough sort of horse--the horse itself calls for\n no explanation! Phrenology takes a start to get beyond the point of\n view of the ghost-like soul entity, but she ends by populating the\n whole skull with ghosts of the same order.\"[8]\n\nModern Science conceives of the matter in a very different way. _Brain\nand mind alike consist of simple elements, sensory and motor_. \"All\nnervous centres,\" says Dr. Hughlings Jackson,[9] \"from the lowest to\nthe very highest (the substrata of consciousness), are made up of\nnothing else than nervous arrangements, representing impressions and\nmovements.... I do not see of what other materials the brain _can_ be\nmade.\" Meynert represents the matter similarly when he calls the cortex\nof the hemispheres the surface of projection for every muscle and every\nsensitive point of the body. The muscles and the sensitive points are\n_represented_ each by a cortical point, and the brain is nothing but\nthe sum of all these cortical points, to which, on the mental side, as\nmany _ideas_ correspond. _Ideas of sensation, ideas of motion_ are,\non the other hand, _the elementary factors out of which the mind is\nbuilt up by the associationists in psychology_. There is a complete\nparallelism between the two analyses, the same diagram of little dots,\ncircles, or triangles joined by lines symbolizes equally well the\ncerebral and mental processes: the dots stand for cells or ideas, the\nlines for fibres or associations. We shall have later to criticise\nthis analysis so far as it relates to the mind; but there is no doubt\nthat it is a most convenient, and has been a most useful, hypothesis,\nformulating the facts in an extremely natural way.\n\nIf, then, we grant that motor and sensory ideas variously associated\nare the materials of the mind, all we need do to get a complete diagram\nof the mind's and the brain's relations should be to ascertain which\nsensory idea corresponds to which sensational surface of projection,\nand which motor idea to which muscular surface of projection. The\nassociations would then correspond to the fibrous connections between\nthe various surfaces. This distinct _cerebral localization_ of the\nvarious elementary sorts of idea has been treated as a 'postulate' by\nmany physiologists (e.g. Munk); and the most stirring controversy in\nnerve-physiology which the present generation has seen has been the\n_localization-question_.\n\n\nTHE LOCALIZATION OF FUNCTIONS IN THE HEMISPHERES.\n\n\nUp to 1870, the opinion which prevailed was that which the experiments\nof Flourens on pigeons' brains had made plausible, namely, that the\ndifferent functions of the hemispheres were not locally separated,\nbut carried on each by the aid of the whole organ. Hitzig in 1870\nshowed, however, that in a dog's brain highly specialized movements\ncould be produced by electric irritation of determinate regions of\nthe cortex; and Ferrier and Munk, half a dozen years later, seemed to\nprove, either by irritations or excisions or both, that there were\nequally determinate regions connected with the senses of sight, touch,\nhearing, and smell. Munk's special sensorial localizations, however,\ndisagreed with Ferrier's; and Goltz, from his extirpation-experiments,\ncame to a conclusion adverse to strict localization of any kind. The\ncontroversy is not yet over. I will not pretend to say anything more\nof it historically, but give a brief account of the condition in which\nmatters at present stand.\n\nThe one thing which is _perfectly_ well established is this, that the\n'central' convolutions, on either side of the fissure of Rolando, and\n(at least in the monkey) the calloso-marginal convolution (which is\ncontinuous with them on the mesial surface where one hemisphere is\napplied against the other), form the region by which all the motor\nincitations which leave the cortex pass out, on their way to those\nexecutive centres in the region of the pons, medulla, and spinal cord\nfrom which the muscular contractions are discharged in the last resort.\nThe existence of this so-called 'motor zone' is established by the\nlines of evidence successively given below:\n\n(1) _Cortical Irritations._ Electrical currents of small intensity\napplied to the surface of the said convolutions in dogs, monkeys, and\nother animals, produce well-defined movements in face, fore-limb,\nhind-limb, tail, or trunk, according as one point or another of the\nsurface is irritated. These movements affect almost invariably the\nside opposite to the brain irritations: If the left hemisphere be\nexcited, the movement is of the right leg, side of face, etc. All the\nobjections at first raised against the validity of these experiments\nhave been overcome. The movements are certainly not due to irritations\nof the base of the brain by the downward spread of the current, for:\n_a_) mechanical irritations will produce them, though less easily than\nelectrical; _b_) shifting the electrodes to a point close by on the\nsurface changes the movement in ways quite inexplicable by changed\nphysical conduction of the current; _c_) if the cortical 'centre'\nfor a certain movement be cut under with a sharp knife but left _in\nsitu_, although the electric conductivity is physically unaltered by\nthe operation, the physiological conductivity is gone and currents\nof the same strength no longer produce the movements which they\ndid; _d_) the time-interval between the application of the electric\nstimulus to the cortex and the resultant movement is what it would\nbe if the cortex acted physiologically and not merely physically in\ntransmitting the irritation. It is namely a well-known fact that when a\nnerve-current has to pass through the spinal cord to excite a muscle by\nreflex action, the time is longer than if it passes directly down the\nmotor nerve: the cells of the cord take a certain time to discharge.\nSimilarly, when a stimulus is applied directly to the cortex the muscle\ncontracts two or three hundredths of a second later than it does when\nthe place on the cortex is cut away and the electrodes are applied to\nthe white fibres below.[10]\n\n(2) _Cortical Ablations._ When the cortical spot which is found to\nproduce a movement of the fore-leg, in a dog, is excised (see spot 5\nin Fig. 5), the leg in question becomes peculiarly affected. At first\nit seems paralyzed. Soon, however, it is used with the other legs, but\nbadly. The animal does not bear his weight on it, allows it to rest on\nits dorsal surface, stands with it crossing the other leg, does not\nremove it if it hangs over the edge of a table, can no longer 'give the\npaw' at word of command if able to do so before the operation, does\nnot use it for scratching the ground, or holding a bone as formerly,\nlets it slip out when running on a smooth surface or when shaking\nhimself, etc., etc. Sensibility of all kinds seems diminished as well\nas motility, but of this I shall speak later on. Moreover the dog tends\nin voluntary movements to swerve towards the side of the brain-lesion\ninstead of going straight forward. All these symptoms gradually\ndecrease, so that even with a very severe brain-lesion the dog may be\noutwardly indistinguishable from a well dog after eight or ten weeks.\nStill, a slight chloroformization will reproduce the disturbances, even\nthen. There is a certain appearance of ataxic in-coordination in the\nmovements--the dog lifts his fore-feet high and brings them down with\nmore strength than usual, and yet the trouble is not ordinary lack of\nco-ordination. Neither is there paralysis. The strength of whatever\nmovements are made is as great as ever--dogs with extensive destruction\nof the motor zone can jump as high and bite as hard as ever they did,\nbut they seem _less easily moved_ to do _anything_ with the affected\nparts. Dr. Loeb, who has studied the motor disturbances of dogs more\ncarefully than any one, conceives of them _en masse_ as effects of an\nincreased inertia in all the processes of innervation towards the side\nopposed to the lesion. All such movements require an unwonted effort\nfor their execution; and when only the normally usual effort is made\nthey fall behind in effectiveness.[11]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Left Hemisphere of Dog's Brain, after Ferrier.\n_A_, the fissure of Sylvius. _B_, the crucial sulcus. _O_, the\nolfactory bulb. _I, II, III, IV,_ indicate the first, second, third,\nand fourth external convolutions respectively. (1), (4), and (5) are on\nthe _sigmoid_ gyrus.]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 6.--Left Hemisphere of Monkey's Brain. Outer\nSurface.]\n\nEven when the entire motor zone of a dog is removed, there is no\npermanent paralysis of any part, but only this curious sort of relative\ninertia when the two sides of the body are compared; and this itself\nbecomes hardly noticeable after a number of weeks have elapsed. Prof.\nGoltz has described a dog whose entire left hemisphere was destroyed,\nand who retained only a slight motor inertia on the right half of\nthe body. In particular he could use his right paw for holding a\nbone whilst gnawing it, or for reaching after a piece of meat. Had\nhe been taught to give his paw Before the operations, it would have\nbeen curious to see whether that faculty also came back. His tactile\nsensibility was permanently diminished on the right side.[12] In\n_monkeys_ a genuine paralysis follows upon ablations of the cortex\nin the motor region. This paralysis affects parts of the body which\nvary with the brain-parts removed. The monkey's opposite arm or leg\nhangs flaccid, or at most takes a small part in associated movements.\nWhen the entire region is removed there is a genuine and permanent\nhemiplegia in which the arm is more affected than the leg; and this\nis followed months later by contracture of the muscles, as in man\nafter inveterate hemiplegia.[13] According to Schaefer and Horsley, the\ntrunk-muscles also become paralyzed after destruction of the _marginal_\nconvolution on _both_ sides (see Fig. 7). These differences between\ndogs and monkeys show the danger of drawing general conclusions from\nexperiments done on any one sort of animal. I subjoin the figures\ngiven by the last-named authors of the motor regions in the monkey's\nbrain.[14]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 7.--Left Hemisphere of Monkey's Brain. Mesial\nSurface.]\n\n_In man_ we are necessarily reduced to the observation _post-mortem_ of\ncortical ablations produced by accident or disease (tumor, hemorrhage,\nsoftening, etc.). What results during life from such conditions is\neither localized spasm, or palsy of certain muscles of the opposite\nside. The cortical regions which invariably produce these results are\nhomologous with those which we have just been studying in the dog,\ncat, ape, etc. Figs. 8 and 9 show the result of 169 cases carefully\nstudied by Exner. The parts shaded are regions where lesions produced\n_no_ motor disturbance. Those left white were, on the contrary, never\ninjured without motor disturbances of some sort. Where the injury to\nthe cortical substance is profound in man, the paralysis is permanent\nand is succeeded by muscular rigidity in the paralyzed parts, just as\nit may be in the monkey.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 8.--Right Hemisphere of Human Brain. Lateral\nSurface.]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 9.--Right Hemisphere of Human Brain. Mesial\nSurface.]\n\n(3) _Descending degenerations_ show the intimate connection of the\nrolandic regions of the cortex with the motor tracts of the cord. When,\neither in man or in the lower animals, these regions are destroyed, a\npeculiar degenerative change known as secondary sclerosis is found to\nextend downwards through the white fibrous substance of the brain in\na perfectly definite manner, affecting certain distinct strands which\npass through the inner capsule, crura, and pons, into the anterior\npyramids of the medulla oblongata, and from thence (partly crossing\nto the other side) downwards into the anterior (direct) and lateral\n(crossed) columns of the spinal cord.\n\n(4) _Anatomical proof_ of the continuity of the rolandic regions with\nthese motor columns of the cord is also clearly given. Flechsig's\n'Pyramidenbahn' forms an uninterrupted strand (distinctly traceable in\nhuman embryos, before its fibres have acquired their white 'medullary\nsheath') passing upwards from the pyramids of the medulla, and\ntraversing the internal capsule and corona radiata to the convolutions\nin question (Fig. 10). None of the inferior gray matter of the brain\nseems to have any connection with this important fibrous strand. It\npasses directly from the cortex to the motor arrangements in the cord,\ndepending for its proper nutrition (as the facts of degeneration show)\non the influence of the cortical cells, just as motor nerves depend for\ntheir nutrition on that of the cells of the spinal cord. Electrical\nstimulation of this motor strand in any accessible part of its course\nhas been shown in dogs to produce movements analogous to those which\nexcitement of the cortical surface calls forth.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 10.--Schematic Transverse Section of Brain showing\nMotor Strand.--After Edinger.]\n\nOne of the most instructive proofs of motor localization in the\ncortex is that furnished by the disease now called aphemia, or _motor\nAphasia_. Motor aphasia is neither loss of voice nor paralysis of the\ntongue or lips. The patient's voice is as strong as ever, and all\nthe innervations of his hypoglossal and facial nerves, except those\nnecessary for speaking, may go on perfectly well. He can laugh and\ncry, and even sing; but he either is unable to utter any words at\nall; or a few meaningless stock phrases form his only speech; or else\nhe speaks incoherently and confusedly, mispronouncing, misplacing,\nand misusing his words in various degrees. Sometimes his speech is\na mere broth of unintelligible syllables. In cases of pure motor\naphasia the patient recognizes his mistakes and suffers acutely from\nthem. Now whenever a patient dies in such a condition as this, and an\nexamination of his brain is permitted, it is found that the lowest\nfrontal gyrus (see Fig. 11) is the seat of injury. Broca first noticed\nthis fact in 1861, and since then the gyrus has gone by the name of\nBroca's convolution. The injury in right-handed people is found on the\nleft hemisphere, and in left-handed people on the right hemisphere.\nMost people, in fact, are left-brained, that is, all their delicate\nand specialized movements are handed over to the charge of the left\nhemisphere. The ordinary right-handedness for such movements is only\na consequence of that fact, a consequence which shows outwardly on\naccount of that extensive decussation of the fibres whereby most of\nthose from the left hemisphere pass to the right half of the body only.\nBut the left-brainedness might exist in equal measure and not show\noutwardly. This would happen wherever organs on _both_ sides of the\nbody could be governed by the left hemisphere; and just such a case\nseems offered by the vocal organs, in that highly delicate and special\nmotor service which we call speech. Either hemisphere _can_ innervate\nthem bilaterally, just as either seems able to innervate bilaterally\nthe muscles of the trunk, ribs, and diaphragm. Of the special movements\nof speech, however, it would appear (from the facts of aphasia) that\nthe left hemisphere in most persons habitually takes exclusive charge.\nWith that hemisphere thrown out of gear, speech is undone; even though\nthe opposite hemisphere still be there for the performance of less\nspecialized acts, such as the various movements required in eating.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 11.--Schematic Profile of Left Hemisphere, with\nthe parts shaded whose destruction causes motor ('Broca') and sensory\n('Wernicke') Aphasia.]\n\nIt will be noticed that Broca's region is homologous with the parts\nascertained to produce movements of the lips, tongue, and larynx when\nexcited by electric currents in apes (cf. Fig. 6). The evidence is\ntherefore as complete as it well can be that the motor incitations to\nthese organs leave the brain by the lower frontal region.\n\nVictims of motor aphasia generally have other disorders. One which\ninterests us in this connection has been called _agraphia_: they have\nlost the power to _write_. They can read writing and understand it;\nbut either cannot use the pen at all or make egregious mistakes with\nit. The seat of the lesion here is less well determined, owing to an\ninsufficient number of good cases to conclude from.[15] There is no\ndoubt, however, that it is (in right-handed people) on the left side,\nand little doubt that it consists of elements of the hand-and-arm\nregion specialized for that service, The symptom may exist when there\nis little or no disability in the hand for other uses. If it does not\nget well, the patient usually educates his right hemisphere, i.e.\nlearns to write with his left hand. In other cases of which we shall\nsay more a few pages later on, the patient can write both spontaneously\nand at dictation, but cannot _read_ even what he has himself written!\nAll these phenomena are now quite clearly explained by separate\nbrain-centres for the various feelings and movements and tracts for\nassociating these together. But their minute discussion belongs to\nmedicine rather than to general psychology, and I can only use them\nhere to illustrate the principles of motor localization.[16] Under the\nheads of sight and hearing I shall have a little more to say.\n\nThe different lines of proof which I have taken up establish\nconclusively the proposition that _all the motor impulses which leave\nthe cortex pass out_, in healthy animals, _from the convolutions about\nthe fissure of Rolando_.\n\nWhen, however, it comes to defining precisely what is involved in\na motor impulse leaving the cortex, things grow more obscure. Does\nthe impulse start independently from the convolutions in question,\nor does it start elsewhere and merely flow through? And to what\nparticular phase of psychic activity does the activity of these\ncentres correspond? Opinions and authorities here divide; but it will\nbe better, before entering into these deeper aspects of the problem,\nto cast a glance at the facts which have been made out concerning the\nrelations of the cortex to sight, hearing, and smell.\n\n\n_Sight._\n\n\nFerrier was the first in the field here. He found, when the _angular_\nconvolution (that lying between the 'intra parietal' and 'external\noccipital' fissures, and bending round the top of the fissure of\nSylvius, in Fig. 6) was excited in the monkey, that movements of\nthe eyes and head as if for vision occurred; and that when it was\nextirpated, what he supposed to be total and permanent blindness of\nthe opposite eye followed. Munk almost immediately declared total and\npermanent blindness to follow from destruction of the _occipital lobe_\nin monkeys as well as dogs, and said that the angular gyrus had nothing\nto do with sight, but was only the centre for tactile sensibility\nof the eyeball. Hunk's absolute tone about his observations and his\ntheoretic arrogance have led to his ruin as an authority. But he did\ntwo things of permanent value. He was the first to distinguish in these\nvivisections between sensorial and _psychic_ blindness, and to describe\nthe phenomenon of _restitution_ of the visual function after its first\nimpairment by an operation; and the first to notice the _hemiopic_\ncharacter of the visual disturbances which result when only one\nhemisphere is injured. Sensorial blindness is absolute insensibility\nto light; psychic blindness is inability to recognize the _meaning_ of\nthe optical impressions, as when we see a page of Chinese print but\nit suggests nothing to us. A hemiopic disturbance of vision is one in\nwhich neither retina is affected in its totality, but in which, for\nexample, the left portion of _each_ retina is blind, so that the animal\nsees nothing situated in space towards its right. Later observations\nhave corroborated this hemiopic character of all the disturbances of\nsight from injury to a single hemisphere in the higher animals; and the\nquestion whether an animal's apparent blindness is sensorial or only\npsychic has, since Munk's first publications, been the most urgent one\nto answer, in all observations relative to the function of sight.\n\nGoltz almost simultaneously with Ferrier and Munk reported experiments\nwhich led him to deny that the visual function was essentially bound\nup with any one localized portion of the hemispheres. Other divergent\nresults soon came in from many quarters, so that, without going into\nthe history of the matter any more, I may report the existing state of\nthe case as follows:[17]\n\nIn _fishes, frogs_, and _lizards_ vision persists when the hemispheres\nare entirely removed. This is admitted for frogs and fishes even by\nMunk, who denies it for birds.\n\nAll of Munk's _birds_ seemed totally blind (blind sensorially) after\nremoval of the hemispheres by his operation. The following of a candle\nby the head and winking at a threatened blow, which are ordinarily held\nto prove the retention of crude optical sensations by the lower centres\nin supposed hemisphereless pigeons, are by Munk ascribed to vestiges\nof the visual sphere of the cortex left behind by the imperfection of\nthe operation. But Schrader, who operated after Munk and with every\napparent guarantee of completeness, found that all his pigeons saw\nafter two or three weeks had elapsed, and the inhibitions resulting\nfrom the wound had passed away. They invariably avoided even the\nslightest obstacles, flew very regularly towards certain perches, etc.,\ndiffering _toto c\u0153lo_ in these respects with certain simply _blinded_\npigeons who were kept with them for comparison. They did not pick up\nfood strewn on the ground, however. Schrader found that they would do\nthis if even a small part of the frontal region of the hemispheres\nwas left, and ascribes their non-self-feeding when deprived of their\noccipital cerebrum not to a visual, but to a motor, defect, a sort of\nalimentary aphasia.[18]\n\nIn presence of such discord as that between Munk and his opponents\none must carefully note how differently significant is _loss_, from\n_preservation_, of a function after an operation on the brain. The\n_loss_ of the function does not necessarily show that it _is_ dependent\non the part cut out; but its _preservation_ does show that it is\n_not_ dependent: and this is true though the loss should be observed\nninety-nine times and the preservation only once in a hundred similar\nexcisions. That birds and mammals _can_ be blinded by cortical ablation\nis undoubted; the only question is, _must_ they be so? Only then can\nthe cortex be certainly called the 'seat of sight.' The blindness may\nalways be due to one of those remote effects of the wound on distant\nparts, inhibitions, extensions of inflammation,--interferences, in\na word,--upon which Brown-S\u00e9quard and Goltz have rightly insisted,\nand the importance of which becomes more manifest every day. Such\neffects are transient; whereas the _symptoms of deprivation_\n(_Ausfallserscheinungen_, as Goltz calls them) which come from the\nactual loss of the cut-out region must from the nature of the case\nbe permanent. Blindness in the pigeons, _so far as it passes away_,\ncannot possibly be charged to their seat of vision being lost, but only\nto some influence which temporarily depresses the activity of that\nseat. The same is true _mutatis mutandis_ of all the other effects\nof operations, and as we pass to mammals we shall see still more the\nimportance of the remark.\n\n_In rabbits_ loss of the entire cortex seems compatible with the\npreservation of enough sight to guide the poor animals' movements,\nand enable them to avoid obstacles. Christiani's observations and\ndiscussions seem conclusively to have established this, although Munk\nfound that all _his_ animals were made totally blind.[19]\n\n_In dogs_ also Munk found absolute stone-blindness after ablation\nof the occipital lobes. He went farther and mapped out determinate\nportions of the cortex thereupon, which he considered correlated with\ndefinite segments of the two retin\u00e6, so that destruction of given\nportions of the cortex produces blindness of the retinal centre, top,\nbottom, or right or left side, of the same or opposite eye. There\nseems little doubt that this definite correlation is mythological.\nOther observers, Hitzig, Goltz, Luciani, Loeb, Exner, etc., find,\nwhatever part of the cortex may be ablated on one side, that there\nusually results a _hemiopic_ disturbance of _both_ eyes, slight and\ntransient when the anterior lobes are the parts attacked, grave when an\noccipital lobe is the seat of injury, and lasting in proportion to the\nlatter's extent. According to Loeb, the defect is a dimness of vision\n('hemiamblyopia') in which (however severe) the centres remain the\nbest seeing portions of the retina, just as they are in normal dogs.\nThe lateral or temporal part of each retina seems to be in exclusive\nconnection with the cortex of its own side. The centre and nasal part\nof each seems, on the contrary, to be connected with the cortex of\nthe opposite hemispheres. Loeb, who takes broader views than any one,\nconceives the hemiamblyopia as he conceives the motor disturbances,\nnamely, as the expression of an increased inertia in the whole optical\nmachinery, of which the result is to make the animal respond with\ngreater effort to impressions coming from the half of space opposed to\nthe side of the lesion. If a dog has right hemiamblyopia, say, and two\npieces of meat are hung before him at once, he invariably turns first\nto the one on his left. But if the lesion be a slight one, _shaking_\nslightly the piece of meat on his right (this makes of it a stronger\nstimulus) makes him seize upon it first. If only one piece of meat be\noffered, he takes it, on whichever side it be.\n\n[Illustration: FIGS. 12 and 13. The Dog's visual centre according to\nMunk, the entire striated region, _A, A_, being the exclusive seat of\nvision, and the dark central circle, _A^1_, being correlated with the\nretinal centre of the opposite eye.]\n\nWhen both occipital lobes are extensively destroyed total blindness\nmay result. Munk maps out his 'Sehsph\u00e4re' definitely, and says that\nblindness _must_ result when the entire shaded part, marked _A, A,_ in\nFigs. 12 and 13, is involved in the lesion. Discrepant reports of other\nobservations he explains as due to incomplete ablation. Luciani, Goltz,\nand Lannegrace, however, contend that they have made complete bilateral\nextirpations of Munk's Sehsph\u00e4re more than once, and found a sort of\ncrude indiscriminating sight of objects to return in a few weeks.[20]\nThe question whether a dog is blind or not is harder to solve than\nwould at first appear; for simply blinded dogs, in places to which they\nare accustomed, show little of their loss and avoid all obstacles;\nwhilst dogs whose occipital lobes are gone may run against things\nfrequently and yet see notwithstanding. The best proof that they may\nsee is that which Goltz's dogs furnished: they carefully avoided, as it\nseemed, strips of sunshine or paper on the floor, as if they were solid\nobstacles. This no really blind dog would do. Luciani tested his dogs\nwhen hungry (a condition which sharpens their attention) by strewing\npieces of meat and pieces of cork before them. If they went straight\nat them, they _saw_; and if they chose the meat and left the cork,\nthey _saw discriminatingly_. The quarrel is very acrimonious; indeed\nthe subject of localization of functions in the brain seems to have a\npeculiar effect on the temper of those who cultivate it experimentally.\nThe amount of preserved vision which Goltz and Luciani report seems\nhardly to be worth considering, on the one hand; and on the other, Munk\nadmits in his penultimate paper that out of 85 dogs he only 'succeeded'\n4 times in his operation of producing complete blindness by complete\nextirpation of his 'Sehsph\u00e4re.'[21] The safe conclusion for _us_ is\nthat Luciani's diagram, Fig. 14, represents something like the truth.\nThe occipital lobes are far more important for vision than any other\npart of the cortex, so that their complete destruction makes the animal\nalmost blind. As for the crude sensibility to light which _may_ then\nremain, nothing exact is known either about its nature or its seat.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 14.--Distribution of the Visual Function in the\nCortex, according to Luciani.]\n\n\n_In the monkey_, doctors also disagree. The truth seems, however, to be\nthat the _occipital lobes_ in this animal also are the part connected\nmost intimately with the visual function. The function would seem to\ngo on when very small portions of them are left, for Ferrier found no\n'appreciable impairment' of it after almost complete destruction of\nthem on both sides. On the other hand, he found complete and permanent\nblindness to ensue when they and the _angular gyri_ in addition were\ndestroyed on both sides. Munk, as well as Brown and Schaefer, found no\ndisturbance of sight from destroying the _angular gyri_ alone, although\nFerrier found blindness to ensue. This blindness was probably due to\ninhibitions exerted _in distans_, or to cutting of the white optical\nfibres passing under the angular gyri on their way to the occipital\nlobes. Brown and Schaefer got complete and permanent blindness in\none monkey from total destruction of both occipital lobes. Luciani\nand Seppili, performing this operation on two monkeys, found that\nthe animals were only mentally, not sensorially, blind. After some\nweeks they saw their food, but could not distinguish by sight between\nfigs and pieces of cork. Luciani and Seppili seem, however, not to\nhave extirpated the entire lobes. When one lobe only is injured the\naffection of sight is hemiopic in monkeys: in this all observers agree.\nOn the whole, then, Munk's original location of vision in the occipital\nlobes is confirmed by the later evidence.[22]\n\n_In man_ we have more exact results, since we are not driven to\ninterpret the vision from the outward conduct. On the other hand,\nhowever, we cannot vivisect, but must wait for pathological lesions\nto turn up. The pathologists who have discussed these (the literature\nis tedious _ad libitum_) conclude that the occipital lobes are the\nindispensable part for vision in man. Hemiopic disturbance in both eyes\ncomes from lesion of either one of them, and total blindness, sensorial\nas well as psychic, from destruction of both.\n\nHemiopia may also result from lesion in other parts, especially the\nneighboring angular and supra-marginal gyri, and it may accompany\nextensive injury in the motor region of the cortex. In these cases\nit seems probable that it is due to an _actio in distans_, probably\nto the interruption of fibres proceeding from the occipital lobe.\nThere seem to be a few cases on record where there was injury to the\noccipital lobes without visual defect. Ferrier has collected as many\nas possible to prove his localization in the angular gyrus.[23] A\nstrict application of logical principles would make one of these cases\noutweigh one hundred contrary ones. And yet, remembering how imperfect\nobservations may be, and how individual brains may vary, it would\ncertainly be rash for their sake to throw away the enormous amount\nof positive evidence for the occipital lobes. Individual variability\nis always a _possible_ explanation of an anomalous case. There is no\nmore prominent anatomical fact than that of the 'decussation of the\npyramids,' nor any more usual pathological fact than its consequence,\nthat left-handed hemorrhages into the motor region produce right-handed\nparalyses. And yet the decussation is variable in amount, and seems\nsometimes to be absent altogether.[24] If, in such a case as this last,\nthe left brain were to become the seat of apoplexy, the left and not\nthe right half of the body would be the one to suffer paralysis.\n\nThe _schema_ below [Fig. 15], copied from Dr. Seguin, expresses, on\nthe whole, the probable truth about the regions concerned in vision.\nNot the entire occipital lobes, but the so-called cunei, and the\nfirst convolutions, are the cortical parts most intimately concerned.\nNothnagel agrees with Seguin in this limitation of the essential\ntracts.[25]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 15.--Scheme of the mechanism of vision, after\nSeguin. The _cuneus_ convolution (_Cu_) of the right occipital lobe is\nsupposed to be injured, and all the parts which lead to it are darkly\nshaded to show that they fail to exert their function. _F. O._ are the\nintra-hemispheric optical fibres. _P. O. C._ is the region of the lower\noptic centres (corpora geniculata and quadrigemina). _T. O. D._ is the\nright optic tract; _C_, the chiasma; _F. L. D._ are the fibres going\nto the lateral or temporal half _T_ of the right retina; and _F. C. S._\nare those going to the central or nasal half of the left retina. _O.\nD._ is the right, and _O. S._ the left eyeball. The rightward half of\neach is therefore blind: in other words, the right nasal field, _R. N.\nF._, and the left temporal field _L. T. F._, have become invisible to\nthe subject with the lesion at _Cu_.]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nA most interesting effect of cortical disorder is _mental blindness_.\nThis consists not so much in insensibility to optical impressions, as\nin _inability to understand them_. Psychologically it is interpretable\nas _loss of associations_ between optical sensations and what they\nsignify; and any interruption of the paths between the optic centres\nand the centres for other ideas ought to bring it about. Thus, printed\nletters of the alphabet, or words, signify certain sounds and certain\narticulatory movements. If the connection between the articulating or\nauditory centres, on the one hand, and the visual centres on the other,\nbe ruptured we ought _a priori_ to expect that the sight of words would\nfail to awaken the idea of their sound, or the movement for pronouncing\nthem. We ought, in short, to have _alexia_, or inability to read:\nand this is just what we do have in many cases of extensive injury\nabout the fronto-temporal regions, as a complication of _aphasic_\ndisease. Nothnagel suggests that whilst the _cuneus_ is the seat of\noptical _sensations_, the other parts of the occipital lobe may be the\nfield of optical _memories and ideas_, from the loss of which mental\nblindness should ensue. In fact, all the medical authors speak of\nmental blindness as if it must consist in the loss of visual images\nfrom the memory. It seems to me, however, that this is a psychological\nmisapprehension. A man whose power of visual imagination has decayed\n(no unusual phenomenon in its lighter grades) is not mentally blind\nin the least, for he recognizes perfectly all that he sees. On the\nother hand, he _may_ be mentally blind, with his optical imagination\nwell preserved; as in the interesting case published by Wilbrand in\n1887.[26] In the still more interesting case of mental blindness\nrecently published by Lissauer,[27] though the patient made the most\nludicrous mistakes, calling for instance a clothes-brush a pair of\nspectacles, an umbrella a plant with flowers, an apple a portrait of\na lady, etc. etc., he seemed, according to the reporter, to have his\nmental images fairly well preserved. It is in fact the momentary loss\nof our _non_-optical images which makes us mentally blind, just as it\nis that of our _non_-auditory images which makes us mentally deaf. I\nam mentally deaf if, _hearing_ a bell, I can't recall how it _looks_;\nand mentally blind if, _seeing_ it, I can't recall its _sound or its\nname_. As a matter of fact, I should have to be not merely mentally\nblind, but stone-blind, if all my visual images were lost. For although\nI am blind to the right half of the field of view if my left occipital\nregion is injured, and to the left half if my right region is injured,\nsuch hemianopsia does not deprive me of visual _images_, experience\nseeming to show that the unaffected hemisphere is always sufficient\nfor production of these. To abolish them entirely I should have to be\ndeprived of both occipital lobes, and that would deprive me not only\nof my inward images of sight, but of my sight altogether.[28] Recent\npathological annals seem to offer a few such cases.[29] Meanwhile there\nare a number of cases of mental blindness, especially for written\nlanguage, coupled with hemianopsia, usually of the rightward field of\nview. These are all explicable by the breaking down, through disease,\nof the _connecting tracts_ between the occipital lobes and other parts\nof the brain, especially those which go to the centres for speech in\nthe frontal and temporal regions of the left hemisphere. They are to\nbe classed among disturbances of _conduction_ or of _association_;\nand nowhere can I find any fact which should force us to believe that\noptical images need[30] be lost in mental blindness, or that the\ncerebral centres for such images are locally distinct from those for\ndirect sensations from the eyes.[31]\n\nWhere an object fails to be recognized by sight, it often happens\nthat the patient will recognize and name it as soon as he touches it\nwith his hand. This shows in an interesting way how numerous the\nassociative paths are which all end by running out of the brain through\nthe channel of speech. The hand-path is open, though the eye-path be\nclosed. When mental blindness is most complete, neither sight, touch,\nnor sound avails to steer the patient, and a sort of dementia which\nhas been called _asymbolia_ or _apraxia_ is the result. The commonest\narticles are not understood. The patient will put his breeches on one\nshoulder and his hat upon the other, will bite into the soap and lay\nhis shoes on the table, or take his food into his hand and throw it\ndown again, not knowing what to do with it, etc. Such disorder can only\ncome from extensive brain-injury.[32]\n\nThe _method of degeneration_ corroborates the other evidence localizing\nthe tracts of vision. In young animals one gets secondary degeneration\nof the occipital regions from destroying an eyeball, and, _vice vers\u00e2_,\ndegeneration of the optic nerves from destroying the occipital regions.\nThe corpora geniculata, thalami, and subcortical fibres leading to the\noccipital lobes are also found atrophied in these cases. The phenomena\nare not uniform, but are indisputable;[33] so that, taking all lines of\nevidence together, the special connection of vision with the occipital\nlobes is perfectly made out. It should be added, that the occipital\nlobes have frequently been found shrunken in cases of inveterate\nblindness in man.\n\n\n_Hearing._\n\n\nHearing is hardly as definitely localized as sight. _In the dog_,\nLuciani's diagram will show the regions which directly or indirectly\naffect it for the worse when injured. As with sight, one-sided lesions\nproduce symptoms on both sides. The mixture of black dots and gray dots\nin the diagram is meant to represent this mixture of 'crossed' and\n'uncrossed' connections, though of course no topographical exactitude\nis aimed at. Of all the region, the temporal lobe is the most important\npart; yet permanent absolute deafness did not result in a dog of\nLuciani's, even from bilateral destruction of both temporal lobes in\ntheir entirety.[34]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 16.--Luciani's Hearing Region.]\n\n_In the monkey_, Ferrier and Yeo once found permanent deafness to\nfollow destruction of the upper temporal convolution (the one just\nbelow the fissure of Sylvius in Fig. 6) on both sides. Brown and\nSchaefer found, on the contrary, that in several monkeys this operation\nfailed to noticeably affect the hearing. In one animal, indeed, both\nentire temporal lobes were destroyed. After a week or two of depression\nof the mental faculties this beast recovered and became one of the\nbrightest monkeys possible, domineering over all his mates, and\nadmitted by all who saw him to have all his senses, including hearing,\n'perfectly acute.'[35] Terrible recriminations have, as usual, ensued\nbetween the investigators, Ferrier denying that Brown and Schaefer's\nablations were complete,[36] Schaefer that Ferrier's monkey was really\ndeaf.[37] In this unsatisfactory condition the subject must be left,\nalthough there seems no reason to doubt that Brown and Schaefer's\nobservation is the more important of the two.\n\n_In man_ the temporal lobe is unquestionably the seat of the hearing\nfunction, and the superior convolution adjacent to the sylvian fissure\nis its most important part. The phenomena of aphasia show this. We\nstudied motor aphasia a few pages back; we must now consider _sensory\naphasia_. Our knowledge of this disease has had three stages: we may\ntalk of the period of Broca, the period of Wernicke, and the period\nof Charcot. What Broca's discovery was we have seen. Wernicke was the\nfirst to discriminate those cases in which the patient can _not even\nunderstand_ speech from those in which he can understand, only not\ntalk; and to ascribe the former condition to lesion of the temporal\nlobe.[38] The condition in question is _word-deafness_, and the disease\nis _auditory aphasia_. The latest statistical survey of the subject is\nthat by Dr. Allen Starr.[39] In the seven cases of _pure_ word-deafness\nwhich he has collected, cases in which the patient could read, talk,\nand write, but not understand what was said to him, the lesion was\nlimited to the first and second temporal convolutions in their\nposterior two thirds. The lesion (in right-handed, i.e. left-brained,\npersons) is always on the left side, like the lesion in motor aphasia.\nCrude hearing would not be abolished, even were the left centre for it\nutterly destroyed; the right centre would still provide for that. But\nthe _linguistic use_ of hearing appears bound up with the integrity of\nthe left centre more or less exclusively. Here it must be that words\nheard enter into association with the things which they represent, on\nthe one hand, and with the movements necessary for pronouncing them, on\nthe other. In a large majority of Dr. Starr's fifty cases, the power\neither to name objects or to talk coherently was impaired. This shows\nthat in most of us (as Wernicke said) speech must go on from auditory\ncues; that is, it must be that our ideas do not innervate our motor\ncentres directly, but only after first arousing the mental sound of\nthe words. This is the immediate stimulus to articulation; and where\nthe possibility of this is abolished by the destruction of its usual\nchannel in the left temporal lobe, the articulation must suffer. In\nthe few cases in which the channel is abolished with no bad effect on\nspeech we must suppose an idiosyncrasy. The patient must innervate\nhis speech-organs either from the corresponding portion of the other\nhemisphere or directly from the centres of ideation, those, namely,\nof vision, touch, etc., without leaning on the auditory region. It\nis the minuter analysis of the facts in the light of such individual\ndifferences as these which constitutes Charcot's contribution towards\nclearing up the subject.\n\nEvery nameable thing, act, or relation has numerous properties,\nqualities, or aspects. In our minds the properties of each thing,\ntogether with its name, form an associated group. If different parts\nof the brain are severally concerned with the several properties, and\na farther part with the hearing, and still another with the uttering,\nof the name, there must inevitably be brought about (through the law\nof association which we shall later study) such a dynamic connection\namongst all these brain-parts that the activity of any one of them will\nbe likely to awaken the activity of all the rest. When we are talking\nas we think, the _ultimate_ process is that of utterance. If the\nbrain-part for _that_ be injured, speech is impossible or disorderly,\neven though all the other brain-parts be intact: and this is just the\ncondition of things which, on page 37, we found to be brought about\nby limited lesion of the left inferior frontal convolution. But back\nof that last act various orders of succession are possible in the\nassociations of a talking man's ideas. The more usual order seems\nto be from the tactile, visual, or other properties of the things\nthought-about to the sound of their names, and then to the latter's\nutterance. But if in a certain individual the thought of the _look_ of\nan object or of the _look_ of its printed name be the process which\nhabitually precedes articulation, then the loss of the _hearing_ centre\nwill _pro tanto_ not affect that individual's speech. He will be\nmentally deaf, i.e. his _understanding_ of speech will suffer, but he\nwill not be aphasic. In this way it is possible to explain the seven\ncases of _pure_ word-deafness which figure in Dr. Starr's table.\n\nIf this order of association be ingrained and habitual in that\nindividual, injury to his _visual_ centres will make him not only\nword-blind, but aphasic as well. His speech will become confused in\nconsequence of an occipital lesion. Naunyn, consequently, plotting\nout on a diagram of the hemisphere the 71 irreproachably reported\ncases of aphasia which he was able to collect, finds that the lesions\nconcentrate themselves in three places: first, on Broca's centre;\nsecond, on Wernicke's; third, on the supra-marginal and angular gyri\nunder which those fibres pass which connect the visual centres with\nthe rest of the brain[40] (see Fig. 17). With this result Dr. Starr's\nanalysis of purely sensory cases agrees.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 17.]\n\nIn a later chapter we shall again return to these differences in\nthe effectiveness of the sensory spheres in different individuals.\nMeanwhile few things show more beautifully than the history of our\nknowledge of aphasia how the sagacity and patience of many banded\nworkers are in time certain to analyze the darkest confusion into an\norderly display.[41] There is no 'centre of Speech' in the brain any\nmore than there is a faculty of Speech in the mind. The entire brain,\nmore or less, is at work in a man who uses language. The subjoined\ndiagram, from Boss, shows the four parts most critically concerned,\nand, in the light of our text, needs no farther explanation (see Fig.\n18).\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 18.]\n\n\n_Smell._\n\nEverything conspires to point to the median descending part of the\ntemporal lobes as being the organs of smell. Even Ferrier and Munk\nagree on the hippocampal gyrus, though Ferrier restricts olfaction, as\nMunk does not, to the lobule or uncinate process of the convolution,\nreserving the rest of it for touch. Anatomy and pathology also point to\nthe hippocampal gyrus; but as the matter is less interesting from the\npoint of view of human psychology than were sight and hearing, I will\nsay no more, but simply add Luciani and Seppili's diagram of the dog's\nsmell-centre.[42] Of\n\n\n_Taste_\n\nwe know little that is definite. What little there is points to the\nlower temporal regions again. Consult Ferrier as below.\n\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 19.--Luciani's Olfactory Region in the Dog.]\n\n\n_Touch._\n\nInteresting problems arise with regard to the seat of tactile and\nmuscular sensibility. Hitzig, whose experiments on _dogs' brains_\nfifteen years ago opened the entire subject which we are discussing,\nascribed the disorders of motility observed after ablations of the\nmotor region to a loss of what he called muscular consciousness.\nThe animals do not notice eccentric positions of their limbs, will\nstand with their legs crossed, with the affected paw resting on its\nback or hanging over a table's edge, etc.; and do not resist our\nbending and stretching of it as they resist with the unaffected paw.\nGoltz, Munk, Schiff, Herzen, and others promptly ascertained an equal\ndefect of cutaneous sensibility to pain, touch, and cold. The paw\nis not withdrawn when pinched, remains standing in cold water, etc.\nFerrier meanwhile denied that there was any true an\u00e6sthesia produced\nby ablations in the motor zone, and explains the appearance of it as\nan effect of the sluggish motor responses of the affected side.[43]\nMunk[44] and Schiff[45], on the contrary, conceive of the 'motor\nzone' as essentially sensory, and in different ways explain the motor\ndisorders as secondary results of the an\u00e6sthesia which is always there,\nMunk calls the motor zone the F\u00fchlsph\u00e4re of the animal's limbs, etc.,\nand makes it co\u00f6rdinate with the Sehsph\u00e4re, the H\u00f6rsph\u00e4re, etc., the\nentire cortex being, according to him, nothing but a projection-surface\nfor sensations, with no exclusively or essentially motor part. Such a\nview would be important if true, through its bearings on the psychology\nof volition. What is the truth? As regards the fact of cutaneous\nan\u00e6sthesia from motor-zone ablations, all other observers are against\nFerrier, so that he is probably wrong in denying it. On the other hand,\nMunk and Schiff are wrong in making the motor symptoms _depend_ on\nthe an\u00e6sthesia, for in certain rare cases they have been observed to\nexist not only without insensibility, but with actual hyper\u00e6sthesia of\nthe parts.[46] The motor and sensory symptoms seem, therefore, to be\nindependent variables.\n\n_In monkeys_ the latest experiments are those of Horsley and\nSchaefer,[47] whose results Ferrier accepts. They find that excision\nof the hippocampal convolution produces transient insensibility of\nthe opposite side of the body, and that permanent insensibility is\nproduced by destruction of its continuation upwards above the corpus\ncallosum, the so-called _gyrus fornicatus_ (the part just below\nthe 'calloso-marginal fissure' in Fig. 7). The insensibility is at\nits maximum when the entire tract comprising both convolutions is\ndestroyed. Ferrier says that the sensibility of monkeys is 'entirely\nunaffected' by ablations of the motor zone,[48] and Horsley and\nSchaefer consider it by no means necessarily abolished.[49] Luciani\nfound it diminished in his three experiments on apes.[50]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 20.--Luciani's Tactile Region in the Dog.]\n\n_In man_ we have the fact that one-sided paralysis from disease of the\nopposite motor zone may or may not be accompanied with an\u00e6sthesia of\nthe parts. Luciani, who believes that the motor zone is also sensory,\ntries to minimize the value of this evidence by pointing to the\ninsufficiency with which patients are examined. He himself believes\nthat in dogs the tactile sphere extends backwards and forwards of the\ndirectly excitable region, into the frontal and parietal lobes (see\nFig. 20). Nothnagel considers that pathological evidence points in the\nsame direction;[51] and Dr. Mills, carefully reviewing the evidence,\nadds the gyri fornicatus and hippocampi to the cutaneo-muscular\nregion in man.[52] If one compare Luciani's diagrams together (Figs.\n14, 16, 19, 20) one will see that the entire parietal region of the\ndog's skull is common to the four senses of sight, hearing, smell,\nand touch, including muscular feeling. The corresponding region in\nthe human brain (upper parietal and supra-marginal gyri--see Fig. 17)\nseems to be a somewhat similar place of conflux. Optical aphasias and\nmotor and tactile disturbances all result from its injury, especially\nwhen that is on the left side.[53] The lower we go in the animal scale\nthe less differentiated the functions of the several brain-parts seem\nto be.[54] It may be that the region in question still represents\nin ourselves something like this primitive condition, and that the\nsurrounding parts, in adapting themselves more and more to specialized\nand narrow functions, have left it as a sort of _carrefour_ through\nwhich they send currents and converse. That it should be connected\nwith musculo-cutaneous feeling is, however, no reason why the motor\nzone proper should not be so connected too. And the cases of paralysis\nfrom the motor zone with no accompanying an\u00e6sthesia may be explicable\nwithout denying all sensory function to that region. For, as my\ncolleague Dr. James Putnam informs me, sensibility is always harder to\nkill than motility, even where we know for a certainty that the lesion\naffects tracts that are both sensory and motor. Persons whose hand is\nparalyzed in its movements from compression of arm-nerves during sleep,\nstill feel with their fingers; and they may still feel in their feet\nwhen their legs are paralyzed by bruising of the spinal cord. In a\nsimilar way, the motor cortex might be sensitive as well as motor, and\nyet by this greater subtlety (or whatever the peculiarity may be) in\nthe sensory currents, the sensibility might survive an amount of injury\nthere by which the motility was destroyed. Nothnagel considers that\nthere are grounds for supposing the _muscular_ sense to be exclusively\nconnected with the parietal lobe and not with the motor zone. \"Disease\nof this lobe gives pure ataxy without palsy, and of the motor zone\npure palsy without loss of muscular sense.\"[55] He fails, however,\nto convince more competent critics than the present writer,[56] so I\nconclude with them that as yet we have no decisive grounds for locating\nmuscular and cutaneous feeling apart. Much still remains to be learned\nabout the relations between musculo-cutaneous sensibility and the\ncortex, but one thing is certain: that neither the occipital, the\nforward frontal, nor the temporal lobes seem to have anything essential\nto do with it in man. It is knit up with the performances of the\n_motor zone and of the convolutions backwards and midwards of them_.\nThe reader must remember this conclusion when we come to the chapter on\nthe Will.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI must add a word about the connection of aphasia with the tactile\nsense. On p. 40 I spoke of those cases in which the patient can write\nbut not read his own writing. He cannot read by his eyes; but he can\nread by the feeling in his fingers, if he retrace the letters in the\nair. It is convenient for such a patient to have a pen in hand whilst\nreading in this way, in order to make the usual feeling of writing more\ncomplete.[57] In such a case we must suppose that the path between the\noptical and the graphic centres remains open, whilst that between the\noptical and the auditory and articulatory centres is closed. Only thus\ncan we understand how the look of the writing should fail to suggest\nthe sound of the words to the patient's mind, whilst it still suggests\nthe proper movements of graphic imitation. These movements in their\nturn must of course be felt, and the feeling of them must be associated\nwith the centres for hearing and pronouncing the words. The injury in\ncases like this where very special combinations fail, whilst others go\non as usual, must always be supposed to be of the nature of increased\nresistance to the passage of certain currents of association. If any of\nthe _elements_ of mental function were destroyed the incapacity would\nnecessarily be much more formidable. A patient who can both read and\nwrite with his fingers most likely uses an identical 'graphic' centre,\nat once sensory and motor, for both operations.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI have now given, as far as the nature of this book will allow, a\ncomplete account of the present state of the localization-question.\nIn its main outlines it stands firm, though much has still to be\ndiscovered. The anterior frontal lobes, for example, so far as is yet\nknown, have no definite functions. Goltz finds that dogs bereft of them\nboth are incessantly in motion, and excitable by every small stimulus.\nThey are irascible and amative in an extraordinary degree, and their\nsides grow bare with perpetual reflex scratching; but they show no\n_local_ troubles of either motion or sensibility. In monkeys not even\nthis lack of inhibitory ability is shown, and neither stimulation nor\nexcision of the prefrontal lobes produces any symptoms whatever. One\nmonkey of Horsley and Schaefer's was as tame, and did certain tricks as\nwell, after as before the operation.[58] It is probable that we have\nabout reached the limits of what can be learned about brain-functions\nfrom vivisecting inferior animals, and that we must hereafter look more\nexclusively to human pathology for light. The existence of separate\nspeech and writing centres in the left hemisphere in man; the fact\nthat palsy from cortical injury is so much more complete and enduring\nin man and the monkey than in dogs; and the farther fact that it seems\nmore difficult to get complete sensorial blindness from cortical\nablations in the lower animals than in man, all show that functions get\nmore specially localized as evolution goes on. In birds localization\nseems hardly to exist, and in rodents it is much less conspicuous than\nin carnivora. Even for man, however, Munk's way of mapping out the\ncortex into absolute areas within which only one movement or sensation\nis represented is surely false. The truth seems to be rather that,\nalthough there is a correspondence of certain regions of the brain to\ncertain regions of the body, yet the several _parts_ within each bodily\nregion are represented throughout the _whole_ of the corresponding\nbrain-region like pepper and salt sprinkled from the same caster. This,\nhowever, does not prevent each 'part' from having its _focus_ at one\nspot within the brain-region. The various brain-regions merge into each\nother in the same mixed way. As Mr. Horsley says: \"There are border\ncentres, and the area of representation of the face merges into that\nfor the representation of the upper limb. If there was a focal lesion\nat that point, you would have the movements of these two parts starting\ntogether.\"[59] The accompanying figure from Paneth shows just how the\nmatter stands in the dog.[60]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 21.--Dog's motor centres, right hemisphere,\naccording to Paneth.--The points of the motor region are correlated as\nfollows with muscles: the _loops_ with the _orbicularis palpebrarum_;\nthe _plain crosses_ with the _flexor_, the _crosses inscribed in\ncircles_ with the _extensor, digitorum communis_ of the fore-paw;\nthe _plain circles_ with the _abductor pollicis longus_; the _double\ncrosses_ with the _extensor communis_ of the hind-limb.]\n\nI am speaking now of localizations breadthwise over the brain-surface.\nIt is conceivable that there might be also localizations depthwise\nthrough the cortex. The more superficial cells are smaller, the deepest\nlayer of them is large; and it has been suggested that the superficial\ncells are sensorial, the deeper ones motor;[61] or that the superficial\nones in the motor region are correlated with the extremities of the\norgans to be moved (fingers, etc.), the deeper ones with the more\ncentral segments (wrist, elbow, etc.).[62] It need hardly be said that\nall such theories are as yet but guesses.\n\nWe thus see that the postulate of Meynert and Jackson which we started\nwith on p. 30 is on the whole most satisfactorily corroborated by\nsubsequent objective research. _The highest centres do probably\ncontain nothing but arrangements for representing impressions and\nmovements, and other arrangements for coupling the activity Of these\narrangements together._[63] Currents pouring in from the sense-organs\nfirst excite some arrangements, which in turn excite others, until\nat last a motor discharge downwards of some sort occurs. When this is\nonce clearly grasped there remains little ground for keeping up that\nold controversy about the motor zone, as to whether it is in reality\nmotor or sensitive. The whole cortex, inasmuch as currents run through\nit, is both. All the currents probably have feelings going with them,\nand sooner or later bring movements about. In one aspect, then,\nevery centre is afferent, in another efferent, even the motor cells\nof the spinal cord having these two aspects inseparably conjoined.\nMarique,[64] and Exner and Paneth[65] have shown that by cutting\n_round_ a 'motor' centre and so separating it from the influence of\nthe rest of the cortex, the same disorders are produced as by cutting\nit out, so that really it is only the mouth of the funnel, as it were,\nthrough which the stream of innervation, starting from elsewhere,\npours;[66] consciousness accompanying the stream, and being mainly of\nthings seen if the stream is strongest occipitally, of things heard\nif it is strongest temporally, of things felt, etc., if the stream\noccupies most intensely the 'motor zone.' It seems to me that some\nbroad and vague formulation like this is as much as we can safely\nventure on in the present state of science; and in subsequent chapters\nI expect to give confirmatory reasons for my view.\n\n\nMAN'S CONSCIOUSNESS LIMITED TO THE HEMISPHERES.\n\n\n_But is the consciousness which accompanies the activity of the cortex\nthe only consciousness that man has?_ or _are his lower centres\nconscious as well?_\n\nThis is a difficult question to decide, how difficult one only learns\nwhen one discovers that the cortex-consciousness itself of certain\nobjects can be seemingly annihilated in any good hypnotic subject by a\nbare wave of his operator's hand, and yet be proved by circumstantial\nevidence to exist all the while in a split-off condition, quite as\n'ejective'[67] to the rest of the subject's mind as that mind is to\nthe mind of the bystanders.[68] The lower centres themselves may\nconceivably all the while have a split-off consciousness of their\nown, similarly ejective to the cortex-consciousness; but whether\nthey have it or not can never be known from merely introspective\nevidence. Meanwhile the fact that occipital destruction in man may\ncause a blindness which is apparently absolute (no feeling remaining\neither of light or dark over one half of the field of view), would\nlead us to suppose that if our lower optical centres, the corpora\nquadrigemina, and thalami, do have any consciousness, it is at all\nevents a consciousness which does not mix with that which accompanies\nthe cortical activities, and which has nothing to do with our personal\nSelf. In lower animals this may not be so much the case. The traces of\nsight found (supra, p. 46) in dogs and monkeys whose occipital lobes\nwere entirely destroyed, may possibly have been due to the fact that\nthe lower centres of these animals saw, and that what they saw was\nnot ejective but objective to the remaining cortex, i.e. it formed\npart of one and the same inner world with the things which that cortex\nperceived. It may be, however, that the phenomena were due to the fact\nthat in these animals the cortical 'centres' for vision reach outside\nof the occipital zone, and that destruction of the latter fails to\nremove them as completely as in man. This, as we know, is the opinion\nof the experimenters themselves. For practical purposes, nevertheless,\nand limiting the meaning of the word consciousness to the personal\nself of the individual, we can pretty confidently answer the question\nprefixed to this paragraph by saying that _the cortex is the sole organ\nof consciousness in man_.[69] If there be any consciousness pertaining\nto the lower centres, it is a consciousness of which the self knows\nnothing.\n\n\nTHE RESTITUTION OF FUNCTION.\n\n\nAnother problem, not so metaphysical, remains. The most general\nand striking fact connected with cortical injury is that of the\n_restoration of function_. Functions lost at first are after a few days\nor weeks restored. _How are we to understand this restitution?_\n\nTwo theories are in the field:\n\n1) Restitution is due to the vicarious action either of the rest of the\ncortex or of centres lower down, acquiring functions which until then\nthey had not performed;\n\n2) It is due to the remaining centres (whether cortical or 'lower')\nresuming functions which they had always had, but of which the wound\nhad temporarily inhibited the exercise. This is the view of which Goltz\nand Brown-S\u00e9quard are the most distinguished defenders.\n\nInhibition is a _vera causa_, of that there can be no doubt. The\npneumogastric nerve inhibits the heart, the splanchnic inhibits the\nintestinal movements, and the superior laryngeal those of inspiration.\nThe nerve-irritations which may inhibit the contraction of arterioles\nare innumerable, and reflex actions are often repressed by the\nsimultaneous excitement of other sensory nerves. For all such facts the\nreader must consult the treatises on physiology. What concerns us here\nis the inhibition exerted by different parts of the nerve-centres, when\nirritated, on the activity of distant parts. The flaccidity of a frog\nfrom 'shock,' for a minute or so after his medulla oblongata is cut, is\nan inhibition from the seat of injury which quickly passes away.\n\nWhat is known as 'surgical shock '(unconsciousness, pallor, dilatation\nof splanchnic blood-vessels, and general syncope and collapse) in\nthe human subject is an inhibition which lasts a longer time. Goltz,\nFreusberg, and others, cutting the spinal cord in dogs, proved that\nthere were functions inhibited still longer by the wound, but which\nre-established themselves ultimately if the animal was kept alive.\nThe lumbar region of the cord was thus found to contain independent\nvaso-motor centres, centres for erection, for control of the\nsphincters, etc., which could be excited to activity by tactile stimuli\nand as readily reinhibited by others simultaneously applied.[70]\nWe may therefore plausibly suppose that the rapid reappearance of\nmotility, vision, etc., after their first disappearance in consequence\nof a cortical mutilation, is due to the passing off of inhibitions\nexerted by the irritated surface of the wound. The only question is\nwhether _all_ restorations of function must be explained in this\none simple way, or whether some part of them may not be owing to\nthe formation of entirely new paths in the remaining centres, by\nwhich they become 'educated' to duties which they did not originally\npossess. In favor of an indefinite extension of the inhibition theory\nfacts may be cited such as the following: In dogs whose disturbances\ndue to cortical lesion have disappeared, they may in consequence of\nsome inner or outer accident reappear in all their intensity for 24\nhours or so and then disappear again.[71] In a dog made half blind\nby an operation, and then shut up in the dark, vision comes back\njust as quickly as in other similar dogs whose sight is exercised\nsystematically every day.[72] A dog which has learned to beg before\nthe operation recommences this practice quite _spontaneously_ a week\nafter a double-sided ablation of the motor zone.[73] Occasionally,\nin a pigeon (or even, it is said, in a dog) we see the disturbances\nless marked immediately after the operation than they are half an hour\nlater.[74] This would be impossible were they due to the subtraction of\nthe organs which normally carried them on. Moreover the entire drift of\nrecent physiological and pathological speculation is towards enthroning\ninhibition as an ever-present and indispensable condition of orderly\nactivity. We shall see how great is its importance, in the chapter on\nthe Will. Mr. Charles Mercier considers that no muscular contraction,\nonce begun, would ever stop without it, short of exhaustion of the\nsystem;[75] and Brown-S\u00e9quard has for years been accumulating examples\nto show how far its influence extends.[76] Under these circumstances it\nseems as if error might more probably lie in curtailing its sphere too\nmuch than in stretching it too far as an explanation of the phenomena\nfollowing cortical lesion.[77]\n\nOn the other hand, if we admit _no_ re-education of centres, we\nnot only fly in the face of an _a priori_ probability, but we find\nourselves compelled by facts to suppose an almost incredible number of\nfunctions natively lodged in the centres below the _thalami_ or even in\nthose below the _corpora quadrigemina_. I will consider the _a priori_\nobjection after first taking a look at the facts which I have in mind.\nThey confront us the moment we ask ourselves just _which are the parts\nwhich perform the functions abolished by an operation after sufficient\ntime has elapsed for restoration to occur?_\n\nThe first observers thought that they must be the _corresponding parts\nof the opposite or intact hemisphere_. But as long ago as 1875 Carville\nand Duret tested this by cutting out the fore-leg-centre on one side,\nin a dog, and then, after waiting till restitution had occurred,\ncutting it out on the opposite side as well. Goltz and others have\ndone the same thing.[78] If the opposite side were really the seat of\nthe restored function, the original palsy should have appeared again\nand been permanent. But it did not appear at all; there appeared only\na palsy of the hitherto unaffected side. The next supposition is that\n_the parts surrounding the cut-out region_ learn vicariously to perform\nits duties. But here, again, experiment seems to upset the hypothesis,\nso far as the motor zone goes at least; for we may wait till motility\nhas returned in the affected limb, and then both irritate the cortex\nsurrounding the wound without exciting the limb to movement, and ablate\nit, without bringing back the vanished palsy.[79] It would accordingly\nseem that _the cerebral centres below the cortex_ must be the seat\nof the regained activities. But Goltz destroyed a dog's entire left\nhemisphere, together with the _corpus striatum_ and the _thalamus_\non that side, and kept him alive until a surprisingly small amount\nof motor and tactile disturbance remained.[80] These centres cannot\nhere have accounted for the restitution. He has even, as it would\nappear,[81] ablated both the hemispheres of a dog, and kept him alive\n51 days, able to walk and stand. The corpora striata and thalami in\nthis dog were also practically gone. In view of such results we seem\ndriven, with M. Fran\u00e7ois-Franck,[82] to fall back on the _ganglia lower\nstill_, or even on the _spinal cord_ as the 'vicarious' organ of which\nwe are in quest. If the abeyance of function between the operation\nand the restoration was due _exclusively_ to inhibition, then we must\nsuppose these lowest centres to be in reality extremely accomplished\norgans. They must always have done what we now find them doing after\nfunction is restored, even when the hemispheres were intact. Of course\nthis is conceivably the case; yet it does not seem very plausible. And\nthe _a priori_ considerations which a moment since I said I should\nurge, make it less plausible still.\n\nFor, in the first place, the brain is essentially a place of currents,\nwhich run in organized paths. Loss of function can only mean one of\ntwo things, either that a current can no longer run in, or that if it\nruns in, it can no longer run out, by its old path. Either of these\ninabilities may come from a local ablation; and 'restitution' can then\nonly mean that, in spite of a temporary block, an inrunning current has\nat last become enabled to flow out by its old path again--e.g., the\nsound of 'give your paw' discharges after some weeks into the same\ncanine muscles into which it used to discharge before the operation. As\nfar as the cortex itself goes, since one of the purposes for which it\nactually exists is the production of new paths,[83] the only question\nbefore us is: Is the formation of _these particular 'vicarious'\npaths_ too much to expect of its plastic powers? It would certainly\nbe too much to expect that a hemisphere should receive currents\nfrom optic fibres whose _arriving-place_ within it is destroyed,\nor that it should discharge into fibres of the pyramidal strand if\ntheir _place of exit_ is broken down. Such lesions as these must be\nirreparable _within that hemisphere_. Yet even then, through the other\nhemisphere, the _corpus callosum_, and the bilateral connections in\nthe spinal cord, one can imagine some road by which the old muscles\nmight eventually be innervated by the same incoming currents which\ninnervated them before the block. And for all minor interruptions,\nnot involving the arriving-place of the 'cortico-petal' or the place\nof exit of the 'cortico-fugal' fibres, roundabout paths of some sort\nthrough the affected hemisphere itself must exist, for every point\nof it is, remotely at least, in potential communication with every\nother point. The normal paths are only paths of least resistance. If\nthey get blocked or cut, paths formerly more resistant become the\nleast resistant paths under the changed conditions. It must never be\nforgotten that a current that runs in has got to run out _somewhere_;\nand if it only once succeeds by accident in striking into its old place\nof exit again, the thrill of satisfaction which the consciousness\nconnected with the whole residual brain then receives will reinforce\nand fix the paths of that moment and make them more likely to be struck\ninto again. The resultant feeling that the old habitual act is at last\nsuccessfully back again, becomes itself a new stimulus which stamps all\nthe existing currents in. It is matter of experience that such feelings\nof successful achievement do tend to fix in our memory whatever\nprocesses have led to them; and we shall have a good deal more to say\nupon the subject when we come to the Chapter on the Will.\n\nMy conclusion then is this: that some of the restitution of function\n(especially where the cortical lesion is not too great) is probably due\nto genuinely vicarious function on the part of the centres that remain;\nwhilst some of it is due to the passing off of inhibitions. In other\nwords, both the vicarious theory and the inhibition theory are true in\ntheir measure. But as for determining that measure, or saying which\ncentres are vicarious, and to what extent they can learn new tricks,\nthat is impossible at present.\n\n\nFINAL CORRECTION OF THE MEYNERT SCHEME.\n\n\nAnd now, after learning all these facts, what are we to think of the\nchild and the candle-flame, and of that scheme which provisionally\nimposed itself on our acceptance after surveying the actions of the\nfrog? (_Cf_. pp. 25-6, _supra_.) It will be remembered that we then\nconsidered the lower centres _en masse_ as machines for responding to\npresent sense-impressions exclusively, and the hemispheres as equally\nexclusive organs of action from inward considerations or ideas; and\nthat, following Meynert, we supposed the hemispheres to have no native\ntendencies to determinate activity, but to be merely superadded organs\nfor breaking up the various reflexes performed by the lower centres,\nand combining their motor and sensory elements in novel ways. It will\nalso be remembered that I prophesied that we should be obliged to\nsoften down the sharpness of this distinction after we had completed\nour survey of the farther facts. The time has now come for that\ncorrection to be made.\n\nWider and completer observations show us both that the lower centres\nare more spontaneous, and that the hemispheres are more automatic,\nthan the Meynert scheme allows. Schrader's observations in Goltz's\nLaboratory on hemisphereless frogs[84] and pigeons[85] give an\nidea quite different from the picture of these creatures which is\nclassically current. Steiner's[86] observations on frogs already\nwent a good way in the same direction, showing, for example, that\nlocomotion is a well-developed function of the medulla oblongata. But\nSchrader, by great care in the operation, and by keeping the frogs\na long time alive, found that at least in some of them the spinal\ncord would produce movements of locomotion when the frog was smartly\nroused by a poke, and that swimming and croaking could sometimes be\nperformed when nothing above the medulla oblongata remained.[87]\nSchrader's hemisphereless frogs moved spontaneously, ate flies, buried\nthemselves in the ground, and in short did many things which before\nhis observations were supposed to be impossible unless the hemispheres\nremained. Steiner[88] and Vulpian have remarked an even greater\nvivacity in fishes deprived of their hemispheres. Vulpian says of his\nbrainless carps[89] that three days after the operation one of them\ndarted at food and at a knot tied on the end of a string, holding\nthe latter so tight between his jaws that his head was drawn out of\nwater. Later, \"they see morsels of white of egg; the moment these\nsink through the water in front of them, they follow and seize them,\nsometimes after they are on the bottom, sometimes before they have\nreached it. In capturing and swallowing this food they execute just the\nsame movements as the intact carps which are in the same aquarium. The\nonly difference is that they seem to see them at less distance, seek\nthem with less impetuosity and less perseverance in all the points of\nthe bottom of the aquarium, but they struggle (so to speak) sometimes\nwith the sound carps to grasp the morsels. It is certain that they do\nnot confound these bits of white of egg with other white bodies, small\npebbles for example, which are at the bottom of the water. The same\ncarp which, three days after operation, seized the knot on a piece of\nstring, no longer snaps at it now, but if one brings it near her, she\ndraws away from it by swimming backwards before it comes into contact\nwith her mouth.\"[90] Already on pp. 9-10, as the reader may remember,\nwe instanced those adaptations of conduct to new conditions, on the\npart of the frog's spinal cord and thalami, which led Pfl\u00fcger and Lewes\non the one hand and Goltz on the other to locate in these organs an\nintelligence akin to that of which the hemispheres are the seat.\n\nWhen it comes to birds deprived of their hemispheres, the evidence\nthat some of their acts have conscious purpose behind them is quite\nas persuasive. In pigeons Schrader found that the state of somnolence\nlasted only three or four days, after which time the birds began\nindefatigably to walk about the room. They climbed out of boxes in\nwhich they were put, jumped over or flew up upon obstacles, and their\nsight was so perfect that neither in walking nor flying did they\never strike any object in the room. They had also definite ends or\npurposes, flying straight for more convenient perching places when\nmade uncomfortable by movements imparted to those on which they stood;\nand of several possible perches they always chose the most convenient.\n\"If we give the dove the choice of a horizontal bar (_Reck_) or an\nequally distant table to fly to, she always gives decided preference to\nthe table. Indeed she chooses the table even if it is several meters\nfarther off than the bar or the chair.\" Placed on the back of a chair,\nshe flies first to the seat and then to the floor, and in general\n\"will forsake a high position, although it give her sufficiently\nfirm support, and in order to reach the ground will make use of the\nenvironing objects as intermediate goals of flight, showing a perfectly\ncorrect judgment of their distance. Although able to fly directly to\nthe ground, she prefers to make the journey in successive stages....\nOnce on the ground, she hardly ever rises spontaneously into the\nair.\"[91]\n\nYoung rabbits deprived of their hemispheres will stand, run, start\nat noises, avoid obstacles in their path, and give responsive cries\nof suffering when hurt. Rats will do the same, and throw themselves\nmoreover into an attitude of defence. Dogs never survive such an\noperation if performed at once. But Goltz's latest dog, mentioned\non p. 70, which is said to have been kept alive for fifty-one days\nafter both hemispheres had been removed by a series of ablations and\nthe corpora striata and thalami had softened away, shows how much the\nmid-brain centres and the cord can do even in the canine species.\nTaken together, the number of reactions shown to exist in the lower\ncentres by these observations make out a pretty good case for the\nMeynert scheme, as applied to these lower animals. That scheme demands\nhemispheres which shall be mere supplements or organs of repetition,\nand in the light of these observations they obviously are so to a great\nextent. But the Meynert scheme also demands that the reactions of the\nlower centres shall all be _native_, and we are not absolutely sure\nthat some of those which we have been considering may not have been\nacquired after the injury; and it furthermore demands that they should\nbe machine-like, whereas the expression of some of them makes us doubt\nwhether they may not be guided by an intelligence of low degree.\n\nEven in the lower animals, then, there is reason to soften down that\nopposition between the hemispheres and the lower centres which the\nscheme demands. The hemispheres may, it is true, only supplement the\nlower centres, but the latter resemble the former in nature and have\nsome small amount at least of 'spontaneity' and choice.\n\nBut when we come to monkeys and man the scheme well-nigh breaks down\naltogether; for we find that the hemispheres do not simply repeat\nvoluntarily actions which the lower centres perform as machines.\nThere are many functions which the lower centres cannot by themselves\nperform at all. When the motor cortex is injured in a man or a monkey\ngenuine paralysis ensues, which in man is incurable, and almost or\nquite equally so in the ape. Dr. Seguin knew a man with hemi-blindness,\nfrom cortical injury, which had persisted unaltered for twenty-three\nyears. 'Traumatic inhibition' cannot possibly account for this. The\nblindness must have been an 'Ausfallserscheinung,' due to the loss\nof vision's essential organ. It would seem, then, that in these\nhigher creatures the lower centres must be less adequate than they\nare farther down in the zoological scale; and that even for certain\nelementary combinations of movement and impression the co-operation\nof the hemispheres is necessary from the start. Even in birds and dogs\nthe power of _eating properly_ is lost when the frontal lobes are cut\noff.[92]\n\nThe plain truth is that neither in man nor beast are the hemispheres\nthe virgin organs which our scheme called them. So far from being\nunorganized at birth, they must have native tendencies to reaction\nof a determinate sort.[93] These are the tendencies which we know as\n_emotions_ and _instincts_, and which we must study with some detail in\nlater chapters of this book. Both instincts and emotions are reactions\nupon special sorts of objects of _perception_; they depend on the\nhemispheres; and they are in the first instance reflex, that is, they\ntake place the first time the exciting object is met, are accompanied\nby no forethought or deliberation, and are irresistible. But they are\nmodifiable to a certain extent by experience, and on later occasions\nof meeting the exciting object, the instincts especially have less of\nthe blind impulsive character which they had at first. All this will be\nexplained at some length in Chapter XXIV. Meanwhile we can say that the\nmultiplicity of emotional and instinctive reactions in man, together\nwith his extensive associative power, permit of extensive recouplings\nof the original sensory and motor partners. The _consequences_ of one\ninstinctive reaction often prove to be the inciters of an opposite\nreaction, and being _suggested_ on later occasions by the original\nobject, may then suppress the first reaction altogether, just as in the\ncase of the child and the flame. For this education the hemispheres do\nnot need to be _tabul\u00e6 ras\u00e6_ at first, as the Meynert scheme would\nhave them; and so far from their being educated by the lower centres\nexclusively, they educate themselves.[94]\n\nWe have already noticed the absence of reactions from fear and hunger\nin the ordinary brainless frog. Schrader gives a striking account of\nthe instinctless condition of his brainless pigeons, active as they\nwere in the way of locomotion and voice. \"The hemisphereless animal\nmoves in a world of bodies which ... are all of equal value for him....\nHe is, to use Goltz's apt expression, _impersonal_.... Every object is\nfor him only a space-occupying mass, he turns out of his path for an\nordinary pigeon no otherwise than for a stone. He may try to climb over\nboth. All authors agree that they never found any difference, whether\nit was an inanimate body, a cat, a dog, or a bird of prey which came\nin their pigeon's way. The creature knows neither friends nor enemies,\nin the thickest company it lives like a hermit. The languishing cooing\nof the male awakens no more impression than the rattling of the peas,\nor the call-whistle which in the days before the injury used to make\nthe birds hasten to be fed. Quite as little as the earlier observers\nhave I seen hemisphereless she-birds answer the courting of the male.\nA hemisphereless male will coo all day long and show distinct signs\nof sexual excitement, but his activity is without any object, it is\nentirely indifferent to him whether the she-bird be there or not. If\none is placed near him, he leaves her unnoticed.... As the male pays\nno attention to the female, so she pays none to her young. The brood\nmay follow the mother ceaselessly calling for food, but they might as\nwell ask it from a stone.... The hemisphereless sphereless pigeon is\nin the highest degree tame, and fears man as little as cat or bird of\nprey.\"[95]\n\nPutting together now all the facts and reflections which we have been\nthrough, it seems to me that _we can no longer hold strictly to the\nMeynert scheme_. If anywhere, it will apply to the lowest animals;\nbut in them especially the lower centres seem to have a degree of\nspontaneity and choice. On the whole, I think that we are driven to\nsubstitute for it some such general conception as the following, which\nallows for zoological differences as we know them, and is vague and\nelastic enough to receive any number of future discoveries of detail.\n\n\nCONCLUSION.\n\n\nAll the centres, in all animals, whilst they are in one aspect\nmechanisms, probably are, or at least once were, organs of\nconsciousness in another, although the consciousness is doubtless\nmuch more developed in the hemispheres than it is anywhere else. The\nconsciousness must everywhere _prefer_ some of the sensations which it\ngets to others; and if it can remember these in their absence, however\ndimly, they must be its _ends_ of desire. If, moreover, it can identify\nin memory any motor discharges which may have led to such ends, and\nassociate the latter with them, then these motor discharges themselves\nmay in turn become desired as _means_. This is the development of\n_will_; and its realization must of course be proportional to the\npossible complication of the consciousness. Even the spinal cord\nmay possibly have some little power of will in this sense, and of\neffort towards modified behavior in consequence of new experiences of\nsensibility.[96]\n\nAll nervous centres have then in the first instance one essential\nfunction, that of 'intelligent' action. They feel, prefer one thing to\nanother, and have 'ends.' Like all other organs, however, they _evolve_\nfrom ancestor to descendant, and their evolution takes two directions,\nthe lower centres passing downwards into more unhesitating automatism,\nand the higher ones upwards into larger intellectuality.[97] Thus it\nmay happen that those functions which can safely grow uniform and fatal\nbecome least accompanied by mind, and that their organ, the spinal\ncord, becomes a more and more soulless machine; whilst on the contrary\nthose functions which it benefits the animal to have adapted to\ndelicate environing variations pass more and more to the hemispheres,\nwhose anatomical structure and attendant consciousness grow more and\nmore elaborate as zoological evolution proceeds. In this way it might\ncome about that in man and the monkeys the basal ganglia should do\nfewer things by themselves than they can do in dogs, fewer in dogs\nthan in rabbits, fewer in rabbits than in hawks,[98] fewer in hawks\nthan in pigeons, fewer in pigeons than in frogs, fewer in frogs than\nin fishes, and that the hemispheres should correspondingly do more.\nThis passage of functions forward to the ever-enlarging hemispheres\nwould be itself one of the evolutive changes, to be explained like\nthe development of the hemispheres themselves, either by fortunate\nvariation or by inherited effects of use. The reflexes, on this view,\nupon which the education of our human hemispheres depends, would not\nbe due to the basal ganglia alone. They would be tendencies in the\nhemispheres themselves, modifiable by education, unlike the reflexes of\nthe medulla oblongata, pons, optic lobes and spinal cord. Such cerebral\nreflexes, if they exist, form a basis quite as good as that which the\nMeynert scheme offers, for the acquisition of memories and associations\nwhich may later result in all sorts of 'changes of partners' in the\npsychic world. The diagram of the baby and the candle (see page 25)\ncan be re-edited, if need be, as an entirely cortical transaction. The\noriginal tendency to touch will be a cortical instinct; the burn will\nleave an image in another part of the cortex, which, being recalled\nby association, will inhibit the touching tendency the next time the\ncandle is perceived, and excite the tendency to withdraw--so that the\nretinal picture will, upon that next time, be coupled with the original\nmotor partner of the pain. We thus get whatever psychological truth\nthe Meynert scheme possesses without entangling ourselves on a dubious\nanatomy and physiology.\n\nSome such shadowy view of the evolution of the centres, of the relation\nof consciousness to them, and of the hemispheres to the other lobes,\nis, it seems to me, that in which it is safest to indulge. If it has no\nother advantage, it at any rate makes us realize how enormous are the\ngaps in our knowledge, the moment we try to cover the facts by any one\nformula of a general kind.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[4] It should be said that this particular cut commonly proves fatal.\nThe text refers to the rare cases which survive.\n\n[5] I confine myself to the frog for simplicity's sake. In higher\nanimals, especially the ape and man, it would seem as if not only\ndeterminate combinations of muscles, but limited groups or even single\nmuscles could be innervated from the hemispheres.\n\n[6] I hope that the reader will take no umbrage at my so mixing the\nphysical and mental, and talking of reflex acts and hemispheres\nand reminiscences in the same breath, as if they were homogeneous\nquantities and factors of one causal chain. I have done so\ndeliberately; for although I admit that from the radically physical\npoint of view it is easy to conceive of the chain of events amongst\nthe cells and fibres as complete in itself, and that whilst so\nconceiving it one need make no mention of 'ideas,' I yet suspect that\npoint of view of being an unreal abstraction. Reflexes in centres may\ntake place even where accompanying feelings or ideas guide them. In\nanother chapter I shall try to show reasons for not abandoning this\ncommon-sense position; meanwhile language lends itself so much more\neasily to the mixed way of describing, that I will continue to employ\nthe latter. The more radical-minded reader can always read 'ideational\nprocess' for 'idea.'\n\n[7] I shall call it hereafter for shortness 'the Meynert scheme;' for\nthe child-and-flame example, as well as the whole general notion that\nthe hemispheres are a supernumerary surface for the projection and\nassociation of sensations and movements natively coupled in the centres\nbelow, is due to Th. Meynert, the Austrian anatomist. For a popular\naccount of his views, see his pamphlet 'Zur Mechanik des Gehirnbaues,'\nVienna, 1874. His most recent development of them is embodied in\nhis 'Psychiatry,' a clinical treatise on diseases of the forebrain,\ntranslated by B. Sachs, New York, 1885.\n\n[8] Geschichte des Materialismus, 2d ed., ii, p. 345.\n\n[9] West Riding Asylum Reports, 1876, p. 267.\n\n[10] For a thorough discussion of the various objections, see Ferrier's\n'Functions of the Brain,' 2d ed., pp. 227-234, and Fran\u00e7ois-Franck's\n'Le\u00e7ons sur les Fonctions Motrices du Cerveau' (1887), Le\u00e7on 31. The\nmost minutely accurate experiments on irritation of cortical points are\nthose of Paneth, in Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, vol 37, p. 528.--Recently the\nskull has been fearlessly opened by surgeons, and operations upon the\nhuman brain performed, sometimes with the happiest results. In some\nof these operations the cortex has been electrically excited for the\npurpose of more exactly localizing the spot, and the movements first\nobserved in dogs and monkeys have then been verified in men.\n\n[11] J. Loeb: Beitr\u00e4ge zur Physiologie des Grosshirns; Pfl\u00fcger's\nArchiv, xxxix, 293. I simplify the author's statement.\n\n[12] Goltz: Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, xlii, 419.\n\n[13] 'Hemiplegia' means one-sided palsy.\n\n[14] Philosophical Transactions, vol. 179, pp. 6, 10 (1888). In a\nlater paper (_ibid._ p. 205) Messrs. Beevor and Horsley go into the\nlocalization still more minutely, showing spots from which single\nmuscles or single digits can be made to contract.\n\n[15] Nothnagel und Naunyn; Die Localization in den Gehirnkrankheiten\n(Wiesbaden, 1887), p. 34.\n\n[16] An accessible account of the history of our knowledge of motor\naphasia is in W. A. Hammond's 'Treatise on the Diseases of the Nervous\nSystem,' chapter vii.\n\n[17] The history up to 1885 may be found in A. Christiani: Zur\nPhysiologie des Gehirnes (Berlin, 1885).\n\n[18] Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, vol. 44, p. 176. Munk (Berlin Academy\nSitzsungberichte, 1889, xxxi) returns to the charge, denying the\nextirpations of Schrader to be complete: \"Microscopic portions of the\n_Sehsph\u00e4re_ must remain.\"\n\n[19] A. Christiani; Zur Physiol. d. Gehirnes (Berlin, 1885), chaps. ii,\niii, iv, H. Munk: Berlin Akad. Stzgsb. 1884, xxiv.\n\n[20] Luciani und Seppili: Die Functions-Localization auf der\nGrosshirnrinde (Deutsch von Fraenkel), Leipzig, 1886, Dogs M, N, and\nS. Goltz in Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, vol. 34, pp. 490-6; vol. 42, p. 454. Cf.\nalso Munk: Berlin Akad. Stzgsb. 1886, vii, viii, pp. 113-121, and Loeb:\nPfl\u00fcger's Archiv, vol. 39, p. 337.\n\n[21] Berlin Akad. Sitzungsberichte, 1886, vii, viii, p. 124.\n\n[22] H. Munk: Functionen der Grosshirnrinde (Berlin, 1881), pp. 36-40.\nFerrier: Functions, etc., 2d ed., chap, ix, pt. i. Brown and Schaefer,\nPhilos. Transactions, vol. 179, p. 321. Luciani u. Seppili, op. cit.\npp. 131-138. Lannegrace found traces of sight with both occipital lobes\ndestroyed, and in one monkey even when angular gyri and occipital lobes\nwere destroyed altogether. His paper is in the Archives de M\u00e9decine\nExp\u00e9rimentale for January and March, 1889. I only know it from the\nabstract in the Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1889, pp. 108-420. The\nreporter doubts the evidence of vision in the monkey. It appears to\nhave consisted in avoiding obstacles and in emotional disturbance in\nthe presence of men.\n\n[23] Localization of Cerebral Disease (1878), pp. 117-8.\n\n[24] For cases see Flechsig: Die Leitungsbahnen in Gehirn u. R\u00fcckenmark\n(Leipzig, 1876), pp. 112, 272; Exner's Untersuchungen, etc., p. 83;\nFerrier's Localization, etc., p. 11; Fran\u00e7ois-Franck's Cerveau Moteur,\np. 63, note.\n\n[25] E. C. Seguin: Hemianopsia of Cerebral Origin, in Journal of\nNervous and Mental Disease, vol. xiii, p. 30. Nothnagel und Naunyn:\nUeber die Localization der Gehirnkrankheiten (Wiesbaden, 1887), p. 16.\n\n[26] Die Seelenblindheit, etc., p. 51 ff. The mental blindness was in\nthis woman's case moderate in degree.\n\n[27] Archiv f. Psychiatrie, vol. 21, p. 222.\n\n[28] Nothnagel (_loc. cit._ p. 22) says: \"_Dies trifft aber nicht zu_.\"\nHe gives, however, no case in support of his opinion that double-sided\ncortical lesion may make one stone-blind and yet not destroy one's\nvisual images; so that I do not know whether it is an observation of\nfact or an _a priori_ assumption.\n\n[29] In a case published by C. S. Freund: Archiv f. Psychiatrie,\nvol. xx, the occipital lobes were injured, but their cortex was not\ndestroyed, on both sides. There was still vision. Cf. pp. 291-5.\n\n[30] I say 'need,' for I do not of course deny the _possible_\ncoexistence of the two symptoms. Many a brain-lesion might block\noptical associations and at the same time impair optical imagination,\nwithout entirely stopping vision. Such a case seems to have been the\nremarkable one from Charcot which I shall give rather fully in the\nchapter on Imagination.\n\n[31] Freund (in the article cited above 'Ueber optische Aphasie und\nSeelenblindheit') and Bruns ('Ein Fall von Alexie,' etc., in the\nNeurologisches Centralblatt for 1888, pp. 581, 509) explain their\ncases by broken-down conduction. Wilbrand, whose painstaking monograph\non mental blindness was referred to a moment ago, gives none but _a\npriori_ reasons for his belief that the optical 'Erinnerungsfeld' must\nbe locally distinct from the Wahrnehmungsfeld (cf. pp. 84, 93). The _a\npriori_ reasons are really the other way. Mauthner ('Gehirn u. Auge'\n(1881), p. 487 ff.) tries to show that the 'mental blindness' of Munk's\ndogs and apes after occipital mutilation was not such, but real dimness\nof sight. The best case of mental blindness yet reported is that by\nLissauer, as above. The reader will also do well to read Bernard: De\nl'Aphasie (1885) chap. v; Ballet: Le Langage Int\u00e9rieur (1886), chap.\nviii; and Jas. Boss's little book on Aphasia (1887), p. 74.\n\n[32] For a case see Wernicke's Lehrb. d. Gehirnkrankheiten, vol. ii, p.\n554 (1881).\n\n[33] The latest account of them is the paper '\u00dcber die optischen\nCentren u. Bahnen' by von Monakow in the Archiv f\u00fcr Psychiatrie, vol.\nxx, p. 714.\n\n[34] Die Functions-Localization, etc., Dog X; see also p. 161.\n\n[35] Philos. Trans., vol. 179, p. 312.\n\n[36] Brain, vol. xi, p. 10.\n\n[37] _Ibid._ p. 147.\n\n[38] Der aphasische Symptomencomplex (1874). See in Fig. 11 the\nconvolution marked WERNICKE.\n\n[39] 'The Pathology of Sensory Aphasia,' 'Brain,' July, 1889.\n\n[40] Nothnagel und Naunyn; _op. cit._ plates.\n\n[41] Ballet's and Bernard's works cited on p. 51 are the most\naccessible documents of Charcot's school. Bastian's book on the Brain\nas an Organ of Mind (last three chapters) is also good.\n\n[42] For details, see Ferrier's 'Functions,' chap. ix, pt. iii, and\nChas. K. Mills: Transactions of Congress of American Physicians and\nSurgeons, 1888, vol. i, p. 278.\n\n[43] Functions of the Brain, chap. x, \u00a7 14.\n\n[44] Ueber die Functionen d. Grosshirnrinde (1881), p. 50.\n\n[45] Lezioni di Fisiologia sperimentale sul sistema nervoso encefalico\n(l. 73), p. 527 ff. Also 'Brain,' vol. ix, p. 298.\n\n[46] Bechterew (Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, vol. 35, p. 137) found _no_\nan\u00e6sthesia in a cat with motor symptoms from ablation of sigmoid gyrus.\nLuciani got hyper\u00e6sthesia coexistent with cortical motor defect in a\ndog, by simultaneously hemisecting the spinal cord (Luciani u. Seppili,\n_op. cit._ p. 234). Goltz frequently found hyper\u00e6sthesia of the whole\nbody to accompany motor defect after ablation of both frontal lobes,\nand he once found it after ablating the motor zone (Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv,\nvol. 34, p. 471).\n\n[47] Philos. Transactions, vol. 179, p. 20 ff.\n\n[48] Functions, p. 375.\n\n[49] Pp. 15-17.\n\n[50] Luciani u. Seppili, _op. cit._ pp. 275-288.\n\n[51] _Op. cit._ p. 18.\n\n[52] Trans. of Congress, etc., p. 272.\n\n[53] See Exner's Unters. \u00fcb. Localization, plate xxv.\n\n[54] Cf. Ferrier's Functions, etc., chap. iv, and chap. x, \u00a7\u00a7 6 to 9.\n\n[55] _Op. cit._ p. 17.\n\n[56] E.g. Starr, _loc. cit._ p. 272; Leyden, Beitr\u00e4ge zur Lehre v. d.\nLocalization im Gehirn (1888), p. 72.\n\n[57] Bernard, _op. cit._ p. 84.\n\n[58] Philos. Trans., vol. 179, p. 3.\n\n[59] Trans. of Congress of Am. Phys. and Surg. 1888, vol. i, p. 343.\nBeevor and Horsley's paper on electric stimulation of the monkey's\nbrain is the most beautiful work yet done for precision. See Phil.\nTrans., vol. 179, p. 205, especially the plates.\n\n[60] Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, vol. 37, p. 523 (1885).\n\n[61] By Luys in his generally preposterous book 'The Brain'; also by\nHorsley.\n\n[62] C. Mercier: The Nervous System and the Mind, p. 124.\n\n[63] The frontal lobes as yet remain a puzzle. Wundt tries to explain\nthem as an organ of 'apperception' (Grundz\u00fcge d. Physiologischen\nPsychologie, 3d ed., vol. i, p. 233 ff.), but I confess myself unable\nto apprehend clearly the Wundtian philosophy so far as this word\nenters into it, so must be contented with this bare reference.--Until\nquite recently it was common to talk of an 'ideational centre' as of\nsomething distinct from the aggregate of other centres. Fortunately\nthis custom is already on the wane.\n\n[64] Rech. Exp. sur le Fonctionnement des Centres Psycho-moteurs\n(Brussels, 1885).\n\n[65] Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, vol. 44, p. 544.\n\n[66] I ought to add, however, that Fran\u00e7ois-Franck (Fonctions Motrices,\np. 370) got, in two dogs and a cat, a different result from this sort\nof 'circumvallation.'\n\n[67] For this word, see T. K. Clifford's Lectures and Essays (1879),\nvol. ii, p. 72.\n\n[68] See below, Chapter VIII.\n\n[69] Cf. Ferrier's Functions, pp. 120, 147, 414. See also Vulpian:\nLe\u00e7ons sur la Physiol. du Syst. Nerveux, p. 548; Luciani u. Seppili,\n_op. cit._ pp. 404-5; H. Maudsley: Physiology of Mind (1876), pp. 138\nff., 197 ff., and 241 ff. In G. H. Lewes's Physical Basis of Mind,\nProblem IV: 'The Reflex Theory,' a very full history of the question is\ngiven.\n\n[70] Goltz: Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, vol. 8, p. 460; Freusberg: _ibid._ vol.\n10, p. 174.\n\n[71] Goltz: Verrichtungen des Grosshirns, p. 78.\n\n[72] Loeb: Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, vol. 89, p. 276.\n\n[73] _Ibid._ p. 289.\n\n[74] Schrader: _ibid._ vol. 44, p. 218.\n\n[75] The Nervous System and the Mind (1888), chaps. iii, vi; also in\nBrain, vol. xi, p. 361.\n\n[76] Brown-S\u00e9quard has given a resume of his opinions in the Archives\nde Physiologie for Oct. 1889, 5me. S\u00e9rie, vol. i, p 751.\n\n[77] Goltz first applied the inhibition theory to the brain in his\n'Verrichtungen des Grosshirns,' p. 39 ff. On the general philosophy\nof Inhibition the reader may consult Brunton's 'Pharmakology and\nTherapeutics,' p. 154 ff., and also 'Nature,' vol. 27, p. 419 ff.\n\n[78] E.g. Herzen, Herman u. Schwalbe's Jahres-bericht for 1886,\nPhysiol. Abth. p. 38. (Experiments on new-born puppies.)\n\n[79] Fran\u00e7ois-Franck: _op. cit._ p. 382. Results are somewhat\ncontradictory.\n\n[80] Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, vol. 42, p. 419.\n\n[81] Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1889, p. 372.\n\n[82] _Op. cit._ p. 387. See pp. 378 to 388 for a discussion of the\nwhole question. Compare also Wundt's Physiol. Psych., 3d ed., i, 225\nff., and Luciani u. Seppili, pp. 243, 293.\n\n[83] The Chapters on Habit, Association, Memory, and Perception will\nchange our present preliminary conjecture that that is one of its\nessential uses, into an unshakable conviction.\n\n[84] Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, vol. 41, p. 75 (1887).\n\n[85] _Ibid._ vol. 44, p. 175 (1889).\n\n[86] Untersuchungen \u00fcber die Physiologie des Froschhirns. 1885.\n\n[87] _Loc. cit._ pp. 80, 82-3. Schrader also found a _biting-reflex_\ndeveloped when the medulla oblongata is cut through just behind the\ncerebellum.\n\n[88] Berlin Akad. Sitzungsberichte for 1886.\n\n[89] Comptes Rendus, vol. 102, p. 90.\n\n[90] Comptes Rendus de l'Acad. d. Sciences, vol. 102, p. 1530.\n\n[91] _Loc. cit._ p. 210.\n\n[92] Goltz: Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, vol. 42, p. 447; Schrader: _ibid._ vol.\n44, p. 219 ff. It is possible that this symptom may be an effect of\ntraumatic inhibition, however.\n\n[93] A few years ago one of the strongest arguments for the theory that\nthe hemispheres are purely supernumerary was Soltmann's often-quoted\nobservation that in new-born puppies the motor zone of the cortex is\nnot excitable by electricity and only becomes so in the course of a\nfortnight, presumably after the experiences of the lower centres have\neducated it to motor duties. Paneth's later observations, however, seem\nto show that Soltmann may have been misled through overnarcotizing his\nvictims (Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, vol. 37, p. 202). In the Neurologisches\nCentralblatt for 1889, p. 513, Bechterew returns to the subject on\nSoltmann's side without, however, noticing Paneth's work.\n\n[94] M\u00fcnsterberg (Die Willenshandlung, 1888, p. 134) challenges\nMeynert's scheme _in toto_, saying that whilst we have in our personal\nexperience plenty of examples of acts which were at first voluntary\nbecoming secondarily automatic and reflex, we have no conscious\nrecord of a single originally reflex act growing voluntary.--As far\nas conscious record is concerned, we could not possibly have it even\nif the Meynert scheme were wholly true, for the education of the\nhemispheres which that scheme postulates must in the nature of things\nantedate recollection. But it seems to me that M\u00fcnsterberg's rejection\nof the scheme may possibly be correct as regards reflexes from the\n_lower centres_. Everywhere in this department of psychogenesis we are\nmade to feel how ignorant we really are.\n\n[95] Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, vol. 44, p. 230-1.\n\n[96] Naturally, as Schiff long ago pointed out (Lehrb. d. Muskel-u.\nNervenphysiologie, 1859, p. 213 ff.), the 'R\u00fcckenmarksseele,' if it\nnow exist, can have no higher sense-consciousness, for its incoming\ncurrents are solely from the skin. But it may, in its dim way, both\nfeel, prefer, and desire. See, for the view favorable to the text:\nG. H. Lewes, The Physiology of Common Life (1860), chap. ix. Goltz\n(Nervencentren des Frosches 1869, pp. 102-130) thinks that the frog's\ncord has no adaptative power. This may be the case in such experiments\nas his, because the beheaded frog's short span of life does not give\nit time to learn the new tricks asked for. But Rosenthal (Biologisches\nCentralblatt, vol. iv, p. 247) and Mendelssohn (Berlin Akad.\nSitzungsberichte, 1885, p. 107) in their investigations on the simple\nreflexes of the frog's cord, show that there is some adaptation to new\nconditions, inasmuch as when usual paths of conduction are interrupted\nby a cut, new paths are taken. According to Rosenthal, these grow more\npervious (i.e. require a smaller stimulus) in proportion as they are\nmore often traversed.\n\n[97] Whether this evolution takes place through the inheritance of\nhabits acquired, or through the preservation of lucky variations, is an\nalternative which we need not discuss here. We shall consider it in the\nlast chapter in the book. For our present purpose the _modus operandi_\nof the evolution makes no difference, provided it be admitted to occur.\n\n[98] See Schrader's Observations, _loc. cit._\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nON SOME GENERAL CONDITIONS OF BRAIN-ACTIVITY.\n\n\nThe elementary properties of nerve-tissue on which the brain-functions\ndepend are far from being satisfactorily made out. The scheme that\nsuggests itself in the first instance to the mind, because it is so\nobvious, is certainly false: I mean the notion that each cell stands\nfor an idea or part of an idea, and that the ideas are associated or\n'bound into bundles' (to use a phrase of Locke's) by the fibres. If we\nmake a symbolic diagram on a blackboard, of the laws of association\nbetween ideas, we are inevitably led to draw circles, or closed figures\nof some kind, and to connect them by lines. When we hear that the\nnerve-centres contain cells which send off fibres, we say that Nature\nhas realized our diagram for us, and that the mechanical substratum\nof thought is plain. In _some_ way, it is true, our diagram must be\nrealized in the brain; but surely in no such visible and palpable way\nas we at first suppose.[99] An enormous number of the cellular bodies\nin the hemispheres are fibreless. Where fibres are sent off they soon\ndivide into untraceable ramifications; and nowhere do we see a simple\ncoarse anatomical connection, like a line on the blackboard, between\ntwo cells. Too much anatomy has been found to order for theoretic\npurposes, even by the anatomists; and the popular-science notions of\ncells and fibres are almost wholly wide of the truth. Let us therefore\nrelegate the subject of the _intimate_ workings of the brain to the\nphysiology of the future, save in respect to a few points of which a\nword must now be said. And first of\n\n\nTHE SUMMATION OF STIMULI\n\n\nin the same nerve-tract. This is a property extremely important for the\nunderstanding of a great many phenomena of the neural, and consequently\nof the mental, life; and it behooves us to gain a clear conception of\nwhat it means before we proceed any farther.\n\nThe law is this, that _a stimulus which would be inadequate by itself\nto excite a nerve-centre to effective discharge may, by acting with\none or more other stimuli (equally ineffectual by themselves alone)\nbring the discharge about_. The natural way to consider this is as a\nsummation of tensions which at last overcome a resistance. The first of\nthem produce a 'latent excitement' or a 'heightened irritability'--the\nphrase is immaterial so far as practical consequences go; the last is\nthe straw which breaks the camel's back. Where the neural process is\none that has consciousness for its accompaniment, the final explosion\nwould in all cases seem to involve a vivid state of feeling of a more\nor less substantive kind. But there is no ground for supposing that\nthe tensions whilst yet submaximal or outwardly ineffective, may not\nalso have a share in determining the total consciousness present in the\nindividual at the time. In later chapters we shall see abundant reason\nto suppose that they do have such a share, and that without their\ncontribution the fringe of relations which is at every moment a vital\ningredient of the mind's object, would not come to consciousness at all.\n\nThe subject belongs too much to physiology for the evidence to be cited\nin detail in these pages. I will throw into a note a few references\nfor such readers as may be interested in following it out,[100] and\nsimply say that the direct electrical irritation of the cortical\ncentres sufficiently proves the point. For it was found by the earliest\nexperimenters here that whereas it takes an exceedingly strong current\nto produce any movement when a single induction-shock is used, a rapid\nsuccession of induction-shocks ('faradization') will produce movements\nwhen the current is comparatively weak. A single quotation from an\nexcellent investigation will exhibit this law under further aspects:\n\n \"If we continue to stimulate the cortex at short intervals with the\n strength of current which produces the minimal muscular contraction\n [of the dog's digital extensor muscle], the amount of contraction\n gradually increases till it reaches the maximum. Each earlier\n stimulation leaves thus an effect behind it, which increases the\n efficacy of the following one. In this summation of the stimuli....\n the following points may be noted: 1) Single stimuli entirely\n inefficacious when alone may become efficacious by sufficiently rapid\n reiteration. If the current used is very much less than that which\n provokes the first beginning of contraction, a very large number of\n successive shocks may be needed before the movement appears--20, 50,\n once 106 shocks were needed. 2) The summation takes place easily in\n proportion to the shortness of the interval between the stimuli. A\n current too weak to give effective summation when its shocks are\n 3 seconds apart will be capable of so doing when the interval is\n shortened to 1 second. 3) Not only electrical irritation leaves a\n modification which goes to swell the following stimulus, but every\n sort of irritant which can produce a contraction does so. If in any\n way a reflex contraction of the muscle experimented on has been\n produced, or if it is contracted spontaneously by the animal (as not\n unfrequently happens 'by sympathy,' during a deep inspiration), it is\n found that an electrical stimulus, until then inoperative, operates\n energetically if immediately applied.\"[101]\n\nFurthermore:\n\n \"In a certain stage of the morphia-narcosis an ineffectively weak\n shock will become powerfully effective, if, immediately before its\n application to the motor centre, the skin of certain parts of\n the body is exposed to gentle tactile stimulation.... If, having\n ascertained the subminimal strength of current and convinced one's\n self repeatedly of its inefficacy, we draw our hand a single time\n lightly over the skin of the paw whose cortical centre is the object\n of stimulation, we find the current at once strongly effective. The\n increase of irritability lasts some seconds before it disappears.\n Sometimes the effect of a single light stroking of the paw is only\n sufficient to make the previously ineffectual current produce a very\n weak contraction. Repeating the tactile stimulation will then, as a\n rule, increase the contraction's extent.\"[102]\n\nWe constantly use the summation of stimuli in our practical appeals.\nIf a car-horse balks, the final way of starting him is by applying\na number of customary incitements at once. If the driver uses reins\nand voice, if one bystander pulls at his head, another lashes his\nhind quarters, and the conductor rings the bell, and the dismounted\npassengers shove the car, all at the same moment, his obstinacy\ngenerally yields, and he goes on his way rejoicing. If we are striving\nto remember a lost name or fact, we think of as many 'cues' as\npossible, so that by their joint action they may recall what no one\nof them can recall alone. The sight of a dead prey will often not\nstimulate a beast to pursuit, but if the sight of movement be added to\nthat of form, pursuit occurs. \"Br\u00fccke noted that his brainless hen,\nwhich made no attempt to peck at the grain under her very eyes, began\npecking if the grain were thrown on the ground with force, so as to\nproduce a rattling sound.\"[103] \"Dr. Allen Thomson hatched out some\nchickens on a carpet, where he kept them for several days. They showed\nno inclination to scrape,... but when Dr. Thomson sprinkled a little\ngravel on the carpet,... the chickens immediately began their scraping\nmovements.\"[104] A strange person, and darkness, are both of them\nstimuli to fear and mistrust in dogs (and for the matter of that, in\nmen). Neither circumstance alone may awaken outward manifestations,\nbut together, i.e. when the strange man is met in the dark, the dog\nwill be excited to violent defiance.[105] Street-hawkers well know the\nefficacy of summation, for they arrange themselves in a line upon the\nsidewalk, and the passer often buys from the last one of them, through\nthe effect of the reiterated solicitation, what he refused to buy from\nthe first in the row. Aphasia shows many examples of summation. A\npatient who cannot name an object simply shown him, will name it if he\ntouches as well as sees it, etc.\n\nInstances of summation might be multiplied indefinitely, but it is\nhardly worth while to forestall subsequent chapters. Those on Instinct,\nthe Stream of Thought, Attention, Discrimination, Association, Memory,\n\u00c6sthetics, and Will, will contain numerous exemplifications of the\nreach of the principle in the purely psychological field.\n\n\nREACTION-TIME.\n\n\nOne of the lines of experimental investigation most diligently followed\nof late years is that of the ascertainment of the _time occupied by\nnervous events_. Helmholtz led off by discovering the rapidity of\nthe current in the sciatic nerve of the frog. But the methods he\nused were soon applied to the sensory nerves and the centres, and\nthe results caused much popular scientific admiration when described\nas measurements of the 'velocity of thought.' The phrase 'quick as\nthought' had from time immemorial signified all that was wonderful and\nelusive of determination in the line of speed; and the way in which\nScience laid her doomful hand upon this mystery reminded people of the\nday when Franklin first '_eripuit c\u0153lo fulmen_,' foreshadowing the\nreign of a newer and colder race of gods. We shall take up the various\noperations measured, each in the chapter to which it more naturally\npertains. I may say, however, immediately, that the phrase 'velocity\nof _thought_' is misleading, for it is by no means clear in any of the\ncases what particular act of thought occurs during the time which is\nmeasured. 'Velocity of nerve-action' is liable to the same criticism,\nfor in most cases we do not know what particular nerve-processes occur.\nWhat the times in question really represent is the total duration of\ncertain _reactions upon stimuli_. Certain of the conditions of the\nreaction are prepared beforehand; they consist in the assumption of\nthose motor and sensory tensions which we name the expectant state.\nJust what happens during the actual time occupied by the reaction (in\nother words, just what is added to the pre-existent tensions to produce\nthe actual discharge) is not made out at present, either from the\nneural or from the mental point of view.\n\nThe method is essentially the same in all these investigations. A\nsignal of some sort is communicated to the subject, and at the same\ninstant records itself on a time-registering apparatus. The subject\nthen makes a muscular movement of some sort, which is the 'reaction,'\nand which also records itself automatically. The time found to have\nelapsed between the two records is the total time of that observation.\nThe time-registering instruments are of various types. One type is\nthat of the revolving drum covered with smoked paper, on which one\nelectric pen traces a line which the signal breaks and the 'reaction'\ndraws again; whilst another electric pen (connected with a pendulum\nor a rod of metal vibrating at a known rate) traces alongside of the\nformer line a 'time-line' of which each undulation or link stands\nfor a certain fraction of a second, and against which the break in\nthe reaction-line can be measured. Compare Fig. 21, where the line is\nbroken by the signal at the first arrow, and continued again by the\nreaction at the second. Ludwig's Kymograph, Marey's Chronograph are\ngood examples of this type of instrument.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 21.]\n\nAnother type of instrument is represented by the stopwatch, of which\nthe most perfect form is Hipp's Chronoscope. The hand on the dial\nmeasures intervals as short as 1/1000 of a second. The signal (by\nan appropriate electric connection) starts it; the reaction stops\nit; and by reading off its initial and terminal positions we have\nimmediately and with no farther trouble the time we seek. A still\nsimpler instrument, though one not very satisfactory in its working,\nis the 'psychodometer' of Exner & Obersteiner, of which I picture a\nmodification devised by my colleague Professor H. P. Bowditch, which\nworks very well.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 22.--Bowditch's Reaction-timer. _F_, tuning-fork\ncarrying a little plate which holds the paper on which the electric pen\n_M_ makes the tracing, and sliding in grooves on the base-board. _P_,\na plug which spreads the prongs of the fork apart when it is pushed\nforward to its extreme limit, and releases them when it is drawn back\nto a certain point. The fork then vibrates, and, its backward movement\ncontinuing, an undulating line is drawn on the smoked paper by the\npen. At _T_ is a tongue fixed to the carriage of the fork, and at _K_\nan electric key which the tongue opens and with which the electric pen\nis connected. At the instant of opening, the pen changes its place and\nthe undulating line is drawn at a different level on the paper. The\nopening can be made to serve as a signal to the reacter in a variety\nof ways, and his reaction can be made to close the pen again, when the\nline returns to its first level. The reaction time = the number of\nundulations traced at the second level.]\n\nThe manner in which the signal and reaction are connected with the\nchronographic apparatus varies indefinitely in different experiments.\nEvery new problem requires some new electric or mechanical disposition\nof apparatus.[106]\n\nThe least complicated time-measurement is that known as _simple\nreaction-time_, in which there is but one possible signal and one\npossible movement, and both are known in advance. The movement is\ngenerally the closing of an electric key with the hand. The foot,\nthe jaw, the lips, even the eyelid, have been in turn made organs of\nreaction, and the apparatus has been modified accordingly.[107] The\ntime usually elapsing between stimulus and movement lies between one\nand three tenths of a second, varying according to circumstances which\nwill be mentioned anon.\n\nThe subject of experiment, whenever the reactions are short and\nregular, is in a state of extreme tension, and feels, when the signal\ncomes, as if _it_ started the reaction, by a sort of fatality, and\nas if no psychic process of perception or volition had a chance to\nintervene. The whole succession is so rapid that perception seems to be\nretrospective, and the time-order of events to be read off in memory\nrather than known at the moment. This at least is my own personal\nexperience in the matter, and with it I find others to agree. The\nquestion is, What happens inside of us, either in brain or mind? and to\nanswer that we must analyze just what processes the reaction involves.\nIt is evident that some time is lost in each of the following stages:\n\n1. The stimulus excites the peripheral sense-organ adequately for a\ncurrent to pass into the sensory nerve;\n\n2. The sensory nerve is traversed;\n\n3. The transformation (or reflection) of the sensory into a motor\ncurrent occurs in the centres;\n\n4. The spinal cord and motor nerve are traversed;\n\n5. The motor current excites the muscle to the contracting point.\n\nTime is also lost, of course, outside the muscle, in the joints, skin,\netc., and between the parts of the apparatus; and when the stimulus\nwhich serves as signal is applied to the skin of the trunk or limbs,\ntime is lost in the sensorial conduction through the spinal cord.\n\nThe stage marked 3 is the only one that interests us here. The other\nstages answer to purely physiological processes, but stage 3 is\npsycho-physical; that is, it is a higher-central process, and has\nprobably some sort of consciousness accompanying it. What sort?\n\nWundt has little difficulty in deciding that it is consciousness of\na quite elaborate kind. He distinguishes between two stages in the\nconscious reception of an impression, calling one _perception_, and the\nother _apperception_, and likening the one to the mere entrance of an\nobject into the periphery of the field of vision, and the other to its\ncoming to occupy the focus or point of view. _Inattentive awareness_\nof an object, and _attention_ to it, are, it seems to me, equivalents\nfor perception and apperception, as Wundt uses the words. To these two\nforms of awareness of the impression Wundt adds the conscious volition\nto react, gives to the trio the name of 'psycho-physical' processes,\nand assumes that they actually follow upon each other in the succession\nin which they have been named.[108] So at least I understand him. The\nsimplest way to determine the time taken up by this psycho-physical\nstage No. 3 would be to determine separately the duration of the\nseveral purely physical processes, 1, 2, 4, and 5, and to subtract them\nfrom the total reaction-time. Such attempts have been made.[109] But\nthe data for calculation are too inaccurate for use, and, as Wundt\nhimself admits,[110] the precise duration of stage 3 must at present\nbe left enveloped with that of the other processes, in the total\nreaction-time.\n\nMy own belief is that no such succession of conscious feelings as\nWundt describes takes place during stage 3. It is a process of central\nexcitement and discharge, with which doubtless some feeling coexists,\nbut _what_ feeling we cannot tell, because it is so fugitive and so\nimmediately eclipsed by the more substantive and enduring memory\nof the impression as it came in, and of the executed movement of\nresponse. Feeling of the impression, attention to it, thought of\nthe reaction, volition to react, _would_, undoubtedly, all be links\nof the process _under other conditions_,[111] and would lead to the\nsame reaction--after an indefinitely longer time. But these other\nconditions are not those of the experiments we are discussing; and it\nis mythological psychology (of which we shall see many later examples)\nto conclude that because two mental processes lead to the same result\nthey must be similar in their inward subjective constitution. The\nfeeling of stage 3 is certainly no articulate perception. It can be\nnothing but the mere sense of a reflex discharge. _The reaction whose\ntime is measured is_, in short, _a reflex action pure and simple, and\nnot a psychic act_. A foregoing psychic condition is, it is true, a\nprerequisite for this reflex action. The preparation of the attention\nand volition; the expectation of the signal and the readiness of the\nhand to move, the instant it shall come; the nervous tension in which\nthe subject waits, are all conditions of the formation in him for the\ntime being of a new path or arc of reflex discharge. The tract from\nthe sense-organ which receives the stimulus, into the motor centre\nwhich discharges the reaction, is already tingling with premonitory\ninnervation, is raised to such a pitch of heightened irritability by\nthe expectant attention, that the signal is instantaneously sufficient\nto cause the overflow.[112] No other tract of the nervous system is,\nat the moment, in this hair-trigger condition. The consequence is\nthat one sometimes responds to a _wrong_ signal, especially if it be\nan impression of the same _kind_ with the signal we expect.[113] But\nif by chance we are tired, or the signal is unexpectedly weak, and\nwe do not react instantly, but only after an express perception that\nthe signal has come, and an express volition, the time becomes quite\ndisproportionately long (a second or more, according to Exner[114]),\nand we feel that the process is in nature altogether different.\n\nIn fact, the reaction-time experiments are a case to which we can\nimmediately apply what we have just learned about the summation of\nstimuli. 'Expectant attention' is but the subjective name for what\nobjectively is a partial stimulation of a certain pathway, the pathway\nfrom the 'centre' for the signal to that for the discharge. In Chapter\nXI we shall see that all attention involves excitement from within\nof the tract concerned in feeling the objects to which attention is\ngiven. The tract here is the excito-motor arc about to be traversed.\nThe signal is but the spark from without which touches off a train\nalready laid. The performance, under these conditions, exactly\nresembles any reflex action. The only difference is that whilst, in the\nordinarily so-called reflex acts, the reflex arc is a permanent result\nof organic growth, it is here a transient result of previous cerebral\nconditions.[115]\n\nI am happy to say that since the preceding paragraphs (and the\nnotes thereto appertaining) were written, Wundt has himself become\nconverted to the view which I defend. He now admits that in the\nshortest reactions \"there is neither apperception nor will, but that\nthey are merely _brain-reflexes due to practice_.\"[116] The means of\nhis conversion are certain experiments performed in his laboratory\nby Herr L. Lange,[117] who was led to distinguish between two ways\nof setting the attention in reacting on a signal, and who found that\nthey gave very different time-results. In the '_extreme sensorial_'\nway, as Lange calls it, of reacting, one keeps one's mind as intent\nas possible upon the expected signal, and 'purposely avoids'[118]\nthinking of the movement to be executed; in the '_extreme muscular_'\nway one 'does not think at all'[119] of the signal, but stands as\nready as possible for the movement. The muscular reactions are much\nshorter than the sensorial ones, the average difference being in the\nneighborhood of a tenth of a second. Wundt accordingly calls them\n'shortened reactions' and, with Lange, admits them to be mere reflexes;\nwhilst the sensorial reactions he calls 'complete,' and holds to his\noriginal conception as far as they are concerned. The facts, however,\ndo not seem to me to warrant even this amount of fidelity to the\noriginal Wundtian position. When we begin to react in the 'extreme\nsensorial' way, Lange says that we get times so very long that they\nmust be rejected from the count as non-typical. \"Only after the reacter\nhas succeeded by repeated and conscientious practice in bringing about\nan extremely precise co-ordination of his voluntary impulse with his\nsense-impression do we get times which can be regarded as typical\nsensorial reaction-times.\"[120] Now it seems to me that these excessive\nand 'untypical' times are probably the real 'complete times,' the only\nones in which distinct processes of actual perception and volition\noccur (see above, pp. 88-9). The typical sensorial time which is\nattained by practice is probably another sort of reflex, less perfect\nthan the reflexes prepared by straining one's attention towards the\nmovement.[121] The times are much more variable in the sensorial way\nthan in the muscular. The several muscular reactions differ little\nfrom each other. Only in them does the phenomenon occur of reacting on\na false signal, or of reacting before the signal. Times intermediate\nbetween these two types occur according as the attention fails to turn\nitself exclusively to one of the extremes. It is obvious that Herr\nLange's distinction between the two types of reaction is a highly\nimportant one, and that the 'extreme muscular method,' giving both the\nshortest times and the most constant ones, ought to be aimed at in all\ncomparative investigations. Herr Lange's own muscular time averaged\n0''.123; his sensorial time, 0''.230.\n\nThese reaction-time experiments are then in no sense measurements of\nthe swiftness of _thought_. Only when we complicate them is there a\nchance for anything like an intellectual operation to occur. They\nmay be complicated in various ways. The reaction may be withheld\nuntil the signal has consciously awakened a distinct idea (Wundt's\ndiscrimination-time, association-time) and then performed. Or there\nmay be a variety of possible signals, each with a different reaction\nassigned to it, and the reacter may be uncertain which one he is about\nto receive. The reaction would then hardly seem to occur without a\npreliminary recognition and choice. We shall see, however, in the\nappropriate chapters, that the discrimination and choice involved in\nsuch a reaction are widely different from the intellectual operations\nof which we are ordinarily conscious under those names. Meanwhile\nthe simple reaction-time remains as the starting point of all these\nsuperinduced complications. It is the fundamental physiological\nconstant in all time-measurements. As such, its own variations have an\ninterest, and must be briefly passed in review.[122]\n\nThe reaction-time varies with the _individual_ and his _age_. An\nindividual may have it particularly long in respect of signals of one\nsense (Buccola, p. 147), but not of others. Old and uncultivated people\nhave it long (nearly a second, in an old pauper observed by Exner,\nPfl\u00fcger's Archiv, vii, 612-4). Children have it long (half a second,\nHerzen in Buccola, p. 152).\n\n_Practice_ shortens it to a quantity which is for each individual a\nminimum beyond which no farther reduction can be made. The aforesaid\nold pauper's time was, after much practice, reduced to 0.1866 sec.\n(_loc. cit._ p. 626).\n\n_Fatigue_ lengthens it.\n\n_Concentration of attention_ shortens it. Details will be given in the\nchapter on Attention.\n\nThe _nature of the signal_ makes it vary.[123] Wundt writes:\n\n \"I found that the reaction-time for impressions on the skin with\n electric stimulus is less than for true touch-sensations, as the\n following averages show:\n\n                              Average.    Average Variation\n\n   Sound                      0.167 sec.  0.0221 sec.\n\n   Light                      0.222 sec.  0.0219 sec.\n\n   Electric skin-sensation    0.201 sec.  0.0115 sec.\n\n   Touch-sensations           0.213 sec.  0.0134 sec.\n\n\n \"I here bring together the averages which have been obtained by some\n other observers:\n\n                  Hirsch.  Hankel.  Exner.\n\n  Sound           0.149    0.1505   0.1360\n\n  Light           0.200    0.2246   0.1506\n\n  Skin-sensation  0.182    0.1546   0.1337\"[124]\n\n\n_Thermic_ reactions have been lately measured by A. Goldscheider\nand by Vintschgau (1887), who find them slower than reactions from\ntouch. That from heat especially is very slow, more so than from\ncold, the differences (according to Goldscheider) depending on the\nnerve-terminations in the skin.\n\n_Gustatory_ reactions were measured by Vintschgau. They differed\naccording to the substances used, running up to half a second as a\nmaximum when identification took place. The mere perception of the\npresence of the substance on the tongue varied from 0''.159 to 0''.219\n(Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, xiv, 529).\n\n_Olfactory_ reactions have been studied by Vintschgau, Buccola, and\nBeaunis. They are slow, averaging about half a second (cf. Beaunis,\nRecherches exp. sur l'Activit\u00e9 C\u00e9r\u00e9brale, 1884, p. 49 ff.).\n\nIt will be observed that _sound_ is more promptly reacted on than\neither _sight_ or _touch. Taste_ and _smell_ are slower than either.\nOne individual, who reacted to touch upon the tip of the tongue in\n0''.125, took 0''.993 to react upon the taste of quinine applied to\nthe same spot. In another, upon the base of the tongue, the reaction\nto touch being 0''.141, that to sugar was 0''.552 (Vintschgau, quoted\nby Buccola, p. 103). Buccola found the reaction to odors to vary from\n0''.334 to 0''.681, according to the perfume used and the individual.\n\nThe _intensity of the signal_ makes a difference. The intenser the\nstimulus the shorter the time. Herzen (Grundlinien einer allgem.\nPsychophysiologie, p. 101) compared the reaction from a _corn_ on\nthe toe with that from the skin of the hand of the same subject. The\ntwo places were stimulated simultaneously, and the subject tried to\nreact simultaneously with both hand and foot, but the foot always went\nquickest. When the sound skin of the foot was touched instead of the\ncorn, it was the hand which always reacted first. Wundt tries to show\nthat when the signal is made barely perceptible, the time is probably\nthe same in all the senses, namely, about 0.332'' (Physiol. Psych., 2d\ned., ii, 224).\n\nWhere the signal is of touch, the place to which it is applied makes\na difference in the resultant reaction-time. G. S. Hall and V. Kries\nfound (Archiv f. Anat. u. Physiol., 1879) that when the finger-tip\nwas the place the reaction was shorter than when the middle of the\nupper arm was used, in spite of the greater length of nerve-trunk\nto be traversed in the latter case. This discovery invalidates the\nmeasurements of the rapidity of transmission of the current in\nhuman nerves, for they are all based on the method of comparing\nreaction-times from places near the root and near the extremity of\na limb. The same observers found that signals seen by the periphery\nof the retina gave longer times than the same signals seen by direct\nvision.\n\nThe _season_ makes a difference, the time being some hundredths of a\nsecond shorter on cold winter days (Vintschgau _apud_ Exner, Hermann's\nHdbh., p. 270).\n\n_Intoxicants_ alter the time. _Coffee_ and _tea_ appear to shorten it.\nSmall doses of _wine_ and _alcohol_ first shorten and then lengthen it;\nbut the shortening stage tends to disappear if a large dose be given\nimmediately. This, at least, is the report of two German observers. Dr.\nJ. W. Warren, whose observations are more thorough than any previous\nones, could find no very decided effects from ordinary doses (Journal\nof Physiology, viii, 311). _Morphia_ lengthens the time. _Amyl-nitrite_\nlengthens it, but after the inhalation it may fall to less than the\nnormal. Ether and chloroform lengthen it (for authorities, etc., see\nBuccola, p. 189).\n\nCertain _diseased states_ naturally lengthen the time.\n\nThe _hypnotic trance_ has no constant effect, sometimes shortening and\nsometimes lengthening it (Hall, Mind, viii, 170; James, Proc. Am. Soc.\nfor Psych. Research, 246).\n\nThe time taken to _inhibit_ a movement (e.g. to cease contraction of\njaw-muscles) seems to be about the same as to produce one (Gad, Archiv\nf. (Anat. u.) Physiol., 1887, 468; Orchansky, _ibid._1889, 1885).\n\nAn immense amount of work has been done on reaction-time, of which\nI have cited but a small part. It is a sort of work which appeals\nparticularly to patient and exact minds, and they have not failed to\nprofit by the opportunity.\n\n\nCEREBRAL BLOOD-SUPPLY.\n\n\nThe next point to occupy our attention is the _changes of circulation\nwhich accompany cerebral activity_.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 23.--Sphymographic pulse-tracing. _A_, during\nintellectual repose; _B_, during intellectual activity. (Mosso.)]\n\nAll parts of the cortex, when electrically excited, produce alterations\nboth of respiration and circulation. The blood-pressure rises, as a\nrule, all over the body, no matter where the cortical irritation is\napplied, though the motor zone is the most sensitive region for the\npurpose. Elsewhere the current must be strong enough for an epileptic\nattack to be produced.[125] Slowing and quickening of the heart are\nalso observed, and are independent of the vaso-constrictive phenomenon.\nMosso, using his ingenious 'plethysmograph' as an indicator,\ndiscovered that the blood-supply to the arms diminished during\nintellectual activity, and found furthermore that the arterial tension\n(as shown by the sphygmograph) was increased in these members (see Fig.\n23). So slight an emotion as that produced by the entrance of Professor\nLudwig into the laboratory was instantly followed by a shrinkage of the\narms.[126] The brain itself is an excessively vascular organ, a sponge\nfull of blood, in fact; and another of Mosso's inventions showed that\nwhen less blood went to the arms, more went to the head. The subject\nto be observed lay on a delicately balanced table which could tip\ndownward either at the head or at the foot if the weight of either end\nwere increased. The moment emotional or intellectual activity began\nin the subject, down went the balance at the head-end, in consequence\nof the redistribution of blood in his system. But the best proof of\nthe immediate afflux of blood to the brain during mental activity is\ndue to Mosso's observations on three persons whose brain had been laid\nbare by lesion of the skull. By means of apparatus described in his\nbook,[127] this physiologist was enabled to let the brain-pulse record\nitself directly by a tracing. The intra-cranial blood-pressure rose\nimmediately whenever the subject was spoken to, or when he began to\nthink actively, as in solving a problem in mental arithmetic. Mosso\ngives in his work a large number of reproductions of tracings which\nshow the instantaneity of the change of blood-supply, whenever the\nmental activity was quickened by any cause whatever, intellectual or\nemotional. He relates of his female subject that one day whilst tracing\nher brain-pulse he observed a sudden rise with no apparent outer or\ninner cause. She however confessed to him afterwards that at that\nmoment she had caught sight of a _skull_ on top of a piece of furniture\nin the room, and that this had given her a slight emotion.\n\nThe fluctuations of the blood supply to the brain were independent\nof respiratory changes,[128] and followed the quickening of mental\nactivity almost immediately. We must suppose a very delicate adjustment\nwhereby the circulation follows the needs of the cerebral activity.\nBlood very likely may rush to each region of the cortex according as\nit is most active, but of this we know nothing. I need hardly say that\nthe activity of the nervous matter is the primary phenomenon, and the\nafflux of blood its secondary consequence. Many popular writers talk\nas if it were the other way about, and as if mental activity were due\nto the afflux of blood. But, as Professor H. N. Martin has well said,\n\"that belief has no physiological foundation whatever; it is even\ndirectly opposed to all that we know of cell life.\"[129] A chronic\npathological congestion may, it is true, have secondary consequences,\nbut the primary congestions which we have been considering _follow_ the\nactivity of the brain-cells by an adaptive reflex vaso-motor mechanism\ndoubtless as elaborate as that which harmonizes blood-supply with\ncell-action in any muscle or gland.\n\nOf the changes in the cerebral circulation during sleep I will speak in\nthe chapter which treats of that subject.\n\n\nCEREBRAL THERMOMETRY.\n\n\n_Brain-activity seems accompanied by a local disengagement of heat._\nThe earliest careful work in this direction was by Dr. J. S. Lombard in\n1867. Dr. Lombard's latest results include the records of over 60,000\nobservations.[130] He noted the changes in delicate thermometers and\nelectric piles placed against the scalp in human beings, and found\nthat any intellectual effort, such as computing, composing, reciting\npoetry silently or aloud, and especially that emotional excitement\nsuch as an anger fit, caused a general rise of temperature, which\nrarely exceeded a degree Fahrenheit. The rise was in most cases more\nmarked in the middle region of the head than elsewhere. Strange to\nsay, it was greater in reciting poetry silently than in reciting it\naloud. Dr. Lombard's explanation is that \"in internal recitation an\nadditional portion of energy, which in recitation aloud was converted\ninto nervous and muscular force, now appears as heat.\"[131] I should\nsuggest rather, if we must have a theory, that the surplus of heat\nin recitation to one's self is due to inhibitory processes which are\nabsent when we recite aloud. In the chapter on the Will we shall see\nthat the _simple_ central process is to _speak_ when we think; to\nthink silently involves a check in addition. In 1870 the indefatigable\nSchiff took up the subject, experimenting on live dogs and chickens,\nplunging thermo-electric needles into the substance of their brain,\nto eliminate possible errors from vascular changes in the skin when\nthe thermometers were placed upon the scalp. After habituation was\nestablished, he tested the animals with various sensations, tactile,\noptic, olfactory, and auditory. He found very regularly an immediate\ndeflection of the galvanometer, indicating an abrupt alteration of\nthe intra-cerebral temperature. When, for instance, he presented an\nempty roll of paper to the nose of his dog as it lay motionless, there\nwas a small deflection, but when a piece of meat was in the paper the\ndeflection was much greater. Schiff concluded from these and other\nexperiments that sensorial activity heats the brain-tissue, but he did\nnot try to localize the increment of heat beyond finding that it was\nin both hemispheres, whatever might be the sensation applied.[132] Dr.\nR. W. Amidon in 1880 made a farther step forward, in localizing the\nheat produced by voluntary muscular contractions. Applying a number\nof delicate surface-thermometers simultaneously against the scalp, he\nfound that when different muscles of the body were made to contract\nvigorously for ten minutes or more, different regions of the scalp rose\nin temperature, that the regions were well focalized, and that the\nrise of temperature was often considerably over a Fahrenheit degree.\nAs a result of his investigations he gives a diagram in which numbered\nregions represent the centres of highest temperature for the various\nspecial movements which were investigated. To a large extent they\ncorrespond to the centres for the same movements assigned by Ferrier\nand others on other grounds; only they cover more of the skull.[133]\n\n\n_Phosphorus and Thought._\n\n\n_Chemical action must of course accompany brain-activity._ But little\ndefinite is known of its exact nature. Cholesterin and creatin are both\nexcrementitious products, and are both found in the brain. The subject\nbelongs to chemistry rather than to psychology, and I only mention it\nhere for the sake of saying a word about a wide-spread popular error\nabout brain-activity and phosphorus. '_Ohne Phosphor, kein Gedanke_,'\nwas a noted war-cry of the 'materialists' during the excitement on that\nsubject which filled Germany in the '60s. The brain, like every other\norgan of the body, contains phosphorus, and a score of other chemicals\nbesides. Why the phosphorus should be picked out as its essence, no one\nknows. It would be equally true to say 'Ohne Wasser kein Gedanke,' or\n'Ohne Kochsalz kein Gedanke'; for thought would stop as quickly if the\nbrain should dry up or lose its NaCl as if it lost its phosphorus. In\nAmerica the phosphorus-delusion has twined itself round a saying quoted\n(rightly or wrongly) from Professor L. Agassiz, to the effect that\nfishermen are more intelligent than farmers because they eat so much\nfish, which contains so much phosphorus. All the facts may be doubted.\n\nThe only straight way to ascertain the importance of phosphorus to\nthought would be to find whether more is excreted by the brain during\nmental activity than during rest. Unfortunately we cannot do this\ndirectly, but can only gauge the amount of PO_{5} in the urine, which\nrepresents other organs as well as the brain, and this procedure,\nas Dr. Edes says, is like measuring the rise of water at the mouth\nof the Mississippi to tell where there has been a thunder-storm\nin Minnesota.[134] It has been adopted, however, by a variety of\nobservers, some of whom found the phosphates in the urine diminished,\nwhilst others found them increased, by intellectual work. On the whole,\nit is impossible to trace any constant relation. In maniacal excitement\nless phosphorus than usual seems to be excreted. More is excreted\nduring sleep. There are differences between the alkaline and earthy\nphosphates into which I will not enter, as my only aim is to show that\nthe popular way of looking at the matter has no exact foundation.[135]\nThe fact that phosphorus-preparations may do good in nervous exhaustion\nproves nothing as to the part played by phosphorus in mental activity.\nLike iron, arsenic, and other remedies it is a stimulant or tonic, of\nwhose intimate workings in the system we know absolutely nothing, and\nwhich moreover does good in an extremely small number of the cases in\nwhich it is prescribed.\n\nThe phosphorus-philosophers have often compared thought to a secretion.\n\"The brain secretes thought, as the kidneys secrete urine, or as the\nliver secretes bile,\" are phrases which one sometimes hears. The lame\nanalogy need hardly be pointed out. The materials which the brain\n_pours into the blood_ (cholesterin, creatin, xanthin, or whatever they\nmay be) are the analogues of the urine and the bile, being in fact real\nmaterial excreta. As far as these matters go, the brain is a ductless\ngland. But we know of nothing connected with liver-and kidney-activity\nwhich can be in the remotest degree compared with the stream of\nthought that accompanies the brain's material secretions.\n\nThere remains another feature of general brain-physiology, and indeed\nfor psychological purposes the most important feature of all. I refer\nto the aptitude of the brain for acquiring _habits_. But I will treat\nof that in a chapter by itself.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[99] I shall myself in later places indulge in much of this\nschematization. The reader will understand once for all that it is\nsymbolic; and that the use of it is hardly more than to show what\na deep congruity there is between mental processes and mechanical\nprocesses of _some_ kind, not necessarily of the exact kind portrayed.\n\n[100] Valentin: Archiv f. d. gesammt. Physiol., 1873, p. 458. Stirling:\nLeipzig Acad. Berichte, 1875, p. 372 (Journal of Physiol., 1875). J.\nWard: Archiv f. (Anat. u.) Physiol., 1880, p. 72. H. Sewall: Johns\nHopkins Studies, 1880, p. 30. Kronecker u. Nicolaides: Archiv f. (Anat.\nu.) Physiol., 1880, p. 437. Exner: Archiv f. die ges. Physiol., Bd.\n28, p. 487 (1882). Eckhard: in Hermann's Hdbch. d. Physiol., Bd. I,\nThl. ii, p. 31. Fran\u00e7ois-Franck: Le\u00e7ons sur les Fonctions motrices du\nCerveau, p. 51 ff., 339.--For the process of summation in _nerves_ and\n_muscles_, cf. Hermann: _ibid._ Thl. i, p. 109, and vol. i, p. 40. Also\nWundt: Physiol. Psych., i, 243 ff.; Richet: Travaux du Laboratoire de\nMarey, 1877, p. 97; L'Homme et l'Intelligence, pp. 24 ff., 468; Revue\nPhilosophique, t. xxi, p. 564. Kronecker u. Hall: Archiv f. (Anat. u.)\nPhysiol., 1879; Sch\u00f6nlein: _ibid._1882, p. 357. Sertoli (Hofmann and\nSchwalbe's Jahres-bericht), 1882, p. 25. De Watteville: Neurologisches\nCentralblatt, 1883, No. 7. Gr\u00fcnhagen: Arch. f. d. ges. Physiol., Bd.\n34, p. 301 (1884).\n\n[101] Bubnoff und Heidenhain: Ueber Erregungs- und Hemmungsvorg\u00e4nge\ninnerhalb der motorischen Hirncentren. Archiv f. d. ges. Physiol., Bd.\n26, p. 156 (1881).\n\n[102] Archiv f. d. ges. Physiol., Bd. 26, p. 176 (1881). Exner thinks\n(_ibid._ Bd. 28, p. 497 (1882)) that the summation here occurs in the\nspinal cord. It makes no difference where this particular summation\noccurs, so far as the general philosophy of summation goes.\n\n[103] G H. Lewes: Physical Basis of Mind, p. 479, where many similar\nexamples are given, 487-9.\n\n[104] Romanes: Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 168.\n\n[105] See a similar instance in Mach: Beitr\u00e4ge zur Analyse der\nEmpfindungen, p. 36, a sparrow being the animal. My young children are\nafraid of their own pug-dog, if he enters their room after they are in\nbed and the lights are out. Compare this statement also: \"The first\nquestion to a peasant seldom proves more than a flapper to rouse the\ntorpid adjustments of his ears. The invariable answer of a Scottish\npeasant is, 'What's your wull?'--that of the English, a vacant stare. A\nsecond and even a third question may be required to elicit an answer.\"\n(R. Fowler; Some Observations on the Mental State of the Blind, and\nDeaf, and Dumb (Salisbury, 1843), p. 14.)\n\n[106] The reader will find a great deal about chronographic apparatus\nin J. Marey: La M\u00e9thode Graphique, pt. ii, chap. ii. One can make\npretty fair measurements with no other instrument than a watch, by\nmaking a large number of reactions, each serving as a signal for\nthe following one, and dividing the total time they take by their\nnumber. Dr. O. W. Holmes first suggested this method, which has been\ningeniously elaborated and applied by Professor Jastrow. See 'Science'\nfor September 10, 1886.\n\n[107] See, for a few modifications, Cattell, Mind, xi, 220 ff.\n\n[108] Physiol. Psych., ii, 221-2. Cf. also the first edition, 728-9.\nI must confess to finding all Wundt's utterances about 'apperception'\nboth vacillating and obscure. I see no use whatever for the word, as he\nemploys it, in Psychology. Attention, perception, conception, volition,\nare its ample equivalents. Why we should need a single word to denote\nall these things by turns, Wundt fails to make clear. Consult, however,\nhis pupil Staude's article, 'Ueber den Begriff der Apperception,' etc.,\nin Wundt's periodical Philosophische Studien, i, 149, which may be\nsupposed official. For a minute criticism of Wundt's 'apperception,'\nsee Marty: Vierteljahrschrift f. wiss. Philos., x, 346.\n\n[109] By Exner, for example, Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, vii, 628 ff.\n\n[110] P. 222. Cf. also Richet, Rev. Philos., vi, 395-6.\n\n[111] For instance, if, on the previous day, one had resolved to act on\na signal when it should come, and it now came whilst we were engaged in\nother things, and reminded us of the resolve.\n\n[112] \"I need hardly mention that success in these experiments depends\nin a high degree on our concentration of attention. If inattentive, one\ngets very discrepant figures.... This concentration of the attention\nis in the highest degree exhausting. After some experiments in which I\nwas concerned to get results as uniform as possible, I was covered with\nperspiration and excessively fatigued although I had sat quietly in my\nchair all the while.\" (Exner, _loc. cit._ vii, 618.)\n\n[113] Wundt, Physiol. Psych., ii, 226\n\n[114] Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, vii, 616.\n\n[115] In short, what M. Delb\u0153uf calls an '_organe adventice_.' The\nreaction-time, moreover, is quite compatible with the reaction itself\nbeing of a reflex order. Some reflexes (sneezing, e.g.) are very slow.\nThe only time-measurement of a reflex act in the human subject with\nwhich I am acquainted is Exner's measurement of winking (in Pfl\u00fcger's\nArchiv f. d. gesammt. Physiol., Bd. viii, p. 526, 1874). He found that\nwhen the stimulus was a flash of light it took the wink 0.2168 sec.\nto occur. A strong electric shock to the cornea shortened the time\nto 0.0578 sec. The ordinary 'reaction-time' is midway between these\nvalues. Exner 'reduces' his times by eliminating the physiological\nprocess of conduction. His 'reduced minimum winking-time' is then\n0.0471 (_ibid._ 531), whilst his reduced reaction-time is 0.0828\n(_ibid._ vii, 637). These figures have really no scientific value\nbeyond that of showing, according to Exner's own belief (vii, 531),\nthat reaction-time and reflex-time measure processes of essentially\nthe same order. His description, moreover, of the process is an\nexcellent description of a reflex act. \"Every one,\" says he, \"who\nmakes reaction-time experiments for the first time is surprised to\nfind how little he is master of his own movements, so soon as it\nbecomes a question of executing them with a maximum of speed. Not only\ndoes their energy lie, as it were, outside the field of choice, but\neven the time in which the movement occurs depends only partly upon\nourselves. We jerk our arm, and we can afterwards tell with astonishing\nprecision whether we have jerked it quicker or slower than another\ntime, although we have no power to jerk it exactly at the wished-for\nmoment.\"--Wundt himself admits that when we await a strong signal\nwith tense preparation there is no consciousness of any duality of\n'apperception' and motor response; the two are continuous (Physiol.\nPsych., ii, 226).--Mr. Cattell's view is identical with the one I\ndefend. \"I think,\" he says, \"that if the processes of perception and\nwilling are present at all they are very rudimentary.... The subject,\nby a voluntary effort [before the signal comes], puts the lines of\ncommunication between the centre for\" the stimulus \"and the centre for\nthe co-ordination of motions ... in a state of unstable equilibrium.\nWhen, therefore, a nervous impulse reaches the\" former centre, \"it\ncauses brain-changes in two directions; an impulse moves along to\nthe cortex and calls forth there a perception corresponding to the\nstimulus, while at the same time an impulse follows a line of small\nresistance to the centre for the co-ordination of motions, and the\nproper nervous impulse, already prepared and waiting for the signal,\nis sent from the centre to the muscle of the hand. When the reaction\nhas often been made the entire cerebral process becomes automatic, the\nimpulse of itself takes the well-travelled way to the motor centre, and\nreleases the motor impulse.\" (Mind, xi, 232-3.)--Finally, Prof. Lipps\nhas, in his elaborate way (Grundtatsachen, 179-188), made mince-meat of\nthe view that stage 3 involves either conscious perception or conscious\nwill.\n\n[116] Physiol. Psych., 3d edition (1887), vol. ii, p. 266.\n\n[117] Philosophische Studien, vol. iv, p. 479 (1888).\n\n[118] _Loc. cit._ p. 488.\n\n[119] _Loc. cit._ p. 487.\n\n[120] _Loc. cit._ p. 489.\n\n[121] Lange has an interesting hypothesis as to the brain-process\nconcerned in the latter, for which I can only refer to his essay.\n\n[122] The reader who wishes to know more about the matter will find\na most faithful compilation of all that has been done, together with\nmuch original matter, in G. Buccola's 'Legge del Tempo,' etc. See also\nchapter xvi of Wundt's Physiol. Psychology; Exner in Hermann's Hdbch.,\nBd. 2, Thl. ii, pp. 252-280; also Ribot's Contemp. Germ. Psych. chap.\nviii.\n\n[123] The nature of the movement also seems to make it vary. Mr. B. I.\nGilman and I reacted to the same signal by simply raising our hand, and\nagain by carrying our hand towards our back. The moment registered was\nalways that at which the hand broke an electric contact in _starting_\nto move. But it started one or two hundredths of a second later when\nthe more extensive movement was the one to be made. Orchansky, on the\nother hand, experimenting on contractions of the masseter muscle,\nfound (Archiv f. (Anat. u.) Physiol., 1889, p. 187) that the greater\nthe amplitude of contraction intended, the shorter grew the time of\nreaction. He explains this by the fact that a more ample contraction\nmakes a greater _appeal to the attention_, and that this shortens the\ntimes.\n\n[124] Physiol. Psych., ii, 223.\n\n[125] Fran\u00e7ois-Franck, Fonctions Motrices, Le\u00e7on xxii.\n\n[126] La Paura (1884), p. 117.\n\n[127] Ueber den Kreislauf des Blutes im menschlichen Gehirn (1881),\nchap. ii. The Introduction gives the history of our previous knowledge\nof the subject.\n\n[128] In this conclusion M. Gley (Archives de Physiologie, 1881, p.\n742) agrees with Professor Mosso. Gley found his pulse rise 1-3 beats,\nhis carotid dilate, and his radial artery contract during hard mental\nwork.\n\n[129] Address before Med. and Chirurg. Society of Maryland, 1879.\n\n[130] See his book; \"Experimental Researches on the Regional\nTemperature of the Head\" (London, 1879).\n\n[131] _Loc. cit._ p. 195.\n\n[132] The most convenient account of Schiff's experiments is by Prof.\nHierzen, in the Revue Philosophique, vol. iii, p. 36.\n\n[133] A New Study of Cerebral Cortical Localization (N. Y., Putnam,\n1880), pp. 48-53.\n\n[134] Archives of Medicine, vol. x, No. 1 (1883).\n\n[135] Without multiplying references, I will simply cite Mendel (Archiv\nf. Psychiatrie, vol. iii, 1871), Mairet (Archives de Neurologie, vol.\nix, 1885), and Beaunis (Rech. Exp\u00e9rimentales sur l'Activit\u00e9 C\u00e9r\u00e9brale,\n1887). Richet gives a partial bibliography in the Revue Scientifique,\nvol. 38, p. 788 (1886).\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.[136]\n\nHABIT.\n\n\nWhen we look at living creatures from an outward point of view, one of\nthe first things that strike us is that they are bundles of habits.\nIn wild animals, the usual round of daily behavior seems a necessity\nimplanted at birth; in animals domesticated, and especially in man, it\nseems, to a great extent, to be the result of education. The habits to\nwhich there is an innate tendency are called instincts; some of those\ndue to education would by most persons be called acts of reason. It\nthus appears that habit covers a very large part of life, and that one\nengaged in studying the objective manifestations of mind is bound at\nthe very outset to define clearly just what its limits are.\n\nThe moment one tries to define what habit is, one is led to the\nfundamental properties of matter. The laws of Nature are nothing but\nthe immutable habits which the different elementary sorts of matter\nfollow in their actions and reactions upon each other. In the organic\nworld, however, the habits are more variable than this. Even instincts\nvary from one individual to another of a kind; and are modified in the\nsame individual, as we shall later see, to suit the exigencies of the\ncase. The habits of an elementary particle of matter cannot change (on\nthe principles of the atomistic philosophy), because the particle is\nitself an unchangeable thing; but those of a compound mass of matter\ncan change, because they are in the last instance due to the structure\nof the compound, and either outward forces or inward tensions can, from\none hour to another, turn that structure into something different from\nwhat it was. That is, they can do so if the body be plastic enough to\nmaintain its integrity, and be not disrupted when its structure yields.\n\nThe change of structure here spoken of need not involve the outward\nshape; it may be invisible and molecular, as when a bar of iron\nbecomes magnetic or crystalline through the action of certain outward\ncauses, or India-rubber becomes friable, or plaster 'sets.' All these\nchanges are rather slow; the material in question opposes a certain\nresistance to the modifying cause, which it takes time to overcome,\nbut the gradual yielding whereof often saves the material from being\ndisintegrated altogether. When the structure has yielded, the same\ninertia becomes a condition of its comparative permanence in the new\nform, and of the new habits the body then manifests. _Plasticity_,\nthen, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a\nstructure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not\nto yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase of equilibrium in\nsuch a structure is marked by what we may call a new set of habits.\nOrganic matter, especially nervous tissue, seems endowed with a very\nextraordinary degree of plasticity of this sort; so that we may without\nhesitation lay down as our first proposition the following, that _the\nphenomena of habit in living beings are due to the plasticity[137] of\nthe organic materials of which their bodies are composed_.\n\nBut the philosophy of habit is thus, in the first instance, a chapter\nin physics rather than in physiology or psychology. That it is at\nbottom a physical principle is admitted by all good recent writers\non the subject. They call attention to analogues of acquired habits\nexhibited by dead matter. Thus, M. L\u00e9on Dumont, whose essay on habit is\nperhaps the most philosophical account yet published, writes:\n\n \"Every one knows how a garment, after having been worn a certain\n time, clings to the shape of the body better than when it was new;\n there has been a change in the tissue, and this change is a new habit\n of cohesion. A lock works better after being used some time; at the\n outset more force was required to overcome certain roughnesses in\n the mechanism. The overcoming of their resistance is a phenomenon of\n habituation. It costs less trouble to fold a paper when it has been\n folded already. This saving of trouble is due to the essential nature\n of habit, which brings it about that, to reproduce the effect, a\n less amount of the outward cause is required. The sounds of a violin\n improve by use in the hands of an able artist, because the fibres of\n the wood at last contract habits of vibration conformed to harmonic\n relations. This is what gives such inestimable value to instruments\n that have belonged to great masters. Water, in flowing, hollows out\n for itself a channel, which grows broader and deeper; and, after\n having ceased to flow, it resumes, when it flows again, the path\n traced by itself before. Just so, the impressions of outer objects\n fashion for themselves in the nervous system more and more appropriate\n paths, and these vital phenomena recur under similar excitements from\n without, when they have been interrupted a certain time.\"[138]\n\nNot in the nervous system alone. A scar anywhere is a _locus minoris\nresistenti\u00e6_, more liable to be abraded, inflamed, to suffer pain and\ncold, than are the neighboring parts. A sprained ankle, a dislocated\narm, are in danger of being sprained or dislocated again; joints\nthat have once been attacked by rheumatism or gout, mucous membranes\nthat have been the seat of catarrh, are with each fresh recurrence\nmore prone to a relapse, until often the morbid state chronically\nsubstitutes itself for the sound one. And if we ascend to the nervous\nsystem, we find how many so-called functional diseases seem to keep\nthemselves going simply because they happen to have once begun; and\nhow the forcible cutting short by medicine of a few attacks is often\nsufficient to enable the physiological forces to get possession of\nthe field again, and to bring the organs back to functions of health.\nEpilepsies, neuralgias, convulsive affections of various sorts,\ninsomnias, are so many cases in point. And, to take what are more\nobviously habits, the success with which a 'weaning' treatment can\noften be applied to the victims of unhealthy indulgence of passion, or\nof mere complaining or irascible disposition, shows us how much the\nmorbid manifestations themselves were due to the mere inertia of the\nnervous organs, when once launched on a false career.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nCan we now form a notion of what the inward physical changes may be\nlike, in organs whose habits have thus struck into new paths? In\nother words, can we say just what mechanical facts the expression\n'change of habit' covers when it is applied to a nervous system?\nCertainly we cannot in anything like a minute or definite way. But our\nusual scientific custom of interpreting hidden molecular events after\nthe analogy of visible massive ones enables us to frame easily an\nabstract and general scheme of processes which the physical changes in\nquestion _may_ be like. And when once the possibility of _some_ kind of\nmechanical interpretation is established, Mechanical Science, in her\npresent mood, will not hesitate to set her brand of ownership upon the\nmatter, feeling sure that it is only a question of time when the exact\nmechanical explanation of the case shall be found out.\n\nIf habits are due to the plasticity of materials to outward agents,\nwe can immediately see to what outward influences, if to any, the\nbrain-matter is plastic. Not to mechanical pressures, not to thermal\nchanges, not to any of the forces to which all the other organs of\nour body are exposed; for nature has carefully shut up our brain and\nspinal cord in bony boxes, where no influences of this sort can get at\nthem. She has floated them in fluid so that only the severest shocks\ncan give them a concussion, and blanketed and wrapped them about\nin an altogether exceptional way. The only impressions that can be\nmade upon them are through the blood, on the one hand, and through\nthe sensory nerve-roots, on the other; and it is to the infinitely\nattenuated currents that pour in through these latter channels that\nthe hemispherical cortex shows itself to be so peculiarly susceptible.\nThe currents, once in, must find a way out. In getting out they leave\ntheir traces in the paths which they take. The only thing they _can_\ndo, in short, is to deepen old paths or to make new ones; and the whole\nplasticity of the brain sums itself up in two words when we call it\nan organ in which currents pouring in from the sense-organs make with\nextreme facility paths which do not easily disappear. For, of course, a\nsimple habit, like every other nervous event--the habit of snuffling,\nfor example, or of putting one's hands into one's pockets, or of biting\none's nails--is, mechanically, nothing but a reflex discharge; and its\nanatomical substratum must be a path in the system. The most complex\nhabits, as we shall presently see more fully, are, from the same point\nof view, nothing but _concatenated_ discharges in the nerve-centres,\ndue to the presence there of systems of reflex paths, so organized as\nto wake each other up successively--the impression produced by one\nmuscular contraction serving as a stimulus to provoke the next, until\na final impression inhibits the process and closes the chain. The only\ndifficult mechanical problem is to explain the formation _de novo_ of\na simple reflex or path in a pre-existing nervous system. Here, as in\nso many other cases, it is only the _premier pas qui co\u00fbte_. For the\nentire nervous system _is_ nothing but a system of paths between a\nsensory _terminus a quo_ and a muscular, glandular, or other _terminus\nad quem_. A path once traversed by a nerve-current might be expected\nto follow the law of most of the paths we know, and to be scooped out\nand made more permeable than before;[139] and this ought to be repeated\nwith each new passage of the current. Whatever obstructions may have\nkept it at first from being a path should then, little by little, and\nmore and more, be swept out of the way, until at last it might become\na natural drainage-channel. This is what happens where either solids\nor liquids pass over a path; there seems no reason why it should not\nhappen where the thing that passes is a mere wave of rearrangement in\nmatter that does not displace itself, but merely changes chemically\nor turns itself round in place, or vibrates across the line. The most\nplausible views of the nerve-current make it out to be the passage\nof some such wave of rearrangement as this. If only a part of the\nmatter of the path were to 'rearrange' itself, the neighboring parts\nremaining inert, it is easy to see how their inertness might oppose\na friction which it would take many waves of rearrangement to break\ndown and overcome. If we call the path itself the 'organ,' and the\nwave of rearrangement the 'function,' then it is obviously a case\nfor repeating the celebrated French formula of '_La fonction fait\nl'organe._'\n\nSo nothing is easier than to imagine how, when a current once has\ntraversed a path, it should traverse it more readily still a second\ntime. But what made it ever traverse it the first time?[140] In\nanswering this question we can only fall back on our general conception\nof a nervous system as a mass of matter whose parts, constantly kept\nin states of different tension, are as constantly tending to equalize\ntheir states. The equalization between any two points occurs through\nwhatever path may at the moment be most pervious. But, as a given point\nof the system may belong, actually or potentially, to many different\npaths, and, as the play of nutrition is subject to accidental changes,\n_blocks_ may from time to time occur, and make currents shoot through\nunwonted lines. Such an unwonted line would be a new-created path,\nwhich if traversed repeatedly, would become the beginning of a new\nreflex arc. All this is vague to the last degree, and amounts to little\nmore than saying that a new path may be formed by the sort of _chances_\nthat in nervous material are likely to occur. But, vague as it is, it\nis really the last word of our wisdom in the matter.[141]\n\nIt must be noticed that the growth of structural modification in\nliving matter may be more rapid than in any lifeless mass, because the\nincessant nutritive renovation of which the living matter is the seat\ntends often to corroborate and fix the impressed modification, rather\nthan to counteract it by renewing the original constitution of the\ntissue that has been impressed. Thus, we notice after exercising our\nmuscles or our brain in a new way, that we can do so no longer at that\ntime; but after a day or two of rest, when we resume the discipline,\nour increase in skill not seldom surprises us. I have often noticed\nthis in learning a tune; and it has led a German author to say that we\nlearn to swim during the winter and to skate during the summer.\n\nDr. Carpenter writes:[142]\n\n \"It is a matter of universal experience that every kind of training\n for special aptitudes is both far more effective, and leaves a more\n permanent impress, when exerted on the _growing_ organism than when\n brought to bear on the adult. The effect of such training is shown\n in the tendency of the organ to 'grow to' the mode in which it is\n habitually exercised; as is evidenced by the increased size and power\n of particular sets of muscles, and the extraordinary flexibility\n of joints, which are acquired by such as have been early exercised\n in gymnastic performances.... There is no part of the organism of\n man in which the _reconstructive activity_ is so great, during the\n whole period of life, as it is in the ganglionic substance of the\n brain. This is indicated by the enormous supply of blood which it\n receives.... It is, moreover, a fact of great significance that\n the nerve-substance is specially distinguished by its _reparative_\n power. For while injuries of other tissues (such as the muscular)\n which are distinguished by the _speciality_ of their structure and\n endowments, are repaired by substance of a lower or less specialized\n type, those of nerve-substance are repaired by a complete reproduction\n of the normal tissue; as is evidenced in the sensibility of the\n newly forming skin which is closing over an open wound, or in the\n recovery of the sensibility of a piece of 'transplanted' skin, which\n has for a time been rendered insensible by the complete interruption\n of the continuity of its nerves. The most remarkable example of\n this reproduction, however, is afforded by the results of M.\n Brown-S\u00e9quard's[143] experiments upon the gradual restoration of the\n functional activity of the spinal cord after its complete division;\n which takes place in a way that indicates rather a _reproduction_ of\n the whole, or the lower part of the cord and of the nerves proceeding\n from it, than a mere _reunion_ of divided surfaces. This reproduction\n is but a special manifestation of the reconstructive change which is\n _always_ taking place in the nervous system; it being not less obvious\n to the eye of reason that the 'waste' occasioned by its functional\n activity must be constantly repaired by the production of new tissue,\n than it is to the eye of sense that such reparation supplies an actual\n _loss_ of substance by disease or injury.\n\n \"Now, in this constant and active reconstruction of the nervous\n system, we recognize a most marked conformity to the general plan\n manifested in the nutrition of the organism as a whole. For, in\n the first place, it is obvious that there is a tendency to the\n production of a _determinate type_ of structure; which type is often\n not merely that of the species, but some special modification of it\n which characterized one or both of the progenitors. But this type is\n peculiarly liable to modification during the early period of life; in\n which the functional activity of the nervous system (and particularly\n of the brain) is extraordinarily great, and the reconstructive process\n proportionally active. And this modifiability expresses itself in the\n formation of the mechanism by which those _secondarily automatic_\n modes of movement come to be established, which, in man, take the\n place of those that are _congenital_ in most of the animals beneath\n him; and those modes of sense-perception come to be _acquired_, which\n are elsewhere clearly _instinctive_. For there can be no reasonable\n doubt that, in both cases, a nervous mechanism is _developed_ in the\n course of this self-education, corresponding with that which the lower\n animals inherit from their parents. The _plan_ of that _rebuilding_\n process, which is necessary to maintain the integrity of the organism\n generally, and which goes on with peculiar activity in this portion of\n it, is thus being incessantly modified; and in this manner all that\n portion of it which ministers to the _external_ life of sense and\n motion that is shared by man with the animal kingdom at large, becomes\n at adult age the expression of the habits which the individual has\n acquired during the period of growth and development. Of these habits,\n some are common to the race generally, while others are peculiar to\n the individual; those of the former kind (such as walking erect) being\n universally acquired, save where physical inability prevents; while\n for the latter a special training is needed, which is usually the more\n effective the earlier it is begun--as is remarkably seen in the case\n of such feats of dexterity as require a conjoint education of the\n perceptive and of the motor powers. And when thus developed during\n the period of growth, so as to have become a part of the constitution\n of the adult, the acquired mechanism is thenceforth maintained in the\n ordinary course of the nutritive operations, so as to be ready for use\n when called upon, even after long inaction.\n\n \"What is so clearly true of the nervous apparatus of animal life\n can scarcely be otherwise than true of that which ministers to the\n automatic activity of the mind. For, as already shown, the study\n of psychology has evolved no more certain result than that there\n are uniformities of mental action which are so entirely conformable\n to those of bodily action as to indicate their intimate relation\n to a 'mechanism of thought and feeling,' acting under the like\n conditions with that of sense and motion. The psychical principles\n of _association_, indeed, and the physiological principles of\n _nutrition_, simply express--the former in terms of mind, the latter\n in terms of brain--the universally admitted fact that any sequence of\n mental action which has been frequently repeated tends to perpetuate\n itself; so that we find ourselves automatically prompted to _think,\n feel,_ or _do_ what we have been before accustomed to think, feel,\n or do, under like circumstances, without any consciously formed\n _purpose_, or anticipation of results. For there is no reason to\n regard the cerebrum as an exception to the general principle that,\n while each part of the organism tends to _form itself_ in accordance\n with the mode in which it is habitually exercised, this tendency\n will be especially strong in the nervous apparatus, in virtue of\n that _incessant regeneration_ which is the very condition of its\n functional activity. It scarcely, indeed, admits of doubt that every\n state of ideational consciousness which is either _very strong_ or is\n _habitually repeated_ leaves an organic impression on the cerebrum; in\n virtue of which that same state may be reproduced at any future time,\n in respondence to a suggestion fitted to excite it.... The 'strength\n of early association' is a fact so universally recognized that the\n expression of it has become proverbial; and this precisely accords\n with the physiological principle that, during the period of growth\n and development, the formative activity of the brain will be most\n amenable to directing influences. It is in this way that what is early\n 'learned by heart' becomes branded in (as it were) upon the cerebrum;\n so that its 'traces' are never lost, even though the conscious\n memory of it may have completely faded out. For, when the organic\n modification has been once _fixed_ in the growing brain, it becomes a\n part of the normal fabric, and is regularly _maintained_ by nutritive\n substitution; so that it may endure to the end of life, like the scar\n of a wound.\"\n\nDr. Carpenter's phrase that _our nervous system grows to the modes in\nwhich it has been exercised_ expresses the philosophy of habit in a\nnutshell. We may now trace some of the practical applications of the\nprinciple to human life.\n\nThe first result of it is that _habit simplifies the movements required\nto achieve a given result, makes them more accurate and diminishes\nfatigue_.\n\n \"The beginner at the piano not only moves his finger up and down in\n order to depress the key, he moves the whole hand, the forearm and\n even the entire body, especially moving its least rigid part, the\n head, as if he would press down the key with that organ too. Often\n a contraction of the abdominal muscles occurs as well. Principally,\n however, the impulse is determined to the motion of the hand and of\n the single finger. This is, in the first place, because the movement\n of the finger is the movement _thought of_ and, in the second place,\n because its movement and that of the key are the movements we try to\n _perceive_, along with the results of the latter on the ear. The more\n often the process is repeated, the more easily the movement follows,\n on account of the increase in permeability of the nerves engaged.\n\n \"But the more easily the movement occurs, the slighter is the stimulus\n required to set it up; and the slighter the stimulus is, the more its\n effect is confined to the fingers alone.\n\n \"Thus, an impulse which originally spread its effects over the whole\n body, or at least over many of its movable parts, is gradually\n determined to a single definite organ, in which it effects the\n contraction of a few limited muscles. In this change the thoughts and\n perceptions which start the impulse acquire more and more intimate\n causal relations with a particular group of motor nerves.\n\n \"To recur to a simile, at least partially apt, imagine the nervous\n system to represent a drainage-system, inclining, on the whole, toward\n certain muscles, but with the escape thither somewhat clogged. Then\n streams of water will, on the whole, tend most to fill the drains\n that go towards these muscles and to wash out the escape. In case of\n a sudden 'flushing,' however, the whole system of channels will fill\n itself, and the water overflow everywhere before it escapes. But a\n moderate quantity of water invading the system will flow through the\n proper escape alone.\n\n \"Just so with the piano-player. As soon as his impulse, which has\n gradually learned to confine itself to single muscles, grows extreme,\n it overflows into larger muscular regions. He usually plays with his\n fingers, his body being at rest. But no sooner does he get excited\n than his whole body becomes 'animated,' and he moves his head and\n trunk, in particular, as if these also were organs with which he meant\n to belabor the keys.\"[144]\n\nMan is born with a tendency to do more things than he has ready-made\narrangements for in his nerve-centres. Most of the performances of\nother animals are automatic. But in him the number of them is so\nenormous, that most of them must be the fruit of painful study. If\npractice did not make perfect, nor habit economize the expense of\nnervous and muscular energy, he would therefore be in a sorry plight.\nAs Dr. Maudsley says:[145]\n\n \"If an act became no easier after being done several times, if\n the careful direction of consciousness were necessary to its\n accomplishment on each occasion, it is evident that the whole activity\n of a lifetime might be confined to one or two deeds--that no progress\n could take place in development. A man might be occupied all day in\n dressing and undressing himself; the attitude of his body would\n absorb all his attention and energy; the washing of his hands or the\n fastening of a button would be as difficult to him on each occasion\n as to the child on its first trial; and he would, furthermore, be\n completely exhausted by his exertions. Think of the pains necessary to\n teach a child to stand, of the many efforts which it must make, and of\n the ease with which it at last stands, unconscious of any effort. For\n while secondarily automatic acts are accomplished with comparatively\n little weariness--in this regard approaching the organic movements, or\n the original reflex movements--the conscious effort of the will soon\n produces exhaustion. A spinal cord without ... memory would simply\n be an idiotic spinal cord.... It is impossible for an individual to\n realize how much he owes to its automatic agency until disease has\n impaired its functions.\"\n\nThe next result is that _habit diminishes the conscious attention with\nwhich our acts are performed_.\n\nOne may state this abstractly thus: If an act require for its execution\na chain, _A, B, C, D, E, F, G,_ etc., of successive nervous events,\nthen in the first performances of the action the conscious will must\nchoose each of these events from a number of wrong alternatives that\ntend to present themselves; but habit soon brings it about that each\nevent calls up its own appropriate successor without any alternative\noffering itself, and without any reference to the conscious will,\nuntil at last the whole chain, _A, B, C, D, E, F, G,_ rattles itself\noff as soon as _A_ occurs, just as if _A_ and the rest of the chain\nwere fused into a continuous stream. When we are learning to walk,\nto ride, to swim, skate, fence, write, play, or sing, we interrupt\nourselves at every step by unnecessary movements and false notes. When\nwe are proficients, on the contrary, the results not only follow with\nthe very minimum of muscular action requisite to bring them forth,\nthey also follow from a single instantaneous 'cue.' The marksman sees\nthe bird, and, before he knows it, he has aimed and shot. A gleam in\nhis adversary's eye, a momentary pressure from his rapier, and the\nfencer finds that he has instantly made the right parry and return. A\nglance at the musical hieroglyphics, and the pianist's fingers have\nrippled through a cataract of notes. And not only is it the right\nthing at the right time that we thus involuntarily do, but the wrong\nthing also, if it be an habitual thing. Who is there that has never\nwound up his watch on taking off his waistcoat in the daytime, or\ntaken his latch-key out on arriving at the door-step of a friend? Very\nabsent-minded persons in going to their bedroom to dress for dinner\nhave been known to take off one garment after another and finally to\nget into bed, merely because that was the habitual issue of the first\nfew movements when performed at a later hour. The writer well remembers\nhow, on revisiting Paris after ten years' absence, and, finding himself\nin the street in which for one winter he had attended school, he lost\nhimself in a brown study, from which he was awakened by finding himself\nupon the stairs which led to the apartment in a house many streets\naway in which he had lived during that earlier time, and to which his\nsteps from the school had then habitually led. We all of us have a\ndefinite routine manner of performing certain daily offices connected\nwith the toilet, with the opening and shutting of familiar cupboards,\nand the like. Our lower centres know the order of these movements, and\nshow their knowledge by their 'surprise' if the objects are altered\nso as to oblige the movement to be made in a different way. But our\nhigher thought-centres know hardly anything about the matter. Few men\ncan tell off-hand which sock, shoe, or trousers-leg they put on first.\nThey must first mentally rehearse the act; and even that is often\ninsufficient--the act must be _performed_. So of the questions, Which\nvalve of my double door opens first? Which way does my door swing? etc.\nI cannot _tell_ the answer; yet my _hand_ never makes a mistake. No one\ncan _describe_ the order in which he brushes his hair or teeth; yet it\nis likely that the order is a pretty fixed one in all of us.\n\nThese results may be expressed as follows:\n\nIn action grown habitual, what instigates each new muscular\ncontraction to take place in its appointed order is not a thought or a\nperception, but the _sensation occasioned by the muscular contraction\njust finished_. A strictly voluntary act has to be guided by idea,\nperception, and volition, throughout its whole course. In an habitual\naction, mere sensation is a sufficient guide, and the upper regions\nof brain and mind are set comparatively free. A diagram will make the\nmatter clear:\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 24.]\n\nLet _A, B, C, D, E, F, G_ represent an habitual chain of muscular\ncontractions, and let _a, b, c, d, e, f_ stand for the respective\nsensations which these contractions excite in us when they are\nsuccessively performed. Such sensations will usually be of the muscles,\nskin, or joints of the parts moved, but they may also be effects of the\nmovement upon the eye or the ear. Through them, and through them alone,\nwe are made aware whether the contraction has or has not occurred. When\nthe series, _A, B, C, D, E, F, G,_ is being learned, each of these\nsensations becomes the object of a separate perception by the mind.\nBy it we test each movement, to see if it be right before advancing\nto the next. We hesitate, compare, choose, revoke, reject, etc.,\nby intellectual means; and the order by which the next movement is\ndischarged is an express order from the ideational centres after this\ndeliberation has been gone through.\n\nIn habitual action, on the contrary, the only impulse which the\ncentres of idea or perception need send down is the initial impulse,\nthe command to _start_. This is represented in the diagram by _V_; it\nmay be a thought of the first movement or of the last result, or a\nmere perception of some of the habitual conditions of the chain, the\npresence, e.g., of the keyboard near the hand. In the present case, no\nsooner has the conscious thought or volition instigated movement _A_,\nthan _A_, through the sensation _a_ of its own occurrence, awakens\n_B_ reflexly; _B_ then excites _C_ through _b_, and so on till the\nchain is ended, when the intellect generally takes cognizance of the\nfinal result. The process, in fact, resembles the passage of a wave\nof 'peristaltic' motion down the bowels. The intellectual perception\nat the end is indicated in the diagram by the effect of _G_ being\nrepresented, at _G'_, in the ideational centres above the merely\nsensational line. The sensational impressions, _a, b, c, d, e, f,_\nare all supposed to have their seat below the ideational lines. That\nour ideational centres, if involved at all by _a, b, c, d, e, f,_ are\ninvolved in a minimal degree, is shown by the fact that the attention\nmay be wholly absorbed elsewhere. We may say our prayers, or repeat the\nalphabet, with our attention far away.\n\n \"A musical performer will play a piece which has become familiar\n by repetition while carrying on an animated conversation, or while\n continuously engrossed by some train of deeply interesting thought;\n the accustomed sequence of movements being directly prompted by\n the _sight_ of the notes, or by the remembered succession of the\n _sounds_ (if the piece is played from memory), aided in both cases\n by the guiding sensations derived from the muscles themselves. But,\n further, a higher degree of the same 'training' (acting on an organism\n specially fitted to profit by it) enables an accomplished pianist to\n play a difficult piece of music at sight; the movements of the hands\n and fingers following so immediately upon the sight of the notes that\n it seems impossible to believe that any but the very shortest and most\n direct track can be the channel of the nervous communication through\n which they are called forth. The following curious example of the same\n class of _acquired aptitudes_, which differ from instincts only in\n being prompted to action by the will, is furnished by Robert Houdin:\n\n \"'With a view of cultivating the rapidity of visual and tactile\n perception, and the precision of respondent movements, which are\n necessary for success in every kind of prestidigitation, Houdin early\n practised the art of juggling with balls in the air; and having, after\n a month's practice, become thorough master of the art of keeping up\n _four_ balls at once, he placed a book before him, and, while the\n balls were in the air, accustomed himself to read without hesitation.\n 'This,' he says, 'will probably seem to my readers very extraordinary;\n but I shall surprise them still more when I say that I have just\n amused myself with repeating this curious experiment. Though thirty\n years have elapsed since the time I was writing, and though I have\n scarcely once touched the balls during that period, I can still manage\n to read with ease while keeping _three_ balls up.'\"(Autobiography, p.\n 26.)[146]\n\nWe have called _a, b, c, d, e, f,_ the antecedents of the successive\nmuscular attractions, by the name of sensations. Some authors seem\nto deny that they are even this. If not even this, they can only be\ncentripetal nerve-currents, not sufficient to arouse feeling, but\nsufficient to arouse motor response.[147] It may be at once admitted\nthat they are not distinct _volitions_. The will, if any will be\npresent, limits itself to a _permission_ that they exert their motor\neffects. Dr. Carpenter writes:\n\n \"There may still be metaphysicians who maintain that actions which\n were originally prompted by the will with a distinct intention, and\n which are still entirely under its control, can never cease to be\n volitional; and that either an infinitesimally small amount of will\n is required to sustain them when they have been once set going, or\n that the will is in a sort of pendulum-like oscillation between the\n two actions--the maintenance of the train of _thought_, and the\n maintenance of the train of _movement_. But if only an infinitesimally\n small amount of will is necessary to sustain them, is not this\n tantamount to saying that they go on by a force of their own? And\n does not the experience of the _perfect continuity_ of our train of\n thought during the performance of movements that have become habitual,\n entirely negative the hypothesis of oscillation? Besides, if such an\n oscillation existed, there must be _intervals_ in which each action\n goes on _of itself_; so that its essentially automatic character is\n virtually admitted. The physiological explanation, that the mechanism\n of locomotion, as of other habitual movements, _grows to_ the mode\n in which it is early exercised, and that it then works automatically\n under the general control and direction of the will, can scarcely\n be put down by any assumption of an hypothetical necessity, which\n rests only on the basis of ignorance of one side of our composite\n nature.\"[148]\n\nBut if not distinct acts of will, these immediate antecedents of each\nmovement of the chain are at any rate accompanied by consciousness of\nsome kind. They are _sensations_ to which we are _usually inattentive_,\nbut which immediately call our attention if they go _wrong_.\nSchneider's account of these sensations deserves to be quoted. In the\nact of walking, he says, even when our attention is entirely off,\n\n \"we are continuously aware of certain muscular feelings; and we have,\n moreover, a feeling of certain impulses to keep our equilibrium and\n to set down one leg after another. It is doubtful whether we could\n preserve equilibrium if no sensation of our body's attitude were\n there, and doubtful whether we should advance our leg if we had no\n sensation of its movement as executed, and not even a minimal feeling\n of impulse to set it down. Knitting appears altogether mechanical,\n and the knitter keeps up her knitting even while she reads or is\n engaged in lively talk. But if we ask her how this be possible, she\n will hardly reply that the knitting goes on of itself. She will rather\n say that she has a feeling of it, that she feels in her hands that\n she knits and how she must knit, and that therefore the movements of\n knitting are called forth and regulated by the sensations associated\n therewithal, even when the attention is called away.\n\n \"So of every one who practises, apparently automatically, a\n long-familiar handicraft. The smith turning his tongs as he smites\n the iron, the carpenter wielding his plane, the lace-maker with her\n bobbin, the weaver at his loom, all will answer the same question\n in the same way by saying that they have a feeling of the proper\n management of the implement in their hands.\n\n \"In these cases, the feelings which are conditions of the appropriate\n acts are very faint. But none the less are they necessary. Imagine\n your hands not feeling; your movements could then only be provoked\n by ideas, and if your ideas were then diverted away, the movements\n ought to come to a standstill, which is a consequence that seldom\n occurs.\"[149]\n\nAgain:\n\n \"An idea makes you take, for example, a violin into your left hand.\n But it is not necessary that your idea remain fixed on the contraction\n of the muscles of the left hand and fingers in order that the violin\n may continue to be held fast and not let fall. The sensations\n themselves which the holding of the instrument awakens in the hand,\n since they are associated with the motor impulse of grasping, are\n sufficient to cause this impulse, which then lasts as long as the\n feeling itself lasts, or until the impulse is inhibited by the idea of\n some antagonistic motion.\"\n\nAnd the same may be said of the manner in which the right hand holds\nthe bow:\n\n \"It sometimes happens, in beginning these simultaneous combinations,\n that one movement or impulse will cease if the consciousness turn\n particularly toward another, because at the outset the guiding\n sensations must _all_ be strongly _felt_. The bow will perhaps slip\n from the fingers, because some of the muscles have relaxed. But the\n slipping is a cause of new sensations starting up in the hand, so that\n the attention is in a moment brought back to the grasping of the bow.\n\n \"The following experiment shows this well: When one begins to play\n on the violin, to keep him from raising his right elbow in playing\n a book is placed under his right armpit, which he is ordered to hold\n fast by keeping the upper arm tight against his body. The muscular\n feelings, and feelings of contact connected with the book, provoke an\n impulse to press it tight. But often it happens that the beginner,\n whose attention gets absorbed in the production of the notes, lets\n drop the book. Later, however, this never happens; the faintest\n sensations of contact suffice to awaken the impulse to keep it in\n its place, and the attention may be wholly absorbed by the notes and\n the fingering with the left hand. _The simultaneous combination of\n movements is thus in the first instance conditioned by the facility\n with which in us, alongside of intellectual processes, processes of\n inattentive feeling may still go on._\"[150]\n\nThis brings us by a very natural transition to the _ethical\nimplications of the law of habit_. They are numerous and momentous.\nDr. Carpenter, from whose 'Mental Physiology' we have quoted, has so\nprominently enforced the principle that our organs grow to the way in\nwhich they have been exercised, and dwelt upon its consequences, that\nhis book almost deserves to be called a work of edification, on this\naccount alone. We need make no apology, then, for tracing a few of\nthese consequences ourselves:\n\n\"Habit a second nature! Habit is ten times nature,\" the Duke of\nWellington is said to have exclaimed; and the degree to which this is\ntrue no one can probably appreciate as well as one who is a veteran\nsoldier himself. The daily drill and the years of discipline end by\nfashioning a man completely over again, as to most of the possibilities\nof his conduct.\n\n \"There is a story, which is credible enough, though it may not be\n true, of a practical joker, who, seeing a discharged veteran carrying\n home his dinner, suddenly called out, 'Attention!' whereupon the man\n instantly brought his hands down, and lost his mutton and potatoes in\n the gutter. The drill had been thorough, and its effects had become\n embodied in the man's nervous structure.\"[151]\n\nRiderless cavalry-horses, at many a battle, have been seen to come\ntogether and go through their customary evolutions at the sound of\nthe bugle-call. Most trained domestic animals, dogs and oxen, and\nomnibus- and car-horses, seem to be machines almost pure and simple,\nundoubtingly, unhesitatingly doing from minute to minute the duties\nthey have been taught, and giving no sign that the possibility of an\nalternative ever suggests itself to their mind. Men grown old in prison\nhave asked to be readmitted after being once set free. In a railroad\naccident to a travelling menagerie in the United States some time in\n1881, a tiger, whose cage had broken open, is said to have emerged,\nbut presently crept back again, as if too much bewildered by his new\nresponsibilities, so that he was without difficulty secured.\n\nHabit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious\nconservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of\nordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings\nof the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of\nlife from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein. It keeps\nthe fisherman and the deck-hand at sea through the winter; it holds the\nminer in his darkness, and nails the countryman to his log-cabin and\nhis lonely farm through all the months of snow; it protects us from\ninvasion by the natives of the desert and the frozen zone. It dooms us\nall to fight out the battle of life upon the lines of our nurture or\nour early choice, and to make the best of a pursuit that disagrees,\nbecause there is no other for which we are fitted, and it is too late\nto begin again. It keeps different social strata from mixing. Already\nat the age of twenty-five you see the professional mannerism settling\ndown on the young commercial traveller, on the young doctor, on the\nyoung minister, on the young counsellor-at-law. You see the little\nlines of cleavage running through the character, the tricks of thought,\nthe prejudices, the ways of the 'shop,' in a word, from which the man\ncan by-and-by no more escape than his coat-sleeve can suddenly fall\ninto a new set of folds. On the whole, it is best he should not escape.\nIt is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the\ncharacter has set like plaster, and will never soften again.\n\nIf the period between twenty and thirty is the critical one in the\nformation of intellectual and professional habits, the period below\ntwenty is more important still for the fixing of _personal_ habits,\nproperly so called, such as vocalization and pronunciation, gesture,\nmotion, and address. Hardly ever is a language learned after twenty\nspoken without a foreign accent; hardly ever can a youth transferred\nto the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of\nspeech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly\never, indeed, no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can\nhe even learn to _dress_ like a gentleman-born. The merchants offer\ntheir wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest 'swell,' but he\nsimply _cannot_ buy the right things. An invisible law, as strong as\ngravitation, keeps him within his orbit, arrayed this year as he was\nthe last; and how his better-bred acquaintances contrive to get the\nthings they wear will be for him a mystery till his dying day.\n\nThe great thing, then, in all education, is to _make our nervous\nsystem our ally instead of our enemy_. It is to fund and capitalize\nour acquisitions, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund.\n_For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible,\nas many useful actions as we can,_ and guard against the growing into\nways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard\nagainst the plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can\nhand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher\npowers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no\nmore miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but\nindecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking\nof every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the\nbeginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional\ndeliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding,\nor regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as\npractically not to exist for his consciousness at all. If there be such\ndaily duties not yet ingrained in any one of my readers, let him begin\nthis very hour to set the matter right.\n\nIn Professor Bain's chapter on 'The Moral Habits' there are some\nadmirable practical remarks laid down. Two great maxims emerge from his\ntreatment. The first is that in the acquisition of a new habit, or\nthe leaving off of an old one, we must take care to _launch ourselves\nwith as strong and decided an initiative as possible_. Accumulate all\nthe possible circumstances which shall re-enforce the right motives;\nput yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way; make\nengagements incompatible with the old; take a public pledge, if the\ncase allows; in short, envelop your resolution with every aid you know.\nThis will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation\nto break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise might; and every\nday during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its\nnot occurring at all.\n\nThe second maxim is: _Never suffer an exception to occur till the new\nhabit is securely rooted in your life_. Each lapse is like the letting\nfall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up; a single\nslip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again. _Continuity_\nof training is the great means of making the nervous system act\ninfallibly right. As Professor Bain says:\n\n \"The peculiarity of the moral habits, contradistinguishing them from\n the intellectual acquisitions, is the presence of two hostile powers,\n one to be gradually raised into the ascendant over the other. It\n is necessary, above all things, in such a situation, never to lose\n a battle. Every gain on the wrong side undoes the effect of many\n conquests on the right. The essential precaution, therefore, is so\n to regulate the two opposing powers that the one may have a series\n of uninterrupted successes, until repetition has fortified it to\n such a degree as to enable it to cope with the opposition, under\n any circumstances. This is the theoretically best career of mental\n progress.\"\n\nThe need of securing success at the _outset_ is imperative. Failure at\nfirst is apt to dampen the energy of all future attempts, whereas past\nexperience of success nerves one to future vigor. Goethe says to a man\nwho consulted him about an enterprise but mistrusted his own powers:\n\"Ach! you need only blow on your hands!\" And the remark illustrates the\neffect on Goethe's spirits of his own habitually successful career.\nProf. Baumann, from whom I borrow the anecdote,[152] says that the\ncollapse of barbarian nations when Europeans come among them is due\nto their despair of ever succeeding as the new-comers do in the larger\ntasks of life. Old ways are broken and new ones not formed.\n\nThe question of 'tapering-off,' in abandoning such habits as drink and\nopium-indulgence, comes in here, and is a question about which experts\ndiffer within certain limits, and in regard to what may be best for an\nindividual case. In the main, however, all expert opinion would agree\nthat abrupt acquisition of the new habit is the best way, _if there be\na real possibility of carrying it out_. We must be careful not to give\nthe will so stiff a task as to insure its defeat at the very outset;\nbut, _provided one can stand it_, a sharp period of suffering, and then\na free time, is the best thing to aim at, whether in giving up a habit\nlike that of opium, or in simply changing one's hours of rising or of\nwork. It is surprising how soon a desire will die of inanition if it be\n_never_ fed.\n\n \"One must first learn, unmoved, looking neither to the right nor\n left, to walk firmly on the straight and narrow path, before one can\n begin 'to make one's self over again.' He who every day makes a fresh\n resolve is like one who, arriving at the edge of the ditch he is to\n leap, forever stops and returns for a fresh run. Without _unbroken_\n advance there is no such thing as _accumulation_ of the ethical forces\n possible, and to make this possible, and to exercise us and habituate\n us in it, is the sovereign blessing of regular _work_.\"[153]\n\nA third maxim may be added to the preceding pair: _Seize the very first\npossible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every\nemotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits\nyou aspire to gain._ It is not in the moment of their forming, but\nin the moment of their producing _motor effects_, that resolves and\naspirations communicate the new 'set' to the brain. As the author last\nquoted remarks:\n\n \"The actual presence of the practical opportunity alone furnishes the\n fulcrum upon which the lever can rest, by means of which the moral\n will may multiply its strength, and raise itself aloft. He who has no\n solid ground to press against will never get beyond the stage of empty\n gesture-making.\"\n\nNo matter how full a reservoir of _maxims_ one may possess, and no\nmatter how good one's _sentiments_ may be, if one have not taken\nadvantage of every concrete opportunity to _act_, one's character may\nremain entirely unaffected for the better. With mere good intentions,\nhell is proverbially paved. And this is an obvious consequence of the\nprinciples we have laid down. A 'character,' as J. S. Mill says, 'is\na completely fashioned will'; and a will, in the sense in which he\nmeans it, is an aggregate of tendencies to act in a firm and prompt and\ndefinite way upon all the principal emergencies of life. A tendency\nto act only becomes effectively ingrained in us in proportion to the\nuninterrupted frequency with which the actions actually occur, and\nthe brain 'grows' to their use. Every time a resolve or a fine glow\nof feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a\nchance lost; it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions\nand emotions from taking the normal path of discharge. There is no\nmore contemptible type of human character than that of the nerveless\nsentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of\nsensibility and emotion, but who never does a manly concrete deed.\nRousseau, inflaming all the mothers of France, by his eloquence, to\nfollow Nature and nurse their babies themselves, while he sends his\nown children to the foundling hospital, is the classical example of\nwhat I mean. But every one of us in his measure, whenever, after\nglowing for an abstractly formulated Good, he practically ignores\nsome actual case, among the squalid 'other particulars' of which that\nsame Good lurks disguised, treads straight on Rousseau's path. All\nGoods are disguised by the vulgarity of their concomitants, in this\nwork-a-day world; but woe to him who can only recognize them when he\nthinks them in their pure and abstract form! The habit of excessive\nnovel-reading and theatre-going will produce true monsters in this\nline. The weeping of a Russian lady over the fictitious personages in\nthe play, while her coachman is freezing to death on his seat outside,\nis the sort of thing that everywhere happens on a less glaring scale.\nEven the habit of excessive indulgence in music, for those who are\nneither performers themselves nor musically gifted enough to take\nit in a purely intellectual way, has probably a relaxing effect upon\nthe character. One becomes filled with emotions which habitually pass\nwithout prompting to any deed, and so the inertly sentimental condition\nis kept up. The remedy would be, never to suffer one's self to have an\nemotion at a concert, without expressing it afterward in _some_ active\nway.[154] Let the expression be the least thing in the world--speaking\ngenially to one's aunt, or giving up one's seat in a horse-car, if\nnothing more heroic offers--but let it not fail to take place.\n\nThese latter cases make us aware that it is not simply _particular\nlines_ of discharge, but also _general forms_ of discharge, that\nseem to be grooved out by habit in the brain. Just as, if we let our\nemotions evaporate, they get into a way of evaporating; so there is\nreason to suppose that if we often flinch from making an effort, before\nwe know it the effort-making capacity will be gone; and that, if we\nsuffer the wandering of our attention, presently it will wander all the\ntime. Attention and effort are, as we shall see later, but two names\nfor the same psychic fact. To what brain-processes they correspond we\ndo not know. The strongest reason for believing that they do depend on\nbrain-processes at all, and are not pure acts of the spirit, is just\nthis fact, that they seem in some degree subject to the law of habit,\nwhich is a material law. As a final practical maxim, relative to these\nhabits of the will, we may, then, offer something like this: _Keep\nthe faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise\nevery day_. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little\nunnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason\nthan that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire\nneed draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand\nthe test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man\npays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and\npossibly may never bring him a return. But if the fire _does_ come,\nhis having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. So with the man\nwho has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention,\nenergetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will\nstand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his\nsofter fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.\n\nThe physiological study of mental conditions is thus the most powerful\nally of hortatory ethics. The hell to be endured hereafter, of which\ntheology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this\nworld by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could\nthe young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles\nof habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the\nplastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never\nto be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its\nnever so little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play,\nexcuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, 'I won't count\nthis time!' Well! he may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count\nit; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells\nand fibres the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it\nup to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we\never do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. Of course,\nthis has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become permanent\ndrunkards by so many separate drinks, so we become saints in the moral,\nand authorities and experts in the practical and scientific spheres, by\nso many separate acts and hours of work. Let no youth have any anxiety\nabout the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If\nhe keep faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely\nleave the final result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count\non waking up some fine morning, to find himself one of the competent\nones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out.\nSilently, between all the details of his business, the _power of\njudging_ in all that class of matter will have built itself up within\nhim as a possession that will never pass away. Young people should know\nthis truth in advance. The ignorance of it has probably engendered more\ndiscouragement and faint-heartedness in youths embarking on arduous\ncareers than all other causes put together.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[136] This chapter has already appeared in the Popular Science Monthly\nfor February 1887.\n\n[137] In the sense above explained, which applies to inner structure as\nwell as to outer form.\n\n[138] Revue Philosophique, i, 324.\n\n[139] Some paths, to be sure, are banked up by bodies moving through\nthem under too great pressure, and made impervious. These special cases\nwe disregard.\n\n[140] We cannot say _the will_, for, though many, perhaps most, human\nhabits were once voluntary actions, no action, as we shall see in\na later chapter, can be _primarily_ such. While an habitual action\nmay once have been voluntary, the voluntary action must before that,\nat least once, have been impulsive or reflex. It is this very first\noccurrence of all that we consider in the text.\n\n[141] Those who desire a more definite formulation may consult J.\nFiske's 'Cosmic Philosophy,' vol. ii, pp. 142-146 and Spencer's\n'Principles of Biology,' sections 302 and 303, and the part entitled\n'Physical Synthesis' of his 'Principles of Psychology.' Mr. Spencer\nthere tries, not only to show how new actions may arise in nervous\nsystems and form new reflex arcs therein, but even how nervous\ntissue may actually be born by the passage of new waves of isometric\ntransformation through an originally indifferent mass. I cannot help\nthinking that Mr. Spencer's data, under a great show of precision,\nconceal vagueness and improbability, and even self-contradiction.\n\n[142] 'Mental Physiology' (1874) pp. 339-345.\n\n[143] [See, later, Masius in Van Benedens' and Van Bambeke's 'Archives\nde Biologie,' vol. i (Li\u00e8ge, 1880).--W. J.]\n\n[144] G. H. Schneider: 'Der menschliche Wille' (1882), pp. 417-419\n(freely translated). For the drain-simile, see also Spencer's\n'Psychology,' part v, chap. viii.\n\n[145] Physiology of Mind, p. 155.\n\n[146] Carpenter's 'Mental Physiology' (1874), pp. 217, 218.\n\n[147] Von Hartmann devotes a chapter of his 'Philosophy of the\nUnconscious' (English translation, vol. i, p. 72) to proving that they\nmust be both _ideas_ and _unconscious_.\n\n[148] 'Mental Physiology,' p. 20.\n\n[149] 'Der menschliche Wille,' pp. 447, 448.\n\n[150] 'Der menschliche Wille,' p. 439. The last sentence is rather\nfreely translated--the sense is unaltered.\n\n[151] Huxley's 'Elementary Lessons in Physiology,' lesson xii.\n\n[152] See the admirable passage about success at the outset, in his\nHandbuch der Moral (1878), pp. 38-43.\n\n[153] J. Bahnsen: 'Beitr\u00e4ge zu Charakterologie' (1867), vol i, p. 209.\n\n[154] See for remarks on this subject a readable article by Miss V.\nScudder on 'Musical Devotees and Morals,' in the Andover Review for\nJanuary. 1887.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nTHE AUTOMATON-THEORY.\n\n\nIn describing the functions of the hemispheres a short way back, we\nused language derived from both the bodily and the mental life, saying\nnow that the animal made indeterminate and unforeseeable reactions,\nand anon that he was swayed by considerations of future good and\nevil; treating his hemispheres sometimes as the seat of memory and\nideas in the psychic sense, and sometimes talking of them as simply a\ncomplicated addition to his reflex machinery. This sort of vacillation\nin the point of view is a fatal incident of all ordinary talk about\nthese questions; but I must now settle my scores with those readers to\nwhom I already dropped a word in passing (see Footnote 6) and who have\nprobably been dissatisfied with my conduct ever since.\n\nSuppose we restrict our view to facts of one and the same plane, and\nlet that be the bodily plane: cannot all the outward phenomena of\nintelligence still be exhaustively described? Those mental images,\nthose 'considerations,' whereof we spoke,--presumably they do not\narise without neural processes arising simultaneously with them,\nand presumably each consideration corresponds to a process _sui\ngeneris_, and unlike all the rest. In other words, however numerous\nand delicately differentiated the train of ideas may be, the train\nof brain-events that runs alongside of it must in both respects be\nexactly its match, and we must postulate a neural machinery that offers\na living counterpart for every shading, however fine, of the history\nof its owner's mind. Whatever degree of complication the latter may\nreach, the complication of the machinery must be quite as extreme,\notherwise we should have to admit that there may be mental events to\nwhich no brain-events correspond. But such an admission as this the\nphysiologist is reluctant to make. It would violate all his beliefs.\n'No psychosis without neurosis,' is one form which the principle of\ncontinuity takes in his mind.\n\nBut this principle forces the physiologist to make still another step.\nIf neural action is as complicated as mind; and if in the sympathetic\nsystem and lower spinal cord we see what, so far as we know, is\nunconscious neural action executing deeds that to all outward intent\nmay be called intelligent; what is there to hinder us from supposing\nthat even where we know consciousness to be there, the still more\ncomplicated neural action which we believe to be its inseparable\ncompanion is alone and of itself the real agent of whatever intelligent\ndeeds may appear? \"As actions of a certain degree of complexity are\nbrought about by mere mechanism, why may not actions of a still greater\ndegree of complexity be the result of a more refined mechanism?\" The\nconception of reflex action is surely one of the best conquests of\nphysiological theory; why not be radical with it? Why not say that just\nas the spinal cord is a machine with few reflexes, so the hemispheres\nare a machine with many, and that that is all the difference? The\nprinciple of continuity would press us to accept this view.\n\nBut what on this view could be the function of the consciousness\nitself? _Mechanical_ function it would have none. The sense-organs\nwould awaken the brain-cells; these would awaken each other in rational\nand orderly sequence, until the time for action came; and then the last\nbrain-vibration would discharge downward into the motor tracts. But\nthis would be a quite autonomous chain of occurrences, and whatever\nmind went with it would be there only as an 'epiphenomenon,' an inert\nspectator, a sort of 'foam, aura, or melody' as Mr. Hodgson says,\nwhose opposition or whose furtherance would be alike powerless over\nthe occurrences themselves. When talking, some time ago, we ought\nnot, accordingly, _as physiologists_, to have said anything about\n'considerations' as guiding the animal. We ought to have said 'paths\nleft in the hemispherical cortex by former currents,' and nothing more.\n\nNow so simple and attractive is this conception from the consistently\nphysiological point of view, that it is quite wonderful to see how late\nit was stumbled on in philosophy, and how few people, even when it\nhas been explained to them, fully and easily realize its import. Much\nof the polemic writing against it is by men who have as yet failed to\ntake it into their imaginations. Since this has been the case, it seems\nworth while to devote a few more words to making it plausible, before\ncriticising it ourselves.\n\nTo Descartes belongs the credit of having first been bold enough to\nconceive of a completely self-sufficing nervous mechanism which should\nbe able to perform complicated and apparently intelligent acts. By a\nsingularly arbitrary restriction, however, Descartes stopped short at\nman, and while contending that in beasts the nervous machinery was all,\nhe held that the higher acts of man were the result of the agency of\nhis rational soul. The opinion that beasts have no consciousness at\nall was of course too paradoxical to maintain itself long as anything\nmore than a curious item in the history of philosophy. And with its\nabandonment the very notion that the nervous system _per se_ might work\nthe work of intelligence, which was an integral, though detachable\npart of the whole theory, seemed also to slip out of men's conception,\nuntil, in this century, the elaboration of the doctrine of reflex\naction made it possible and natural that it should again arise. But it\nwas not till 1870, I believe, that Mr. Hodgson made the decisive step,\nby saying that feelings, no matter how intensely they may be present,\ncan have no causal efficacy whatever, and comparing them to the colors\nlaid on the surface of a mosaic, of which the events in the nervous\nsystem are represented by the stones.[155] Obviously the stones are\nheld in place by each other and not by the several colors which they\nsupport.\n\nAbout the same time Mr. Spalding, and a little later Messrs. Huxley\nand Clifford, gave great publicity to an identical doctrine,\nthough in their case it was backed by less refined metaphysical\nconsiderations.[156]\n\nA few sentences from Huxley and Clifford may be subjoined to make the\nmatter entirely clear. Professor Huxley says:\n\n \"The consciousness of brutes would appear to be related to the\n mechanism of their body simply as a collateral product of its working,\n and to be as completely without any power of modifying that working as\n the steam-whistle which accompanies the work of a locomotive engine\n is without influence on its machinery. Their volition, if they have\n any, is an emotion _indicative_ of physical changes, not a _cause_ of\n such changes.... The soul stands related to the body as the bell of a\n clock to the works, and consciousness answers to the sound which the\n bell gives out when it is struck.... Thus far I have strictly confined\n myself to the automatism of brutes.... It is quite true that, to the\n best of my judgment, the argumentation which applies to brutes holds\n equally good of men; and, therefore, that all states of consciousness\n in us, as in them, are immediately caused by molecular changes of the\n brain-substance. It seems to me that in men, as in brutes, there is\n no proof that any state of consciousness is the cause of change in\n the motion of the matter of the organism. If these positions are well\n based, it follows that our mental conditions are simply the symbols\n in consciousness of the changes which take place automatically in the\n organism; and that, to take an extreme illustration, the feeling we\n call volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but the symbol of\n that state of the brain which is the immediate cause of that act. We\n are conscious automata.\"\n\nProfessor Clifford writes:\n\n \"All the evidence that we have goes to show that the physical world\n gets along entirely by itself, according to practically universal\n rules.... The train of physical facts between the stimulus sent into\n the eye, or to any one of our senses, and the exertion which follows\n it, and the train of physical facts which goes on in the brain, even\n when there is no stimulus and no exertion,--these are perfectly\n complete physical trams, and every step is fully accounted for by\n mechanical conditions.... The two things are on utterly different\n platforms--the physical facts go along by themselves, and the mental\n facts go along by themselves. There is a parallelism between them,\n but there is no interference of one with the other. Again, if anybody\n says that the will influences matter, the statement is not untrue, but\n it is nonsense. Such an assertion belongs to the crude materialism of\n the savage. The only thing which influences matter is the position\n of surrounding matter or the motion of surrounding matter.... The\n assertion that another man's volition, a feeling in his consciousness\n that I cannot perceive, is part of the train of physical facts which\n I may perceive,--this is neither true nor untrue, but nonsense; it\n is a combination of words whose corresponding ideas will not go\n together.... Sometimes one series is known better, and sometimes\n the other; so that in telling a story we speak sometimes of mental\n and sometimes of material facts. A feeling of chill made a man run;\n strictly speaking, the nervous disturbance which coexisted with that\n feeling of chill made him run, if we want to talk about material\n facts; or the feeling of chill produced the form of sub-consciousness\n which coexists with the motion of legs, if we want to talk about\n mental facts.... When, therefore, we ask: 'What is the physical link\n between the ingoing message from chilled skin and the outgoing message\n which moves the leg? 'and the answer is, 'A man's will,' we have as\n much right to be amused as if we had asked our friend with the picture\n what pigment was used in painting the cannon in the foreground, and\n received the answer, 'Wrought iron.' It will be found excellent\n practice in the mental operations required by this doctrine to imagine\n a train, the fore part of which is an engine and three carriages\n linked with iron couplings, and the hind part three other carriages\n linked with iron couplings; the bond between the two parts being made\n up out of the sentiments of amity subsisting between the stoker and\n the guard.\"\n\nTo comprehend completely the consequences of the dogma so confidently\nenunciated, one should unflinchingly apply it to the most complicated\nexamples. The movements of our tongues and pens, the flashings of our\neyes in conversation, are of course events of a material order, and as\nsuch their causal antecedents must be exclusively material. If we knew\nthoroughly the nervous system of Shakespeare, and as thoroughly all\nhis environing conditions, we should be able to show why at a certain\nperiod of his life his hand came to trace on certain sheets of paper\nthose crabbed little black marks which we for shortness' sake call\nthe manuscript of Hamlet. We should understand the rationale of every\nerasure and alteration therein, and we should understand all this\nwithout in the slightest degree acknowledging the existence of the\nthoughts in Shakespeare's mind. The words and sentences would be taken,\nnot as signs of anything beyond themselves, but as little outward\nfacts, pure and simple. In like manner we might exhaustively write\nthe biography of those two hundred pounds, more or less, of warmish\nalbuminoid matter called Martin Luther, without ever implying that it\nfelt.\n\nBut, on the other hand, nothing in all this could prevent us from\ngiving an equally complete account of either Luther's or Shakespeare's\nspiritual history, an account in which every gleam of thought and\nemotion should find its place. The mind-history would run alongside\nof the body-history of each man, and each point in the one would\ncorrespond to, but not react upon, a point in the other. So the melody\nfloats from the harp-string, but neither checks nor quickens its\nvibrations; so the shadow runs alongside the pedestrian, but in no way\ninfluences his steps.\n\nAnother inference, apparently more paradoxical still, needs to be\nmade, though, as far as I am aware, Dr. Hodgson is the only writer\nwho has explicitly drawn it. That inference is that feelings, not\ncausing nerve-actions, cannot even cause each other. To ordinary\ncommon sense, felt pain is, as such, not only the cause of outward\ntears and cries, but also the cause of such inward events as sorrow,\ncompunction, desire, or inventive thought. So the consciousness of\ngood news is the direct producer of the feeling of joy, the awareness\nof premises that of the belief in conclusions. But according to\nthe automaton-theory, each of the feelings mentioned is only the\ncorrelate of some nerve-movement whose _cause_ lay wholly in a previous\nnerve-movement. The first nerve-movement called up the second; whatever\nfeeling was attached to the second consequently found itself following\nupon the feeling that was attached to the first. If, for example, good\nnews was the consciousness correlated with the first movement, then\njoy turned out to be the correlate in consciousness of the second.\nBut all the while the items of the nerve series were the only ones in\ncausal continuity; the items of the conscious series, however inwardly\nrational their sequence, were simply juxtaposed.\n\n\nREASONS FOR THE THEORY.\n\n\nThe 'conscious automaton-theory,' as this conception is generally\ncalled, is thus a radical and simple conception of the manner in\nwhich certain facts may possibly occur. But between conception and\nbelief, proof ought to lie. And when we ask, 'What proves that all\nthis is more than a mere conception of the possible?' it is not easy\nto get a sufficient reply. If we start from the frog's spinal cord and\nreason by continuity, saying, as that acts so intelligently, _though\nunconscious_, so the higher centres, _though conscious_, may have the\nintelligence they show quite as mechanically based; we are immediately\nmet by the exact counter-argument from continuity, an argument actually\nurged by such writers as Pfl\u00fcger and Lewes, which starts from the acts\nof the hemispheres, and says: \"As _these_ owe _their_ intelligence to\nthe consciousness which we know to be there, so the intelligence of\nthe spinal cord's acts must really be due to the invisible presence of\na consciousness lower in degree.\" All arguments from continuity work\nin two ways: you can either level up or level down by their means. And\nit is clear that such arguments as these can eat each other up to all\neternity.\n\nThere remains a sort of philosophic faith, bred like most faiths from\nan \u00e6sthetic demand. Mental and physical events are, on all hands,\nadmitted to present the strongest contrast in the entire field of\nbeing. The chasm which yawns between them is less easily bridged over\nby the mind than any interval we know. Why, then, not call it an\nabsolute chasm, and say not only that the two worlds are different,\nbut that they are independent? This gives us the comfort of all simple\nand absolute formulas, and it makes each chain homogeneous to our\nconsideration. When talking of nervous tremors and bodily actions, we\nmay feel secure against intrusion from an irrelevant mental world.\nWhen, on the other hand, we speak of feelings, we may with equal\nconsistency use terms always of one denomination, and never be annoyed\nby what Aristotle calls 'slipping into another kind.' The desire on\nthe part of men educated in laboratories not to have their physical\nreasonings mixed up with such incommensurable factors as feelings is\ncertainly very strong. I have heard a most intelligent biologist say:\n\"It is high time for scientific men to protest against the recognition\nof any such thing as consciousness in a scientific investigation.\" In\na word, feeling constitutes the 'unscientific' half of existence, and\nany one who enjoys calling himself a 'scientist' will be too happy to\npurchase an untrammelled homogeneity of terms in the studies of his\npredilection, at the slight cost of admitting a dualism which, in the\nsame breath that it allows to mind an independent status of being,\nbanishes it to a limbo of causal inertness, from whence no intrusion or\ninterruption on its part need ever be feared.\n\nOver and above this great postulate that matters must be kept simple,\nthere is, it must be confessed, still another highly abstract reason\nfor denying causal efficacity to our feelings. We can form no positive\nimage of the _modus operandi_ of a volition or other thought affecting\nthe cerebral molecules.\n\n \"Let us try to imagine an idea, say of food, producing a movement, say\n of carrying food to the mouth.... What is the method of its action?\n Does it assist the decomposition of the molecules of the gray matter,\n or does it retard the process, or does it alter the direction in\n which the shocks are distributed? Let us imagine the molecules of the\n gray matter combined in such a way that they will fall into simpler\n combinations on the impact of an incident force. Now suppose the\n incident force, in the shape of a shock from some other centre, to\n impinge upon these molecules. By hypothesis it will decompose them,\n and they will fall into the simpler combination. How is the idea of\n food to prevent this decomposition? Manifestly it can do so only by\n increasing; the force which binds the molecules together. Good! Try\n to imagine the idea of a beefsteak binding two molecules together.\n It is impossible. Equally impossible is it to imagine a similar idea\n loosening the attractive force between two molecules.\"[157]\n\nThis passage from an exceedingly clever writer expresses admirably\nthe difficulty to which I allude. Combined with a strong sense of the\n'chasm' between the two worlds, and with a lively faith in reflex\nmachinery, the sense of this difficulty can hardly fail to make one\nturn consciousness out of the door as a superfluity so far as one's\nexplanations go. One may bow her out politely, allow her to remain as\nan 'epiphenomenon' (invaluable word!), but one insists that matter\nshall hold all the power.\n\n \"Having thoroughly recognized the fathomless abyss that separates mind\n from matter, and having so blended the very notion into his very\n nature that there is no chance of his ever forgetting it or failing\n to saturate with it all his meditations, the student of psychology\n has next to appreciate the association between these two orders of\n phenomena.... They are associated in a manner so intimate that some\n of the greatest thinkers consider them different aspects of the same\n process.... When the rearrangement of molecules takes place in the\n higher regions of the brain, a change of consciousness simultaneously\n occurs.... The change of consciousness never takes place without the\n change in the brain; the change in the brain never ... without the\n change in consciousness. But _why_ the two occur together, or what\n the link is which connects them, we do not know, and most authorities\n believe that we never shall and never can know. Having firmly and\n tenaciously grasped these two notions, of the absolute separateness\n of mind and matter, and of the invariable concomitance of a mental\n change with a bodily change, the student will enter on the study of\n psychology with half his difficulties surmounted.\"[158]\n\nHalf his difficulties ignored, I should prefer to say. For this\n'concomitance' in the midst of 'absolute separateness' is an utterly\nirrational notion. It is to my mind quite inconceivable that\nconsciousness should have _nothing to do_ with a business which it\nso faithfully attends. And the question, 'What has it to do?' is one\nwhich psychology has no right to 'surmount,' for it is her plain duty\nto consider it. The fact is that the whole question of interaction\nand influence between things is a metaphysical question, and cannot\nbe discussed at all by those who are unwilling to go into matters\nthoroughly. It is truly enough hard to imagine the 'idea of a beefsteak\nbinding two molecules together;' but since Hume's time it has been\nequally hard to imagine _anything_ binding them together. The whole\nnotion of 'binding' is a mystery, the first step towards the solution\nof which is to clear scholastic rubbish out of the way. Popular\nscience talks of 'forces,' 'attractions' or 'affinities' as binding\nthe molecules; but clear science, though she may use such words to\nabbreviate discourse, has no use for the conceptions, and is satisfied\nwhen she can express in simple 'laws' the bare space-relations of the\nmolecules as functions of each other and of time. To the more curiously\ninquiring mind, however, this simplified expression of the bare facts\nis not enough; there must be a 'reason' for them, and something must\n'determine' the laws. And when one seriously sits down to consider what\nsort of a thing one _means_ when one asks for a 'reason,' one is led so\nfar afield, so far away from popular science and its scholasticism, as\nto see that even such a fact as the existence or non-existence in the\nuniverse of 'the idea of a beefsteak' may not be wholly indifferent to\nother facts in the same universe, and in particular may have something\nto do with determining the distance at which two molecules in that\nuniverse shall lie apart. If this is so, then common-sense, though the\nintimate nature of causality and of the connection of things in the\nuniverse lies beyond her pitifully bounded horizon, has the root and\ngist of the truth in her hands when she obstinately holds to it that\nfeelings and ideas are causes. However inadequate our ideas of causal\nefficacy may be, we are less wide of the mark when we say that our\nideas and feelings have it, than the Automatists are when they say they\nhaven't it. As in the night all cats are gray, so in the darkness of\nmetaphysical criticism all causes are obscure. But one has no right\nto pull the pall over the psychic half of the subject only, as the\nautomatists do, and to say that _that_ causation is unintelligible,\nwhilst in the same breath one dogmatizes about _material_ causation\nas if Hume, Kant, and Lotze had never been born. One cannot thus\nblow hot and cold. One must be impartially _naif_ or impartially\ncritical. If the latter, the reconstruction must be thorough-going or\n'metaphysical,' and will probably preserve the common-sense view that\nideas are forces, in some translated form. But Psychology is a mere\nnatural science, accepting certain terms uncritically as her data, and\nstopping short of metaphysical reconstruction. Like physics, she must\nbe _naive_; and if she finds that in her very peculiar field of study\nideas _seem_ to be causes, she had better continue to talk of them\nas such. She gains absolutely nothing by a breach with common-sense\nin this matter, and she loses, to say the least, all naturalness\nof speech. If feelings are causes, of course their effects must be\nfurtherances and checkings of internal cerebral motions, of which in\nthemselves we are entirely without knowledge. It is probable that for\nyears to come we shall have to infer what happens in the brain either\nfrom our feelings or from motor effects which we observe. The organ\nwill be for us a sort of vat in which feelings and motions somehow go\non stewing together, and in which innumerable things happen of which we\ncatch but the statistical result. Why, under these circumstances, we\nshould be asked to forswear the language of our childhood I cannot well\nimagine, especially as it is perfectly compatible with the language of\nphysiology. The feelings can produce nothing absolutely new, they can\nonly reinforce and inhibit reflex currents which already exist, and the\noriginal organization of these by physiological forces must always be\nthe ground-work of the psychological scheme.\n\nMy conclusion is that to urge the automaton-theory upon us, as it is\nnow urged, on purely _a priori_ and _quasi-_metaphysical grounds, is an\n_unwarrantable impertinence in the present state of psychology_.\n\n\nREASONS AGAINST THE THEORY.\n\n\nBut there are much more positive reasons than this why we ought to\ncontinue to talk in psychology as if consciousness had causal efficacy.\nThe _particulars of the distribution of consciousness_, so far as we\nknow them, _point to its being efficacious_. Let us trace some of them.\n\nIt is very generally admitted, though the point would be hard to prove,\nthat consciousness grows the more complex and intense the higher we\nrise in the animal kingdom. That of a man must exceed that of an\noyster. From this point of view it seems an organ, superadded to the\nother organs which maintain the animal in the struggle for existence;\nand the presumption of course is that it helps him in some way in the\nstruggle, just as they do. But it cannot help him without being in some\nway efficacious and influencing the course of his bodily history. If\nnow it could be shown in what way consciousness _might_ help him, and\nif, moreover, the defects of his other organs (where consciousness is\nmost developed) are such as to make them need just the kind of help\nthat consciousness would bring provided it _were_ efficacious; why,\nthen the plausible inference would be that it came just _because_ of\nits efficacy--in other words, its efficacy would be inductively proved.\n\nNow the study of the phenomena of consciousness which we shall make\nthroughout the rest of this book will show us that consciousness is\nat all times primarily _a selecting agency_.[159] Whether we take it\nin the lowest sphere of sense, or in the highest of intellection, we\nfind it always doing one thing, choosing one out of several of the\nmaterials so presented to its notice, emphasizing and accentuating that\nand suppressing as far as possible all the rest. The item emphasized is\nalways in close connection with some _interest_ felt by consciousness\nto be paramount at the time.\n\nBut what are now the defects of the nervous system in those animals\nwhose consciousness seems most highly developed? Chief among them must\nbe _instability_. The cerebral hemispheres are the characteristically\n'high' nerve-centres, and we saw how indeterminate and unforeseeable\ntheir performances were in comparison with those of the basal ganglia\nand the cord. But this very vagueness constitutes their advantage.\nThey allow their possessor to adapt his conduct to the minutest\nalterations in the environing circumstances, any one of which may be\nfor him a sign, suggesting distant motives more powerful than any\npresent solicitations of sense. It seems as if certain mechanical\nconclusions should be drawn from this state of things. An organ,\nswayed by slight impressions is an organ whose natural state is one of\nunstable equilibrium. We may imagine the various lines of discharge\nin the cerebrum to be almost on a par in point of permeability--what\ndischarge a given small impression will produce may be called\n_accidental_, in the sense in which we say it is a matter of accident\nwhether a rain-drop falling on a mountain ridge descend the eastern\nor the western slope. It is in this sense that we may call it a\nmatter of accident whether a child be a boy or a girl. The ovum is so\nunstable a body that certain causes too minute for our apprehension\nmay at a certain moment tip it one way or the other. The natural law\nof an organ constituted after this fashion can be nothing but a law\nof caprice. I do not see how one could reasonably expect from it any\ncertain pursuance of useful lines of reaction, such as the few and\nfatally determined performances of the lower centres constitute within\ntheir narrow sphere. The dilemma in regard to the nervous system seems,\nin short, to be of the following kind. We may construct one which\nwill react infallibly and certainly, but it will then be capable of\nreacting to very few changes in the environment--it will fail to be\nadapted to all the rest. We may, on the other hand, construct a nervous\nsystem potentially adapted to respond to an infinite variety of minute\nfeatures in the situation; but its fallibility will then be as great\nas its elaboration. We can never be sure that its equilibrium will\nbe upset in the appropriate direction. In short, a high brain may do\nmany things, and may do each of them at a very slight hint. But its\nhair-trigger organization makes of it a happy-go-lucky, hit-or-miss\naffair. It is as likely to do the crazy as the sane thing at any given\nmoment. A low brain does few things, and in doing them perfectly\nforfeits all other use. The performances of a high brain are like dice\nthrown forever on a table. Unless they be loaded, what chance is there\nthat the highest number will turn up oftener than the lowest?\n\nAll this is said of the brain as a physical machine pure and simple.\n_Can consciousness increase its efficiency by loading its dice?_ Such\nis the problem.\n\nLoading its dice would mean bringing a more or less constant pressure\nto bear in favor of _those_ of its performances which make for the most\npermanent interests cf the brain's owner; it would mean a constant\ninhibition of the tendencies to stray aside.\n\nWell, just such pressure and such inhibition are what consciousness\n_seems_ to be exerting all the while. And the interests in whose favor\nit seems to exert them are _its_ interests and its alone, interests\nwhich it _creates_, and which, but for it, would have no status in the\nrealm of being whatever. We talk, it is true, when we are darwinizing,\nas if the mere _body_ that owns the brain had interests; we speak\nabout the utilities of its various organs and how they help or hinder\nthe body's survival; and we treat the survival as if it were an\nabsolute end, existing as such in the physical world, a sort of actual\n_should-be_, presiding over the animal and judging his reactions,\nquite apart from the presence of any commenting intelligence outside.\nWe forget that in the absence of some such superadded commenting\nintelligence (whether it be that of the animal itself, or only ours\nor Mr. Darwin's), the reactions cannot be properly talked of as\n'useful' or 'hurtful' at all. Considered merely physically, all that\ncan be said of them is that _if_ they occur in a certain way survival\nwill as a matter of fact prove to be their incidental consequence.\nThe organs themselves, and all the rest of the physical world, will,\nhowever, all the time be quite indifferent to this consequence, and\nwould quite as cheerfully, the circumstances changed, compass the\nanimal's destruction. In a word, survival can enter into a purely\nphysiological discussion only as an _hypothesis made by an onlooker_,\nabout the future. But the moment you bring a consciousness into the\nmidst, survival ceases to be a mere hypothesis. No longer is it, \"_if_\nsurvival is to occur, then so and so must brain and other organs work.\"\nIt has now become an imperative decree: \"Survival _shall_ occur, and\ntherefore organs _must_ so work!\" _Real_ ends appear for the first\ntime now upon the world's stage. The conception of consciousness as a\npurely cognitive form of being, which is the pet way of regarding it\nin many idealistic schools, modern as well as ancient, is thoroughly\nanti-psychological, as the remainder of this book will show. Every\nactually existing consciousness seems to itself at any rate to be a\n_fighter for ends_, of which many, but for its presence, would not be\nends at all. Its powers of cognition are mainly subservient to these\nends, discerning which facts further them and which do not.\n\nNow let consciousness only be what it seems to itself, and it will help\nan instable brain to compass its proper ends. The movements of the\nbrain _per se_ yield the means of attaining these ends mechanically,\nbut only out of a lot of other ends, if so they may be called, which\nare not the proper ones of the animal, but often quite opposed. The\nbrain is an instrument of possibilities, but of no certainties. But the\nconsciousness, with its own ends present to it, and knowing also well\nwhich possibilities lead thereto and which away, will, if endowed with\ncausal efficacy, reinforce the favorable possibilities and repress the\nunfavorable or indifferent ones. The nerve-currents, coursing through\nthe cells and fibres, must in this case be supposed strengthened by\nthe fact of their awaking one consciousness and dampened by awaking\nanother. _How_ such reaction of the consciousness upon the currents may\noccur must remain at present unsolved: it is enough for my purpose to\nhave shown that it may not uselessly exist, and that the matter is less\nsimple than the brain-automatists hold.\n\nAll the facts of the natural history of consciousness lend color\nto this view. Consciousness, for example, is only intense when\nnerve-processes are hesitant. In rapid, automatic, habitual action\nit sinks to a minimum. Nothing could be more fitting than this, if\nconsciousness have the teleological function we suppose; nothing more\nmeaningless, if not. Habitual actions are certain, and being in no\ndanger of going astray from their end, need no extraneous help. In\nhesitant action, there seem many alternative possibilities of final\nnervous discharge. The feeling awakened by the nascent excitement of\neach alternative nerve-tract seems by its attractive or repulsive\nquality to determine whether the excitement shall abort or shall become\ncomplete. Where indecision is great, as before a dangerous leap,\nconsciousness is agonizingly intense. Feeling, from this point of view,\nmay be likened to a cross-section of the chain of nervous discharge,\nascertaining the links already laid down, and groping among the fresh\nends presented to it for the one which seems best to fit the case.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe phenomena of 'vicarious function' which we studied in Chapter II\nseem to form another bit of circumstantial evidence. A machine in\nworking order acts fatally in one way. Our consciousness calls this the\nright way. Take out a valve, throw a wheel out of gear or bend a pivot,\nand it becomes a different machine, acting just as fatally in another\nway which we call the wrong way. But the machine itself knows nothing\nof wrong or right: matter has no ideals to pursue. A locomotive will\ncarry its train through an open drawbridge as cheerfully as to any\nother destination.\n\nA brain with part of it scooped out is virtually a new machine, and\nduring the first days after the operation functions in a thoroughly\nabnormal manner. As a matter of fact, however, its performances\nbecome from day to day more normal, until at last a practised eye\nmay be needed to suspect anything wrong. Some of the restoration is\nundoubtedly due to 'inhibitions' passing away. But if the consciousness\nwhich goes with the rest of the brain, be there not only in order\nto take cognizance of each functional error, but also to exert\nan efficient pressure to check it if it be a sin of commission,\nand to lend a strengthening hand if it be a weakness or sin of\nomission,--nothing seems more natural than that the remaining parts,\nassisted in this way, should by virtue of the principle of habit grow\nback to the old teleological modes of exercise for which they were at\nfirst incapacitated. Nothing, on the contrary, seems at first sight\nmore unnatural than that they should vicariously take up the duties of\na part now lost without those _duties as such_ exerting any persuasive\nor coercive force. At the end of Chapter XXVI I shall return to this\nagain.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere is yet another set of facts which seem explicable on the\nsupposition that consciousness has causal efficacy. _It is a well-known\nfact that pleasures are generally associated with beneficial, pains\nwith detrimental, experiences._ All the fundamental vital processes\nillustrate this law. Starvation, suffocation, privation of food, drink\nand sleep, work when exhausted, burns, wounds, inflammation, the\neffects of poison, are as disagreeable as filling the hungry stomach,\nenjoying rest and sleep after fatigue, exercise after rest, and a\nsound skin and unbroken bones at all times, are pleasant. Mr. Spencer\nand others have suggested that these coincidences are due, not to any\npre-established harmony, but to the mere action of natural selection\nwhich would certainly kill off in the long-run any breed of creatures\nto whom the fundamentally noxious experience seemed enjoyable. An\nanimal that should take pleasure in a feeling of suffocation would, if\nthat pleasure were efficacious enough to make him immerse his head in\nwater, enjoy a longevity of four or five minutes. But if pleasures and\npains have no efficacy, one does not see (without some such _a priori_\nrational harmony as would be scouted by the 'scientific' champions\nof the automaton-theory) why the most noxious acts, such as burning,\nmight not give thrills of delight, and the most necessary ones, such\nas breathing, cause agony. The exceptions to the law are, it is true,\nnumerous, but relate to experiences that are either not vital or not\nuniversal. Drunkenness, for instance, which though noxious, is to many\npersons delightful, is a very exceptional experience. But, as the\nexcellent physiologist Pick remarks, if all rivers and springs ran\nalcohol instead of water, either all men would now be born to hate it\nor our nerves would have been selected so as to drink it with impunity.\nThe only considerable attempt, in fact, that has been made to explain\nthe _distribution_ of our feelings is that of Mr. Grant Allen in his\nsuggestive little work _Physiological \u00c6sthetics_; and his reasoning is\nbased exclusively on that causal efficacy of pleasures and pains which\nthe 'double-aspect' partisans so strenuously deny.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThus, then, from every point of view the circumstantial evidence\nagainst that theory is strong. _A priori_ analysis of both brain-action\nand conscious action shows us that if the latter were efficacious it\nwould, by its selective emphasis, make amends for the indeterminateness\nof the former; whilst the study _a posteriori_ of the _distribution_\nof consciousness shows it to be exactly such as we might expect in an\norgan added for the sake of steering a nervous system grown too complex\nto regulate itself. The conclusion that it is useful is, after all\nthis, quite justifiable. But, if it is useful, it must be so through\nits causal efficaciousness, and the automaton-theory must succumb\nto the theory of common-sense. I, at any rate (pending metaphysical\nreconstructions not yet successfully achieved), shall have no\nhesitation in using the language of common-sense throughout this book.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[155] The Theory of Practice, vol. i, p. 416 ff.\n\n[156] The present writer recalls how in 1869, when still a medical\nstudent, he began to write an essay showing how almost every one who\nspeculated about brain-processes illicitly interpolated into his\naccount of them links derived from the entirely heterogeneous universe\nof Feeling. Spencer, Hodgson (in his Time and Space), Maudsley,\nLockhart Clarke, Bain, Dr. S. Carpenter, and other authors were cited\nas having been guilty of the confusion. The writing was soon stopped\nbecause he perceived that the view which he was upholding against these\nauthors was a pure conception, with no proofs to be adduced of its\nreality. Later it seemed to him that whatever _proofs_ existed really\ntold in favor of their view.\n\n[157] Chas. Mercier: The Nervous System and the Mind (1888), p. 9.\n\n[158] _Op. cit._ p. 11.\n\n[159] See in particular the end of Chapter IX.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\nTHE MIND-STUFF THEORY.\n\n\nThe reader who found himself swamped with too much metaphysics in the\nlast chapter will have a still worse time of it in this one, which is\nexclusively metaphysical. Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually\nobstinate effort to think clearly. The fundamental conceptions of\npsychology are practically very clear to us, but theoretically they are\nvery confused, and one easily makes the obscurest assumptions in this\nscience without realizing, until challenged, what internal difficulties\nthey involve. When these assumptions have once established themselves\n(as they have a way of doing in our very descriptions of the phenomenal\nfacts) it is almost impossible to get rid of them afterwards or to make\nany one see that they are not essential features of the subject. The\nonly way to prevent this disaster is to scrutinize them beforehand and\nmake them give an articulate account of themselves before letting them\npass. One of the obscurest of the assumptions of which I speak is _the\nassumption that our mental states are composite in structure, made up\nof smaller states conjoined_. This hypothesis has outward advantages\nwhich make it almost irresistibly attractive to the intellect, and\nyet it is inwardly quite unintelligible. Of its unintelligibility,\nhowever, half the writers on psychology seem unaware. As our own aim is\n_to understand_ if possible, I make no apology for singling out this\nparticular notion for very explicit treatment before taking up the\ndescriptive part of our work. _The theory of 'mind-stuff' is the theory\nthat our mental states are compounds_, expressed in its most radical\nform.\n\n\nEVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY DEMANDS A MIND-DUST.\n\n\nIn a general theory of evolution the inorganic comes first, then the\nlowest forms of animal and vegetable life, then forms of life that\npossess mentality, and finally those like ourselves that possess it\nin a high degree. As long as we keep to the consideration of purely\noutward facts, even the most complicated facts of biology, our task\nas evolutionists is comparatively easy. We are dealing all the time\nwith matter and its aggregations and separations; and although our\ntreatment must perforce be hypothetical, this does not prevent it from\nbeing _continuous_. The point which as evolutionists we are bound\nto hold fast to is that all the new forms of being that make their\nappearance are really nothing more than results of the redistribution\nof the original and unchanging materials. The self-same atoms which,\nchaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily\ncaught in peculiar positions, form our brains; and the 'evolution' of\nthe brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms\ncame to be so caught and jammed. In this story no new _natures_, no\nfactors not present at the beginning, are introduced at any later stage.\n\nBut with the dawn of consciousness an entirely new nature seems to slip\nin, something whereof the potency was _not_ given in the mere outward\natoms of the original chaos.\n\nThe enemies of evolution have been quick to pounce upon this undeniable\ndiscontinuity in the data of the world and many of them, from the\nfailure of evolutionary explanations at this point, have inferred their\ngeneral incapacity all along the line. Every one admits the entire\nincommensurability of feeling as such with material motion as such.\n\"A motion became a feeling!\"--no phrase that our lips can frame is\nso devoid of apprehensible meaning. Accordingly, even the vaguest of\nevolutionary enthusiasts, when deliberately comparing material with\nmental facts, have been as forward as any one else to emphasize the\n'chasm' between the inner and the outer worlds.\n\n \"Can the oscillations of a molecule,\" says Mr. Spencer, \"be\n represented side by side with a nervous shock [he means a mental\n shock], and the two be recognized as one? No effort enables us to\n assimilate them. That a unit of feeling has nothing in common with a\n unit of motion becomes more than ever manifest when we bring the two\n into juxtaposition.\"[160]\n\nAnd again:\n\n \"Suppose it to have become quite clear that a shock in consciousness\n and a molecular motion are the subjective and objective faces of the\n same thing; we continue utterly incapable of uniting the two, so as to\n conceive that reality of which they are the opposite faces.\"[161]\n\nIn other words, incapable of perceiving in them any common character.\nSo Tyndall, in that lucky paragraph which has been quoted so often that\nevery one knows it by heart:\n\n \"The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts\n of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and\n a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously; we do\n not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the\n organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning, from\n one to the other.\"[162]\n\nOr in this other passage:\n\n \"We can trace the development of a nervous system and correlate with\n it the parallel phenomena of sensation and thought. We see with\n undoubting certainty that they go hand in hand. But we try to soar\n in a vacuum the moment we seek to comprehend the connection between\n them.... There is no fusion possible between the two classes of\n facts--no motor energy in the intellect of man to carry it without\n logical rupture from the one to the other.\"[163]\n\nNone the less easily, however, when the evolutionary afflatus is upon\nthem, do the very same writers leap over the breach whose flagrancy\nthey are the foremost to announce, and talk as if mind grew out of body\nin a continuous way. Mr. Spencer, looking back on his review of mental\nevolution, tells us how \"in tracing up the increase we found ourselves\npassing _without break_ from the phenomena of bodily life to the\nphenomena of mental life.\"[164] And Mr. Tyndall, in the same Belfast\nAddress from which we just quoted, delivers his other famous passage:\n\n \"Abandoning all disguise, the confession that I feel bound to make\n before you is that I prolong the vision backward across the boundary\n of the experimental evidence, and discern in that matter which we,\n in our ignorance and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its\n Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium the promise and potency\n of every form and quality of life.\"[165]\n\n--mental life included, as a matter of course.\n\nSo strong a postulate is continuity! Now this book will tend to show\nthat mental postulates are on the whole to be respected. The demand for\ncontinuity has, over large tracts of science, proved itself to possess\ntrue prophetic power. We ought therefore ourselves sincerely to try\nevery possible mode of conceiving the dawn of consciousness so that it\nmay _not_ appear equivalent to the irruption into the universe of a new\nnature, non-existent until then.\n\nMerely to call the consciousness 'nascent' will not serve our\nturn.[166] It is true that the word signifies not yet _quite_ born,\nand so seems to form a sort of bridge between existence and nonentity.\nBut that is a verbal quibble. The fact is that discontinuity comes\nin if a new nature comes in at all. The _quantity_ of the latter is\nquite immaterial. The girl in 'Midshipman Easy' could not excuse the\nillegitimacy of her child by saying, 'it was a little small one.'\nAnd Consciousness, however little, is an illegitimate birth in any\nphilosophy that starts without it, and yet professes to explain all\nfacts by continuous evolution.\n\n_If evolution is to work smoothly, consciousness in some shape must\nhave been present at the very origin of things._ Accordingly we find\nthat the more clear-sighted evolutionary philosophers are beginning\nto posit it there. Each atom of the nebula, they suppose, must have\nhad an aboriginal atom of consciousness linked with it; and, just\nas the material atoms have formed bodies and brains by massing\nthemselves together, so the mental atoms, by an analogous process of\naggregation, have fused into those larger consciousnesses which we know\nin ourselves and suppose to exist in our fellow-animals. Some such\ndoctrine of _atomistic hylozoism_ as this is an indispensable part of a\nthorough-going philosophy of evolution. According to it there must be\nan infinite number of degrees of consciousness, following the degrees\nof complication and aggregation of the primordial mind-dust. To prove\nthe separate existence of these degrees of consciousness by indirect\nevidence, since direct intuition of them is not to be had, becomes\ntherefore the first duty of psychological evolutionism.\n\n\nSOME ALLEGED PROOFS THAT MIND-DUST EXISTS.\n\n\nSome of this duty we find already performed by a number of philosophers\nwho, though not interested at all in evolution, have nevertheless on\nindependent grounds convinced themselves of the existence of a vast\namount of sub-conscious mental life. The criticism of this general\nopinion and its grounds will have to be postponed for a while. At\npresent let us merely deal with the arguments assumed to prove\naggregation of bits of mind-stuff into distinctly sensible feelings.\nThey are clear and admit of a clear reply.\n\nThe German physiologist A. Fick, in 1862, was, so far as I know, the\nfirst to use them. He made experiments on the discrimination of the\nfeelings of warmth and of touch, when only a very small portion of the\nskin was excited through a hole in a card, the surrounding parts being\nprotected by the card. He found that under these circumstances mistakes\nwere frequently made by the patient,[167] and concluded that this must\nbe because the number of sensations from the elementary nerve-tips\naffected was too small to sum itself distinctly into either of the\nqualities of feeling in question. He tried to show how a different\nmanner of the summation might give rise in one case to the heat and in\nanother to the touch.\n\n \"A feeling of temperature,\" he says, \"arises when the intensities of\n the units of feeling are evenly gradated, so that between two elements\n _a_ and _b_ no other unit can spatially intervene whose intensity is\n not also _between_ that of _a_ and _b_. A feeling of contact perhaps\n arises when this condition is not fulfilled. Both kinds of feeling,\n however, are composed of the same units.\"\n\nBut it is obviously far clearer to interpret such a gradation of\nintensities as a brain-fact than as a mind-fact. If in the brain a\ntract were first excited in one of the ways suggested by Prof. Fick,\nand then again in the other, it might very well happen, for aught\nwe can say to the contrary, that the psychic accompaniment in the\none case would be heat, and in the other pain. The pain and the heat\nwould, however, not be composed of psychic units, but would each be\nthe direct result of one total brain-process. So long as this latter\ninterpretation remains open, Fick cannot be held to have proved psychic\nsummation.\n\nLater, both Spencer and Taine, independently of each other, took up\nthe same line of thought. Mr. Spencer's reasoning is worth quoting _in\nextenso_. He writes:\n\n \"Although the individual sensations and emotions, real or ideal,\n of which consciousness is built up, appear to be severally simple,\n homogeneous, unanalyzable, or of inscrutable natures, yet they are\n not so. There is at least one kind of feeling which, as ordinarily\n experienced, seems elementary, that is demonstrably not elementary.\n And after resolving it into its proximate components, we can scarcely\n help suspecting that other apparently-elementary feelings are also\n compound, and may have proximate components like those which we can in\n this one instance identify.\n\n \"Musical sound is the name we give to this seemingly simple feeling\n which is clearly resolvable into simpler feelings. Well-known\n experiments prove that when equal blows or taps are made one after\n another at a rate not exceeding some sixteen per second, the effect\n of each is perceived as a separate noise; but when the rapidity with\n which the blows follow one another exceeds this, the noises are no\n longer identified in separate states of consciousness, and there\n arises in place of them a continuous state of consciousness, called\n a tone. In further increasing the rapidity of the blows, the tone\n undergoes the change of quality distinguished as rise in pitch; and\n it continues to rise in pitch as the blows continue to increase in\n rapidity, until it reaches an acuteness beyond which it is no longer\n appreciable as a tone. So that out of units of feeling of the same\n kind, many feelings distinguishable from one another in quality\n result, according as the units are more or less integrated.\n\n \"This is not all. The inquiries of Professor Helmholtz have shown\n that when, along with one series of these rapidly-recurring noises,\n there is generated another series in which the noises are more rapid\n though not so loud, the effect is a change in that quality known as\n its _timbre_. As various musical instruments show us, tones which are\n alike in pitch and strength are distinguishable by their harshness or\n sweetness, their ringing or their liquid characters; and all their\n specific peculiarities are proved to arise from the combination\n of one, two, three, or more, supplementary series of recurrent\n noises with the chief series of recurrent noises. So that while the\n unlikenesses of feeling known as differences of pitch in tones are\n due to differences of integration among the recurrent noises of one\n series, the unlikenesses of feeling known as differences of _timbre_,\n are due to the simultaneous integration with this series of other\n series having other degrees of integration. And thus an enormous\n number of qualitatively-contrasted kinds of consciousness that seem\n severally elementary prove to be composed of one simple kind of\n consciousness, combined and recombined with itself in multitudinous\n ways.\n\n \"Can we stop short here? If the different sensations known as sounds\n are built out of a common unit, is it not to be rationally inferred\n that so likewise are the different sensations known as tastes, and\n the different sensations known as odors, and the different sensations\n known as colors? Nay, shall we not regard it as probable that there is\n a unit common to all these strongly-contrasted classes of sensations?\n If the unlikenesses among the sensations of each class may be due to\n unlikenesses among the modes of aggregation of a unit of consciousness\n common to them all; so too may the much greater unlikenesses between\n the sensations of each class and those of other classes. There may be\n a single primordial element of consciousness, and the countless kinds\n of consciousness may be produced by the compounding of this element\n with itself and the recompounding of its compounds with one another\n in higher and higher degrees: so producing increased multiplicity,\n variety, and complexity.\n\n \"Have we any clue to this primordial element? I think we have. That\n simple mental impression which proves to be the unit of composition\n of the sensation of musical tone, is allied to certain other simple\n mental impressions differently originated. The subjective effect\n produced by a crack or noise that has no appreciable duration is\n little else than a nervous shock. Though we distinguish such a nervous\n shock as belonging to what we call sounds, yet it does not differ very\n much from nervous shocks of other kinds. An electric discharge sent\n through the body causes a feeling akin to that which a sudden loud\n report causes. A strong unexpected impression made through the eyes,\n as by a flash of lightning, similarly gives rise to a start or shock;\n and though the feeling so named seems, like the electric shock, to\n have the body at large for its seat, and may therefore be regarded\n as the correlative rather of the efferent than of the afferent\n disturbance, yet on remembering the mental change that results from\n the instantaneous transit of an object across the field of vision, I\n think it may be perceived that the feeling accompanying the efferent\n disturbance is itself reduced very nearly to the same form. The state\n of consciousness so generated is, in fact, comparable in quality to\n the initial state of consciousness caused by a blow (distinguishing\n it from the pain or other feeling that commences the instant after);\n which state of consciousness caused by a blow may be taken as the\n primitive and typical form of the nervous shock. The fact that sudden\n brief disturbances thus set up by different stimuli through different\n sets of nerves cause feelings scarcely distinguishable in quality\n will not appear strange when we recollect that distinguishableness of\n feeling implies appreciable duration; and that when the duration is\n greatly abridged, nothing more is known than that some mental change\n has occurred and ceased. To have a sensation of redness, to know a\n tone as acute or grave, to be conscious of a taste as sweet, implies\n in each case a considerable continuity of state. If the state does\n not last long enough to admit of its being contemplated, it cannot be\n classed as of this or that kind; and becomes a momentary modification\n very similar to momentary modifications otherwise caused.\n\n \"It is possible, then--may we not even say probable?--that something\n of the same order as that which we call a nervous shock is the\n ultimate unit of consciousness; and that all the unlikenesses\n among our feelings result from unlike modes of integration of this\n ultimate unit. I say of the same order, because there are discernible\n differences among nervous shocks that are differently caused; and\n the primitive nervous shock probably differs somewhat from each of\n them. And I say of the same order, for the further reason that while\n we may ascribe to them a general likeness in nature, we must suppose\n a great unlikeness in degree. The nervous shocks recognized as such\n are violent--must be violent before they can be perceived amid the\n procession of multitudinous vivid feelings suddenly interrupted by\n them. But the rapidly-recurring nervous shocks of which the different\n forms of feeling consist, we must assume to be of comparatively\n moderate, or even of very slight intensity. Were our various\n sensations and emotions composed of rapidly-recurring shocks as strong\n as those ordinarily called shocks, they would be unbearable; indeed\n life would cease at once. We must think of them rather as successive\n faint pulses of subjective change, each having the same quality as\n the strong pulse of subjective change distinguished as a nervous\n shock.\"[168]\n\n\nINSUFFICIENCY OF THESE PROOFS.\n\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 25.]\n\nConvincing as this argument of Mr. Spencer's may appear on a first\nreading, it is singular how weak it really is.[169] We do, it is true,\nwhen we study the connection between a musical note and its outward\ncause, find the note simple and continuous while the cause is multiple\nand discrete. Somewhere, then, there _is_ a transformation, reduction,\nor fusion. The question is, Where?--in the nerve-world or in the\nmind-world? Really we have no experimental proof by which to decide;\nand if decide we must, analogy and _a priori_ probability can alone\nguide us. Mr. Spencer assumes that the fusion must come to pass in the\nmental world, and that the physical processes get through air and ear,\nauditory nerve and medulla, lower brain and hemispheres, without their\nnumber being reduced. Figure 25 will make the point clear.\n\nLet the line _a--b_ represent the threshold of consciousness: then\neverything drawn below that line will symbolize a physical process,\neverything above it will mean a fact of mind. Let the crosses stand\nfor the physical blows, the circles for the events in successively\nhigher orders of nerve-cells, and the horizontal marks for the facts of\nfeeling. Spencer's argument implies that each order of cells transmits\njust as many impulses as it receives to the cells above it; so that if\nthe blows come at the rate of 20,000 in a second the cortical cells\ndischarge at the same rate, and one unit of feeling corresponds to each\none of the 20,000 discharges. Then, and only then, does 'integration'\noccur, by the 20,000 units of feeling 'compounding with themselves'\ninto the 'continuous state of consciousness' represented by the short\nline at the top of the figure.\n\nNow such an interpretation as this flies in the face of physical\nanalogy, no less than of logical intelligibility. Consider physical\nanalogy first,\n\nA pendulum may be deflected by a single blow, and swing back. Will\nit swing back the more often the more we multiply the blows? No; for\nif they rain upon the pendulum too fast, it will not swing at all\nbut remain deflected in a sensibly stationary state. In other words,\nincreasing the cause numerically need not equally increase numerically\nthe effect. Blow through a tube: you get a certain musical note; and\nincreasing the blowing increases for a certain time the loudness of\nthe note. Will this be true indefinitely? No; for when a certain force\nis reached, the note, instead of growing louder, suddenly disappears\nand is replaced by its higher octave. Turn on the gas slightly and\nlight it: you get a tiny flame. Turn on more gas, and the breadth\nof the flame increases. Will this relation increase indefinitely?\nNo, again; for at a certain moment up shoots the flame into a ragged\nstreamer and begins to hiss. Send slowly through the nerve of a\nfrog's gastrocnemius muscle a succession of galvanic shocks: you get\na succession of twitches. Increasing the number of shocks does not\nincrease the twitching; on the contrary, it stops it, and we have\nthe muscle in the apparently stationary state of contraction called\ntetanus. This last fact is the true analogue of what must happen\nbetween the nerve-cell and the sensory fibre. It is certain that cells\nare more inert than fibres, and that rapid vibrations in the latter can\nonly arouse relatively simple processes or states in the former. The\nhigher cells may have even a slower rate of explosion than the lower,\nand so the twenty thousand supposed blows of the outer air may be\n'integrated' in the cortex into a very small number of cell-discharges\nin a second. This other diagram will serve to contrast this supposition\nwith Spencer's. In Fig. 26 all 'integration' occurs below the threshold\nof consciousness. The frequency of cell-events becomes more and more\nreduced as we approach the cells to which feeling is most directly\nattached, until at last we come to a condition of things symbolized by\nthe larger ellipse, which may be taken to stand for some rather massive\nand slow process of tension and discharge in the cortical centres, to\nwhich, _as a whole_, the feeling of musical tone symbolized by the line\nat the top of the diagram _simply and totally_ corresponds. It is as if\na long file of men were to start one after the other to reach a distant\npoint. The road at first is good and they keep their original distance\napart. Presently it is intersected by bogs each worse than the last,\nso that the front men get so retarded that the hinder ones catch up\nwith them before the journey is done, and all arrive together at the\ngoal.[170]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 26.]\n\nOn this supposition there _are_ no unperceived units of mind-stuff\npreceding and composing the full consciousness. The latter is itself\nan immediate psychic fact and bears an immediate relation to the\nneural state which is its unconditional accompaniment. Did each neural\nshock give rise to its own psychic shock, and the psychic shocks then\ncombine, it would be impossible to understand why severing one part of\nthe central nervous system from another should break up the integrity\nof the consciousness. The cut has nothing to do with the psychic world.\nThe atoms of mind-stuff ought to float off from the nerve-matter on\neither side of it, and come together over it and fuse, just as well\nas if it had not been made. We know, however, that they do not; that\nseverance of the paths of conduction between a man's left auditory\ncentre or optical centre and the rest of his cortex will sever all\ncommunication between the words which he hears or sees written and the\nrest of his ideas.\n\nMoreover, if feelings can mix into a _tertium quid_, why do we not\ntake a feeling of greenness and a feeling of redness, and make a\nfeeling of yellowness out of them? Why has optics neglected the open\nroad to truth, and wasted centuries in disputing about theories of\ncolor-composition which two minutes of introspection would have settled\nforever[171] We cannot mix feelings as such, though we may mix the\nobjects we feel, and from _their_ mixture get new feelings. We cannot\neven (as we shall later see) have two feelings in our mind at once. At\nmost we can compare together _objects previously presented_ to us in\ndistinct feelings; but then we find each object stubbornly maintaining\nits separate identity before consciousness, whatever the verdict of the\ncomparison may be.[172]\n\n\nSELF-COMPOUNDING OF MENTAL FACTS IS INADMISSIBLE.\n\n\nBut there is a still more fatal objection to the theory of mental\nunits 'compounding with themselves' or 'integrating.' It is logically\nunintelligible; it leaves out the essential feature of all the\n'combinations' we actually know.\n\n_All the 'combinations' which we actually know are_ EFFECTS, _wrought\nby the units said to be 'combined,'_ UPON SOME ENTITY OTHER THAN\nTHEMSELVES. Without this feature of a medium or vehicle, the notion of\ncombination has no sense.\n\n \"A multitude of contractile units, by joint action, and by being\n all connected, for instance, with a single tendon, will pull at the\n same, and will bring about a dynamical effect which is undoubtedly\n the resultant of their combined individual energies.... On the whole,\n tendons are to muscular fibres, and bones are to tendons, combining\n recipients of mechanical energies. A medium of composition is\n indispensable to the summation of energies. To realize the complete\n dependence of mechanical resultants on a combining substratum, one may\n fancy for a moment all the individually contracting muscular elements\n severed from their attachments. They might then still be capable\n of contracting with the same energy as before, yet no co-operative\n result would be accomplished. The medium of dynamical combination\n would be wanting. The multiple energies, singly exerted on no common\n recipient, would lose themselves on entirely isolated and disconnected\n efforts.\"[173]\n\nIn other words, no possible number of entities (call them as you\nlike, whether forces, material particles, or mental elements) can\nsum _themselves_ together. Each remains, in the sum, what it always\nwas; and the sum itself exists only _for a bystander_ who happens to\noverlook the units and to apprehend the sum as such; or else it exists\nin the shape of some other _effect_ on an entity external to the sum\nitself. Let it not be objected that H_{2} and O combine of themselves\ninto 'water,' and thenceforward exhibit new properties. They do not.\nThe 'water' is just the old atoms in the new position, H-O-H; the 'new\nproperties' are just their combined _effects_, when in this position,\nupon external media, such as our sense-organs and the various reagents\non which water may exert its properties and be known.\n\n \"Aggregations are organized wholes only when they behave as such in\n the presence of other things. A statue is an aggregation of particles\n of marble, but as such it has no unity. For the spectator it is one;\n in itself it is an aggregate; just as, to the consciousness of an ant\n crawling over it, it may again appear a mere aggregate. No summing up\n of parts can make an unity of a mass of discrete constituents, unless\n this unity exist for some other subject, not for the mass itself.\"[174]\n\nJust so, in the parallelogram of forces, the 'forces' themselves do\nnot combine into the diagonal resultant; a _body_ is needed on which\nthey may impinge, to exhibit their resultant effect. No more do musical\nsounds combine _per se_ into concords or discords. Concord and discord\nare names for their combined effects on that external medium, the\n_ear_.\n\nWhere the elemental units are supposed to be feelings, the case is in\nno wise altered. Take a hundred of them, shuffle them and pack them as\nclose together as you can (whatever that may mean); still each remains\nthe same feeling it always was, shut in its own skin, windowless,\nignorant of what the other feelings are and mean. There would be a\nhundred-and-first feeling there, if, when a group or series of such\nfeelings were set up, a consciousness _belonging to the group as such_\nshould emerge. And this 101st feeling would be a totally new fact; the\n100 original feelings might, by a curious physical law, be a signal\nfor its _creation_, when they came together; but they would have no\nsubstantial identity with it, nor it with them, and one could never\ndeduce the one from the others, or (in any intelligible sense) say that\nthey _evolved_ it.\n\nTake a sentence of a dozen words, and take twelve men and tell to each\none word. Then stand the men in a row or jam them in a bunch, and let\neach think of his word as intently as he will; nowhere will there be\na consciousness of the whole sentence.[175] We talk of the 'spirit of\nthe age,' and the 'sentiment of the people,' and in various ways we\nhypostatize 'public opinion.' But we know this to be symbolic speech,\nand never dream that the spirit, opinion, sentiment, etc., constitute\na consciousness other than, and additional to, that of the several\nindividuals whom the words 'age,' 'people,' or 'public' denote. The\nprivate minds do not agglomerate into a higher compound mind. This has\nalways been the invincible contention of the spiritualists against the\nassociationists in Psychology,--a contention which we shall take up\nat greater length in Chapter X. The associationists say the mind is\nconstituted by a multiplicity of distinct 'ideas' _associated_ into\na unity. There is, they say, an idea of _a_, and also an idea of _b.\nTherefore,_ they say, there is an idea of _a_ + _b_, or of _a_ and _b_\ntogether. Which is like saying that the mathematical square of _a_ plus\nthat of _b_ is equal to the square of _a_ + _b_, a palpable untruth.\nIdea of _a_ + idea of _b_ is _not_ identical with idea of (_a_ + _b_).\nIt is one, they are two; in it, what knows _a_ also knows _b_; in them,\nwhat knows _a_ is expressly posited as not knowing _b_; etc. In short,\nthe two separate ideas can never by any logic be made to figure as one\nand the same thing as the 'associated' idea.\n\nThis is what the spiritualists keep saying; and since we do, as a\nmatter of fact, have the 'compounded' idea, and do know _a_ and _b_\ntogether, they adopt a farther hypothesis to explain that fact. The\nseparate ideas exist, they say, but _affect_ a third entity, the soul.\n_This_ has the 'compounded' idea, if you please so to call it; and the\ncompounded idea is an altogether new psychic fact to which the separate\nideas stand in the relation, not of constituents, but of occasions of\nproduction.\n\nThis argument of the spiritualists against the associationists has\nnever been answered by the latter. It holds good against any talk\nabout self-compounding amongst feelings, against any 'blending,'\nor 'complication,' or 'mental chemistry,' or 'psychic synthesis,'\nwhich supposes a resultant consciousness to float off from the\nconstituents _per se_, in the absence of a supernumerary principle of\nconsciousness which they may affect. The mind-stuff theory, in short,\nis unintelligible. Atoms of feeling cannot compose higher feelings, any\nmore than atoms of matter can compose physical things! The 'things,'\nfor a clear-headed atomistic evolutionist, are not. Nothing is but\nthe everlasting atoms. When grouped in a certain way, _we_ name them\nthis 'thing' or that; but the thing we name has no existence out of\nour mind. So of the states of mind which are supposed to be compound\nbecause they know many different things together. Since indubitably\nsuch states do exist, they must exist as single new facts, effects,\npossibly, as the spiritualists say, on the Soul (we will not decide\nthat point here), but at any rate independent and integral, and not\ncompounded of psychic atoms.[176]\n\n\nCAN STATES OF MIND BE UNCONSCIOUS?\n\n\nThe passion for unity and smoothness is in some minds so insatiate\nthat, in spite of the logical clearness of these reasonings and\nconclusions, many will fail to be influenced by them. They establish\na sort of disjointedness in things which in certain quarters will\nappear intolerable. They sweep away all chance of 'passing without\nbreak' either from the material to the mental, or from the lower\nto the higher mental; and they thrust us back into a pluralism of\nconsciousnesses--each arising discontinuously in the midst of two\ndisconnected worlds, material and mental--which is even worse than the\nold notion of the separate creation of each particular soul. But the\nmalcontents will hardly try to refute our reasonings by direct attack.\nIt is more probable that, turning their back upon them altogether, they\nwill devote themselves to sapping and mining the region roundabout\nuntil it is a bog of logical liquefaction, into the midst of which all\ndefinite conclusions of any sort may be trusted ere long to sink and\ndisappear.\n\nOur reasonings have assumed that the 'integration' of a thousand\npsychic units must be either just the units over again, simply\nrebaptized, or else something real, but then other than and additional\nto those units; that if a certain existing fact is that of a thousand\nfeelings, it cannot at the same time be that of ONE feeling; for the\nessence of feeling is to be felt, and as a psychic existent _feels_,\nso it must _be_. If the one feeling feels like no one of the thousand,\nin what sense can it be said to _be_ the thousand? These assumptions\nare what the monists will seek to undermine. The Hegelizers amongst\nthem will take high ground at once, and say that the glory and\nbeauty of the psychic life is that in it all contradictions find\ntheir reconciliation; and that it is just because the facts we are\nconsidering _are_ facts of the self that they are both one and many at\nthe same time. With this intellectual temper I confess that I cannot\ncontend. As in striking at some unresisting gossamer with a club, one\nbut overreaches one's self, and the thing one aims at gets no harm. So\nI leave this school to its devices.\n\nThe other monists are of less deliquescent frame, and try to break\ndown distinctness among mental states by _making a distinction_. This\nsounds paradoxical, but it is only ingenious. The distinction is that\n_between the unconscious and the conscious being of the mental state_.\nIt is the sovereign means for believing what one likes in psychology,\nand of turning what might become a science into a tumbling-ground for\nwhimsies. It has numerous champions, and elaborate reasons to give for\nitself. We must therefore accord it due consideration. In discussing\nthe question:\n\n\nDO UNCONSCIOUS MENTAL STATES EXIST?\n\n\nit will be best to give the list of so-called proofs as briefly as\npossible, and to follow each by its objection, as in scholastic\nbooks.[177]\n\n_First Proof_. The _minimum visibile_, the _minimum audibile_, are\nobjects composed of parts. How can the whole affect the sense unless\neach part does? And yet each part does so without being separately\nsensible. Leibnitz calls the total consciousness an '_aperception_,'\nthe supposed insensible consciousness by the name of '_petites\nperceptions_.'\n\n \"To judge of the latter,\" he says, \"I am accustomed to use the example\n of the roaring of the sea with which one is assailed when near the\n shore. To hear this noise as one does, one must hear the parts which\n compose its totality, that is, the noise of each wave,... although\n this noise would not be noticed if its wave were alone. One must be\n affected a little by the movement of one wave, one must have some\n perception of each several noise, however small it be. Otherwise one\n would not hear that of 100,000 waves, for of 100,000 zeros one can\n never make a quantity.\"[178]\n\n_Reply_. This is an excellent example of the so-called 'fallacy of\ndivision,' or predicating what is true only of a collection, of each\nmember of the collection distributively. It no more follows that if a\nthousand things together cause sensation, one thing alone must cause\nit, than it follows that if one pound weight moves a balance, then one\nounce weight must move it too, in less degree. One ounce weight does\nnot move it _at all_; its movement _begins_ with the pound. At most we\ncan say that each ounce affects it in _some_ way which helps the advent\nof that movement. And so each infra-sensible stimulus to a nerve no\ndoubt affects the nerve and helps the birth of sensation when the other\nstimuli come. But this affection is a nerve-affection, and there is not\nthe slightest ground for supposing it to be a 'perception' unconscious\nof itself. \"A certain _quantity_ of the cause may be a necessary\ncondition to the production of _any_ of the effect,\"[179] when the\nlatter is a mental state.\n\n_Second Proof._ In all acquired dexterities and habits, secondarily\nautomatic performances as they are called, we do what _originally_\nrequired a chain of deliberately conscious perceptions and volitions.\nAs the actions still keep their intelligent character, intelligence\nmust still preside over their execution. But since our consciousness\nseems all the while elsewhere engaged, such intelligence must consist\nof unconscious perceptions, inferences, and volitions.\n\n_Reply._ There is more than one alternative explanation in accordance\nwith larger bodies of fact. One is that the perceptions and volitions\nin habitual actions may be performed consciously, only so quickly and\ninattentively that no _memory_ of them remains. Another is that the\nconsciousness of these actions exists, but is _split-off_ from the rest\nof the consciousness of the hemispheres. We shall find in Chapter X\nnumerous proofs of the reality of this split-off condition of portions\nof consciousness. Since in man the hemispheres indubitably co-operate\nin these secondarily automatic acts, it will not do to say either that\nthey occur without consciousness or that their consciousness is that\nof the lower centres, which we know nothing about. But either lack of\nmemory or split-off cortical consciousness will certainly account for\nall of the facts.[180]\n\n_Third Proof._ Thinking of A, we presently find ourselves thinking of\nC. Now B is the natural logical link between A and C, but we have no\nconsciousness of having thought of B. It must have been in our mind\n'_un_consciously,' and in that state affected the sequence of our\nideas.\n\n_Reply._ Here again we have a choice between more plausible\nexplanations. Either B was consciously there, but the next instant\nforgotten, or its _brain-tract_ alone was adequate to do the whole work\nof coupling A with C, without the idea B being aroused at all, whether\nconsciously or 'unconsciously.'\n\n_Fourth Proof._ Problems unsolved when we go to bed are found solved\nin the morning when we wake. Somnambulists do rational things. We\nawaken punctually at an hour predetermined overnight, etc. Unconscious\nthinking, volition, time-registration, etc., must have presided over\nthese acts.\n\n_Reply._ Consciousness forgotten, as in the hypnotic trance.\n\n_Fifth Proof._ Some patients will often, in an attack of epileptiform\nunconsciousness, go through complicated processes, such as eating a\ndinner in a restaurant and paying for it, or making a violent homicidal\nattack. In trance, artificial or pathological, long and complex\nperformances, involving the use of the reasoning powers, are executed,\nof which the patient is wholly unaware on coming to.\n\n_Reply._ Rapid and complete oblivescence is certainly the explanation\nhere. The analogue again is hypnotism. Tell the subject of an hypnotic\ntrance, during his trance, that he _will_ remember, and he may remember\neverything perfectly when he awakes, though without your telling him no\nmemory would have remained. The extremely rapid oblivescence of common\n_dreams_ is a familiar fact.\n\n_Sixth Proof._ In a musical concord the vibrations of the several notes\nare in relatively simple ratios. The mind must unconsciously count the\nvibrations, and be pleased by the simplicity which it finds.\n\n_Reply._ The brain-process produced by the simple ratios may be as\ndirectly agreeable as the conscious process of comparing them would be.\nNo counting, either conscious or 'unconscious,' is required.\n\n_Seventh Proof._ Every hour we make theoretic judgments and emotional\nreactions, and exhibit practical tendencies, for which we can give\nno explicit logical justification, but which are good inferences from\ncertain premises. We know more than we can say. Our conclusions run\nahead of our power to analyze their grounds. A child, ignorant of\nthe axiom that two things equal to the same are equal to each other,\napplies it nevertheless in his concrete judgments unerringly. A boor\nwill use the _dictum de omni et nullo_ who is unable to understand it\nin abstract terms.\n\n \"We seldom consciously think how our house is painted, what the shade\n of it is, what the pattern of our furniture is, or whether the door\n opens to the right or left, or out or in. But how quickly should we\n notice a change in any of these things! Think of the door you have\n most often opened, and tell, if you can, whether it opens to the\n right or left, out or in. Yet when you open the door you never put\n the hand on the wrong side to find the latch, nor try to push it when\n it opens with a pull.... What is the precise characteristic in your\n friend's step that enables you to recognize it when he is coming? Did\n you ever consciously think the idea, 'if I run into a solid piece of\n matter I shall get hurt, or be hindered in my progress'? and do you\n avoid running into obstacles because you ever distinctly conceived, or\n consciously acquired and thought, that idea?\"[181]\n\nMost of our knowledge is at all times potential. We act in accordance\nwith the whole drift of what we have learned, but few items rise into\nconsciousness at the time. Many of them, however, we may recall at\nwill. All this co-operation of unrealized principles and facts, of\npotential knowledge, with our actual thought is quite inexplicable\nunless we suppose the perpetual existence of an immense mass of _ideas\nin an unconscious state_, all of them exerting a steady pressure\nand influence upon our conscious thinking, and many of them in such\ncontinuity with it as ever and anon to become conscious themselves.\n\n_Reply._ No such mass of ideas is supposable. But there are all kinds\nof short-cuts in the brain; and processes not aroused strongly enough\nto give any 'idea' distinct enough to be a premise, may, nevertheless,\nhelp to determine just that resultant process of whose psychic\naccompaniment the said idea _would_ be a premise, if the idea existed\nat all. A certain overtone may be a feature of my friend's voice,\nand may conspire with the other tones thereof to arouse in my brain\nthe process which suggests to my consciousness his name. And yet I\nmay be ignorant of the overtone _per se_, and unable, even when he\nspeaks, to tell whether it be there or no. It leads me to the idea of\nthe name; but it produces in me no such cerebral process as that to\nwhich the _idea of the overtone_ would correspond. And similarly of\nour learning. Each subject we learn leaves behind it a modification\nof the brain, which makes it impossible for the latter to react upon\nthings just as it did before; and the result of the difference may\nbe a tendency to act, though with no idea, much as we should _if_ we\nwere consciously thinking about the subject. The becoming conscious\nof the latter at will is equally readily explained as a result of the\nbrain-modification. This, as Wundt phrases it, is a 'predisposition'\nto bring forth the conscious idea of the original subject, a\npredisposition which other stimuli and brain-processes may convert into\nan actual result. But such a predisposition is no 'unconscious idea;'\nit is only a particular collocation of the molecules in certain tracts\nof the brain.\n\n_Eighth Proof._ Instincts, as pursuits of ends by appropriate means,\nare manifestations of intelligence; but as the ends are not foreseen,\nthe intelligence must be unconscious.\n\n_Reply._ Chapter XXIV will show that all the phenomena of instinct are\nexplicable as actions of the nervous system, mechanically discharged by\nstimuli to the senses.\n\n_Ninth Proof._ In sense-perception we have results in abundance, which\ncan only be explained as conclusions drawn by a process of unconscious\ninference from data given to sense. A small human image on the retina\nis referred, not to a pygmy, but to a distant man of normal size. A\ncertain gray patch is inferred to be a white object seen in a dim\nlight. Often the inference leads us astray: e.g., pale gray against\npale green looks red, because we take a wrong premise to argue from.\nWe think a green film is spread over everything; and knowing that\nunder such a film a red thing would look gray, we wrongly infer\nfrom the gray appearance that a red thing must be there. Our study\nof space-perception in Chapter XVIII will give abundant additional\nexamples both of the truthful and illusory percepts which have been\nexplained to result from unconscious logic operations.\n\n_Reply._ That chapter will also in many cases refute this explanation.\nColor-and light-contrast are certainly purely sensational affairs, in\nwhich inference plays no part. This has been satisfactorily proved by\nHering,[182] and shall be treated of again in Chapter XVII. Our rapid\njudgments of size, shape, distance, and the like, are best explained\nas processes of simple cerebral association. Certain sense-impressions\ndirectly stimulate brain-tracts, of whose activity ready-made conscious\npercepts are the immediate psychic counterparts. They do this by a\nmechanism either connate or acquired by habit. It is to be remarked\nthat Wundt and Helmholtz, who in their earlier writings did more than\nany one to give vogue to the notion that unconscious inference is a\nvital factor in sense-perception, have seen fit on later occasions to\nmodify their views and to admit that results _like_ those of reasoning\nmay accrue without any actual reasoning process unconsciously taking\nplace.[183] Maybe the excessive and riotous applications made by\nHartmann of their principle have led them to this change. It would be\nnatural to feel towards him as the sailor in the story felt towards the\nhorse who got his foot into the stirrup,--\"If you're going to get on, I\nmust get off.\"\n\nHartmann fairly boxes the compass of the universe with the principle of\nunconscious thought. For him there is no namable thing that does not\nexemplify it. But his logic is so lax and his failure to consider the\nmost obvious alternatives so complete that it would, on the whole, be\na waste of time to look at his arguments in detail. The same is true\nof Schopenhauer, in whom the mythology reaches its climax. The visual\nperception, for example, of an object in space results, according\nto him, from the intellect performing the following operations, all\nunconscious. First, it apprehends the inverted retinal image and\nturns it right side up, constructing _flat space_ as a preliminary\noperation; then it computes from the angle of convergence of the\neyeballs that the two retinal images must be the projection of but a\nsingle _object_; thirdly, it constructs the third dimension and sees\nthis object _solid_; fourthly, it assigns its _distance_; and fifthly,\nin each and all of these operations it gets the objective character of\nwhat it 'constructs' by unconsciously inferring it as the only possible\n_cause_ of some sensation which it unconsciously feels.[184] Comment on\nthis seems hardly called for. It is, as I said, pure mythology.\n\nNone of these facts, then, appealed to so confidently in proof of the\nexistence of ideas in an unconscious state, prove anything of the sort.\nThey prove either that conscious ideas were present which the next\ninstant were forgotten; or they prove that certain results, _similar_\nto results of reasoning, may be wrought out by rapid brain-processes to\nwhich no ideation seems attached. But there is one more argument to be\nalleged, less obviously insufficient than those which we have reviewed,\nand demanding a new sort of reply.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_Tenth Proof._ There is a great class of experiences in our mental life\nwhich may be described as discoveries that a subjective condition which\nwe have been having is really something different from what we had\nsupposed. We suddenly find ourselves bored by a thing which we thought\nwe were enjoying well enough; or in love with a person whom we imagined\nwe only liked. Or else we deliberately analyze our motives, and find\nthat at bottom they contain jealousies and cupidities which we little\nsuspected to be there. Our feelings towards people are perfect wells of\nmotivation, unconscious of itself, which introspection brings to light.\nAnd our sensations likewise: we constantly discover new elements in\nsensations which we have been in the habit of receiving all our days,\nelements, too, which have been there from the first, since otherwise\nwe should have been unable to distinguish the sensations containing\nthem from others nearly allied. The elements must exist, for we use\nthem to discriminate by; but they must exist in an unconscious state,\nsince we so completely fail to single them out.[185] The books of the\nanalytic school of psychology abound in examples of the kind. Who knows\nthe countless associations that mingle with his each and every thought?\nWho can pick apart all the nameless feelings that stream in at every\nmoment from his various internal organs, muscles, heart, glands, lungs,\netc., and compose in their totality his sense of bodily life? Who is\naware of the part played by feelings of innervation and suggestions of\npossible muscular exertion in all his judgments of distance, shape, and\nsize? Consider, too, the difference between a sensation which we simply\n_have_ and one which we _attend to_. Attention gives results that seem\nlike fresh creations; and yet the feelings and elements of feeling\nwhich it reveals must have been already there--in an unconscious\nstate. We all know _practically_ the difference between the so-called\nsonant and the so-called surd consonants, between D, B, Z, G, V, and\nT, P, S, K, F, respectively. But comparatively few persons know the\ndifference _theoretically_, until their attention has been called to\nwhat it is, when they perceive it readily enough. The sonants are\nnothing but the surds plus a certain element, which is alike in all,\nsuperadded. That element is the laryngeal sound with which they are\nuttered, surds having no such accompaniment. When we hear the sonant\nletter, both its component elements must really be in our mind; but\nwe remain unconscious of what they really are, and mistake the letter\nfor a simple quality of sound until an effort of attention teaches us\nits two components. There exist a host of sensations which most men\npass through life and never attend to, and consequently have only in\nan unconscious way. The feelings of opening and closing the glottis,\nof making tense the tympanic membrane, of accommodating for near\nvision, of intercepting the passage from the nostrils to the throat,\nare instances of what I mean. Every one gets these feelings many times\nan hour; but few readers, probably, are conscious of exactly what\nsensations are meant by the names I have just used. All these facts,\nand an enormous number more, seem to prove conclusively that, in\naddition to the fully conscious way in which an idea may exist in the\nmind, there is also an unconscious way; that it is unquestionably the\nsame identical idea which exists in these two ways; and that therefore\nany arguments against the mind-stuff theory, based on the notion\nthat _esse_ in our mental life is _sentiri_, and that an idea must\nconsciously be felt as what it is, fall to the ground.\n\n_Objection._ These reasonings are one tissue of confusion. Two states\nof mind which refer to the same external reality, or two states of\nmind the later one of which refers to the earlier, are described\nas the same state of mind, or 'idea,' published as it were in two\neditions; and then whatever qualities of the second edition are found\nopenly lacking in the first are explained as having really been there,\nonly in an 'unconscious' way. It would be difficult to believe that\nintelligent men could be guilty of so patent a fallacy, were not the\nhistory of psychology there to give the proof. The psychological\nstock-in-trade of some authors is the belief that two thoughts about\none thing are virtually the same thought, and that this same thought\nmay in subsequent reflections become more and more _conscious_ of what\nit really _was_ all along from the first. But once make the distinction\nbetween simply _having an idea_ at the moment of its presence and\nsubsequently knowing all sorts of things _about it_; make moreover that\nbetween a state of mind itself, taken as a subjective fact, on the one\nhand, and the objective thing it knows, on the other, and one has no\ndifficulty in escaping from the labyrinth.\n\nTake the latter distinction first: Immediately all the arguments based\non sensations and the new features in them which attention brings to\nlight fall to the ground. The sensations of the B and the V when we\nattend to these sounds and analyze out the laryngeal contribution\nwhich makes them differ from P and F respectively, are _different\nsensations_ from those of the B and the V taken in a simple way.\nThey stand, it is true, for the _same letters_, and thus mean the\n_same outer realities_; but they are different mental affections, and\ncertainly depend on widely different processes of cerebral activity.\nIt is unbelievable that two mental states so different as the passive\nreception of a sound as a whole, and the analysis of that whole into\ndistinct ingredients by voluntary attention, should be due to processes\nat all similar. And the subjective difference does not consist in that\nthe first-named state _is_ the second in an 'unconscious' form. It is\nan absolute psychic difference, even greater than that between the\nstates to which two different surds will give rise. The same is true\nof the other sensations chosen as examples. The man who learns for the\nfirst time how the closure of his glottis feels, experiences in this\ndiscovery an absolutely new psychic modification, the like of which he\nnever had before. He had another feeling before, a feeling incessantly\nrenewed, and of which the same glottis was the organic starting point;\nbut that was not the later feeling in an 'unconscious' state; it was\na feeling _sui generis_ altogether, although it took cognizance of\nthe same bodily part, the glottis. We shall see, hereafter, that the\nsame reality can be cognized by an endless number of psychic states,\nwhich may differ _toto c\u0153lo_ among themselves, without ceasing on\nthat account to refer to the reality in question. Each of them is a\nconscious fact: none of them has any mode of being whatever except a\ncertain way of being felt at the moment of being present. It is simply\nunintelligible and fantastical to say, because they point to the same\nouter reality, that they must therefore be so many editions of the same\n'idea,' now in a conscious and now in an 'unconscious' phase. There is\nonly one 'phase' in which an idea can be, and that is a fully conscious\ncondition. If it is not in that condition, then it is not at all.\nSomething else is, in its place. The something else may be a merely\nphysical brain-process, or it may be another conscious idea. Either of\nthese things may perform much the same _function_ as the first idea,\nrefer to the same object, and roughly stand in the same relations to\nthe upshot of our thought. But that is no reason why we should throw\naway the logical principle of identity in psychology, and say that,\nhowever it may fare in the outer world, the mind at any rate is a place\nin which a thing can be all kinds of other things without ceasing to be\nitself as well.\n\nNow take the other cases alleged, and the other distinction, that\nnamely between _having_ a mental state and knowing all _about_ it.\nThe truth is here even simpler to unravel. When I decide that I have,\nwithout knowing it, been for several weeks in love, I am simply giving\na name to a state which previously _I have not named_, but which was\nfully conscious; which had no residual mode of being except the manner\nin which it was conscious; and which, though it was a feeling towards\nthe same person for whom I now have a much more inflamed feeling, and\nthough it continuously led into the latter, and is similar enough to be\ncalled by the same name, is yet in no sense identical with the latter,\nand least of all in an 'unconscious' way. Again, the feelings from our\nviscera and other dimly-felt organs, the feelings of innervation (if\nsuch there be), and those of muscular exertion which, in our spatial\njudgments, are supposed unconsciously to determine what we shall\nperceive, are just exactly what we feel them, perfectly determinate\nconscious states, not vague editions of other conscious states. They\nmay be faint and weak; they may be very vague cognizers of the same\nrealities which other conscious states cognize and name exactly; they\nmay be unconscious of much in the reality which the other states are\nconscious of. But that does not make them _in themselves_ a whit dim\nor vague or unconscious. They _are_ eternally as they feel when they\nexist, and can, neither actually nor potentially, be identified with\nanything else than their own faint selves. A faint feeling may be\nlooked back upon and classified and understood in its relations to what\nwent before or after it in the stream of thought. But it, on the one\nhand, and the later state of mind which knows all these things about\nit, on the other, are surely not two conditions, one conscious and the\nother 'unconscious,' of the same identical psychic fact. It is the\ndestiny of thought that, on the whole, our early ideas are superseded\nby later ones, giving fuller accounts of the same realities. But none\nthe less do the earlier and the later ideas preserve their own several\nsubstantive identities as so many several successive states of mind.\nTo believe the contrary would make any definite science of psychology\nimpossible. The only identity to be found among our successive ideas is\ntheir similarity of cognitive or representative function as dealing\nwith the same objects. Identity of _being_, there is none; and I\nbelieve that throughout the rest of this volume the reader will reap\nthe advantages of the simpler way of formulating the facts which is\nhere begun.[186]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSo we seem not only to have ascertained the unintelligibility of the\nnotion that a mental fact can be two things at once, and that what\nseems like one feeling, of blueness for example, or of hatred, may\nreally and 'unconsciously' be ten thousand elementary feelings which\ndo not resemble blueness or hatred at all, but we find that we can\nexpress all the observed facts in other ways. The mind-stuff theory,\nhowever, though scotched, is, we may be sure, not killed. If we ascribe\nconsciousness to unicellular animalcules, then single cells can have\nit, and analogy should make us ascribe it to the several cells of the\nbrain, each individually taken. And what a convenience would it not\nbe for the psychologist if, by the adding together of various doses\nof this separate-cell-consciousness, he could treat thought as a kind\nof stuff or material, to be measured out in great or small amount,\nincreased and subtracted from, and baled about at will! He feels an\nimperious craving to be allowed to _construct_ synthetically the\nsuccessive mental states which he describes. The mind-stuff theory so\neasily admits of the construction being made, that it seems certain\nthat 'man's unconquerable mind' will devote much future pertinacity and\ningenuity to setting it on its legs again and getting it into some sort\nof plausible working-order. I will therefore conclude the chapter with\nsome consideration of the remaining difficulties which beset the matter\nas it at present stands.\n\n\nDIFFICULTY OF STATING THE CONNECTION BETWEEN MIND AND BRAIN.\n\n\nIt will be remembered that in our criticism of the theory of the\nintegration of successive conscious units into a feeling of musical\npitch, we decided that whatever integration there was was that of the\nair-pulses into a simpler and simpler sort of physical effect, as the\npropagations of material change got higher and higher in the nervous\nsystem. At last, we said (p. 23), there results some simple and massive\nprocess in the auditory centres of the hemispherical cortex, to which,\n_as a whole_, the feeling of musical pitch directly corresponds.\nAlready, in discussing the localization of functions in the brain,\nI had said (pp. 158-9) that consciousness accompanies the stream of\ninnervation through that organ and varies in quality with the character\nof the currents, being mainly of things seen if the occipital lobes\nare much involved, of things heard if the action is focalized in the\ntemporal lobes, etc., etc.; and I had added that a vague formula like\nthis was as much as one could safely venture on in the actual state of\nphysiology. The facts of mental deafness and blindness, of auditory\nand optical aphasia, show us that the whole brain must act together\nif certain thoughts are to occur. The consciousness, which is itself\nan integral thing not made of parts, 'corresponds' to the entire\nactivity of the brain, whatever that may be, at the moment. This is a\nway of expressing the relation of mind and brain from which I shall\nnot depart during the remainder of the book, because it expresses the\nbare phenomenal fact with no hypothesis, and is exposed to no such\nlogical objections as we have found to cling to the theory of ideas in\ncombination.\n\nNevertheless, this formula which is so unobjectionable if taken\nvaguely, positivistically, or scientifically, as a mere empirical law\nof concomitance between our thoughts and our brain, tumbles to pieces\nentirely if we assume to represent anything more intimate or ultimate\nby it. The ultimate of ultimate problems, of course, in the study\nof the relations of thought and brain, is to understand why and how\nsuch disparate things are connected at all. But before that problem\nis solved (if it ever is solved) there is a less ultimate problem\nwhich must first be settled. Before the connection of thought and\nbrain can be explained, it must at least be _stated_ in an elementary\nform; and there are great difficulties about so stating it. To state\nit in elementary form one must reduce it to its lowest terms and\nknow which mental fact and which cerebral fact are, so to speak, in\nimmediate juxtaposition. We must find the minimal mental fact whose\nbeing reposes directly on a brain-fact; and we must similarly find\nthe minimal brain-event which will have a mental counterpart at all.\nBetween the mental and the physical minima thus found there will be an\nimmediate relation, the expression of which, if we had it, would be the\nelementary psycho-physic law.\n\nOur own formula escapes the unintelligibility of psychic atoms by\n_taking the entire thought_ (even of a complex object) _as the minimum\nwith which it deals on the mental side_. But in taking the entire\nbrain-process as its minimal fact on the material side it confronts\nother difficulties almost as bad.\n\nIn the first place, it ignores analogies on which certain critics\nwill insist, those, namely, between the composition of the total\nbrain-process and that of the _object_ of the thought. The total\nbrain-process is composed of parts, of simultaneous processes in the\nseeing, the hearing, the feeling, and other centres. The object thought\nof is also composed of parts, some of which are seen, others heard,\nothers perceived by touch and muscular manipulation. \"How then,\"\nthese critics will say, \"should the thought not itself be composed of\nparts, each the counterpart of a part of the object and of a part of\nthe brain-process?\" So natural is this way of looking at the matter\nthat it has given rise to what is on the whole the most flourishing of\nall psychological systems--that of the Lockian school of associated\nideas--of which school the mind-stuff theory is nothing but the last\nand subtlest offshoot.\n\nThe second difficulty is deeper still. _The 'entire brain-process' is\nnot a physical fact at all._ It is the appearance to an onlooking mind\nof a multitude of physical facts. 'Entire brain' is nothing but our\nname for the way in which a million of molecules arranged in certain\npositions may affect our sense. On the principles of the corpuscular or\nmechanical philosophy, the only realities are the separate molecules,\nor at most the cells. Their aggregation into a 'brain' is a fiction of\npopular speech. Such a fiction cannot serve as the objectively real\ncounterpart to any psychic state whatever. Only a genuinely physical\nfact can so serve. But the molecular fact is the only genuine physical\nfact--whereupon we seem, if we are to have an elementary psycho-physic\nlaw at all, thrust right back upon something like the mind-stuff\ntheory, for the molecular fact, being an element of the 'brain,'\nwould seem naturally to correspond, not to the total thoughts, but to\nelements in the thought.\n\nWhat shall we do? Many would find relief at this point in celebrating\nthe mystery of the Unknowable and the 'awe' which we should feel at\nhaving such a principle to take final charge of our perplexities.\nOthers would rejoice that the finite and separatist view of things\nwith which we started had at last developed its contradictions, and\nwas about to lead us dialectically upwards to some 'higher synthesis'\nin which inconsistencies cease from troubling and logic is at rest.\nIt may be a constitutional infirmity, but I can take no comfort in\nsuch devices for making a luxury of intellectual defeat. They are but\nspiritual chloroform. Better live on the ragged edge, better gnaw the\nfile forever!\n\n\nTHE MATERIAL-MONAD THEORY.\n\n\nThe most rational thing to do is to suspect that there may be a third\npossibility, an alternative supposition which we have not considered.\nNow there _is_ an alternative supposition--a supposition moreover\nwhich has been frequently made in the history of philosophy, and which\nis freer from logical objections than either of the views we have\nourselves discussed. It may be called the _theory of polyzoism or\nmultiple monadism_; and it conceives the matter thus:\n\nEvery brain-cell has its own individual consciousness, which no other\ncell knows anything about, all individual consciousnesses being\n'ejective' to each other. There is, however, among the cells one\ncentral or pontifical one to which _our_ consciousness is attached. But\nthe events of all the other cells physically influence this arch-cell;\nand through producing their joint effects on it, these other cells may\nbe said to 'combine.' The arch-cell is, in fact, one of those 'external\nmedia' without which we saw that no fusion or integration of a number\nof things can occur. The physical modifications of the arch-cell thus\nform a sequence of results in the production whereof every other cell\nhas a share, so that, as one might say, every other cell is represented\ntherein. And similarly, the conscious correlates to these physical\nmodifications form a sequence of thoughts or feelings, each one of\nwhich is, as to its substantive being, an integral and uncompounded\npsychic thing, but each one of which may (in the exercise of its\n_cognitive_ function) be _aware of THINGS_ many and complicated in\nproportion to the number of other cells that have helped to modify the\ncentral cell.\n\nBy a conception of this sort, one incurs neither of the internal\ncontradictions which we found to beset the other two theories. One has\nno unintelligible self-combining of psychic units to account for on the\none hand; and on the other hand, one need not treat as the physical\ncounterpart of the stream of consciousness under observation, a 'total\nbrain-activity' which is non-existent as a genuinely physical fact.\nBut, to offset these advantages, one has physiological difficulties\nand improbabilities. There is no cell or group of cells in the brain\nof such anatomical or functional pre-eminence as to appear to be the\nkeystone or centre of gravity of the whole system. And even if there\nwere such a cell, the theory of multiple monadism would, in strictness\nof thought, have no right to stop at it and treat it as a unit. The\ncell is no more a unit, materially considered, than the total brain\nis a unit. It is a compound of molecules, just as the brain is a\ncompound of cells and fibres. And the molecules, according to the\nprevalent physical theories, are in turn compounds of atoms. The\ntheory in question, therefore, if radically carried out, must set up\nfor its elementary and irreducible psycho-physic couple, not the cell\nand its consciousness, but the primordial and eternal atom and its\nconsciousness. We are back at Leibnitzian monadism, and therewith leave\nphysiology behind us and dive into regions inaccessible to experience\nand verification; and our doctrine, although not self-contradictory,\nbecomes so remote and unreal as to be almost as bad as if it were.\nSpeculative minds alone will take an interest in it; and metaphysics,\nnot psychology, will be responsible for its career. That the career may\nbe a successful one must be admitted as a possibility--a theory which\nLeibnitz, Herbart, and Lotze have taken under their protection must\nhave some sort of a destiny.\n\n\nTHE SOUL-THEORY.\n\n\nBut is this my last word? By no means. Many readers have certainly been\nsaying to themselves for the last few pages: \"Why on earth doesn't\nthe poor man say _the Soul_ and have done with it?\" Other readers, of\nanti-spiritualistic training and prepossessions, advanced thinkers,\nor popular evolutionists, will perhaps be a little surprised to\nfind this much-despised word now sprung upon them at the end of so\nphysiological a train of thought. But the plain fact is that all the\narguments for a 'pontifical cell' or an 'arch-monad' are also arguments\nfor that well-known spiritual agent in which scholastic psychology\nand common-sense have always believed. And my only reason for beating\nthe bushes so, and not bringing it in earlier as a possible solution\nof our difficulties, has been that by this procedure I might perhaps\nforce some of these materialistic minds to feel the more strongly the\nlogical respectability of the spiritualistic position. The fact is that\none cannot afford to despise any of these great traditional objects of\nbelief. Whether we realize it or not, there is always a great drift\nof reasons, positive and negative, towing us in their direction. If\nthere be such entities as Souls in the universe, they may possibly be\naffected by the manifold occurrences that go on in the nervous centres.\nTo the state of the entire brain at a given moment they may respond\nby inward modifications of their own. These changes of state may be\npulses of consciousness, cognitive of objects few or many, simple or\ncomplex. The soul would be thus a medium upon which (to use our earlier\nphraseology) the manifold brain-processes _combine their effects_.\nNot needing to consider it as the 'inner aspect' of any arch-molecule\nor brain-cell, we escape that physiological improbability; and as its\npulses of consciousness are unitary and integral affairs from the\noutset, we escape the absurdity of supposing feelings which exist\nseparately and then 'fuse together' by themselves. The separateness is\nin the brain-world, on this theory, and the unity in the soul-world;\nand the only trouble that remains to haunt us is the metaphysical one\nof understanding how one sort of world or existent thing can affect or\ninfluence another at all. This trouble, however, since it also exists\ninside of both worlds, and involves neither physical improbability nor\nlogical contradiction, is relatively small.\n\nI confess, therefore, that to posit a soul influenced in some\nmysterious way by the brain-states and responding to them by conscious\naffections of its own, seems to me the line of least logical\nresistance, so far as we yet have attained.\n\nIf it does not strictly _explain_ anything, it is at any rate less\npositively objectionable than either mind-stuff or a material-monad\ncreed. _The bare_ PHENOMENON, _however, the_ IMMEDIATELY KNOWN _thing\nwhich on the mental side is in apposition with the entire brain-process\nis the state of consciousness and not the soul itself._ Many of the\nstanchest believers in the soul admit that we know it only as an\ninference from experiencing its _states_. In Chapter X, accordingly,\nwe must return to its consideration again, and _ask ourselves whether,\nafter all, the ascertainment of a blank unmediated correspondence,\nterm for term, of the succession of states of consciousness with the\nsuccession of total brain-processes, be not the simplest psycho-physic\nformula, and the last word of a psychology which contents itself with\nverifiable laws, and seeks only to be clear, and to avoid unsafe\nhypotheses._ Such a mere admission of the empirical parallelism will\nthere appear the wisest course. By keeping to it, our psychology\nwill remain positivistic and non-metaphysical; and although this is\ncertainly only a provisional halting-place, and things must some day\nbe more thoroughly thought out, we shall abide there in this book, and\njust as we have rejected mind-dust, we shall take no account of the\nsoul. The spiritualistic reader may nevertheless believe in the soul\nif he will; whilst the positivistic one who wishes to give a tinge of\nmystery to the expression of his positivism can continue to say that\nnature in her unfathomable designs has mixed us of clay and flame,\nof brain and mind, that the two things hang indubitably together and\ndetermine each other's being, but how or why, no mortal may ever know.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[160] Psychol. \u00a7 62.\n\n[161] _Ibid._ \u00a7 272.\n\n[162] Fragments of Science, 5th ed., p. 420.\n\n[163] Belfast Address, 'Nature,' August 20, 1874, p. 318. I cannot\nhelp remarking that the disparity between motions and feelings on\nwhich these authors lay so much stress, is somewhat less absolute\nthan at first sight it seems. There are categories common to the two\nworlds. Not only temporal succession (as Helmholtz admits, Physiol.\nOptik, p. 445), but such attributes as intensity, volume, simplicity\nor complication, smooth or impeded change, rest or agitation, are\nhabitually predicated of both physical facts and mental facts. Where\nsuch analogies obtain, the things do have something in common.\n\n[164] Psychology, \u00a7 131\n\n[165] 'Nature,' as above, 317-8.\n\n[166] 'Nascent' is Mr. Spencer's great word. In showing how at a\ncertain point consciousness must appear upon the evolving scene this\nauthor fairly outdoes himself in vagueness.\n\n\"In its higher forms, Instinct is probably accompanied by a rudimentary\nconsciousness. There cannot be co-ordination of many stimuli without\nsome ganglion through which they are all brought into relation. In\nthe process of bringing them into relation, this ganglion must be\nsubject to the influence of each--must undergo many changes. And\nthe quick succession of changes in a ganglion, implying as it does\nperpetual experiences of differences and likenesses, constitutes the\n_raw material_ of consciousness. The _implication_ is that as fast as\nInstinct is developed, some kind of consciousness becomes nascent.\"\n(Psychology, \u00a7 195.)\n\nThe words 'raw material' and 'implication' which I have italicized\nare the words which do the _evolving_. They are supposed to have\nall the rigor which the 'synthetic philosophy' requires. In the\nfollowing passage, when 'impressions' pass through a common 'centre\nof communication' in succession (much as people might pass into a\ntheatre through a turnstile) consciousness, non-existent until then, is\nsupposed to result:\n\n\"Separate impressions are received by the senses--by different parts\nof the body. If they go no further than the places at which they\nare received, they are useless. Or if only some of them are brought\ninto relation with one another, they are useless. That an effectual\nadjustment may be made, they must be all brought into relation with one\nanother. But this implies some centre of communication common to them\nall, through which they severally pass; and as they cannot pass through\nit simultaneously, they must pass through it in succession. So that as\nthe external phenomena responded to become greater in number and more\ncomplicated in kind, the variety and rapidity of the changes to which\nthis common centre of communication is subject must increase--there\nmust result an unbroken series of these changes-_there must arise a\nconsciousness_.\n\n\"Hence the progress of the correspondence between the organism and its\nenvironment necessitates a gradual reduction of the sensorial changes\nto a succession; and by so doing _evolves a distinct consciousness_--a\nconsciousness that becomes higher as the succession becomes more rapid\nand the correspondence more complete.\" (_Ibid._ \u00a7 179.)\n\nIt is true that in the Fortnightly Review (vol. xiv, p. 716) Mr.\nSpencer denies that he means by this passage to tell us anything about\nthe origin of consciousness at all. It resembles, however, too many\nother places in his Psychology (e.g. \u00a7\u00a7 43, 110, 244) not to be taken\nas a serious attempt to explain how consciousness must at a certain\npoint be 'evolved.' That, when a critic calls his attention to the\ninanity of his words, Mr. Spencer should say he never meant anything\nparticular by them, is simply an example of the scandalous vagueness\nwith which this sort of 'chromo-philosophy' is carried on.\n\n[167] His own words are: \"Mistakes are made in the sense that he\nadmits having been touched, when in reality it was radiant heat that\naffected his skin. In our own before-mentioned experiments there\nwas never any deception on the entire palmar side of the hand or\non the face. On the back of the hand in one case in a series of 60\nstimulations 4 mistakes occurred, in another case 2 mistakes in 45\nstimulations. On the extensor side of the upper arm 3 deceptions out of\n48 stimulations were noticed, and in the case of another individual,\n1 out of 31. In one case over the spine 3 deceptions in a series of\n11 excitations were observed; in another, 4 out of 19. On the lumbar\nspine 6 deceptions came among 29 stimulations, and again 4 out of\n7. There is certainly not yet enough material on which to rest a\ncalculation of probabilities, but any one can easily convince himself\nthat on the back there is no question of even a moderately accurate\ndiscrimination between warmth and a light pressure so far as but small\nportions of skin come into play. It has been as yet impossible to make\ncorresponding experiments with regard to sensibility to cold.\" (Lehrb.\nd. Anat. u. Physiol. d. Sinnesorgane (1862), p. 29.)\n\n[168] Principles of Psychology, \u00a7 60.\n\n[169] Oddly enough, Mr. Spencer seems quite unaware of the\n_general_ function of the theory of elementary units of mind-stuff\nin the evolutionary philosophy. We have seen it to be absolutely\nindispensable, if that philosophy is to work, to postulate\nconsciousness in the nebula,---the simplest way being, of course, to\nsuppose every atom animated. Mr. Spencer, however, will have it (e.g.\nFirst Principles, \u00a7 71) that consciousness is only the occasional\nresult of the 'transformation' of a certain amount of 'physical force'\nto which it is 'equivalent.' Presumably a brain must already be there\nbefore any such 'transformation' can take place; and so the argument\nquoted in the text stands as a mere local detail, without general\nbearings.\n\n[170] The compounding of colors may be dealt with in an identical\nway. Helmholtz has shown that if green light and red light fall\nsimultaneously on the retina, we see the color yellow. The mind-stuff\ntheory would interpret this as a ease where the feeling green and the\nfeeling red 'combine' into the _tertium quid_ of feeling, yellow. What\nreally occurs is no doubt that a third kind of nerve-process is set\nup when the combined lights impinge on the retina,--not simply the\nprocess of red plus the process of green, but something quite different\nfrom both or either. Of course, then, there _are_ no feelings, either\nof red or of green, present to the mind at all; but the feeling of\nyellow which _is_ there, answers as directly to the nerve-process which\nmomentarily then exists, as the feelings of green and red would answer\nto their respective nerve-processes did the latter happen to be taking\nplace.\n\n[171] Cf. Mill's Logic, book vi, chap. iv, \u00a7 3.\n\n[172] I find in my students an almost invincible tendency to think that\nwe can immediately perceive that feelings do combine. \"What!\" they say,\n\"is not the taste of lemonade composed of that of lemon _plus_ that of\nsugar?\" This is taking the combining of objects for that of feelings.\nThe physical lemonade contains both the lemon and the sugar, but its\ntaste does not contain their tastes, for if there are any two things\nwhich are certainly _not_ present in the taste of lemonade, those are\nthe lemon-sour on the one hand and the sugar-sweet on the other. These\ntastes are absent utterly. The entirely new taste which is present\n_resembles_, it is true, both those tastes; but in Chapter XIII we\nshall see that resemblance can not always be held to involve partial\nidentity.\n\n[173] E. Montgomery, in 'Mind,' v, 18-19. See also pp. 24-5.\n\n[174] J. Royce, 'Mind,' vi, p. 376. Lotze has set forth the truth\nof this law more clearly and copiously than any other writer.\nUnfortunately he is too lengthy to quote. See his Microcosmus, bk. ii,\nch. i, \u00a7 5; Metaphysik, \u00a7\u00a7 242, 260; Outlines of Metaphysics, part ii,\nchap. i, \u00a7\u00a7 3, 4, 5. Compare also Reid's Intellectual Powers, essay v,\nchap. iii, _ad fin._; Bowne's Metaphysics, pp. 361-76; St. J. Mivart:\nNature and Thought, pp. 98-101; E. Gurney: 'Monism,' in 'Mind,' vi,\n153; and the article by Prof. Royce, just quoted, on 'Mind-stuff and\nReality.'\n\n_In defence of the mind-stuff view,_ see W. K. Clifford: 'Mind,' iii,\n57 (reprinted in his 'Lectures and Essays,' ii, 71); G. T. Fechner,\nPsychophysik, Bd. ii, cap. xlv; H. Taine: on Intelligence, bk. iii; E.\nHaeckel: 'Zellseelen u. Seelenzellen' in Gesammelte pop. Vortr\u00e4ge, Bd.\ni, p. 143; W. S. Duncan: Conscious Matter, _passim_; H. Z\u00f6llner: Natur\nd. Cometen, pp. 320 ff.; Alfred Barratt: 'Physical Ethic' and 'Physical\nMetempiric,' _passim_; J. Soury: 'Hylozoismus,' in 'Kosmos,' V. Jahrg.,\nHeft x, p. 241; A. Main: 'Mind,' i, 292, 431, 566; ii, 129, 402; _Id._\nRevue Philos., ii, 86, 88, 419; iii, 51, 502; iv, 402; F. W. Frankland:\n'Mind,' vi, 116; Whittaker: 'Mind,' vi, 498 (historical); Morton\nPrince: The Nature of Mind and Human Automatism (1885); A. Riehl: Der\nphilosophische Kriticismus, Bd. ii, Theil 2, 2ter Abschnitt, 2tes Cap.\n(1887). The clearest of all these Statements is, as far as it goes,\nthat of Prince.\n\n[175] \"Someone might say that although it is true that neither a blind\nman nor a deaf man by himself can compare sounds with colors, yet since\none hears and the other sees they might do so both together.... But\nwhether they are apart or close together makes no difference; not even\nif they permanently keep house together; no, not if they were Siamese\ntwins, or more than Siamese twins, and were inseparably grown together,\nwould it make the assumption any more possible. Only when sound and\ncolor are represented in the same reality is it thinkable that they\nshould be compared.\" (Brentano: Psychologie, p. 209.)\n\n[176] The reader must observe that we are reasoning altogether about\nthe _Logic_ of the mind-stuff theory, about whether it can _exist in\nthe constitution_ of higher mental states by viewing them as _identical\nwith lower ones_ summed together. We say the two sorts of fact are\nnot identical: a higher state _is_ not a lot of lower states; it is\nitself. When, however, a lot of lower states have come together, or\nwhen certain brain-conditions occur together which, _if they occurred\nseparately, would produce_ a lot of lower states, we have not for a\nmoment pretended that a higher state may not emerge. In fact it does\nemerge under those conditions; and our Chapter IX will be mainly\ndevoted to the proof of this fact. But such emergence is that of a new\npsychic entity, and is _toto c\u0153lo_ different from such an 'integration'\nof the lower states as the mind-stuff theory affirms.\n\nIt may seem strange to suppose that anyone should mistake criticism\nof a certain theory about a fact for doubt of the fact itself. And\nyet the confusion is made in high quarters enough to justify our\nremarks. Mr. J. Ward, in his article Psychology in the Encyclop\u00e6dia\nBritannica, speaking of the hypothesis that \"a series of feelings can\nbe aware of itself as a series,\" says (p. 39): \"Paradox is too mild\na word for it, even contradiction will hardly suffice.\" Whereupon,\nProfessor Bain takes him thus to task: \"As to 'a series of states being\naware of itself,' I confess I see no insurmountable difficulty. It\nmay be a fact, or not a fact; it may be a very clumsy expression for\nwhat it is applied to; but it is neither paradox nor contradiction.\nA series merely contradicts an individual, or it may be two or more\nindividuals as coexisting; but that is too general to exclude the\npossibility of self-knowledge. It certainly does not bring the property\nof self-knowledge into the foreground, which, however, is not the same\nas denying it. An algebraic series might know itself, without any\ncontradiction: the only thing against it is the want of evidence of the\nfact.\" ('Mind,' xi, 459). Prof. Bain thinks, then, that all the bother\nis about the difficulty of seeing how a series of feelings can have the\nknowledge of itself _added to it!!!_ As if anybody ever was troubled\nabout that. That, notoriously enough, is a fact: our consciousness\nis a series of feelings to which every now and then is _added_ a\nretrospective consciousness that they have come and gone. What Mr. Ward\nand I are troubled about is merely the silliness of the mind-stuffists\nand associationists continuing to say that the 'series of states' _is_\nthe 'awareness of itself;' that if the states be posited severally,\ntheir collective consciousness is _eo ipso_ given; and that we need no\nfarther explanation, or 'evidence of the fact.'\n\n[177] The writers about 'unconscious cerebration' seem sometimes to\nmean that and sometimes unconscious thought. The arguments which follow\nare culled from various quarters. The reader will find them most\nsystematically urged by E. von Hartmann: Philosophy of the Unconscious,\nvol. i; and by E. Colsenet: La Vie Inconsciente de l'Esprit (1880).\nConsult also T. Laycock: Mind and Brain, vol. i, chap. v (1860); W.\nB. Carpenter: Mental Physiology, chap. xiii; F. P. Cobbe: Darwinism\nin Morals and other Essays, essay xi, Unconscious Cerebration (1872);\nF. Bowen: Modern Philosophy, pp. 428-480; R. H. Hutton: Contemporary\nReview, vol. xxiv, p. 201; J. S. Mill: Exam. of Hamilton, chap. xv; G.\nH. Lewes: Problems of Life and Mind, 3d series, Prob. ii, chap. x, and\nalso Prob. iii, chap. ii; D. G. Thompson: A System of Psychology, chap.\nxxxiii; J. M. Baldwin, Handbook of Psychology, chap. iv.\n\n[178] Nouveaux Essais, Avant-propos.\n\n[179] J. S. Mill, Exam. of Hamilton, chap. xv.\n\n[180] Cf. Dugald Stewart, Elements, chap. ii.\n\n[181] J. E. Maude: 'The Unconscious in Education,' in 'Education,' vol.\ni, p. 401 (1882).\n\n[182] Zur Lehre vor Lichtsinne (1878).\n\n[183] Cf. Wundt: Ueber den Einfluss der Philosophie, etc.--Antrittsrede\n(1876), pp. 10-11;--Helmholtz: Die Thatsachen in der Wahrnehmung\n(1879), p. 27.\n\n[184] Cf. Satz vom Grunde, pp. 59-65. Compare also F. Z\u00f6llner's Natur\nder Kometen, pp. 342 ff. and 425.\n\n[185] Cf. the statements from Helmholtz to be found later in Chapter\nXIII.\n\n[186] The text was written before Professor Lipps's Grundtatsachen des\nSeelenlebens (1883) came into my hands. In Chapter III of that book\nthe notion of unconscious thought is subjected to the clearest and\nmost searching criticism which it has yet received. Some passages are\nso similar to what I have myself written that I must quote them in a\nnote. After proving that dimness and clearness, incompleteness and\ncompleteness do not pertain to a state of mind _as such_--since every\nstate of mind must be _exactly_ what it is, and nothing else--but only\npertain to the way in which states of mind stand for objects, which\nthey more or less dimly, more or less clearly, _represent_; Lipps takes\nthe case of those sensations which attention is said to make more\nclear. \"I perceive an object,\" he says, \"now in clear daylight, and\nagain at night. Call the content of the day-perception _a_, and that\nof the evening-perception _a^1_. There will probably be a considerable\ndifference between _a_ and _a^1_. The colors of _a_ will be varied\nand intense, and will be sharply bounded by each other; those of\n_a^1_ will be less luminous, and less strongly contrasted, and will\napproach a common gray or brown, and merge more into each other. Both\npercepts, however, as such, are completely determinate and distinct\nfrom all others. The colors of _a^1_ appear before my eye neither more\nnor less decidedly dark and blurred than the colors of _a_ appear\nbright and sharply bounded. But now I know, or believe I know, that\none and the same real Object A corresponds to both _a_ and _a^1_. I\nam convinced, moreover, that _a_ represents A better than does _a^1_.\nInstead, however, of giving to my conviction this, its only correct,\nexpression, and keeping the content of my consciousness and the real\nobject, the representation and what it means, distinct from each other,\nI substitute the real object for the content of the consciousness, and\ntalk of the experience as if it consisted in one and the same object\n(namely, the surreptitiously introduced real one), constituting twice\nover the content of my consciousness, once in a clear and distinct,\nthe other time in an obscure and vague fashion. I talk now of a\ndistincter and of a less distinct _consciousness_ of A, whereas I\nam only justified in talking of two consciousnesses, _a_ and _a^1_,\nequally distinct _in se_, but to which the supposed external object A\ncorresponds with different degrees of distinctness.\" (P. 38-9.)\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII.\n\nTHE METHODS AND SNARES OF PSYCHOLOGY\n\n\nWe have now finished the physiological preliminaries of our subject\nand must in the remaining chapters study the mental states themselves\nwhose cerebral conditions and concomitants we have been considering\nhitherto. Beyond the brain, however, there is an outer world to which\nthe brain-states themselves 'correspond.' And it will be well, ere we\nadvance farther, to say a word about the relation of the mind to this\nlarger sphere of physical fact.\n\n\nPSYCHOLOGY IS A NATURAL SCIENCE.\n\n\nThat is, the mind which the psychologist studies is the mind of\ndistinct individuals inhabiting definite portions of a real space and\nof a real time. With any other sort of mind, absolute Intelligence,\nMind unattached to a particular body, or Mind not subject to the course\nof time, the psychologist as such has nothing to do. 'Mind,' in his\nmouth, is only a class name for _minds_. Fortunate will it be if his\nmore modest inquiry result in any generalizations which the philosopher\ndevoted to absolute Intelligence as such can use.\n\nTo the psychologist, then, the minds he studies are _objects_, in a\nworld of other objects. Even when he introspectively analyzes his own\nmind, and tells what he finds there, he talks about it in an objective\nway. He says, for instance, that under certain circumstances the color\ngray appears to him green, and calls the appearance an illusion.\nThis implies that he compares two objects, a real color seen under\ncertain conditions, and a mental perception which he believes to\nrepresent it, and that he declares the relation between them to be of\na certain kind. In making this critical judgment, the psychologist\nstands as much outside of the perception which he criticises as he\ndoes of the color. Both are his objects. And if this is true of him\nwhen he reflects on his own conscious states, how much truer is it\nwhen he treats of those of others! In German philosophy since Kant\nthe word _Erkenntnisstheorie_, criticism of the faculty of knowledge,\nplays a great part. Now the psychologist necessarily becomes such an\n_Erkenntnisstheoretiker_. But the knowledge he theorizes about is not\nthe bare function of knowledge which Kant criticises--he does not\ninquire into the possibility of knowledge _\u00fcberhaupt_. He assumes it to\nbe possible, he does not doubt its presence in himself at the moment\nhe speaks. The knowledge he criticises is the knowledge of particular\nmen about the particular things that surround them. This he may, upon\noccasion, in the light of his _own_ unquestioned knowledge, pronounce\ntrue or false, and trace the reasons by which it has become one or the\nother.\n\nIt is highly important that this natural-science point of view should\nbe understood at the outset. Otherwise more may be demanded of the\npsychologist than he ought to be expected to perform.\n\nA diagram will exhibit more emphatically what the assumptions of\nPsychology must be:\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n| 1            |  2           |   3             |   4                  |\n| The          |  The Thought |   The Thought's |   The Psychologist's |\n| Psychologist |  Studied     |   Object        |   Reality            |\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nThese four squares contain the irreducible data of psychology. No. 1,\nthe psychologist, believes Nos. 2, 3, and 4, which together form _his\n_ total object, to be realities, and reports them and their mutual\nrelations as truly as he can without troubling himself with the puzzle\nof how he can report them at all. About such _ultimate _ puzzles he in\nthe main need trouble himself no more than the geometer, the chemist,\nor the botanist do, who make precisely the same assumptions as he.[187]\n\nOf certain fallacies to which the psychologist is exposed by reason of\nhis peculiar point of view--that of being a reporter of subjective as\nwell as of objective facts, we must presently speak. But not until we\nhave considered the methods he uses for ascertaining what the facts in\nquestion are.\n\n\nTHE METHODS OF INVESTIGATION.\n\n\n_Introspective Observation is what we have to rely on first and\nforemost and always._ The word introspection need hardly be defined--it\nmeans, of course, the looking into our own minds and reporting what\nwe there discover. _Every one agrees that we there discover states of\nconsciousness._ So far as I know, the existence of such states has\nnever been doubted by any critic, however sceptical in other respects\nhe may have been. That we have _cogitations_ of some sort is the\n_inconcussum_ in a world most of whose other facts have at some time\ntottered in the breath of philosophic doubt. All people unhesitatingly\nbelieve that they feel themselves thinking, and that they distinguish\nthe mental state as an inward activity or passion, from all the objects\nwith which it may cognitively deal. _I regard this belief as the most\nfundamental of all the postulates of Psychology,_ and shall discard all\ncurious inquiries about its certainty as too metaphysical for the scope\nof this book.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_A Question of Nomenclature._ We ought to have some general term\nby which to designate all states of consciousness merely as such,\nand apart from their particular quality or cognitive function.\nUnfortunately most of the terms in use have grave objections. 'Mental\nstate,' 'state of consciousness,' 'conscious modification,' are\ncumbrous and have no kindred verbs. The same is true of 'subjective\ncondition.' 'Feeling' has the verb 'to feel,' both active and neuter,\nand such derivatives as 'feelingly,' 'felt,' 'feltness,' etc., which\nmake it extremely convenient. But on the other hand it has specific\nmeanings as well as its generic one, sometimes standing for pleasure\nand pain, and being sometimes a synonym of '_sensation_' as opposed\nto _thought_; whereas we wish a term to cover sensation and thought\nindifferently. Moreover, 'feeling' has acquired in the hearts of\nplatonizing thinkers a very opprobrious set of implications; and since\none of the great obstacles to mutual understanding in philosophy is the\nuse of words eulogistically and disparagingly, impartial terms ought\nalways, if possible, to be preferred. The word _psychosis_ has been\nproposed by Mr. Huxley. It has the advantage of being correlative to\n_neurosis_ (the name applied by the same author to the corresponding\nnerve-process), and is moreover technical and devoid of partial\nimplications. But it has no verb or other grammatical form allied to\nit. The expressions 'affection of the soul,' 'modification of the\nego,' are clumsy, like 'state of consciousness,' and they implicitly\nassert theories which it is not well to embody in terminology before\nthey have been openly discussed and approved. 'Idea' is a good vague\nneutral word, and was by Locke employed in the broadest generic way;\nbut notwithstanding his authority it has not domesticated itself in the\nlanguage so as to cover bodily sensations, and it moreover has no verb.\n'Thought' would be by far the best word to use if it could be made to\ncover sensations. It has no opprobrious connotation such as 'feeling'\nhas, and it immediately suggests the omnipresence of cognition (or\nreference to an object other than the mental state itself), which\nwe shall soon see to be of the mental life's essence. But can the\nexpression 'thought of a toothache' ever suggest to the reader the\nactual present pain itself? It is hardly possible; and we thus seem\nabout to be forced back on some _pair_ of terms like Hume's 'impression\nand idea,' or Hamilton's 'presentation and representation,' or the\nordinary 'feeling and thought,' if we wish to cover the whole ground.\n\nIn this quandary we can make no definitive choice, but must, according\nto the convenience of the context, use sometimes one, sometimes another\nof the synonyms that have been mentioned. _My own partiality is for\neither FEELING or THOUGHT._ I shall probably often use both words in a\nwider sense than usual, and alternately startle two classes of readers\nby their unusual sound; but if the connection makes it clear that\nmental states at large, irrespective of their kind, are meant, this\nwill do no harm, and may even do some good.[188]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_The inaccuracy of introspective observation_ has been made a subject\nof debate. It is important to gain some fixed ideas on this point\nbefore we proceed.\n\nThe commonest spiritualistic opinion is that the Soul or _Subject_\nof the mental life is a metaphysical entity, inaccessible to direct\nknowledge, and that the various mental states and operations of which\nwe reflectively become aware are objects of an inner sense which\ndoes not lay hold of the real agent in itself, any more than sight\nor hearing gives us direct knowledge of matter in itself. From, this\npoint of view introspection is, of course, incompetent to lay hold of\nanything more than the Soul's _phenomena_. But even then the question\nremains, How well can it know the phenomena themselves?\n\nSome authors take high ground here and claim for it a sort of\ninfallibility. Thus Ueberweg:\n\n \"When a mental image, as such, is the object of my apprehension,\n there is no meaning in seeking to distinguish its existence in my\n consciousness (in me) from its existence out of my consciousness (in\n itself); for the object apprehended is, in this case, one which does\n not even exist, as the objects of external perception do, in itself\n outside of my consciousness. It exists only within me.\"[189]\n\nAnd Brentano:\n\n \"The phenomena inwardly apprehended are true in themselves. As they\n appear--of this the evidence with which they are apprehended is a\n warrant--so they are in reality. Who, then, can deny that in this a\n great superiority of Psychology over the physical sciences comes to\n light?\"\n\nAnd again:\n\n \"No one can doubt whether the psychic condition he apprehends in\n himself _be_, and be _so_, as he apprehends it. Whoever should doubt\n this would have reached that _finished_ doubt which destroys itself\n in destroying every fixed point from which to make an attack upon\n knowledge.\"[190]\n\nOthers have gone to the opposite extreme, and maintained that we\ncan have no introspective cognition of our own minds at all. A\ndeliverance of Auguste Comte to this effect has been so often quoted\nas to be almost classical; and some reference to it seems therefore\nindispensable here.\n\nPhilosophers, says Comte,[191] have\n\n \"in these latter days imagined themselves able to distinguish, by a\n very singular subtlety, two sorts of observation of equal importance,\n one external, the other internal, the latter being solely destined for\n the study of intellectual phenomena.... I limit myself to pointing out\n the principal consideration which proves clearly that this pretended\n direct contemplation of the mind by itself is a pure illusion.... It\n is in fact evident that, by an invincible necessity, the human mind\n can observe directly all phenomena except its own proper states. For\n by whom shall the observation of these be made? It is conceivable\n that a man might observe himself with respect to the _passions_\n that animate him, for the anatomical organs of passion are distinct\n from those whose function is observation. Though we have all made\n such observations on ourselves, they can never have much scientific\n value, and the best mode of knowing the passions will always be that\n of observing them from without; for every strong state of passion\n ... is necessarily incompatible with the state of observation. But,\n as for observing in the same way _intellectual_ phenomena at the\n time of their actual presence, that is a manifest impossibility. The\n thinker cannot divide himself into two, of whom one reasons whilst\n the other observes him reason. The organ observed and the organ\n observing being, in this case, identical, how could observation take\n place? This pretended psychological method is then radically null\n and void. On the one hand, they advise you to isolate yourself, as\n far as possible, from every external sensation, especially every\n intellectual work,--for if you were to busy yourself even with the\n simplest calculation, what would become of _internal_ observation?--on\n the other hand, after having with the utmost care attained this state\n of intellectual slumber, you must begin to contemplate the operations\n going on in your mind, when nothing there takes place! Our descendants\n will doubtless see such pretensions some day ridiculed upon the stage.\n The results of so strange a procedure harmonize entirely with its\n principle. For all the two thousand years during which metaphysicians\n have thus cultivated psychology, they are not agreed about one\n intelligible and established proposition. '_Internal observation_'\n gives almost as many divergent results as there are individuals who\n think they practise it.\"\n\nComte hardly could have known anything of the English, and nothing\nof the German, empirical psychology. The 'results' which he had in\nmind when writing were probably scholastic ones, such as principles\nof internal activity, the faculties, the ego, the _liberum arbitrium\nindifferenti\u00e6_, etc. John Mill, in replying to him,[192] says:\n\n \"It might have occurred to M. Comte that a fact may be studied through\n the medium of memory, not at the very moment of our perceiving it,\n but the moment after: and this is really the mode in which our\n best knowledge of our intellectual acts is generally acquired. We\n reflect on what we have been doing when the act is past, but when\n its impression in the memory is still fresh. Unless in one of these\n ways, we could not have acquired the knowledge which nobody denies us\n to have, of what passes in our minds. M. Comte would scarcely have\n affirmed that we are not aware of our own intellectual operations. We\n know of our observings and our reasonings, either at the very time,\n or by memory the moment after; in either case, by direct knowledge,\n and not (like things done by us in a state of somnambulism) merely\n by their results. This simple fact destroys the whole of M. Comte's\n argument. Whatever we are directly aware of, we can directly observe.\"\n\nWhere now does the truth lie? Our quotation from Mill is obviously the\none which expresses the most of _practical_ truth about the matter.\nEven the writers who insist upon the absolute veracity of our immediate\ninner apprehension of a conscious state have to contrast with this the\nfallibility of our _memory_ or _observation_ of it, a moment later. No\none has emphasized more sharply than Brentano himself the difference\nbetween the immediate _feltness_ of a feeling, and its perception by\na subsequent reflective act. But which mode of consciousness of it is\nthat which the psychologist must depend on? If to _have_ feelings or\nthoughts in their immediacy were enough, babies in the cradle would\nbe psychologists, and infallible ones. But the psychologist must not\nonly _have_ his mental states in their absolute veritableness, he must\nreport them and write about them, name them, classify and compare\nthem and trace their relations to other things. Whilst alive they are\ntheir own property; it is only _post-mortem_ that they become his\nprey.[193] And as in the naming, classing, and knowing of things\nin general we are notoriously fallible, why not also here? Comte is\nquite right in laying stress on the fact that a feeling, to be named,\njudged, or perceived, must be already past. No subjective state,\nwhilst present, is its own object; its object is always something\nelse. There are, it is true, cases in which we appear to be naming\nour present feeling, and so to be experiencing and observing the same\ninner fact at a single stroke, as when we say 'I feel tired,' 'I am\nangry,' etc. But these are illusory, and a little attention unmasks\nthe illusion. The present conscious state, when I say 'I feel tired,'\nis not the direct state of tire; when I say 'I feel angry,' it is not\nthe direct state of anger. It is the state of _saying-I-feel-tired_,\nof _saying-I-feel-angry_,--entirely different matters, so different\nthat the fatigue and anger apparently included in them are considerable\nmodifications of the fatigue and anger directly felt the previous\ninstant. The act of naming them has momentarily detracted from their\nforce.[194]\n\nThe only sound grounds on which the infallible veracity of the\nintrospective judgment might be maintained are empirical. If we had\nreason to think it has never yet deceived us, we might continue to\ntrust it. This is the ground actually maintained by Herr Mohr.\n\n \"The illusions of our senses,\" says this author, \"have undermined\n our belief in the reality of the outer world; but in the sphere of\n inner observation our confidence is intact, for we have never found\n ourselves to be in error about the reality of an act of thought or\n feeling. We have never been misled into thinking we were _not_ in\n doubt or in anger when these conditions were really states of our\n consciousness.\"[195]\n\nBut sound as the reasoning here would be, were the premises correct,\nI fear the latter cannot pass. However it may be with such strong\nfeelings as doubt or anger, about weaker feelings, and about the\n_relations to each other_ of all feelings, we find ourselves in\ncontinual error and uncertainty so soon as we are called on to name and\nclass, and not merely to feel. Who can be sure of the exact _order_\nof his feelings when they are excessively rapid? Who can be sure, in\nhis sensible perception of a chair, how much comes from the eye and\nhow much is supplied out of the previous knowledge of the mind? Who\ncan compare with precision the _quantities_ of disparate feelings\neven where the feelings are very much alike? For instance, where an\nobject is felt now against the back and now against the cheek, which\nfeeling is most extensive? Who can be sure that two given feelings are\nor are not exactly the same? Who can tell which is briefer or longer\nthan the other when both occupy but an instant of time? Who knows, of\nmany actions, for what motive they were done, or if for any motive\nat all? Who can enumerate all the distinct ingredients of such a\ncomplicated feeling as _anger_? and who can tell off-hand whether or no\na perception of _distance_ be a compound or a simple state of mind? The\nwhole mind-stuff controversy would stop if we could decide conclusively\nby introspection that what seem to us elementary feelings are really\nelementary and not compound.\n\nMr. Sully, in his work on Illusions, has a chapter on those of\nIntrospection from which we might now quote. But, since the rest of\nthis volume will be little more than a collection of illustrations of\nthe difficulty of discovering by direct introspection exactly what our\nfeelings and their relations are, we need not anticipate our own future\ndetails, I but just state our general conclusion that _introspection is\ndifficult and fallible; and that the difficulty is simply that of all\nobservation of whatever kind_. Something is before us; we do our best\nto tell what it is, but in spite of our good will we may go astray, and\ngive a description more applicable to some other sort of thing. The\nonly safeguard is in the final _consensus_ of our farther knowledge\nabout the thing in question, later views correcting earlier ones, until\nat last the harmony of a consistent system is reached. Such a system,\ngradually worked out, is the best guarantee the psychologist can give\nfor the soundness of any particular psychologic observation which he\nmay report. Such a system we ourselves must strive, as far as may be,\nto attain.\n\nThe English writers on psychology, and the school of Herbart in\nGermany, have in the main contented themselves with such results as\nthe immediate introspection of single individuals gave, and shown what\na body of doctrine they may make. The works of Locke, Hume, Reid,\nHartley, Stewart, Brown, the Mills, will always be classics in this\nline; and in Professor Bain's Treatises we have probably the last word\nof what this method taken mainly by itself can do--the last monument of\nthe youth of our science, still untechnical and generally intelligible,\nlike the Chemistry of Lavoisier, or Anatomy before the microscope was\nused.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_The Experimental Method_. But psychology is passing into a less simple\nphase. Within a few years what one may call a microscopic psychology\nhas arisen in Germany, carried on by experimental methods, asking of\ncourse every moment for introspective data, but eliminating their\nuncertainty by operating on a large scale and taking statistical means.\nThis method taxes patience to the utmost, and could hardly have arisen\nin a country whose natives could be _bored_. Such Germans as Weber,\nFechner, Vierordt, and Wundt obviously cannot; and their success has\nbrought into the field an array of younger experimental psychologists,\nbent on studying the _elements_ of the mental life, dissecting them\nout from the gross results in which they are embedded, and as far as\npossible reducing them to quantitative scales. The simple and open\nmethod of attack having done what it can, the method of patience,\nstarving out, and harassing to death is tried; the Mind must submit\nto a regular _siege_, in which minute advantages gained night and day\nby the forces that hem her in must sum themselves up at last into\nher overthrow. There is little of the grand style about these new\nprism, pendulum, and chronograph-philosophers. They mean business, not\nchivalry. What generous divination, and that superiority in virtue\nwhich was thought by Cicero to give a man the best insight into nature,\nhave failed to do, their spying and scraping, their deadly tenacity and\nalmost diabolic cunning, will doubtless some day bring about.\n\nNo general description of the methods of experimental psychology\nwould be instructive to one unfamiliar with the instances of their\napplication, so we will waste no words upon the attempt. _The principal\nfields of experimentation_ so far have been: 1) the connection of\nconscious states with their physical conditions, including the whole\nof brain-physiology, and the recent minutely cultivated physiology\nof the sense-organs, together with what is technically known as\n'psycho-physics,' or the laws of correlation between sensations and\nthe outward stimuli by which they are aroused; 2) the analysis of\nspace-perception into its sensational elements; 3) the measurement\nof the _duration_ of the simplest mental processes; 4) that of the\n_accuracy of reproduction_ in the memory of sensible experiences and\nof intervals of space and time; 5) that of the manner in which simple\nmental states _influence each other_, call each other up, or inhibit\neach other's reproduction; 6) that of the _number of facts_ which\nconsciousness can simultaneously discern; finally, 7) that of the\nelementary laws of oblivescence and retention. It must be said that in\nsome of these fields the results have as yet borne little theoretic\nfruit commensurate with the great labor expended in their acquisition.\nBut facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them they are sure\nto combine. New ground will from year to year be broken, and theoretic\nresults will grow. Meanwhile the experimental method has quite changed\nthe face of the science so far as the latter is a record of mere work\ndone.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe _comparative method_, finally, supplements the introspective and\nexperimental methods. This method presupposes a normal psychology of\nintrospection to be established in its main features. But where the\norigin of these features, or their dependence upon one another, is\nin question, it is of the utmost importance to trace the phenomenon\nconsidered through all its possible variations of type and combination.\nSo it has come to pass that instincts of animals are ransacked to throw\nlight on our own; and that the reasoning faculties of bees and ants,\nthe minds of savages, infants, madmen, idiots, the deaf and blind,\ncriminals, and eccentrics, are all invoked in support of this or that\nspecial theory about some part of our own mental life. The history of\nsciences, moral and political institutions, and languages, as types of\nmental product, are pressed into the same service. Messrs. Darwin and\nGalton have set the example of circulars of questions sent out by the\nhundred to those supposed able to reply. The custom has spread, and it\nwill be well for us in the next generation if such circulars be not\nranked among the common pests of life. Meanwhile information grows, and\nresults emerge. There are great sources of error in the comparative\nmethod. The interpretation of the 'psychoses' of animals, savages, and\ninfants is necessarily wild work, in which the personal equation of\nthe investigator has things very much its own way. A savage will be\nreported to have no moral or religious feeling if his actions shock the\nobserver unduly. A child will be assumed without self-consciousness\nbecause he talks of himself in the third person, etc., etc. No rules\ncan be laid down in advance. Comparative observations, to be definite,\nmust usually be made to test some pre-existing hypothesis; and the only\nthing then is to use as much sagacity as you possess, and to be as\ncandid as you can.\n\n\nTHE SOURCES OF ERROR IN PSYCHOLOGY.\n\n\n_The first of them arises from the Misleading Influence of Speech._\nLanguage was originally made by men who were not psychologists, and\nmost men to-day employ almost exclusively the vocabulary of outward\nthings. The cardinal passions of our life, anger, love, fear, hate,\nhope, and the most comprehensive divisions of our intellectual\nactivity, to remember, expect, think, know, dream, with the broadest\ngenera of \u00e6sthetic feeling, joy, sorrow, pleasure, pain, are the only\nfacts of a subjective order which this vocabulary deigns to note by\nspecial words. The elementary qualities of sensation, bright, loud,\nred, blue, hot, cold, are, it is true, susceptible of being used\nin both an objective and a subjective sense. They stand for outer\nqualities and for the feelings which these arouse. But the objective\nsense is the original sense; and still to-day we have to describe a\nlarge number of sensations by the name of the object from which they\nhave most frequently been got. An orange color, an odor of violets,\na cheesy taste, a thunderous sound, a fiery smart, etc., will recall\nwhat I mean. This absence of a special vocabulary for subjective facts\nhinders the study of all but the very coarsest of them. Empiricist\nwriters are very fond of emphasizing one great set of delusions which\nlanguage inflicts on the mind. Whenever we have made a word, they\nsay, to denote a certain group of phenomena, we are prone to suppose\na substantive entity existing beyond the phenomena, of which the word\nshall be the name. But the _lack_ of a word quite as often leads to the\ndirectly opposite error. We are then prone to suppose that no entity\ncan be there; and so we come to overlook phenomena whose existence\nwould be patent to us all, had we only grown up to hear it familiarly\nrecognized in speech.[196] It is hard to focus our attention on the\nnameless, and so there results a certain vacuousness in the descriptive\nparts of most psychologies.\n\nBut a worse defect than vacuousness comes from the dependence of\npsychology on common speech. Naming our thought by its own objects,\nwe almost all of us assume that as the objects are, so the thought\nmust be. The thought of several distinct things can only consist of\nseveral distinct bits of thought, or 'ideas;' that of an abstract or\nuniversal object can only be an abstract or universal idea. As each\nobject may come and go, be forgotten and then thought of again, it\nis held that the thought of it has a precisely similar independence,\nself-identity, and mobility. The thought of the object's recurrent\nidentity is regarded as the identity of its recurrent thought; and\nthe perceptions of multiplicity, of coexistence, of succession, are\nseverally conceived to be brought about only through a multiplicity, a\ncoexistence, a succession, of perceptions. The continuous flow of the\nmental stream is sacrificed, and in its place an atomism, a brickbat\nplan of construction, is preached, for the existence of which no\ngood introspective grounds can be brought forward, and out of which\npresently grow all sorts of paradoxes and contradictions, the heritage\nof woe of students of the mind.\n\nThese words are meant to impeach the entire English psychology derived\nfrom Locke and Hume, and the entire German psychology derived from\nHerbart, so far as they both treat 'ideas' as separate subjective\nentities that come and go. Examples will soon make the matter clearer.\nMeanwhile our psychologic insight is vitiated by still other snares.\n\n'_The Psychologist's Fallacy._' The _great_ snare of the psychologist\nis the _confusion of his own standpoint with that of the mental fact_\nabout which he is making his report. I shall hereafter call this the\n'psychologist's fallacy' _par excellence_. For some of the mischief,\nhere too, language is to blame. The psychologist, as we remarked above\n(p. 183), stands outside of the mental state he speaks of. Both itself\nand its object are objects for him. Now when it is a _cognitive_ state\n(percept, thought, concept, etc.), he ordinarily has no other way of\nnaming it than as the thought, percept, etc., _of that object_. He\nhimself, meanwhile, knowing the self-same object in _his_ way, gets\neasily led to suppose that the thought, which is _of_ it, knows it in\nthe same way in which he knows it, although this is often very far from\nbeing the case.[197] The most fictitious puzzles have been introduced\ninto our science by this means. The so-called question of presentative\nor representative perception, of whether an object is present to the\nthought that thinks it by a counterfeit image of itself, or directly\nand without any intervening image at all; the question of nominalism\nand conceptualism, of the shape in which things are present when only\na general notion of them is before the mind; are comparatively easy\nquestions when once the psychologist's fallacy is eliminated from their\ntreatment,--as we shall ere long see (in Chapter XII).\n\n_Another variety of the psychologist's fallacy is the assumption\nthat the mental state studied must be conscious of itself as the\npsychologist is conscious of it._ The mental state is aware of itself\nonly from within; it grasps what we call its own content, and nothing\nmore. The psychologist, on the contrary, is aware of it from without,\nand knows its relations with all sorts of other things. What the\nthought sees is only its own object; what the psychologist sees is\nthe thought's object, plus the thought itself, plus possibly all the\nrest of the world. We must be very careful therefore, in discussing a\nstate of mind from the psychologist's point of view, to avoid foisting\ninto its own ken matters that are only there for ours. We must avoid\nsubstituting what we know the consciousness _is_, for what it is a\nconsciousness _of_, and counting its outward, and so to speak physical,\nrelations with other facts of the world, in among the objects of which\nwe set it down as aware. Crude as such a confusion of standpoints seems\nto be when abstractly stated, it is nevertheless a snare into which\nno psychologist has kept himself at all times from falling, and which\nforms almost the entire stock-in-trade of certain schools. We cannot be\ntoo watchful against its subtly corrupting influence.\n\n_Summary_. To sum up the chapter, Psychology assumes that thoughts\nsuccessively occur, and that they know objects in a world which the\npsychologist also knows. _These thoughts are the subjective data\nof which he treats, and their relations to their objects, to the\nbrain, and to the rest of the world constitute the subject-matter of\npsychologic science._ Its methods are introspection, experimentation,\nand comparison. But introspection is no sure guide to truths _about_\nour mental states; and in particular the poverty of the psychological\nvocabulary leads us to drop out certain states from our consideration,\nand to treat others as if they knew themselves and their objects as the\npsychologist knows both, which is a disastrous fallacy in the science.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[187] On the relation between Psychology and General Philosophy, see G.\nC. Robertson, 'Mind,' vol. viii, p. 1, and J. Ward, _ibid._ p. 153; J.\nDewey _ibid._ vol. ix, p. 1.\n\n[188] Compare some remarks in Mill's Logic, bk. i, chap. iii, \u00a7\u00a7 2, 3.\n\n[189] Logic, \u00a7 40.\n\n[190] Psychologie, bk. ii, chap. iii, \u00a7\u00a7 1, 2.\n\n[191] Cours de Philosophie Positive, i, 34-8.\n\n[192] Auguste Comte and Positivism, 3d edition (1882), p. 64.\n\n[193] Wundt says: \"The first rule for utilizing inward observation\nconsists in taking, as far as possible, experiences that are\naccidental, unexpected, and not intentionally brought about.... _First_\nit is best as far as possible to rely on _Memory_ and not on immediate\nApprehension.... _Second_, internal observation is better fitted to\ngrasp clearly conscious states, especially voluntary mental acts: such\ninner processes as are obscurely conscious and involuntary will almost\nentirely elude it, because the effort to observe interferes with them,\nand because they seldom abide in memory.\" (Logik, ii, 432.)\n\n[194] In cases like this, where the state outlasts the act of naming\nit, exists before it, and recurs when it is past, we probably run\nlittle practical risk of error when we talk as if the state knew\nitself. The state of feeling and the state of naming the feeling\nare continuous, and the infallibility of such prompt introspective\njudgments is probably great. But even here the certainty of our\nknowledge ought not to be argued on the _a priori_ ground that\n_percipi_ and _esse_ are in psychology the same. The states are really\ntwo; the naming state and the named state are apart; '_percipi_ is\n_esse_' is not the principle that applies.\n\n[195] J. Mohr: Grundlage der Empirischen Psychologie (Leipzig, 1882),\np. 47.\n\n[196] In English we have not even the generic distinction between\nthe-thing-thought-of and the-thought-thinking-it, which in German is\nexpressed by the opposition between _Gedachtes_ and _Gedanke_, in Latin\nby that between _cogitatum_ and _cogitatio_.\n\n[197] Compare B. P. Bowne's Metaphysics (1882), p. 408.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\n\nTHE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS.\n\n\nSince, for psychology, a mind is an object in a world of other objects,\nits relation to those other objects must next be surveyed. First of\nall, to its\n\n\nTIME-RELATIONS.\n\n\nMinds, as we know them, are temporary existences. Whether my mind\nhad a being prior to the birth of my body, whether it shall have\none after the latter's decease, are questions to be decided by my\ngeneral philosophy or theology rather than by what we call 'scientific\nfacts'--I leave out the facts of so-called spiritualism, as being still\nin dispute. Psychology, as a natural science, confines itself to the\npresent life, in which every mind appears yoked to a body through which\nits manifestations appear. In the present world, then, minds precede,\nsucceed, and coexist with each other in the common receptacle of time,\nand of their _collective_ relations to the latter nothing more can\nbe said. The life of the _individual_ consciousness in time seems,\nhowever, to be an interrupted one, so that the question:\n\n    _Are we ever wholly unconscious?_\n\nbecomes one which must be discussed. Sleep, fainting, coma, epilepsy,\nand other 'unconscious' conditions are apt to break in upon and occupy\nlarge durations of what we nevertheless consider the mental history of\na single man. And, the fact of interruption being admitted, is it not\npossible that it may exist where we do not suspect it, and even perhaps\nin an incessant and fine-grained form?\n\nThis might happen, and yet the subject himself never know it. We often\ntake ether and have operations performed without a suspicion that our\nconsciousness has suffered a breach. The two ends join each other\nsmoothly over the gap; and only the sight of our wound assures us\nthat we must have been living through a time which for our immediate\nconsciousness was non-existent. Even in sleep this sometimes happens:\nWe think we have had no nap, and it takes the clock to assure us that\nwe are wrong.[198] We thus may live through a real outward time, a time\nknown by the psychologist who studies us, and yet not _feel_ the time,\nor infer it from any inward sign. The question is, how often does this\nhappen? Is consciousness really discontinuous, incessantly interrupted\nand recommencing (from the psychologist's point of view)? and does it\nonly seem continuous to itself by an illusion analogous to that of the\nzoetrope? Or is it at most times as continuous outwardly as it inwardly\nseems?\n\nIt must be confessed that we can give no rigorous answer to this\nquestion. Cartesians, who hold that the _essence_ of the soul is to\nthink, can of course solve it _a priori_, and explain the appearance of\nthoughtless intervals either by lapses in our ordinary memory, or by\nthe sinking of consciousness to a minimal state, in which perhaps all\nthat it feels is a bare existence which leaves no particulars behind to\nbe recalled. If, however, one have no doctrine about the soul or its\nessence, one is free to take the appearances for what they seem to be,\nand to admit that the mind, as well as the body, may go to sleep.\n\nLocke was the first prominent champion of this latter view, and the\npages in which he attacks the Cartesian belief are as spirited as any\nin his Essay. \"Every drowsy nod shakes their doctrine who teach that\ntheir soul is always thinking.\" He will not believe that men so easily\nforget. M. Jouffroy and Sir W. Hamilton, attacking the question in the\nsame empirical way, are led to an opposite conclusion. Their reasons,\nbriefly stated, are these:\n\nIn somnambulism, natural or induced, there is often a great display of\nintellectual activity, followed by complete oblivion of all that has\npassed.[199]\n\nOn being suddenly awakened from a sleep, however profound, we always\ncatch ourselves in the middle of a dream. Common dreams are often\nremembered for a few minutes after waking, and then irretrievably lost.\n\nFrequently, when awake and absent-minded, we are visited by thoughts\nand images which the next instant we cannot recall.\n\nOur insensibility to habitual noises, etc., whilst awake, proves that\nwe can neglect to attend to that which we nevertheless feel. Similarly\nin sleep, we grow inured, and sleep soundly in presence of sensations\nof sound, cold, contact, etc., which at first prevented our complete\nrepose. We have learned to neglect them whilst asleep as we should\nwhilst awake. The mere _sense-impressions_ are the same when the sleep\nis deep as when it is light; the difference must lie in a _judgment_\non the part of the apparently slumbering mind that they are not worth\nnoticing.\n\nThis discrimination is equally shown by nurses of the sick and mothers\nof infants, who will sleep through much noise of an irrelevant sort,\nbut waken at the slightest stirring of the patient or the babe. This\nlast fact shows the _sense-organ_ to be pervious for sounds.\n\nMany people have a remarkable faculty of registering when asleep the\nflight of time. They will habitually wake up at the same minute day\nafter day, or will wake punctually at an unusual hour determined upon\novernight. How can this knowledge of the hour (more accurate often than\nanything the waking consciousness shows) be possible without mental\nactivity during the interval?\n\nSuch are what we may call the classical reasons for admitting that the\nmind is active even when the person afterwards ignores the fact.[200]\nOf late years, or rather, one may say, of late months, they have been\nreinforced by a lot of curious observations made on hysterical and\nhypnotic subjects, which prove the existence of a highly developed\nconsciousness in places where it has hitherto not been suspected at\nall. These observations throw such a novel light upon human nature that\nI must give them in some detail. That at least four different and in\na certain sense rival observers should agree in the same conclusion\njustifies us in accepting the conclusion as true.\n\n\n_'Unconsciousness' in Hysterics._\n\n\nOne of the most constant symptoms in persons suffering from hysteric\ndisease in its extreme forms consists in alterations of the natural\nsensibility of various parts and organs of the body. Usually the\nalteration is in the direction of defect, or an\u00e6sthesia. One or both\neyes are blind, or color-blind, or there is hemianopsia (blindness\nto one half the field of view), or the field is contracted. Hearing,\ntaste, smell may similarly disappear, in part or in totality. Still\nmore striking are the cutaneous an\u00e6sthesias. The old witch-finders\nlooking for the 'devil's seals' learned well the existence of those\ninsensible patches on the skin of their victims, to which the minute\nphysical examinations of recent medicine have but recently attracted\nattention again. They may be scattered anywhere, but are very apt to\naffect one side of the body. Not infrequently they affect an entire\nlateral half, from head to foot; and the insensible skin of, say, the\nleft side will then be found separated from the naturally sensitive\nskin of the right by a perfectly sharp line of demarcation down the\nmiddle of the front and back. Sometimes, most remarkable of all, the\nentire skin, hands, feet, face, everything, and the mucous membranes,\nmuscles and joints so far as they can be explored, become _completely_\ninsensible without the other vital functions becoming gravely disturbed.\n\nThese hysterical an\u00e6sthesias can be made to disappear more or less\ncompletely by various odd processes. It has been recently found that\nmagnets, plates of metal, or the electrodes of a battery, placed\nagainst the skin, have this peculiar power. And when one side is\nrelieved in this way, the an\u00e6sthesia is often found to have transferred\nitself to the opposite side, which until then was well. Whether\nthese strange effects of magnets and metals be due to their direct\nphysiological action, or to a prior effect on the patient's mind\n('expectant attention' or 'suggestion') is still a mooted question.\nA still better awakener of sensibility is the hypnotic trance, into\nwhich many of these patients can be very easily placed, and in which\ntheir lost sensibility not infrequently becomes entirely restored.\nSuch returns of sensibility succeed the times of insensibility and\nalternate with them. But Messrs. Pierre Janet[201] and A. Binet[202]\nhave shown that during the times of an\u00e6sthesia, and coexisting with it,\n_sensibility to the an\u00e6sthetic parts is also there, in the form of a\nsecondary consciousness_ entirely cut off from the primary or normal\none, but susceptible of being _tapped_ and made to testify to its\nexistence in various odd ways.\n\nChief amongst these is what M. Janet calls 'the method of\n_distraction_.' These hysterics are apt to possess a very narrow field\nof attention, and to be unable to think of more than one thing at a\ntime. When talking with any person they forget everything else. \"When\nLucie talked directly with any one,\" says M. Janet, \"she ceased to\nbe able to hear any other person. You may stand behind her, call her\nby name, shout abuse into her ears, without making her turn round;\nor place yourself before her, show her objects, touch her, etc.,\nwithout attracting her notice. When finally she becomes aware of you,\nshe thinks you have just come into the room again, and greets you\naccordingly. This singular forgetfulness makes her liable to tell\nall her secrets aloud, unrestrained by the presence of unsuitable\nauditors.\"\n\nNow M. Janet found in several subjects like this that if he came up\nbehind them whilst they were plunged in conversation with a third\nparty, and addressed them in a whisper, telling them to raise their\nhand or perform other simple acts, they would obey the order given,\nalthough their _talking_ intelligence was quite unconscious of\nreceiving it. Leading them from one thing to another, he made them\nreply by signs to his whispered questions, and finally made them\nanswer in writing, if a pencil were placed in their hand. The primary\nconsciousness meanwhile went on with the conversation, entirely\nunaware of these performances on the hand's part. The consciousness\nwhich presided over these latter appeared in its turn to be quite as\nlittle disturbed by the upper consciousness's concerns. This _proof\nby 'automatic' writing_, of a secondary consciousness's existence, is\nthe most cogent and striking one; but a crowd of other facts prove the\nsame thing. If I run through them rapidly, the reader will probably be\nconvinced.\n\n_The apparently an\u00e6sthetic hand_ of these subjects, for one thing,\n_will often adapt itself discriminatingly_ to whatever object may be\nput into it. With a pencil it will make writing movements; into a pair\nof scissors it will put its fingers and will open and shut them, etc.,\netc. The primary consciousness, so to call it, is meanwhile unable to\nsay whether or no _anything_ is in the hand, if the latter be hidden\nfrom sight. \"I put a pair of eyeglasses into L\u00e9onie's an\u00e6sthetic\nhand, this hand opens it and raises it towards the nose, but half way\nthither it enters the field of vision of L\u00e9onie, who sees it and stops\nstupefied: 'Why,' says she, 'I have an eye-glass in my left hand!'\" M.\nBinet found a very curious sort of connection between the apparently\nan\u00e6sthetic skin and the mind in some Salp\u00e9tri\u00e8re-subjects. Things\nplaced in the hand were not felt, but _thought_ of (apparently in\nvisual terms) and in no wise referred by the subject to their starting\npoint in the hand's sensation. A key, a knife, placed in the hand\noccasioned _ideas_ of a key or a knife, but the hand felt nothing.\nSimilarly the subject _thought of_ the number 3, 6, etc., if the hand\nor finger was bent three or six times by the operator, or if he stroked\nit three, six, etc., times.\n\nIn certain individuals there was found a still odder phenomenon, which\nreminds one of that curious idiosyncrasy of 'colored hearing' of which\na few cases have been lately described with great care by foreign\nwriters. These individuals, namely, _saw_ the impression received by\nthe hand, but could not feel it; and the thing seen appeared by no\nmeans associated with the hand, but more like an independent vision,\nwhich usually interested and surprised the patient. Her hand being\nhidden by a screen, she was ordered to look at another screen and to\ntell of any visual image which might project itself thereon. Numbers\nwould then come, corresponding to the number of times the insensible\nmember was raised, touched, etc. Colored lines and figures would come,\ncorresponding to similar ones traced on the palm; the hand itself or\nits fingers would come when manipulated and finally objects placed in\nit would come; but on the hand itself nothing would ever be felt. Of\ncourse simulation would not be hard here; but M. Binet disbelieves this\n(usually very shallow) explanation to be a probable one in cases in\nquestion.[203]\n\nThe usual way in which doctors measure the delicacy of our touch is by\nthe compass-points. Two points are normally felt as one whenever they\nare too close together for discrimination; but what is 'too close' on\none part of the skin may seem very far apart on another. In the middle\nof the back or on the thigh, less than 3 inches may be too close;\non the finger-tip a tenth of an inch is far enough apart. Now, as\ntested in this way, with the appeal made to the primary consciousness,\nwhich talks through the mouth and seems to hold the field alone, a\ncertain person's skin may be entirely an\u00e6sthetic and not feel the\ncompass-points at all; and yet this same skin will prove to have a\nperfectly normal sensibility if the appeal be made to that other\nsecondary or sub-consciousness, which expresses itself automatically by\nwriting or by movements of the hand. M. Binet, M. Pierre Janet, and M.\nJules Janet have all found this. The subject, whenever touched, would\nsignify 'one point' or 'two points,' as accurately as if she were a\nnormal person. She would signify it only by these movements; and of the\nmovements themselves her primary self would be as unconscious as of the\nfacts they signified, for what the submerged consciousness makes the\nhand do automatically is unknown to the consciousness which uses the\nmouth.\n\nMessrs. Bernheim and Pitres have also proved, by observations too\ncomplicated to be given in this spot, that the hysterical blindness\nis no real blindness at all. The eye of an hysteric which is totally\nblind when the other or seeing eye is shut, will do its share of vision\nperfectly well when _both_ eyes are open together. But even where both\neyes are semi-blind from hysterical disease, the method of automatic\nwriting proves that their perceptions exist, only cut off from\ncommunication with the upper consciousness. M. Binet has found the hand\nof his patients unconsciously writing down words which their eyes were\nvainly endeavoring to 'see,' i.e., to bring to the upper consciousness.\nTheir submerged consciousness was of course seeing them, or the hand\ncould not have written as it did. Colors are similarly perceived by\nthe sub-conscious self, which the hysterically color-blind eyes cannot\nbring to the normal consciousness. Pricks, burns, and pinches on the\nan\u00e6sthetic skin, all unnoticed by the upper self, are recollected to\nhave been suffered, and complained of, as soon as the under self gets\na chance to express itself by the passage of the subject into hypnotic\ntrance.\n\nIt must be admitted, therefore, that _in certain persons_, at least,\n_the total possible consciousness may be split into parts which coexist\nbut mutually ignore each other,_ and share the objects of knowledge\nbetween them. More remarkable still, they are _complementary_. Give an\nobject to one of the consciousnesses, and by that fact you remove it\nfrom the other or others. Barring a certain common fund of information,\nlike the command of language, etc., what the upper self knows the\nunder self is ignorant of, and _vice vers\u00e2_. M. Janet has proved this\nbeautifully in his subject Lucie. The following experiment will serve\nas the type of the rest: In her trance he covered her lap with cards,\neach bearing a number. He then told her that on waking she should\n_not see_ any card whose number was a multiple of three. This is the\nordinary so-called 'post-hypnotic suggestion,' now well known, and\nfor which Lucie was a well-adapted subject. Accordingly, when she was\nawakened and asked about the papers on her lap, she counted and said\nshe saw those only whose number was not a multiple of 3. To the 12,\n18, 9, etc., she was blind. But the _hand_, when the sub-conscious\nself was interrogated by the usual method of engrossing the upper\nself in another conversation, wrote that the only cards in Lucie's\nlap were those numbered 12, 18, 9, etc., and on being asked to pick\nup all the cards which were there, picked up these and let the others\nlie. Similarly when the sight of certain things was suggested to the\nsub-conscious Lucie, the normal Lucie suddenly became partially or\ntotally blind. \"What is the matter? I can't see!\" the normal personage\nsuddenly cried out in the midst of her conversation, when M. Janet\nwhispered to the secondary personage to make use of her eyes. The\nan\u00e6sthesias, paralyses, contractions and other irregularities from\nwhich hysterics suffer seem then to be due to the fact that their\nsecondary personage has enriched itself by robbing the primary one\nof a function which the latter ought to have retained. The curative\nindication is evident: get at the secondary personage, by hypnotization\nor in whatever other way, and make her _give up_ the eye, the skin, the\narm, or whatever the affected part may be. The normal self thereupon\nregains possession, sees, feels, or is able to move again. In this way\nM. Jules Janet easily cured the well-known subject of the Salp\u00e9tri\u00e8re,\nWit...., of all sorts of afflictions which, until he discovered the\nsecret of her deeper trance, it had been difficult to subdue. \"Cessez\ncette mauvaise plaisanterie,\" he said to the secondary self--and the\nlatter obeyed. The way in which the various personages share the stock\nof possible sensations between them seems to be amusingly illustrated\nin this young woman. When awake, her skin is insensible everywhere\nexcept on a zone about the arm where she habitually wears a gold\nbracelet. This zone has feeling; but in the deepest trance, when all\nthe rest of her body feels, this particular zone becomes absolutely\nan\u00e6sthetic.\n\nSometimes the mutual ignorance of the selves leads to incidents\nwhich are strange enough. The acts and movements performed by the\nsub-conscious self are withdrawn from the conscious one, and the\nsubject will do all sorts of incongruous things of which he remains\nquite unaware. \"I order Lucie [by the method of _distraction_] to make\na _pied de nez_, and her hands go forthwith to the end of her nose.\nAsked what she is doing, she replies that she is doing nothing, and\ncontinues for a long time talking, with no apparent suspicion that her\nfingers are moving in front of her nose. I make her walk about the\nroom; she continues to speak and believes herself sitting down.\"\n\nM. Janet observed similar acts in a man in alcoholic delirium. Whilst\nthe doctor was questioning him, M. J. made him by whispered suggestion\nwalk, sit, kneel, and even lie down on his face on the floor, he\nall the while believing himself to be standing beside his bed. Such\n_bizarreries_ sound incredible, until one has seen their like. Long\nago, without understanding it, I myself saw a small example of the way\nin which a person's knowledge may be shared by the two selves. A young\nwoman who had been writing automatically was sitting with a pencil\nin her hand, trying to recall at my request the name of a gentleman\nwhom she had once seen. She could only recollect the first syllable.\nHer hand meanwhile, without her knowledge, wrote down the last two\nsyllables. In a perfectly healthy young man who can write with the\nplanchette, I lately found the hand to be entirely an\u00e6sthetic during\nthe writing act; I could prick it severely without the Subject knowing\nthe fact. The _writing on the planchette_, however, accused me in\nstrong terms of hurting the hand. Pricks on the _other_ (non-writing)\nhand, meanwhile, which awakened strong protest from the young man's\nvocal organs, were denied to exist by the self which made the\nplanchette go.[204]\n\n_We get exactly similar results in the so-called post-hypnotic\nsuggestion._ It is a familiar fact that certain subjects, when told\nduring a trance to perform an act or to experience an hallucination\nafter waking, will when the time comes, obey the command. How is the\ncommand registered? How is its performance so accurately timed? These\nproblems were long a mystery, for the primary personality remembers\nnothing of the trance or the suggestion, and will often trump up an\nimprovised pretext for yielding to the unaccountable impulse which\npossesses the man so suddenly and which he cannot resist. Edmund\nGurney was the first to discover, by means of automatic writing, that\nthe secondary self is awake, keeping its attention constantly fixed\non the command and watching for the signal of its execution. Certain\ntrance-subjects who were also automatic writers, when roused from\ntrance and put to the planchette,--not knowing then what they wrote,\nand having their upper attention fully engrossed by reading aloud,\ntalking, or solving problems in mental arithmetic,--would inscribe the\norders which they had received, together with notes relative to the\ntime elapsed and the time yet to run before the execution.[205] It is\ntherefore to no 'automatism' in the mechanical sense that such acts\nare due: a self presides over them, a split-off, limited and buried,\nbut yet a fully conscious, self. More than this, the buried self often\ncomes to the surface and drives out the other self whilst the acts are\nperforming. In other words, the subject lapses into trance again when\nthe moment arrives for execution, and has no subsequent recollection\nof the act which he has done. Gurney and Beaunis established this\nfact, which has since been verified on a large scale; and Gurney also\nshowed that the patient became _suggestible_ again during the brief\ntime of the performance. M. Janet's observations, in their turn, well\nillustrate the phenomenon.\n\n \"I tell Lucie to keep her arms raised after she shall have awakened.\n Hardly is she in the normal state, when up go her arms above her head,\n but she pays no attention to them. She goes, comes, converses, holding\n her arms high in the air. If asked what her arms are doing, she is\n surprised at such a question, and says very sincerely: 'My hands are\n doing nothing; they are just like yours.'... I command her to weep,\n and when awake she really sobs, but continues in the midst of her\n tears to talk of very gay matters. The sobbing over, there remained no\n trace of this grief, which seemed to have been quite sub-conscious.\"\n\nThe primary self often has to invent an hallucination by which to mask\nand hide from its own view the deeds which the other self is enacting.\nL\u00e9onie 3[206] writes real letters whilst L\u00e9onie 1 believes that she\nis knitting; or Lucie 2 really comes to the doctor's office, whilst\nLucie 1 believes herself to be at home. This is a sort of delirium. The\nalphabet, or the series of numbers, when handed over to the attention\nof the secondary personage may for the time be lost to the normal\nself. Whilst the hand writes the alphabet, obediently to command, the\n'subject,' to her great stupefaction, finds herself unable to recall\nit, etc. Few things are more curious than these relations of mutual\nexclusion, of which all gradations exist between the several partial\nconsciousnesses.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nHow far this splitting up of the mind into separate consciousnesses may\nexist in each one of us is a problem. M. Janet holds that it is only\npossible where there is abnormal weakness, and consequently a defect\nof unifying or co-ordinating power. An hysterical woman abandons part\nof her consciousness because she is too weak nervously to hold it\ntogether. The abandoned part meanwhile may solidify into a secondary or\nsub-conscious self. In a perfectly sound subject, on the other hand,\nwhat is dropped out of mind at one moment keeps coming back at the\nnext. The whole fund of experiences and knowledges remains integrated,\nand no split-off portions of it can get organized stably enough to form\nsubordinate selves. The stability, monotony, and stupidity of these\nlatter is often very striking. The post-hypnotic sub-consciousness\nseems to think of nothing but the order which it last received;\nthe cataleptic sub-consciousness, of nothing but the last position\nimprinted on the limb. M. Janet could cause definitely circumscribed\nreddening and tumefaction of the skin on two of his subjects, by\nsuggesting to them in hypnotism the hallucination of a mustard-poultice\nof any special shape. \"J'ai tout le temps pens\u00e9 \u00e0 votre sinapisme,\"\nsays the subject, when put back into trance after the suggestion has\ntaken effect. A man N., whom M. Janet operated on at long intervals,\nwas betweenwhiles tampered with by another operator, and when put\nto sleep again by M. Janet, said he was 'too far away to receive\norders, being in Algiers.' The other operator, having suggested that\nhallucination, had forgotten to remove it before waking the subject\nfrom his trance, and the poor passive trance-personality had stuck for\nweeks in the stagnant dream. L\u00e9onie's sub-conscious performances having\nbeen illustrated to a caller, by a '_pied de nez_' executed with her\nleft hand in the course of conversation, when, a year later, she meets\nhim again, up goes the same hand to her nose again, without L\u00e9onie's\nnormal self suspecting the fact.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAll these facts, taken together, form unquestionably the beginning\nof an inquiry which is destined to throw a new light into the very\nabysses of our nature. It is for that reason that I have cited them at\nsuch length in this early chapter of the book. They prove one thing\nconclusively, namely, that _we must never take a person's testimony,\nhowever sincere, that he has felt nothing, as proof positive that\nno feeling has been there._ It may have been there as part of the\nconsciousness of a 'secondary personage,' of whose experiences the\nprimary one whom we are consulting can naturally give no account. In\nhypnotic subjects (as we shall see in a later chapter) just as it\nis the easiest thing in the world to paralyze a movement or member\nby simple suggestion, so it is easy to produce what is called a\nsystematized an\u00e6sthesia by word of command. A systematized an\u00e6sthesia\nmeans an insensibility, not to any one element of things, but to some\none concrete thing or class of things. The subject is made blind or\ndeaf to a certain person in the room and to no one else, and thereupon\ndenies that that person is present, or has spoken, etc. M. P. Janet's\nLucie, blind to some of the numbered cards in her lap (p. 207 above),\nis a case in point. Now when the object is simple, like a red wafer\nor a black cross, the subject, although he denies that he sees it when\nhe looks straight at it, nevertheless gets a 'negative after-image' of\nit when he looks away again, showing that the _optical impression_ of\nit has been received. Moreover reflection shows that such a subject\nmust _distinguish the object from others like it in order to be blind\nto it._ Make him blind to one person in the room, set all the persons\nin a row, and tell him to count them. He will count all but that one.\nBut how can he tell _which_ one not to count without recognizing who\nhe is? In like manner, make a stroke on paper or blackboard, and tell\nhim it is not there, and he will see nothing but the clean paper or\nboard. Next (he not looking) surround the original stroke with other\nstrokes exactly like it, and ask him what he sees. He will point out\none by one all the new strokes, and omit the original one every time,\nno matter how numerous the new strokes may be, or in what order they\nare arranged. Similarly, if the original single stroke to which he is\nblind be _doubled_ by a prism of some sixteen degrees placed before one\nof his eyes (both being kept open), he will say that he now sees _one_\nstroke, and point in the direction in which the image seen through the\nprism lies, ignoring still the original stroke.\n\nObviously, then, he is not blind to the _kind_ of stroke in the least.\nHe is blind only to one individual stroke of that kind in a particular\nposition on the board or paper--that is to a particular complex object;\nand, paradoxical as it may seem to say so, he must distinguish it with\ngreat accuracy from others like it, in order to remain blind to it when\nthe others are brought near. He discriminates it, as a preliminary to\nnot seeing it at all.\n\nAgain, when by a prism before one eye a previously invisible line has\nbeen made visible to that eye, and the other eye is thereupon closed\nor screened, _its_ closure makes no difference; the line still remains\nvisible. But if then the prism be removed, the line will disappear even\nto the eye which a moment ago saw it, and both eyes will revert to\ntheir original blind state.\n\nWe have, then, to deal in these cases neither with a blindness of the\neye itself, nor with a mere failure to notice, but with something much\nmore complex; namely, an active counting out and positive exclusion of\ncertain objects. It is as when one 'cuts' an acquaintance, 'ignores'\na claim, or 'refuses to be influenced' by a consideration. But the\nperceptive activity which works to this result is disconnected from the\nconsciousness which is personal, so to speak, to the subject, and makes\nof the object concerning which the suggestion is made, its own private\npossession and prey.[207]\n\nThe mother who is asleep to every sound but the stirrings of her\nbabe, evidently has the babe-portion of her auditory sensibility\nsystematically awake. Relatively to that, the rest of her mind is\nin a state of systematized an\u00e6sthesia. That department, split off\nand disconnected from the sleeping part, can none the less wake the\nlatter up in case of need. So that on the whole the quarrel between\nDescartes and Locke as to whether the mind ever sleeps is less near\nto solution than ever. On _a priori_ speculative grounds Locke's view\nthat thought and feeling may at times wholly disappear seems the more\nplausible. As glands cease to secrete and muscles to contract, so the\nbrain should sometimes cease to carry currents, and with this minimum\nof its activity might well coexist a minimum of consciousness. On the\nother hand, we see how deceptive are appearances, and are forced to\nadmit that a part of consciousness may sever its connections with other\nparts and yet continue to be. On the whole it is best to abstain from a\nconclusion. The science of the near future will doubtless answer this\nquestion more wisely than we can now.\n\nLet us turn now to consider the\n\n\nRELATIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS TO SPACE.\n\n\nThis is the problem known in the history of philosophy as the _question\nof the seat of the soul_. It has given rise to much literature, but\nwe must ourselves treat it very briefly. Everything depends on what\nwe conceive the soul to be, an extended or an inextended entity. If\nthe former, it may occupy a seat. If the latter, it may not; though\nit has been thought that even then it might still have a _position_.\nMuch hair-splitting has arisen about the possibility of an inextended\nthing nevertheless being _present_ throughout a certain amount of\nextension. We must distinguish the kinds of presence. In some manner\nour consciousness is 'present' to everything with which it is in\nrelation. I am _cognitively_ present to Orion whenever I perceive that\nconstellation, but I am not _dynamically_ present there, I work no\neffects. To my brain, however, I am dynamically present, inasmuch as\nmy thoughts and feelings seem to react upon the processes thereof. If,\nthen, by the seat of the mind is meant nothing more than the locality\nwith which it stands in immediate dynamic relations, we are certain\nto be right in saying that its seat is somewhere in the cortex of the\nbrain. Descartes, as is well known, thought that the inextended soul\nwas immediately present to the pineal gland. Others, as Lotze in his\nearlier days, and W. Volkmann, think its position must be at some\npoint of the structureless matrix of the anatomical brain-elements,\nat which point they suppose that all nerve-currents may cross and\ncombine. The scholastic doctrine is that the soul is totally present,\nboth in the whole and in each and every part of the body. This mode\nof presence is said to be due to the soul's inextended nature and to\nits simplicity. Two extended entities could only correspond in space\nwith one another, part to part,--but not so does the soul, which has\nno parts, correspond with the body. Sir Wm. Hamilton and Professor\nBowen defend something like this view. I. H. Fichte, Ulrici, and, among\nAmerican philosophers, Mr. J. E. Walter,[208] maintain the soul to be a\nspace-filling principle. Fichte calls it the inner body, Ulrici likens\nit to a fluid of non-molecular composition. These theories remind us\nof the 'theosophic' doctrines of the present day, and carry us back to\ntimes when the soul as vehicle of consciousness was not discriminated,\nas it now is, from the vital principle presiding over the formation of\nthe body. Plato gave head, breast, and abdomen to the immortal reason,\nthe courage, and the appetites, as their seats respectively. Aristotle\nargues that the heart is the sole seat. Elsewhere we find the blood,\nthe brain, the lungs, the liver the kidneys even, in turn assigned as\nseat of the whole or part of the soul.[209]\n\nThe truth is that if the thinking principle is extended we neither know\nits form nor its seat; whilst if unextended, it is absurd to speak\nof its having any space-relations at all. Space-relations we shall\nsee hereafter to be _sensible_ things. The only objects that can have\nmutual relations of position are objects that are perceived coexisting\nin the same felt space. A thing not perceived at all, such as the\ninextended soul must be, cannot coexist with any perceived objects in\nthis way. No lines can be felt stretching from it to the other objects.\nIt can form no terminus to any space-interval. It can therefore in no\nintelligible sense enjoy position. Its relations cannot be spatial,\nbut must be exclusively cognitive or dynamic, as we have seen. So far\nas they are dynamic, to talk of the soul being 'present' is only a\nfigure of speech. Hamilton's doctrine that the soul is present to the\nwhole body is at any rate false: for cognitively its presence extends\nfar beyond the body, and dynamically it does not extend beyond the\nbrain.[210]\n\n\nTHE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER OBJECTS\n\n\nare either relations to _other minds_, or to _material things_. The\nmaterial things are either the mind's _own brain_, on the one hand, or\n_anything else_, on the other. The relations of a mind to its own brain\nare of a unique and utterly mysterious sort; we discussed them in the\nlast two chapters, and can add nothing to that account.\n\nThe mind's relations to other objects than the brain are _cognitive\nand emotional_ relations exclusively, so far as we know. It _knows_\nthem, and it inwardly _welcomes or rejects_ them, but it has no other\ndealings with them. When it seems to _act_ upon them, it only does so\nthrough the intermediary of its own body, so that not it but the body\nis what acts on them, and the brain must first act upon the body. The\nsame is true when other things seem to act on it--they only act on\nthe body, and through that on its brain.[211] All that it _can_ do\n_directly_ is to know other things, misknow or ignore them, and to find\nthat they interest it, in this fashion or in that.\n\nNow the _relation of knowing_ is the most mysterious thing in the\nworld. If we ask how one thing _can_ know another we are led into the\nheart of _Erkenntnisstheorie_ and metaphysics. The psychologist, for\nhis part, does not consider the matter so curiously as this. Finding\na world before him which he cannot but believe that _he_ knows, and\nsetting himself to study his own past thoughts, or someone else's\nthoughts, of what he believes to be that same world; he cannot but\nconclude that those other thoughts know it after their fashion even as\nhe knows it after his. Knowledge becomes for him an ultimate relation\nthat must be admitted, whether it be explained or not, just like\ndifference or resemblance, which no one seeks to explain.\n\nWere our topic Absolute Mind instead of being the concrete minds of\nindividuals dwelling in the natural world, we could not tell whether\nthat Mind had the function of knowing or not, as knowing is commonly\nunderstood. We might learn the complexion of its thoughts; but, as we\nshould have no realities outside of it to compare them with,--for if\nwe had, the Mind would not be Absolute,--we could not criticise them,\nand find them either right or wrong; and we should have to call them\nsimply the thoughts, and not the _knowledge_, of the Absolute Mind.\nFinite minds, however, can be judged in a different way, because the\npsychologist himself can go bail for the independent reality of the\nobjects of which they think. He knows these to exist outside as well as\ninside the minds in question; he thus knows whether the minds think and\n_know_, or only think; and though his knowledge is of course that of a\nfallible mortal, there is nothing in the conditions that should make it\nmore likely to be wrong in this case than in any other.\n\nNow by what tests does the psychologist decide whether the state of\nmind he is studying is a bit of knowledge, or only a subjective fact\nnot referring to anything outside itself?\n\nHe uses the tests we all practically use. If the state of mind\n_resembles_ his own idea of a certain reality; or if without resembling\nhis idea of it, it seems to imply that reality and refer to it by\noperating upon it through the bodily organs; or even if it resembles\nand operates on some other reality that implies, and leads up to,\nand terminates in, the first one,--in either or all of these cases\nthe psychologist admits that the state of mind takes cognizance,\ndirectly or remotely, distinctly or vaguely, truly or falsely, of the\nreality's nature and position in the world. If, on the other hand, the\nmental state under examination neither resembles nor operates on any\nof the realities known to the psychologist, he calls it a subjective\nstate pure and simple, possessed of no cognitive worth. If, again,\nit resemble a reality or a set of realities as he knows them, but\naltogether fail to operate on them or modify their course by producing\nbodily motions which the psychologist sees, then the psychologist, like\nall of us, may be in doubt. Let the mental state, for example, occur\nduring the sleep of its subject. Let the latter dream of the death of\na certain man, and let the man simultaneously die. Is the dream a mere\ncoincidence, or a veritable cognition of the death? Such puzzling cases\nare what the Societies for 'Psychical Research' are collecting and\ntrying to interpret in the most reasonable way.\n\nIf the dream were the only one of the kind the subject ever had in\nhis life, if the context of the death in the dream differed in many\nparticulars from the real death's context, and if the dream led to\nno action about the death, unquestionably we should all call it a\nstrange coincidence, and naught besides. But if the death in the dream\nhad a long context, agreeing point for point with every feature that\nattended the real death; if the subject were constantly having such\ndreams, all equally perfect, and if on awaking he had a habit of acting\nimmediately as if they were true and so getting 'the start' of his more\ntardily informed neighbors,--we should probably all have to admit that\nhe had some mysterious kind of clairvoyant power, that his dreams in\nan inscrutable way knew just those realities which they figured, and\nthat the word 'coincidence' failed to touch the root of the matter.\nAnd whatever doubts any one preserved would completely vanish if it\nshould appear that from the midst of his dream he had the power of\n_interfering_ with the course of the reality, and making the events in\nit turn this way or that, according as he dreamed they should. Then at\nleast it would be certain that he and the psychologist were dealing\nwith the _same_. It is by such tests as these that we are convinced\nthat the waking minds of our fellows and our own minds know the same\nexternal world.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_The psychologist's attitude towards cognition_ will be so important in\nthe sequel that we must not leave it until it is made perfectly clear.\n_It is a thoroughgoing dualism._ It supposes two elements, mind knowing\nand thing known, and treats them as irreducible. Neither gets out of\nitself or into the other, neither in any way _is_ the other, neither\n_makes_ the other. They just stand face to face in a common world, and\none simply knows, or is known unto, its counterpart. This singular\nrelation is not to be expressed in any lower terms, or translated into\nany more intelligible name. Some sort of _signal_ must be given by the\nthing to the mind's brain, or the knowing will not occur--we find as a\nmatter of fact that the mere _existence_ of a thing outside the brain\nis not a sufficient cause for our knowing it: it must strike the brain\nin some way, as well as be there, to be known. But the brain being\nstruck, the knowledge is constituted by a new construction that occurs\naltogether _in_ the mind. The thing remains the same whether known or\nnot.[212] And when once there, the knowledge may remain there, whatever\nbecomes of the thing.\n\nBy the ancients, and by unreflecting people perhaps to-day, knowledge\nis explained as the _passage_ of something from without into the\nmind--the latter, so far, at least, as its sensible affections go,\nbeing passive and receptive. But even in mere sense-impression the\nduplication of the object by an inner construction must take place.\nConsider, with Professor Bowne, what happens when two people converse\ntogether and know each other's mind.\n\n \"No thoughts leave the mind of one and cross into the mind of the\n other. When we speak of an exchange of thought, even the crudest mind\n knows that this is a mere figure of speech.... To perceive another's\n thought, we must construct his thought within ourselves;... this\n thought is our own and is strictly original with us. At the same time\n we owe it to the other; and if it had not originated with him, it\n would probably not have originated with us. But what has the other\n done?... This: by an entirely mysterious world-order, the speaker is\n enabled to produce a series of signs which are totally unlike [the]\n thought, but which, by virtue of the same mysterious order, act\n as a series of incitements upon the hearer, so that he constructs\n within himself the corresponding mental state. The act of the speaker\n consists in availing himself of the proper incitements. The act of\n the hearer is immediately only the reaction of the soul against the\n incitement.... All communion between finite minds is of this sort....\n Probably no reflecting person would deny this conclusion, but when\n we say that what is thus true of perception of another's thought\n is equally true of the perception of the outer world in general,\n many minds will be disposed to question, and not a few will deny it\n outright. Yet there is no alternative but to affirm that to perceive\n the universe we must construct it in thought, and that our knowledge\n of the universe is but the unfolding of the mind's inner nature....\n By describing the mind as a waxen tablet, and things as impressing\n themselves upon it, we seem to get great insight until we think to\n ask where this extended tablet is, and how things stamp themselves\n on it, and how the perceptive act would be explained even if they\n did.... The immediate antecedents of sensation and perception are\n a series of nervous changes in the brain. Whatever we know of the\n outer world is revealed only in and through these nervous changes.\n But these are totally unlike the objects assumed to exist as their\n causes. If we might conceive the mind as in the light, and in direct\n contact with its objects, the imagination at least would be comforted;\n but when we conceive the mind as coming in contact with the outer\n world only in the dark chamber of the skull, and then not in contact\n with the objects perceived, but only with a series of nerve-changes\n of which, moreover, it knows nothing, it is plain that the object\n is a long way off. All talk of pictures, impressions, etc., ceases\n because of the lack of all the conditions to give such figures any\n meaning. It is not even clear that we shall ever find our way out\n of the darkness into the world of light and reality again. We begin\n with complete trust in physics and the senses, and are forthwith\n led away from the object into a nervous labyrinth, where the object\n is entirely displaced by a set of nervous changes which are totally\n unlike anything but themselves. Finally, we land in the dark chamber\n of the skull. The object has gone completely, and knowledge has not\n yet appeared. Nervous signs are the raw material of all knowledge of\n the outer world according to the most decided realism. But in order\n to pass beyond these signs into a knowledge of the outer world, we\n must posit an interpreter who shall read back these signs into their\n objective meaning. But that interpreter, again, must implicitly\n contain the meaning of the universe within itself; and these signs are\n really but excitations which cause the soul to unfold what is within\n itself. Inasmuch as by common consent the soul communicates with the\n outer world only through these signs, and never comes nearer to the\n object than such signs can bring it, it follows that the principles\n of interpretation must be in the mind itself, and that the resulting\n construction is primarily only an expression of the mind's own nature.\n All reaction is of this sort; it expresses the nature of the reacting\n agent, and knowledge comes under the same head, this fact makes it\n necessary for us either to admit a pre-established harmony between the\n laws and nature of thought and the laws and nature of things, or else\n to allow that the objects of perception, the universe as it appears,\n are purely phenomenal, being but the way in which the mind reacts\n against the ground of its sensations.\"[213]\n\nThe dualism of Object and Subject and their pre-established harmony are\nwhat the psychologist as such must assume, whatever ulterior monistic\nphilosophy he may, as an individual who has the right also to be a\nmetaphysician, have in reserve. I hope that this general point is now\nmade clear, so that we may leave it, and descend to some distinctions\nof detail.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_There are two kinds of knowledge_ broadly and practically\ndistinguishable: we may call them respectively _knowledge of\nacquaintance_ and _knowledge-about_. Most languages express the\ndistinction; thus, _\u03b3\u03bd\u1ff6\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9, \u03b5\u1f76\u03b4\u03ad\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9; noscere, scire; kennen, wissen;\nconna\u00eetre, savoir_.[214] I am acquainted with many people and things,\nwhich I know very little about, except their presence in the places\nwhere I have met them. I know the color blue when I see it, and the\nflavor of a pear when I taste it; I know an inch when I move my finger\nthrough it; a second of time, when I feel it pass; an effort of\nattention when I make it; a difference between two things when I notice\nit; but _about_ the inner nature of these facts or what makes them\nwhat they are, I can say nothing at all. I cannot impart acquaintance\nwith them to any one who has not already made it himself. I cannot\n_describe_ them, make a blind man guess what blue is like, define to a\nchild a syllogism, or tell a philosopher in just what respect distance\nis just what it is, and differs from other forms of relation. At most,\nI can say to my friends, Go to certain places and act in certain ways,\nand these objects will probably come. All the elementary natures of the\nworld, its highest genera, the simple qualities of matter and mind,\ntogether with the kinds of relation that subsist between them, must\neither not be known at all, or known in this dumb way of acquaintance\nwithout _knowledge-about_. In minds able to speak at all there is, it\nis true, _some_ knowledge about everything. Things can at least be\nclassed, and the times of their appearance told. But in general, the\nless we analyze a thing, and the fewer of its relations we perceive,\nthe less we know about it and the more our familiarity with it is of\nthe acquaintance-type. The two kinds of knowledge are, therefore, as\nthe human mind practically exerts them, relative terms. That is, the\nsame thought of a thing may be called knowledge-about it in comparison\nwith a simpler thought, or acquaintance with it in comparison with a\nthought of it that is more articulate and explicit still.\n\nThe grammatical sentence expresses this. Its 'subject' stands for an\nobject of acquaintance which, by the addition of the predicate, is to\nget something known about it. We may already know a good deal, when\nwe hear the subject named--its name may have rich connotations. But,\nknow we much or little then, we know more still when the sentence is\ndone. We can relapse at will into a mere condition of acquaintance with\nan object by scattering our attention and staring at it in a vacuous\ntrance-like way. We can ascend to knowledge _about_ it by rallying our\nwits and proceeding to notice and analyze and think. What we are only\nacquainted with is only _present_ to our minds; we _have_ it, or the\nidea of it. But when we know about it, we do more than merely have\nit; we seem, as we think over its relations, to subject it to a sort\nof _treatment_ and to _operate_ upon it with our thought. The words\n_feeling_ and _thought_ give voice to the antithesis. Through feelings\nwe become acquainted with things, but only by our thoughts do we know\nabout them. Feelings are the germ and starting point of cognition,\nthoughts the developed tree. The minimum of grammatical subject, of\nobjective presence, of reality known about, the mere beginning of\nknowledge, must be named by the word that says the least. Such a word\nis the interjection, as _lo! there! ecco! voil\u00e0!_ or the article or\ndemonstrative pronoun introducing the sentence, as _the, it, that_. In\nChapter XII we shall see a little deeper into what this distinction,\nbetween the mere mental having or feeling of an object and the thinking\nof it, portends.\n\nThe mental states usually distinguished as feelings are the _emotions_,\nand the _sensations_ we get from skin, muscle, viscus, eye, ear, nose,\nand palate. The 'thoughts,' as recognized in popular parlance, are the\n_conceptions_ and _judgments_. When we treat of these mental states in\nparticular we shall have to say a word about the cognitive function and\nvalue of each. It may perhaps be well to notice now that our senses\nonly give us acquaintance with facts of body, and that of the mental\nstates of other persons we only have conceptual knowledge. Of our own\npast states of mind we take cognizance in a peculiar way. They are\n'objects of memory,' and appear to us endowed with a sort of warmth and\nintimacy that makes the perception of them seem more like a process of\nsensation than like a thought.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[198] Messrs. Payton Spence (Journal of Spec. Phil., x, 338, xiv,\n286) and M. M. Garver (Amer. Jour. of Science, 3d series, xx,\n189) argue, the one from speculative, the other from experimental\ngrounds, that, the physical condition of consciousness being neural\nvibration, the consciousness must itself be incessantly interrupted by\nunconsciousness--about fifty times a second, according to Garver.\n\n[199] That the appearance of mental activity here is real can be proved\nby suggesting to the 'hypnotized' somnambulist that he shall remember\nwhen he awakes. He will then often do so.\n\n[200] For more details, cf. Malebranche, Rech. de la Verit\u00e9, bk.\niii, chap. i; J. Locke, Essay conc. H. U., book iii, ch. i; C. Wolf,\nPsychol. rationalis, \u00a7 59; Sir W. Hamilton, Lectures on Metaph.,\nlecture xvii; J. Bascom, Science of Mind, \u00a7 12; Th. Jouffroy, M\u00e9langes\nPhilos., 'du Sommeil'; H. Holland, Chapters on Mental Physiol., p. 80;\nB. Brodie, Psychol. Researches, p. 147; E. M. Chesley, Journ. of Spec.\nPhil., vol. xi, p. 72; Th. Ribot, Maladies de la Personnalit\u00e9, pp.\n8-10; H. Lotze, Metaphysics, \u00a7 533.\n\n[201] L'Automatisme Psychologique, Paris, 1889, _passim_.\n\n[202] See his articles in the Chicago Open Court, for July, August and\nNovember, 1889. Also in the Revue Philosophique for 1889 and '90.\n\n[203] This whole phenomenon shows how an idea which remains itself\nbelow the threshold of a certain conscious self may occasion\nassociative effects therein. The skin-sensations unfelt by the\npatient's primary consciousness awaken nevertheless their usual visual\nassociates therein.\n\n[204] See Proceedings of American Soc. for Psych. Research, vol. i, p.\n548.\n\n[205] Proceedings of the (London) Soc. for Psych. Research, May, 1887,\np. 268 ff.\n\n[206] M. Janet designates by numbers the different personalities which\nthe subject may display.\n\n[207] How to conceive of this state of mind is not easy. It would be\nmuch simpler to understand the process, if adding new strokes made\nthe first one visible. There would then be two different objects\napperceived as totals,--paper with one stroke, paper with many strokes;\nand, blind to the former, he would see all that was in the latter,\nbecause he would have apperceived it as a different total in the first\ninstance.\n\nA process of this sort occurs sometimes (not always) when the new\nstrokes, instead of being mere repetitions of the original one, are\nlines which combine with it into a total object, say a human face. The\nsubject of the trance then may regain his sight of the line to which he\nhad previously been blind, by seeing it as part of the face.\n\n[208] Perception of Space and Matter, 1879, part ii, chap. 3.\n\n[209] For a very good condensed history of the various opinions, see\nW. Volkmann von Volkmar, Lehrbuch d. Psychologie, \u00a7 16, Anm. Complete\nreferences to Sir W. Hamilton are given in J. E. Walter, Perception of\nSpace and Matter, pp. 65-6.\n\n[210] Most contemporary writers ignore the question of the soul's\nseat. Lotze is the only one who seems to have been much concerned\nabout it, and his views have varied. Cf. Medicinische Psychol., \u00a7 10.\nMicrocosmus, bk. iii, ch. 2. Metaphysic, bk. iii, ch. 5. Outlines of\nPsychol., part ii, ch. 3. See also G. T. Fechner, Psychophysik, chap.\nxxxvii.\n\n[211] I purposely ignore 'clairvoyance' and action upon distant things\nby 'mediums,' as not yet matters of common consent.\n\n[212] I disregard _consequences_ which may later come to the thing from\nthe fact that it is known. The knowing _per se_ in no wise affects the\nthing.\n\n[213] B. P. Bowne: Metaphysics, pp. 407-10. Cf. also Lotze: Logik, \u00a7\u00a7\n308, 326-7.\n\n[214] Cf. John Grote: Exploratio Philosophica, p. 60; H. Helmholtz,\nPopular Scientific Lectures, London, p. 308-9.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX.[215]\n\nTHE STREAM OF THOUGHT.\n\n\nWe now begin our study of the mind from within. Most books start with\nsensations, as the simplest mental facts, and proceed synthetically,\nconstructing each higher stage from those below it. But this is\nabandoning the empirical method of investigation. No one ever had a\nsimple sensation by itself. Consciousness, from our natal day, is of a\nteeming multiplicity of objects and relations, and what we call simple\nsensations are results of discriminative attention, pushed often to a\nvery high degree. It is astonishing what havoc is wrought in psychology\nby admitting at the outset apparently innocent suppositions, that\nnevertheless contain a flaw. The bad consequences develop themselves\nlater on, and are irremediable, being woven through the whole texture\nof the work. The notion that sensations, being the simplest things, are\nthe first things to take up in psychology is one of these suppositions.\nThe only thing which psychology has a right to postulate at the outset\nis the fact of thinking itself, and that must first be taken up and\nanalyzed. If sensations then prove to be amongst the elements of the\nthinking, we shall be no worse off as respects them than if we had\ntaken them for granted at the start.\n\n_The first fact for us, then, as psychologists, is that thinking of\nsome sort goes on._ I use the word thinking, in accordance with what\nwas said on p. 186, for every form of consciousness indiscriminately.\nIf we could say in English 'it thinks,' as we say 'it rains 'or 'it\nblows,' we should be stating the fact most simply and with the minimum\nof assumption. As we cannot, we must simply say that _thought goes on_.\n\n\nFIVE CHARACTERS IN THOUGHT.\n\n\nHow does it go on? We notice immediately five important characters in\nthe process, of which it shall be the duty of the present chapter to\ntreat in a general way:\n\n1) Every thought tends to be part of a personal consciousness.\n\n2) Within each personal consciousness thought is always changing.\n\n3) Within each personal consciousness thought is sensibly continuous.\n\n4) It always appears to deal with objects independent of itself.\n\n5) It is interested in some parts of these objects to the exclusion\nof others, and welcomes or rejects--_chooses_ from among them, in a\nword--all the while.\n\nIn considering these five points successively, we shall have to plunge\n_in medias res_ as regards our vocabulary, and use psychological terms\nwhich can only be adequately defined in later chapters of the book.\nBut every one knows what the terms mean in a rough way; and it is only\nin a rough way that we are now to take them. This chapter is like a\npainter's first charcoal sketch upon his canvas, in which no niceties\nappear.\n\n\n1) _Thought tends to Personal Form._\n\n\nWhen I say _every thought is part of a personal consciousness_,\n'personal consciousness' is one of the terms in question. Its meaning\nwe know so long as no one asks us to define it, but to give an accurate\naccount of it is the most difficult of philosophic tasks. This task we\nmust confront in the next chapter; here a preliminary word will suffice.\n\nIn this room--this lecture-room, say--there are a multitude of\nthoughts, yours and mine, some of which cohere mutually, and some not.\nThey are as little each-for-itself and reciprocally independent as\nthey are all-belonging-together. They are neither: no one of them is\nseparate, but each belongs with certain others and with none beside.\nMy thought belongs with my other thoughts, and your thought with your\nother thoughts. Whether anywhere in the room there be a mere thought,\nwhich is nobody's thought, we have no means of ascertaining, for we\nhave no experience of its like. The only states of consciousness that\nwe naturally deal with are found in personal consciousnesses, minds,\nselves, concrete particular I's and you's.\n\nEach of these minds keeps its own thoughts to itself. There is no\ngiving or bartering between them. No thought even comes into direct\n_sight_ of a thought in another personal consciousness than its own.\nAbsolute insulation, irreducible pluralism, is the law. It seems as if\nthe elementary psychic fact were not _thought_ or _this thought_ or\n_that thought_, but _my thought_, every thought being _owned_. Neither\ncontemporaneity, nor proximity in space, nor similarity of quality and\ncontent are able to fuse thoughts together which are sundered by this\nbarrier of belonging to different personal minds. The breaches between\nsuch thoughts are the most absolute breaches in nature. Everyone will\nrecognize this to be true, so long as the existence of _something_\ncorresponding to the term 'personal mind' is all that is insisted on,\nwithout any particular view of its nature being implied. On these\nterms the personal self rather than the thought might be treated as\nthe immediate datum in psychology. The universal conscious fact is\nnot 'feelings and thoughts exist,' but 'I think' and 'I feel.'[216]\nNo psychology, at any rate, can question the _existence_ of personal\nselves. The worst a psychology can do is so to interpret the nature of\nthese selves as to rob them of their worth. A French writer, speaking\nof our ideas, says somewhere in a fit of anti-spiritualistic excitement\nthat, misled by certain peculiarities which they display, we 'end by\npersonifying' the procession which they make,--such personification\nbeing regarded by him as a great philosophic blunder on our part. It\ncould only be a blunder if the notion of personality meant something\nessentially different from anything to be found in the mental\nprocession. But if that procession be itself the very 'original' of the\nnotion of personality, to personify it cannot possibly be wrong. It is\nalready personified. There are no marks of personality to be gathered\n_aliunde_, and then found lacking in the train of thought. It has them\nall already; so that to whatever farther analysis we may subject that\nform of personal selfhood under which thoughts appear, it is, and must\nremain, true that the thoughts which psychology studies do continually\ntend to appear as parts of personal selves.\n\nI say 'tend to appear' rather than 'appear,' on account of those facts\nof sub-conscious personality, automatic writing, etc., of which we\nstudied a few in the last chapter. The buried feelings and thoughts\nproved now to exist in hysterical an\u00e6sthetics, in recipients of\npost-hypnotic suggestion, etc., themselves are parts of _secondary\npersonal selves_. These selves are for the most part very stupid and\ncontracted, and are cut off at ordinary times from communication with\nthe regular and normal self of the individual; but still they form\nconscious unities, have continuous memories, speak, write, invent\ndistinct names for themselves, or adopt names that are suggested; and,\nin short, are entirely worthy of that title of secondary personalities\nwhich is now commonly given them. According to M. Janet these secondary\npersonalities are always abnormal, and result from the splitting of\nwhat ought to be a single complete self into two parts, of which one\nlurks in the background whilst the other appears on the surface as\nthe only self the man or woman has. For our present purpose it is\nunimportant whether this account of the origin of secondary selves is\napplicable to all possible cases of them or not, for it certainly is\ntrue of a large number of them. Now although the _size_ of a secondary\nself thus formed will depend on the number of thoughts that are\nthus split-off from the main consciousness, the _form_ of it tends\nto personality, and the later thoughts pertaining to it remember\nthe earlier ones and adopt them as their own. M. Janet caught the\nactual moment of inspissation (so to speak) of one of these secondary\npersonalities in his an\u00e6sthetic somnambulist Lucie. He found that when\nthis young woman's attention was absorbed in conversation with a third\nparty, her an\u00e6sthetic hand would write simple answers to questions\nwhispered to her by himself. \"Do you hear?\" he asked. \"_No,_\" was the\nunconsciously written reply. \"But to answer you must hear.\" \"_Yes,\nquite so._\" \"Then how do you manage?\" \"_I don't know._\" \"There must be\nsome one who hears me.\" \"_Yes._\" \"Who?\" \"_Someone other than Lucie._\"\n\"Ah! another person. Shall we give her a name?\" \"_No._\" \"Yes, it will\nbe more convenient.\" \"_Well, Adrienne, then._\" \"Once baptized, the\nsubconscious personage,\" M. Janet continues, \"grows more definitely\noutlined and displays better her psychological characters. In\nparticular she shows us that she is conscious of the feelings excluded\nfrom the consciousness of the primary or normal personage. She it is\nwho tells us that I am pinching the arm or touching the little finger\nin which Lucie for so long has had no tactile sensations.\"[217]\n\nIn other cases the adoption of the name by the secondary self is more\nspontaneous. I have seen a number of incipient automatic writers\nand mediums as yet imperfectly 'developed,' who immediately and of\ntheir own accord write and speak in the name of departed spirits.\nThese may be public characters, as Mozart, Faraday, or real persons\nformerly known to the subject, or altogether imaginary beings.\nWithout prejudicing the question of real 'spirit-control' in the more\ndeveloped sorts of trance-utterance, I incline to think that these\n(often deplorably unintelligent) rudimentary utterances are the work\nof an inferior fraction of the subject's own natural mind, set free\nfrom control by the rest, and working after a set pattern fixed by the\nprejudices of the social environment. In a spiritualistic community we\nget optimistic messages, whilst in an ignorant Catholic village the\nsecondary personage calls itself by the name of a demon, and proffers\nblasphemies and obscenities, instead of telling us how happy it is in\nthe summer-land.[218]\n\nBeneath these tracts of thought, which, however rudimentary, are\nstill organized selves with a memory, habits, and sense of their own\nidentity, M. Janet thinks that the facts of catalepsy in hysteric\npatients drive us to suppose that there are thoughts quite unorganized\nand impersonal. A patient in cataleptic trance (which can be produced\nartificially in certain hypnotized subjects) is without memory on\nwaking, and seems insensible and unconscious as long as the cataleptic\ncondition lasts. If, however, one raises the arm of such a subject it\nstays in that position, and the whole body can thus be moulded like\nwax under the hands of the operator, retaining for a considerable\ntime whatever attitude he communicates to it. In hysterics whose arm,\nfor example, is an\u00e6sthetic, the same thing may happen. The an\u00e6sthetic\narm may remain passively in positions which it is made to assume; or\nif the hand be taken and made to hold a pencil and trace a certain\nletter, it will continue tracing that letter indefinitely on the\npaper. These acts, until recently, were supposed to be accompanied by\nno consciousness at all: they were physiological reflexes. M. Janet\nconsiders with much more plausibility that feeling escorts them.\nThe feeling is probably merely that of the position or movement of\nthe limb, and it produces no more than its natural effects when it\ndischarges into the motor centres which keep the position maintained,\nor the movement incessantly renewed.[219] Such thoughts as these, says\nM. Janet, \"are known by _no one_, for disaggregated sensations reduced\nto a state of mental dust are not synthetized in any personality.\"[220]\nHe admits, however, that these very same unutterably stupid thoughts\ntend to develop memory,--the cataleptic ere long moves her arm at a\nbare hint; so that they form no important exception to the law that all\nthought tends to assume the form of personal consciousness.\n\n\n2) _Thought is in Constant Change._\n\n\nI do not mean necessarily that no one state of mind has any\nduration--even if true, that would be hard to establish. The change\nwhich I have more particularly in view is that which takes place in\nsensible intervals of time; and the result on which I wish to lay\nstress is this, that _no state once gone can recur and be identical\nwith what it was before_. Let us begin with Mr. Shadworth Hodgson's\ndescription:\n\n \"I go straight to the facts, without saying I go to perception, or\n sensation, or thought, or any special mode at all. What I find when I\n look at my consciousness at all is that what I cannot divest myself\n of, or not have in consciousness, if I have any consciousness at all,\n is a sequence of different feelings. I may shut my eyes and keep\n perfectly still, and try not to contribute anything of my own will;\n but whether I think or do not think, whether I perceive external\n things or not, I always have a succession of different feelings.\n Anything else that I may have also, of a more special character,\n comes in as parts of this succession, Not to have the succession of\n different feelings is not to be conscious at all.... The chain of\n consciousness is a sequence of _differents_.\"[221]\n\nSuch a description as this can awaken no possible protest from any\none. We all recognize as different great classes of our conscious\nstates. Now we are seeing, now hearing; now reasoning, now willing;\nnow recollecting, now expecting; now loving, now hating; and in a\nhundred other ways we know our minds to be alternately engaged. But\nall these are complex states. The aim of science is always to reduce\ncomplexity to simplicity; and in psychological science we have the\ncelebrated 'theory of _ideas_' which, admitting the great difference\namong each other of what may be called concrete conditions of mind,\nseeks to show how this is all the resultant effect of variations in\nthe _combination_ of certain simple elements of consciousness that\nalways remain the same. These mental atoms or molecules are what\nLocke called 'simple ideas.' Some of Locke's successors made out that\nthe only simple ideas were the sensations strictly so called. Which\nideas the simple ones may be does not, however, now concern us. It is\nenough that certain philosophers have thought they could see under the\ndissolving-view-appearance of the mind elementary facts of _any_ sort\nthat remained unchanged amid the flow.\n\nAnd the view of these philosophers has been called little into\nquestion, for our common experience seems at first sight to corroborate\nit entirely. Are not the sensations we get from the same object, for\nexample, always the same? Does not the same piano-key, struck with\nthe same force, make us hear in the same way? Does not the same grass\ngive us the same feeling of green, the same sky the same feeling of\nblue, and do we not get the same olfactory sensation no matter how many\ntimes we put our nose to the same flask of cologne? It seems a piece\nof metaphysical sophistry to suggest that we do not; and yet a close\nattention to the matter shows that _there is no proof that the same\nbodily sensation is ever got by us twice_.\n\n_What is got twice is the same_ OBJECT. We hear the same _note_ over\nand over again; we see the same _quality_ of green, or smell the same\nobjective perfume, or experience the same _species_ of pain. The\nrealities, concrete and abstract, physical and ideal, whose permanent\nexistence we believe in, seem to be constantly coming up again before\nour thought, and lead us, in our carelessness, to suppose that our\n'ideas' of them are the same ideas. When we come, some time later, to\nthe chapter on Perception, we shall see how inveterate is our habit\nof not attending to sensations as subjective facts, but of simply\nusing them as stepping-stones to pass over to the recognition of the\nrealities whose presence they reveal. The grass out of the window\nnow looks to me of the same green in the sun as in the shade, and\nyet a painter would have to paint one part of it dark brown, another\npart bright yellow, to give its real, sensational effect. We take\nno heed, as a rule, of the different way in which the same things\nlook and sound and smell at different distances and under different\ncircumstances. The sameness of the _things_ is what we are concerned\nto ascertain; and any sensations that assure us of that will probably\nbe considered in a rough way to be the same with each other. This\nis what makes off-hand testimony about the subjective identity of\ndifferent sensations well-nigh worthless as a proof of the fact. The\nentire history of Sensation is a commentary on our inability to tell\nwhether two sensations received apart are exactly alike. What appeals\nto our attention far more than the absolute quality or quantity of\na given sensation is its _ratio_ to whatever other sensations we may\nhave at the same time. When everything is dark a somewhat less dark\nsensation makes us see an object white. Helmholtz calculates that the\nwhite marble painted in a picture representing an architectural view by\nmoonlight is, when seen by daylight, from ten to twenty thousand times\nbrighter than the real moonlit marble would be.[222]\n\nSuch a difference as this could never have been _sensibly_ learned; it\nhad to be inferred from a series of indirect considerations. There are\nfacts which make us believe that our sensibility is altering all the\ntime, so that the same object cannot easily give us the same sensation\nover again. The eye's sensibility to light is at its maximum when the\neye is first exposed, and blunts itself with surprising rapidity.\nA long night's sleep will make it see things twice as brightly on\nwakening, as simple rest by closure will make it see them later in\nthe day.[223] We feel things differently according as we are sleepy\nor awake, hungry or full, fresh or tired; differently at night and\nin the morning, differently in summer and in winter, and above all\nthings differently in childhood, manhood, and old age. Yet we never\ndoubt that our feelings reveal the same world, with the same sensible\nqualities and the same sensible things occupying it. The difference\nof the sensibility is shown best by the difference of our emotion\nabout the things from one age to another, or when we are in different\norganic moods. What was bright and exciting becomes weary, flat, and\nunprofitable. The bird's song is tedious, the breeze is mournful, the\nsky is sad.\n\nTo these indirect presumptions that our sensations, following the\nmutations of our capacity for feeling, are always undergoing an\nessential change, must be added another presumption, based on what\nmust happen in the brain. Every sensation corresponds to some cerebral\naction. For an identical sensation to recur it would have to occur the\nsecond time _in an unmodified brain_. But as this, strictly speaking,\nis a physiological impossibility, so is an unmodified feeling an\nimpossibility; for to every brain-modification, however small, must\ncorrespond a change of equal amount in the feeling which the brain\nsubserves.\n\nAll this would be true if even sensations came to us pure and single\nand not combined into 'things.' Even then we should have to confess\nthat, however we might in ordinary conversation speak of getting the\nsame sensation again, we never in strict theoretic accuracy could do\nso; and that whatever was true of the river of life, of the river of\nelementary feeling, it would certainly be true to say, like Heraclitus,\nthat we never descend twice into the same stream.\n\nBut if the assumption of 'simple ideas of sensation' recurring in\nimmutable shape is so easily shown to be baseless, how much more\nbaseless is the assumption of immutability in the larger masses of our\nthought!\n\nFor there it is obvious and palpable that our state of mind is never\nprecisely the same. Every thought we have of a given fact is, strictly\nspeaking, unique, and only bears a resemblance of kind with our other\nthoughts of the same fact. When the identical fact recurs, we _must_\nthink of it in a fresh manner, see it under a somewhat different\nangle, apprehend it in different relations from those in which it\nlast appeared. And the thought by which we cognize it is the thought\nof it-in-those-relations, a thought suffused with the consciousness\nof all that dim context. Often we are ourselves struck at the strange\ndifferences in our successive views of the same thing. We wonder how\nwe ever could have opined as we did last month about a certain matter.\nWe have outgrown the possibility of that state of mind, we know not\nhow. From one year to another we see things in new lights. What was\nunreal has grown real, and what was exciting is insipid. The friends\nwe used to care the world for are shrunken to shadows; the women, once\nso divine, the stars, the woods, and the waters, how now so dull and\ncommon! the young girls that brought an aura of infinity, at present\nhardly distinguishable existences; pictures so empty; and as for the\nbooks, what _was_ there to find so mysteriously significant in Goethe,\nor in John Mill so full of weight? Instead of all this, more zestful\nthan ever is the work, the work; and fuller and deeper the import of\ncommon duties and of common goods.\n\nBut what here strikes us so forcibly on the flagrant scale exists on\nevery scale, down to the imperceptible transition from one hour's\noutlook to that of the next. Experience is remoulding us every moment,\nand our mental reaction on every given thing is really a resultant of\nour experience of the whole world up to that date. The analogies of\nbrain-physiology must again be appealed to to corroborate our view.\n\nOur earlier chapters have taught us to believe that, whilst we think,\nour brain changes, and that, like the aurora borealis, its whole\ninternal equilibrium shifts with every pulse of change. The precise\nnature of the shifting at a given moment is a product of many factors.\nThe accidental state of local nutrition or blood-supply may be among\nthem. But just as one of them certainly is the influence of outward\nobjects on the sense-organs during the moment, so is another certainly\nthe very special susceptibility in which the organ has been left at\nthat moment by all it has gone through in the past. Every brain-state\nis partly determined by the nature of this entire past succession.\nAlter the latter in any part, and the brain-state must be somewhat\ndifferent. Each present brain-state is a record in which the eye of\nOmniscience might read all the foregone history of its owner. It is out\nof the question, then, that any total brain-state should identically\nrecur. Something like it may recur; but to suppose _it_ to recur would\nbe equivalent to the absurd admission that all the states that had\nintervened between its two appearances had been pure nonentities, and\nthat the organ after their passage was exactly as it was before. And\n(to consider shorter periods) just as, in the senses, an impression\nfeels very differently according to what has preceded it; as one\ncolor succeeding another is modified by the contrast, silence sounds\ndelicious after noise, and a note, when the scale is sung up, sounds\nunlike itself when the scale is sung down; as the presence of certain\nlines in a figure changes the apparent form of the other lines, and as\nin music the whole \u00e6sthetic effect comes from the manner in which one\nset of sounds alters our feeling of another; so, in thought, we must\nadmit that those portions of the brain that have just been maximally\nexcited retain a kind of soreness which is a condition of our present\nconsciousness, a codeterminant of how and what we now shall feel.[224]\n\nEver some tracts are waning in tension, some waxing, whilst others\nactively discharge. The states of tension have as positive an influence\nas any in determining the total condition, and in deciding what the\n_psychosis_ shall be. All we know of submaximal nerve-irritations,\nand of the summation of apparently ineffective stimuli, tends to show\nthat _no_ changes in the brain are physiologically ineffective, and\nthat presumably none are bare of psychological result. But as the\nbrain-tension shifts from one relative state of equilibrium to another,\nlike the gyrations of a kaleidoscope, now rapid and now slow, is it\nlikely that its faithful psychic concomitant is heavier-footed than\nitself, and that it cannot match each one of the organ's irradiations\nby a shifting inward iridescence of its own? But if it can do this, its\ninward iridescences must be infinite, for the brain-redistributions are\nin infinite variety. If so coarse a thing as a telephone-plate can be\nmade to thrill for years and never reduplicate its inward condition,\nhow much more must this be the case with the infinitely delicate brain?\n\nI am sure that this concrete and total manner of regarding the mind's\nchanges is the only true manner, difficult as it may be to carry it out\nin detail. If anything seems obscure about it, it will grow clearer as\nwe advance. Meanwhile, if it be true, it is certainly also true that\nno two 'ideas' are ever exactly the same, which is the proposition we\nstarted to prove. The proposition is more important theoretically than\nit at first sight seems. For it makes it already impossible for us\nto follow obediently in the footprints of either the Lockian or the\nHerbartian school, schools which have had almost unlimited influence\nin Germany and among ourselves. No doubt it is often _convenient_ to\nformulate the mental facts in an atomistic sort of way, and to treat\nthe higher states of consciousness as if they were all built out of\nunchanging simple ideas. It is convenient often to treat curves as\nif they were composed of small straight lines, and electricity and\nnerve-force as if they were fluids. But in the one case as in the\nother we must never forget that we are talking symbolically, and that\nthere is nothing in nature to answer to our words. _A permanently\nexisting 'idea' or 'Vorstellung' which makes its appearance before the\nfootlights of consciousness at periodical intervals, is as mythological\nan entity as the Jack of Spades._\n\nWhat makes it convenient to use the mythological formulas is the whole\norganization of speech, which, as was remarked a while ago, was not\nmade by psychologists, but by men who were as a rule only interested\nin the facts their mental states revealed. They only spoke of their\nstates as _ideas of this or of that thing_. What wonder, then, that the\nthought is most easily conceived under the law of the thing whose name\nit bears! If the thing is composed of parts, then we suppose that the\nthought of the thing must be composed of the thoughts of the parts.\nIf one part of the thing have appeared in the same thing or in other\nthings on former occasions, why then we must be having even now the\nvery same 'idea' of that part which was there on those occasions. If\nthe thing is simple, its thought is simple. If it is multitudinous,\nit must require a multitude of thoughts to think it. If a succession,\nonly a succession of thoughts can know it. If permanent, its thought\nis permanent. And so on _ad libitum_. What after all is so natural\nas to assume that one object, called by one name, should be known\nby one affection of the mind? But, if language must thus influence\nus, the agglutinative languages, and even Greek and Latin with their\ndeclensions, would be the better guides. Names did not appear in them\ninalterable, but changed their shape to suit the context in which\nthey lay. It must have been easier then than now to conceive of the\nsame object as being thought of at different times in non-identical\nconscious states.\n\nThis, too, will grow clearer as we proceed. Meanwhile a necessary\nconsequence of the belief in permanent self-identical psychic facts\nthat absent themselves and recur periodically is the Humian doctrine\nthat our thought is composed of separate independent parts and is not a\nsensibly continuous stream. That this doctrine entirely misrepresents\nthe natural appearances is what I next shall try to show.\n\n\n3) _Within each personal consciousness, thought is sensibly continuous._\n\n\nI can only define 'continuous' as that which is without breach, crack,\nor division. I have already said that the breach from one mind to\nanother is perhaps the greatest breach in nature. The only breaches\nthat can well be conceived to occur within the limits of a single\nmind would either be _interruptions, time_-gaps during which the\nconsciousness went out altogether to come into existence again at a\nlater moment; or they would be breaks in the _quality_, or content, of\nthe thought, so abrupt that the segment that followed had no connection\nwhatever with the one that went before. The proposition that within\neach personal consciousness thought feels continuous, means two things:\n\n1. That even where there is a time-gap the consciousness after it feels\nas if it belonged together with the consciousness before it, as another\npart of the same self;\n\n2. That the changes from one moment to another in the quality of the\nconsciousness are never absolutely abrupt.\n\nThe case of the time-gaps, as the simplest, shall be taken first. And\nfirst of all a word about time-gaps of which the consciousness may not\nbe itself aware.\n\nOn page 200 we saw that such time-gaps existed, and that they might\nbe more numerous than is usually supposed. If the consciousness is\nnot aware of them, it cannot feel them as interruptions. In the\nunconsciousness produced by nitrous oxide and other an\u00e6sthetics, in\nthat of epilepsy and fainting, the broken edges of the sentient life\nmay meet and merge over the gap, much as the feelings of space of the\nopposite margins of the 'blind spot' meet and merge over that objective\ninterruption to the sensitiveness of the eye. Such consciousness as\nthis, whatever it be for the onlooking psychologist, is for itself\nunbroken. It _feels_ unbroken; a waking day of it is sensibly a unit\nas long as that day lasts, in the sense in which the hours themselves\nare units, as having all their parts next each other, with no intrusive\nalien substance between. To expect the consciousness to feel the\ninterruptions of its objective continuity as gaps, would be like\nexpecting the eye to feel a gap of silence because it does not hear, or\nthe ear to feel a gap of darkness because it does not see. So much for\nthe gaps that are unfelt.\n\nWith the felt gaps the case is different. On waking from sleep, we\nusually know that we have been unconscious, and we often have an\naccurate judgment of how long. The judgment here is certainly an\ninference from sensible signs, and its ease is due to long practice\nin the particular field.[225] The result of it, however, is that the\nconsciousness is, _for itself,_ not what it was in the former case, but\ninterrupted and discontinuous, in the mere sense of the words. But in\nthe other sense of continuity, the sense of the parts being inwardly\nconnected and belonging together because they are parts of a common\nwhole, the consciousness remains sensibly continuous and one. What now\nis the common whole? The natural name for it is _myself, I,_ or _me_.\n\nWhen Paul and Peter wake up in the same bed, and recognize that they\nhave been asleep, each one of them mentally reaches back and makes\nconnection with but _one_ of the two streams of thought which were\nbroken by the sleeping hours. As the current of an electrode buried\nin the ground unerringly finds its way to its own similarly buried\nmate, across no matter how much intervening earth; so Peter's present\ninstantly finds out Peter's past, and never by mistake knits itself\non to that of Paul. Paul's thought in turn is as little liable to\ngo astray. The past thought of Peter is appropriated by the present\nPeter alone. He may have a _knowledge_, and a correct one too, of\nwhat Paul's last drowsy states of mind were as he sank into sleep,\nbut it is an entirely different sort of knowledge from that which he\nhas of his own last states. He _remembers_ his own states, whilst\nhe only _conceives_ Paul's. Remembrance is like direct feeling; its\nobject is suffused with a warmth and intimacy to which no object of\nmere conception ever attains. This quality of warmth and intimacy and\nimmediacy is what Peter's _present_ thought also possesses for itself.\nSo sure as this present is me, is mine, it says, so sure is anything\nelse that comes with the same warmth and intimacy and immediacy, me and\nmine. What the qualities called warmth and intimacy may in themselves\nbe will have to be matter for future consideration. But whatever past\nfeelings appear with those qualities must be admitted to receive the\ngreeting of the present mental state, to be owned by it, and accepted\nas belonging together with it in a common self. This community of\nself is what the time-gap cannot break in twain, and is why a present\nthought, although not ignorant of the time-gap, can still regard itself\nas continuous with certain chosen portions of the past.\n\nConsciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such\nwords as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as it presents\nitself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A\n'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally\ndescribed. _In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of\nthought, of consciousness, or of subjective life._\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBut now there appears, even within the limits of the same self, and\nbetween thoughts all of which alike have this same sense of belonging\ntogether, a kind of jointing and separateness among the parts, of which\nthis statement seems to take no account. I refer to the breaks that\nare produced by sudden _contrasts in the quality_ of the successive\nsegments of the stream of thought If the words 'chain' and 'train' had\nno natural fitness in them, how came such words to be used at all? Does\nnot a loud explosion rend the consciousness upon which it abruptly\nbreaks, in twain? Does not every sudden shock, appearance of a new\nobject, or change in a sensation, create a real interruption, sensibly\nfelt as such, which cuts the conscious stream across at the moment at\nwhich it appears? Do not such interruptions smite us every hour of our\nlives, and have we the right, in their presence, still to call our\nconsciousness a continuous stream?\n\nThis objection is based partly on a confusion and partly on a\nsuperficial introspective view.\n\nThe confusion is between the thoughts themselves, taken as subjective\nfacts, and the things of which they are aware. It is natural to make\nthis confusion, but easy to avoid it when once put on one's guard.\nThe things are discrete and discontinuous; they do pass before us in\na train or chain, making often explosive appearances and rending each\nother in twain. But their comings and goings and contrasts no more\nbreak the flow of the thought that thinks them than they break the\ntime and the space in which they lie. A silence may be broken by a\nthunder-clap, and we may be so stunned and confused for a moment by the\nshock as to give no instant account to ourselves of what has happened.\nBut that very confusion is a mental state, and a state that passes us\nstraight over from the silence to the sound. The transition between the\nthought of one object and the thought of another is no more a break in\nthe _thought_ than a joint in a bamboo is a break in the wood. It is\na part of the _consciousness_ as much as the joint is a part of the\n_bamboo_.\n\nThe superficial introspective view is the overlooking, even when\nthe things are contrasted with each other most violently, of the\nlarge amount of affinity that may still remain between the thoughts\nby whose means they are cognized. Into the awareness of the thunder\nitself the awareness of the previous silence creeps and continues;\nfor what we hear when the thunder crashes is not thunder _pure_,\nbut thunder-breaking-upon-silence-and-contrasting-with-it.[226] Our\nfeeling of the same objective thunder, coming in this way, is quite\ndifferent from what it would be were the thunder a continuation of\nprevious thunder. The thunder itself we believe to abolish and exclude\nthe silence; but the _feeling_ of the thunder is also a feeling of\nthe silence as just gone; and it would be difficult to find in the\nactual concrete consciousness of man a feeling so limited to the\npresent as not to have an inkling of anything that went before. Here,\nagain, language works against our perception of the truth. We name our\nthoughts simply, each after its thing, as if each knew its own thing\nand nothing else. What each really knows is clearly the thing it is\nnamed for, with dimly perhaps a thousand other things. It ought to\nbe named after all of them, but it never is. Some of them are always\nthings known a moment ago more clearly; others are things to be known\nmore clearly a moment hence.[227] Our own bodily position, attitude,\ncondition, is one of the things of which _some_ awareness, however\ninattentive, invariably accompanies the knowledge of whatever else\nwe know. We think; and as we think we feel our bodily selves as the\nseat of the thinking. If the thinking be _our_ thinking, it must be\nsuffused through all its parts with that peculiar warmth and intimacy\nthat make it come as ours. Whether the warmth and intimacy be anything\nmore than the feeling of the same old body always there, is a matter\nfor the next chapter to decide. _Whatever_ the content of the ego may\nbe, it is habitually felt _with_ everything else by us humans, and must\nform a _liaison_ between all the things of which we become successively\naware.[228]\n\nOn this gradualness in the changes of our mental content the principles\nof nerve-action can throw some more light. When studying, in Chapter\nIII, the summation of nervous activities, we saw that no state of the\nbrain can be supposed instantly to die away. If a new state comes, the\ninertia of the old state will still be there and modify the result\naccordingly. Of course we cannot tell, in our ignorance, what in each\ninstance the modifications ought to be. The commonest modifications\nin sense-perception are known as the phenomena of contrast. In\n\u00e6sthetics they are the feelings of delight or displeasure which certain\nparticular orders in a series of impressions give. In thought, strictly\nand narrowly so called, they are unquestionably that consciousness of\nthe _whence_ and the _whither_ that always accompanies its flows. If\nrecently the brain-tract _a_ was vividly excited, and then _b_, and now\nvividly _c_, the total present consciousness is not produced simply\nby _c_'s excitement, but also by the dying vibrations of _a_ and _b_\nas well. If we want to represent the brain-process we must write it\nthus: __{a}b^{c}_--three different processes coexisting, and correlated\nwith them a thought which is no one of the three thoughts which they\nwould have produced had each of them occurred alone. But whatever this\nfourth thought may exactly be, it seems impossible that it should not\nbe something _like_ each of the three other thoughts whose tracts are\nconcerned in its production, though in a fast-waning phase.\n\nIt all goes back to what we said in another connection only a few\npages ago (p. 233). As the total neurosis changes, so does the total\npsychosis change. But as the changes of neurosis are never absolutely\ndiscontinuous, so must the successive psychoses shade gradually into\neach other, although their _rate_ of change may be much faster at one\nmoment than at the next.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThis difference in the rate of change lies at the basis of a difference\nof subjective states of which we ought immediately to speak. When\nthe rate is slow we are aware of the object of our thought in a\ncomparatively restful and stable way. When rapid, we are aware of\na passage, a relation, a transition _from_ it, or _between_ it and\nsomething else. As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful\nstream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different\npace of its parts. Like a bird's life, it seems to be made of an\nalternation of flights and perchings. The rhythm of language expresses\nthis, where every thought is expressed in a sentence, and every\nsentence closed by a period. The resting-places are usually occupied\nby sensorial imaginations of some sort, whose peculiarity is that they\ncan be held before the mind for an indefinite time, and contemplated\nwithout changing; the places of flight are filled with thoughts of\nrelations, static or dynamic, that for the most part obtain between the\nmatters contemplated in the periods of comparative rest.\n\n_Let us call the resting-places the 'substantive parts,' and the\nplaces of flight the 'transitive parts,' of the stream of thought._\nIt then appears that the main end of our thinking is at all times the\nattainment of some other substantive part than the one from which we\nhave just been dislodged. And we may say that the main use of the\ntransitive parts is to lead us from one substantive conclusion to\nanother.\n\nNow it is very difficult, introspectively, to see the transitive parts\nfor what they really are. If they are but flights to a conclusion,\nstopping them to look at them before the conclusion is reached is\nreally annihilating them. Whilst if we wait till the conclusion _be_\nreached, it so exceeds them in vigor and stability that it quite\neclipses and swallows them up in its glare. Let anyone try to cut a\nthought across in the middle and get a look at its section, and he\nwill see how difficult the introspective observation of the transitive\ntracts is. The rush of the thought is so headlong that it almost\nalways brings us up at the conclusion before we can arrest it. Or if\nour purpose is nimble enough and we do arrest it, it ceases forthwith\nto be itself. As a snow-flake crystal caught in the warm hand is no\nlonger a crystal but a drop, so, instead of catching the feeling of\nrelation moving to its term, we find we have caught some substantive\nthing, usually the last word we were pronouncing, statically taken, and\nwith its function, tendency, and particular meaning in the sentence\nquite evaporated. The attempt at introspective analysis in these cases\nis in fact like seizing a spinning top to catch its motion, or trying\nto turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness looks. And\nthe challenge to _produce_ these psychoses, which is sure to be thrown\nby doubting psychologists at anyone who contends for their existence,\nis as unfair as Zeno's treatment of the advocates of motion, when,\nasking them to point out in what place an arrow _is_ when it moves, he\nargues the falsity of their thesis from their inability to make to so\npreposterous a question an immediate reply.\n\nThe results of this introspective difficulty are baleful. If to hold\nfast and observe the transitive parts of thought's stream be so\nhard, then the great blunder to which all schools are liable must be\nthe failure to register them, and the undue emphasizing of the more\nsubstantive parts of the stream. Were we not ourselves a moment since\nin danger of ignoring any feeling transitive between the silence and\nthe thunder, and of treating their boundary as a sort of break in\nthe mind? Now such ignoring as this has historically worked in two\nways. One set of thinkers have been led by it to _Sensationalism_.\nUnable to lay their hands on any coarse feelings corresponding to\nthe innumerable relations and forms of connection between the facts\nof the world, finding no _named_ subjective modifications mirroring\nsuch relations, they have for the most part denied that feelings of\nrelation exist, and many of them, like Hume, have gone so far as to\ndeny the reality of most relations _out_ of the mind as well as in it.\nSubstantive psychoses, sensations and their copies and derivatives,\njuxtaposed like dominoes in a game, but really separate, everything\nelse verbal illusion,--such is the upshot of this view.[229] The\n_Intellectualists_, on the other hand, unable to give up the reality\nof relations _extra mentem_, but equally unable to point to any\ndistinct substantive feelings in which they were known, have made the\nsame admission that the feelings do not exist. But they have drawn\nan opposite conclusion. The relations must be known, they say, in\nsomething that is no feeling, no mental modification continuous and\nconsubstantial with the subjective tissue out of which sensations and\nother substantive states are made. They are known, these relations,\nby something that lies on an entirely different plane, by an _actus\npurus_ of Thought, Intellect, or Reason, all written with capitals\nand considered to mean something unutterably superior to any fact of\nsensibility whatever.\n\nBut from our point of view both Intellectualists and Sensationalists\nare wrong. If there be such things as feelings at all, _then so surely\nas relations between objects exist in rerum natur\u00e2, so surely, and more\nsurely, do feelings exist to which these relations are known_. There\nis not a conjunction or a preposition, and hardly an adverbial phrase,\nsyntactic form, or inflection of voice, in human speech, that does\nnot express some shading or other of relation which we at some moment\nactually feel to exist between the larger objects of our thought. If we\nspeak objectively, it is the real relations that appear revealed; if we\nspeak subjectively, it is the stream of consciousness that matches each\nof them by an inward coloring of its own. In either case the relations\nare numberless, and no existing language is capable of doing justice to\nall their shades.\n\nWe ought to say a feeling of _and_, a feeling of _if_, a feeling of\n_but_, and a feeling of _by_, quite as readily as we say a feeling of\n_blue_ or a feeling of _cold_. Yet we do not: so inveterate has our\nhabit become of recognizing the existence of the substantive parts\nalone, that language almost refuses to lend itself to any other use.\nThe Empiricists have always dwelt on its influence in making us suppose\nthat where we have a separate name, a separate thing must needs be\nthere to correspond with it; and they have rightly denied the existence\nof the mob of abstract entities, principles, and forces, in whose favor\nno other evidence than this could be brought up. But they have said\nnothing of that obverse error, of which we said a word in Chapter VII,\n(see p. 195), of supposing that where there is _no_ name no entity\ncan exist. All _dumb_ or anonymous psychic states have, owing to this\nerror, been coolly suppressed; or, if recognized at all, have been\nnamed after the substantive perception they led to, as thoughts 'about'\nthis object or 'about' that, the stolid word _about_ engulfing all\ntheir delicate idiosyncrasies in its monotonous sound. Thus the greater\nand greater accentuation and isolation of the substantive parts have\ncontinually gone on.\n\nOnce more take a look at the brain. We believe the brain to be an organ\nwhose internal equilibrium is always in a state of change,--the change\naffecting every part. The pulses of change are doubtless more violent\nin one place than in another, their rhythm more rapid at this time than\nat that. As in a kaleidoscope revolving at a uniform rate, although\nthe figures are always rearranging themselves, there are instants\nduring which the transformation seems minute and interstitial and\nalmost absent, followed by others when it shoots with magical rapidity,\nrelatively stable forms thus alternating with forms we should not\ndistinguish if seen again; so in the brain the perpetual rearrangement\nmust result in some forms of tension lingering relatively long, whilst\nothers simply come and pass. But if consciousness corresponds to the\nfact of rearrangement itself, why, if the rearrangement stop not,\nshould the consciousness ever cease? And if a lingering rearrangement\nbrings with it one kind of consciousness, why should not a swift\nrearrangement bring another kind of consciousness as peculiar as the\nrearrangement itself? The lingering consciousnesses, if of simple\nobjects, we call 'sensations' or 'images,' according as they are vivid\nor faint; if of complex objects, we call them 'percepts' when vivid,\n'concepts' or 'thoughts' when faint. For the swift consciousnesses\nwe have only those names of 'transitive states,' or 'feelings of\nrelation,' which we have used.[230] As the brain-changes are\ncontinuous, so do all these consciousnesses melt into each other like\ndissolving views. Properly they are but one protracted consciousness,\none unbroken stream.\n\n\n_Feelings of Tendency._\n\n\nSo much for the transitive states. But there are other unnamed states\nor qualities of states that are just as important and just as\ncognitive as they, and just as much unrecognized by the traditional\nsensationalist and intellectualist philosophies of mind. The first\nfails to find them at all, the second finds their _cognitive function_,\nbut denies that anything in the way of _feeling_ has a share in\nbringing it about. Examples will make clear what these inarticulate\npsychoses, due to waxing and waning excitements of the brain, are\nlike.[231]\n\nSuppose three successive persons say to us: 'Wait!' 'Hark!' 'Look!'\nOur consciousness is thrown into three quite different attitudes of\nexpectancy, although no definite object is before it in any one of\nthe three cases. Leaving out different actual bodily attitudes, and\nleaving out the reverberating images of the three words, which are of\ncourse diverse, probably no one will deny the existence of a residual\nconscious affection, a sense of the direction from which an impression\nis about to come, although no positive impression is yet there.\nMeanwhile we have no names for the psychoses in question but the names\nhark, look, and wait.\n\nSuppose we try to recall a forgotten name. The state of our\nconsciousness is peculiar. There is a gap therein; but no mere gap.\nIt is a gap that is intensely active. A sort of wraith of the name\nis in it, beckoning us in a given direction, making us at moments\ntingle with the sense of our closeness, and then letting us sink back\nwithout the longed-for term. If wrong names are proposed to us, this\nsingularly definite gap acts immediately so as to negate them. They do\nnot fit into its mould. And the gap of one word does not feel like the\ngap of another, all empty of content as both might seem necessarily\nto be when described as gaps. When I vainly try to recall the name of\nSpalding, my consciousness is far removed from what it is when I vainly\ntry to recall the name of Bowles. Here some ingenious persons will\nsay: \"How _can_ the two consciousnesses be different when the terms\nwhich might make them different are not there? All that is there, so\nlong as the effort to recall is vain, is the bare effort itself. How\nshould that differ in the two cases? You are making it seem to differ\nby prematurely filling it out with the different names, although\nthese, by the hypothesis, have not yet come. Stick to the two efforts\nas they are, without naming them after facts not yet existent, and\nyou'll be quite unable to designate any point in which they differ.\"\nDesignate, truly enough. We can only designate the difference by\nborrowing the names of objects not yet in the mind. Which is to say\nthat our psychological vocabulary is wholly inadequate to name the\ndifferences that exist, even such strong differences as these. But\nnamelessness is compatible with existence. There are innumerable\nconsciousnesses of emptiness, no one of which taken in itself has a\nname, but all different from each other. The ordinary way is to assume\nthat they are all emptinesses of consciousness, and so the same state.\nBut the feeling of an absence is _toto c\u0153lo_ other than the absence\nof a feeling. It is an intense feeling. The rhythm of a lost word may\nbe there without a sound to clothe it; or the evanescent sense of\nsomething which is the initial vowel or consonant may mock us fitfully,\nwithout growing more distinct. Every one must know the tantalizing\neffect of the blank rhythm of some forgotten verse, restlessly dancing\nin one's mind, striving to be filled out with words.\n\nAgain, what is the strange difference between an experience tasted\nfor the first time and the same experience recognized as familiar,\nas having been enjoyed before, though we cannot name it or say where\nor when? A tune, an odor, a flavor sometimes carry this inarticulate\nfeeling of their familiarity so deep into our consciousness that\nwe are fairly shaken by its mysterious emotional power. But strong\nand characteristic as this psychosis is--it probably is due to the\nsubmaximal excitement of wide-spreading associational brain-tracts--the\nonly name we have for all its shadings is 'sense of familiarity.'\n\nWhen we read such phrases as 'naught but,' 'either one or the other,'\n'_a_ is _b_, but,' 'although it is, nevertheless,' 'it is an excluded\nmiddle, there is no _tertium quid_,' and a host of other verbal\nskeletons of logical relation, is it true that there is nothing more\nin our minds than the words themselves as they pass? What then is\nthe meaning of the words which we think we understand as we read?\nWhat makes that meaning different in one phrase from what it is in\nthe other? 'Who?' 'When?' 'Where?' Is the difference of felt meaning\nin these interrogatives nothing more than their difference of sound?\nAnd is it not (just like the difference of sound itself) known and\nunderstood in an affection of consciousness correlative to it, though\nso impalpable to direct examination? Is not the same true of such\nnegatives as 'no,' 'never,' 'not yet'?\n\nThe truth is that large tracts of human speech are nothing but _signs\nof direction_ in thought, of which direction we nevertheless have an\nacutely discriminative sense, though no definite sensorial image plays\nany part in it whatsoever. Sensorial images are stable psychic facts;\nwe can hold them still and look at them as long as we like. These bare\nimages of logical movement, on the contrary, are psychic transitions,\nalways on the wing, so to speak, and not to be glimpsed except in\nflight. Their function is to lead from one set of images to another.\nAs they pass, we feel both the waxing and the waning images in a way\naltogether peculiar and a way quite different from the way of their\nfull presence. If we try to hold fast the feeling of direction, the\nfull presence comes and the feeling of direction is lost. The blank\nverbal scheme of the logical movement gives us the fleeting sense of\nthe movement as we read it, quite as well as does a rational sentence\nawakening definite imaginations by its words.\n\nWhat is that first instantaneous glimpse of some one's meaning which we\nhave, when in vulgar phrase we say we 'twig' it? Surely an altogether\nspecific affection of our mind. And has the reader never asked himself\nwhat kind of a mental fact is his _intention of saying a thing_ before\nhe has said it? It is an entirely definite intention, distinct from\nall other intentions, an absolutely distinct state of consciousness,\ntherefore; and yet how much of it consists of definite sensorial\nimages, either of words or of things? Hardly anything! Linger, and\nthe words and things come into the mind; the anticipatory intention,\nthe divination is there no more. But as the words that replace it\narrive, it welcomes them successively and calls them right if they\nagree with it, it rejects them and calls them wrong if they do not.\nIt has therefore a nature of its own of the most positive sort, and\nyet what can we say about it without using words that belong to the\nlater mental facts that replace it? The intention _to-say-so-and-so_\nis the only name it can receive. One may admit that a good third of\nour psychic life consists in these rapid premonitory perspective views\nof schemes of thought not yet articulate. How comes it about that a\nman reading something aloud for the first time is able immediately to\nemphasize all his words aright, unless from the very first he have a\nsense of at least the form of the sentence yet to come, which sense\nis fused with his consciousness of the present word, and modifies its\nemphasis in his mind so as to make him give it the proper accent as\nhe utters it? Emphasis of this kind is almost altogether a matter of\ngrammatical construction. If we read 'no more' we expect presently to\ncome upon a 'than'; if we read 'however' at the outset of a sentence\nit is a 'yet,' a 'still,' or a 'nevertheless,' that we expect. A noun\nin a certain position demands a verb in a certain mood and number, in\nanother position it expects a relative pronoun. Adjectives call for\nnouns, verbs for adverbs, etc., etc. And this foreboding of the coming\ngrammatical scheme combined with each successive uttered word is so\npractically accurate that a reader incapable of understanding four\nideas of the book he is reading aloud, can nevertheless read it with\nthe most delicately modulated expression of intelligence.\n\nSome will interpret these facts by calling them all cases in which\ncertain images, by laws of association, awaken others so very rapidly\nthat we think afterwards we felt the very _tendencies_ of the nascent\nimages to arise, before they were actually there. For this school the\nonly possible materials of consciousness are images of a perfectly\ndefinite nature. Tendencies exist, but they are facts for the outside\npsychologist rather than for the subject of the observation. The\ntendency is thus a _psychical_ zero; only its _results_ are felt.\n\nNow what I contend for, and accumulate examples to show, is that\n'tendencies' are not only descriptions from without, but that they are\namong the _objects_ of the stream, which is thus aware of them from\nwithin, and must be described as in very large measure constituted of\n_feelings_ of _tendency_, often so vague that we are unable to name\nthem at all. It is, in short, the re-instatement of the vague to its\nproper place in our mental life which I am so anxious to press on the\nattention. Mr. Galton and Prof. Huxley have, as we shall see in Chapter\nXVIII, made one step in advance in exploding the ridiculous theory of\nHume and Berkeley that we can have no images but of perfectly definite\nthings. Another is made in the overthrow of the equally ridiculous\nnotion that, whilst simple objective qualities are revealed to our\nknowledge in subjective feelings, relations are not. But these reforms\nare not half sweeping and radical enough. What must be admitted is\nthat the definite images of traditional psychology form but the very\nsmallest part of our minds as they actually live. The traditional\npsychology talks like one who should say a river consists of nothing\nbut pailsful, spoonsful, quartpotsful, barrelsful, and other moulded\nforms of water. Even were the pails and the pots all actually standing\nin the stream, still between them the free water would continue to\nflow. It is just this free water of consciousness that psychologists\nresolutely overlook. Every definite image in the mind is steeped and\ndyed in the free water that flows round it. With it goes the sense of\nits relations, near and remote, the dying echo of whence it came to\nus, the dawning sense of whither it is to lead. The significance, the\nvalue, of the image is all in this halo or penumbra that surrounds and\nescorts it,--or rather that is fused into one with it and has become\nbone of its bone and flesh of its flesh; leaving it, it is true, an\nimage of the same _thing_ it was before, but making it an image of that\nthing newly taken and freshly understood.\n\nWhat is that shadowy scheme of the 'form' of an opera, play, or book,\nwhich remains in our mind and on which we pass judgment when the actual\nthing is done? What is our notion of a scientific or philosophical\nsystem? Great thinkers have vast premonitory glimpses of schemes of\nrelation between terms, which hardly even as verbal images enter\nthe mind, so rapid is the whole process.[232] We all of us have\nthis permanent consciousness of whither our thought is going. It is\na feeling like any other, a feeling of what thoughts are next to\narise, before they have arisen. This field of view of consciousness\nvaries very much in extent, depending largely on the degree of mental\nfreshness or fatigue. When very fresh, our minds carry an immense\nhorizon with them. The present image shoots its perspective far before\nit, irradiating in advance the regions in which lie the thoughts as\nyet unborn. Under ordinary conditions the halo of felt relations is\nmuch more circumscribed. And in states of extreme brain-fag the horizon\nis narrowed almost to the passing word,--the associative machinery,\nhowever, providing for the next word turning up in orderly sequence,\nuntil at last the tired thinker is led to some kind of a conclusion. At\ncertain moments he may find himself doubting whether his thoughts have\nnot come to a full stop; but the vague sense of a _plus ultra_ makes\nhim ever struggle on towards a more definite expression of what it may\nbe; whilst the slowness of his utterance shows how difficult, under\nsuch conditions, the labor of thinking must be.\n\nThe awareness that our _definite_ thought has come to a stop is an\nentirely different thing from the awareness that our thought is\ndefinitively completed. The expression of the latter state of mind is\nthe falling inflection which betokens that the sentence is ended, and\nsilence. The expression of the former state is 'hemming and hawing,' or\nelse such phrases as '_et cetera_,' or 'and so forth.' But notice that\nevery part of the sentence to be left incomplete feels differently as\nit passes, by reason of the premonition we have that we shall be unable\nto end it. The 'and so forth' casts its shadow back, and is as integral\na part of the object of the thought as the distinctest of images would\nbe.\n\nAgain, when we use a common noun, such as _man_, in a universal sense,\nas signifying all possible men, we are fully aware of this intention\non our part, and distinguish it carefully from our intention when we\nmean a certain group of men, or a solitary individual before us. In the\nchapter on Conception we shall see how important this difference of\nintention is. It casts its influence over the whole of the sentence,\nboth before and after the spot in which the word _man_ is used.\n\nNothing is easier than to symbolize all these facts in terms of\nbrain-action. Just as the echo of the _whence_, the sense of the\nstarting point of our thought, is probably due to the dying excitement\nof processes but a moment since vividly aroused; so the sense of the\nwhither, the foretaste of the terminus, must be due to the waxing\nexcitement of tracts or processes which, a moment hence, will be the\ncerebral correlatives of some thing which a moment hence will be\nvividly present to the thought. Represented by a curve, the neurosis\nunderlying consciousness must at any moment be like this:\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 27.]\n\nEach point of the horizontal line stands for some brain-tract or\nprocess. The height of the curve above the line stands for the\nintensity of the process. All the processes are _present_, in the\nintensities shown by the curve. But those before the latter's apex\n_were_ more intense a moment ago; those after it _will be_ more intense\na moment hence. If I recite _a, b, c, d, e, f, g,_ at the moment\nof uttering _d_, neither _a, b, c,_ nor _e, f, g,_ are out of my\nconsciousness altogether, but both, after their respective fashions,\n'mix their dim lights' with the stronger one of the _d_, because their\nneuroses are both awake in some degree.\n\nThere is a common class of mistakes which shows how brain-processes\nbegin to be excited before the thoughts attached to them are\n_due_--due, that is, in substantive and vivid form. I mean those\nmistakes of speech or writing by which, in Dr. Carpenter's words, \"we\nmispronounce or misspell a word, by introducing into it a letter or\nsyllable of some other, whose turn is shortly to come; or, it may be,\nthe whole of the anticipated word is substituted for the one which\nought to have been expressed.\"[233] In these cases one of two things\nmust have happened: either some local accident of nutrition _blocks_\nthe process that is _due_, so that other processes discharge that ought\nas yet to be but nascently aroused; or some opposite local accident\n_furthers_ the _latter processes_ and makes them explode before their\ntime. In the chapter on Association of Ideas, numerous instances will\ncome before us of the actual effect on consciousness of neuroses not\nyet maximally aroused.\n\nIt is just like the 'overtones' in music. Different instruments give\nthe 'same note,' but each in a different voice, because each gives more\nthan that note, namely, various upper harmonics of it which differ from\none instrument to another. They are not separately heard by the ear;\nthey blend with the fundamental note, and suffuse it, and alter it; and\neven so do the waxing and waning brain-processes at every moment blend\nwith and suffuse and alter the psychic effect of the processes which\nare at their culminating point.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nLet us use the words _psychic overtone, suffusion,_ or _fringe_, to\ndesignate the influence of a faint brain-process upon our thought, as\nit makes it aware of relations and objects but dimly perceived.[234]\n\nIf we then consider the _cognitive function_ of different states of\nmind, we may feel assured that the difference between those that are\nmere 'acquaintance,' and those that are 'knowledges-_about_' (see p.\n221) is reducible almost entirely to the absence or presence of psychic\nfringes or overtones. Knowledge _about_ a thing is knowledge of its\nrelations. Acquaintance with it is limitation to the bare impression\nwhich it makes. Of most of its relations we are only aware in the\npenumbral nascent way of a 'fringe' of unarticulated affinities about\nit. And, before passing to the next topic in order, I must say a little\nof this sense of affinity, as itself one of the most interesting\nfeatures of the subjective stream.\n\nIn all our voluntary thinking there is some topic or subject about\nwhich all the members of the thought revolve. Half the time this\ntopic is a problem, a gap we cannot yet fill with a definite picture,\nword, or phrase, but which, in the manner described some time back,\ninfluences us in an intensely active and determinate psychic way.\nWhatever may be the images and phrases that pass before us, we feel\ntheir relation to this aching gap. To fill it up is our thoughts'\ndestiny. Some bring us nearer to that consummation. Some the gap\nnegates as quite irrelevant. Each swims in a felt fringe of relations\nof which the aforesaid gap is the term. Or instead of a definite gap\nwe may merely carry a mood of interest about with us. Then, however\nvague the mood, it will still act in the same way, throwing a mantle of\nfelt affinity over such representations, entering the mind, as suit it,\nand tingeing with the feeling of tediousness or discord all those with\nwhich it has no concern.\n\nRelation, then, to our topic or interest is constantly felt in the\nfringe, and particularly the relation of harmony and discord, of\nfurtherance or hindrance of the topic. When the sense of furtherance\nis there, we are 'all right;' with the sense of hindrance we are\ndissatisfied and perplexed, and cast about us for other thoughts. Now\n_any_ thought the quality of whose fringe lets us feel ourselves 'all\nright,' is an acceptable member of our thinking, whatever kind of\nthought it may otherwise be. Provided we only feel it to have a place\nin the scheme of relations in which the interesting topic also lies,\nthat is quite sufficient to make of it a relevant and appropriate\nportion of our train of ideas.\n\n_For the important thing about a train of thought is its conclusion._\nThat is the _meaning_, or, as we say, the topic of the thought. That is\nwhat abides when all its other members have faded from memory. Usually\nthis conclusion is a word or phrase or particular image, or practical\nattitude or resolve, whether rising to answer a problem or fill a\npre-existing gap that worried us, or whether accidentally stumbled on\nin revery. In either case it stands out from the other segments of\nthe stream by reason of the peculiar interest attaching to it. This\ninterest _arrests_ it, makes a sort of crisis of it when it comes,\ninduces attention upon it and makes us treat it in a substantive way.\n\nThe parts of the stream that precede these substantive conclusions\nare but the means of the latter's attainment. And, provided the same\nconclusion be reached, the means may be as mutable as we like, for the\n'meaning' of the stream of thought will be the same. What difference\ndoes it make what the means are? \"_Qu'importe le flacon, pourvu qu'on\nait l'ivresse?_\" The relative unimportance of the means appears from\nthe fact that when the conclusion is there, we have always forgotten\nmost of the steps preceding its attainment. When we have uttered a\nproposition, we are rarely able a moment afterwards to recall our exact\nwords, though we can express it in different words easily enough. The\npractical upshot of a book we read remains with us, though we may not\nrecall one of its sentences.\n\nThe only paradox would seem to lie in supposing that the fringe of\nfelt affinity and discord can be the same in two heterogeneous sets of\nimages. Take a train of words passing through the mind and leading to\na certain conclusion on the one hand, and on the other hand an almost\nwordless set of tactile, visual and other fancies leading to the same\nconclusion. Can the halo, fringe, or scheme in which we feel the words\nto lie be the same as that in which we feel the images to lie? Does not\nthe discrepancy of terms involve a discrepancy of felt relations among\nthem?\n\nIf the terms be taken _qu\u00e2_ mere sensations, it assuredly does. For\ninstance, the words may rhyme with each other,--the visual images can\nhave no such affinity as _that_. But _qu\u00e2_ thoughts, _qu\u00e2_ sensations\n_understood_, the words have contracted by long association fringes of\nmutual repugnance or affinity with each other and with the conclusion,\nwhich run exactly parallel with like fringes in the visual, tactile\nand other ideas. The most important element of these fringes is, I\nrepeat, the mere feeling of harmony or discord, of a right or wrong\ndirection in the thought. Dr. Campbell has, so far as I know, made the\nbest analysis of this fact, and his words, often quoted, deserve to be\nquoted again. The chapter is entitled \"What is the cause that nonsense\nso often escapes being detected, both by the writer and by the reader?\"\nThe author, in answering this question, makes (_inter alia_) the\nfollowing remarks:[235]\n\n \"That connection [he says] or relation which comes gradually to\n subsist among the different words of a language, in the minds of those\n who speak it,... is merely consequent on this, that those words are\n employed as signs of connected or related things. It is an axiom in\n geometry that things equal to the same thing are equal to one another.\n It may, in like manner, be admitted as an axiom in psychology that\n ideas associated by the same idea will associate one another. Hence it\n will happen that if, from experiencing the connection of two things,\n there results, as infallibly there will result, an association between\n the ideas or notions annexed to them, as each idea will moreover be\n associated by its sign, there will likewise be an association between\n the ideas of the signs. Hence the sounds considered as signs will be\n conceived to have a connection analogous to that which subsisteth\n among the things signified; I say, the sounds considered as signs;\n for this way of considering them constantly attends us in speaking,\n writing, hearing, and reading. When we purposely abstract from it,\n and regard them merely as sounds, we are instantly sensible that they\n are quite unconnected, and have no other relation than what ariseth\n from similitude of tone or accent. But to consider them in this manner\n commonly results from previous design, and requires a kind of effort\n which is not exerted in the ordinary use of speech. In ordinary use\n they are regarded solely as signs, or, rather, they are confounded\n with the things they signify; the consequence of which is that, in the\n manner just now explained, we come insensibly to conceive a connection\n among them of a very different sort from that of which sounds are\n naturally susceptible.\n\n \"Now this conception, habit, or tendency of the mind, call it which\n you please, is considerably strengthened by the frequent use of\n language and by the structure of it. Language is the sole channel\n through which we communicate our knowledge and discoveries to\n others, and through which the knowledge and discoveries of others\n are communicated to us. By reiterated recourse to this medium, it\n necessarily happens that when things are related to each other, the\n words signifying those things are more commonly brought together in\n discourse. Hence the words and names by themselves, by customary\n vicinity, contract in the fancy a relation additional to that which\n they derive purely from being the symbols of related things. Farther,\n this tendency is strengthened by the structure of language. All\n languages whatever, even the most barbarous, as far as hath yet\n appeared, are of a regular and analogical make. The consequence is\n that similar relations in things will be expressed similarly; that\n is, by similar inflections, derivations, compositions, arrangement\n of words, or juxtaposition of particles, according to the genius or\n grammatical form of the particular tongue. Now as, by the habitual use\n of a language (even though it were quite irregular), the signs would\n insensibly become connected in the imagination wherever the things\n signified are connected in nature, so, by the regular structure of a\n language, this connection among the signs is conceived as analogous to\n that which subsisteth among their archetypes.\"\n\nIf we know English and French and begin a sentence in French, all the\nlater words that come are French; we hardly ever drop into English.\nAnd this affinity of the French words for each other is not something\nmerely operating mechanically as a brain-law, it is something we feel\nat the time. Our understanding of a French sentence heard never falls\nto so low an ebb that we are not aware that the words linguistically\nbelong together. Our attention can hardly so wander that if an English\nword be suddenly introduced we shall not start at the change. Such\na vague sense as this of the words belonging together is the very\nminimum of fringe that can accompany them, if 'thought' at all. Usually\nthe vague perception that all the words we hear belong to the same\nlanguage and to the same special vocabulary in that language, and that\nthe grammatical sequence is familiar, is practically equivalent to an\nadmission that what we hear is sense. But if an unusual foreign word\nbe introduced, if the grammar trip, or if a term from an incongruous\nvocabulary suddenly appear, such as 'rat-trap' or 'plumber's bill' in a\nphilosophical discourse, the sentence detonates, as it were, we receive\na shock from the incongruity, and the drowsy assent is gone. The\nfeeling of rationality in these cases seems rather a negative than a\npositive thing, being the mere absence of shock, or sense of discord,\nbetween the terms of thought.\n\nSo delicate and incessant is this recognition by the mind of the\nmere fitness of words to be mentioned together that the slightest\nmisreading, such as 'casualty' for 'causality,' or 'perpetual' for\n'perceptual,' will be corrected by a listener whose attention is so\nrelaxed that he gets no idea of the _meaning_ of the sentence at all.\n\nConversely, if words do belong to the same vocabulary, and if the\ngrammatical structure is correct, sentences with absolutely no meaning\nmay be uttered in good faith and pass unchallenged. Discourses at\nprayer-meetings, reshuffling the same collection of cant phrases,\nand the whole genus of penny-a-line-isms and newspaper-reporter's\nflourishes give illustrations of this. \"The birds filled the tree-tops\nwith their morning song, making the air moist, cool, and pleasant,\"\nis a sentence I remember reading once in a report of some athletic\nexercises in Jerome Park. It was probably written unconsciously by the\nhurried reporter, and read uncritically by many readers. An entire\nvolume of 784 pages lately published in Boston[236] is composed of\nstuff like this passage picked out at random:\n\n \"The flow of the efferent fluids of all these vessels from their\n outlets at the terminal loop of each culminate link on the surface of\n the nuclear organism is continuous as their respective atmospheric\n fruitage up to the altitudinal limit of their expansibility, whence,\n when atmosphered by like but coalescing essences from higher\n altitudes,--those sensibly expressed as the essential qualities of\n external forms,--they descend, and become assimilated by the afferents\n of the nuclear organism.\"[237]\n\nThere are every year works published whose contents show them to be by\nreal lunatics. To the reader, the book quoted from seems pure nonsense\nfrom beginning to end. It is impossible to divine, in such a case,\njust what sort of feeling of rational relation between the words may\nhave appeared to the author's mind. The border line between objective\nsense and nonsense is hard to draw; that between subjective sense and\nnonsense, impossible. Subjectively, any collocation of words may make\nsense--even the wildest words in a dream--if one only does not doubt\ntheir belonging together. Take the obscurer passages in Hegel: it is a\nfair question whether the rationality included in them be anything more\nthan the fact that the words all belong to a common vocabulary, and are\nstrung together on a scheme of predication and relation,--immediacy,\nself-relation, and what not,--which has habitually recurred. Yet there\nseems no reason to doubt that the subjective feeling of the rationality\nof these sentences was strong in the writer as he penned them, or even\nthat some readers by straining may have reproduced it in themselves.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTo sum up, certain kinds of verbal associate, certain grammatical\nexpectations fulfilled, stand for a good part of our impression\nthat a sentence has a meaning and is dominated by the Unity of one\nThought. Nonsense in grammatical form sounds half rational; sense\nwith grammatical sequence upset sounds nonsensical; e.g., \"Elba the\nNapoleon English faith had banished broken to be Saint because Helena\nat.\" Finally, there is about each word the psychic 'overtone' of\nfeeling that it brings us nearer to a forefelt conclusion. Suffuse all\nthe words of a sentence, as they pass, with these three fringes or\nhaloes of relation, let the conclusion seem worth arriving at, and all\nwill admit the sentence to be an expression of thoroughly continuous,\nunified, and rational thought.[238]\n\nEach word, in such a sentence, is felt, not only as a word, but as\nhaving a _meaning_. The 'meaning' of a word taken thus dynamically in a\nsentence may be quite different from its meaning when taken statically\nor without context. The dynamic meaning is usually reduced to the bare\nfringe we have described, of felt suitability or unfitness to the\ncontext and conclusion. The static meaning, when the word is concrete,\nas 'table,' 'Boston,' consists of sensory images awakened; when it is\nabstract, as 'criminal legislation,' 'fallacy,' the meaning consists of\nother words aroused, forming the so-called 'definition.'\n\nHegel's celebrated dictum that pure being is identical with pure\nnothing results from his taking the words statically, or without the\nfringe they wear in a context. Taken in isolation, they agree in the\nsingle point of awakening no sensorial images. But taken dynamically,\nor as significant,--as _thought_,--their fringes of relation, their\naffinities and repugnances, their function and meaning, are felt and\nunderstood to be absolutely opposed.\n\nSuch considerations as these remove all appearance of paradox from\nthose cases of extremely deficient visual imagery of whose existence\nMr. Galton has made us aware (see below). An exceptionally intelligent\nfriend informs me that he can frame no image whatever of the appearance\nof his breakfast-table. When asked how he then remembers it at all, he\nsays he simple '_knows_' that it seated four people, and was covered\nwith a white cloth on which were a butter-dish, a coffee-pot, radishes,\nand so forth. The mind-stuff of which this 'knowing' is made seems\nto be verbal images exclusively. But if the words 'coffee,' 'bacon,'\n'muffins,' and 'eggs' lead a man to speak to his cook, to pay his\nbills, and to take measures for the morrow's meal exactly as visual\nand gustatory memories would, why are they not, for all practical\nintents and purposes, as good a kind of material in which to think?\nIn fact, we may suspect them to be for most purposes better than\nterms with a richer imaginative coloring. The scheme of relationship\nand the conclusion being the essential things in thinking, that kind\nof mind-stuff which is handiest will be the best for the purpose.\nNow words, uttered or unexpressed, are the handiest mental elements\nwe have. Not only are they very _rapidly_ revivable, but they are\nrevivable as actual sensations more easily than any other items of our\nexperience. Did they not possess some such advantage as this, it would\nhardly be the case that the older men are and the more effective as\nthinkers, the more, as a rule, they have lost their visualizing power\nand depend on words. This was ascertained by Mr. Galton to be the case\nwith members of the Royal Society. The present writer observes it in\nhis own person most distinctly.\n\nOn the other hand, a deaf and dumb man can weave his tactile and visual\nimages into a system of thought quite as effective and rational as\nthat of a word-user. _The question whether thought is possible without\nlanguage_ has been a favorite topic of discussion among philosophers.\nSome interesting reminiscences of his childhood by Mr. Ballard, a\ndeaf-mute instructor in the National College at Washington, show it to\nbe perfectly possible. A few paragraphs may be quoted here.\n\n \"In consequence of the loss of my hearing in infancy, I was debarred\n from enjoying the advantages which children in the full possession of\n their senses derive from the exercises of the common primary school,\n from the every-day talk of their school-fellows and playmates, and\n from the conversation of their parents and other grown-up persons.\n\n \"I could convey my thoughts and feelings to my parents and brothers by\n natural signs or pantomime, and I could understand what they said to\n me by the same medium; our intercourse being, however, confined to the\n daily routine of home affairs and hardly going beyond the circle of my\n own observation....\n\n \"My father adopted a course which he thought would, in some measure,\n compensate me for the loss of my hearing. It was that of taking me\n with him when business required him to ride abroad; and he took me\n more frequently than he did my brothers; giving, as the reason for his\n apparent partiality, that they could acquire information through the\n ear, while I depended solely upon my eye for acquaintance with affairs\n of the outside world....\n\n \"I have a vivid recollection of the delight I felt in watching the\n different scenes we passed through, observing the various phases of\n nature, both animate and inanimate; though we did not, owing to my\n infirmity, engage in conversation. It was during those delightful\n rides, some two or three years before my initiation into the rudiments\n of written language, that I began to ask myself the question: _How\n came the world into being?_ When this question occurred to my mind, I\n set myself to thinking it over a long time. My curiosity was awakened\n as to what was the origin of human life in its first appearance upon\n the earth, and of vegetable life as well, and also the cause of the\n existence of the earth, sun, moon, and stars.\n\n \"I remember at one time when my eye fell upon a very large old stump\n which we happened to pass in one of our rides, I asked myself, 'Is\n it possible that the first man that ever came into the world rose\n out of that stump? But that stump is only a remnant of a once noble\n magnificent tree, and how came that tree? Why, it came only by\n beginning to grow out of the ground just like those little trees now\n coming up.' And I dismissed from my mind, as an absurd idea, the\n connection between the origin of man and a decaying old stump....\n\n \"I have no recollection of what it was that first suggested to me the\n question as to the origin of things. I had before this time gained\n ideas of the descent from parent to child, of the propagation of\n animals, and of the production of plants from seeds. The question that\n occurred to my mind was: whence came the first man, the first animal,\n and the first plant, at the remotest distance of time, before which\n there was no man, no animal, no plant; since I knew they all had a\n beginning and an end.\n\n \"It is impossible to state the exact order in which these different\n questions arose, i.e., about men, animals, plants, the earth, sun,\n moon, etc. The lower animals did not receive so much thought as was\n bestowed upon man and the earth; perhaps because I put man and beast\n in the same class, since I believed that man would be annihilated\n and there was no resurrection beyond the grave,--though I am told by\n my mother that, in answer to my question, in the case of a deceased\n uncle who looked to me like a person in sleep, she had tried to make\n me understand that he would awake in the far future. It was my belief\n that man and beast derived their being from the same source, and were\n to be laid down in the dust in a state of annihilation. Considering\n the brute animal as of secondary importance, and allied to man on a\n lower level, man and the earth were the two things on which my mind\n dwelled most.\n\n \"I think I was five years old, when I began to understand the\n descent from parent to child and the propagation of animals. I was\n nearly eleven years old, when I entered the Institution where I was\n educated; and I remember distinctly that it was at least two years\n before this time that I began to ask myself the question as to the\n origin of the universe. My age was then about eight, not over nine\n years.\n\n \"Of the form of the earth, I had no idea in my childhood, except that,\n from a look at a map of the hemispheres, I inferred there were two\n immense disks of matter lying near each other. I also believed the\n sun and moon to be round, flat plates of illuminating matter; and for\n those luminaries I entertained a sort of reverence on account of their\n power of lighting and heating the earth. I thought from their coming\n up and going down, travelling across the sky in so regular a manner\n that there must be a certain something having power to govern their\n course. I believed the sun went into a hole at the west and came out\n of another at the east, travelling through a great tube in the earth,\n describing the same curve as it seemed to describe in the sky. The\n stars seemed to me to be tiny lights studded in the sky.\n\n \"The source from which the universe came was the question about which\n my mind revolved in a vain struggle to grasp it, or rather to fight\n the way up to attain to a satisfactory answer. When I had occupied\n myself with this subject a considerable time, I perceived that it was\n a matter much greater than my mind could comprehend; and I remember\n well that I became so appalled at its mystery and so bewildered at my\n inability to grapple with it that I laid the subject aside and out\n of my mind, glad to escape being, as it were, drawn into a vortex of\n inextricable confusion. Though I felt relieved at this escape, yet I\n could not resist the desire to know the truth; and I returned to the\n subject; but as before, I left it, after thinking it over for some\n time. In this state of perplexity, I hoped all the time to get at the\n truth, still believing that the more I gave thought to the subject,\n the more my mind would penetrate the mystery. Thus I was tossed like\n a shuttlecock, returning to the subject and recoiling from it, till I\n came to school.\n\n \"I remember that my mother once told me about a being up above,\n pointing her finger towards the sky and with a solemn look on her\n countenance. I do not recall the circumstance which led to this\n communication. When she mentioned the mysterious being up in the sky,\n I was eager to take hold of the subject, and plied her with questions\n concerning the form and appearance of this unknown being, asking if it\n was the sun, moon, or one of the stars. I knew she meant that there\n was a living one somewhere up in the sky; but when I realized that\n she could not answer my questions, I gave it up in despair, feeling\n sorrowful that I could not obtain a definite idea of the mysterious\n living one up in the sky.\n\n \"One day, while we were haying in a field, there was a series of\n heavy thunder-claps. I asked one of my brothers where they came from.\n He pointed to the sky and made a zigzag motion with his finger,\n signifying lightning. I imagined there was a great man somewhere in\n the blue vault, who made a loud noise with his voice out of it; and\n each time I heard[239] a thunder-clap I was frightened, and looked up\n at the sky, fearing he was speaking a threatening word.\"[240]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 28.]\n\nHere we may pause. The reader sees by this time that it makes little or\nno difference in what sort of mind-stuff, in what quality of imagery,\nhis thinking goes on. The only images _intrinsically_ important are\nthe halting-places, the substantive conclusions, provisional or final,\nof the thought. Throughout all the rest of the stream, the feelings of\nrelation are everything, and the terms related almost naught. These\nfeelings of relation, these psychic overtones, halos, suffusions, or\nfringes about the terms, may be the same in very different systems of\nimagery. A diagram may help to accentuate this indifference of the\nmental means where the end is the same. Let _A_ be some experience from\nwhich a number of thinkers start. Let _Z_ be the practical conclusion\nrationally inferrible from it. One gets to the conclusion by one line,\nanother by another; one follows a course of English, another of German,\nverbal imagery. With one, visual images predominate; with another,\ntactile. Some trains are tinged with emotions, others not; some are\nvery abridged, synthetic and rapid, others, hesitating and broken into\nmany steps. But when the penultimate terms of all the trains, however\ndiffering _inter se_, finally shoot into the same conclusion, we say\nand rightly say, that all the thinkers have had substantially the same\nthought. It would probably astound each of them beyond measure to be\nlet into his neighbor's mind and to find how different the scenery\nthere was from that in his own.\n\nThought is in fact a kind of Algebra, as Berkeley long ago said, \"in\nwhich, though a particular quantity be marked by each letter, yet to\nproceed right, it is not requisite that in every step each letter\nsuggest to your thoughts that particular quantity it was appointed to\nstand for.\" Mr. Lewes has developed this algebra-analogy so well that I\nmust quote his words:\n\n \"The leading characteristic of algebra is that of operation on\n relations. This also is the leading characteristic of Thought.\n Algebra cannot exist without values, nor Thought without Feelings.\n The operations are so many blank forms till the values are assigned.\n Words are vacant sounds, ideas are blank forms, unless they symbolize\n images and sensations which are their values. Nevertheless it is\n rigorously true, and of the greatest importance, that analysts carry\n on very extensive operations with blank forms, never pausing to\n supply the symbols with values until the calculation is completed;\n and ordinary men, no less than philosophers, carry on long trains\n of thought without pausing to translate their ideas (words) into\n images.... Suppose some one from a distance shouts 'a lion!' At once\n the man starts in alarm.... To the man the word is not only an ...\n expression of all that he has seen and heard of lions, capable of\n recalling various experiences, but is also capable of taking its\n place in a connected series of thoughts without recalling any of\n those experiences, without reviving an image, however faint, of the\n lion--simply as a sign of a certain relation included in the complex\n so named. Like an algebraic symbol it may be operated on without\n conveying other significance than an abstract relation: it is a sign\n of Danger, related to fear with all its motor sequences. Its logical\n position suffices.... Ideas are _substitutions_ which require a\n secondary process when what is symbolized by them is translated into\n the images and experiences it replaces; and this secondary process is\n frequently not performed at all, generally only performed to a very\n small extent. Let anyone closely examine what has passed in his mind\n when he has constructed a chain of reasoning, and he will be surprised\n at the fewness and faintness of the images which have accompanied the\n ideas. Suppose you inform me that 'the blood rushed violently from\n the man's heart, quickening his pulse at the sight of his enemy.'\n Of the many latent images in this phrase, how many were salient in\n your mind and in mine? Probably two--the man and his enemy--and these\n images were faint. Images of blood, heart, violent rushing, pulse,\n quickening, and sight, were either not revived at all, or were passing\n shadows. Had any such images arisen, they would have hampered thought,\n retarding the logical process of judgment by irrelevant connections.\n The symbols had substituted _relations_ for these _values_.... There\n are no images of two things and three things, when I say 'two and\n three equal five;' there are simply familiar symbols having precise\n relations.... The verbal symbol 'horse,' which stands for all our\n experiences of horses, serves all the purposes of Thought, without\n recalling one of the images clustered in the perception of horses,\n just as the sight of a horse's form serves all the purposes of\n _recognition_ without recalling the sound of its neighing or its\n tramp, its qualities as an animal of draught, and so forth.\"[241]\n\nIt need only be added that as the Algebrist, though the sequence of his\nterms is fixed by their relations rather than by their several values,\nmust give a real value to the _final_ one he reaches; so the thinker\nin words must let his concluding word or phrase be translated into its\nfull sensible-image-value, under penalty of the thought being left\nunrealized and pale.\n\nThis is all I have to say about the sensible continuity and unity of\nour thought as contrasted with the apparent discreteness of the words,\nimages, and other means by which it seems to be carried on. Between all\ntheir substantive elements there is 'transitive' consciousness, and the\nwords and images are 'fringed,' and not as discrete as to a careless\nview they seem. Let us advance now to the next head in our description\nof Thought's stream.\n\n\n4. _Human thought appears to deal with objects independent of itself;\nthat is, it is cognitive, or possesses the function of knowing._\n\n\nFor Absolute Idealism, the infinite Thought and its objects are one.\nThe Objects are, through being thought; the eternal Mind is, through\nthinking them. Were a human thought alone in the world there would be\nno reason for any other assumption regarding it. Whatever it might\nhave before it would be its vision, would be there, in _its_ 'there,'\nor then, in _its_ 'then'; and the question would never arise whether\nan extra-mental duplicate of it existed or not. The reason why we all\nbelieve that the objects of our thoughts have a duplicate existence\noutside, is that there are _many_ human thoughts, each with the _same_\nobjects, as we cannot help supposing. The judgment that _my_ thought\nhas the same object as _his_ thought is what makes the psychologist\ncall my thought cognitive of an outer reality. The judgment that my own\npast thought and my own present thought are of the same object is what\nmakes _me_ take the object out of either and project it by a sort of\ntriangulation into an independent position, from which it may _appear_\nto both. _Sameness_ in a multiplicity of objective appearances is\nthus the basis of our belief in realities outside of thought.[242] In\nChapter XII we shall have to take up the judgment of sameness again.\n\nTo show that the question of reality being extra-mental or not is not\nlikely to arise in the absence of repeated experiences of the _same_,\ntake the example of an altogether unprecedented experience, such as\na new taste in the throat. Is it a subjective quality of feeling, or\nan objective quality felt? You do not even ask the question at this\npoint. It is simply _that taste_. But if a doctor hears you describe\nit, and says: \"Ha! Now you know what _heartburn_ is,\" then it becomes\na quality already existent _extra mentem tuam_, which you in turn have\ncome upon and learned. The first spaces, times, things, qualities,\nexperienced by the child probably appear, like the first heartburn, in\nthis absolute way, as simple _beings_, neither in nor out of thought.\nBut later, by having other thoughts than this present one, and making\nrepeated judgments of sameness among their objects, he corroborates in\nhimself the notion of realities, past and distant as well as present,\nwhich realities no one single thought either possesses or engenders,\nbut which all may contemplate and know. This, as was stated in the\nlast chapter, is the _psychological_ point of view, the relatively\nuncritical non-idealistic point of view of all natural science, beyond\nwhich this book cannot go. A mind which has become conscious of its own\ncognitive function, plays what we have called 'the psychologist' upon\nitself. It not only knows the things that appear before it; it knows\nthat it knows them. This stage of reflective condition is, more or\nless explicitly, our habitual adult state of mind.\n\nIt cannot, however, be regarded as primitive. The consciousness\nof objects must come first. We seem to lapse into this primordial\ncondition when consciousness is reduced to a minimum by the inhalation\nof an\u00e6sthetics or during a faint. Many persons testify that at a\ncertain stage of the an\u00e6sthetic process objects are still cognized\nwhilst the thought of self is lost. Professor Herzen says:[243]\n\n \"During the syncope there is absolute psychic annihilation, the\n absence of all consciousness; then at the beginning of coming to,\n one has at a certain moment a vague, limitless, infinite feeling--a\n sense of _existence in general_ without the least trace of distinction\n between the me and the not-me.\"\n\nDr. Shoemaker of Philadelphia describes during the deepest conscious\nstage of ether-intoxication a vision of\n\n \"two endless parallel lines in swift longitudinal motion ... on a\n uniform misty background ... together with a constant sound or whirr,\n not loud but distinct ... which seemed to be connected with the\n parallel lines.... These phenomena occupied the whole field. There\n were present no dreams or visions in any way connected with human\n affairs, no ideas or impressions akin to anything in past experience,\n no emotions, of course no idea of personality. There was no conception\n as to what being it was that was regarding the two lines, or that\n there existed any such thing as such a being; the lines and waves were\n all.\"[244]\n\nSimilarly a friend of Mr. Herbert Spencer, quoted by him in 'Mind' (vol\niii, p. 556), speaks of \"an undisturbed empty quiet everywhere except\nthat a stupid presence lay like a heavy intrusion _somewhere_--a blotch\non the calm.\" This sense of objectivity and lapse of subjectivity, even\nwhen the object is almost indefinable, is, it seems to me, a somewhat\nfamiliar phase in chloroformization, though in my own case it is too\ndeep a phase for any articulate after-memory to remain. I only know\nthat as it vanishes I seem to wake to a sense of my own existence as\nsomething additional to what had previously been there.[245]\n\nMany philosophers, however, hold that the reflective consciousness\nof the self is essential to the cognitive function of thought. They\nhold that a thought, in order to know a thing at all, must expressly\ndistinguish between the thing and its own self.[246] This is a\nperfectly wanton assumption, and not the faintest shadow of reason\nexists for supposing it true. As well might I contend that I cannot\ndream without dreaming that I dream, swear without swearing that I\nswear, deny without denying that I deny, as maintain that I cannot\nknow without knowing that I know. I may have either acquaintance-with,\nor knowledge-about, an object O without think about myself at all. It\nsuffices for this that I think O, and that it exist. If, in addition\nto thinking O, I also think that I exist and that I know O, well and\ngood; I then know one more thing, a fact about O, of which I previously\nwas unmindful. That, however, does not prevent me from having already\nknown O a good deal. O _per se_, or O _plus_ P, are as good objects\nof knowledge as O _plus me_ is. The philosophers in question simply\nsubstitute one particular object for all others, and call it _the_\nobject _par excellence_. It is a case of the 'psychologist's fallacy'\n(see p. 197). _They_ know the object to be one thing and the thought\nanother; and they forthwith foist their own knowledge into that of the\nthought of which they pretend to give a true account. To conclude,\nthen, _thought may, but need not, in knowing, discriminate between its\nobject and itself._\n\nWe have been using the word Object. _Something must now be said about\nthe proper use of the term Object in Psychology._\n\nIn popular parlance the word object is commonly taken without reference\nto the act of knowledge, and treated as synonymous with individual\nsubject of existence. Thus if anyone ask what is the mind's object when\nyou say 'Columbus discovered America in 1492,' most people will reply\n'Columbus,' or 'America,' or, at most, 'the discovery of America.' They\nwill name a substantive kernel or nucleus of the consciousness, and say\nthe thought is 'about' that,--as indeed it is,--and they will call that\nyour thought's 'object.' Really that is usually only the grammatical\nobject, or more likely the grammatical subject, of your sentence. It\nis at most your 'fractional object;' or you may call it the 'topic'\nof your thought, or the 'subject of your discourse.' But the _Object_\nof your thought is really its entire content or deliverance, neither\nmore nor less. It is a vicious use of speech to take out a substantive\nkernel from its content and call that its object; and it is an equally\nvicious use of speech to add a substantive kernel not articulately\nincluded in its content, and to call that its object. Yet either\none of these two sins we commit, whenever we content ourselves with\nsaying that a given thought is simply 'about' a certain topic, or that\nthat topic is its 'object.' The object of my thought in the previous\nsentence, for example, is strictly speaking neither Columbus, nor\nAmerica, nor its discovery. It is nothing short of the entire sentence,\n'Columbus-discovered-America-in-1492.' And if we wish to speak of it\nsubstantively, we must make a substantive of it by writing it out thus\nwith hyphens between all its words. Nothing but this can possibly name\nits delicate idiosyncrasy. And if we wish to _feel_ that idiosyncrasy\nwe must reproduce the thought as it was uttered, with every word\nfringed and the whole sentence bathed in that original halo of obscure\nrelations, which, like an horizon, then spread about its meaning.\n\nOur psychological duty is to cling as closely as possible to the actual\nconstitution of the thought we are studying. We may err as much by\nexcess as by defect. If the kernel or 'topic,' Columbus, is in one way\nless than the thought's object, so in another way it may be more. That\nis, when named by the psychologist, it may mean much more than actually\nis present to the thought of which he is reporter. Thus, for example,\nsuppose you should go on to think: 'He was a daring genius!' An\nordinary psychologist would not hesitate to say that the object of your\nthought was still 'Columbus.' True, your thought is _about_ Columbus.\nIt 'terminates' in Columbus, leads from and to the direct idea of\nColumbus. But for the moment it is not fully and immediately Columbus,\nit is only 'he,' or rather 'he-was-a-daring-genius;' which, though it\nmay be an unimportant difference for conversational purposes, is, for\nintrospective psychology, as great a difference as there can be.\n\nThe object of every thought, then, is neither more nor less than all\nthat the thought thinks, exactly as the thought thinks it, however\ncomplicated the matter, and however symbolic the manner of the thinking\nmay be. It is needless to say that memory can seldom accurately\nreproduce such an object, when once it has passed from before the\nmind. It either makes too little or too much of it. Its best plan is\nto repeat the verbal sentence, if there was one, in which the object\nwas expressed. But for inarticulate thoughts there is not even this\nresource, and introspection must confess that the task exceeds her\npowers. The mass of our thinking vanishes for ever, beyond hope of\nrecovery, and psychology only gathers up a few of the crumbs that fall\nfrom the feast.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe next point to make clear is that, _however complex the object may\nbe, the thought of it is one undivided state of consciousness_. As\nThomas Brown says:[247]\n\n \"I have already spoken too often to require again to caution you\n against the mistake into which, I confess, that the terms which the\n poverty of our language obliges us to use might of themselves very\n naturally lead you; the mistake of supposing that the most complex\n states of mind are not truly, in their very essence, as much one and\n indivisible as those which we term simple--the complexity and seeming\n coexistence which they involve being relative to our feeling[248]\n only, not to their own absolute nature. I trust I need not repeat to\n you that, in itself, every notion, however seemingly complex, is, and\n must be, truly simple--being one state or affection, of one simple\n substance, mind. Our conception of a whole army, for example, is as\n truly this one mind existing in this one state, as our conception\n of any of the individuals that compose an army. Our notion of the\n abstract numbers, eight, four, two, is as truly one feeling of the\n mind as our notion of simple unity.\"\n\nThe ordinary associationist-psychology supposes, in contrast with\nthis, that whenever an object of thought contains many elements,\nthe thought itself must be made up of just as many ideas, one idea\nfor each element, and all fused together in appearance, but really\nseparate.[249] The enemies of this psychology find (as we have already\nseen) little trouble in showing that such a bundle of separate ideas\nwould never form one thought at all, and they contend that an Ego\nmust be added to the bundle to give it unity, and bring the various\nideas into relation with each other.[250] We will not discuss the\nego just yet, but it is obvious that if things are to be thought in\nrelation, they must be thought together, and in one _something_, be\nthat something ego, psychosis, state of consciousness, or whatever\nyou please. If not thought with each other, things are not thought in\nrelation at all. Now most believers in the ego make the same mistake as\nthe associationists and sensationists whom they oppose. Both agree that\nthe elements of the subjective stream are discrete and separate and\nconstitute what Kant calls a 'manifold.' But while the associationists\nthink that a 'manifold' can form a single knowledge, the egoists\ndeny this, and say that the knowledge comes only when the manifold\nis subjected to the synthetizing activity of an ego. Both make an\nidentical initial hypothesis; but the egoist, finding it won't express\nthe facts, adds another hypothesis to correct it. Now I do not wish\njust yet to 'commit myself' about the existence or non-existence of the\nego, but I do contend that we need not invoke it for this particular\nreason--namely, because the manifold of ideas has to be reduced to\nunity. _There is no manifold of coexisting ideas;_ the notion of such\na thing is a chimera. _Whatever things are thought in relation are\nthought from the outset in a unity, in a single pulse of subjectivity,\na single psychosis, feeling, or state of mind._\n\nThe reason why this fact is so strangely garbled in the books seems to\nbe what on an earlier page (see p. 196 ff.) I called the psychologist's\nfallacy. We have the inveterate habit, whenever we try introspectively\nto describe one of our thoughts, of dropping the thought as it is in\nitself and talking of something else. We describe the things that\nappear to the thought, and we describe other thoughts _about_ those\nthings--as if these and the original thought were the same. If, for\nexample, the thought be 'the pack of cards is on the table,' we say,\n\"Well, isn't it a thought of the pack of cards? Isn't it of the cards\nas included in the pack? Isn't it of the table? And of the legs of\nthe table as well? The table has legs--how can you think the table\nwithout virtually thinking its legs? Hasn't our thought then, all these\nparts--one part for the pack and another for the table? And within the\npack-part a part for each card, as within the table-part a part for\neach leg? And isn't each of these parts an idea? And can our thought,\nthen, be anything but an assemblage or pack of ideas, each answering to\nsome element of what it knows?\"\n\nNow not one of these assumptions is true. The thought taken as an\nexample is, in the first place, not of 'a pack of cards.' It is of\n'the-pack-of-cards-is-on-the-table,' an entirely different subjective\nphenomenon, whose Object implies the pack, and every one of the cards\nin it, but whose conscious constitution bears very little resemblance\nto that of the thought of the pack _per se_. What a thought _is_,\nand what it may be developed into, or explained to stand for, and be\nequivalent to, are two things, not one.[251]\n\nAn analysis of what passes through the mind as we utter the phrase _the\npack of cards is on the table_ will, I hope, make this clear, and may\nat the same time condense into a concrete example a good deal of what\nhas gone before.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 29.--The Stream of Consciousness.]\n\nIt takes time to utter the phrase. Let the horizontal line in Fig.\n29 represent time. Every part of it will then stand for a fraction,\nevery point for an instant, of the time. Of course the thought has\n_time-parts_. The part 2-3 of it, though continuous with 1-2, is yet a\ndifferent part from 1-2. Now I say of these time-parts that we cannot\ntake any one of them so short that it will not after some fashion or\nother be a thought of the whole object 'the pack of cards is on the\ntable.' They melt into each other like dissolving views, and no two of\nthem feel the object just alike, but each feels the total object in\na unitary undivided way. This is what I mean by denying that in the\nthought any parts can be found corresponding to the object's parts.\nTime-parts are not such parts.\n\nNow let the vertical dimensions of the figure stand for the objects\nor contents of the thoughts. A line vertical to any point of the\nhorizontal, as _1-1'_, will then symbolize the object in the mind\nat the instant 1; a space above the horizontal, as 1-1'-2'-2, will\nsymbolize all that passes through the mind during the time 1-2 whose\nline it covers. The entire diagram from 0 to 0' represents a finite\nlength of thought's stream.\n\nCan we now define the psychic constitution of each vertical section of\nthis segment? We can, though in a very rough way. Immediately after\n0, even before we have opened our mouths to speak, the entire thought\nis present to our mind in the form of an intention to utter that\nsentence. This intention, though it has no simple name, and though it\nis a transitive state immediately displaced by the first word, is yet\na perfectly determinate phase of thought, unlike anything else (see p.\n253). Again, immediately before 0', after the last word of the sentence\nis spoken, all will admit that we again think its entire content as\nwe inwardly realize its completed deliverance. All vertical sections\nmade through any other parts of the diagram will be respectively filled\nwith other ways of feeling the sentence's meaning. Through 2, for\nexample, the cards will be the part of the object most emphatically\npresent to the mind; through 4, the table. The stream is made higher\nin the drawing at its end than at its beginning, because the final way\nof feeling the content is fuller and richer than the initial way. As\nJoubert says, \"we only know just what we meant to say, after we have\nsaid it.\" And as M. V. Egger remarks, \"before speaking, one barely\nknows what one intends to say, but afterwards one is filled with\nadmiration and surprise at having said and thought it so well.\"\n\nThis latter author seems to me to have kept at much closer quarters\nwith the facts than any other analyst of consciousness.[252] But even\nhe does not quite hit the mark, for, as I understand him, he thinks\nthat each word as it occupies the mind _displaces_ the rest of the\nthought's content. He distinguishes the 'idea' (what I have called\nthe total _object_ or meaning) from the consciousness of the words,\ncalling the former a very feeble state, and contrasting it with the\nliveliness of the words, even when these are only silently rehearsed.\n\"The feeling,\" he says, \"of the words makes ten or twenty times more\nnoise in our consciousness than the sense of the phrase, which for\nconsciousness is a very slight matter.\"[253] And having distinguished\nthese two things, he goes on to separate them in time, saying that\nthe idea may either precede or follow the words, but that it is a\n'pure illusion' to suppose them simultaneous.[254] Now I believe\nthat in all cases where the words are _understood_, the total idea\nmay be and usually is present not only before and after the phrase\nhas been spoken, but also whilst each separate word is uttered.[255]\nIt is the overtone, halo, or fringe of the word, _as spoken in that\nsentence_. It is never absent; no word in an understood sentence comes\nto consciousness as a mere noise. We feel its meaning as it passes;\nand although our object differs from one moment to another as to its\nverbal kernel or nucleus, yet it is _similar_ throughout the entire\nsegment of the stream. The same object is known everywhere, now from\nthe point of view, if we may so call it, of this word, now from the\npoint of view of that. And in our feeling of each word there chimes an\necho or foretaste of every other. The consciousness of the 'Idea' and\nthat of the words are thus consubstantial. They are made of the same\n'mind-stuff,' and form an unbroken stream. Annihilate a mind at any\ninstant, cut its thought through whilst yet uncompleted, and examine\nthe object present to the cross-section thus suddenly made; you will\nfind, not the bald word in process of utterance, but that word suffused\nwith the whole idea. The word may be so loud, as M. Egger would say,\nthat we cannot _tell_ just how its suffusion, as such, feels, or how it\ndiffers from the suffusion of the next word. But it does differ; and we\nmaybe sure that, could we see into the brain, we should find the same\nprocesses active through the entire sentence in different degrees, each\none in turn becoming maximally excited and then yielding the momentary\nverbal 'kernel,' to the thought's content, at other times being only\nsub-excited, and then combining with the other sub-excited processes to\ngive the overtone or fringe.[256]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 30.]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 31.]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 32.]\n\nWe may illustrate this by a farther development of the diagram on p.\n279. Let the objective content of any vertical section through the\nstream be represented no longer by a line, but by a plane figure,\nhighest opposite whatever part of the object is most prominent in\nconsciousness at the moment when the section is made. This part, in\nverbal thought, will usually be some word. A series of sections 1-1',\ntaken at the moments 1, 2, 3, would then look like this: horizontal\nbreadth stands for the entire object in each of the figures; the\nheight of the curve above each part of that object marks the relative\nprominence of that part in the thought. At the moment symbolized by the\nfirst figure _pack_ is the prominent part; in the third figure it is\n_table_, etc.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 33.]\n\nWe can easily add all these plane sections together to make a solid,\none of whose solid dimensions will represent time, whilst a cut across\nthis at right angles will give the thought's content at the moment when\nthe cut is made. Let it be the thought, 'I am the same I that I was\nyesterday.' If at the fourth moment of time we annihilate the thinker\nand examine how the last pulsation of his consciousness was made, we\nfind that it was an awareness of the whole content with _same_ most\nprominent, and the other parts of the thing known relatively less\ndistinct. With each prolongation of the scheme in the time-direction,\nthe summit of the curve of section would come further towards the end\nof the sentence. If we make a solid wooden frame with the sentence\nwritten on its front, and the time-scale on one of its sides, if\nwe spread flatly a sheet of India rubber over its top, on which\nrectangular co-ordinates are painted, and slide a smooth ball under\nthe rubber in the direction from 0 to 'yesterday,' the bulging of the\nmembrane along this diagonal at successive moments will symbolize the\nchanging of the thought's content in a way plain enough, after what\nhas been said, to call for no more explanation. Or to express it in\ncerebral terms, it will show the relative intensities, at successive\nmoments, of the several nerve-processes to which the various parts of\nthe thought-object correspond.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn\nin this first rough description of its stream is that\n\n5) _It is always interested more in one part of its object than in\nanother, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks._\n\n\nThe phenomena of selective attention and of deliberative will are\nof course patent examples of this choosing activity. But few of us\nare aware how incessantly it is at work in operations not ordinarily\ncalled by these names. Accentuation and Emphasis are present in\nevery perception we have. We find it quite impossible to disperse\nour attention impartially over a number of impressions. A monotonous\nsuccession of sonorous strokes is broken up into rhythms, now of\none sort, now of another, by the different accent which we place on\ndifferent strokes. The simplest of these rhythms is the double one,\ntick-t\u00f3ck, tick-t\u00f3ck, tick-t\u00f3ck. Dots dispersed on a surface are\nperceived in rows and groups. Lines separate into diverse figures. The\nubiquity of the distinctions, _this_ and _that, here_ and _there, now_\nand _then_, in our minds is the result of our laying the same selective\nemphasis on parts of place and time.\n\nBut we do far more than emphasize things, and unite some, and keep\nothers apart. We actually _ignore_ most of the things before us. Let me\nbriefly show how this goes on.\n\nTo begin at the bottom, what are our very senses themselves but\norgans of selection? Out of the infinite chaos of movements, of which\nphysics teaches us that the outer world consists, each sense-organ\npicks out those which fall within certain limits of velocity. To\nthese it responds, but ignores the rest as completely as if they did\nnot exist. It thus accentuates particular movements in a manner for\nwhich objectively there seems no valid ground; for, as Lange says,\nthere is no reason whatever to think that the gap in Nature between\nthe highest sound-waves and the lowest heat-waves is an abrupt break\nlike that of our sensations; or that the difference between violet\nand ultra-violet rays has anything like the objective importance\nsubjectively represented by that between light and darkness. Out of\nwhat is in itself an undistinguishable, swarming _continuum_, devoid of\ndistinction or emphasis, our senses make for us, by attending to this\nmotion and ignoring that, a world full of contrasts, of sharp accents,\nof abrupt changes, of picturesque light and shade.\n\nIf the sensations we receive from a given organ have their causes thus\npicked out for us by the conformation of the organ's termination,\nAttention, on the other hand, out of all the sensations yielded,\npicks out certain ones as worthy of its notice and suppresses all the\nrest. Helmholtz's work on Optics is little more than a study of those\nvisual sensations of which common men never become aware--blind spots,\n_musc\u00e6 volitantes_, after-images, irradiation, chromatic fringes,\nmarginal changes of color, double images, astigmatism, movements of\naccommodation and convergence, retinal rivalry, and more besides. We do\nnot even know without special training on which of our eyes an image\nfalls. So habitually ignorant are most men of this that one may be\nblind for years of a single eye and never know the fact.\n\nHelmholtz says that we notice only those sensations which are signs to\nus of _things_. But what are things? Nothing, as we shall abundantly\nsee, but special groups of sensible qualities, which happen practically\nor \u00e6sthetically to interest us, to which we therefore give substantive\nnames, and which we exalt to this exclusive status of independence\nand dignity. But in itself, apart from my interest, a particular\ndust-wreath on a windy day is just as much of an individual thing, and\njust as much or as little deserves an individual name, as my own body\ndoes.\n\nAnd then, among the sensations we get from each separate thing,\nwhat happens? The mind selects again. It chooses certain of the\nsensations to represent the thing most _truly_, and considers the\nrest as its appearances, modified by the conditions of the moment.\nThus my table-top is named _square_, after but one of an infinite\nnumber of retinal sensations which it yields, the rest of them being\nsensations of two acute and two obtuse angles; but I call the latter\n_perspective_ views, and the four right angles the _true_ form of the\ntable, and erect the attribute squareness; into the table's essence,\nfor \u00e6sthetic reasons of my own. In like manner, the real form of the\ncircle is deemed to be the sensation it gives when the line of vision\nis perpendicular to its centre--all its other sensations are signs of\nthis sensation. The real sound of the cannon is the sensation it makes\nwhen the ear is close by. The real color of the brick is the sensation\nit gives when the eye looks squarely at it from a near point, out of\nthe sunshine and yet not in the gloom; under other circumstances it\ngives us other color-sensations which are but signs of this--we then\nsee it looks pinker or blacker than it really is. The reader knows\nno object which he does not represent to himself by preference as in\nsome typical attitude, of some normal size, at some characteristic\ndistance, of some standard tint, etc., etc. But all these essential\ncharacteristics, which together form for us the genuine objectivity\nof the thing and are contrasted with what we call the subjective\nsensations it may yield us at a given moment, are mere sensations\nlike the latter. The mind chooses to suit itself, and decides what\nparticular sensation shall be held more real and valid than all the\nrest.\n\nThus perception involves a twofold choice. Out of all present\nsensations, we notice mainly such as are significant of absent ones;\nand out of all the absent associates which these suggest, we again pick\nout a very few to stand for the objective reality _par excellence_. We\ncould have no more exquisite example of selective industry.\n\nThat industry goes on to deal with the things thus given in perception.\nA man's empirical thought depends on the things he has experienced,\nbut what these shall be is to a large extent determined by his habits\nof attention. A thing may be present to him a thousand times, but if\nhe persistently fails to notice it, it cannot be said to enter into\nhis experience. We are all seeing flies, moths, and beetles by the\nthousand, but to whom, save an entomologist, do they say anything\ndistinct? On the other hand, a thing met only once in a lifetime may\nleave an indelible experience in the memory. Let four men make a tour\nin Europe. One will bring home only picturesque impressions--costumes\nand colors, parks and views and works of architecture, pictures and\nstatues. To another all this will be non-existent; and distances\nand prices, populations and drainage-arrangements, door- and\nwindow-fastenings, and other useful statistics will take their place.\nA third will give a rich account of the theatres, restaurants, and\npublic balls, and naught beside; whilst the fourth will perhaps have\nbeen so wrapped in his own subjective broodings as to tell little more\nthan a few names of places through which he passed. Each has selected,\nout of the same mass of presented objects, those which suited his\nprivate interest and has made his experience thereby.\n\nIf, now, leaving the empirical combination of objects, we ask how the\nmind proceeds _rationally_ to connect them, we find selection again\nto be omnipotent. In a future chapter we shall see that all Reasoning\ndepends on the ability of the mind to break up the totality of the\nphenomenon reasoned about, into parts, and to pick out from among these\nthe particular one which, in our given emergency, may lead to the\nproper conclusion. Another predicament will need another conclusion,\nand require another element to be picked out. The man of genius is he\nwho will always stick in his bill at the right point, and bring it\nout with the right element--'reason' if the emergency be theoretical,\n'means' if it be practical--transfixed upon it. I here confine myself\nto this brief statement, but it may suffice to show that Reasoning is\nbut another form of the selective activity of the mind.\n\nIf now we pass to its \u00e6sthetic department, our law is still more\nobvious. The artist notoriously selects his items, rejecting all\ntones, colors, shapes, which do not harmonize with each other and with\nthe main purpose of his work. That unity, harmony, 'convergence of\ncharacters,' as M. Taine calls it, which gives to works of art their\nsuperiority over works of nature, is wholly due to _elimination_. Any\nnatural subject will do, if the artist has wit enough to pounce upon\nsome one feature of it as characteristic, and suppress all merely\naccidental items which do not harmonize with this.\n\nAscending still higher, we reach the plane of Ethics, where choice\nreigns notoriously supreme. An act has no ethical quality whatever\nunless it be chosen out of several all equally possible. To sustain the\narguments for the good course and keep them ever before us, to stifle\nour longing for more flowery ways, to keep the foot unflinchingly\non the arduous path, these are characteristic ethical energies. But\nmore than these; for these but deal with the means of compassing\ninterests already felt by the man to be supreme. The ethical energy\n_par excellence_ has to go farther and choose which _interest_ out of\nseveral, equally coercive, shall become supreme. The issue here is of\nthe utmost pregnancy, for it decides a man's entire career. When he\ndebates, Shall I commit this crime? choose that profession? accept that\noffice, or marry this fortune?--his choice really lies between one of\nseveral equally possible future Characters. What he shall _become_ is\nfixed by the conduct of this moment. Schopenhauer, who enforces his\ndeterminism by the argument that with a given fixed character only one\nreaction is possible under given circumstances, forgets that, in these\ncritical ethical moments, what consciously _seems_ to be in question\nis the complexion of the character itself. The problem with the man is\nless what act he shall now choose to do, than what being he shall now\nresolve to become.\n\nLooking back, then, over this review, we see that the mind is at every\nstage a theatre of simultaneous possibilities. Consciousness consists\nin the comparison of these with each other, the selection of some, and\nthe suppression of the rest by the reinforcing and inhibiting agency of\nattention. The highest and most elaborated mental products are filtered\nfrom the data chosen by the faculty next beneath, out of the mass\noffered by the faculty below that, which mass in turn was sifted from\na still larger amount of yet simpler material, and so on. The mind, in\nshort, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on\nhis block of stone. In a sense the statue stood there from eternity.\nBut there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor\nalone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest. Just so\nthe world of each of us, howsoever different our several views of it\nmay be, all lay embedded in the primordial chaos of sensations, which\ngave the mere _matter_ to the thought of all of us indifferently. We\nmay, if we like, by our reasonings unwind things back to that black\nand jointless continuity of space and moving clouds of swarming atoms\nwhich science calls the only real world. But all the while the world\n_we_ feel and live in will be that which our ancestors and we, by\nslowly cumulative strokes of choice, have extricated out of this, like\nsculptors, by simply rejecting certain portions of the given stuff.\nOther sculptors, other statues from the same stone! Other minds, other\nworlds from the same monotonous and inexpressive chaos! My world is but\none in a million alike embedded, alike real to those who may abstract\nthem. How different must be the worlds in the consciousness of ant,\ncuttle-fish, or crab!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBut in my mind and your mind the rejected portions and the selected\nportions of the original world-stuff are to a great extent the same.\nThe human race as a whole largely agrees as to what it shall notice and\nname, and what not. And among the noticed parts we select in much the\nsame way for accentuation and preference or subordination and dislike.\nThere is, however, one entirely extraordinary case in which no two\nmen ever are known to choose alike. One great splitting of the whole\nuniverse into two halves is made by each of us; and for each of us\nalmost all of the interest attaches to one of the halves; but we all\ndraw the line of division between them in a different place. When I\nsay that we all call the two halves by the same; names, and that those\nnames are '_me_' and '_not-me_' respectively, it will at once be seen\nwhat I mean. The altogether unique kind of interest which each human\nmind feels in those parts of creation which it can call _me_ or _mine_\nmay be a moral riddle, but it is a fundamental psychological fact.\nNo mind can take the same interest in his neighbor's _me_ as in his\nown. The neighbor's me falls together with all the rest of things in\none foreign mass, against which his own _me_ stands out in startling\nrelief. Even the trodden worm, as Lotze somewhere says, contrasts his\nown suffering self with the whole remaining universe, though he have no\nclear conception either of himself or of what the universe may be. He\nis for me a mere part of the world; for him it is I who am the mere\npart. Each of us dichotomizes the Kosmos in a different place.\n\nDescending now to finer work than this first general sketch, let\nus in the next chapter try to trace the psychology of this fact of\nself-consciousness to which we have thus once more been led.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[215] A good deal of this chapter is reprinted from an article 'On some\nOmissions of Introspective Psychology' which appeared in 'Mind' for\nJanuary 1884.\n\n[216] B. P. Bowne: Metaphysics, p. 362.\n\n[217] L'Automatisme Psychologique, p. 318.\n\n[218] Cf. A. Constans: Relation sur une \u00c9pid\u00e9mie d'hyst\u00e9ro-d\u00e9monopathie\nen 1861. 2me ed. Paris, 1863.--Chiap e Franzolin: L'Epidemia\nd'istero-demonopatie in Verzegnis. Reggio, 1879.--See also J. Kerner's\nlittle work: Nachricht von dem Vorkommen des Besessenseins. 1836.\n\n[219] For the Physiology of this compare the chapter on the Will.\n\n[220] _Loc. cit._ p. 316.\n\n[221] The Philosophy of Reflection, i, 248, 290.\n\n[222] Popul\u00e4re Wissenschaftliche Vortr\u00e4ge, Drittes Heft (1876). p. 72.\n\n[223] Fick, in L. Hermann's Handb. d. Physiol., Bd. iii, Th. i, p. 225.\n\n[224] It need of course not follow, because a total brain-state does\nnot recur, that no _point_ of the brain can ever be twice in the same\ncondition. That would be as improbable a consequence as that in the sea\na wave-crest should never come twice at the same point of space. What\ncan hardly come twice is an identical _combination_ of wave-forms all\nwith their crests and hollows reoccupying identical places. For such a\ntotal combination as this is the analogue of the brain-state to which\nour actual consciousness at any moment is due.\n\n[225] The accurate registration of the 'how long' is still a little\nmysterious.\n\n[226] Cf. Brentano; Psychologie, vol. i, pp. 219-20. Altogether this\nchapter of Brentano's on the Unity of Consciousness is as good as\nanything with which I am acquainted.\n\n[227] Honor to whom honor is due! The most explicit acknowledgment I\nhave anywhere found of all this is in a buried and forgotten paper by\nthe Rev. Jas. Wills, on 'Accidental Association,' in the Transactions\nof the Royal Irish Academy, vol xxi, part i (1846). Mr. Wills writes:\n\n\"At every instant of conscious thought there is a certain sum of\nperceptions, or reflections, or both together, present, and together\nconstituting one whole state of apprehension. Of this some definite\nportion may be far more distinct than all the rest; and the rest be in\nconsequence proportionally vague, even to the limit of obliteration.\nBut still, within this limit, the most dim shade of perception enters\ninto, and in some infinitesimal degree modifies, the whole existing\nstate. This state will thus be in some way modified by any sensation\nor emotion, or act of distinct attention, that may give prominence to\nany part of it; so that the actual result is capable of the utmost\nvariation, according to the person or the occasion.... To any portion\nof the entire scope here described there may be a special direction of\nthe attention, and this special direction is recognized as strictly\nwhat is _recognized_ as the idea present to the mind. This idea is\nevidently not commensurate with the entire state of apprehension,\nand much perplexity has arisen from not observing this fact. However\ndeeply we may suppose the attention to be engaged by any thought,\nany considerable alteration of the surrounding phenomena would still\nbe perceived; the most abstruse demonstration in this room would\nnot prevent a listener, however absorbed, from noticing the sudden\nextinction of the lights. Our mental states have always an _essential\nunity_, such that each state of apprehension, however variously\ncompounded, is a single whole, of which every component is, therefore,\nstrictly apprehended (so far as it is apprehended) as a part. Such\nis the elementary basis from which all our intellectual operations\ncommence.\"\n\n[228] Compare the charming passage in Taine on Intelligence (N. Y.\ned.), i, 83-4.\n\n[229] E.g.: \"The stream of thought is not a continuous current, but a\nseries of distinct ideas, more or less rapid in their succession; the\nrapidity being measurable by the number that pass through the mind in a\ngiven time.\" (Bain: E. and W., p. 29.)\n\n[230] Few writers have admitted that we cognize relations through\nfeeling. The intellectualists have explicitly denied the possibility of\nsuch a thing--e.g., Prof. T. H. Green ('Mind,' vol. vii, p. 28): \"No\nfeeling, as such or as felt, is [of?] a relation.... Even a relation\nbetween feelings is not itself a feeling or felt.\" On the other hand,\nthe sensationists have either smuggled in the cognition without giving\nany account of it, or have denied the relations to be cognized, or\neven to exist, at all. A few honorable exceptions, however, deserve\nto be named among the sensationists. Destutt de Tracy, Laromigui\u00e8re,\nCardaillac, Brown, and finally Spencer, have explicitly contended for\nfeelings of relation, consubstantial with our feelings or thoughts\nof the terms 'between' which they obtain. Thus Destutt de Tracy says\n(\u00c9l\u00e9ments d'Id\u00e9ologie, T. Ier, chap. iv): \"The faculty of judgment\nis itself a sort of sensibility, for it is the faculty of feeling\nthe relations among our ideas; and to feel relations is to feel.\"\nLaromigui\u00e8re writes (Le\u00e7ons de Philosophie, IIme Partie, 3me Le\u00e7on):\n\n\"There is no one whose intelligence does not embrace simultaneously\nmany ideas, more or less distinct, more or less confused. Now, when\nwe have many ideas at once, a peculiar feeling arises in us: we feel,\namong these ideas, resemblances, differences, relations. Let us call\nthis mode of feeling, common to us all, the feeling of relation,\nor relation-feeling (_sentiment-rapport_). One sees immediately\nthat these relation-feelings, resulting from the propinquity of\nideas, must be infinitely more numerous than the sensation-feelings\n(_sentiments-sensations_) or the feelings we have of the action of\nour faculties. The slightest knowledge of the mathematical theory of\ncombinations will prove this.... _Ideas_ of relation originate in\nfeelings of relation. They are the effect of our comparing them and\nreasoning about them.\"\n\nSimilarly, de Cardaillac (\u00c9tudes \u00c9l\u00e9mentaires de Philosophie, Section\ni, chap. vii):\n\n\"By a natural consequence, we are led to suppose that at the same time\nthat we have several sensations or several ideas in the mind, we feel\nthe relations which exist between these sensations, and the relations\nwhich exist between these ideas.... If the feeling of relations exists\nin us,... it is necessarily the most varied and the most fertile of\nall human feelings: 1\u00b0, the most varied, because, relations being more\nnumerous than beings, the feelings of relation must be in the same\nproportion more numerous than the sensations whose presence gives rise\nto their formation; 2\u00b0, the most fertile, for the relative ideas of\nwhich the feeling-of-relation is the source ... are more important\nthan absolute ideas, if such exist.... If we interrogate common\nspeech, we find the feeling of relation expressed there in a thousand\ndifferent ways. If it is easy to seize a relation, we say that it is\n_sensible_, to distinguish it from one which, because its terms are\ntoo remote, cannot be as quickly perceived. A sensible difference,\nor resemblance.... What is taste in the arts, in intellectual\nproductions? What but the feeling of those relations among the parts\nwhich constitutes their merit?... Did we not feel relations we should\nnever attain to true knowledge,... for almost all our knowledge is of\nrelations.... We never have an isolated sensation;... we are therefore\nnever without the feeling of relation.... An _object_ strikes our\nsenses; we see in it only a sensation.... The relative is so near the\nabsolute, the relation-feeling so near the sensation-feeling, the two\nare so intimately fused in the composition of the object, that the\nrelation appears to us as part of the sensation itself. It is doubtless\nto this sort of fusion between sensations and feelings of relation that\nthe silence of metaphysicians as to the latter is due; and it is for\nthe same reason that they have obstinately persisted in asking from\nsensation alone those ideas of relation which it was powerless to give.\"\n\nDr. Thomas Brown writes (Lectures, xlv, _init._): \"There is an\nextensive order of our feelings which involve this notion of relation,\nand which consist indeed in the mere perception of a relation of some\nsort.... Whether the relation be of two or of many external objects, or\nof two or many affections of the mind, the feeling of this relation ...\nis what I term a relative suggestion; that phrase being the simplest\nwhich it is possible to employ, for expressing, without any theory, the\nmere fact of the rise of certain feelings of relation, after certain\nother feelings which precede them; and therefore, as involving no\nparticular theory, and simply expressive of an undoubted fact.... That\nthe feelings of relation are states of the mind essentially different\nfrom our simple perceptions, or conceptions of the objects,... that\nthey are not what Condillac terms _transformed sensations_, I proved\nin a former lecture, when I combated the excessive simplification of\nthat ingenious but not very accurate philosopher. There is an original\ntendency or susceptibility of the mind, by which, on perceiving\ntogether different objects, we are instantly, without the intervention\nof any other mental process, sensible of their relation in certain\nrespects, as truly as there is an original tendency or susceptibility\nby which, when external objects are present and have produced a certain\naffection of our sensorial organ, we are instantly affected with the\nprimary elementary feelings of perception; and, I may add, that as\nour sensations or perceptions are of various species, so are there\nvarious species of relations;--the number of relations, indeed, even of\nexternal things, being almost infinite, while the number of perceptions\nis, necessarily, limited by that of the objects which have the power of\nproducing some affection of our organs of sensation.... Without that\nsusceptibility of the mind by which it has the feeling of relation, our\nconsciousness would be as truly limited to a single point, as our body\nwould become, were it possible to fetter it to a single atom.\"\n\nMr. Spencer is even more explicit. His philosophy is crude in that he\nseems to suppose that it is only in transitive states that outward\nrelations are known; whereas in truth space-relations, relations\nof contrast, etc., are felt along with their terms, in substantive\nstates as well as in transitive states, as we shall abundantly see.\nNevertheless Mr. Spencer's passage is so clear that it also deserves to\nbe quoted in full (Principles of Psychology, \u00a7 65):\n\n\"The proximate components of Mind are of two broadly-contrasted\nkinds--Feelings and the relations between feelings. Among the members\nof each group there exist multitudinous unlikenesses, many of which are\nextremely strong; but such unlikenesses are small compared with those\nwhich distinguish members of the one group from members of the other.\nLet us, in the first place, consider what are the characters which\nall Feelings have in common, and what are the characters which all\nRelations between feelings have in common.\n\n\"Each feeling, as we here define it, is any portion of consciousness\nwhich occupies a place sufficiently large to give it a perceivable\nindividuality; which has its individuality marked off from adjacent\nportions of consciousness by qualitative contrasts; and which, when\nintrospectively contemplated, appears to be homogeneous. These are the\nessentials. Obviously if, under introspection, a state of consciousness\nis decomposable into unlike parts that exist either simultaneously or\nsuccessively, it is not one feeling but two or more. Obviously if it is\nindistinguishable from an adjacent portion of consciousness, it forms\none with that portion--is not an individual feeling, but part of one.\nAnd obviously if it does not occupy in consciousness an appreciable\narea, or an appreciable duration, it cannot be known as a feeling.\n\n\"A Relation between feelings is, on the contrary, characterized by\noccupying no appreciable part of consciousness. Take away the terms\nit unites, and it disappears along with them; having no independent\nplace, no individuality of its own. It is true that, under an ultimate\nanalysis, what we call a relation proves to be itself a kind of\nfeeling--the momentary feeling accompanying the transition from\none conspicuous feeling to an adjacent conspicuous feeling. And it\nis true that, notwithstanding its extreme brevity, its qualitative\ncharacter is appreciable; for relations are (as we shall hereafter\nsee) distinguishable from one another only by the unlikenesses of the\nfeelings which accompany the momentary transitions. Each relational\nfeeling may, in fact, be regarded as one of those nervous shocks\nwhich we suspect to be the units of composition of feelings; and,\nthough instantaneous, it is known as of greater or less strength,\nand as taking place with greater or less facility. But the contrast\nbetween these relational feelings and what we ordinarily call feelings\nis so strong that we must class them apart. Their extreme brevity,\ntheir small variety, and their dependence on the terms they unite,\ndifferentiate them in an unmistakable way.\n\n\"Perhaps it will be well to recognize more fully the truth that this\ndistinction cannot be absolute. Besides admitting that, as an element\nof consciousness, a relation is a momentary feeling, we must also\nadmit that just as a relation can have no existence apart from the\nfeelings which form its terms, so a feeling can exist only by relations\nto other feelings which limit it in space or time or both. Strictly\nspeaking, neither a feeling nor a relation is an independent element\nof consciousness: there is throughout a dependence such that the\nappreciable areas of consciousness occupied by feelings can no more\npossess individualities apart from the relations which link them, than\nthese relations can possess individualities apart from the feelings\nthey link. The essential distinction between the two, then, appears\nto be that whereas a relational feeling is a portion of consciousness\ninseparable into parts, a feeling, ordinarily so called, is a portion\nof consciousness that admits imaginary division into like parts which\nare related to one another in sequence or coexistence. A feeling proper\nis either made up of like parts that occupy time, or it is made up of\nlike parts that occupy space, or both. In any case, a feeling proper\nis an aggregate of related like parts, while a relational feeling is\nundecomposable. And this is exactly the contrast between the two which\nmust result if, as we have inferred, feelings are composed of units of\nfeelings, or shocks.\"\n\n[231] M. Paulhan (Revue Philosophique, xx, 455-6), after speaking\nof the faint mental images of objects and emotions, says: \"We find\nother vaguer states still, upon which attention seldom rests, except\nin persons who by nature or profession are addicted to internal\nobservation. It is even difficult to name them precisely, for they\nare little known and not classed; but we may cite as an example of\nthem that peculiar impression which we feel when, strongly preoccupied\nby a certain subject, we nevertheless are engaged with, and have our\nattention almost completely absorbed by, matters quite disconnected\ntherewithal. We do not then exactly think of the object of our\npreoccupation; we do not represent it in a clear manner; and yet our\nmind is not as it would be without this preoccupation. Its object,\nabsent from consciousness, is nevertheless represented there by a\npeculiar unmistakable impression, which often persists long and is a\nstrong feeling, although so obscure for our intelligence.\" \"A mental\nsign of the kind is the unfavorable disposition left in our mind\ntowards an individual by painful incidents erewhile experienced and\nnow perhaps forgotten. The sign remains, but is not understood; its\ndefinite meaning is lost.\" (P. 458.)\n\n[232] Mozart describes thus his manner of composing: First bits and\ncrumbs of the piece come and gradually join together in his mind;\nthen the soul getting warmed to the work, the thing grows more and\nmore, \"and I spread it out broader and clearer, and at last it gets\nalmost finished in my head, even when it is a long piece, so that I\ncan see the whole of it at a single glance in my mind, as if it were\na beautiful painting or a handsome human being; in which way I do not\nhear it in my imagination at all as a succession--the way it must\ncome later--but all at once, as it were. If is a rare feast! All the\ninventing and making goes on in me as in a beautiful strong dream. But\nthe best of all is the _hearing of it all at once_.\"\n\n[233] Mental Physiology, \u00a7 236. Dr. Carpenter's explanation differs\nmaterially from that given in the text.\n\n[234] Cf. also S. Stricker: Vorlesungen \u00fcber allg. u. exp. Pathologie\n(1879), pp. 462-3, 501, 547; Romanes: Origin of Human Faculty, p.\n82. It is so hard to make one's self clear that I may advert to a\nmisunderstanding of my views by the late Prof. Thos. Maguire of Dublin\n(Lectures on Philosophy, 1885). This author considers that by the\n'fringe' I mean some sort of psychic material by which sensations in\nthemselves separate are made to cohere together, and wittily says that\nI ought to \"see that uniting sensations by their 'fringes' is more\nvague than to construct the universe out of oysters by platting their\nbeards\" (p. 211). But the fringe, as I use the word, means nothing like\nthis; it is part of the _object cognized_,--substantive _qualities_\nand _things_ appearing to the mind in a _fringe of relations_.\nSome parts--the transitive parts--of our stream of thought cognize\nthe relations rather than the things; but both the transitive and\nthe substantive parts form one continuous stream, with no discrete\n'sensations' in it such as Prof. Maguire supposes, and supposes me to\nsuppose, to be there.\n\n[235] George Campbell: Philosophy of Rhetoric, book ii, chap. vii.\n\n[236] Substantialism or Philosophy of Knowledge, by 'Jean Story' (1879).\n\n[237] M. G. Tarde, quoting (in Delb\u0153uf, Le Sommeil et les R\u00eaves (1885),\np. 226) some nonsense-verses from a dream, says they show \"how prosodic\nforms may subsist in a mind from which logical rules are effaced....\nI was able, in dreaming, to preserve the faculty of finding two words\nwhich rhymed, to appreciate the rhyme, to fill up the verse as it first\npresented itself with other words which, added, gave the right number\nof syllables, and yet I was ignorant of the sense of the words....\nThus we have the extraordinary fact that the words called each other\nup, without calling up their sense.... Even when awake, it is more\ndifficult to ascend to the meaning of a word than to pass from one word\nto another; or to put it otherwise, _it is harder to be a thinker than\nto be a rhetorician_, and on the whole nothing is commoner than trains\nof words not understood.\"\n\n[238] We think it odd that young children should listen with such rapt\nattention to the reading of stories expressed in words half of which\nthey do not understand, and of none of which they ask the meaning. But\ntheir thinking is in form just what ours is when it is rapid. Both\nof us make flying leaps over large portions of the sentences uttered\nand we give attention only to substantive starting points, turning\npoints, and conclusions here and there. All the rest, 'substantive' and\nseparately intelligible as it may _potentially_ be, actually serves\nonly as so much transitive material. It is _internodal_ consciousness,\ngiving us the sense of continuity, but having no significance apart\nfrom its mere gap-filling function. The children probably feel no gap\nwhen through a lot of unintelligible words they are swiftly carried to\na familiar and intelligible terminus.\n\n[239] Not literally _heard_, of course. Deaf mutes are quick to\nperceive shocks and jars that can be felt, even when so slight as to be\nunnoticed by those who can hear.\n\n[240] Quoted by Samuel Porter: 'Is Thought possible without Language?'\nin Princeton Review, 57th year, pp. 108-12 (Jan. 1881?). Cf. also\nW. W. Ireland: The Blot upon the Brain (1886), Paper x, part ii;\nG. J. Romanes: Mental Evolution in Man, pp. 81-83, and references\ntherein made. Prof. Max M\u00fcller gives a very complete history of this\ncontroversy in pp. 30-64 of his 'Science of Thought' (1887). His own\nview is that Thought and Speech are inseparable; but under speech he\nincludes any conceivable sort of symbolism or even mental imagery, and\nhe makes no allowance for the wordless summary glimpses which we have\nof systems of relation and direction.\n\n[241] Problems of Life and Mind, 3d Series, Problem iv, chapter 5.\nCompare also Victor Egger: La Parole Int\u00e9rieure (Paris, 1881), chap. vi.\n\n[242] If but one person sees an apparition we consider it his private\nhallucination. If more than one, we begin to think it may be a real\nexternal presence.\n\n[243] Revue Philosophique, vol. xxi, p. 671.\n\n[244] Quoted from the Therapeutic Gazette, by the N. Y. Semi-weekly\nEvening Post for Nov. 2, 1886.\n\n[245] In half-stunned states self-consciousness may lapse. A friend\nwrites me: \"We were driving back from ---- in a wagonette. The door\nflew open and X., alias 'Baldy,' fell out on the road. We pulled up at\nonce, and then he said, 'Did anybody fall out?' or 'Who fell out?'--I\ndon't exactly remember the words. When told that Baldy fell out, he\nsaid, 'Did Baldy fall out? Poor Baldy!'\"\n\n[246] Kant originated this view. I subjoin a few English statements of\nit. J. Ferrier, Institutes of Metaphysic, Proposition i: \"Along with\nwhatever any intelligence knows it must, as the ground or condition\nof its knowledge, have some knowledge of itself.\" Sir Wm. Hamilton,\nDiscussions, p. 47: \"We know, and we know that we know,--these\npropositions, logically distinct, are really identical; each implies\nthe other.... So true is the scholastic brocard: _non sentimus nisi\nsentiamus nos sentire_.\" H. L. Mansel, Metaphysics, p. 58: \"Whatever\nvariety of materials may exist within reach of my mind, I can become\nconscious of them only by recognizing them as mine.... Relation to\nthe conscious self is thus the permanent and universal feature which\nevery state of consciousness as such must exhibit.\" T. H. Green,\nIntroduction to Hume, p. 12: \"A consciousness by the man ... of\nhimself, in negative relation to the thing that is his object, and this\nconsciousness must be taken to go along with the perceptive act itself.\nNot less than this indeed can be involved in any act that is to be the\nbeginning of knowledge at all. It is the minimum of possible thought or\nintelligence.\"\n\n[247] Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Lecture 45.\n\n[248] Instead of saying _to our feeling only_, he should have said, to\nthe _object_ only.\n\n[249] \"There can be no difficulty in admitting that association does\nform the ideas of an indefinite number of individuals into one complex\nidea; because it is an acknowledged fact. Have we not the idea of an\narmy? And is not that precisely the ideas of an indefinite number of\nmen formed into one idea?\" (Jas. Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind (J.\nS. Mill's Edition), vol. i, p. 264.)\n\n[250] For their arguments, see above.\n\n[251] I know there are readers whom nothing can convince that the\nthought of a complex object has not as many parts as are discriminated\nin the object itself. Well, then, let the word parts pass. Only\nobserve that these parts are not the separate 'ideas' of traditional\npsychology. No one of them can live out of that particular thought, any\nmore than my head can live off of my particular shoulders. In a sense a\nsoap-bubble has parts; it is a sum of juxtaposed spherical triangles.\nBut these triangles are not separate realities; neither are the 'parts'\nof the thought separate realities. Touch the bubble and the triangles\nare no more. Dismiss the thought and out go its parts. You can no more\nmake a new thought out of 'ideas' that have once served than you can\nmake a new bubble out of old triangles Each bubble, each thought, is a\nfresh organic unity, _sui generis_.\n\n[252] In his work, La Parole Int\u00e9rieure (Paris, 1881), especially\nchapters vi and vii.\n\n[253] Page 301.\n\n[254] Page 218. To prove this point, M. Egger appeals to the fact that\nwe often hear some one speak whilst our mind is preoccupied, but do\nnot understand him until some moments afterwards, when we suddenly\n'realize' what he meant. Also to our digging out the meaning of a\nsentence in an unfamiliar tongue, where the words are present to us\nlong before the idea is taken in. In these special cases the word\ndoes indeed precede the idea. The idea, on the contrary, precedes\nthe word whenever we try to express ourselves with effort, as in a\nforeign tongue, or in an unusual field of intellectual invention. Both\nsets of cases, however, are exceptional, and M. Egger would probably\nhimself admit, on reflection, that in the former class there is some\nsort of a verbal suffusion, however evanescent, of the idea, when it\nis grasped--we hear the echo of the words as we catch their meaning.\nAnd he would probably admit that in the second class of cases the idea\npersists after the words that came with so much effort are found. In\nnormal cases the simultaneity, as he admits, is obviously there.\n\n[255] A good way to get the words and the sense separately is to\ninwardly articulate word for word the discourse of another. One then\nfinds that the meaning will often come to the mind in pulses, after\nclauses or sentences are finished.\n\n[256] The nearest approach (with which I am acquainted) to the doctrine\nset forth here is in O. Liebmaun's Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit, pp.\n427-438.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X.\n\nTHE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF.\n\n\nLet us begin with the Self in its widest acceptation, and follow it up\nto its most delicate and subtle form, advancing from the study of the\nempirical, as the Germans call it, to that of the pure, Ego.\n\n\nTHE EMPIRICAL SELF OR ME.\n\n\nThe Empirical Self of each of us is all that he is tempted to call by\nthe name of _me_. But it is clear that between what a man calls _me_\nand what he simply calls _mine_ the line is difficult to draw. We feel\nand act about certain things that are ours very much as we feel and act\nabout ourselves. Our fame, our children, the work of our hands, may\nbe as dear to us as our bodies are, and arouse the same feelings and\nthe same acts of reprisal if attacked. And our bodies themselves, are\nthey simply ours, or are they _us_? Certainly men have been ready to\ndisown their very bodies and to regard them as mere vestures, or even\nas prisons of clay from which they should some day be glad to escape.\n\nWe see then that we are dealing with a fluctuating material. The\nsame object being sometimes treated as a part of me, at other times\nas simply mine, and then again as if I had nothing to do with it at\nall. _In its widest possible sense_, however, _a man's Self is the\nsum total of all that he_ CAN _call his_, not only his body and his\npsychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children,\nhis ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and\nhorses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same\nemotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle\nand die away, he feels cast down,--not necessarily in the same degree\nfor each thing, but in much the same way for all. Understanding the\nSelf in this widest sense, we may begin by dividing the history of it\ninto three parts, relating respectively to--\n\n1. Its constituents;\n\n2. The feelings and emotions they arouse,--_Self-feelings;_\n\n3. The actions to which they prompt,--_Self-seeking and\nSelf-preservation._\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n1. _The constituents of the Self_ may be divided into two classes,\nthose which make up respectively--\n\n(_a_) The material Self;\n\n(_b_) The social Self;\n\n(_c_) The spiritual Self; and\n\n(_d_) The pure Ego.\n\n(_a_) The body is the innermost part of _the material Self_ in each of\nus; and certain parts of the body seem more intimately ours than the\nrest. The clothes come next. The old saying that the human person is\ncomposed of three parts--soul, body and clothes--is more than a joke.\nWe so appropriate our clothes and identify ourselves with them that\nthere are few of us who, if asked to choose between having a beautiful\nbody clad in raiment perpetually shabby and unclean, and having an ugly\nand blemished form always spotlessly attired, would not hesitate a\nmoment before making a decisive reply.[257] Next, our immediate family\nis a part of ourselves. Our father and mother, our wife and babes, are\nbone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. When they die, a part of our\nvery selves is gone. If they do anything wrong, it is our shame. If\nthey are insulted, our anger flashes forth as readily as if we stood\nin their place. Our home comes next. Its scenes are part of our life;\nits aspects awaken the tenderest feelings of affection; and we do not\neasily forgive the stranger who, in visiting it, finds fault with its\narrangements or treats it with contempt. All these different things are\nthe objects of instinctive preferences coupled with the most important\npractical interests of life. We all have a blind impulse to watch over\nour body, to deck it with clothing of an ornamental sort, to cherish\nparents, wife and babes, and to find for ourselves a home of our own\nwhich we may live in and 'improve.'\n\nAn equally instinctive impulse drives us to collect property; and the\ncollections thus made become, with different degrees of intimacy, parts\nof our empirical selves. The parts of our wealth most intimately ours\nare those which are saturated with our labor. There are few men who\nwould not feel personally annihilated if a life-long construction of\ntheir hands or brains--say an entomological collection or an extensive\nwork in manuscript--were suddenly swept away. The miser feels similarly\ntowards his gold, and although it is true that a part of our depression\nat the loss of possessions is due to our feeling that we must now go\nwithout certain goods that we expected the possessions to bring in\ntheir train, yet in every case there remains, over and above this,\na sense of the shrinkage of our personality, a partial conversion\nof ourselves to nothingness, which is a psychological phenomenon by\nitself. We are all at once assimilated to the tramps and poor devils\nwhom we so despise, and at the same time removed farther than ever away\nfrom the happy sons of earth who lord it over land and sea and men in\nthe full-blown lustihood that wealth and power can give, and before\nwhom, stiffen ourselves as we will by appealing to anti-snobbish first\nprinciples, we cannot escape an emotion, open or sneaking, of respect\nand dread.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n(_b_) _A man's Social Self_ is the recognition which he gets from his\nmates. We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in sight of our\nfellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and\nnoticed favorably, by our kind. No more fiendish punishment could be\ndevised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should\nbe turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the\nmembers thereof. If no one turned round when we entered, answered when\nwe spoke, or minded what we did, but if every person we met 'cut us\ndead,' and acted as if we were non-existing things, a kind of rage\nand impotent despair would ere long well up in us, from which the\ncruellest bodily tortures would be a relief; for these would make us\nfeel that, however bad might be our plight, we had not sunk to such a\ndepth as to be unworthy of attention at all.\n\nProperly speaking, _a man has as many social selves as there are\nindividuals who recognize him_ and carry an image of him in their\nmind. To wound any one of these his images is to wound him.[258] But\nas the individuals who carry the images fall naturally into classes,\nwe may practically say that he has as many different social selves\nas there are distinct _groups_ of persons about whose opinion he\ncares. He generally shows a different side of himself to each of these\ndifferent groups. Many a youth who is demure enough before his parents\nand teachers, swears and swaggers like a pirate among his 'tough'\nyoung friends. We do not show ourselves to our children as to our\nclub-companions, to our customers as to the laborers we employ, to our\nown masters and employers as to our intimate friends. From this there\nresults what practically is a division of the man into several selves;\nand this may be a discordant splitting, as where one is afraid to let\none set of his acquaintances know him as he is elsewhere; or it may be\na perfectly harmonious division of labor, as where one tender to his\nchildren is stern to the soldiers or prisoners under his command.\n\nThe most peculiar social self which one is apt to have is in the mind\nof the person one is in love with. The good or bad fortunes of this\nself cause the most intense elation and dejection--unreasonable enough\nas measured by every other standard than that of the organic feeling\nof the individual. To his own consciousness he _is_ not, so long as\nthis particular social self fails to get recognition, and when it is\nrecognized his contentment passes all bounds.\n\nA man's _fame_, good or bad, and his _honor_ or dishonor, are names for\none of his social selves. The particular social self of a man called\nhis honor is usually the result of one of those splittings of which\nwe have spoken. It is his image in the eyes of his own 'set,' which\nexalts or condemns him as he conforms or not to certain requirements\nthat may not be made of one in another walk of life. Thus a layman\nmay abandon a city infected with cholera; but a priest or a doctor\nwould think such an act incompatible with his honor. A soldier's honor\nrequires him to fight or to die under circumstances where another man\ncan apologize or run away with no stain upon his social self. A judge,\na statesman, are in like manner debarred by the honor of their cloth\nfrom entering into pecuniary relations perfectly honorable to persons\nin private life. Nothing is commoner than to hear people discriminate\nbetween their different selves of this sort: \"As a man I pity you, but\nas an official I must show you no mercy; as a politician I regard him\nas an ally, but as a moralist I loathe him;\" etc., etc. What may be\ncalled 'club-opinion' is one of the very strongest forces in life.[259]\nThe thief must not steal from other thieves; the gambler must pay his\ngambling-debts, though he pay no other debts in the world. The code\nof honor of fashionable society has throughout history been full of\npermissions as well as of vetoes, the only reason for following either\nof which is that so we best serve one of our social selves. You must\nnot lie in general, but you may lie as much as you please if asked\nabout your relations with a lady; you must accept a challenge from an\nequal, but if challenged by an inferior you may laugh him to scorn:\nthese are examples of what is meant.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n(_c_) By the Spiritual Self, so far as it belongs to the Empirical\nMe, I mean a man's inner or subjective being, his psychic faculties\nor dispositions, taken concretely; not the bare principle of\npersonal Unity, or 'pure' Ego, which remains still to be discussed.\nThese psychic dispositions are the most enduring and intimate\npart of the self, that which we most verily seem to be. We take\na purer self-satisfaction when we think of our ability to argue\nand discriminate, of our moral sensibility and conscience, of our\nindomitable will, than when we survey any of our other possessions.\nOnly when these are altered is a man said to be _alienatus a se_.\n\nNow this spiritual self may be considered in various ways. We may\ndivide it into faculties, as just instanced, isolating them one from\nanother, and identifying ourselves with either in turn. This is an\n_abstract_ way of dealing with consciousness, in which, as it actually\npresents itself, a plurality of such faculties are always to be\nsimultaneously found; or we may insist on a concrete view, and then the\nspiritual self in us will be either the entire stream of our personal\nconsciousness, or the present 'segment' or 'section' of that stream,\naccording as we take a broader or a narrower view--both the stream and\nthe section being concrete existences in time, and each being a unity\nafter its own peculiar kind. But whether we take it abstractly or\nconcretely, our considering the spiritual self at all is a reflective\nprocess, is the result of our abandoning the outward-looking point of\nview, and of our having become able to think of subjectivity as such,\n_to think ourselves as thinkers_.\n\nThis attention to thought as such, and the identification of ourselves\nwith it rather than with any of the objects which it reveals, is a\nmomentous and in some respects a rather mysterious operation, of which\nwe need here only say that as a matter of fact it exists; and that in\neveryone, at an early age, the distinction between thought as such,\nand what it is 'of' or 'about,' has become familiar to the mind. The\ndeeper grounds for this discrimination may possibly be hard to find;\nbut superficial grounds are plenty and near at hand. Almost anyone will\ntell us that thought is a different sort of existence from things,\nbecause many sorts of thought are of no things--e.g., pleasures, pains,\nand emotions; others are of non-existent things--errors and fictions;\nothers again of existent things, but in a form that is symbolic\nand does not resemble them--abstract ideas and concepts; whilst in\nthe thoughts that do resemble the things they are 'of' (percepts,\nsensations), we can feel, alongside of the thing known, the thought of\nit going on as an altogether separate act and operation in the mind.\n\nNow this subjective life of ours, distinguished as such so clearly\nfrom the objects known by its means, may, as aforesaid, be taken by\nus in a concrete or in an abstract way. Of the concrete way I will\nsay nothing just now, except that the actual 'section' of the stream\nwill ere long, in our discussion of the nature of the principle of\n_unity_ in consciousness, play a very important part. The abstract way\nclaims our attention first. If the stream as a whole is identified\nwith the Self far more than any outward thing, a _certain portion of\nthe stream abstracted from the rest_ is so identified in an altogether\npeculiar degree, and is felt by all men as a sort of innermost centre\nwithin the circle, of sanctuary within the citadel, constituted by the\nsubjective life as a whole. Compared with this element of the stream,\nthe other parts, even of the subjective life, seem transient external\npossessions, of which each in turn can be disowned, whilst that which\ndisowns them remains. Now, _what is this self of all the other selves?_\n\nProbably all men would describe it in much the same way up to a certain\npoint. They would call it the _active_ element in all consciousness;\nsaying that whatever qualities a man's feelings may possess, or\nwhatever content his thought may include, there is a spiritual\nsomething in him which seems to _go out_ to meet these qualities\nand contents, whilst they seem to _come in_ to be received by it.\nIt is what welcomes or rejects. It presides over the perception of\nsensations, and by giving or withholding its assent it influences the\nmovements they tend to arouse. It is the home of interest,--not the\npleasant or the painful, not even pleasure or pain, as such, but that\nwithin us to which pleasure and pain, the pleasant and the painful,\nspeak. It is the source of effort and attention, and the place from\nwhich appear to emanate the fiats of the will. A physiologist who\nshould reflect upon it in his own person could hardly help, I should\nthink, connecting it more or less vaguely with the process by which\nideas or incoming sensations are 'reflected' or pass over into outward\nacts. Not necessarily that it should _be_ this process or the mere\nfeeling of this process, but that it should be in some close way\n_related_ to this process; for it plays a part analogous to it in the\npsychic life, being a sort of junction at which sensory ideas terminate\nand from which motor ideas proceed, and forming a kind of link between\nthe two. Being more incessantly there than any other single element of\nthe mental life, the other elements end by seeming to accrete round\nit and to belong to it. It become opposed to them as the permanent is\nopposed to the changing and inconstant.\n\nOne may, I think, without fear of being upset by any future Galtonian\ncirculars, believe that all men must single out from the rest of\nwhat they call themselves some central principle of which each would\nrecognize the foregoing to be a fair general description,--accurate\nenough, at any rate, to denote what is meant, and keep it unconfused\nwith other things. The moment, however, they came to closer quarters\nwith it, trying to define more accurately its precise nature, we\nshould find opinions beginning to diverge. Some would say that it is a\nsimple active substance, the soul, of which they are thus conscious;\nothers, that it is nothing but a fiction, the imaginary being denoted\nby the pronoun I; and between these extremes of opinion all sorts of\nintermediaries would be found.\n\nLater we must ourselves discuss them all, and sufficient to that day\nwill be the evil thereof. _Now_, let us try to settle for ourselves\nas definitely as we can, just how this central nucleus of the Self\nmay _feel_, no matter whether it be a spiritual substance or only a\ndelusive word.\n\nFor this central part of the Self is _felt_. It may be all that\nTranscendentalists say it is, and all that Empiricists say it is into\nthe bargain, but it is at any rate no _mere ens rationis_, cognized\nonly in an intellectual way, and no _mere_ summation of memories or\n_mere_ sound of a word in our ears. It is something with which we also\nhave direct sensible acquaintance, and which is as fully present at\nany moment of consciousness in which it _is_ present, as in a whole\nlifetime of such moments. When, just now, it was called an abstraction,\nthat did not mean that, like some general notion, it could not be\npresented in a particular experience. It only meant that in the stream\nof consciousness it never was found all alone. But when it is found,\nit is _felt_; just as the body is felt, the feeling of which is also\nan abstraction, because never is the body felt all alone, but always\ntogether with other things. _Now can we tell more precisely in what the\nfeeling of this central active self consists,_--not necessarily as yet\nwhat the active self _is_, as a being or principle, but what we _feel_\nwhen we become aware of its existence?\n\nI think I can in my own case; and as what I say will be likely to\nmeet with opposition if generalized (as indeed it may be in part\ninapplicable to other individuals), I had better continue in the\nfirst person, leaving my description, to be accepted by those to\nwhose introspection it may commend itself as true, and confessing my\ninability to meet the demands of others, if others there be.\n\nFirst of all, I am aware of a constant play of furtherances and\nhindrances in my thinking, of checks and releases, tendencies which\nrun with desire, and tendencies which run the other way. Among the\nmatters I think of, some range themselves on the side of the thought's\ninterests, whilst others play an unfriendly part thereto. The mutual\ninconsistencies and agreements, reinforcements and obstructions, which\nobtain amongst these objective matters reverberate backwards and\nproduce what seem to be incessant reactions of my spontaneity upon\nthem, welcoming or opposing, appropriating or disowning, striving with\nor against, saying yes or no. This palpitating inward life is, in me,\nthat central nucleus which I just tried to describe in terms that all\nmen might use.\n\nBut when I forsake such general descriptions and grapple with\nparticulars, coming to the closest possible quarters with the\nfacts, _it is difficult for me to detect in the activity any purely\nspiritual element at all. Whenever my introspective glance succeeds in\nturning round quickly enough to catch one of these manifestations of\nspontaneity in the act, all it can ever feel distinctly is some bodily\nprocess, for the most part taking place within the head._ Omitting for\na moment what is obscure in these introspective results, let me try to\nstate those particulars which to my own consciousness seem indubitable\nand distinct.\n\nIn the first place, the acts of attending, assenting, negating, making\nan effort, are felt as movements of something in the head. In many\ncases it is possible to describe these movements quite exactly. In\nattending to either an idea or a sensation belonging to a particular\nsense-sphere, the movement is the adjustment of the sense-organ, felt\nas it occurs. I cannot think in visual terms, for example, without\nfeeling a fluctuating play of pressures, convergences, divergences,\nand accommodations in my eyeballs. The direction in which the object\nis conceived to lie determines the character of these movements, the\nfeeling of which becomes, for my consciousness, identified with the\nmanner in which I make myself ready to receive the visible thing. My\nbrain appears to me as if all shot across with lines of direction, of\nwhich I have become conscious as my attention has shifted from one\nsense-organ to another, in passing to successive outer things, or in\nfollowing trains of varying sense-ideas.\n\nWhen I try to remember or reflect, the movements in question, instead\nof being directed towards the periphery, seem to come from the\nperiphery inwards and feel like a sort of _withdrawal_ from the outer\nworld. As far as I can detect, these feelings are due to an actual\nrolling outwards and upwards of the eyeballs, such as I believe occurs\nin me in sleep, and is the exact opposite of their action in fixating\na physical thing. In reasoning, I find that I am apt to have a kind\nof vaguely localized diagram in my mind, with the various fractional\nobjects of the thought disposed at particular points thereof; and the\noscillations of my attention from one of them to another are most\ndistinctly felt as alternations of direction in movements occurring\ninside the head.[260]\n\nIn consenting and negating, and in making a mental effort, the\nmovements seem more complex, and I find them harder to describe.\nThe opening and closing of the glottis play a great part in these\noperations, and, less distinctly, the movements of the soft palate,\netc., shutting off the posterior nares from the mouth. My glottis\nis like a sensitive valve, intercepting my breath instantaneously\nat every mental hesitation or felt aversion to the objects of my\nthought, and as quickly opening, to let the air pass through my throat\nand nose, the moment the repugnance is overcome. The feeling of the\nmovement of this air is, in me, one strong ingredient of the feeling\nof assent. The movements of the muscles of the brow and eyelids also\nrespond very sensitively to every fluctuation in the agreeableness or\ndisagreeableness of what comes before my mind.\n\nIn _effort_ of any sort, contractions of the jaw-muscles and of those\nof respiration are added to those of the brow and glottis, and thus the\nfeeling passes out of the head properly so called. It passes out of the\nhead whenever the welcoming or rejecting of the object is _strongly_\nfelt. Then a set of feelings pour in from many bodily parts, all\n'expressive' of my emotion, and the head-feelings proper are swallowed\nup in this larger mass.\n\nIn a sense, then, it may be truly said that, in one person at least,\n_the 'Self of selves,' when carefully examined, is found to consist\nmainly of the collection of these peculiar motions in the head or\nbetween the head and throat_. I do not for a moment say that this is\n_all_ it consists of, for I fully realize how desperately hard is\nintrospection in this field. But I feel quite sure that these cephalic\nmotions are the portions of my innermost activity of which I am _most\ndistinctly aware_. If the dim portions which I cannot yet define should\nprove to be like unto these distinct portions in me, and I like other\nmen, _it would follow that our entire feeling of spiritual activity,\nor what commonly passes by that name, is really a feeling of bodily\nactivities whose exact nature is by most men overlooked._\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nNow, without pledging ourselves in any way to adopt this hypothesis,\nlet us dally with it for a while to see to what consequences it might\nlead if it were true.\n\nIn the first place, the nuclear part of the Self, intermediary\nbetween ideas and overt acts, would be a collection of activities\nphysiologically in no essential way different from the overt acts\nthemselves. If we divide all possible physiological acts into\n_adjustments_ and _executions_, the nuclear self would be the\nadjustments collectively considered; and the less intimate, more\nshifting self, so far as it was active, would be the executions. But\nboth adjustments and executions would obey the reflex type. Both\nwould be the result of sensorial and ideational processes discharging\neither into each other within the brain, or into muscles and other\nparts outside. The peculiarity of the adjustments would be that they\nare minimal reflexes, few in number, incessantly repeated, constant\namid great fluctuations in the rest of the mind's content, and\nentirely unimportant and uninteresting except through their uses in\nfurthering or inhibiting the presence of various things, and actions\nbefore consciousness. These characters would naturally keep us from\nintrospectively paying much attention to them in detail, whilst they\nwould at the same time make us aware of them as a coherent group of\nprocesses, strongly contrasted with all the other things consciousness\ncontained,--even with the other constituents of the 'Self,' material,\nsocial, or spiritual, as the case might be. They are reactions, and\nthey are _primary_ reactions. Everything arouses them; for objects\nwhich have no other effects will for a moment contract the brow and\nmake the glottis close. It is as if all that visited the mind had to\nstand an entrance-examination, and just show its face so as to be\neither approved or sent back. These primary reactions are like the\nopening or the closing of the door. In the midst of psychic change\nthey are the permanent core of turnings-towards and turnings-from,\nof yieldings and arrests, which naturally seem central and interior\nin comparison with the foreign matters, _a propos_ to which they\noccur, and hold a sort of arbitrating, decisive position, quite unlike\nthat held by any of the other constituents of the Me. It would not\nbe surprising, then, if we were to feel them as the birthplace of\nconclusions and the starting point of acts, or if they came to appear\nas what we called a while back the 'sanctuary within the citadel' of\nour personal life.[261]\n\nIf they really were the innermost sanctuary, the _ultimate_ one of all\nthe selves whose being we can ever directly experience, it would follow\nthat _all_ that is experienced is, strictly considered, _objective_;\nthat this Objective falls asunder into two contrasted parts, one\nrealized as 'Self,' the other as 'not-Self; 'and that over and above\nthese parts there _is_ nothing save the fact that they are known,\nthe fact of the stream of thought being there as the indispensable\nsubjective condition of their being experienced at all. But this\n_condition_ of the experience is not one of the _things experienced_\nat the moment; this knowing is not immediately _known_. It is only\nknown in subsequent reflection. Instead, then, of the stream of thought\nbeing one of _con_-sciousness, \"thinking its own existence along with\nwhatever else it thinks,\" (as Ferrier says) it might be better called\na stream of _Scious_ness pure and simple, thinking objects of some of\nwhich it makes what it calls a 'Me,' and only aware of its 'pure' Self\nin an abstract, hypothetic or conceptual way. Each 'section' of the\nstream would then be a bit of sciousness or knowledge of this sort,\nincluding and contemplating its 'me' and its 'not-me' as objects which\nwork out their drama together, but not yet including or contemplating\nits own subjective being. The sciousness in question would be the\n_Thinker_, and the existence of this thinker would be given to us\nrather as a logical postulate than as that direct inner perception\nof spiritual activity which we naturally believe ourselves to have.\n'Matter,' as something behind physical phenomena, is a postulate of\nthis sort. Between the postulated Matter and the postulated Thinker,\nthe sheet of phenomena would then swing, some of them (the 'realities')\npertaining more to the matter, others (the fictions, opinions, and\nerrors) pertaining more to the Thinker. But _who_ the Thinker would\nbe, or how many distinct Thinkers we ought to suppose in the universe,\nwould all be subjects for an ulterior metaphysical inquiry.\n\nSpeculations like this traverse common-sense; and not only do they\ntraverse common sense (which in philosophy is no insuperable objection)\nbut they contradict the fundamental assumption of _every_ philosophic\nschool. Spiritualists, transcendentalists, and empiricists alike admit\nin us a continual direct perception of the thinking activity in the\nconcrete. However they may otherwise disagree, they vie with each other\nin the cordiality of their recognition of our _thoughts_ as the one\nsort of existent which skepticism cannot touch.[262] I will therefore\ntreat the last few pages as a parenthetical digression, and from now to\nthe end of the volume revert to the path of common-sense again. I mean\nby this that I will continue to assume (as I have assumed all along,\nespecially in the last chapter) a direct awareness of the process of\nour thinking as such, simply insisting on the fact that it is an even\nmore inward and subtle phenomenon than most of us suppose. At the\nconclusion of the volume, however, I may permit myself to revert again\nto the doubts here provisionally mooted, and will indulge in some\nmetaphysical reflections suggested by them.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAt present, then, the only conclusion I come to is the following:\nThat (in some persons at least) the part of the innermost Self which\nis most vividly felt turns out to consist for the most part of a\ncollection of cephalic movements of 'adjustments' which, for want of\nattention and reflection, usually fail to be perceived and classed\nas what they are; that over and above these there is an obscurer\nfeeling of something more; but whether it be of fainter physiological\nprocesses, or of nothing objective at all, but rather of subjectivity\nas such, of thought become 'its own object,' must at present remain an\nopen question,--like the question whether it be an indivisible active\nsoul-substance, or the question whether it be a personification of the\npronoun I, or any other of the guesses as to what its nature may be.\n\nFarther than this we cannot as yet go clearly in our analysis of the\nSelf's constituents. So let us proceed to the emotions of Self which\nthey arouse.\n\n\n2. SELF-FEELING.\n\n\nThese are primarily _self-complacency_ and _self-dissatisfaction_. Of\nwhat is called 'self-love,' I will treat a little farther on. Language\nhas synonyms enough for both primary feelings. Thus pride, conceit,\nvanity, self-esteem, arrogance, vainglory, on the one hand; and on the\nother modesty, humility, confusion, diffidence, shame, mortification,\ncontrition, the sense of obloquy and personal despair. These two\nopposite classes of affection seem to be direct and elementary\nendowments of our nature. Associationists would have it that they are,\non the other hand, secondary phenomena arising from a rapid computation\nof the sensible pleasures or pains to which our prosperous or debased\npersonal predicament is likely to lead, the sum of the represented\npleasures forming the self-satisfaction, and the sum of the represented\npains forming the opposite feeling of shame. No doubt, when we are\nself-satisfied, we do fondly rehearse all possible rewards for our\ndesert, and when in a fit of self-despair we forebode evil. But the\nmere expectation of reward _is_ not the self-satisfaction, and the mere\napprehension of the evil _is_ not the self-despair, for there is a\ncertain average tone of self-feeling which each one of us carries about\nwith him, and which is independent of the objective reasons we may have\nfor satisfaction or discontent. That is, a very meanly-conditioned man\nmay abound in unfaltering conceit, and one whose success in life is\nsecure and who is esteemed by all may remain diffident of his powers to\nthe end.\n\nOne may say, however, that the normal _provocative_ of self-feeling is\none's actual success or failure, and the good or bad actual position\none holds in the world. \"He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum, and\nsaid what a good boy am I.\" A man with a broadly extended empirical\nEgo, with powers that have uniformly brought him success, with place\nand wealth and friends and fame, is not likely to be visited by the\nmorbid diffidences and doubts about himself which he had when he was a\nboy. \"Is not this great Babylon, which I have planted?\"[263] Whereas\nhe who has made one blunder after another, and still lies in middle\nlife among the failures at the foot of the hill, is liable to grow all\nsicklied o'er with self-distrust, and to shrink from trials with which\nhis powers can really cope.\n\nThe emotions themselves of self-satisfaction and abasement are of a\nunique sort, each as worthy to be classed as a primitive emotional\nspecies as are, for example, rage or pain. Each has its own peculiar\nphysiognomical expression. In self-satisfaction the extensor muscles\nare innervated, the eye is strong and glorious, the gait rolling and\nelastic, the nostril dilated, and a peculiar smile plays upon the lips.\nThis whole complex of symptoms is seen in an exquisite way in lunatic\nasylums, which always contain some patients who are literally mad\nwith conceit, and whose fatuous expression and absurdly strutting or\nswaggering gait is in tragic contrast with their lack of any valuable\npersonal quality. It is in these same castles of despair that we find\nthe strongest examples of the opposite physiognomy, in good people who\nthink they have committed 'the unpardonable sin' and are lost forever,\nwho crouch and cringe and slink from notice, and are unable to speak\naloud or look us in the eye. Like fear and like anger, in similar\nmorbid conditions, these opposite feelings of Self may be aroused with\nno adequate exciting cause. And in fact we ourselves know how the\nbarometer of our self-esteem and confidence rises and falls from one\nday to another through causes that seem to be visceral and organic\nrather than rational, and which certainly answer to no corresponding\nvariations in the esteem in which we are held by our friends. Of the\norigin of these emotions in the race, we can speak better when we have\ntreated of--\n\n\n3. SELF-SEEKING AND SELF-PRESERVATION.\n\n\nThese words cover a large number of our fundamental instinctive\nimpulses. We have those of _bodily self-seeking_, those of _social\nself-seeking_, and those of _spiritual self-seeking_.\n\nAll the ordinary useful reflex actions and movements of alimentation\nand defence are acts of bodily self-preservation. Fear and anger prompt\nto acts that are useful in the same way. Whilst if by self-seeking we\nmean the providing for the future as distinguished from maintaining\nthe present, we must class both anger and fear with the hunting, the\nacquisitive, the home-constructing and the tool-constructing instincts,\nas impulses to self-seeking of the bodily kind. Really, however, these\nlatter instincts, with amativeness, parental fondness, curiosity and\nemulation, seek not only the development of the bodily Self, but that\nof the material Self in the widest possible sense of the word.\n\nOur _social self-seeking_, in turn, is carried on directly through\nour amativeness and friendliness, our desire to please and attract\nnotice and admiration, our emulation and jealousy, our love of glory,\ninfluence, and power, and indirectly through whichever of the material\nself-seeking impulses prove serviceable as means to social ends. That\nthe direct social self-seeking impulses are probably pure instincts is\neasily seen. The noteworthy thing about the desire to be 'recognized'\nby others is that its strength has so little to do with the worth of\nthe recognition computed in sensational or rational terms. We are\ncrazy to get a visiting-list which shall be large, to be able to say\nwhen any one is mentioned, \"Oh! I know him well,\" and to be bowed to\nin the street by half the people we meet. Of course distinguished\nfriends and admiring recognition are the most desirable--Thackeray\nsomewhere asks his readers to confess whether it would not give each\nof _them_ an exquisite pleasure to be met walking down Pall Mall with\na duke on either arm. But in default of dukes and envious salutations\nalmost anything will do for some of us; and there is a whole race of\nbeings to-day whose passion is to keep their names in the newspapers,\nno matter under what heading, 'arrivals and departures,' 'personal\nparagraphs,' 'interviews,'--gossip, even scandal, will suit them\nif nothing better is to be had. Guiteau, Garfield's assassin, is\nan example of the extremity to which this sort of craving for the\nnotoriety of print may go in a pathological case. The newspapers\nbounded his mental horizon; and in the poor wretch's prayer on the\nscaffold, one of the most heartfelt expressions was: \"The newspaper\npress of this land has a big bill to settle with thee, O Lord!\"\n\nNot only the people but the places and things I know enlarge my Self\nin a sort of metaphoric social way. \"_\u00c7a me conna\u00eet_,\" as the French\nworkman says of the implement he can use well. So that it comes about\nthat persons for whose _opinion_ we care nothing are nevertheless\npersons whose notice we woo; and that many a man truly great, many a\nwoman truly fastidious in most respects, will take a deal of trouble\nto dazzle some insignificant cad whose whole personality they heartily\ndespise.\n\nUnder the head of _spiritual self-seeking_ ought to be included\nevery impulse towards psychic progress, whether intellectual, moral,\nor spiritual in the narrow sense of the term. It must be admitted,\nhowever, that much that commonly passes for spiritual self-seeking\nin this narrow sense is only material and social self-seeking beyond\nthe grave. In the Mohammedan desire for paradise and the Christian\naspiration not to be damned in hell, the materiality of the goods\nsought is undisguised. In the more positive and refined view of heaven\nmany of its goods, the fellowship of the saints and of our dead ones,\nand the presence of God, are but social goods of the most exalted kind.\nIt is only the search of the redeemed inward nature, the spotlessness\nfrom sin, whether here or hereafter, that can count as spiritual\nself-seeking pure and undefined.\n\nBut this broad external review of the facts of the life of the Self\nwill be incomplete without some account of the\n\n\nRIVALRY AND CONFLICT OF THE DIFFERENT SELVES.\n\n\nWith most objects of desire, physical nature restricts our choice to\nbut one of many represented goods, and even so it is here. I am often\nconfronted by the necessity of standing by one of my empirical selves\nand relinquishing the rest. Not that I would not, if I could, be both\nhandsome and fat and well dressed, and a great athlete, and make a\nmillion a year, be a wit, a _bon-vivant_, and a lady-killer, as well\nas a philosopher; a philanthropist, statesman, warrior, and African\nexplorer, as well as a 'tone-poet' and saint. But the thing is simply\nimpossible. The millionaire's work would run counter to the saint's;\nthe _bon-vivant_ and the philanthropist would trip each other up; the\nphilosopher and the lady-killer could not well keep house in the same\ntenement of clay. Such different characters may conceivably at the\noutset of life be alike _possible_ to a man. But to make any one of\nthem actual, the rest must more or less be suppressed. So the seeker\nof his truest, strongest, deepest self must review the list carefully,\nand pick out the one on which to stake his salvation. All other selves\nthereupon become unreal, but the fortunes of this self are real. Its\nfailures are real failures, its triumphs real triumphs, carrying shame\nand gladness with them. This is as strong an example as there is of\nthat selective industry of the mind on which I insisted some pages back\n(p. 284 ff.). Our thought, incessantly deciding, among many things of\na kind, which ones for it shall be realities, here chooses one of many\npossible selves or characters, and forthwith reckons it no shame to\nfail in any of those not adopted expressly as its own.\n\nI, who for the time have staked my all on being a psychologist,\nam mortified if others know much more psychology than I. But I am\ncontented to wallow in the grossest ignorance of Greek. My deficiencies\nthere give me no sense of personal humiliation at all. Had I\n'pretensions' to be a linguist, it would have been just the reverse.\nSo we have the paradox of a man shamed to death because he is only the\nsecond pugilist or the second oarsman in the world. That he is able to\nbeat the whole population of the globe minus one is nothing; he has\n'pitted' himself to beat that one; and as long as he doesn't do that\nnothing else counts. He is to his own regard as if he were not, indeed\nhe _is_ not.\n\nYonder puny fellow, however, whom every one can beat, suffers no\nchagrin about it, for he has long ago abandoned the attempt to 'carry\nthat line,' as the merchants say, of self at all. With no attempt\nthere can be no failure; with no failure no humiliation. So our\nself-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we _back_ ourselves\nto be and do. It is determined by the ratio of our actualities to our\nsupposed potentialities; a fraction of which our pretensions are the\ndenominator and the numerator our success: thus, Self-esteem = Success/\nPretensions. Such a fraction may be increased as well by diminishing\nthe denominator as by increasing the numerator.[264] To give up\npretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them gratified; and where\ndisappointment is incessant, and the struggle unending, this is what\nmen will always do. The history of evangelical theology, with its\nconviction of sin, its self-despair, and its abandonment of salvation\nby works, is the deepest of possible examples, but we meet others in\nevery walk of life. There is the strangest lightness about the heart\nwhen one's nothingness in a particular line is once accepted in good\nfaith. _All_ is not bitterness in the lot of the lover sent away by\nthe final inexorable 'No.' Many Bostonians, _crede experto_ (and\ninhabitants of other cities, too, I fear), would be happier women and\nmen to-day, if they could once for all abandon the notion of keeping up\na Musical Self, and without shame let people hear them call a symphony\na nuisance. How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be\nyoung,--or slender! Thank God! we say, _those_ illusions are gone.\nEverything added to the Self is a burden as well as a pride. A certain\nman who lost every penny during our civil war went and actually rolled\nin the dust, saying he had not felt so free and happy since he was born.\n\nOnce more, then, our self-feeling is in our power. As Carlyle says:\n\"Make thy claim of wages a zero, then hast thou the world under\nthy feet. Well did the wisest of our time write, it is only with\n_renunciation_ that life, properly speaking, can be said to begin.\"\n\nNeither threats nor pleadings can move a man unless they touch some\none of his potential or actual selves. Only thus can we, as a rule,\nget a 'purchase' on another's will. The first care of diplomatists and\nmonarchs and all who wish to rule or influence is, accordingly, to\nfind out their victim's strongest principle of self-regard, so as to\nmake that the fulcrum of all appeals. But if a man has given up those\nthings which are subject to foreign fate, and ceased to regard them as\nparts of himself at all, we are well-nigh powerless over him. The Stoic\nreceipt for contentment was to dispossess yourself in advance of all\nthat was out of your own power,--then fortune's shocks might rain down\nunfelt. Epictetus exhorts us, by thus narrowing and at the same time\nsolidifying our Self to make it invulnerable: \"I must die; well, but\nmust I die groaning too? I will speak what appears to be right, and if\nthe despot says, then I will put you to death, I will reply, 'When did\nI ever tell you that I was immortal? You will do your part and I mine;\nit is yours to kill and mine to die intrepid; yours to banish, mine to\ndepart untroubled.' How do we act in a voyage? We choose the pilot, the\nsailors, the hour. Afterwards comes a storm. What have I to care for?\nMy part is performed. This matter belongs to the pilot. But the ship is\nsinking; what then have I to do? That which alone I can do--submit to\nbeing drowned without fear, without clamor or accusing of God, but as\none who knows that what is born must likewise die.\"[265]\n\nThis Stoic fashion, though efficacious and heroic enough in its\nplace and time, is, it must be confessed, only possible as an\nhabitual mood of the soul to narrow and unsympathetic characters. It\nproceeds altogether by exclusion. If I am a Stoic, the goods I cannot\nappropriate cease to be _my_ goods, and the temptation lies very near\nto deny that they are goods at all. We find this mode of protecting\nthe Self by exclusion and denial very common among people who are in\nother respects not Stoics. All narrow people _intrench_ their Me, they\n_retract_ it,--from the region of what they cannot securely possess.\nPeople who don't resemble them, or who treat them with indifference,\npeople over whom they gain no influence, are people on whose existence,\nhowever meritorious it may intrinsically be, they look with chill\nnegation, if not with positive hate. Who will not be mine I will\nexclude from existence altogether; that is, as far as I can make it\nso, such people shall be as if they were not.[266] Thus may a certain\nabsoluteness and definiteness in the outline of my Me console me for\nthe smallness of its content.\n\nSympathetic people, on the contrary, proceed by the entirely opposite\nway of expansion and inclusion. The outline of their self often gets\nuncertain enough, but for this the spread of its content more than\natones. _Nil humani a me alienum._ Let them despise this little person\nof mine, and treat me like a dog, _I_ shall not negate _them_ so long\nas I have a soul in my body. They are realities as much as I am. What\npositive good is in them shall be mine too, etc., etc. The magnanimity\nof these expansive natures is often touching indeed. Such persons\ncan feel a sort of delicate rapture in thinking that, however sick,\nill-favored, mean-conditioned, and generally forsaken they may be,\nthey yet are integral parts of the whole of this brave world, have a\nfellow's share in the strength of the dray-horses, the happiness of\nthe young people, the wisdom of the wise ones, and are not altogether\nwithout part or lot in the good fortunes of the Vanderbilts and the\nHohenzollerns themselves. Thus either by negating or by embracing,\nthe Ego may seek to establish itself in reality. He who, with Marcus\nAurelius, can truly say, \"O Universe, I wish all that thou wishest,\"\nhas a self from which every trace of negativeness and obstructiveness\nhas been removed--no wind can blow except to fill its sails.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nA tolerably unanimous opinion ranges the different selves of which a\nman may be 'seized and possessed,' and the consequent different orders\nof his self-regard, in an _hierarchical scale, with the bodily Self at\nthe bottom, the spiritual Self at top, and the extracorporeal material\nselves and the various social selves between_. Our merely natural\nself-seeking would lead us to aggrandize all these selves; we give\nup deliberately only those among them which we find we cannot keep.\nOur unselfishness is thus apt to be a 'virtue of necessity'; and it\nis not without all show of reason that cynics quote the fable of the\nfox and the grapes in describing our progress therein. But this is the\nmoral education of the race; and if we agree in the result that on the\nwhole the selves we can keep are the intrinsically best, we need not\ncomplain of being led to the knowledge of their superior worth in such\na tortuous way.\n\nOf course this is not the only way in which we learn to subordinate our\nlower selves to our higher. A direct ethical judgment unquestionably\nalso plays its part, and last, not least, we apply to our own persons\njudgments originally called forth by the acts of others. It is one\nof the strangest laws of our nature that many things which we are\nwell satisfied with in ourselves disgust us when seen in others.\nWith another man's bodily 'hoggishness' hardly anyone has any\nsympathy;--almost as little with his cupidity, his social vanity and\neagerness, his jealousy, his despotism, and his pride. Left absolutely\nto myself I should probably allow all these spontaneous tendencies\nto luxuriate in me unchecked, and it would be long before I formed\na distinct notion of the order of their subordination. But having\nconstantly to pass judgment on my associates, I come ere long to see,\nas Herr Horwicz says, my own lusts in the mirror of the lusts of\nothers, and to _think_ about them in a very different way from that in\nwhich I simply _feel_. Of course, the moral generalities which from\nchildhood have been instilled into me accelerate enormously the advent\nof this reflective judgment on myself.\n\nSo it comes to pass that, as aforesaid, men have arranged the various\nselves which they may seek in an hierarchical scale according to their\nworth. A certain amount of bodily selfishness is required as a basis\nfor all the other selves. But too much sensuality is despised, or at\nbest condoned on account of the other qualities of the individual. The\nwider material selves are regarded as higher than the immediate body.\nHe is esteemed a poor creature who is unable to forego a little meat\nand drink and warmth and sleep for the sake of getting on in the world.\nThe social self as a whole, again, ranks higher than the material self\nas a whole. We must care more for our honor, our friends, our human\nties, than for a sound skin or wealth. And the spiritual self is so\nsupremely precious that, rather than lose it, a man ought to be willing\nto give up friends and good fame, and property, and life itself.\n\n_In each kind of self, material, social, and spiritual, men distinguish\nbetween the immediate and actual, and the remote and potential,_\nbetween the narrower and the wider view, to the detriment of the former\nand advantage of the latter. One must forego a present bodily enjoyment\nfor the sake of one's general health; one must abandon the dollar in\nthe hand for the sake of the hundred dollars to come; one must make an\nenemy of his present interlocutor if thereby one makes friends of a\nmore valued circle; one must go without learning and grace, and wit,\nthe better to compass one's soul's salvation.\n\nOf all these wider, more potential selves, _the potential social self_\nis the most interesting, by reason of certain apparent paradoxes to\nwhich it leads in conduct, and by reason of its connection with our\nmoral and religious life. When for motives of honor and conscience\nI brave the condemnation of my own family, club, and 'set'; when,\nas a protestant, I turn catholic; as a catholic, freethinker; as a\n'regular practitioner,' hom\u0153opath, or what not, I am always inwardly\nstrengthened in my course and steeled against the loss of my actual\nsocial self by the thought of other and better _possible_ social\njudges than those whose verdict goes against me now. The ideal social\nself which I thus seek in appealing to their decision may be very\nremote: it may be represented as barely possible. I may not hope for\nits realization during my lifetime; I may even expect the future\ngenerations, which would approve me if they knew me, to know nothing\nabout me when I am dead and gone. Yet still the emotion that beckons\nme on is indubitably the pursuit of an ideal social self, of a self\nthat is at least _worthy_ of approving recognition by the highest\n_possible_ judging companion, if such companion there be.[267] This\nself is the true, the intimate, the ultimate, the permanent Me which\nI seek. This judge is God, the Absolute Mind, the 'Great Companion.'\nWe hear, in these days of scientific enlightenment, a great deal of\ndiscussion about the efficacy of prayer; and many reasons are given us\nwhy we should not pray, whilst others are given us why we should. But\nin all this very little is said of the reason why we _do_ pray, which\nis simply that we cannot _help_ praying. It seems probable that, in\nspite of all that 'science' may do to the contrary, men will continue\nto pray to the end of time, unless their mental nature changes in a\nmanner which nothing we know should lead us to expect. The impulse to\npray is a necessary consequence of the fact that whilst the innermost\nof the empirical selves of a man is a Self of the _social_ sort, it yet\ncan find its only adequate _Socius_ in an ideal world.\n\nAll progress in the social Self is the substitution of higher tribunals\nfor lower; this ideal tribunal is the highest; and most men, either\ncontinually or occasionally, carry a reference to it in their breast.\nThe humblest outcast on this earth can feel himself to be real and\nvalid by means of this higher recognition. And, on the other hand, for\nmost of us, a world with no such inner refuge when the outer social\nself failed and dropped from us would be the abyss of horror. I say\n'for most of us,' because it is probable that individuals differ a\ngood deal in the degree in which they are haunted by this sense of an\nideal spectator. It is a much more essential part of the consciousness\nof some men than of others. Those who have the most of it are possibly\nthe most _religious_ men. But I am sure that even those who say they\nare altogether without it deceive themselves, and really have it in\nsome degree. Only a non-gregarious animal could be completely without\nit. Probably no one can make sacrifices for 'right,' without to some\ndegree personifying the principle of right for which the sacrifice is\nmade, and expecting thanks from it. _Complete_ social unselfishness,\nin other words, can hardly exist; _complete_ social suicide hardly\noccur to a man's mind. Even such texts as Job's, \"Though He slay me\nyet will I trust Him,\" or Marcus Aurelius's, \"If gods hate me and my\nchildren, there is a reason for it,\" can least of all be cited to\nprove the contrary. For beyond all doubt Job revelled in the thought\nof Jehovah's recognition of the worship after the slaying should have\nbeen done; and the Roman emperor felt sure the Absolute Reason would\nnot be all indifferent to his acquiescence in the gods' dislike. The\nold test of piety, \"Are you willing to be damned for the glory of\nGod?\" was probably never answered in the affirmative except by those\nwho felt sure in their heart of hearts that God would 'credit' them\nwith their willingness, and set more store by them thus than if in His\nunfathomable scheme He had not damned them at all.\n\nAll this about the impossibility of suicide is said on the supposition\nof _positive_ motives. When possessed by the emotion of _fear_,\nhowever, we are in a _negative_ state of mind; that is, our desire is\nlimited to the mere banishing of something, without regard to what\nshall take its place. In this state of mind there can unquestionably be\ngenuine thoughts, and genuine acts, of suicide, spiritual and social,\nas well as bodily. Anything, _anything_, at such times, so as to escape\nand not to be! But such conditions of suicidal frenzy are pathological\nin their nature and run dead against everything that is regular in the\nlife of the Self in man.\n\n\nWHAT SELF IS LOVED IN 'SELF-LOVE'?\n\n\nWe must now try to interpret the facts of self-love and self-seeking a\nlittle more delicately from within.\n\nA man in whom self-seeking of any sort is largely developed is said to\nbe selfish.[268] He is on the other hand called unselfish if he shows\nconsideration for the interests of other selves than his own. Now what\nis the intimate _nature_ of the selfish emotion in him? and what is\nthe primary _object_ of its regard? We have described him pursuing and\nfostering as his self first one set of things and then another; we have\nseen the same set of facts gain or lose interest in his eyes, leave him\nindifferent, or fill him either with triumph or despair according as\nhe made pretensions to appropriate them, treated them as if they were\npotentially or actually parts of himself, or not. We know how little\nit matters to us whether _some_ man, a man taken at large and in the\nabstract, prove a failure or succeed in life,--he may be hanged for\naught we care,--but we know the utter momentousness and terribleness\nof the alternative when the man is the one whose name we ourselves\nbear. _I_ must not be a failure, is the very loudest of the voices\nthat clamor in each of our breasts: let fail who may, _I_ at least\nmust succeed. Now the first conclusion which these facts suggest is\nthat each of us is animated by a _direct feeling of regard for his own\npure principle of individual existence_, whatever that may be, taken\nmerely as such. It appears as if all our concrete manifestations of\nselfishness might be the conclusions of as many syllogisms, each with\nthis principle as the subject of its major premiss, thus: Whatever is\nme is precious; this is me; therefore this is precious; whatever is\nmine must not fail; this is mine; therefore this must not fail, etc.\nIt appears, I say, as if this principle inoculated all it touched with\nits own intimate quality of worth; as if, previous to the touching,\neverything might be matter of indifference, and nothing interesting in\nits own right; as if my regard for my own body even were an interest\nnot simply in this body, but in this body only so far as it is mine.\n\nBut what is this abstract numerical principle of identity, this\n'Number One' within me, for which, according to proverbial philosophy,\nI am supposed to keep so constant a 'lookout'? Is it the inner nucleus\nof my spiritual self, that collection of obscurely felt 'adjustments,'\n_plus_ perhaps that still more obscurely perceived subjectivity as\nsuch, of which we recently spoke? Or is it perhaps the concrete stream\nof my thought in its entirety, or some one section of the same? Or\nmay it be the indivisible Soul-Substance, in which, according to the\northodox tradition, my faculties inhere? Or, finally, can it be the\nmere pronoun I? Surely it is none of these things, that self for which\nI feel such hot regard. Though all of them together were put within\nme, I should still be cold, and fail to exhibit anything worthy of the\nname of selfishness or of devotion to 'Number One.' To have a self\nthat I can _care for_, nature must first present me with some _object_\ninteresting enough to make me instinctively wish to appropriate it for\nits _own_ sake, and out of it to manufacture one of those material,\nsocial, or spiritual selves, which we have already passed in review.\nWe shall find that all the facts of rivalry and substitution that have\nso struck us, all the shiftings and expansions and contractions of\nthe sphere of what shall be considered me and mine, are but results\nof the fact that certain _things_ appeal to primitive and instinctive\nimpulses of our nature, and that we follow their destinies with an\nexcitement that owes nothing to a reflective source. These objects our\nconsciousness treats as the primordial constituents of its Me. Whatever\nother objects, whether by association with the fate of these, or in any\nother way, come to be followed with the same sort of interest, form our\nremoter and more secondary self. _The words_ ME, _then, and_ SELF, _so\nfar as they arouse feeling and connote emotional worth, are_ OBJECTIVE\n_designations, meaning_ ALL THE THINGS _which have the power to produce\nin a stream of consciousness excitement of a certain peculiar sort._\nLet us try to justify this proposition in detail.\n\nThe most palpable selfishness of a man is his bodily selfishness;\nand his most palpable self is the body to which that selfishness\nrelates. Now I say that he identifies himself with this body because\nhe loves _it_, and that he does not love it because he finds it to be\nidentified with himself. Reverting to natural history-psychology will\nhelp us to see the truth of this. In the chapter on Instincts we shall\nlearn that every creature has a certain selective interest in certain\nportions of the world, and that this interest is as often connate as\nacquired. Our _interest in things_ means the attention and emotion\nwhich the thought of them will excite, and the actions which their\npresence will evoke. Thus every species is particularly interested in\nits own prey or food, its own enemies, its own sexual mates, and its\nown young. These things fascinate by their intrinsic power to do so;\nthey are cared for for their own sakes.\n\nWell, it stands not in the least otherwise with our bodies. They\ntoo are percepts in our objective field--they are simply the most\ninteresting percepts there. What happens to them excites in us emotions\nand tendencies to action more energetic and habitual than any which\nare excited by other portions of the 'field.' What my comrades call\nmy bodily selfishness or self-love, is nothing but the sum of all the\nouter acts which this interest in my body spontaneously draws from me.\nMy 'selfishness' is here but a descriptive name for grouping together\nthe outward symptoms which I show. When I am led by self-love to keep\nmy seat whilst ladies stand, or to grab something first and cut out\nmy neighbor, what I really love is the comfortable seat, is the thing\nitself which I grab. I love them primarily, as the mother loves her\nbabe, or a generous man an heroic deed. Wherever, as here, self-seeking\nis the outcome of simple instinctive propensity, it is but a name\nfor certain reflex acts. Something rivets my attention fatally, and\nfatally provokes the 'selfish' response. Could an automaton be so\nskilfully constructed as to ape these acts, it would be called selfish\nas properly as I. It is true that I am no automaton, but a thinker. But\nmy thoughts, like my acts, are here concerned only with the outward\nthings. They need neither know nor care for any pure principle within.\nIn fact the more utterly 'selfish' I am in this primitive way, the more\nblindly absorbed my thought will be in the objects and impulses of my\nlusts, and the more devoid of any inward looking glance. A baby, whose\nconsciousness of the pure Ego, of himself as a thinker, is not usually\nsupposed developed, is, in this way, as some German has said, '_der\nvollendeteste Egoist_.' His corporeal person, and what ministers to its\nneeds, are the only self he can possibly be said to love. His so-called\nself-love is but a name for his insensibility to all but this one set\nof things. It may be that he needs a pure principle of subjectivity,\na soul or pure Ego (he certainly needs a stream of thought) to make\nhim sensible at all to anything, to make him discriminate and love\n_\u00fcberhaupt_,--how that may be, we shall see ere long; but this pure\nEgo, which would then be the _condition_ of his loving, need no more\nbe the _object_ of his love than it need be the object of his thought.\nIf his interests lay altogether in other bodies than his own, if all\nhis instincts were altruistic and all his acts suicidal, still he\nwould need a principle of _consciousness_ just as he does now. Such a\nprinciple cannot then be the principle of his bodily _selfishness_ any\nmore than it is the principle of any other tendency he may show.\n\nSo much for the bodily self-love. But my _social_ self-love, my\ninterest in the images other men have framed of me, is also an interest\nin a set of objects external to my thought. These thoughts in other\nmen's minds are out of my mind and 'ejective' to me. They come and go,\nand grow and dwindle, and I am puffed up with pride, or blush with\nshame, at the result, just as at my success or failure in the pursuit\nof a material thing. So that here again, just as in the former case,\nthe pure principle seems out of the game as an _object_ of regard, and\npresent only as the general form or condition under which the regard\nand the thinking go on in me at all.\n\nBut, it will immediately be objected, this is giving a mutilated\naccount of the facts. Those images of me in the minds of other men\nare, it is true, things outside of me, whose changes I perceive just\nas I perceive any other outward change. But the pride and shame which\nI feel are not concerned merely with _those_ changes. I feel as if\nsomething else had changed too, when I perceive my image in your mind\nto have changed for the worse, something in me to which that image\nbelongs, and which a moment ago I felt inside of me, big and strong\nand lusty, but now weak, contracted, and collapsed. Is not this latter\nchange the change I feel the shame about? Is not the condition of this\nthing inside of me the proper object of my egoistic concern, of my\nself-regard? And is it not, after all, my pure Ego, my bare numerical\nprinciple of distinction from other men, and no empirical part of me at\nall?\n\nNo, it is no such pure principle, it is simply my total empirical\nselfhood again, my historic Me, a collection of objective facts, to\nwhich the depreciated image in your mind 'belongs.' In what capacity\nis it that I claim and demand a respectful greeting from you instead\nof this expression of disdain? It is not as being a bare I that\nI claim it; it is as being an I who has always been treated with\nrespect, who belongs to a certain family and 'set,' who has certain\npowers, possessions, and public functions, sensibilities, duties,\nand purposes, and merits and deserts. All this is what your disdain\nnegates and contradicts; this is 'the thing inside of me' whose changed\ntreatment I feel the shame about; this is what was lusty, and now, in\nconsequence of your conduct, is collapsed; and this certainly is an\nempirical objective thing. Indeed, the thing that is felt modified\nand changed for the worse during my feeling of shame is often more\nconcrete even than this,--it is simply my bodily person, in which\nyour conduct immediately and without any reflection at all on my\npart works those muscular, glandular, and vascular changes which\ntogether make up the 'expression' of shame. In this instinctive,\nreflex sort of shame, the body is just as much the entire vehicle of\nthe self-feeling as, in the coarser cases which we first took up, it\nwas the vehicle of the self-seeking. As, in simple 'hoggishness,' a\nsucculent morsel gives rise, by the reflex mechanism, to behavior which\nthe bystanders find 'greedy,' and consider to flow from a certain sort\nof 'self-regard;' so here your disdain gives rise, by a mechanism\nquite as reflex and immediate, to another sort of behavior, which the\nbystanders call 'shame-faced' and which they consider due to another\nkind of self-regard. But in both cases there may be no particular self\n_regarded_ at all by the mind: and the name self-regard may be only a\ndescriptive title imposed from without the reflex acts themselves, and\nthe feelings that immediately result from their discharge.\n\nAfter the bodily and social selves come the spiritual. But which\nof my spiritual selves do I really care for? My Soul-substance? my\n'transcendental Ego, or Thinker'? my pronoun I? my subjectivity as\nsuch? my nucleus of cephalic adjustments? or my more phenomenal and\nperishable powers, my loves and hates, willingnesses and sensibilities,\nand the like? Surely the latter. But they, relatively to the central\nprinciple, whatever it may be, are external and objective. They come\nand go, and it remains--\"so shakes the magnet, and so stands the pole.\"\nIt may indeed have to be there for them to be loved, but being there is\nnot identical with being loved itself.\n\nTo sum up, then, _we see no reason to suppose that 'self-love' is\nprimarily, or secondarily, or ever, love for one's mere principle of\nconscious identity._ It is always love for something which, as compared\nwith that principle, is superficial, transient, liable to be taken up\nor dropped at will.\n\nAnd zoological psychology again comes to the aid of our understanding\nand shows us that this must needs be so. In fact, in answering the\nquestion what things it is that a man loves in his self-love, we have\nimplicitly answered the farther question, of why he loves them.\n\nUnless his consciousness were something more than cognitive, unless\nit experienced a partiality for certain of the objects, which, in\nsuccession, occupy its ken, it could not long maintain itself in\nexistence; for, by an inscrutable necessity, each human mind's\nappearance on this earth is conditioned upon the integrity of the body\nwith which it belongs, upon the treatment which that body gets from\nothers, and upon the spiritual dispositions which use it as their\ntool, and lead it either towards longevity or to destruction. _Its own\nbody, then, first of all, its friends next, and finally its spiritual\ndispositions,_ MUST _be the supremely interesting_ OBJECTS _for each\nhuman mind._ Each mind, to begin with, must have a certain minimum\nof selfishness in the shape of instincts of bodily self-seeking in\norder to exist. This minimum must be there as a basis for all farther\nconscious acts, whether of self-negation or of a selfishness more\nsubtle still. All minds must have come, by the way of the survival of\nthe fittest, if by no directer path, to take an intense interest in the\nbodies to which they are yoked, altogether apart from any interest in\nthe pure Ego which they also possess.\n\nAnd similarly with the images of their person in the minds of others.\nI should not be extant now had I not become sensitive to looks of\napproval or disapproval on the faces among which my life is cast.\nLooks of contempt cast on other persons need affect me in no such\npeculiar way. Were my mental life dependent exclusively on some other\nperson's welfare, either directly or in an indirect way, then natural\nselection would unquestionably have brought it about that I should\nbe as sensitive to the social vicissitudes of that other person as I\nnow am to my own. Instead of being egoistic I should be spontaneously\naltruistic, then. But in this case, only partially realized in actual\nhuman conditions, though the self I empirically love would have\nchanged, my pure Ego or Thinker would have to remain just what it is\nnow.\n\nMy spiritual powers, again, must interest me more than those of other\npeople, and for the same reason. I should not be here at all unless I\nhad cultivated them and kept them from decay. And the same law which\nmade me once care for them makes me care for them still.\n\n_My own body and what ministers to its needs are thus the primitive\nobject, instinctively determined, of my egoistic interests. Other\nobjects may become interesting derivatively_ through association with\nany of these things, either as means or as habitual concomitants; _and\nso in a thousand ways the primitive sphere of the egoistic emotions may\nenlarge_ and change its boundaries.\n\nThis sort of interest is really the _meaning of the word 'my.'_\nWhatever has it is _eo ipso_ a part of me. My child, my friend dies,\nand where he goes I feel that part of myself now is and evermore shall\nbe:\n\n    \"For this losing is true dying;\n    This is lordly man's down-lying;\n    This his slow but sure reclining,\n    Star by star his world resigning.\"\n\nThe fact remains, however, that certain special sorts of thing tend\nprimordially to possess this interest, and form the _natural_ me. But\nall these things are _objects_, properly so called, to the subject\nwhich does the thinking.[269] And this latter fact upsets at once the\ndictum of the old-fashioned sensationalist psychology, that altruistic\npassions and interests are contradictory to the nature of things,\nand that if they appear anywhere to exist, it must be as secondary\nproducts, resolvable at bottom into cases of selfishness, taught by\nexperience a hypocritical disguise. If the zoological and evolutionary\npoint of view is the true one, there is no reason why any object\nwhatever _might_ not arouse passion and interest as primitively and\ninstinctively as any other, whether connected or not with the interests\nof the me. The phenomenon of passion is in origin and essence the\nsame, whatever be the target upon which it is discharged; and what the\ntarget actually happens to be is solely a question of fact. I might\nconceivably be as much fascinated, and as primitively so, by the care\nof my neighbor's body as by the care of my own. The only check to\nsuch exuberant altruistic interests is natural selection, which would\nweed out such as were very harmful to the individual or to his tribe.\nMany such interests, however, remain unweeded out--the interest in\nthe opposite sex, for example, which seems in mankind stronger than\nis called for by its utilitarian need; and alongside of them remain\ninterests, like that in alcoholic intoxication, or in musical sounds,\nwhich, for aught we can see, are without any utility whatever. The\nsympathetic instincts and the egoistic ones are thus co-ordinate. They\narise, so far as we can tell, on the same psychologic level. The only\ndifference between them is, that the instincts called egoistic form\nmuch the larger mass.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe only author whom I know to have discussed the question whether the\n'pure Ego,' _per se_, can be an object of regard, is Herr Horwicz,\nin his extremely able and acute _Psychologische Analysen_. He too\nsays that all self-regard is regard for certain objective things. He\ndisposes so well of one kind of objection that I must conclude by\nquoting a part of his own words:\n\nFirst, the objection:\n\n \"The fact is indubitable that one's own children always pass for\n the prettiest and brightest, the wine from one's own cellar for the\n best--at least for its price,--one's own house and horses for the\n finest. With what tender admiration do we con over our own little\n deed of benevolence! our own frailties and misdemeanors, how ready\n we are to acquit ourselves for them, when we notice them at all, on\n the ground of 'extenuating circumstances'! How much more really comic\n are our own jokes than those of others, which, unlike ours, will not\n bear being repeated ten or twelve times over! How eloquent, striking,\n powerful, our own speeches are! How appropriate our own address! In\n short, how much more intelligent, soulful, better, is everything about\n us than in anyone else. The sad chapter of artists' and authors'\n conceit and vanity belongs here.\n\n \"The prevalence of this obvious preference which we feel for\n everything of our own is indeed striking. Does it not look as if our\n dear Ego must first lend its color and flavor to anything in order to\n make it please us?... Is it not the simplest explanation for all these\n phenomena, so consistent among themselves, to suppose that the Ego,\n the self, which forms the origin and centre of our _thinking_ life,\n is at the same time the original and central object of our life of\n feeling, and the ground both of whatever special ideas and of whatever\n special feelings ensue?\"\n\nHerr Horwicz goes on to refer to what we have already noticed, that\nvarious things which disgust us in others do not disgust us at all in\nourselves.\n\n \"To most of us even the bodily warmth of another, for example the\n chair warm from another's sitting, is felt unpleasantly, whereas there\n is nothing disagreeable in the warmth of the chair in which we have\n been sitting ourselves.\"\n\nAfter some further remarks, he replies to these facts and reasonings as\nfollows;\n\n \"We may with confidence affirm that our own possessions in most cases\n please us better [not because they are ours], but simply because we\n know them better, 'realize' them more intimately, feel them more\n deeply. We learn to appreciate what is ours in all its details and\n shadings, whilst the goods of others appear to us in coarse outlines\n and rude averages. Here are some examples: A piece of music which\n one plays one's self is heard and understood better than when it is\n played by another. We get more exactly all the details, penetrate\n more deeply into the musical thought. We may meanwhile perceive\n perfectly well that the other person is the better performer, and\n yet nevertheless--at times--get more enjoyment from our own playing\n because it brings the melody and harmony so much nearer home to\n us. This case may almost be taken as typical for the other cases of\n self-love. On close examination, we shall almost always find that a\n great part of our feeling about what is ours is due to the fact that\n we _live closer_ to our own things, and so feel them more thoroughly\n and deeply. As a friend of mine was about to marry, he often bored me\n by the repeated and minute way in which he would discuss the details\n of his new household arrangements. I wondered that so intellectual a\n man should be so deeply interested in things of so external a nature.\n But as I entered, a few years later, the same condition myself, these\n matters acquired for me an entirely different interest, and it became\n my turn to turn them over and talk of them unceasingly.... The reason\n was simply this, that in the first instance I _understood_ nothing\n of these things and their importance for domestic comfort, whilst in\n the latter ease they came home to me with irresistible urgency, and\n vividly took possession of my fancy. So it is with many a one who\n mocks at decorations and titles, until he gains one himself. And this\n is also surely the reason why one's own portrait or reflection in the\n mirror is so peculiarly interesting a thing to contemplate ... not\n on account of any absolute '_c'est moi_,' but just as with the music\n played by ourselves. What greets our eyes is what we know best, most\n deeply understand; because we ourselves have felt it and lived through\n it. We know what has ploughed these furrows, deepened these shadows,\n blanched this hair; and other faces may be handsomer, but none can\n speak to us or interest us like this.\"[270]\n\nMoreover, this author goes on to show that our own things are _fuller_\nfor us than those of others because of the memories they awaken and\nthe practical hopes and expectations they arouse. This alone would\nemphasize them, apart from any value derived from their belonging\nto ourselves. We may conclude with him, then, that _an original\ncentral self-feeling can never explain the passionate warmth of our\nself-regarding emotions, which must, on the contrary, be addressed\ndirectly to special things less abstract and empty of content. To these\nthings the name of 'self' may be given, or to our conduct towards them\nthe name of 'selfishness,' but neither in the self nor the selfishness\ndoes the pure Thinker play the 'title-role.'_\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOnly one more point connected with our self-regard need be mentioned.\nWe have spoken of it so far as active instinct or emotion. It remains\nto speak of it as cold _intellectual self-estimation_. We may weigh our\nown Me in the balance of praise and blame as easily as we weigh other\npeople,--though with difficulty quite as fairly. The _just_ man is the\none who can weigh himself impartially. Impartial weighing presupposes\na rare faculty of abstraction from the vividness with which, as\nHerr Horwicz has pointed out, things known as intimately as our own\npossessions and performances appeal to our imagination; and an equally\nrare power of vividly representing the affairs of others. But, granting\nthese rare powers, there is no reason why a man should not pass\njudgment on himself quite as objectively and well as on anyone else. No\nmatter how he _feels_ about himself, unduly elated or unduly depressed,\nhe may still truly _know_ his own worth by measuring it by the outward\nstandard he applies to other men, and counteract the injustice of\nthe feeling he cannot wholly escape. This self-measuring process has\nnothing to do with the instinctive self-regard we have hitherto been\ndealing with. Being merely one application of intellectual comparison,\nit need no longer detain us here. Please note again, however, how\nthe pure Ego appears merely as the vehicle in which the estimation\nis carried on, the objects estimated being all of them facts of an\nempirical sort,[271] one's body, one's credit, one' fame, one's\nintellectual ability, one's goodness, or whatever the case may be.\n\nThe empirical life of Self is divided, as below, into\n\n            MATERIAL.           SOCIAL.                  SPIRITUAL.\n\nSELF-       Bodily Appetites    Desire to please, be     Intellectual, Moral\nSEEKING.    and Instincts       noticed, admired, etc.   and Religious\n            Love of Adornment,  Sociability, Emulation,  Aspiration,\n            Foppery,            Envy, Love,              Conscientiousness.\n            Acquisitiveness,    Pursuit of Honor,\n            Constructiveness,   Ambition, etc.\n            Love of Home, etc.\n\nSELF-       Personal Vanity,    Social and Family        Sense of Moral or\nESTIMATION. Modesty, etc.       Pride, Vainglory,        Mental Superiority,\n            Pride of Wealth,    Snobbery, Humility,      Purity, etc.\n            Fear of Poverty     Shame, etc.              Sense of Inferiority\n                                                         or of Guilt\n\n\n\nTHE PURE EGO.\n\n\nHaving summed up in the above table the principal results of\nthe chapter thus far, I have said all that need be said of the\nconstituents of the phenomenal self, and of the nature of self-regard.\nOur decks are consequently cleared for the struggle with that pure\nprinciple of personal identity which has met us all along our\npreliminary exposition, but which we have always shied from and treated\nas a difficulty to be postponed. Ever since Hume's time, it has been\njustly regarded as the most puzzling puzzle with which psychology\nhas to deal; and whatever view one may espouse, one has to hold his\nposition against heavy odds. If, with the Spiritualists, one contend\nfor a substantial soul, or transcendental principle of unity, one can\ngive no positive account of what that may be. And if, with the Humians,\none deny such a principle and say that the stream of passing thoughts\nis all, one runs against the entire common-sense of mankind, of which\nthe belief in a distinct principle of selfhood seems an integral part.\nWhatever solution be adopted in the pages to come, we may as well make\nup our minds in advance that it will fail to satisfy the majority of\nthose to whom it is addressed. The best way of approaching the matter\nwill be to take up first--\n\n\n_The Sense of Personal Identity._\n\nIn the last chapter it was stated in as radical a way as possible that\nthe thoughts which we actually know to exist do not fly about loose,\nbut seem each to belong to some one thinker and not to another. Each\nthought, out of a multitude of other thoughts of which it may think, is\nable to distinguish those which belong to its own Ego from those which\ndo not. The former have a warmth and intimacy about them of which the\nlatter are completely devoid, being merely conceived, in a cold and\nforeign fashion, and not appearing as blood-relatives, bringing their\ngreetings to us from out of the past.\n\nNow this consciousness of personal sameness may be treated either as\na subjective phenomenon or as an objective deliverance, as a feeling,\nor as a truth. We may explain how one bit of thought can come to judge\nother bits to belong to the same Ego with itself; or we may criticise\nits judgment and decide how far it may tally with the nature of things.\n\nAs a mere subjective phenomenon the judgment presents no difficulty or\nmystery peculiar to itself. It belongs to the great class of judgments\nof sameness; and there is nothing more remarkable in making a judgment\nof sameness in the first person than in the second or the third. The\nintellectual operations seem essentially alike, whether I say 'I am the\nsame,' or whether I say 'the pen is the same, as yesterday.' It is as\neasy to think this as to think the opposite and say 'neither I nor the\npen is the same.'\n\nThis sort of _bringing of things together into the object of a single\njudgment_ is of course essential to all thinking. The things are\nconjoined _in_ the thought, whatever may be the relation in which they\nappear to the thought. The thinking them is _thinking_ them together,\neven if only with the result of judging that they do not _belong_\ntogether. This sort of _subjective synthesis_, essential to knowledge\nas such (whenever it has a complex object), must not be confounded with\n_objective synthesis_ or union instead of difference or disconnection,\nknown among the things.[272] The subjective synthesis thesis is\ninvolved in thought's mere existence. Even a really disconnected world\ncould only be _known_ to be such by having its parts temporarily united\nin the Object of some pulse of consciousness.[273]\n\nThe sense of personal identity is not, then, this mere synthetic form\nessential to all thought. It is the sense of a sameness perceived _by_\nthought and predicated of things _thought-about_. These things are a\npresent self and a self of yesterday. The thought not only thinks them\nboth, but thinks that they are identical. The psychologist, looking on\nand playing the critic, might prove the thought wrong, and show there\nwas no real identity,--there might have been no yesterday, or, at any\nrate, no self of yesterday; or, if there were, the sameness predicated\nmight not obtain, or might be predicated on insufficient grounds. In\neither case the personal identity would not exist as a _fact_; but it\nwould exist as a _feeling_ all the same; the consciousness of it by\nthe thought would be there, and the psychologist would still have to\nanalyze that, and show where its illusoriness lay. Let us now be the\npsychologist and see whether it be right or wrong when it says, _I am\nthe same self that I was yesterday_.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe may immediately call it right and intelligible so far as it posits\na past time with past thoughts or selves contained therein--these\nwere data which we assumed at the outset of the book. Right also and\nintelligible so far as it thinks of a present self--that present self\nwe have just studied in its various forms. The only question for us is\nas to what the consciousness may mean when it calls the present self\nthe _same_ with one of the past selves which it has in mind.\n\nWe spoke a moment since of warmth and intimacy. This leads us to the\nanswer sought. For, whatever the thought we are criticising may think\nabout its present self, that self comes to its acquaintance, or is\nactually felt, with warmth and intimacy. Of course this is the case\nwith the _bodily_ part of it; we feel the whole cubic mass of our body\nall the while, it gives us an unceasing sense of personal existence.\nEqually do we feel the inner 'nucleus of the spiritual self,' either\nin the shape of yon faint physiological adjustments, or (adopting the\nuniversal psychological belief), in that of the pure activity of our\nthought taking place as such. Our remoter spiritual, material, and\nsocial selves, so far as they are realized, come also with a glow\nand a warmth; for the thought of them infallibly brings some degree\nof organic emotion in the shape of quickened heart-beats, oppressed\nbreathing, or some other alteration, even though it be a slight one,\nin the general bodily tone. The character of 'warmth,' then, in the\npresent self, reduces itself to either of two things,--something in the\nfeeling which we have of the thought itself, as thinking, or else the\nfeeling of the body's actual existence at the moment,--or finally to\nboth. We cannot realize our present self without simultaneously feeling\none or other of these two things. Any other fact which brings these two\nthings with it into consciousness will be thought with a warmth and an\nintimacy like those which cling to the present self.\n\nAny _distant_ self which fulfils this condition will be thought with\nsuch warmth and intimacy. But which distant selves _do_ fulfil the\ncondition, when represented?\n\nObviously those, and only those, which fulfilled it when they were\nalive. _Them_ we shall imagine with the animal warmth upon them, to\nthem may possibly cling the aroma, the echo of the thinking taken in\nthe act. And by a natural consequence, we shall assimilate them to each\nother and to the warm and intimate self we now feel within us as we\nthink, and separate them as a collection from whatever selves have not\nthis mark, much as out of a herd of cattle let loose for the winter on\nsome wide western prairie the owner picks out and sorts together when\nthe time for the round-up comes in the spring, all the beasts on which\nhe finds his own particular brand.\n\nThe various members of the collection thus set apart are felt to belong\nwith each other whenever they are thought at all. The animal warmth,\netc., is their herd-mark, the brand from which they can never more\nescape. It runs through them all like a thread through a chaplet and\nmakes them into a whole, which we treat as a unit, no matter how much\nin other ways the parts may differ _inter se_. Add to this character\nthe farther one that the distant selves appear to our thought as having\nfor hours of time been _continuous_ with each other, and the most\nrecent ones of them continuous with the Self of the present moment,\nmelting into it by slow degrees; and we get a still stronger bond of\nunion. As we think we see an identical bodily thing when, in spite of\nchanges of structure, it exists continuously before our eyes, or when,\nhowever interrupted its presence, its quality returns unchanged; so\nhere we think we experience an identical _Self_ when it appears to us\nin an analogous way. Continuity makes us unite what dissimilarity might\notherwise separate; similarity makes us unite what discontinuity might\nhold apart. And thus it is, finally, that Peter, awakening in the same\nbed with Paul, and recalling what both had in mind before they went to\nsleep, reidentifies and appropriates the 'warm' ideas as his, and is\nnever tempted to confuse them with those cold and pale-appearing ones\nwhich he ascribes to Paul. As well might he confound Paul's body, which\nhe only sees, with his own body, which he sees but also feels. Each of\nus when he awakens says, Here's the same old self again, just as he\nsays, Here's the same old bed, the same old room, the came old world.\n\n_The sense of our own personal identity, then, is exactly like any\none of our other perceptions of sameness among phenomena. It is a\nconclusion grounded either on the resemblance in a fundamental respect;\nor on the continuity before the mind, of the phenomena compared._\n\nAnd it must not be taken to mean more than these grounds warrant, or\ntreated as a sort of metaphysical or absolute Unity in which all\ndifferences are overwhelmed. The past and present selves compared are\nthe same just so far as they _are_ the same, and no farther. A uniform\nfeeling of 'warmth,' of bodily existence (or an equally uniform feeling\nof pure psychic energy?) pervades them all; and this is what gives them\na _generic_ unity, and makes them the same in _kind_. But this generic\nunity coexists with generic differences just as real as the unity.\nAnd if from the one point of view they are one self, from others they\nare as truly not one but many selves. And similarly of the attribute\nof continuity; it gives its own kind of unity to the self--that of\nmere connectedness, or unbrokenness, a perfectly definite phenomenal\nthing--but it gives not a jot or tittle more. And this unbrokenness\nin the stream of selves, like the unbrokenness in an exhibition of\n'dissolving views,' in no wise implies any farther unity or contradicts\nany amount of plurality in other respects.\n\nAnd accordingly we find that, where the resemblance and the continuity\nare no longer felt, the sense of personal identity goes too. We hear\nfrom our parents various anecdotes about our infant years, but we do\nnot appropriate them as we do our own memories. Those breaches of\ndecorum awaken no blush, those bright sayings no self-complacency.\nThat child is a foreign creature with which our present self is no\nmore identified in feeling than it is with some stranger's living\nchild to-day. Why? Partly because great time-gaps break up all these\nearly years--we cannot ascend to them by continuous memories; and\npartly because no representation of how the child _felt_ comes up with\nthe stories. We know what he said and did; but no sentiment of his\nlittle body, of his emotions, of his psychic strivings as they felt to\nhim, comes up to contribute an element of warmth and intimacy to the\nnarrative we hear, and the main bond of union with our present self\nthus disappears. It is the same with certain of our dimly-recollected\nexperiences. We hardly know whether to appropriate them or to disown\nthem as fancies, or things read or heard and not lived through. Their\nanimal heat has evaporated; the feelings that accompanied them are so\nlacking in the recall, or so different from those we now enjoy, that\nno judgment of identity can be decisively cast.\n\n_Resemblance among the parts of a continuum of feelings_ (especially\nbodily feelings) experienced along with things widely different in all\nother regards, _thus constitutes the real and verifiable 'personal\nidentity' which we feel_. There is no other identity than this in the\n'stream' of subjective consciousness which we described in the last\nchapter. Its parts differ, but under all their differences they are\nknit in these two ways; and if either way of knitting disappears,\nthe sense of unity departs. If a man wakes up some fine day unable\nto recall any of his past experiences, so that he has to learn his\nbiography afresh, or if he only recalls the facts of it in a cold\nabstract way as things that he is sure once happened; or if, without\nthis loss of memory, his bodily and spiritual habits all change during\nthe night, each organ giving a different tone, and the act of thought\nbecoming aware of itself in a different way; he _feels_, and he _says_,\nthat he is a changed person. He disowns his former me, gives himself\na new name, identifies his present life with nothing from out of the\nolder time. Such cases are not rare in mental pathology; but, as we\nstill have some reasoning to do, we had better give no concrete account\nof them until the end of the chapter.\n\nThis description of personal identity will be recognized by the\ninstructed reader as the ordinary doctrine professed by the empirical\nschool. Associationists in England and France, Herbartians in Germany,\nall describe the Self as an aggregate of which each part, as to its\n_being_, is a separate fact. So far so good, then; thus much is true\nwhatever farther things may be true; and it is to the imperishable\nglory of Hume and Herbart and their successors to have taken so much of\nthe meaning of personal identity out of the clouds and made of the Self\nan empirical and verifiable thing.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBut in leaving the matter here, and saying that this sum of passing\nthings is all, these writers have neglected certain more subtle aspects\nof the Unity of Consciousness, to which we next must turn.\n\nOur recent simile of the herd of cattle will help us. It will be\nremembered that the beasts were brought together into one herd because\ntheir owner found on each of them his brand. The 'owner' symbolizes\nhere that 'section' of consciousness, or pulse of thought, which we\nhave all along represented as the vehicle of the judgment of identity;\nand the 'brand' symbolizes the characters of warmth and continuity, by\nreason of which the judgment is made. There is found a _self_-brand,\njust as there is found a herd-brand. Each brand, so far, is the mark,\nor cause of our knowing, that certain things belong-together. But if\nthe brand is the _ratio cognoscendi_ of the belonging, the belonging,\nin the case of the herd, is in turn the _ratio existendi_ of the brand.\nNo beast would be so branded unless he belonged to the owner of the\nherd. They are not his because they are branded; they are branded\nbecause they are his. So that it seems as if our description of the\nbelonging-together of the various selves, as a belonging-together which\nis merely _represented_, in a later pulse of thought, had knocked the\nbottom out of the matter, and omitted the most characteristic one of\nall the features found in the herd--a feature which common-sense finds\nin the phenomenon of personal identity as well, and for our omission\nof which she will hold us to a strict account. For common-sense\ninsists that the unity of all the selves is not a mere appearance of\nsimilarity or continuity, ascertained after the fact. She is sure that\nit involves a real belonging to a real Owner, to a pure spiritual\nentity of some kind. Relation to this entity is what makes the self's\nconstituents stick together as they do for thought. The individual\nbeasts do not stick together, for all that they wear the same brand.\nEach wanders with whatever accidental mates it finds. The herd's unity\nis only potential, its centre ideal, like the 'centre of gravity'\nin physics, until the herdsman or owner comes. He furnishes a real\ncentre of accretion to which the beasts are driven and by which they\nare held. The beasts stick together by sticking severally to him.\nJust so, common-sense insists, there must be a real proprietor in the\ncase of the selves, or else their actual accretion into a 'personal\nconsciousness' would never have taken place. To the usual empiricist\nexplanation of personal consciousness this is a formidable reproof,\nbecause all the individual thoughts and feelings which have succeeded\neach other 'up to date' are represented by ordinary Associationism\nas in some inscrutable way 'integrating' or gumming themselves\ntogether on their own account, and thus fusing into a stream. All the\nincomprehensibilities which in Chapter VI we saw to attach to the idea\nof things fusing without a _medium_ apply to the empiricist description\nof personal identity.\n\nBut in our own account the medium is fully assigned, the herdsman is\nthere, in the shape of something not among the things collected, but\nsuperior to them all, namely, the real, present onlooking, remembering,\n'judging thought' or identifying 'section' of the stream. This is what\ncollects,--'owns' some of the past facts which it surveys, and disowns\nthe rest,--and so makes a unity that is actualized and anchored and\ndoes not merely float in the blue air of possibility. And the reality\nof such pulses of thought, with their function of knowing, it will\nbe remembered that we did not seek to deduce or explain, but simply\nassumed them as the ultimate kind of fact that the psychologist must\nadmit to exist.\n\nBut this assumption, though it yields much, still does not yield all\nthat common-sense demands. The unity into which the Thought--as I\nshall for a time proceed to call, with a capital T, the present mental\nstate--binds the individual past facts with each other and with itself,\ndoes not exist until the Thought is there. It is as if wild cattle\nwere lassoed by a newly-created settler and then owned for the first\ntime. But the essence of the matter to common-sense is that the past\nthoughts never were wild cattle, they were always owned. The Thought\ndoes not capture them, but as soon as it comes into existence it finds\nthem already its own. How is this possible unless the Thought have a\n_substantial_ identity with a former owner,--not a mere continuity or\na resemblance, as in our account, but a _real unity_? Common-sense\nin fact would drive us to admit what we may for the moment call an\nArch-Ego, dominating the entire stream of thought and all the selves\nthat may be represented in it, as the ever self-same and changeless\nprinciple implied in their union. The 'Soul' of Metaphysics and the\n'Transcendental Ego' of the Kantian Philosophy, are, as we shall soon\nsee, but attempts to satisfy this urgent demand of common-sense. But,\nfor a time at least, we can still express without any such hypotheses\nthat appearance of never-lapsing ownership for which common-sense\ncontends.\n\nFor how would it be if the Thought, the present judging Thought,\ninstead of being in any way substantially or transcendentally identical\nwith the former owner of the past self, merely inherited his 'title,'\nand thus stood as his legal representative now? It would then, if its\nbirth coincided exactly with the death of another owner, _find_ the\npast self already its own as soon as it found it at all, and the past\nself would thus never be wild, but always owned, by a title that never\nlapsed. We can imagine a long succession of herdsmen coming rapidly\ninto possession of the same cattle by transmission of an original title\nby bequest. May not the 'title' of a collective self be passed from one\nThought to another in some analogous way?\n\nIt is a patent fact of consciousness that a transmission like this\nactually occurs. Each pulse of cognitive consciousness, each Thought,\ndies away and is replaced by another. The other, among the things it\nknows, knows its own predecessor, and finding it 'warm,' in the way we\nhave described, greets it, saying: \"Thou art _mine_, and part of the\nsame self with me.\" Each later Thought, knowing and including thus the\nThoughts which went before, is the final receptacle--and appropriating\nthem is the final owner--of all that they contain and own. Each\nThought is thus born an owner, and dies owned, transmitting whatever\nit realized as its Self to its own later proprietor. As Kant says,\nit is as if elastic balls were to have not only motion but knowledge\nof it, and a first ball were to transmit both its motion and its\nconsciousness to a second, which took both up into _its_ consciousness\nand passed them to a third, until the last ball held all that the other\nballs had held, and realized it as its own. It is this trick which the\nnascent thought has of immediately taking up the expiring thought and\n'adopting' it, which is the foundation of the appropriation of most of\nthe remoter constituents of the self. Who owns the last self owns the\nself before the last, for what possesses the possessor possesses the\npossessed.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is impossible to discover any _verifiable_ features in personal\nidentity, which this sketch does not contain, impossible to imagine\nhow any transcendent non-phenomenal sort of an Arch-Ego, were he\nthere, could shape matters to any other result, or be known in\ntime by any other fruit, than just this production of a stream of\nconsciousness each 'section' of which should know, and knowing, hug\nto itself and adopt, all those that went before,--thus standing as\nthe _representative_ of the entire past stream; and which should\nsimilarly adopt the objects already adopted by any portion of this\nspiritual stream. Such standing-as-representative, and such adopting,\nare perfectly clear phenomenal relations. The Thought which, whilst it\nknows another Thought and the Object of that Other, appropriates the\nOther and the Object which the Other appropriated, is still a perfectly\ndistinct phenomenon from that Other; it may hardly resemble it; it may\nbe far removed from it in space and time.\n\nThe only point that is obscure is the _act of appropriation_ itself.\nAlready in enumerating the constituents of the self and their rivalry,\nI had to use the word appropriate. And the quick-witted reader probably\nnoticed at the time, in hearing how one constituent was let drop and\ndisowned and another one held fast to and espoused, that the phrase\nwas meaningless unless the constituents were objects in the hands of\nsomething else. A thing cannot appropriate itself; it _is_ itself;\nand still less can it disown itself. There must be an agent of the\nappropriating and disowning; but that agent we have already named.\nIt is the Thought to whom the various 'constituents' are known. That\nThought is a vehicle of choice as well as of cognition; and among the\nchoices it makes are these appropriations, or repudiations, of its\n'own.' But the Thought never is an object in its own hands, it never\nappropriates or disowns itself. It appropriates _to_ itself, it is\nthe actual focus of accretion, the hook from which the chain of past\nselves dangles, planted firmly in the Present, which alone passes for\nreal, and thus keeping the chain from being a purely ideal thing. Anon\nthe hook itself will drop into the past with all it carries, and then\nbe treated as an object and appropriated by a new Thought in the new\npresent which will serve as living hook in turn. The present moment of\nconsciousness is thus, as Mr. Hodgson says, the darkest in the whole\nseries. It may feel its own immediate existence--we have all along\nadmitted the possibility of this, hard as it is by direct introspection\nto ascertain the fact--but nothing can be known _about_ it till it be\ndead and gone. Its appropriations are therefore less to _itself_ than\nto the most intimately felt _part of its present Object, the body, and\nthe central adjustments,_ which accompany the act of thinking, in the\nhead. _These are the real nucleus of our personal identity,_ and it is\ntheir actual existence, realized as a solid present fact, which makes\nus say 'as sure _as I exist_, those past facts were part of myself.'\nThey are the kernel to which the _represented_ parts of the Self are\nassimilated, accreted, and knit on; and even were Thought entirely\nunconscious of itself in the act of thinking, these 'warm' parts of\nits present object would be a firm basis on which the consciousness\nof personal identity would rest.[274] Such consciousness, then, as\na psychologic fact, can be fully described without supposing any\nother agent than a succession of perishing thoughts, endowed with the\nfunctions of appropriation and rejection, and of which some can know\nand appropriate or reject objects already known, appropriated, or\nrejected by the rest.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 34.]\n\nTo illustrate by diagram, let A, B, and C stand for three successive\nthoughts, each with its object inside of it. If B's object be A, and\nC's object be B; then A, B, and C would stand for three pulses in a\nconsciousness of personal identity. Each pulse would _be_ something\ndifferent from the others; but B would know and adopt A, and C would\nknow and adopt A and B. Three successive states of the same brain,\non which each experience in passing leaves its mark, might very well\nengender thoughts differing from each other in just such a way as this.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe passing Thought then seems to be the Thinker; and though there\n_may_ be another non-phenomenal Thinker behind that, so far we do not\nseem to need him to express the facts. But we cannot definitively\nmake up our mind about him until we have heard the reasons that have\nhistorically been used to prove his reality.\n\n\nTHE PURE SELF OR INNER PRINCIPLE OF PERSONAL UNITY.\n\n\nTo a brief survey of the theories of the Ego let us then next proceed.\nThey are three in number, as follows:\n\n1) The Spiritualist theory;\n\n2) The Associationist theory;\n\n3) The Transcendentalist theory.\n\n\n_The Theory of the Soul._\n\n\nIn Chapter VI we were led ourselves to the spiritualist theory of the\n'Soul,' as a means of escape from the unintelligibilities of mind-stuff\n'integrating' with itself, and from the physiological improbability of\na material monad, with thought attached to it, in the brain. But at the\nend of the chapter we said we should examine the 'Soul' critically in\na later place, to see whether it had any other advantages as a theory\nover the simple phenomenal notion of a stream of thought accompanying a\nstream of cerebral activity, by a law yet unexplained.\n\nThe theory of the Soul is the theory of popular philosophy and of\nscholasticism, which is only popular philosophy made systematic.\nIt declares that the principle of individuality within us must be\n_substantial_, for psychic phenomena are activities, and there can be\nno activity without a concrete agent. This substantial agent cannot\nbe the brain but must be something _immaterial_; for its activity,\nthought, is both immaterial, and takes cognizance of immaterial things,\nand of material things in general and intelligible, as well as in\nparticular and sensible ways,--all which powers are incompatible with\nthe nature of matter, of which the brain is composed. Thought moreover\nis simple, whilst the activities of the brain are compounded of the\nelementary activities of each of its parts. Furthermore, thought is\nspontaneous or free, whilst all material activity is determined _ab\nextra_; and the will can turn itself against all corporeal goods and\nappetites, which would be impossible were it a corporeal function.\nFor these objective reasons the principle of psychic life must be\nboth immaterial and simple as well as substantial, must be what is\ncalled _a Soul_. The same consequence follows from subjective reasons.\nOur consciousness of personal identity assures us of our essential\nsimplicity: the owner of the various constituents of the self, as\nwe have seen them, the hypothetical Arch-Ego whom we provisionally\nconceived as possible, is a real entity of whose existence\nself-consciousness makes us directly aware. No material agent could\nthus turn round and grasp _itself_--material activities always grasp\nsomething else than the agent. And if a brain _could_ grasp itself and\nbe self-conscious, it would be conscious of itself _as_ a brain and not\nas something of an altogether different kind. The Soul then exists as\na simple spiritual substance in which the various psychic faculties,\noperations, and affections inhere.\n\nIf we ask what a Substance is, the only answer is that it is a\nself-existent being, or one which needs no other subject in which to\ninhere. At bottom its only positive determination is Being, and this\nis something whose meaning we all realize even though we find it hard\nto explain. The Soul is moreover an _individual_ being, and if we\nask what that is, we are told to look in upon our Self, and we shall\nlearn by direct intuition better than through any abstract reply. Our\ndirect perception of our own inward being is in fact by many deemed\nto be the original prototype out of which our notion of simple active\nsubstance in general is fashioned. The _consequences_ of the simplicity\nand substantiality of the Soul are its incorruptibility and natural\n_immortality_--nothing but God's direct _fiat_ can annihilate it--and\nits _responsibility_ at all times for whatever it may have ever done.\n\nThis substantialist view of the soul was essentially the view of Plato\nand of Aristotle. It received its completely formal elaboration in the\nmiddle ages. It was believed in by Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, Leibnitz,\nWolf, Berkeley, and is now defended by the entire modern dualistic or\nspiritualistic or common-sense school. Kant held to it while denying\nits fruitfulness as a premise for deducing consequences verifiable\nhere below. Kant's successors, the absolute idealists, profess to have\ndiscarded it,--how that may be we shall inquire ere long. Let us make\nup our minds what to think of it ourselves.\n\n_It is at all events needless for expressing the actual subjective\nphenomena of consciousness as they appear._ We have formulated them\nall without its aid, by the supposition of a stream of thoughts, each\nsubstantially different from the rest, but cognitive of the rest\nand 'appropriative' of each other's content. At least, if I have\nnot already succeeded in making this plausible to the reader, I am\nhopeless of convincing him by anything I could add now. The unity,\nthe identity, the individuality, and the immateriality that appear in\nthe psychic life are thus accounted for as phenomenal and temporal\nfacts exclusively, and with no need of reference to any more simple or\nsubstantial agent than the present Thought or 'section' of the stream.\nWe have seen it to be single and unique in the sense of having no\n_separable_ parts (above, p. 239 ff.)--perhaps that is the only kind\nof simplicity meant to be predicated of the soul. The present Thought\nalso has being,--at least all believers in the Soul believe so--and if\nthere be no other Being in which it 'inheres,' it ought itself to be a\n'substance.' If _this_ kind of simplicity and substantiality were all\nthat is predicated of the Soul, then it might appear that we had been\ntalking of the soul all along, without knowing it, when we treated\nthe present Thought as an agent, an owner, and the like. But the\nThought is a perishing and not an immortal or incorruptible thing. Its\nsuccessors may continuously succeed to it, resemble it, and appropriate\nit, but they _are_ not it, whereas the Soul-Substance is supposed to\nbe a fixed unchanging thing. By the Soul is always meant something\n_behind_ the present Thought, another kind of substance, existing on a\nnon-phenomenal plane.\n\nWhen we brought in the Soul at the end of Chapter VI, as an\nentity which the various brain-processes were supposed to affect\nsimultaneously, and which responded to their combined influence by\nsingle pulses of its thought, it was to escape integrated mind-stuff on\nthe one hand, and an improbable cerebral monad on the other. But when\n(as now, after all we have been through since that earlier passage) we\ntake the two formulations, first of a brain to whose processes pulses\nof thought _simply_ correspond, and second, of one to whose processes\npulses of thought _in a Soul_ correspond, and compare them together,\nwe see that at bottom the second formulation is only a more roundabout\nway than the first, of expressing the same bald fact. That bald fact\nis that _when the brain acts, a thought occurs._ The spiritualistic\nformulation says that the brain-processes knock the thought, so to\nspeak, out of a Soul which stands there to receive their influence.\nThe simpler formulation says that the thought simply _comes_. But\nwhat positive meaning has the Soul, when scrutinized, but the _ground\nof possibility_ of the thought? And what is the 'knocking' but the\n_determining of the possibility to actuality_? And what is this after\nall but giving a sort of concreted form to one's belief that the coming\nof the thought, when the brain-processes occur, has _some_ sort of\nground in the nature of things? If the world Soul be understood merely\nto express that claim, it is a good word to use. But if it be held to\ndo more, to gratify the claim,--for instance, to connect rationally\nthe thought which comes, with the processes which occur, and to\nmediate intelligibly between their two disparate natures,--then it is\nan illusory term. It is, in fact, with the word Soul as with the word\nSubstance in general. To say that phenomena inhere in a Substance is\nat bottom only to record one's protest against the notion that the\nbare existence of the phenomena is the total truth. A phenomenon would\nnot itself be, we insist, unless there were something _more_ than the\nphenomenon. To the more we give the provisional name of Substance.\nSo, in the present instance, we ought certainly to admit that there\nis more than the bare fact of coexistence of a passing thought with a\npassing brain-state. But we do not answer the question 'What is that\nmore?' when we say that it is a 'Soul' which the brain-state affects.\nThis kind of more _explains_ nothing; and when we are once trying\nmetaphysical explanations we are foolish not to go as far as we can.\nFor my own part I confess that the moment I become metaphysical and try\nto define the more, I find the notion of some sort of an _anima mundi_\nthinking in all of us to be a more promising hypothesis, in spite of\nall its difficulties, than that of a lot of absolutely individual\nsouls. Meanwhile, as _psychologists_, we need not be metaphysical\nat all. The phenomena are enough, the passing Thought itself is the\nonly _verifiable_ thinker, and its empirical connection with the\nbrain-process is the ultimate known law.\n\nTo the other arguments which would prove the need of a soul, we may\nalso turn a deaf ear. The argument from free-will can convince only\nthose who believe in free-will; and even they will have to admit that\nspontaneity is just as possible, to say the least, in a temporary\nspiritual agent like our 'Thought' as in a permanent one like the\nsupposed Soul. The same is true of the argument from the kinds of\nthings cognized. Even if the brain could not cognize universal,\nimmaterials, or its 'Self,' still the 'Thought' which we have relied\nupon in our account _is_ not the brain, closely as it seems connected\nwith it; and after all, if the brain could cognize at all, one does\nnot well see why it might not cognize one sort of thing as well as\nanother. The great difficulty is in seeing how a thing can cognize\n_anything_. This difficulty is not in the least removed by giving to\nthe thing that cognizes the name of Soul. The Spiritualists do not\ndeduce any of the properties of the mental life from otherwise known\nproperties of the soul. They simply find various characters ready-made\nin the mental life, and these they clap into the Soul, saying, \"Lo!\nbehold the source from whence they flow!\" The merely verbal character\nof this 'explanation' is obvious. The Soul invoked, far from making\nthe phenomena more intelligible, can only be made intelligible itself\nby borrowing their form,--it must be represented, if at all, as a\ntranscendent stream of consciousness duplicating the one we know.\n\nAltogether, the Soul is an outbirth of that sort of philosophizing\nwhose great maxim, according to Dr. Hodgson, is: \"Whatever you are\n_totally_ ignorant of, assert to be the explanation of everything else.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nLocke and Kant, whilst still believing in the soul, began the work of\nundermining the notion that we know anything about it. Most modern\nwriters of the mitigated spiritualistic, or dualistic philosophy--the\nScotch school, as it is often called among us--are forward to proclaim\nthis ignorance, and to attend exclusively to the verifiable phenomena\nof self-consciousness, as we have laid them down. Dr. Wayland, for\nexample, begins his Elements of Intellectual Philosophy with the phrase\n\"Of the essence of Mind we know nothing,\" and goes on: \"All that we\nare able to affirm of it is that it is _something_ which perceives,\nreflects, remembers, imagines, and wills; but what that something\n_is_ which exerts these energies we know not. It is only as we are\nconscious of the action of these energies that we are conscious of the\nexistence of mind. It is only by the exertion of its own powers that\nthe mind becomes cognizant of their existence. The cognizance of its\npowers, however, gives us no knowledge of that essence of which they\nare predicated. In these respects our knowledge of mind is precisely\nanalogous to our knowledge of matter.\" This analogy of our two\nignorances is a favorite remark in the Scotch school. It is but a step\nto lump them together into a single ignorance, that of the 'Unknowable'\nto which any one fond of superfluities in philosophy may accord the\nhospitality of his belief, if it so please him, but which any one else\nmay as freely ignore and reject.\n\nThe Soul-theory is, then, a complete superfluity, so far as accounting\nfor the actually verified facts of conscious experience goes. So far,\nno one can be compelled to subscribe to it for definite scientific\nreasons. The case would rest here, and the reader be left free to make\nhis choice, were it not for other demands of a more practical kind.\n\nThe first of these is _Immortality_, for which the simplicity and\nsubstantiality of the Soul seem to offer a solid guarantee. A 'stream'\nof thought, for aught that we see to be contained in its essence,\nmay come to a full stop at any moment; but a simple substance is\nincorruptible, and will, by its own inertia, persist in Being so\nlong as the Creator does not by a direct miracle snuff it out.\nUnquestionably this is the stronghold of the spiritualistic belief,--as\nindeed the popular touchstone for all philosophies is the question,\n\"What is their bearing on a future life?\"\n\nThe Soul, however, when closely scrutinized, guarantees no immortality\nof a sort _we care for_. The enjoyment of the atom-like simplicity of\ntheir substance _in s\u00e6cula s\u00e6culorum_ would not to most people seem a\nconsummation devoutly to be wished. The substance must give rise to a\nstream of consciousness continuous with the present stream, in order\nto arouse our hope, but of this the mere persistence of the substance\n_per se_ offers no guarantee. Moreover, in the general advance of our\nmoral ideas, there has come to be something ridiculous in the way\nour forefathers had of grounding their hopes of immortality on the\nsimplicity of their substance. The demand for immortality is nowadays\nessentially teleological. We believe ourselves immortal because we\nbelieve ourselves _fit_ for immortality. A 'substance' ought surely\nto perish, we think, if not worthy to survive; and an insubstantial\n'stream' to prolong itself, provided it be worthy, if the nature\nof Things is organized in the rational way in which we trust it\nis. Substance or no substance, soul or 'stream,' what Lotze says of\nimmortality is about all that human wisdom can say:\n\n \"We have no other principle for deciding it than this general\n idealistic belief: that every created thing will continue whose\n continuance belongs to the meaning of the world, and so long as it\n does so belong; whilst every one will pass away whose reality is\n justified only in a transitory phase of the world's course. That this\n principle admits of no further application in human hands need hardly\n be said. _We_ surely know not the merits which may give to one being a\n claim on eternity, nor the defects which would cut others off.\"[275]\n\nA second alleged necessity for a soul-substance is our forensic\nresponsibility before God. Locke caused an uproar when he said that\nthe unity of _consciousness_ made a man the same _person_, whether\nsupported by the same _substance_ or no, and that God would not, in\nthe great day, make a person answer for what he remembered nothing of.\nIt was supposed scandalous that our forgetfulness might thus deprive\nGod of the chance of certain retributions, which otherwise would have\nenhanced his 'glory.' This is certainly a good speculative ground\nfor retaining the Soul--at least for those who demand a plenitude of\nretribution. The mere stream of consciousness, with its lapses of\nmemory, cannot possibly be as 'responsible' as a soul which _is_ at the\njudgment day all that it ever was. To modern readers, however, who are\nless insatiate for retribution than their grandfathers, this argument\nwill hardly be as convincing as it seems once to have been.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOne great use of the Soul has always been to account for, and at the\nsame time to guarantee, the closed individuality of each personal\nconsciousness. The thoughts of one soul must unite into one self, it\nwas supposed, and must be eternally insulated from those of every\nother soul. But we have already begun to see that, although unity is\nthe rule of each man's consciousness, yet in some individuals, at\nleast, thoughts may split away from the others and form separate\nselves. As for insulation, it would be rash, in view of the phenomena\nof thought-transference, mesmeric influence and spirit-control, which\nare being alleged nowadays on better authority than ever before, to\nbe too sure about that point either. The definitively closed nature\nof our personal consciousness is probably an average statistical\nresultant of many conditions, but not an elementary force or fact;\nso that, if one wishes to preserve the Soul, the less he draws his\narguments from _that_ quarter the better. So long as our self, on the\nwhole, makes itself good and practically maintains itself as a closed\nindividual, why, as Lotze says, is not that enough? And why is the\n_being_-an-individual in some inaccessible metaphysical way so much\nprouder an achievement?[276]\n\nMy final conclusion, then, about the substantial Soul is that it\nexplains nothing and guarantees nothing. Its successive thoughts are\nthe only intelligible and verifiable things about it, and definitely\nto ascertain the correlations of these with brain-processes is as\nmuch as psychology can empirically do. From the metaphysical point\nof view, it is true that one may claim that the correlations have a\nrational ground; and if the word Soul could be taken to mean merely\nsome such vague problematic ground, it would be unobjectionable. But\nthe trouble is that it professes to give the ground in positive terms\nof a very dubiously credible sort. I therefore feel entirely free to\ndiscard the word Soul from the rest of this book. If I ever use it,\nit will be in the vaguest and most popular way. The reader who finds\nany comfort in the idea of the Soul, is, however, perfectly free to\ncontinue to believe in it; for our reasonings have not established the\nnon-existence of the Soul; they have only proved its superfluity for\nscientific purposes.\n\nThe next theory of the pure Self to which we pass is\n\n\n_The Associationist Theory._\n\n\nLocke paved the way for it by the hypothesis he suggested of the same\nsubstance having two successive consciousnesses, or of the same\nconsciousness being supported by more than one substance. He made his\nreaders feel that the _important_ unity of the Self was its verifiable\nand felt unity, and that a metaphysical or absolute unity would be\ninsignificant, so long as a _consciousness_ of diversity might be there.\n\nHume showed how great the consciousness of diversity actually was.\nIn the famous chapter on Personal Identity, in his Treatise on Human\nNature, he writes as follows:\n\n \"There are some philosophers who imagine we are every moment\n intimately conscious of what we call our SELF; that we feel its\n existence and its continuance in existence, and are certain, beyond\n the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and\n simplicity.... Unluckily all these positive assertions are contrary\n to that very experience which is pleaded for them, nor have we any\n idea of Self, after the manner it is here explained.... It must be\n some one impression that gives rise to every real idea.... If any\n impression gives rise to the idea of Self, that impression must\n continue invariably the same through the whole course of our lives,\n since self is supposed to exist after that manner. But there is no\n impression constant and invariable. Pain and pleasure, grief and joy,\n passions and sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at the\n same time.... For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I\n call _myself_, I always stumble on some particular perception or other\n of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure.\n I never can catch _myself_ at any time without a perception, and\n never can observe anything but the perception. When my perceptions\n are removed for any time, as by sound sleep, so long am I insensible\n of _myself_ and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my\n perceptions removed by death, and could I neither think, nor feel, nor\n see, nor love, nor hate after the dissolution of my body, I should be\n entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is farther requisite to\n make me a perfect non-entity. If anyone, upon serious and unprejudiced\n reflection, thinks he has a different notion of _himself_ I must\n confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that\n he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially\n different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something\n simple and continued which he calls _himself_; though I am certain\n there is no such principle in me.\n\n \"But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to\n affirm of the rest of mankind that they are _nothing but a bundle or\n collection of different perceptions_, which succeed each other with\n an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.\n Our eyes cannot turn in their sockets without varying our perceptions.\n Our thought is still more variable than our sight; and all our\n other senses and faculties contribute to this change; nor is there\n any single power of the soul which remains unalterably the same,\n perhaps for one moment The mind is a kind of theatre, where several\n perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, repass, glide\n away and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.\n _There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity\n in different_; whatever natural propension we may have to imagine\n that simplicity and identity. The comparison of the theatre must not\n mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute\n the mind; nor have we the most distant notion of the place where these\n scenes are represented, nor of the material of which it is composed.\"\n\nBut Hume, after doing this good piece of introspective work, proceeds\nto pour out the child with the bath, and to fly to as great an extreme\nas the substantialist philosophers. As they say the Self is nothing\nbut Unity, unity abstract and absolute, so Hume says it is nothing but\nDiversity, diversity abstract and absolute; whereas in truth it is\nthat mixture of unity and diversity which we ourselves have already\nfound so easy to pick apart. We found among the objects of the stream\ncertain feelings that hardly changed, that stood out warm and vivid in\nthe past just as the present feeling does now; and we found the present\nfeeling to be the centre of accretion to which, _de proche en proche_,\nthese other feelings are, _by the judging Thought_, felt to cling.\nHume says nothing of the judging Thought; and he denies this thread\nof resemblance, this core of sameness running through the ingredients\nof the Self, to exist even as a phenomenal thing. To him there is no\n_tertium quid_ between pure unity and pure separateness. A succession\nof ideas \"connected by a close relation affords to an accurate view as\nperfect a notion of diversity as if there was _no manner of relation\"\nat all._\n\n \"All our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and the mind\n never perceives any real connection among distinct existences. Did\n our perceptions either inhere in something simple or individual, or\n _did the mind perceive some real connection_ among them, there would\n be no difficulty in the case. For my part, I must plead the privilege\n of a sceptic and confess that this difficulty is too hard for my\n understanding, I pretend not, however, to pronounce it insuperable.\n Others, perhaps,... may discover some hypothesis that will reconcile\n these contradictions.\"[277]\n\nHume is at bottom as much of a metaphysician as Thomas Aquinas. No\nwonder he can discover no 'hypothesis.' The unity of the parts of the\nstream is just as 'real' a connection as their diversity is a real\nseparation; both connection and separation are ways in which the past\nthoughts appear to the present Thought;--unlike each other in respect\nof date and certain qualities--this is the separation; alike in other\nqualities, and continuous in time--this is the connection. In demanding\na more 'real' connection than this obvious and verifiable likeness and\ncontinuity, Hume seeks 'the world behind the looking glass,' and gives\na striking example of that Absolutism which is the great disease of\nphilosophic Thought.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe chain of distinct existences into which Hume thus chopped up our\n'stream' was adopted by all of his successors as a complete inventory\nof the facts. The associationist Philosophy was founded. Somehow, out\nof 'ideas,' each separate, each ignorant of its mates, but sticking\ntogether and calling each other up according to certain laws, all the\nhigher forms of consciousness were to be explained, and among them\nthe consciousness of our personal identity. The task was a hard one,\nin which what we called the psychologist's fallacy (p. 196 ff.) bore\nthe brunt of the work. Two ideas, one of 'A,' succeeded by another of\n'B,' were transmuted into a third idea of '_B after A_.' An idea from\nlast year returning now was taken to be an idea _of last year_; two\nsimilar ideas stood for an _idea of similarity_, and the like; palpable\nconfusions, in which certain facts _about_ the ideas, possible only to\nan outside knower of them, were put into the place of the ideas' own\nproper and limited deliverance and content. Out of such recurrences and\nresemblances in a series of discrete ideas and feelings a knowledge\nwas somehow supposed to be engendered in each feeling that it _was_\nrecurrent and resembling, and that it helped to form a series to whose\nunity the name _I_ came to be joined. In the same way, substantially,\nHerbart,[278] in Germany, tried to show how a conflict of ideas would\nfuse into a _manner of representing itself_ for which _I_ was the\nconsecrated name.[279]\n\nThe defect of all these attempts is that the conclusion pretended to\nfollow from certain premises is by no means rationally involved in the\npremises. A feeling of any kind, if it simply _returns_, ought to be\nnothing else than what it was at first. If memory of previous existence\nand all sorts of other cognitive functions are attributed to it when it\nreturns, it is no longer the same, but a widely different feeling, and\nought to be so described. _We_ have so described it with the greatest\nexplicitness. We have said that feelings never do return. We have not\npretended to _explain_ this; we have recorded it as an empirically\nascertained law, analogous to certain laws of brain-physiology; and,\nseeking to define the way in which new feelings do differ from the old,\nwe have found them to be _cognizant_ and _appropriative_ of the old,\nwhereas the old were always cognizant and appropriative of something\nelse. Once more, this account pretended to be nothing more than a\ncomplete description of the facts. It explained them no more than the\nassociationist account explains them. But the latter both assumes to\nexplain them and in the same breath falsifies them, and for each reason\nstands condemned.\n\nIt is but just to say that the associationist writers as a rule seem to\nhave a lurking bad conscience about the Self; and that although they\nare explicit enough about what it is, namely, a train of feelings or\nthoughts, they are very shy about openly tackling the problem of how\nit comes to be aware of itself. Neither Bain nor Spencer, for example,\ndirectly touch this problem. As a rule, associationist writers keep\ntalking about 'the mind' and about what 'we' do; and so, smuggling in\nsurreptitiously what they ought avowedly to have postulated in the form\nof a present 'judging Thought,' they either trade upon their reader's\nlack of discernment or are undiscerning themselves.\n\nMr. D. G. Thompson is the only associationist writer I know who\nperfectly escapes this confusion, and _postulates_ openly what he\nneeds. \"All states of consciousness,\" he says, \"imply and postulate\na subject Ego, whose substance is unknown and unknowable, to which\n[why not say _by_ which?] states of consciousness are referred as\nattributes, but which in the process of reference becomes objectified\nand becomes itself an attribute of a subject Ego which lies still\nbeyond, and which ever eludes cognition though ever postulated for\ncognition.\"[280] This is exactly our judging and remembering present\n'Thought,' described in less simple terms.\n\nAfter Mr. Thompson, M. Taine and the two Mills deserve credit for\nseeking to be as clear as they can. Taine tells us in the first volume\nof his 'Intelligence' what the Ego _is_,--a continuous web of conscious\nevents no more really distinct from each other[281] than rhomboids,\ntriangles, and squares marked with chalk on a plank are really\ndistinct, for the plank itself is one. In the second volume he _says_\nall these parts have a common character embedded in them, that of being\n_internal_ [this is our character of 'warmness,' otherwise named]. This\ncharacter is abstracted and isolated by a mental fiction, and is what\nwe are _conscious of_ as our self--'this stable _within_ is what each\nof us calls _I_ or me.' Obviously M. Taine forgets to tell us what this\n'each of us' is, which suddenly starts up and performs the abstraction\nand 'calls' its product I or me. The character does not abstract\n_itself_. Taine means by 'each of us' merely the present 'judging\nThought' with its memory and tendency to appropriate, but he does not\nname it distinctly enough, and lapses into the fiction that the entire\nseries of thoughts, the entire 'plank,' is the reflecting psychologist.\n\nJames Mill, after defining Memory as a train of associated ideas\nbeginning with that of my past self and ending with that of my\npresent self, defines my Self as a train of ideas of which Memory\ndeclares the first to be continuously connected with the last. The\nsuccessive associated ideas 'run, as it were, into a single point of\nconsciousness.[282] John Mill, annotating this account, says:\n\n \"The phenomenon of Self and that of Memory are merely two sides of the\n same fact, or two different modes of viewing the same fact. We may,\n as psychologists, set out from either of them, and refer the other to\n it.... But it is hardly allowable to do both. At least it must be said\n that by doing so we explain neither. We only show that the two things\n are essentially the same; that my memory of having ascended Skiddaw\n on a given day, and my consciousness of being the same person who\n ascended Skiddaw on that day, are two modes of stating the same fact:\n a fact which psychology has as yet failed to resolve into anything\n more elementary. In analyzing the complex phenomena of consciousness,\n we must come to something ultimate; and we seem to have reached two\n elements which have a good _prima facie_ claim to that title. There\n is, first,... the difference between a fact and the Thought of that\n fact: a distinction which we are able to cognize in the past, and\n which then constitutes Memory, and in the future, when it constitutes\n Expectation; but in neither case can we give any account of it except\n that it exists.... Secondly, in addition to this, and setting out from\n the belief ... that the idea I now have was derived from a previous\n sensation ... there is the further conviction that this sensation ...\n was my own; that it happened to my self. In other words, I am aware of\n a long and uninterrupted succession of past feelings, going back as\n far as memory reaches, and terminating with the sensations I have at\n the present moment, all of which are connected by an inexplicable tie,\n that distinguishes them not only from any succession or combination\n in mere thought, but also from the parallel successions of feelings\n which I believe, on satisfactory evidence, to have happened to each\n of the other beings, shaped like myself, whom I perceive around me.\n This succession of feelings, which I call my memory of the past, is\n that by which I distinguish my Self. Myself is the person who had that\n series of feelings, and I know nothing of myself, by direct knowledge,\n except that I had them. But there is a bond of some sort among all\n the parts of the series, which makes me say that they were feelings\n of a person who was the same person throughout [according to us this\n is their 'warmth' and resemblance to the 'central spiritual self' now\n actually felt] and a different person from those who had any of the\n parallel successions of feelings; and this bond, to me, constitutes\n my Ego. Here I think the question must rest, until some psychologist\n succeeds better than anyone else has done, in showing a mode in which\n the analysis can be carried further.\"[283]\n\nThe reader must judge of our own success in carrying the analysis\nfarther. The various distinctions we have made are all parts of an\nendeavor so to do. John Mill himself, in a later-written passage, so\nfar from advancing in the line of analysis, seems to fall back upon\nsomething perilously near to the Soul. He says:\n\n \"The fact of recognizing a sensation,... remembering that it has been\n felt before, is the simplest and most elementary fact of memory: and\n the _inexplicable tie_ ... which connects the present consciousness\n with the past one of which it reminds me, is as near as I think we\n can get to a positive conception of Self. That there is something\n real in this tie, real as the sensations themselves, and not a mere\n product of the laws of thought without any fact corresponding to it,\n I hold to be indubitable.... This original element,... to which we\n cannot give any name but its own peculiar one, without implying some\n false or ungrounded theory, is the Ego, or Self. As such I ascribe a\n reality to the Ego--to my own mind--different from that real existence\n as a Permanent Possibility, which is the only reality I acknowledge\n in Matter.... We are forced to apprehend every part of the series as\n linked with the other parts by _something in common_ which is not the\n feelings themselves, any more than the succession of the feelings is\n the feelings themselves; and as that which is the same in the first as\n in the second, in the second as in the third, in the third as in the\n fourth, and so on, must be the same in the first and in the fiftieth,\n this common element is a permanent element. But beyond this we can\n affirm nothing of it except the states of consciousness themselves.\n The feelings or consciousnesses which belong or have belonged to it,\n and its possibilities of having more, are the only facts there are to\n be asserted of Self--the only positive attributes, except permanence,\n which we can ascribe to it.\"[284]\n\nMr. Mill's habitual method of philosophizing was to affirm boldly\nsome general doctrine derived from his father, and then make so many\nconcessions of detail to its enemies as practically to abandon it\naltogether.[285] In this place the concessions amount, so far as they\nare intelligible, to the admission of something very like the Soul.\nThis 'inexplicable tie' which connects the feelings, this 'something in\ncommon' by which they are linked and which is not the passing feelings\nthemselves, but something 'permanent,' of which we can 'affirm nothing'\nsave its attributes and its permanence, what is it but metaphysical\nSubstance come again to life? Much as one must respect the fairness\nof Mill's temper, quite as much must one regret his failure of acumen\nat this point. At bottom he makes the same blunder as Hume: the\nsensations _per se_, he thinks, have no 'tie.' The tie of resemblance\nand continuity which the remembering Thought finds among them is not a\n'real tie' but 'a mere product of the laws of thought;' and the fact\nthat the present Thought 'appropriates' them is also no real tie. But\nwhereas Hume was contented to say that there might after all _be_ no\n'real tie,' Mill, unwilling to admit this possibility, is driven, like\nany scholastic, to place it in a non-phenomenal world.\n\nJohn Mill's concessions may be regarded as the _definitive bankruptcy\nof the associationist description_ of the consciousness of self,\nstarting, as it does, with the best intentions, and dimly conscious of\nthe path, but 'perplexed in the extreme' at last with the inadequacy\nof those 'simple feelings,' non-cognitive, non-transcendent of\nthemselves, which were the only baggage it was willing to take along.\nOne must _beg_ memory, knowledge on the part of the feelings of\nsomething outside themselves. That granted, every other true thing\nfollows naturally, and it is hard to go astray. The knowledge the\npresent feeling has of the past ones is a real tie between them,\nso is their resemblance; so is their continuity; so is the one's\n'appropriation' of the other: all are real ties, realized in the\njudging Thought of every moment, the only place where _disconnections_\ncould be realized, did they exist. Hume and Mill both imply that a\ndisconnection can be realized there, whilst a tie cannot. But the\nties and the disconnections are exactly on a par, in this matter of\nself-consciousness. The way in which the present Thought appropriates\nthe past is a real way, so long as no other owner appropriates it\nin a more real way, and so long as the Thought has no grounds for\nrepudiating it stronger than those which lead to its appropriation.\nBut no other owner ever does in point of fact present himself for my\npast; and the grounds which I perceive for appropriating it--viz.,\ncontinuity and resemblance with the present--outweigh those I perceive\nfor disowning it--viz., distance in time. My present Thought stands\nthus in the plenitude of ownership of the train of my past selves, is\nowner not only _de facto_, but _de jure_, the most real owner there can\nbe, and all without the supposition of any 'inexplicable tie,' but in a\nperfectly verifiable and phenomenal way.\n\nTurn we now to what we may call\n\n\nTHE TRANSCENDENTALIST THEORY.\n\n\nwhich owes its origin to Kant. Kant's own statements are too lengthy\nand obscure for verbatim quotation here, so I must give their substance\nonly. Kant starts, as I understand him, from a view of the _Object_\nessentially like our own description of it on p. 275 ff., that is,\nit is a system of things, qualities or facts in relation. \"_Object_\nis that in the knowledge (Begriff) of which the Manifold of a given\nPerception is connected.\"[286] But whereas we simply begged the vehicle\nof this connected knowledge in the shape of what we call the present\nThought, or section of the Stream of Consciousness (which we declared\nto be the ultimate fact for psychology), Kant denies this to be an\nultimate fact and insists on analyzing it into a large number of\ndistinct, though equally essential, elements. The 'Manifoldness' of\nthe Object is due to Sensibility, which _per se_ is chaotic, and the\nunity is due to the synthetic handling which this Manifold receives\nfrom the higher faculties of Intuition, Apprehension, Imagination,\nUnderstanding, and Apperception. It is the one essential spontaneity of\nthe Understanding which, under these different names, brings unity into\nthe manifold of sense.\n\n \"The Understanding _is_, in fact, nothing more than the faculty of\n binding together _a priori_, and of bringing the Manifold of given\n ideas under the unity of Apperception, which consequently is the\n supreme principle in all human knowledge\" (\u00a7 16).\n\nThe material connected must be _given_ by lower faculties to the\nUnderstanding, for the latter is not an intuitive faculty, but by\nnature 'empty.' And the bringing of this material 'under the unity of\nApperception' is explained by Kant to mean the thinking it always so\nthat, whatever its other determinations be, it may be known as _thought\nby me_.[287] Though this consciousness, that _I think it_, need not be\nat every moment explicitly realized, it is always _capable_ of being\nrealized. For if an object _incapable_ of being combined with the idea\nof a thinker were there, how could it be known, how related to other\nobjects, how form part of 'experience' at all?\n\nThe awareness that _I think_ is therefore implied in all experience.\nNo connected consciousness of anything without that of _Self_ as its\npresupposition and 'transcendental' condition! All things, then, so\nfar as they are intelligible at all, are so through combination with\npure consciousness of _Self_, and apart from this, at least potential,\ncombination nothing is knowable _to us_ at all.\n\nBut this self, whose consciousness Kant thus established deductively\nas a _conditio sine qu\u00e2 non_ of experience, is in the same breath\ndenied by him to have any positive attributes. Although Kant's name for\nit--the 'original transcendental synthetic Unity of Apperception'--is\nso long, our consciousness _about_ it is, according to him, short\nenough. Self-consciousness of this 'transcendental' sort tells us,\n'not how we appear, not how we inwardly are, but only _that_ we are'\n(\u00a7 25). At the basis of our knowledge of our selves there lies only\n\"the simple and utterly empty idea: _I_; of which we cannot even\nsay we have a notion, but only a consciousness which accompanies\nall notions. In this _I_, or _he_ or _it_ (the thing) which thinks,\nnothing more is represented than the bare transcendental Subject of the\nknowledge = _x_, which is only recognized by the thoughts which are its\npredicates, and of which, taken by itself, we cannot form the least\nconception\" (_ibid._ 'Paralogisms'). The pure Ego of all apperception\nis thus for Kant not the soul, but only that 'Subject' which is the\nnecessary correlate of the Object in all knowledge. There _is_ a soul,\nKant thinks, but this mere ego-form of our consciousness tells us\nnothing about it, neither whether it be substantial, nor whether it\nbe immaterial, nor whether it be simple, nor whether it be permanent.\nThese declarations on Kant's part of the utter barrenness of the\nconsciousness of the pure Self, and of the consequent impossibility of\nany deductive or 'rational' psychology, are what, more than anything\nelse, earned for him the title of the 'all-destroyer.' The only self we\nknow anything positive _about_, he thinks, is the empirical _me_, not\nthe pure _I_; the self which is an object among other objects and the\n'constituents' of which we ourselves have seen, and recognized to be\nphenomenal things appearing in the form of space as well as time.\n\nThis, for our purposes, is a sufficient account of the 'transcendental'\nEgo.\n\nThose purposes go no farther than to ascertain whether anything in\nKant's conception ought to make us give up our own, of a remembering\nand appropriating Thought incessantly renewed. In many respects Kant's\nmeaning is obscure, but it will not be necessary for us to squeeze the\ntexts in order to make sure what it actually and historically was. If\nwe can define clearly two or three things which it may _possibly_ have\nbeen, that will help us just as much to clear our own ideas.\n\nOn the whole, a defensible interpretation of Kant's view would take\nsomewhat the following shape. Like ourselves he believes in a Reality\noutside the mind of which he writes, but the critic who vouches for\nthat reality does so on grounds of faith, for it is not a verifiable\nphenomenal thing. Neither is it manifold. The 'Manifold' which the\nintellectual functions combine is a mental manifold altogether, which\nthus _stands between_ the Ego of Apperception and the outer Reality,\nbut still stands inside the mind. In the function of knowing there is a\nmultiplicity to be connected, and Kant brings this multiplicity inside\nthe mind. The Reality becomes a mere empty _locus_, or unknowable, the\nso-called Noumenon; the manifold phenomenon is in the mind. We, on the\ncontrary, put the Multiplicity with the Reality outside, and leave\nthe mind simple. Both of us deal with the same elements--thought and\nobject--the only question is in which of them the multiplicity shall\nbe lodged. Wherever it is lodged it must be 'synthetized' when it\ncomes to be thought. And that particular way of lodging it will be the\nbetter, which, in addition to describing the facts naturally, makes the\n'mystery of synthesis' least hard to understand.\n\nWell, Kant's way of describing the facts is mythological. The notion\nof our thought being this sort of an elaborate internal machine-shop\nstands condemned by all we said in favor of its simplicity on pages\n276 ff. Our Thought is not composed of parts, however so composed\nits objects may be. There is no originally chaotic manifold in it\nto be reduced to order. There is something almost shocking in the\nnotion of so chaste a function carrying this Kantian hurly-burly in\nher womb. If we are to have a dualism of Thought and Reality at all,\nthe multiplicity should be lodged in the latter and not in the former\nmember of the couple of related terms. The parts and their relations\nsurely belong less to the knower than to what is known.\n\nBut even were all the mythology true, the process of synthesis would\nin no whit be _explained_ by calling the inside of the mind its seat.\nNo mystery would be made lighter by such means. It is just as much\na puzzle _how_ the 'Ego' can employ the productive Imagination to\nmake the Understanding use the categories to combine the data which\nRecognition, Association, and Apprehension receive from sensible\nIntuition, as how the Thought can combine the objective facts.\nPhrase it as one may, the difficulty is always the same: _the Many\nknown by the One_. Or does one seriously think he understands better\n_how_ the knower 'connects' its objects, when one calls the former a\ntranscendental Ego and the latter a 'Manifold of Intuition' than when\none calls them Thought and Things respectively? Knowing must have a\nvehicle. Call the vehicle Ego, or call it Thought, Psychosis, Soul,\nIntelligence, Consciousness, Mind, Reason, Feeling,--what you like--it\nmust _know_. The best grammatical subject for the verb _know_ would,\nif possible, be one from whose other properties the knowing could\nbe deduced. And if there be no such subject, the best one would be\nthat with the fewest ambiguities and the least pretentious name. By\nKant's confession, the transcendental Ego has no properties, and from\nit nothing can be deduced. Its name is pretentious, and, as we shall\npresently see, has its meaning ambiguously mixed up with that of the\nsubstantial soul. So on every possible account we are excused from\nusing it instead of our own term of the present passing 'Thought,' as\nthe principle by which the Many is simultaneously known.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe _ambiguity_ referred to in the meaning of the transcendental Ego is\nas to whether Kant signified by it an _Agent_, and by the Experience\nit helps to constitute, an operation; or whether the experience is an\nevent _produced_ in an unassigned way, and the Ego a mere indwelling\n_element_ therein contained. If an operation be meant, then Ego and\nManifold must both be existent prior to that collision which results\nin the experience of one by the other. If a mere analysis is meant,\nthere is no such prior existence, and the elements only _are_ in so\nfar as they are in union. Now Kant's tone and language are everywhere\nthe very words of one who is talking of operations and the agents by\nwhich they are performed.[288] And yet there is reason to think that\nat bottom he may have had nothing of the sort in mind.[289] In this\nuncertainty we need again do no more than decide what to think of his\ntranscendental Ego _if it be_ an agent.\n\nWell, if it be so, Transcendentalism is only Substantialism grown\nshame-faced, and the Ego only a 'cheap and nasty' edition of the soul.\nAll our reasons for preferring the 'Thought' to the 'Soul' apply with\nredoubled force when the Soul is shrunk to this estate. The Soul truly\nexplained nothing; the 'syntheses,' which she performed, were simply\ntaken ready-made and clapped on to her as expressions of her nature\ntaken after the fact; but at least she had some semblance of nobility\nand outlook. She was called active; might select; was responsible, and\npermanent in her way. The Ego is simply _nothing_: as ineffectual and\nwindy an abortion as Philosophy can show. It would indeed be one of\nReason's tragedies if the good Kant, with all his honesty and strenuous\npains, should have deemed this conception an important outbirth of his\nthought.\n\nBut we have seen that Kant deemed it of next to no importance at all.\nIt was reserved for his Fichtean and Hegelian successors to call it\nthe first Principle of Philosophy, to spell its name in capitals and\npronounce it with adoration, to act, in short, as if they were going\nup in a balloon, whenever the notion of it crossed their mind. Here\nagain, however, I am uncertain of the facts of history, and know that\nI may not read my authors aright. The whole lesson of Kantian and\npost-Kantian speculation is, it seems to me, the lesson of simplicity.\nWith Kant, complication both of thought and statement was an inborn\ninfirmity, enhanced by the musty academicism of his K\u00f6nigsberg\nexistence. With Hegel it was a raging fever. Terribly, therefore, do\nthe sour grapes which these fathers of philosophy have eaten set our\nteeth on edge. We have in England and America, however, a contemporary\ncontinuation of Hegelism from which, fortunately, somewhat simpler\ndeliverances come; and, unable to find any definite psychology in what\nHegel, Rosenkranz, or Erdmann tells us of the Ego, I turn to Caird and\nGreen.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe great difference, practically, between these authors and Kant is\ntheir complete abstraction from the onlooking Psychologist and from\nthe Reality he thinks he knows; or rather it is the absorption of\nboth of these outlying terms into the proper topic of Psychology,\nviz., the mental experience of the mind under observation. The Reality\ncoalesces with the connected Manifold, the Psychologist with the Ego,\nknowing becomes 'connecting,' and there results no longer a finite or\ncriticisable, but an 'absolute' Experience, of which the Object and\nthe Subject are always the same. Our finite 'Thought' is virtually and\npotentially this eternal (or rather this 'timeless'), absolute Ego,\nand only provisionally and speciously the limited thing which it seems\n_prima facie_ to be. The later 'sections' of our 'Stream,' which come\nand appropriate the earlier ones, _are_ those earlier ones, just as\nin substantialism the Soul is throughout all time the same.[290] This\n'solipsistic' character of an Experience conceived as absolute really\nannihilates psychology as a distinct body of science.\n\nPsychology is a natural science, an account of particular finite\nstreams of thought, coexisting and succeeding in time. It is of course\nconceivable (though far from clearly so) that in the last metaphysical\nresort all these streams of thought may be thought by one universal\nAll-thinker. But in this metaphysical notion there is no profit for\npsychology; for grant that one Thinker does think in all of us, still\nwhat He thinks in me and what in you can never be deduced from the\nbare idea of Him. The idea of Him seems even to exert a positively\nparalyzing effect on the mind. The existence of finite thoughts is\nsuppressed altogether. Thought's characteristics, as Professor Green\nsays, are\n\n \"not to be sought in the incidents of individual lives which last but\n for a day.... No knowledge, nor any mental act involved in knowledge,\n can properly be called a 'phenomenon of consciousness.'... For a\n phenomenon is a sensible event, related in the way of antecedence or\n consequence to other sensible events, but the consciousness which\n constitutes a knowledge ... is not an event so related nor made up of\n such events.\"\n\nAgain, if\n\n \"we examine the constituents of any perceived object,... we shall find\n alike that it is only for consciousness that they can exist, and that\n the consciousness for which they thus exist cannot be merely a series\n of phenomena or a succession of states.... It then becomes clear\n that there is a function of consciousness, as exercised in the most\n rudimentary experience [namely, the function of _synthesis_] which\n is incompatible with the definition of consciousness as any sort of\n succession of any sort of phenomena.\"[291]\n\nWere we to follow these remarks, we should have to abandon our notion\nof the 'Thought' (perennially renewed in time, but always cognitive\nthereof), and to espouse instead of it an entity copied from thought\nin all essential respects, but differing from it in being 'out of\ntime.' What psychology can gain by this barter would be hard to divine.\nMoreover this resemblance of the timeless Ego to the Soul is completed\nby other resemblances still. The monism of the post-Kantian idealists\nseems always lapsing into a regular old-fashioned spiritualistic\ndualism. They incessantly talk as if, like the Soul, their All-thinker\nwere an Agent, operating on detached materials of sense. This may come\nfrom the accidental fact that the English writings of the school have\nbeen more polemic than constructive, and that a reader may often take\nfor a positive profession a statement _ad hominem_ meant as part of a\nreduction to the absurd, or mistake the analysis of a bit of knowledge\ninto elements for a dramatic myth about its creation. But I think the\nmatter has profounder roots. Professor Green constantly talks of the\n'activity' of Self as a 'condition' of knowledge taking place. Facts\nare said to become incorporated with other facts only through the\n'_action_ of a combining self-consciousness upon data of sensation.'\n\n \"Every object we perceive ... requires, in order to its presentation,\n the _action_ of a principle of consciousness, not itself subject to\n conditions of time, upon successive appearances, such action as may\n _hold the appearances together_, without fusion, in an apprehended\n fact.\"[292]\n\nIt is needless to repeat that the connection of things in our\nknowledge is in no whit _explained_ by making it the deed of an agent\nwhose essence is self-identity and who is out of time. The agency\nof phenomenal thought coming and going in time is just as easy to\n_understand_. And when it is furthermore said that the agent that\ncombines is the same 'self-distinguishing subject' which 'in another\nmode of its activity' presents the manifold object to itself, the\nunintelligibilities become quite paroxysmal, and we are forced to\nconfess that the entire school of thought in question, in spite of\noccasional glimpses of something more refined, still dwells habitually\nin that mythological stage of thought where phenomena are explained\nas results of dramas enacted by entities which but reduplicate the\ncharacters of the phenomena themselves. The self must not only _know_\nits object,--that is too bald and dead a relation to be written down\nand left in its static state. The knowing must be painted as a 'famous\nvictory' in which the object's distinctness is in some way 'overcome.'\n\n \"The self exists as one self only as it opposes itself, as object,\n to itself as subject, and immediately denies and transcends that\n opposition. Only because it is such a concrete unity, which has in\n itself a resolved contradiction, can the intelligence cope with all\n the manifoldness and division of the mighty universe, and hope to\n master its secrets. As the lightning sleeps in the dew-drop, so in\n the simple and transparent unity of self-consciousness there is held\n in equilibrium that vital antagonism of opposites which ... seems to\n rend the world asunder. The intelligence is able to understand the\n world, or, in other words, to break down the barrier between itself\n and things and find itself in them, just because its own existence\n is implicitly the solution of all the division and conflict of\n things.\"[293]\n\nThis dynamic (I had almost written dynamitic) way of representing\nknowledge has the merit of not being tame. To turn from it to our\nown psychological formulation is like turning from the fireworks,\ntrap-doors, and transformations of the pantomime into the insipidity of\nthe midnight, where\n\n        \"ghastly through the drizzling rain,\n    On the bald street breaks the blank day!\"[294]\n\nAnd yet turn we must, with the confession that our 'Thought'--a\ncognitive phenomenal event in time--is, if it exist at all, itself\nthe only Thinker which the facts require. The only service that\ntranscendental egoism has done to psychology has been by its protests\nagainst Hume's 'bundle'-theory of mind. But this service has been\nill-performed; for the Egoists themselves, let them say what they will,\nbelieve in the bundle, and in their own system merely _tie it up_,\nwith their special transcendental string, invented for that use alone.\nBesides, they talk as if, with this miraculous tying or 'relating,'\nthe Ego's duties were done. Of its far more important duty of choosing\nsome of the things it ties and appropriating them, to the exclusion of\nthe rest, they tell us never a word. To sum up, then, my own opinion\nof the transcendentalist school, it is (whatever ulterior metaphysical\ntruth it may divine) a school in which psychology at least has naught\nto learn, and whose deliverances about the Ego in particular in no wise\noblige us to revise our own formulation of the Stream of Thought.[295]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWith this, all possible rival formulations have been discussed. The\nliterature of the Self is large, but all its authors may be classed\nas radical or mitigated representatives of the three schools we have\nnamed, substantialism, associationism, or transcendentalism. Our own\nopinion must be classed apart, although it incorporates essential\nelements from all three schools. _There need never have been a quarrel\nbetween associationism and its rivals if the former had admitted the\nindecomposable unity of every pulse of thought, and the latter been\nwilling to allow that 'perishing' pulses of thought might recollect and\nknow._\n\nWe may sum up by saying that personality implies the incessant presence\nof two elements, an objective person, known by a passing subjective\nThought and recognized as continuing in time. _Hereafter let us use the\nwords_ ME _and_ I _for the empirical person and the judging Thought._\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_Certain vicissitudes in the me demand our notice._\n\nIn the first place, although its changes are gradual, they become in\ntime great. The central part of the _me_ is the feeling of the body\nand of the adjustments in the head; and in the feeling of the body\nshould be included that of the general emotional tones and tendencies,\nfor at bottom these are but the habits in which organic activities\nand sensibilities run. Well, from infancy to old age, this assemblage\nof feelings, most constant of all, is yet a prey to slow mutation.\nOur powers, bodily and mental, change at least as fast.[296] Our\npossessions notoriously are perishable facts. The identity which\nthe _I_ discovers, as it surveys this long procession, can only be a\nrelative identity, that of a slow shifting in which there is always\nsome common ingredient retained.[297] The commonest element of all, the\nmost uniform, is the possession of the same memories. However different\nthe man may be from the youth, both look back on the same childhood,\nand call it their own.\n\nThus the identity found by the _I_ in its _me_ is only a loosely\nconstrued thing, an identity 'on the whole,' just like that which\nany outside observer might find in the same assemblage of facts. We\noften say of a man 'he is so changed one would not know him'; and so\ndoes a man, less often, speak of himself. These changes in the _me_,\nrecognized by the I, or by outside observers, may be grave or slight.\nThey deserve some notice here.\n\n\nTHE MUTATIONS OF THE SELF\n\n\nmay be divided into two main classes:\n\n1. Alterations of memory; and\n\n2. Alterations in the present bodily and spiritual selves.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n1. _Alterations of memory_ are either _losses_ or false recollections.\nIn either case the _me_ is changed. Should a man be punished for what\nhe did in his childhood and no longer remembers? Should he be punished\nfor crimes enacted in post-epileptic unconsciousness, somnambulism,\nor in any involuntarily induced state of which no recollection is\nretained? Law, in accord with common-sense, says: \"No; he is not the\nsame person forensically now which he was then.\" These losses of memory\nare a normal incident of extreme old age, and the person's _me_ shrinks\nin the ratio of the facts that have disappeared.\n\nIn dreams we forget our waking experiences; they are as if they were\nnot. And the converse is also true. As a rule, no memory is retained\nduring the waking state of what has happened during mesmeric trance,\nalthough when again entranced the person may remember it distinctly,\nand may then forget facts belonging to the waking state. We thus have,\nwithin the bounds of healthy mental life, an approach to an alternation\nof _me's_.\n\nFalse memories are by no means rare occurrences in most of us, and,\nwhenever they occur, they distort the consciousness of the me. Most\npeople, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to\ntheir past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them,\nor they may only have dreamed or imagined they did so. The content of\na dream will oftentimes insert itself into the stream of real life in\na most perplexing way. The most frequent source of false memory is\nthe accounts we give to others of our experiences. Such accounts we\nalmost always make both more simple and more interesting than the\ntruth. We quote what we should have said or done, rather than what we\nreally said or did; and in the first telling we may be fully aware\nof the distinction. But ere long the fiction expels the reality from\nmemory and reigns in its stead alone. This is one great source of the\nfallibility of testimony meant to be quite honest. Especially where\nthe marvellous is concerned, the story takes a tilt that way, and the\nmemory follows the story. Dr. Carpenter quotes from Miss Cobbe the\nfollowing, as an instance of a very common sort:\n\n \"It happened once to the Writer to hear a most scrupulously\n conscientious friend narrate an incident of table-turning, to which\n she appended an assurance that the table rapped when _nobody was\n within a yard of it_. The writer being confounded by this latter fact,\n the lady, though fully satisfied of the accuracy of her statement,\n promised to look at the note she had made ten years previously of\n the transaction. The note was examined, and was found to contain\n the distinct statement that the table rapped when _the hands of six\n persons rested on it!_ The lady's memory as to all other points proved\n to be strictly correct; and in this point she had erred in entire good\n faith.\"[298]\n\nIt is next to impossible to get a story of this sort accurate in all\nits details, although it is the inessential details that suffer most\nchange.[299] Dickens and Balzac were said to have constantly mingled\ntheir fictions with their real experiences. Every one must have known\n_some_ specimen of our mortal dust so intoxicated with the thought of\nhis own person and the sound of his own voice as never to be able even\nto think the truth when his autobiography was in question. Amiable,\nharmless, radiant J. V.! mayst thou ne'er wake to the difference\nbetween thy real and thy fondly-imagined self![300]\n\n2. When we pass beyond alterations of memory to abnormal _alterations\nin the present self_ we have still graver disturbances. These\nalterations are of three main types, from the descriptive point of\nview. But certain cases unite features of two or more types; and our\nknowledge of the elements and causes of these changes of personality is\nso slight that the division into types must not be regarded as having\nany profound significance. The types are:\n\n(1) Insane delusions;\n\n(2) Alternating selves;\n\n(3) Mediumships or possessions.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n1) In insanity we often have delusions projected into the past, which\nare melancholic or sanguine according to the character of the disease.\nBut the worst alterations of the self come from present perversions\nof sensibility and impulse which leave the past undisturbed, but\ninduce the patient to think that the present _me_ is an altogether\nnew personage. Something of this sort happens normally in the rapid\nexpansion of the whole character, intellectual as well as volitional,\nwhich takes place after the time of puberty. The pathological cases are\ncurious enough to merit longer notice.\n\nThe basis of our personality, as M. Ribot says, is that feeling of our\nvitality which, because it is so perpetually present, remains in the\nbackground of our consciousness.\n\n \"It is the basis because, always present, always acting, without\n peace or rest, it knows neither sleep nor fainting, and lasts as long\n as life itself, of which it is one form. It serves as a support to\n that self-conscious _me_ which memory constitutes, it is the medium\n of association among its other parts.... Suppose now that it were\n possible at once to change our body and put another into its place:\n skeleton, vessels, viscera, muscles, skin, everything made new, except\n the nervous system with its stored-up memory of the past. There can\n be no doubt that in such a case the afflux of unaccustomed vital\n sensations would produce the gravest disorders. Between the old sense\n of existence engraved on the nervous system, and the new one acting\n with all the intensity of its reality and novelty, there would be\n irreconcilable contradiction.\"[301]\n\nWith the beginnings of cerebral disease there often happens something\nquite comparable to this:\n\n \"Masses of new sensation, hitherto foreign to the individual, impulses\n and ideas of the same inexperienced kind, for example terrors,\n representations of enacted crime, of enemies pursuing one, etc. At\n the outset, these stand in contrast with the old familiar _me_, as\n a strange, often astonishing and abhorrent _thou_.[302] Often their\n invasion into the former circle of feelings is felt as if the old\n self were being taken possession of by a dark overpowering might,\n and the fact of such 'possession' is described in fantastic images.\n Always this doubleness, this struggle of the old self against the\n new discordant forms of experience, is accompanied with painful\n mental conflict, with passion, with violent emotional excitement.\n This is in great part the reason for the common experience, that the\n first stage in the immense majority of cases of mental disease is an\n emotional alteration particularly of a melancholic sort. If now the\n brain-affection, which is the immediate cause of the new abnormal\n train of ideas, be not relieved, the latter becomes confirmed.\n It may gradually contract associations with the trains of ideas\n which characterized the old self, or portions of the latter may be\n extinguished and lost in the progress of the cerebral malady, so\n that little by little the opposition of the two conscious _me's_\n abates, and the emotional storms are calmed. But by that time _the\n old me itself has been falsified and turned into another_ by those\n associations, by that reception into itself of the abnormal elements\n of feeling and of will. The patient may again be quiet, and his\n thought sometimes logically correct, but in it the morbid erroneous\n ideas are always present, with the adhesions they have contracted,\n as uncontrollable premises, and the man is no longer the same, but a\n really new person, his old self transformed.\"[303]\n\nBut the patient himself rarely continues to describe the change in just\nthese terms unless new _bodily sensations_ in him or the loss of old\nones play a predominant part. Mere perversions of sight and hearing, or\neven of impulse, soon cease to be felt as contradictions of the unity\nof the me.\n\nWhat the particular perversions of the bodily sensibility may be, which\ngive rise to these contradictions, is for the most part impossible for\na sound-minded person to conceive. One patient has another self that\nrepeats all his thoughts for him. Others, among whom are some of the\nfirst characters in history, have familiar d\u00e6mons who speak with them,\nand are replied to. In another someone 'makes' his thoughts for him.\nAnother has two bodies, lying in different beds. Some patients feel as\nif they had lost parts of their bodies, teeth, brain, stomach, etc. In\nsome it is made of wood, glass, butter, etc. In some it does not exist\nany longer, or is dead, or is a foreign object quite separate from the\nspeaker's self. Occasionally, parts of the body lose their connection\nfor consciousness with the rest, and are treated as belonging to\nanother person and moved by a hostile will. Thus the right hand may\nfight with the left as with an enemy.[304] Or the cries of the patient\nhimself are assigned to another person with whom the patient expresses\nsympathy. The literature of insanity is filled with narratives of such\nillusions as these. M. Taine quotes from a patient of Dr. Krishaber an\naccount of sufferings, from which it will be seen how completely aloof\nfrom what is normal a man's experience may suddenly become:\n\n \"After the first or second day it was for some weeks impossible\n to observe or analyze myself. The suffering--angina pectoris--was\n too overwhelming. It was not till the first days of January that I\n could give an account to myself of what I experienced.... Here is\n the first thing of which I retain a clear remembrance. I was alone,\n and already a prey to permanent visual trouble, when I was suddenly\n seized with a visual trouble infinitely more pronounced. Objects grew\n small and receded to infinite distances--men and things together.\n I was myself immeasurably far away, I looked about me with terror\n and astonishment; _the world was escaping from me_.... I remarked at\n the same time that my voice was extremely far away from me, that it\n sounded no longer as if mine. I struck the ground with my foot, and\n perceived its resistance; but this resistance seemed illusory--not\n that the soil was soft, but that the weight of my body was reduced to\n almost nothing.... I had the feeling of being without weight....\" In\n addition to being so distant, \"objects appeared to me _flat_. When\n I spoke with anyone, I saw him like an image cut out of paper with\n no relief.... This sensation lasted intermittently for two years....\n Constantly it seemed as if my legs did not belong to me. It was almost\n as bad with my arms. As for my head, it seemed no longer to exist....\n I appeared to myself to act automatically, by an impulsion foreign\n to myself.... There was inside of me a new being, and another part\n of myself, the old being, which took no interest in the new-comer.\n I distinctly remember saying to myself that the sufferings of this\n new being were to me indifferent. I was never really dupe of these\n illusions, but my mind grew often tired of incessantly correcting the\n new impressions, and I let myself go and lived the unhappy life of\n this new entity. I had an ardent desire to see my old world again, to\n get back to my old self. This desire kept me from killing myself....\n I was another, and I hated, I despised this other; he was perfectly\n odious to me; it was certainly another who had taken my form and\n assumed my functions.\"[305]\n\nIn cases similar to this, it is as certain that the _I_ is unaltered as\nthat the _me_ is changed. That is to say, the present Thought of the\npatient is cognitive of both the old _me_ and the new, so long as its\nmemory holds good. Only, within that objective sphere which formerly\nlent itself so simply to the judgment of recognition and of egoistic\nappropriation, strange perplexities have arisen. The present and the\npast both seen therein will not unite. Where is my old me? What is this\nnew one? Are they the same? Or have I two? Such questions, answered by\nwhatever theory the patient is able to conjure up as plausible, form\nthe beginning of his insane life.[306]\n\nA case with which I am acquainted through Dr. C. J. Fisher of Tewksbury\nhas possibly its origin in this way. The woman, Bridget F.,\n\n \"has been many years insane, and always speaks of her supposed self\n as 'the rat,' asking me to 'bury the little rat,' etc. Her real self\n she speaks of in the third person as 'the good woman,' saying, 'The\n good Woman knew Dr. F. and used to work for him,' etc. Sometimes she\n sadly asks: 'Do you think the good woman will ever come back?' She\n works at needlework, knitting, laundry, etc., and shows her work,\n saying, 'Isn't that good for only a rat?' She has, during periods of\n depression, hid herself under buildings, and crawled into holes and\n under boxes. 'She was only a rat, and wants to die,' she would say\n when we found her.\"\n\n2. The phenomenon of _alternating personality_ in its simplest\nphases seems based on lapses of memory. Any man becomes, as we say,\n_inconsistent_ with himself if he forgets his engagements, pledges,\nknowledges, and habits; and it is merely a question of degree at\nwhat point we shall say that his personality is changed. In the\npathological cases known as those of double or alternate personality\nthe lapse of memory is abrupt, and is usually preceded by a period of\nunconsciousness or syncope lasting a variable length of time. In the\nhypnotic trance we can easily produce an alteration of the personality,\neither by telling the subject to forget all that has happened to him\nsince such or such a date, in which case he becomes (it may be) a child\nagain, or by telling him he is another altogether imaginary personage,\nin which case all facts about himself seem for the time being to lapse\nfrom out his mind, and he throws himself into the new character with a\nvivacity proportionate to the amount of histrionic imagination which\nhe possesses.[307] But in the pathological cases the transformation is\nspontaneous. The most famous case, perhaps, on record is that of F\u00e9lida\nX., reported by Dr. Azam of Bordeaux.[308] At the age of fourteen this\nwoman began to pass into a 'secondary' state characterized by a change\nin her general disposition and character, as if certain 'inhibitions,'\npreviously existing, were suddenly removed. During the secondary state\nshe remembered the first state, but on emerging from it into the first\nstate she remembered nothing of the second. At the age of forty-four\nthe duration of the secondary state (which was on the whole superior in\nquality to the original state) had gained upon the latter so much as to\noccupy most of her time. During it she remembers the events belonging\nto the original state, but her complete oblivion of the secondary state\nwhen the original state recurs is often very distressing to her, as,\nfor example, when the transition takes place in a carriage on her way\nto a funeral, and she hasn't the least idea which one of her friends\nmay be dead. She actually became pregnant during one of her early\nsecondary states, and during her first state had no knowledge of how it\nhad come to pass. Her distress at these blanks of memory is sometimes\nintense and once drove her to attempt suicide.\n\nTo take another example, Dr. Rieger gives an account[309] of an\nepileptic man who for seventeen years had passed his life alternately\nfree, in prisons, or in asylums, his character being orderly enough in\nthe normal state, but alternating with periods, during which he would\nleave his home for several weeks, leading the life of a thief and\nvagabond, being sent to jail, having epileptic fits and excitement,\nbeing accused of malingering, etc., etc., and with never a memory of\nthe abnormal conditions which were to blame for all his wretchedness.\n\n \"I have never got from anyone,\" says Dr. Rieger, \"so singular an\n impression as from this man, of whom it could not be said that he\n had any properly conscious past at all.... It is really impossible\n to think one's self into such a state of mind. His last larceny had\n been performed in N\u00fcrnberg, he knew nothing of it, and saw himself\n before the court and then in the hospital, but without in the least\n understanding the reason why. That he had epileptic attacks, he knew.\n But it was impossible to convince him that for hours together he raved\n and acted in an abnormal way.\"\n\nAnother remarkable case is that of Mary Reynolds, lately republished\nagain by Dr. Weir Mitchell.[310] This dull and melancholy young woman,\ninhabiting the Pennsylvania wilderness in 1811,\n\n \"was found one morning, long after her habitual time for rising, in\n a profound sleep from which it was impossible to arouse her. After\n eighteen or twenty hours of sleeping she awakened, but in a state of\n unnatural consciousness. Memory had fled. To all intents and purposes\n she was as a being for the first time ushered into the world. 'All\n of the past that remained to her was the faculty of pronouncing a\n few words, and this seems to have been as purely instinctive as the\n wailings of an infant; for at first the words which she uttered were\n connected with no ideas in her mind.' Until she was taught their\n significance they were unmeaning sounds.\n\n \"'Her eyes were virtually for the first time opened upon the world.\n Old things had passed away; all things had become new.' Her parents,\n brothers, sisters, friends, were not recognized or acknowledged as\n such by her. She had never seen them before,--never known them,--was\n not aware that such persons had been. Now for the first time she was\n introduced to their company and acquaintance. To the scenes by which\n she was surrounded she was a perfect stranger. The house, the fields,\n the forest, the hills, the vales, the streams,--all were novelties.\n The beauties of the landscape were all unexplored.\n\n \"She had not the slightest consciousness that she had ever existed\n previous to the moment in which she awoke from that mysterious\n slumber. 'In a word, she was an infant, just born, yet born in a\n state of maturity, with a capacity for relishing the rich, sublime,\n luxuriant wonders of created nature.'\n\n \"The first lesson in her education was to teach her by what ties\n she was bound to those by whom she was surrounded, and the duties\n devolving upon her accordingly. This she was very slow to learn, and,\n 'indeed, never did learn, or, at least, never would acknowledge the\n ties of consanguinity, or scarcely those of friendship. She considered\n those she had once known as for the most part strangers and enemies,\n among whom she was, by some remarkable and unaccountable means,\n transplanted, though from what region or state of existence was a\n problem unsolved.'\n\n \"The next lesson was to re-teach her the arts of reading and writing.\n She was apt enough, and made such rapid progress in both that _in a_\n _few weeks_ she had readily re-learned to read and write. In copying\n her name which her brother had written for her as a first lesson, she\n took her pen in a very awkward manner and began to copy from right to\n left in the Hebrew mode, as though she had been transplanted from an\n Eastern soil....\n\n \"The next thing that is noteworthy is the change which took place in\n her disposition. Instead of being melancholy she was now cheerful\n to extremity. Instead of being reserved she was buoyant and social.\n Formerly taciturn and retiring, she was now merry and jocose. Her\n disposition was totally and absolutely changed. While she was, in\n this second state, extravagantly fond of company, she was much more\n enamoured of nature's works, as exhibited in the forests, hills,\n vales, and water-courses. She used to start in the morning, either on\n foot or horseback, and ramble until nightfall over the whole country;\n nor was she at all particular whether she were on a path or in the\n trackless forest. Her predilection for this manner of life may have\n been occasioned by the restraint necessarily imposed upon her by\n her friends, which caused her to consider them her enemies and not\n companions, and she was glad to keep out of their way.\n\n \"She knew no fear, and as bears and panthers were numerous in the\n woods, and rattlesnakes and copperheads abounded everywhere, her\n friends told her of the danger to which she exposed herself, but it\n produced no other effect than to draw forth a contemptuous laugh,\n as she said, 'I know you only want to frighten me and keep me at\n home, but you miss it, for I often see your bears and I am perfectly\n convinced that they are nothing more than black hogs.'\n\n \"One evening, after her return from her daily excursion, she told the\n following incident: 'As I was riding to-day along a narrow path a\n great black hog came out of the woods and stopped before me. I never\n saw such an impudent black hog before. It stood up on its hind feet\n and grinned and gnashed its teeth at me. I could not make the horse\n go on. I told him he was a fool to be frightened at a hog, and tried\n to whip him past, but he would not go and wanted to turn back. I told\n the hog to get out of the way, but he did not mind me. \"Well,\" said\n I, \"if you won't for words, I'll try blows;\" so I got off and took a\n stick, and walked up toward it. When I got pretty close by, it got\n down on all fours and walked away slowly and sullenly, stopping every\n few steps and looking back and grinning and growling. Then I got on my\n horse and rode on.'...\n\n \"Thus it continued for five weeks, when one morning, after a\n protracted sleep, she awoke and was herself again. She recognized\n the parental, the brotherly, and sisterly ties as though nothing\n had happened, and immediately went about the performance of duties\n incumbent upon her, and which she had planned five weeks previously.\n Great was her surprise at the change which one night (as she supposed)\n had produced. Nature bore a different aspect. Not a trace was left\n in her mind of the giddy scenes through which she had passed. Her\n ramblings through the forest, her tricks and humor, all were faded\n from her memory, and not a shadow left behind. Her parents saw their\n child; her brothers and sisters saw their sister. She now had all the\n knowledge that she had possessed in her first state previous to the\n change, still fresh and in as vigorous exercise as though no change\n had been. But any new acquisitions she had made, and any new ideas\n she had obtained, were lost to her now--yet not lost, but laid up\n out of sight in safe-keeping for future use. Of course her natural\n disposition returned; her melancholy was deepened by the information\n of what had occurred. All went on in the old-fashioned way, and it was\n fondly hoped that the mysterious occurrences of those five weeks would\n never be repeated, but these anticipations were not to be realized.\n After the lapse of a few weeks she fell into a profound sleep, and\n awoke in her second state, taking up her new life again precisely\n where she had left it when she before passed from that state. She was\n not now a daughter or a sister. All the knowledge she possessed was\n that acquired during the few weeks of her former period of second\n consciousness. She knew nothing of the intervening time. Two periods\n widely separated were brought into contact. She thought it was but one\n night.\n\n \"In this state she came to understand perfectly the facts of her case,\n not from memory, but from information. Yet her buoyancy of spirits was\n so great that no depression was produced. On the contrary, it added to\n her cheerfulness, and was made the foundation, as was everything else,\n of mirth.\n\n \"These alternations from one state to another continued at intervals\n of varying length for fifteen or sixteen years, but finally ceased\n when she attained the age of thirty-five or thirty-six, leaving her\n _permanently in her second state_. In this she remained without change\n for the last quarter of a century of her life.\"\n\nThe emotional opposition of the two states seems, however, to have\nbecome gradually effaced in Mary Reynolds:\n\n \"The change from a gay, hysterical, mischievous woman, fond of\n jests and subject to absurd beliefs or delusive convictions, to\n one retaining the joyousness and love of society, but sobered down\n to levels of practical usefulness, was gradual. The most of the\n twenty-five years which followed she was as different from her\n melancholy, morbid self as from the hilarious condition of the early\n years of her second state. Some of her family spoke of it as her\n third state. She is described as becoming rational, industrious, and\n very cheerful, yet reasonably serious; possessed of a well-balanced\n temperament, and not having the slightest indication of an injured or\n disturbed mind. For some years she taught school, and in that capacity\n was both useful and acceptable, being a general favorite with old and\n young.\n\n \"During these last twenty-five years she lived in the same house with\n the Rev. Dr. John V. Reynolds, her nephew, part of that time keeping\n house for him, showing a sound judgment and a thorough acquaintance\n with the duties of her position.\n\n \"Dr. Reynolds, who is still living in Meadville,\" says Dr. Mitchell,\n \"and who has most kindly placed the facts at my disposal, states in\n his letter to me of January 4, 1888, that at a later period of her\n life she said she did sometimes seem to have a dim, dreamy idea of\n a shadowy past, which she could not fully grasp, and could not be\n certain whether it originated in a partially restored memory or in the\n statements of the events by others during her abnormal state.\n\n \"Miss Reynolds died in January, 1854, at the age of sixty-one. On the\n morning of the day of her death she rose in her usual health, ate her\n breakfast, and superintended household duties. While thus employed she\n suddenly raised her hands to her head and exclaimed: 'Oh! I wonder\n what is the matter with my head!' and immediately fell to the floor.\n When carried to a sofa she gasped once or twice and died.\"\n\nIn such cases as the preceding, in which the secondary character is\nsuperior to the first, there seems reason to think that the first one\nis the morbid one. The word _inhibition_ describes its dulness and\nmelancholy. F\u00e9lida X.'s original character was dull and melancholy in\ncomparison with that which she later acquired, and the change may be\nregarded as the removal of inhibitions which had maintained themselves\nfrom earlier years. Such inhibitions we all know temporarily, when we\ncan not recollect or in some other way command our mental resources.\nThe systematized amnesias (losses of memory) of hypnotic subjects\nordered to forget all nouns, or all verbs, or a particular letter\nof the alphabet, or all that is relative to a certain person, are\ninhibitions of the sort on a more extensive scale. They sometimes\noccur spontaneously as symptoms of disease.[311] Now M. Pierre Janet\nhas shown that such inhibitions when they bear on a certain class of\nsensations (making the subject an\u00e6sthetic thereto) and also on the\nmemory of such sensations, are the basis of changes of personality.\nThe an\u00e6sthetic and 'amnesic' hysteric is one person; but when you\nrestore her inhibited sensibilities and memories by plunging her into\nthe hypnotic trance--in other words, when you rescue them from their\n'dissociated' and split-off condition, and make them rejoin the other\nsensibilities and memories--she is a different person. As said above\n(p. 203), the hypnotic trance is one method of restoring sensibility\nin hysterics. But one day when the hysteric an\u00e6sthetic named Lucie was\nalready in the hypnotic trance, M. Janet for a certain reason continued\nto make passes over her for a full half-hour as if she were not already\nasleep. The result was to throw her into a sort of syncope from which,\nafter half an hour, she revived in a second somnambulic condition\nentirely unlike that which had characterized her thitherto--different\nsensibilities, a different memory, a different person, in short. In\nthe waking state the poor young woman was an\u00e6sthetic all over, nearly\ndeaf, and with a badly contracted field of vision. Bad as it was,\nhowever, sight was her best sense, and she used it as a guide in all\nher movements. With her eyes bandaged she became entirely helpless, and\nlike other persons of a similar sort whose cases have been recorded,\nshe almost immediately fell asleep in consequence of the withdrawal\nof her last sensorial stimulus. M. Janet calls this waking or primary\n(one can hardly in such a connection say 'normal') state by the\nname of Lucie 1. In Lucie 2, her first sort of hypnotic trance, the\nan\u00e6sthesias were diminished but not removed. In the deeper trance,\n'Lucie 3,' brought about as just described, no trace of them remained.\nHer sensibility became perfect, and instead of being an extreme example\nof the 'visual' type, she was transformed into what in Prof. Charcot's\nterminology is known as a motor. That is to say, that whereas when\nawake she had thought in visual terms exclusively, and could imagine\nthings only by remembering how they _looked_, now in this deeper trance\nher thoughts and memories seemed to M. Janet to be largely composed of\nimages of movement and of touch.\n\nHaving discovered this deeper trance and change of personality in\nLucie, M. Janet naturally became eager to find it in his other\nsubjects. He found it in Rose, in Marie, and in L\u00e9onie; and his\nbrother, Dr. Jules Janet, who was _interne_ at the Salp\u00e9tri\u00e8re\nHospital, found it in the celebrated subject Wit.... whose trances had\nbeen studied for years by the various doctors of that institution\nwithout any of them having happened to awaken this very peculiar\nindividuality.[312]\n\nWith the return of all the sensibilities in the deeper trance, these\nsubjects turned, as it were, into normal persons. Their memories\nin particular grew more extensive, and hereupon M. Janet spins a\ntheoretic generalization. _When a certain kind of sensation_, he says,\n_is abolished in an hysteric patient, there is also abolished along\nwith it all recollection of past sensations of that kind_. If, for\nexample, hearing be the an\u00e6sthetic sense, the patient becomes unable\neven to imagine sounds and voices, and has to speak (when speech is\nstill possible) by means of motor or articulatory cues. If the motor\nsense be abolished, the patient must will the movements of his limbs\nby first defining them to his mind in visual terms, and must innervate\nhis voice by premonitory ideas of the way in which the words are going\nto sound. The practical consequences of this law would be great, for\nall experiences belonging to a sphere of sensibility which afterwards\nbecame an\u00e6sthetic, as, for example, touch, would have been stored away\nand remembered in tactile terms, and would be incontinently forgotten\nas soon as the cutaneous and muscular sensibility should come to be cut\nout in the course of disease. Memory of them would be restored again,\non the other hand, so soon as the sense of touch came back. Now, in the\nhysteric subjects on whom M. Janet experimented, touch did come back in\nthe state of trance. The result was that all sorts of memories, absent\nin the ordinary condition, came back too, and they could then go back\nand explain the origin of many otherwise inexplicable things in their\nlife. One stage in the great convulsive crisis of hystero-epilepsy,\nfor example, is what French writers call the _phase des attitudes\npassionelles_, in which the patient, without speaking or giving any\naccount of herself, will go through the outward movements of fear,\nanger, or some other emotional state of mind. Usually this phase is,\nwith each patient, a thing so stereotyped as to seem automatic, and\ndoubts have even been expressed as to whether any consciousness exists\nwhilst it lasts. When, however, the patient Lucie's tactile sensibility\ncame back in the deeper trance, she explained the origin of her\nhysteric crisis in a great fright which she had had when a child, on\na day when certain men, hid behind the curtains, had jumped out upon\nher; she told how she went through this scene again in all her crises;\nshe told of her sleep-walking fits through the house when a child, and\nhow for several months she had been shut in a dark room because of a\ndisorder of the eyes. All these were things of which she recollected\nnothing when awake, because they were records of experiences mainly of\nmotion and of touch.\n\nBut M. Janet's subject L\u00e9onie is interesting, and shows best how with\nthe sensibilities and motor impulses the memories and character will\nchange.\n\n \"This woman, whose life sounds more like an improbable romance than\n a genuine history, has had attacks of natural somnambulism since the\n age of three years. She has been hypnotized constantly by all sorts of\n persons from the age of sixteen upwards, and she is now forty-five.\n Whilst her normal life developed in one way in the midst of her poor\n country surroundings, her second life was passed in drawing-rooms and\n doctors' offices, and naturally took an entirely different direction.\n To-day, when in her normal state, this poor peasant woman is a serious\n and rather sad person, calm and slow, very mild with every one, and\n extremely timid: to look at her one would never suspect the personage\n which she contains. But hardly is she put to sleep hypnotically\n when a metamorphosis occurs. Her face is no longer the same. She\n keeps her eyes closed, it is true, but the acuteness of her other\n senses supplies their place. She is gay, noisy, restless, sometimes\n insupportably so. She remains good-natured, but has acquired a\n singular tendency to irony and sharp jesting. Nothing is more curious\n than to hear her after a sitting when she has received a visit from\n strangers who wished to see her asleep. She gives a word-portrait of\n them, apes their manners, pretends to know their little ridiculous\n aspects and passions, and for each invents a romance. To this\n character must be added the possession of an enormous number of\n recollections, whose existence she does not even suspect when awake,\n for her amnesia is then complete.... She refuses the name of L\u00e9onie\n and takes that of L\u00e9ontine (L\u00e9onie 2) to which her first magnetizers\n had accustomed her. 'That good woman is not myself,' she says, 'she\n is too stupid!' To herself, L\u00e9ontine or L\u00e9onie 2, she attributes\n all the sensations and all the actions, in a word all the conscious\n experiences which she has undergone _in somnambulism_, and knits them\n together to make the history of her already long life. To L\u00e9onie 1 [as\n M. Janet calls the waking woman] on the other hand, she exclusively\n ascribes the events lived through in waking hours. I was at first\n struck by an important exception to the rule, and was disposed to\n think that there might be something arbitrary in this partition of her\n recollections. In the normal state L\u00e9onie has a husband and children;\n but L\u00e9onie 2, the somnambulist, whilst acknowledging the children\n as her own, attributes the husband to 'the other.' This choice, was\n perhaps explicable, but it followed no rule. It was not till later\n that I learned that her magnetizers in early days, as audacious\n as certain hypnotizers of recent date, had somnambulized her for\n her first _accouchements_, and that she had lapsed into that state\n spontaneously in the later ones. L\u00e9onie 2 was thus quite right in\n ascribing to herself the children--it was she who had had them, and\n the rule that her first trance-state forms a different personality was\n not broken. But it is the same with her second or deepest state of\n trance. When after the renewed passes, syncope, etc., she reaches the\n condition which I have called L\u00e9onie 3, she is another person still.\n Serious and grave, instead of being a restless child, she speaks\n slowly and moves but little. Again she separates herself from the\n waking L\u00e9onie 1. 'A good but rather stupid woman,' she says, 'and not\n me.' And she also separates herself from L\u00e9onie 2: 'How can you see\n anything of me in that crazy creature?' she says. 'Fortunately I am\n nothing for her.'\"\n\nL\u00e9onie 1 knows only of herself; L\u00e9onie 2, of herself and of L\u00e9onie 1;\nL\u00e9onie 3 knows of herself and of both the others. L\u00e9onie 1 has a visual\nconsciousness; L\u00e9onie 2 has one both visual and auditory; in L\u00e9onie 3\nit is at once visual, auditory, and tactile. Prof. Janet thought at\nfirst that he was L\u00e9onie 3's discoverer. But she told him that she had\nbeen frequently in that condition before. A former magnetizer had hit\nupon her just as M. Janet had, in seeking by means of passes to deepen\nthe sleep of L\u00e9onie 2.\n\n \"This resurrection of a somnambulic personage who had been extinct\n for twenty years is curious enough; and in speaking to L\u00e9onie 3, I\n naturally now adopt the name of L\u00e9onore which was given her by her\n first master.\"\n\nThe most carefully studied case of multiple personality is that of the\nhysteric youth Louis V. about whom MM. Bourru and Burot have written a\nbook.[313] The symptoms are too intricate to be reproduced here with\ndetail. Suffice it that Louis V. had led an irregular life, in the\narmy, in hospitals, and in houses of correction, and had had numerous\nhysteric an\u00e6sthesias, paralyses, and contractures attacking him\ndifferently at different times and when he lived at different places.\nAt eighteen, at an agricultural House of Correction he was bitten by\na viper, which brought on a convulsive crisis and left _both of his\nlegs_ paralyzed for three years. During this condition he was gentle,\nmoral, and industrious. But suddenly at last, after a long convulsive\nseizure, his paralysis disappeared, and with it his memory for all the\ntime during which it had endured. His character also changed: he became\nquarrelsome, gluttonous, impolite, stealing his comrades' wine, and\nmoney from an attendant, and finally escaped from the establishment\nand fought furiously when he was overtaken and caught. Later, when\nhe first fell under the observation of the authors, his _right side_\nwas half paralyzed and insensible, and his character intolerable; the\napplication of metals transferred the paralysis to the _left_ side,\nabolished his recollections of the other condition, and carried him\npsychically back to the hospital of Bic\u00eatre where he had been treated\nfor a similar physical condition. His character, opinions, education,\nall underwent a concomitant transformation. He was no longer the\npersonage of the moment before. It appeared ere long that any present\nnervous disorder in him could be temporarily removed by metals,\nmagnets, electric or other baths, etc.; and that any past disorder\ncould be brought back by hypnotic suggestion. He also went through a\nrapid spontaneous repetition of his series of past disorders after\neach of the convulsive attacks which occurred in him at intervals.\nIt was observed that each physical state in which he found himself,\nexcluded certain memories and brought with it a definite modification\nof character.\n\n \"The law of these changes,\" say the authors, \"is quite clear. There\n exist precise, constant, and necessary relations between the bodily\n and the mental state, such that it is impossible to modify the one\n without modifying the other in a parallel fashion.\"[314]\n\nThe case of this proteiform individual would seem, then, nicely to\ncorroborate M. P. Janet's law that an\u00e6sthesias and gaps in memory go\ntogether. Coupling Janet's law with Locke's that changes of memory\nbring changes of personality, we should have an apparent explanation\nof some cases at least of alternate personality. But mere an\u00e6sthesia\ndoes not sufficiently explain the changes of disposition, which\nare probably due to modifications in the perviousness of motor and\nassociative paths, co-ordinate with those of the sensorial paths rather\nthan consecutive upon them. And indeed a glance at other cases than M.\nJanet's own, suffices to show us that sensibility and memory are not\ncoupled in any invariable way.[315] M. Janet's law, true of his own\ncases, does not seem to hold good in all.\n\nOf course it is mere guesswork to speculate on what may be the cause of\nthe amnesias which lie at the bottom of changes in the Self. Changes\nof blood-supply have naturally been invoked. Alternate action of the\ntwo hemispheres was long ago proposed by Dr. Wigan in his book on\nthe Duality of the Mind. I shall revert to this explanation after\nconsidering the third class of alterations of the Self, those, namely,\nwhich I have called 'possessions.'\n\nI have myself become quite recently acquainted with the subject of a\ncase of alternate personality of the 'ambulatory' sort, who has given\nme permission to name him in these pages.[316]\n\n The Rev. Ansel Bourne, of Greene, R. I., was brought up to the trade\n of a carpenter; but, in consequence of a sudden temporary loss,\n of sight and hearing under very peculiar circumstances, he became\n converted from Atheism to Christianity just before his thirtieth\n year, and has since that time for the most part lived the life of an\n itinerant preacher. He has been subject to headaches and temporary\n fits of depression of spirits during most of his life, and has had a\n few fits of unconsciousness lasting an hour or less. He also has a\n region of somewhat diminished cutaneous sensibility on the left thigh.\n Otherwise his health is good, and his muscular strength and endurance\n excellent. He is of a firm and self-reliant disposition, a man whose\n yea is yea and his nay, nay; and his character for uprightness is such\n in the community that no person who knows him will for a moment admit\n the possibility of his case not being perfectly genuine.\n\n On January 17, 1887, he drew 551 dollars from a bank in Providence\n with which to pay for a certain lot of land in Greene, paid certain\n bills, and got into a Pawtucket horse-car. This is the last incident\n which he remembers. He did not return home that day, and nothing\n was heard of him for two months. He was published in the papers as\n missing, and foul play being suspected, the police sought in vain his\n whereabouts. On the morning of March 14th, however, at Norristown,\n Pennsylvania, a man calling himself A. J. Brown, who had rented\n a small shop six weeks previously, stocked it with stationery,\n confectionery, fruit and small articles, and carried on his quiet\n trade without seeming to any one unnatural or eccentric, woke up in a\n fright and called in the people of the house to tell him where he was.\n He said that his name was Ansel Bourne, that he was entirely ignorant\n of Norristown, that he knew nothing of shop-keeping, and that the last\n thing he remembered--it seemed only yesterday--was drawing the money\n from the bank, etc., in Providence. He would not believe that two\n months had elapsed. The people of the house thought him insane; and\n so, at first, did Dr. Louis H. Read, whom they called in to see him.\n But on telegraphing to Providence, confirmatory messages came, and\n presently his nephew, Mr. Andrew Harris, arrived upon the scene, made\n everything straight, and took him home. He was very weak, having lost\n apparently over twenty pounds of flesh during his escapade, and had\n such a horror of the idea of the candy-store that he refused to set\n foot in it again.\n\n The first two weeks of the period remained unaccounted for, as he had\n no memory, after he had once resumed his normal personality, of any\n part of the time, and no one who knew him seems to have seen him\n after he left home. The remarkable part of the change is, of course,\n the peculiar occupation which the so-called Brown indulged in. Mr.\n Bourne has never in his life had the slightest contact with trade.\n 'Brown' was described by the neighbors as taciturn, orderly in his\n habits, and in no way queer. He went to Philadelphia several times;\n replenished his stock; cooked for himself in the back shop, where he\n also slept; went regularly to church; and once at a prayer-meeting\n made what was considered by the hearers a good address, in the course\n of which he related an incident which he had witnessed in his natural\n state of Bourne.\n\n This was all that was known of the case up to June 1890, when I\n induced Mr. Bourne to submit to hypnotism, so as to see whether, in\n the hypnotic trance, his 'Brown' memory would not come back. It did\n so with surprising readiness; so much so indeed that it proved quite\n impossible to make him whilst in the hypnosis remember any of the\n facts of his normal life. He had heard of Ansel Bourne, but \"didn't\n know as he had ever met the man.\" When confronted with Mrs. Bourne\n he said that he had \"never seen the woman before,\" etc. On the other\n hand, he told of his peregrinations during the lost fortnight,[317]\n and gave all sorts of details about the Norristown episode. The whole\n thing was prosaic enough; and the Brown-personality seems to be\n nothing but a rather shrunken, dejected, and amnesic extract of Mr.\n Bourne himself. He gives no motive for the wandering except that there\n was 'trouble back there' and he 'wanted rest.' During the trance he\n looks old, the corners of his mouth are drawn down, his voice is slow\n and weak, and he sits screening his eyes and trying vainly to remember\n what lay before and after the two months of the Brown experience. \"I'm\n all hedged in,\" he says: \"I can't get out at either end. I don't know\n what set me down in that Pawtucket horse-car, and I don't know how I\n ever left that store, or what became of it.\" His eyes are practically\n normal, and all his sensibilities (save for tardier response) about\n the same in hypnosis as in waking. I had hoped by suggestion, etc., to\n run the two personalities into one, and make the memories continuous,\n but no artifice would avail to accomplish this, and Mr. Bourne's skull\n to-day still covers two distinct personal selves.\n\n The case (whether it contain an epileptic element or not) should\n apparently be classed as one of spontaneous hypnotic trance,\n persisting for two months. The peculiarity of it is that nothing else\n like it ever occurred in the man's life, and that no eccentricity of\n character came out. In most similar cases, the attacks recur, and the\n sensibilities and conduct markedly change.[318]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n3. In '_mediumships_' or '_possessions_' the invasion and the passing\naway of the secondary state are both relatively abrupt, and the\nduration of the state is usually short--i.e., from a few minutes to a\nfew hours. Whenever the secondary state is well developed no memory for\naught that happened during it remains after the primary consciousness\ncomes back. The subject during the secondary consciousness speaks,\nwrites, or acts as if animated by a foreign person, and often names\nthis foreign person and gives his history. In old times the foreign\n'control' was usually a demon, and is so now in communities which favor\nthat belief. With us he gives himself out at the worst for an Indian or\nother grotesquely speaking but harmless personage. Usually he purports\nto be the spirit of a dead person known or unknown to those present,\nand the subject is then what we call a 'medium.' Mediumistic possession\nin all its grades seems to form a perfectly natural special type of\nalternate personality, and the susceptibility to it in some form is\nby no means an uncommon gift, in persons who have no other obvious\nnervous anomaly. The phenomena are very intricate, and are only just\nbeginning to be studied in a proper scientific way. The lowest phase\nof mediumship is automatic writing, and the lowest grade of that is\nwhere the Subject knows what words are coming, but feels impelled to\nwrite them as if from without. Then comes writing unconsciously, even\nwhilst engaged in reading or talk. Inspirational speaking, playing on\nmusical instruments, etc., also belong to the relatively lower phases\nof possession, in which the normal self is not excluded from conscious\nparticipation in the performance, though their initiative seems to come\nfrom elsewhere. In the highest phase the trance is complete, the voice,\nlanguage, and everything are changed, and there is no after-memory\nwhatever until the next trance comes. One curious thing about\ntrance-utterances is their generic similarity in different individuals.\nThe 'control' here in America is either a grotesque, slangy, and\nflippant personage ('Indian' controls, calling the ladies 'squaws,'\nthe men 'braves,' the house a 'wigwam,' etc., etc., are excessively\ncommon); or, if he ventures on higher intellectual flights, he abounds\nin a curiously vague optimistic philosophy-and-water, in which phrases\nabout spirit, harmony, beauty, law, progression, development, etc.,\nkeep recurring. It seems exactly as if one author composed more than\nhalf of the trance-messages, no matter by whom they are uttered.\nWhether all sub-conscious selves are peculiarly susceptible to a\ncertain stratum of the _Zeitgeist_, and get their inspiration from it,\nI know not; but this is obviously the case with the secondary selves\nwhich become 'developed' in spiritualist circles. There the beginnings\nof the medium trance are indistinguishable from effects of hypnotic\nsuggestion. The subject assumes the r\u00f4le of a medium simply because\nopinion expects it of him under the conditions which are present;\nand carries it out with a feebleness or a vivacity proportionate to\nhis histrionic gifts. But the odd thing is that persons unexposed to\nspiritualist traditions will so often act in the same way when they\nbecome entranced, speak in the name of the departed, go through the\nmotions of their several death-agonies, send messages about their happy\nhome in the summer-land, and describe the ailments of those present.\nI have no theory to publish of these cases, several of which I have\npersonally seen.\n\nAs an example of the automatic writing performances I will quote from\nan account of his own case kindly furnished me by Mr. Sidney Dean of\nWarren, R I., member of Congress from Connecticut from 1855 to 1859,\nwho has been all his life a robust and active journalist, author, and\nman of affairs. He has for many years been a writing subject, and has a\nlarge collection of manuscript automatically produced.\n\n \"Some of it,\" he writes us, \"is in hieroglyph, or strange compounded\n arbitrary characters, each series possessing a seeming unity in\n general design or character, followed by what purports to be a\n translation or rendering into mother English. I never attempted the\n seemingly impossible feat of copying the characters. They were cut\n with the precision of a graver's tool, and generally with a single\n rapid stroke of the pencil. Many languages, some obsolete and passed\n from history, are professedly given. To see them would satisfy you\n that no one could copy them except by tracing.\n\n \"These, however, are but a small part of the phenomena. The\n 'automatic' has given place to the _impressional_, and when the work\n is in progress I am in the normal condition, and seemingly two minds,\n intelligences, persons, are practically engaged. The writing is in my\n own hand but the dictation not of my own mind and will, but that of\n another, upon subjects of which I can have no knowledge and hardly a\n theory; and I, myself, consciously criticise the thought, fact, mode\n of expressing it, etc., while the hand is recording the subject-matter\n and even the words impressed to be written. If _I_ refuse to write\n the sentence, or even the word, the impression instantly ceases, and\n my willingness must be mentally expressed before the work is resumed,\n and it is resumed at the point of cessation, even if it should be in\n the middle of a sentence. Sentences are commenced without knowledge\n of mine as to their subject or ending. In fact, I have never known in\n advance the subject of disquisition.\n\n \"There is in progress now, at uncertain times, not subject to my will,\n a series of twenty-four chapters upon the scientific features of life,\n moral, spiritual, eternal. Seven have already been written in the\n manner indicated. These were preceded by twenty-four chapters relating\n generally to the life beyond material death, its characteristics,\n etc. Each chapter is signed by the name of some person who has lived\n on earth,--some with whom I have been personally acquainted, others\n known in history.... I know nothing of the alleged authorship of any\n chapter until it is completed and the name impressed and appended....\n I am interested not only in the reputed authorship,--of which I have\n nothing corroborative,--but in the philosophy taught, of which I was\n in ignorance until these chapters appeared. From my standpoint of\n life--which has been that of biblical orthodoxy--the philosophy is\n new, seems to be reasonable, and is logically put. I confess to an\n inability to successfully controvert it to my own satisfaction.\n\n \"It is an intelligent _ego_ who writes, or else the influence\n assumes individuality, which practically makes of the influence a\n personality. It is _not_ myself; of that I am conscious at every step\n of the process. I have also traversed the whole field of the claims\n of 'unconscious cerebration,' so called, so far as I am competent\n to critically examine it, and it fails, as a theory, in numberless\n points, when applied to this strange work through me. It would be far\n more reasonable and satisfactory for me to accept the silly hypothesis\n of re-incarnation,--the old doctrine of metempsychosis,--as taught\n by some spiritualists to-day, and to believe that I lived a former\n life here, and that once in a while it dominates my intellectual\n powers, and writes chapters upon the philosophy of life, or opens a\n post-office for spirits to drop their effusions, and have them put\n into English script. No; the easiest and most natural solution to me\n is to admit the claim made, i.e., that it is a decarnated intelligence\n who writes. But _who?_ that is the question. The names of scholars\n and thinkers who once lived are affixed to the most ungrammatical and\n weakest of _bosh_....\n\n \"It seems reasonable to me--upon the hypothesis that it is a person\n using another's mind or brain--that there must be more or less of\n that other's style or tone incorporated in the message, and that to\n the unseen personality, i.e., the power which impresses, the thought,\n the fact, or the philosophy, and not the style or tone, belongs. For\n instance, while the influence is impressing my brain with the greatest\n force and rapidity, so that my pencil fairly flies over the paper to\n record the thoughts, I am conscious that, in many cases, the vehicle\n of the thought, i.e., the language, is very natural and familiar to\n me, as if, somehow, _my_ personality as a writer was getting mixed\n up with the message. And, again, the style, language, everything, is\n entirely foreign to my own style.\"\n\nI am myself persuaded by abundant acquaintance with the trances of\none medium that the 'control' may be altogether different from any\n_possible_ waking self of the person. In the case I have in mind,\nit professes to be a certain departed French doctor; and is, I am\nconvinced, acquainted with facts about the circumstances, and the\nliving and dead relatives and acquaintances, of numberless sitters\nwhom the medium never met before, and of whom she has never heard the\nnames. I record my bare opinion here unsupported by the evidence, not,\nof course, in order to convert anyone to my view, but because I am\npersuaded that a serious study of these trance-phenomena is one of the\ngreatest needs of psychology, and think that my personal confession\nmay possibly draw a reader or two into a field which the _soi-disant_\n'scientist' usually refuses to explore.\n\nMany persons have found evidence conclusive to their minds that in some\ncases the control is really the departed spirit whom it pretends to be.\nThe phenomena shade off so gradually into cases where this is obviously\nabsurd, that the presumption (quite apart from _a priori_ 'scientific'\nprejudice) is great against its being true. The case of Lurancy Vennum\nis perhaps as extreme a case of 'possession' of the modern sort as one\ncan find.[319] Lurancy was a young girl of fourteen, living with her\nparents at Watseka, Ill., who (after various distressing hysterical\ndisorders and spontaneous trances, during which she was possessed by\ndeparted spirits of a more or less grotesque sort) finally declared\nherself to be animated by the spirit of Mary Roff (a neighbor's\ndaughter, who had died in an insane asylum twelve years before) and\ninsisted on being sent 'home' to Mr. Roff's house. After a week of\n'homesickness' and importunity on her part, her parents agreed, and the\nRoffs, who pitied her, and who were spiritualists into the bargain,\ntook her in. Once there, she seems to have convinced the family that\ntheir dead Mary had exchanged habitations with Lurancy. Lurancy was\nsaid to be temporarily in heaven, and Mary's spirit now controlled her\norganism, and lived again in her former earthly home.\n\n \"The girl, now in her new home, seemed perfectly happy and content,\n knowing every person and everything that Mary knew when in her\n original body, twelve to twenty-five years ago, recognizing and\n calling by name those who were friends and neighbors of the family\n from 1852 to 1865, when Mary died, calling attention to scores, yes,\n hundreds of incidents that transpired during her natural life. During\n all the period of her sojourn at Mr. Roff's she had no knowledge of,\n and did not recognize, any of Mr. Vennum's family, their friends or\n neighbors, yet Mr. and Mrs. Vennum and their children visited her and\n Mr. Roff's people, she being introduced to them as to any strangers.\n After frequent visits, and hearing them often and favorably spoken\n of, she learned to love them as acquaintances, and visited them with\n Mrs. Roff three times. From day to day she appeared natural, easy,\n affable, and industrious, attending diligently and faithfully to her\n household duties, assisting in the general work of the family as a\n faithful, prudent daughter might be supposed to do, singing, reading,\n or conversing as opportunity offered, upon all matters of private or\n general interest to the family.\"\n\nThe so-called Mary whilst at the Roffs' would sometimes 'go back to\nheaven,' and leave the body in a 'quiet trance,' i.e., without the\noriginal personality of Lurancy returning. After eight or nine weeks,\nhowever, the memory and manner of Lurancy would sometimes partially,\nbut not entirely, return for a few minutes. Once Lurancy seems to\nhave taken full possession for a short time. At last, after some\nfourteen weeks, conformably to the prophecy which 'Mary' had made\nwhen she first assumed 'control,' she departed definitively and the\nLurancy-consciousness came back for good. Mr. Roff writes:\n\n \"She wanted me to take her home, which I did. She called me Mr. Roff,\n and talked with me as a young girl would, not being acquainted. I\n asked her how things appeared to her--if they seemed natural. She said\n it seemed like a dream to her. She met her parents and brothers in a\n very affectionate manner, hugging and kissing each one in tears of\n gladness. She clasped her arms around her father's neck a long time,\n fairly smothering him with kisses. I saw her father just now (eleven\n o'clock). He says she has been perfectly natural, and seems entirely\n well.\"\n\nLurancy's mother writes, a couple of months later, that she was\n\n \"perfectly and entirely well and natural. For two or three weeks after\n her return home, she seemed a little strange to what she had been\n before she was taken sick last summer, but only, perhaps, the natural\n change that had taken place with the girl, and except it seemed to\n her as though she had been dreaming or sleeping, etc. Lurancy has\n been smarter, more intelligent, more industrious, more womanly, and\n more polite than before. We give the credit of her complete cure and\n restoration to her family, to Dr. E. W. Stevens, and Mr. and Mrs.\n Roff, by their obtaining her removal to Mr. Roff's, where her cure was\n perfected. We firmly believe that, had she remained at home, she would\n have died, or we would have been obliged to send her to the insane\n asylum; and if so, that she would have died there; and further, that\n I could not have lived but a short time with the care and trouble\n devolving on me. Several of the relatives of Lurancy, including\n ourselves, now believe she was cured by spirit power, and that Mary\n Roff controlled the girl.\"\n\nEight years later, Lurancy was reported to be married and a mother, and\nin good health. She had apparently outgrown the mediumistic phase of\nher existence.[320]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOn the condition of the sensibility during these invasions, few\nobservations have been made. I have found the hands of two automatic\nwriters an\u00e6sthetic during the act. In two others I have found this not\nto be the case. Automatic writing is usually preceded by shooting pains\nalong the arm-nerves and irregular contractions of the arm-muscles.\nI have found one medium's tongue and lips apparently insensible to\npin-pricks during her (speaking) trance.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIf we speculate on the brain-condition during all these different\nperversions of personality, we see that it must be supposed capable of\nsuccessively changing all its modes of action, and abandoning the use\nfor the time being of whole sets of well-organized association-paths.\nIn no other way can we explain the loss of memory in passing from one\nalternating condition to another. And not only this, but we must admit\nthat organized systems of paths can be thrown out of gear with others,\nso that the processes in one system give rise to one consciousness,\nand those of another system to another _simultaneously_ existing\nconsciousness. Thus only can we understand the facts of automatic\nwriting, etc., whilst the patient is out of trance, and the false\nan\u00e6sthesias and amnesias of the hysteric type. But just what sort of\ndissociation the phrase 'thrown out of gear' may stand for, we cannot\neven conjecture; only I think we ought not to talk of the doubling of\nthe self as if it consisted in the failure to combine on the part of\ncertain systems of _ideas_ which usually do so. It is better to talk\nof _objects_ usually combined, and which are now divided between the\ntwo 'selves,' in the hysteric and automatic cases in question. Each of\nthe selves is due to a system of cerebral paths acting by itself. If\nthe brain acted normally, and the dissociated systems came together\nagain, we should get a new affection of consciousness in the form of a\nthird 'Self' different from the other two, but knowing their objects\ntogether, as the result.--After all I have said in the last chapter,\nthis hardly needs further remark.\n\nSome peculiarities in the lower automatic performances suggest that\nthe systems thrown out of gear with each other are contained one in\nthe right and the other in the left hemisphere. The subjects, e.g.,\noften write backwards, or they transpose letters, or they write\nmirror-script. All these are symptoms of agraphic disease. The left\nhand, if left to its natural impulse, will in most people write\nmirror-script more easily than natural script. Mr. F. W. H. Myers has\nlaid stress on these analogies.[321] He has also called attention\nto the usual inferior moral tone of ordinary planchette writing. On\nHughlings Jackson's principles, the left hemisphere, being the more\nevolved organ, at ordinary times inhibits the activity of the right\none; but Mr. Myers suggests that during the automatic performances the\nusual inhibition may be removed and the right hemisphere set free to\nact all by itself. This is very likely to some extent to be the case.\nBut the crude explanation of 'two' selves by 'two' hemispheres is of\ncourse far from Mr. Myers's thought. The selves may be more than two,\nand the brain-systems severally used for each must be conceived as\ninterpenetrating each other in very minute ways.\n\n\nSUMMARY.\n\n\nTo sum up now this long chapter. The consciousness of Self involves\na stream of thought, each part of which as 'I' can 1) remember\nthose which went before, and know the things they knew; and 2)\nemphasize and care paramountly for certain ones among them as 'me,'\nand _appropriate to these_ the rest. The nucleus of the '_me_' is\nalways the bodily existence felt to be present at the time. Whatever\nremembered-past-feelings _resemble_ this present feeling are deemed to\nbelong to the same _me_ with it. Whatever other things are perceived to\nbe _associated_ with this feeling are deemed to form part of that me's\n_experience_; and of them certain ones (which fluctuate more or less)\nare reckoned to be themselves _constituents_ of the me in a larger\nsense,--such are the clothes, the material possessions, the friends,\nthe honors and esteem which the person receives or may receive. This me\nis an empirical aggregate of things objectively known. The _I_ which\nknows them cannot itself be an aggregate, neither for psychological\npurposes need it be considered to be an unchanging metaphysical entity\nlike the Soul, or a principle like the pure Ego, viewed as 'out of\ntime.' It is a _Thought_, at each moment different from that of the\nlast moment, but _appropriative_ of the latter, together with all that\nthe latter called its own. All the experiential facts find their place\nin this description, unencumbered with any hypothesis save that of the\nexistence of passing thoughts or states of mind. The same brain may\nsubserve many conscious selves, either alternate or coexisting; but by\nwhat modifications in its action, or whether ultra-cerebral conditions\nmay intervene, are questions which cannot now be answered.\n\nIf anyone urge that I assign no _reason_ why the successive passing\nthoughts should inherit each other's possessions, or why they and the\nbrain-states should be functions (in the mathematical sense) of each\nother, I reply that the reason, if there be any, must lie where all\nreal reasons lie, in the total sense or meaning of the world. If there\nbe such a meaning, or any approach to it (as we are bound to trust\nthere is), it alone can make clear to us why such finite human streams\nof thought are called into existence in such functional dependence\nupon brains. This is as much as to say that the special natural\nscience of _psychology_ must stop with the mere functional formula.\n_If the passing thought be the directly verifiable existent which no\nschool has hitherto doubted it to be, then that thought is itself the\nthinker_, and psychology need not look beyond. The only pathway that I\ncan discover for bringing in a more transcendental thinker would be to\n_deny_ that we have any _direct_ knowledge of the thought as such. The\nlatter's existence would then be reduced to a postulate, an assertion\nthat there _must be_ a _knower_ correlative to all this _known_; and\nthe problem _who that knower is_ would have become a metaphysical\nproblem. With the question once stated in these terms, the spiritualist\nand transcendentalist solutions must be considered as _prima facie_ on\na par with our own psychological one, and discussed impartially. But\nthat carries us beyond the psychological or naturalistic point of view.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[257] See, for a charming passage on the Philosophy of Dress, H.\nLotze's Microcosmus, Eng. tr. vol. i, p. 592 ff.\n\n[258] \"Who filches from me my good name,\" etc.\n\n[259] \"He who imagines commendation and disgrace not to be strong\nmotives on men ... seems little skilled in the nature and history of\nmankind; the greatest part whereof he shall find to govern themselves\nchiefly, if not solely, by this law of fashion; and so they do that\nwhich keeps them in reputation with their company, little regard\nthe laws of God or the magistrate. The penalties that attend the\nbreach of God's laws some, nay, most, men seldom seriously reflect\non; and amongst those that do, many, whilst they break the laws,\nentertain thoughts of future reconciliation, and making their peace\nfor such breaches: and as to the punishments due from the laws of the\ncommonwealth, they frequently flatter themselves with the hope of\nimpunity. But no man escapes the punishment of _their_ censure and\ndislike who offends against the fashion and opinion of the company he\nkeeps, and would recommend himself to. Nor is there one in ten thousand\nwho is stiff and insensible enough to bear up under the constant\ndislike and condemnation of his own club. He must be of a strange\nand unusual constitution who can content himself to live in constant\ndisgrace and disrepute with his own particular society. Solitude\nmany men have sought and been reconciled to; but nobody that has the\nleast thought or sense of a man about him can live in society under\nthe constant dislike and ill opinion of his familiars and those he\nconverses with. This is a burden too heavy for human sufferance: and he\nmust be made up of irreconcilable contradictions who can take pleasure\nin company and yet be insensible of contempt and disgrace from his\ncompanions.\" (Locke's Essay, book ii, ch. xxviii, \u00a7 12.)\n\n[260] For some farther remarks on these feelings of movement see the\nnext chapter.\n\n[261] Wundt's account of Self-consciousness deserves to be compared\nwith this. What I have called 'adjustments' he calls processes of\n'Apperception.' \"In this development (of consciousness) one particular\ngroup of percepts claims a prominent significance, namely, those\nof which the spring lies in ourselves. The images of feelings we\nget from our own body, and the representations of our own movements\ndistinguish themselves from all others by forming a _permanent_\ngroup. As there are always some muscles in a state either of tension\nor of activity it follows that we never lack a sense, either dim or\nclear, of the positions or movements of our body.... This permanent\nsense, moreover, has this peculiarity, that we are aware of our power\nat any moment voluntarily to arouse any one of its ingredients. We\nexcite the sensations of movement immediately by such impulses of\nthe will as shall arouse the movements themselves; and we excite the\nvisual and tactile feelings of our body by the voluntary movement of\nour organs of sense. So we come to conceive this permanent mass of\nfeeling as immediately or remotely subject to our will, and call it\nthe _consciousness of ourself_. This self-consciousness is, at the\noutset, thoroughly sensational,... only gradually the second-named\nof its characters, its subjection to our will, attains predominance.\nIn proportion as the apperception of all our mental objects appears\nto us as an inward exercise of will, does our self-consciousness\nbegin both to widen itself and to narrow itself at the same time. It\nwidens itself in that every mental act whatever comes to stand in\nrelation to our will; and it narrows itself in that it concentrates\nitself more and more upon the inner activity of apperception, over\nagainst which our own body and all the representations connected with\nit appear as external objects, different from our proper self. This\nconsciousness, contracted down to the process of apperception, we\ncall our Ego; and the apperception of mental objects in general, may\nthus, after Leibnitz, be designated as the raising of them into our\nself-consciousness. Thus the natural development of self-consciousness\nimplicitly involves the most abstract forms in which this faculty\nhas been described in philosophy; only philosophy is fond of placing\nthe abstract ego at the outset, and so reversing the process of\ndevelopment. Nor should we overlook the fact that the completely\nabstract ego [as pure activity], although suggested by the natural\ndevelopment of our consciousness, is never actually found therein.\nThe most speculative of philosophers is incapable of disjoining his\nego from those bodily feelings and images which form the incessant\nbackground of his awareness of himself. The notion of his ego as such\nis, like every notion, derived from sensibility, for the process of\napperception itself comes to our knowledge chiefly through those\nfeelings of tension [what I have above called inward adjustments] which\naccompany it.\" (Physiologische Psychologie, 2te Aufl. Bd. ii, pp.\n217-19.)\n\n[262] The only exception I know of is M. J. Souriau, in his important\narticle in the Revue Philosophique, vol. xxi, p. 449. M. Souriau's\nconclusion is 'que la conscience n'existe pas' (p. 472).\n\n[263] See the excellent remarks by Prof. Bain on the 'Emotion of Power'\nin his 'Emotions and the Will.'\n\n[264] Cf. Carlyle: _Sartor Resartus_, 'The Everlasting Yea.' \"I tell\nthee, blockhead, it all comes of thy vanity; of what thou fanciest\nthose same deserts of thine to be. Fancy that thou deservest to be\nhanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only\nshot: fancy that thou deservest to be hanged in a hair halter, it will\nbe a luxury to die in hemp.... What act of legislature was there that\n_thou_ shouldst be happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to\n_be_ at all.\" etc., etc.\n\n[265] T. W. Higginson's translation (1866), p. 105.\n\n[266] \"The usual mode of lessening the shock of disappointment or\ndisesteem is to contract, if possible, a low estimate of the persons\nthat inflict it. This is our remedy for the unjust censures of party\nspirit, as well as of personal malignity.\" (Bain: Emotion and Will, p.\n209.)\n\n[267] It must be observed that the qualities of the Self thus ideally\nconstituted are all qualities approved by my actual fellows in the\nfirst instance; and that my reason for now appealing from their verdict\nto that of the ideal judge lies in some outward peculiarity of the\nimmediate case. What once was admired in me as courage has now become\nin the eyes of men 'impertinence'; what was fortitude is obstinacy;\nwhat was fidelity is now fanaticism. The ideal judge alone, I now\nbelieve, can read my qualities, my willingnesses, my powers, for what\nthey truly are. My fellows, misled by interest and prejudice, have gone\nastray.\n\n[268] The _kind_ of selfishness varies with the self that is sought.\nIf it be the mere bodily self; if a man grabs the best food, the warm\ncorner, the vacant seat; if he makes room for no one, spits about, and\nbelches in our faces,--we call it hoggishness. If it be the social\nself, in the form of popularity or influence, for which he is greedy,\nhe may in material ways subordinate himself to others as the best means\nto his end; and in this case he is very apt to pass for a disinterested\nman. If it be the 'other-worldly' self which he seeks, and if he seeks\nit ascetically,--even though he would rather see all mankind damned\neternally than lose his individual soul,--'saintliness' will probably\nbe the name by which his selfishness will be called.\n\n[269] Lotze, Med. Psych. 498-501; Microcosmos, bk. ii, chap. v, \u00a7\u00a7 3, 4.\n\n[270] Psychologische Analysen auf Physiologischer Grundlage. Theil ii,\n2te H\u00e4lfte, \u00a7 11. The whole section ought to be read.\n\n[271] Professor Bain, in his chapter on 'Emotions of Self,' does scant\njustice to the primitive nature of a large part of our self-feeling,\nand seems to reduce it to reflective self-estimation of this sober\nintellectual sort, which certainly _most_ of it is not. He says that\nwhen the attention is turned inward upon self as a Personality, \"we\nare putting forth towards ourselves the kind of exercise that properly\naccompanies our contemplation of other persons. We are accustomed to\nscrutinize the actions and conduct of those about us, to set a higher\n_value_ upon one man than upon another, by comparing the two; to _pity_\none in distress; to feel _complacency_ towards a particular individual;\nto _congratulate_ a man on some good fortune that it pleases us to see\nhim gain; to _admire_ greatness or excellence as displayed by any of\nour fellows. All these exercises are intrinsically social, like Love\nand Resentment; an isolated individual could never attain to them, nor\nexercise them. By what means, then, through what fiction [!] can we\nturn round and play them off upon self? Or how comes it that we obtain\nany satisfaction by putting self in the place of the other party?\nPerhaps the simplest form of the reflected act is that expressed by\nSelf-worth and Self-estimation, based and begun upon observation of\nthe ways and conduct of our fellow-beings. We soon make comparisons\namong the individuals about us; we see that one is stronger and does\nmore work than another, and, in consequence perhaps, receives more\npay. We see one putting forth perhaps more kindness than another, and\nin consequence receiving more love. We see some individuals surpassing\nthe rest in astonishing feats, and drawing after them the gaze and\nadmiration of a crowd. We acquire a series of fixed associations\ntowards persons so situated; favorable in the case of the superior, and\nunfavorable to the inferior. To the strong and laborious man we attach\nan estimate of greater reward, and feel that to be in his place would\nbe a happier lot than falls to others. Desiring, as we do, from the\nprimary motives of our being, to possess good things, and observing\nthese to come by a man's superior exertions, we feel a respect for\nsuch exertion and a wish that it might be ours. We know that we also\nput forth exertions for our share of good things; and on witnessing\nothers, we are apt to be reminded of ourselves and to make comparisons\nwith ourselves, which comparisons derive their interest from the\nsubstantial consequences. Having thus once learned to look at other\npersons as performing labors, greater or less, and as realizing fruits\nto accord; being, moreover, in all respects like our fellows,--we\nfind it an exercise neither difficult nor unmeaning to contemplate\nself as doing work and receiving the reward.... As we decide between\none man and another,--which is worthier,... so we decide between self\nand all other men; being, however, in this decision under the bias of\nour own desires.\" A couple of pages farther on we read: \"By the terms\nSelf-complacency. Self-gratulation, is indicated a positive enjoyment\nin dwelling upon our own merits and belongings. As in other modes, so\nhere, the starting point is the contemplation of excellence or pleasing\nqualities _in another person_, accompanied more or less with fondness\nor love.\" Self-pity is also regarded by Professor Bain, in this place,\nas an emotion diverted to ourselves from a more immediate object, \"in\na manner that we may term fictitious and unreal. Still, as we can view\nself in the light of another person, we can feel towards it the emotion\nof pity called forth by others in our situation.\"\n\nThis account of Professor Bain's is, it will be observed, a good\nspecimen of the old-fashioned mode of explaining the several emotions\nas rapid calculations of results, and the transfer of feeling from one\nobject to another, associated by contiguity or similarity with the\nfirst. Zoological evolutionism, which came up since Professor Bain\nfirst wrote, has made us see, on the contrary, that many emotions must\nbe _primitively_ aroused by special objects. None are more worthy\nof being ranked primitive than the self-gratulation and humiliation\nattendant on our own successes and failures in the main functions of\nlife. We need no borrowed reflection for these feelings. Professor\nBain's account applies to but that small fraction of our self-feeling\nwhich reflective criticism can add to, or subtract from, the total\nmass.--Lotze has some pages on the modifications of our self-regard by\nuniversal judgments, in Microcosmus, book v, chap. v, \u00a7 5.\n\n[272] \"Also nur dadurch, dass ich ein Mannigfaltiges gegehener\nVorstellungen in _einem Bewusstsein_ verbinden kann, ist es m\u00f6glich\ndass ich die _Identit\u00e4t des Bewusstseins_ in diesen _Vorstellungen_\nselbst vorstelle, d. h. die analytische Einheit der Apperception ist\nnur unter der Voraussetzung irgend einer synthetischen m\u00f6glich.\" In\nthis passage (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 2te Aufl. \u00a7 16) Kant calls\nby the names of analytic and synthetic apperception what we here mean\nby objective and subjective synthesis respectively. It were much to\nbe desired that some one might invent a good pair of terms in which\nto record the distinction--those used in the text are certainly very\nbad, but Kant's seem to me still worse. 'Categorical unity' and\n'transcendental synthesis' would also be good Kantian, but hardly good\nhuman, speech.\n\n[273] So that we might say, by a sort of bad pun, \"only a connected\nworld can be known as disconnected.\" I say bad pun, because the point\nof view shifts between the connectedness and the disconnectedness. The\ndisconnectedness is of the realities known; the connectedness is of\nthe knowledge of them; and reality and knowledge of it are, from the\npsychological point of view held fast to in these pages, two different\nfacts.\n\n[274] Some subtle reader will object that the Thought cannot call any\npart of its Object 'I' and knit other parts on to it, without first\nknitting that part on to _Itself_; and that it cannot knit it on to\nItself without knowing Itself;--so that our supposition (above, p.\n304) that the Thought may conceivably have no immediate knowledge of\nItself is thus overthrown. To which the reply is that we must take\ncare not to be duped by words. The words _I_ and _me_ signify nothing\nmysterious and unexampled--they are at bottom only names of _emphasis_;\nand Thought is always emphasizing something. Within a tract of space\nwhich it cognizes, it contrasts a _here_ with a _there_; within a\ntract of time a _now_ with a _then_; of a pair of things it calls one\n_this_, the other _that_. I and _thou_, I and _it_, are distinctions\nexactly on a par with these,--distinctions possible in an exclusively\n_objective_ field of knowledge, the 'I' meaning for the Thought nothing\nbut the bodily life which it momentarily feels. The sense of my bodily\nexistence, however obscurely recognized as such, _may_ then be the\nabsolute original of my conscious selfhood, the fundamental perception\nthat _I am_. All appropriations _may_ be made _to_ it, _by_ a Thought\nnot at the moment immediately cognized by itself. Whether these are\nnot only logical possibilities but actual facts is something not yet\ndogmatically decided in the text.\n\n[275] Metaphysik, \u00a7 245 _fin_. This writer, who in his early work, the\nMedizinische Psychologie, was (to my reading) a strong defender of the\nSoul-Substance theory, has written in \u00a7\u00a7 243-5 of his Metaphysik the\nmost beautiful criticism of this theory which exists.\n\n[276] On the empirical and transcendental conceptions of the self's\nunity, see Lotze, Metaphysic, \u00a7 244.\n\n[277] Appendix to book i of Hume's Treatise on Human Nature.\n\n[278] Herbart believed in the Soul, too; but for him the 'Self' of\nwhich we are 'conscious' is the empirical Self--not the soul.\n\n[279] Compare again the remarks on pp. 158-162 above.\n\n[280] System of Psychology (1884). vol. i, p. 114.\n\n[281] 'Distinct only to _observation_,' he adds. To whose observation?\nthe outside psychologist's, the Ego's, their own, or the plank's?\n_Darauf kommt es an!_\n\n[282] Analysis, etc., J. S. Mill's Edition, vol. i, p. 331. The 'as it\nwere' is delightfully characteristic of the school.\n\n[283] J. Mill's Analysis, vol. ii, p. 175.\n\n[284] Examination of Hamilton. 4th ed. p. 263.\n\n[285] His chapter on the Psychological Theory of Mind is a beautiful\ncase in point, and his concessions there have become so celebrated\nthat they must be quoted for the reader's benefit. He ends the chapter\nwith these words (_loc. cit._ p. 247): \"The theory, therefore,\nwhich resolves Mind into a series of feelings, with a background of\npossibilities of feeling, can effectually withstand the most invidious\nof the arguments directed against it. But groundless as are the\nextrinsic objections, the theory has intrinsic difficulties which\nwe have not set forth, and which it seems to me beyond the power of\nmetaphysical analysis to remove....\n\n\"The thread of consciousness which composes the mind's phenomenal\nlife consist not only of present sensations, but likewise, in part,\nof memories and expectations. Now what are these? In themselves,\nthey are present feelings, states of present consciousness, and in\nthat respect not distinguished from sensations. They all, moreover,\nresemble some given sensations or feelings, of which we have previously\nhad experience. But they are attended with the peculiarity that each\nof them involves a belief in more than its own present existence. A\nsensation involves only this; but a remembrance of sensation, even if\nnot referred to any particular date, involves the suggestion and belief\nthat a sensation, of which it is a copy or representation, actually\nexisted in the past; and an expectation involves the belief, more or\nless positive, that a sensation or other feeling to which it directly\nrefers will exist in the future. Nor can the phenomena involved in\nthese two states of consciousness be adequately expressed, without\nsaying that the belief they include is, that I myself formerly had,\nor that I myself, and no other, shall hereafter have, the sensations\nremembered or expected. The fact believed is, that the sensations did\nactually form, or will hereafter form, part of the self-same series\nof states, or thread of consciousness, of which the remembrance or\nexpectation of those sensations is the part now present. If, therefore,\nwe speak of the mind as a series of feelings we are obliged to complete\nthe statement by calling it a series of feelings which is aware of\nitself as past and future; and we are reduced to the alternative of\nbelieving that the mind, or Ego, is something different from any series\nof feelings, or possibilities of them, or of accepting the paradox that\nsomething which _ex hypothesi_ is but a series of feelings, can be\naware of itself as a series.\n\n\"The truth is, that we are here face to face with that final\ninexplicability, at which, as Sir W. Hamilton observes, we inevitably\narrive when we reach ultimate facts; and in general, one mode of\nstating it only appears more incomprehensible than another, because\nthe whole of human language is accommodated to the one, and is so\nincongruous with the other that it cannot be expressed in any terms\nwhich do not deny its truth. The real stumbling-block is perhaps\nnot in any theory of the fact, but in the fact itself. The true\nincomprehensibility perhaps is, that something which has ceased, or is\nnot yet in existence, can still be, in a manner, present; that a series\nof feelings, the infinitely greater part of which is past or future,\ncan be gathered up, as it were, into a simple present conception,\naccompanied by a belief of reality. I think by far the wisest thing we\ncan do is to accept the inexplicable fact, without any theory of how\nit takes place; and when we are obliged to speak of it in terms which\nassume a theory, to use them with a reservation as to their meaning.\"\n\nIn a later place in the same book (p. 561) Mill, speaking of what may\nrightly be demanded of a theorist, says: \"He is not entitled to frame\na theory from one class of phenomena, extend it to another class which\nit does not fit, and excuse himself by saying that if we cannot make\nit fit, it is because ultimate facts are inexplicable.\" The class of\nphenomena which the associationist school takes to frame its theory\nof the Ego are feelings unaware of each other. The class of phenomena\nthe Ego presents are feelings of which the later ones are intensely\naware of those that went before. The two classes do not 'fit,' and no\nexercise of ingenuity can ever make them fit. No _shuffling_ of unaware\nfeelings can make them aware. To get the awareness we must openly beg\nit by postulating a new feeling which has it. This new feeling is no\n'Theory' of the phenomena, but a simple statement of them; and as\nsuch I postulate in the text the present passing Thought as a psychic\ninteger, with its knowledge of so much that has gone before.\n\n[286] Kritik d. reinen Vernunft, 2te Aufl. \u00a7 17.\n\n[287] It must be noticed, in justice to what was said above on page 274\nff., that neither Kant nor his successors anywhere discriminate between\nthe _presence_ of the apperceiving Ego to the combined object, and the\n_awareness by_ that Ego _of_ its own presence and of its distinctness\nfrom what it apperceives. That the Object must be known to something\nwhich _thinks_, and that it must be known to something which _thinks\nthat it thinks_, are treated by them as identical necessities,--by what\nlogic, does not appear. Kant tries to soften the jump in the reasoning\nby saying the thought _of itself_ on the part of the Ego need only\nbe _potential_--\"the 'I think' must _be capable_ of accompanying all\nother knowledge\"--but a thought which is only potential is actually no\nthought at all, which practically gives up the case.\n\n[288] \"As regards the soul, now, or the 'I,' the 'thinker,' the whole\ndrift of Kant's advance upon Hume and sensational psychology is towards\nthe demonstration that the subject of knowledge is an _Agent_.\" (G. S.\nMorris, Kant's Critique, etc. (Chicago, 1882), p. 224.)\n\n[289] \"In Kant's Prolegomena,\" says H. Cohen,--I do not myself find\nthe passage,--\"it is expressly said that the problem is not to show\nhow experience arises (ensteht), but of what it consists (besteht).\"\n(Kant's Theorie d. Erfahrung (1871), p. 138.)\n\n[290] The contrast between the Monism thus reached and our own\npsychological point of view can be exhibited schematically thus,\nthe terms in squares standing for what, for us, are the ultimate\nirreducible data of psychological science, and the vincula above it\nsymbolizing the reductions which post-Kantian idealism performs:\n\n                    Absolute Self-consciousness\n                          Reason or\n                         Experience.\n                        /           \\\n        Transcendental Ego          World\n         /       \\                 /        \\\n  Psychologist   Thought     Thought's Object  Psychologist's Reality\n             \\    \\                  /     /\n                 Psychologist's Object.\n\nThese reductions account for the ubiquitousness of the 'psychologist's\nfallacy (bk. ii, ch. i, p. 32) in the modern monistic writings. For\n_us_ it is an unpardonable logical sin, when talking of a thought's\nknowledge (either of an object or of itself), to change the terms\nwithout warning, and, substituting the psychologist's knowledge\ntherefor, still make as if we were continuing to talk of the same\nthing. For monistic idealism, this is the very enfranchisement of\nphilosophy, and of course cannot be too much indulged in.\n\n[291] T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, \u00a7\u00a7 57, 61, 64.\n\n[292] _Loc. cit._ \u00a7 64.\n\n[293] E. Caird: Hegel (1883), p. 149.\n\n[294] One is almost tempted to believe that the pantomime-state of mind\nand that of the Hegelian dialectics are, emotionally considered, one\nand the same thing. In the pantomime all common things are represented\nto happen in impossible ways, people jump down each other's throats,\nhouses turn inside out, old women become young men, everything 'passes\ninto its opposite' with inconceivable celerity and skill; and this, so\nfar from producing perplexity, brings rapture to the beholder's mind.\nAnd so in the Hegelian logic, relations elsewhere recognized under\nthe insipid name of distinctions (such as that between knower and\nobject, many and one) must first be translated into impossibilities and\ncontradictions, then 'transcended' and identified by miracle, ere the\nproper temper is induced for thoroughly enjoying the spectacle they\nshow.\n\n[295] The reader will please understand that I am quite willing to\nleave the hypothesis of the transcendental Ego as a substitute for the\npassing Thought open to discussion on _general speculative grounds_.\nOnly _in this book_ I prefer to stick by the common sense assumption\nthat we have successive conscious states, because all psychologists\nmake it, and because one does not see how there can be a Psychology\nwritten which does not postulate such thoughts as its ultimate data.\nThe data of all natural sciences become in turn subjects of a critical\ntreatment more refined than that which the sciences themselves\naccord; and so it may fare in the end with our passing Thought. We\nhave ourselves seen (pp. 299-305) that the _sensible_ certainty of\nits existence is less strong than is usually assumed. My quarrel with\nthe transcendental Egoists is mainly about their _grounds_ for their\nbelief. Did they consistently propose it as a _substitute_ for the\npassing Thought, did they consistently _deny the latter's existence_,\nI should respect their position more. But so far as I can understand\nthem, they habitually believe in the passing Thought also. They seem\neven to believe in the Lockian stream of separate ideas, for the chief\nglory of the Ego in their pages is always its power to 'overcome'\nthis separateness and unite the naturally disunited, _'synthetizing,'\n'connecting,' or 'relating' the ideas together_ being used as synonyms,\nby transcendentalist writers, for _knowing various objects at once_.\nNot the being conscious at all, but the being conscious of _many things\ntogether_ is held to be the difficult thing, in our psychic life, which\nonly the wonder-working Ego can perform. But on what slippery ground\ndoes one get the moment one changes the definite notion of _knowing an\nobject_ into the altogether vague one of _uniting or synthetizing the\nideas_ of its various parts!--In the chapter on Sensation we shall come\nupon all this again.\n\n[296] \"When we compare the listless inactivity of the infant,\nslumbering from the moment at which he takes his milky food to the\nmoment at which he wakes to require it again, with the restless\nenergies of that mighty being which he is to become in his maturer\nyears, pouring truth after truth, in rapid and dazzling profusion, upon\nthe world, or grasping in his single hand the destiny of empires, how\nfew are the circumstances of resemblance which we can trace, of all\nthat intelligence which is afterwards to be displayed; how little more\nis seen than what serves to give feeble motion to the mere machinery\nof life!... Every age, if we may speak of many ages in the few years\nof human life, seems to be marked with a distinct character. Each has\nits peculiar objects which excite lively affections; and in each,\nexertion is excited by affections, which in other periods terminate\nwithout inducing active desire. The boy finds a world in less space\nthan that which bounds his visible horizon; he wanders over his range\nof field and exhausts his strength in the pursuit of objects which,\nin the years that follow, are seen only to be neglected; while to\nhim the objects that are afterwards to absorb his whole soul are\nas indifferent as the objects of his present passions are destined\nthen to appear.... How many opportunities must every one have had of\nwitnessing the progress of intellectual decay, and the coldness that\nsteals upon the once benevolent heart! We quit our country, perhaps at\nan early period of life, and after an absence of many years we return\nwith all the remembrances of past pleasure which grow more tender as\nthey approach their objects. We eagerly seek him to whose paternal\nvoice we have been accustomed to listen with the same reverence as\nif its predictions had possessed oracular certainty,--who first led\nus into knowledge, and whose image has been constantly joined in our\nmind with all that veneration which does not forbid love. We find him\nsunk, perhaps, in the imbecility of idiotism, unable to recognize\nus,--ignorant alike of the past and of the future, and living only in\nthe sensibility of animal gratification. We seek the favorite companion\nof our childhood, whose tenderness of heart, etc.... We find him\nhardened into a man, meeting us scarcely with the cold hypocrisy of\ndissembled friendship--in his general relations to the world careless\nof the misery _he_ is not to feel.... When we observe all this,... do\nwe use only a metaphor of little meaning when we say of him that he is\nbecome a different person, and that his mind and character are changed?\nIn what does the identity consist?... The supposed test of identity,\nwhen applied to the mind in these cases, completely fails. It neither\naffects, nor is affected, in the same manner in the same circumstances.\nIt therefore, if the test be a just one, is not the same identical\nmind.\" (T. Brown: Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, 'on\nMental Identity.')\n\n[297] \"Sir John Cutler had a pair of black worsted stockings, which\nhis maid darned so often with silk that they became at last a pair of\nsilk stockings. Now, supposing these stockings of Sir John's endued\nwith some degree of consciousness at every particular darning, they\nwould have been sensible that they were the same individual pair of\nstockings both before and after the darning; and this sensation would\nhave continued in them through all the succession of darnings; and yet\nafter the last of all, there was not perhaps one thread left of the\nfirst pair of stockings: but they were grown to be silk stockings, as\nwas said before.\" (Pope's Martinus Scriblerus, quoted by Brown, _ibid._)\n\n[298] Hours of Work and Play, p. 100.\n\n[299] For a careful study of the errors in narratives, see E. Gurney:\nPhantasms of the Living, vol. i, pp. 126-158. In the Proceedings of\nthe Society for Psychical Research for May 1887 Mr. Richard Hodgson\nshows by an extraordinary array of instances how utterly inaccurate\neveryone's description from memory of a rapid series of events is\ncertain to be.\n\n[300] See Josiah Royce (Mind, vol. 13, p. 244, and Proceedings of Am.\nSoc. of Psych. Research, vol. i, p. 366), for evidence that a certain\nsort of hallucination of memory which he calls 'pseudo-presentiment' is\nno uncommon phenomenon.\n\n[301] Maladies de la M\u00e9moire, p. 85. The little that would be left\nof personal consciousness if _all_ our senses stopped their work is\ningenuously shown in the remark of the extraordinary an\u00e6sthetic youth\nwhose case Professor Str\u00fcmpell reports (in the Deutsches Archiv f.\nklin. Med., xxii, 847, 1878). This boy, whom we shall later find\ninstructive in many connections, was totally an\u00e6sthetic without and (so\nfar as could be tested) within, save for the sight of one eye and the\nhearing of one ear. When his eye was closed, he said: \"_Wenn ich nicht\nsehen kann, da_ BIN _ich gar nicht_--I no longer _am_.\"\n\n[302] \"One can compare the state of the patient to nothing so well as\nto that of a caterpillar, which, keeping all its caterpillar's ideas\nand remembrances, should suddenly become a butterfly with a butterfly's\nsenses and sensations. Between the old and the new state, between the\nfirst self, that of the caterpillar, and the second self, that of\nthe butterfly, there is a deep scission, a complete rupture. The new\nfeelings find no anterior series to which they can knit themselves on;\nthe patient can neither interpret nor use them; he does not recognize\nthem; they are unknown. Hence two conclusions, the first which\nconsists in his saying, _I no longer am_; the second, somewhat later,\nwhich consists in his saying, _I am another person._\" (H. Taine: de\nl'Intelligence, 3me \u00e9dition (1878), p. 462).\n\n[303] W. Griesinger: Mental Diseases, \u00a7 29.\n\n[304] See the interesting case of 'old Stump' in the Proceedings of the\nAm. Soc. for Psych. Research, p. 552.\n\n[305] De l'Intelligence, 3me \u00e9dition (1878), vol. ii, note, p. 461.\nKrishaber's book (La N\u00e9vropathie C\u00e9r\u00e9bro-cardiaque, 1873) is full of\nsimilar observations.\n\n[306] Sudden alterations in outward fortune often produce such a\nchange in the empirical _me_ as almost to amount to a pathological\ndisturbance of self-consciousness. When a poor man draws the big prize\nin a lottery, or unexpectedly inherits an estate; when a man high in\nfame is publicly disgraced, a millionaire becomes a pauper, or a loving\nhusband and father sees his family perish at one fell swoop, there\nis temporarily such a rupture between all past habits, whether of an\nactive or a passive kind, and the exigencies and possibilities of the\nnew situation, that the individual may find no medium of continuity or\nassociation to carry him over from the one phase to the other of his\nlife. Under these conditions mental derangement is no unfrequent result.\n\n[307] The number of subjects who can do this with any fertility and\nexuberance is relatively quite small.\n\n[308] First in the Revue Scientifique for May 26, 1876, then in his\nbook, Hypnotisme, Double Conscience, et Alt\u00e9rations de la Personnalit\u00e9\n(Paris, 1887).\n\n[309] Der Hypnotismus (1884), pp. 109-15.\n\n[310] Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, April\n4, 1888. Also, less complete, in Harper's Magazine, May 1860.\n\n[311] Cf. Ribot's Diseases of Memory for cases. See also a large number\nof them in Forbes Winslow's Obscure Diseases of the Brain and Mind,\nchapters xiii-xvii.\n\n[312] See the interesting account by M. J. Janet in the Revue\nScientifique, May 19, 1888.\n\n[313] Variations de la Personnalit\u00e9 (Paris, 1888).\n\n[314] _Op. cit._ p. 84. In this work and in Dr. Azam's (cited on\na previous page), as well as in Prof. Th. Ribot's Maladies de la\nPersonnalit\u00e9 (1885), the reader will find information and references\nrelative to the other known cases of the kind.\n\n[315] His own brother's subject Wit...., although in her an\u00e6sthetic\nwaking state she recollected nothing of either of her trances, yet\nremembered her deeper trance (in which her sensibilities became\nperfect--see above, p. 207) when she was in her lighter trance.\nNevertheless in the latter she was as an\u00e6sthetic as when awake. (_Loc.\ncit._ p. 619.)--It does not appear that there was any important\ndifference in the sensibility of F\u00e9lida X. between her two states--as\nfar as one can judge from M. Azam's account she was to some degree\nan\u00e6sthetic in both (_op. cit._ pp. 71, 96).--In the case of double\npersonality reported by M. Dufay (Revue Scientifique, vol. xviii,\np. 69), the memory seems to have been best in the more an\u00e6sthetic\ncondition.--Hypnotic subjects made blind do not necessarily lose their\nvisual ideas. It appears, then, both that amnesias may occur without\nan\u00e6sthesias, and an\u00e6sthesias without amnesias, though they may also\noccur in combination. Hypnotic subjects made blind by suggestion will\ntell you that they clearly imagine the things which they can no longer\nsee.\n\n[316] A full account of the case, by Mr. R. Hodgson, will be found in\nthe Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research for 1891.\n\n[317] He had spent an afternoon in Boston, a night in New York, an\nafternoon in Newark, and ten days or more in Philadelphia, first\nin a certain hotel and next in a certain boarding-house, making\nno acquaintances, 'resting,' reading, and 'looking round.' I have\nunfortunately been unable to get independent corroboration of these\ndetails, as the hotel registers are destroyed, and the boarding-house\nnamed by him has been pulled down. He forgets the name of the two\nladies who kept it.\n\n[318] The details of the case, it will be seen, are all _compatible_\nwith simulation. I can only say of that, that no one who has examined\nMr. Bourne (including Dr. Read, Dr. Weir Mitchell, Dr. Guy Hinsdale,\nand Mr. R. Hodgson) practically doubts his ingrained honesty, nor, so\nfar as I can discover, do any of his personal acquaintances indulge in\na sceptical view.\n\n[319] The Watseka Wonder, by E. W. Stevens. Chicago,\nReligio-Philosophical Publishing House, 1887.\n\n[320] My friend Mr. R. Hodgson informs me that he visited Watseka in\nApril 1890, and cross-examined the principal witnesses of this case.\nHis confidence in the original narrative was strengthened by what\nhe learned; and various unpublished facts were ascertained, which\nincreased the plausibility of the spiritualistic interpretation of the\nphenomenon.\n\n[321] See his highly important series of articles on Automatic Writing,\netc., in the Proceedings of the Soc. for Psych. Research, especially\nArticle ii (May 1885). Compare also Dr. Maudsley's instructive article\nin Mind, vol. xiv, p. 161, and Luys's essay, 'Sur le D\u00e9doublement,'\netc., in l'Enc\u00e9phale for 1889.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI.\n\nATTENTION.\n\n\nStrange to say, so patent a fact as the perpetual presence of selective\nattention has received hardly any notice from psychologists of the\nEnglish empiricist school. The Germans have explicitly treated of it,\neither as a faculty or as a resultant, but in the pages of such writers\nas Locke, Hume, Hartley, the Mills, and Spencer the word hardly occurs,\nor if it does so, it is parenthetically and as if by inadvertence.[322]\nThe motive of this ignoring of the phenomenon of attention is obvious\nenough. These writers are bent on showing how the higher faculties of\nthe mind are pure products of 'experience;' and experience is supposed\nto be of something simply _given_. Attention, implying a degree of\nreactive spontaneity, would seem to break through the circle of pure\nreceptivity which constitutes 'experience,' and hence must not be\nspoken of under penalty of interfering with the smoothness of the tale.\n\nBut the moment one thinks of the matter, one sees how false a notion\nof experience that is which would make it tantamount to the mere\npresence to the senses of an outward order. Millions of items of the\noutward order are present to my senses which never properly enter\ninto my experience. Why? Because they have no _interest_ for me. _My\nexperience is what I agree to attend to._ Only those items which I\n_notice_ shape my mind--without selective interest, experience is\nan utter chaos. Interest alone gives accent and emphasis, light and\nshade, background and foreground--intelligible perspective, in a word.\nIt varies in every creature, but without it the consciousness of\nevery creature would be a gray chaotic indiscriminateness, impossible\nfor us even to conceive. Such an empiricist writer as Mr. Spencer,\nfor example, regards the creature as absolutely passive clay, upon\nwhich 'experience' rains down. The clay will be impressed most deeply\nwhere the drops fall thickest, and so the final shape of the mind\nis moulded. Give time enough, and all sentient things ought, at\nthis rate, to end by assuming an identical mental constitution--for\n'experience,' the sole shaper, is a constant fact, and the order of\nits items must end by being exactly reflected by the passive mirror\nwhich we call the sentient organism. If such an account were true, a\nrace of dogs bred for generations, say in the Vatican, with characters\nof visual shape, sculptured in marble, presented to their eyes, in\nevery variety of form and combination, ought to discriminate before\nlong the finest shades of these peculiar characters. In a word, they\nought to become, if time were given, accomplished _connoisseurs_ of\nsculpture. Anyone may judge of the probability of this consummation.\nSurely an eternity of experience of the statues would leave the dog as\ninartistic as he was at first, for the lack of an original interest to\nknit his discriminations on to. Meanwhile the odors at the bases of\nthe pedestals would have organized themselves in the consciousness of\nthis breed of dogs into a system of 'correspondences' to which the most\nhereditary caste of _custodi_ would never approximate, merely because\nto them, as human beings, the dog's interest in those smells would\nfor ever be an inscrutable mystery. These writers have, then, utterly\nignored the glaring fact that subjective interest may, by laying its\nweighty index-finger on particular items of experience, so accent them\nas to give to the least frequent associations far more power to shape\nour thought than the most frequent ones possess. The interest itself,\nthough its genesis is doubtless perfectly _natural, makes_ experience\nmore than it is made by it.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nEvery one knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by\nthe mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several\nsimultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization,\nconcentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies\nwithdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others,\nand is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed,\nscatter-brained state which in French is called _distraction_, and\n_Zerstreutheit_ in German.\n\nWe all know this latter state, even in its extreme degree. Most people\nprobably fall several times a day into a fit of something like this:\nThe eyes are fixed on vacancy, the sounds of the world melt into\nconfused unity, the attention is dispersed so that the whole body is\nfelt, as it were, at once, and the foreground of consciousness is\nfilled, if by anything, by a sort of solemn sense of surrender to\nthe empty passing of time. In the dim background of our mind we know\nmeanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves,\nanswering the person who has spoken to us, trying to make the next\nstep in our reasoning. But somehow we cannot _start_; the _pens\u00e9e de\nderri\u00e8re la t\u00eate_ fails to pierce the shell of lethargy that wraps our\nstate about. Every moment we expect the spell to break, for we know\nno reason why it should continue. But it does continue, pulse after\npulse, and we float with it, until--also without reason that we can\ndiscover--an energy is given, something--we know not what--enables us\nto gather ourselves together, we wink our eyes, we shake our heads,\nthe background-ideas become effective, and the wheels of life go round\nagain.\n\nThis curious state of inhibition can for a few moments be produced at\nwill by fixing the eyes on vacancy. Some persons can voluntarily empty\ntheir minds and 'think of nothing.' With many, as Professor Exner\nremarks of himself, this is the most efficacious means of falling\nasleep. It is difficult not to suppose something like this scattered\ncondition of mind to be the usual state of brutes when not actively\nengaged in some pursuit. Fatigue, monotonous mechanical occupations\nthat end by being automatically carried on, tend to produce it in men.\nIt is not sleep; and yet when aroused from such a state, a person\nwill often hardly be able to say what he has been thinking about\nSubjects of the hypnotic trance seem to lapse into it when left to\nthemselves; asked what they are thinking of, they reply, 'of nothing\nparticular'![323]\n\nThe abolition of this condition is what we call the awakening of\nthe attention. One principal object comes then into the focus of\nconsciousness, others are temporarily suppressed. The awakening\nmay come about either by reason of a stimulus from without, or in\nconsequence of some unknown inner alteration; and the change it\nbrings with it amounts to a concentration upon one single object with\nexclusion of aught besides, or to a condition anywhere between this and\nthe completely dispersed state.\n\n\nTO HOW MANY THINGS CAN WE ATTEND AT ONCE?\n\n\nThe question of _the 'span' of consciousness_ has often been asked and\nanswered--sometimes _a priori_, sometimes by experiment. This seems the\nproper place for us to touch upon it; and our answer, according to the\nprinciples laid down in Chapter IX, will not be difficult. The number\nof _things_ we may attend to is altogether indefinite, depending on the\npower of the individual intellect, on the form of the apprehension, and\non what the things are. When apprehended conceptually as a connected\nsystem, their number may be very large. But however numerous the\nthings, they can only be known in a single pulse of consciousness for\nwhich they form one complex 'object' (p. 276 ff.), so that properly\nspeaking there is before the mind at no time a plurality of _ideas_,\nproperly so called.\n\nThe 'unity of the soul' has been supposed by many philosophers, who\nalso believed in the distinct atomic nature of 'ideas,' to preclude the\npresence to it of more than one objective fact, manifested in one idea,\nat a time. Even Dugald Stuart opines that every _minimum visibile_ of a\npictured figure\n\n \"constitutes just as distinct an object of attention to the mind as if\n it were separated by an interval of empty space from the rest.... It\n is impossible for the mind to attend to more than one of these points\n at once; and as the perception of the figure implies a knowledge of\n the relative situation of the different points with respect to each\n other, we must conclude that the perception of figure by the eye is\n the result of a number of different acts of attention. These acts\n of attention, however, are performed with such rapidity, that the\n effect, with respect to us, is the same as if the perception were\n instantaneous.\"[324]\n\nSuch glaringly artificial views can only come from fantastic\nmetaphysics or from the ambiguity of the word 'idea,' which, standing\nsometimes for mental state and sometimes for thing known, leads men to\nascribe to the thing, not only the unity which belongs to the mental\nstate, but even the simplicity which is thought to reside in the Soul.\n\nWhen the things are apprehended by the _senses_, the number of them\nthat can be attended to at once is small, \"_Pluribus intentus, minor\nest ad singula sensus_.\"\n\n \"By Charles Bonnet the Mind is allowed to have a distinct notion\n of six objects at once; by Abraham Tucker the number is limited to\n four; while Destutt Tracy again amplifies it to six. The opinion\n of the first and last of these philosophers\" [continues Sir Wm.\n Hamilton] \"seems to me correct. You can easily make the experiments\n for yourselves, but you must beware of grouping the objects into\n classes. If you throw a handful of marbles on the floor, you will find\n it difficult to view at once more than six, or seven at most, without\n confusion; but if you group them into twos, or threes, or fives, you\n can comprehend as many groups as you can units; because the mind\n considers these groups only as units--it views them as wholes, and\n throws their parts out of consideration.\"[325]\n\nProfessor Jevons, repeating this observation, by counting\ninstantaneously beans thrown into a box, found that the number 6\nwas guessed correctly 120 times out of 147, 5 correctly 102 times\nout of 107, and 4 and 3 always right.[326] It is obvious that such\nobservations decide nothing at all about our attention, properly\nso called. They rather measure in part the distinctness of our\nvision--especially of the primary-memory-image[327]--in part the amount\nof association in the individual between seen arrangements and the\nnames of numbers.[328]\n\nEach number-name is a way of grasping the beans as one total object.\nIn such a total object, all the parts converge harmoniously to the one\nresultant concept; no single bean has special discrepant associations\nof its own; and so, with _practice_, they may grow quite numerous ere\nwe fail to estimate them aright. But where the 'object' before us\nbreaks into parts disconnected with each other, and forming each as it\nwere a separate object or system, not conceivable in union with the\nrest, it becomes harder to apprehend all these parts at once, and the\nmind tends to let go of one whilst it attends to another. Still, within\nlimits this can be done. M. Paulhan has experimented carefully on the\nmatter by declaiming one poem aloud whilst he repeated a different one\nmentally, or by writing one sentence whilst speaking another, or by\nperforming calculations on paper whilst reciting poetry.[329] He found\nthat\n\n \"the most favorable condition for the doubling of the mind was its\n simultaneous application to two easy and heterogeneous operations. Two\n operations of the same sort, two multiplications, two recitations, or\n the reciting one poem and writing another, render the process more\n uncertain and difficult.\"\n\nThe attention often, but not always, oscillates during these\nperformances; and sometimes a word from one part of the task slips\ninto another. I myself find when I try to simultaneously recite one\nthing and write another that the beginning of each word or segment of\na phrase is what requires the attention. Once started, my pen runs on\nfor a word or two as if by its own momentum. M. Paulhan compared the\ntime occupied by the same two operations done simultaneously or in\nsuccession, and found that there was often a considerable gain of time\nfrom doing them simultaneously. For instance:\n\n \"I write the first four verses of Athalie, whilst reciting eleven of\n Musset. The whole performance occupies 40 seconds. But reciting alone\n takes 22 and writing alone 31, or 53 altogether, so that there is a\n difference in favor of the simultaneous operations.\"\n\nOr again:\n\n \"I multiply 421 312 212 by 2; the operation takes 6 seconds; the\n recitation of 4 verses also takes 6 seconds. But the two operations\n done at once only take 6 seconds, so that there is no loss of time\n from combining them.\"\n\nOf course these time-measurements lack precision. With three systems of\nobject (writing with _each_ hand whilst reciting) the operation became\nmuch more difficult.\n\nIf, then, by the original question, how many ideas or things can we\nattend to at once, be meant how many entirely disconnected systems or\nprocesses of conception can go on simultaneously, the answer is, _not\neasily more than one, unless the processes are very habitual; but then\ntwo, or even three,_ without very much oscillation of the attention.\nWhere, however, the processes are less automatic, as in the story of\nJulius C\u00e6sar dictating four letters whilst he writes a fifth,[330]\nthere must be a rapid oscillation of the mind from one to the next, and\nno consequent gain of time. Within any one of the systems the parts may\nbe numberless, but we attend to them collectively when we conceive the\nwhole which they form.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen the things to be attended to are small sensations, and when the\neffort is to be exact in noting them, it is found that attention to one\ninterferes a good deal with the perception of the other. A good deal\nof fine work has been done in this field, of which I must give some\naccount.\n\nIt has long been noticed, when expectant attention is concentrated\nupon one of two sensations, that the other one is apt to be displaced\nfrom consciousness for a moment and to appear subsequent; although in\nreality the two may have been contemporaneous events. Thus, to use\nthe stock example of the books, the surgeon would sometimes see the\nblood flow from the arm of the patient whom he was bleeding, _before_\nhe saw the instrument penetrate the skin. Similarly the smith may see\nthe sparks fly _before_ he sees the hammer smite the iron, etc. There\nis thus a certain difficulty in perceiving the exact _date_ of two\nimpressions when they do not interest our attention equally, and when\nthey are of a disparate sort.\n\nProfessor Exner, whose experiments on the _minimal perceptible\nsuccession_ in time of two sensations we shall have to quote in another\nchapter, makes some noteworthy remarks about the way in which the\nattention must be _set_ to catch the interval and the right order of\nthe sensations, when the time is exceeding small. The point was to\ntell whether two signals were simultaneous or successive; and, if\nsuccessive, which one of them came first.\n\nThe first way of attending which he found himself to fall into, was\nwhen the signals did not differ greatly--when, e.g., they were similar\nsounds heard each by a different ear. Here he lay in wait for the\n_first_ signal, whichever it might be, and identified it the next\nmoment in memory. The second, which could then always be known by\ndefault, was often not clearly distinguished in itself. When the time\nwas too short, the first could not be isolated from the second at all.\n\nThe second way was to accommodate the attention for a certain _sort_\nof signal, and the next moment to become aware in memory of whether it\ncame before or after its mate.\n\n \"This way brings great uncertainty with it. The impression not\n prepared for comes to us in the memory more weak than the other,\n obscure as it were, badly fixed in time. We tend to take the\n subjectively stronger stimulus, that which we were intent upon, for\n the first, just as we are apt to take an objectively stronger stimulus\n to be the first. Still, it may happen otherwise. In the experiments\n from touch to sight it often seemed to me as if the impression for\n which the attention was _not_ prepared were there already when the\n other came.\"\n\nExner found himself employing this method oftenest when the impressions\ndiffered strongly.[331]\n\nIn such observations (which must not be confounded with those where\nthe two signals were identical and their successiveness known as\nmere _doubleness_, without distinction of which came first), it is\nobvious that each signal must combine stably in our perception with a\n_different_ instant of time. It is the simplest possible case of two\ndiscrepant concepts simultaneously occupying the mind. Now the case of\nthe signals being _simultaneous_ seems of a different sort. We must\nturn to Wundt for observations fit to cast a nearer light thereon.\n\nThe reader will remember the reaction-time experiments of which we\ntreated in Chapter III. It happened occasionally in Wundt's experiments\nthat the reaction-time was reduced to zero or even assumed a negative\nvalue, which, being translated into common speech, means that the\nobserver was sometimes so intent upon the signal that his reaction\n_actually coincided in time with it, or even preceded it,_ instead of\ncoming a fraction of a second after it, as in the nature of things it\nshould. More will be said of these results anon. Meanwhile Wundt, in\nexplaining them, says this:\n\n \"In general _we have a very exact feeling of the simultaneity of two\n stimuli,_ if they do not differ much in strength. And in a series of\n experiments in which a warning precedes, at a fixed interval, the\n stimulus, we involuntarily try to react, not only as promptly as\n possible, but also in such wise that our movement may coincide with\n the stimulus itself. We seek to make our own feelings of touch and\n innervation [muscular contraction] objectively _contemporaneous with\n the signal_ which we hear; and experience shows that in many cases we\n approximately succeed. In these cases we have a distinct consciousness\n of hearing the signal, reacting upon it, and feeling our reaction take\n place,--all at one and the same moment.\"[332]\n\nIn another place, Wundt adds:\n\n \"The difficulty of these observations and the comparative infrequency\n with which the reaction-time can be made thus to disappear shows how\n hard it is, when our attention is intense, to keep it fixed even on\n _two_ different ideas at once. Note besides that when this happens,\n one always tries to bring the ideas into a certain connection, to\n grasp them as components of a certain complex representation. Thus in\n the experiments in question, it has often seemed to me that I produced\n by my own recording movement the sound which the ball made in dropping\n on the board.\"[333]\n\nThe 'difficulty,' in the cases of which Wundt speaks, is that of\nforcing two non-simultaneous events into apparent combination with\nthe same instant of time. There is no difficulty, as he admits, in so\ndividing our attention between two _really_ simultaneous impressions\nas to feel them to be such. The cases he describes are really cases\nof anachronistic perception, of subjective time-displacement, to use\nhis own term. Still more curious cases of it have been most carefully\nstudied by him. They carry us a step farther in our research, so I will\nquote them, using as far as possible his exact words:\n\n \"The conditions become more complicated when we receive a series\n of impressions separated by distinct intervals, into the midst of\n which a heterogeneous impression is suddenly brought. Then comes\n the question, with which member of the series do we perceive the\n additional impression to coincide? with that member with whose\n presence it really coexists, or is there some aberration?... If the\n additional stimulus belongs to a different sense very considerable\n aberrations may occur.\n\n \"The best way to experiment is with a number of visual impressions\n (which one can easily get from a moving object) for the series, and\n with a sound as the disparate impression. Let, e.g., an index-hand\n move over a circular scale with uniform and sufficiently slow\n velocity, so that the impressions it gives will not fuse, but permit\n its position at any instant to be distinctly seen. Let the clockwork\n which turns it have an arrangement which rings a bell once in every\n revolution, but at a point which can be varied, so that the observer\n need never know in advance just when the bell-stroke takes place.\n In such observations three cases are possible. The bell-stroke can\n be perceived either exactly at the moment to which the index points\n when it sounds--in this case there will be no time-displacement; or\n we can combine it with a later position of the index--... _positive\n time-displacement_, as we shall call it; or finally we can combine\n it with a position of the index earlier than that at which the sound\n occurred--and this we will call a _negative displacement_. The most\n natural displacement would apparently be the positive, since for\n apperception a certain time is always required.... But experience\n shows that the opposite is the case: it happens most frequently\n that the sound appears earlier than its real date--far less often\n coincident with it, or later. It should be observed that in all\n these experiments it takes some time to get a distinctly perceived\n combination of the sound with a particular position of the index,\n and that a single revolution of the latter is never enough for the\n purpose. The motion must go on long enough for the sounds themselves\n to form a regular series--the outcome being a simultaneous perception\n of two distinct series of events, of which either may by changes in\n its rapidity modify the result. The first thing one remarks is that\n the sound belongs in a certain region of the scale; only gradually\n is it perceived to combine with a particular position of the index.\n But even a result gained by observation of many revolutions may be\n deficient in certainty, for accidental combinations of attention\n have a great influence upon it. If we deliberately try to combine\n the bell-stroke with an arbitrarily chosen position of the index, we\n succeed without difficulty, provided this position be not too remote\n from the true one. If, again, we cover the whole scale, except a\n single division over which we may see the index pass, we have a strong\n tendency to combine the bell-stroke with this actually seen position;\n and in so doing may easily overlook more than 1/4 of a second of\n time. Results, therefore, to be of any value, must be drawn from\n long-continued and very numerous observations, in which such irregular\n oscillations of the attention neutralize each other according to the\n law of great numbers, and allow the true laws to appear. Although\n my own experiments extend over many years (with interruptions), they\n are not even yet numerous enough to exhaust the subject--still, they\n bring out the principal laws which the attention follows under such\n conditions.\"[334]\n\nWundt accordingly distinguishes the _direction_ from the _amount_ of\nthe apparent displacement in time of the bell-stroke. The direction\ndepends on the rapidity of the movement of the index and (consequently)\non that of the succession of the bell-strokes. The moment at which\nthe bell struck was estimated by him with the least tendency to\nerror, when the revolutions took place once in a second. Faster than\nthis, _positive_ errors began to prevail; slower, _negative_ ones\nalmost always were present. On the other hand, if the rapidity went\n_quickening_, errors became _negative_; if _slowing, positive_. The\namount of error is, in general, the greater the slower the speed and\nits alterations. Finally, individual differences prevail, as well as\ndifferences in the same individual at different times.[335]\n\nWundt's pupil von Tschisch has carried out these experiments on a still\nmore elaborate scale,[336] using, not only the single bell-stroke, but\n2, 3, 4, or 5 simultaneous impressions, so that the attention had to\nnote the place of the index at the moment when a whole group of things\nwas happening. The single bell-stroke was always heard too early by\nvon Tschisch--the displacement was invariably 'negative.' As the other\nsimultaneous impressions were added, the displacement first became\nzero and finally positive, i.e. the impressions were connected with a\nposition of the index that was too late. This retardation was greater\nwhen the simultaneous impressions were disparate (electric tactile\nstimuli on different places, simple touch-stimuli, different sounds)\nthan when they were all of the same sort. The increment of retardation\nbecame relatively less with each additional impression, so that it is\nprobable that six impressions would have given almost the same result\nas five, which was the maximum number used by Herr von T.\n\nWundt explains all these results by his previous observation that a\nreaction sometimes antedates the signal (see above, p. 411). The mind,\nhe supposes, is so intent upon the bell-strokes that its 'apperception'\nkeeps ripening periodically after each stroke in anticipation of the\nnext. Its most natural rate of ripening may be faster or slower than\nthe rate at which the strokes come. If faster, then it hears the\nstroke too early; if slower, it hears it too late. The position of\nthe index on the scale, meanwhile, is noted at the moment, early or\nlate, at which the bell-stroke is subjectively heard. Substituting\nseveral impressions for the single bell-stroke makes the ripening of\nthe perception slower, and the index is seen too late. So, at least,\ndo I understand the explanations which Herren Wundt and v. Tschisch\ngive.[337]\n\nThis is all I have to say about the difficulty of having two discrepant\nconcepts together, and about the number of things to which we can\nsimultaneously attend.\n\n\nTHE VARIETIES OF ATTENTION.\n\n\nThe things to which we attend are said to _interest_ us. Our interest\nin them is supposed to be the _cause_ of our attending. What makes an\nobject interesting we shall see presently; and later inquire in what\nsense interest may cause attention. Meanwhile\n\nAttention may be divided into kinds in various ways. It is either to\n\n_a_) Objects of sense (sensorial attention); or to\n\n_b_) Ideal or represented objects (intellectual attention). It is either\n\n_c_) Immediate; or\n\n_d_) Derived: immediate, when the topic or stimulus is interesting in\nitself, without relation to anything else; derived, when it owes its\ninterest to association with some other immediately interesting thing.\nWhat I call derived attention has been named 'apperceptive' attention.\nFurthermore, Attention may be either\n\n_e_) Passive, reflex, non-voluntary, effortless; or\n\n_f_) Active and voluntary.\n\n_Voluntary attention is always derived_; we never make an _effort_ to\nattend to an object except for the sake of some _remote_ interest which\nthe effort will serve. But both sensorial and intellectual attention\nmay be either passive or voluntary.\n\nIn _passive immediate sensorial attention_ the stimulus is a\nsense-impression, either very intense, voluminous, or sudden,--in which\ncase it makes no difference what its nature may be, whether sight,\nsound, smell, blow, or inner pain,--or else it is an _instinctive_\nstimulus, a perception which, by reason of its nature rather than its\nmere force, appeals to some one of our normal congenital impulses and\nhas a directly exciting quality. In the chapter on Instinct we shall\nsee how these stimuli differ from one animal to another, and what most\nof them are in man: strange things, moving things, wild animals, bright\nthings, pretty things, metallic things, words, blows, blood, etc.,\netc., etc.\n\nSensitiveness to immediately exciting sensorial stimuli characterizes\nthe attention of childhood and youth. In mature age we have generally\nselected those stimuli which are connected with one or more so-called\npermanent interests, and our attention has grown irresponsive to the\nrest.[338] But childhood is characterized by great active energy, and\nhas few organized interests by which to meet new impressions and decide\nwhether they are worthy of notice or not, and the consequence is that\nextreme mobility of the attention with which we are all familiar in\nchildren, and which makes their first lessons such rough affairs. Any\nstrong sensation whatever produces accommodation of the organs which\nperceive it, and absolute oblivion, for the time being, of the task in\nhand. This reflex and passive character of the attention which, as a\nFrench writer says, makes the child seem to belong less to himself than\nto every object which happens to catch his notice, is the first thing\nwhich the teacher must overcome. It never is overcome in some people,\nwhose work, to the end of life, gets done in the interstices of their\nmind-wandering.\n\nThe passive sensorial attention is _derived_ when the impression,\nwithout being either strong or of an instinctively exciting nature, is\nconnected by previous experience and education with things that are\nso. These things may be called the _motives_ of the attention. The\nimpression draws an interest from them, or perhaps it even fuses into\na single complex object with them; the result is that it is brought\ninto the focus of the mind. A faint tap _per se_ is not an interesting\nsound; it may well escape being discriminated from the general rumor\nof the world. But when it is a signal, as that of a lover on the\nwindow-pane, it will hardly go unperceived. Herbart writes:\n\n \"How a bit of bad grammar wounds the ear of the purist! How a false\n note hurts the musician! or an offence against good manners the man\n of the world! How rapid is progress in a science when its first\n principles have been so well impressed upon us that we reproduce them\n mentally with perfect distinctness and ease! How slow and uncertain,\n on the other hand, is our learning of the principles themselves, when\n familiarity with the still more elementary percepts connected with the\n subject has not given us an adequate predisposition!--Apperceptive\n attention may be plainly observed in very small children when,\n hearing the speech of their elders, as yet unintelligible to them,\n they suddenly catch a single known word here and there, and repeat\n it to themselves; yes! even in the dog who looks round at us when\n we speak of him and pronounce his name. Not far removed is the\n talent which mind-wandering school-boys display during the hours of\n instruction, of noticing every moment in which the teacher tells a\n story. I remember classes in which, instruction being uninteresting,\n and discipline relaxed, a buzzing murmur was always to be heard,\n which invariably stopped for as long a time as an anecdote lasted.\n How could the boys, since they seemed to hear nothing, notice when\n the anecdote began? Doubtless most of them always heard something\n of the teacher's talk; but most of it had no connection with their\n previous knowledge and occupations, and therefore the separate words\n no sooner entered their consciousness than they fell out of it again;\n but, on the other hand, no sooner did the words awaken old thoughts,\n forming strongly-connected series with which the new impression easily\n combined, than out of new and old together a total interest resulted\n which drove the vagrant ideas below the threshold of consciousness,\n and brought for a while settled attention into their place.\"[339]\n\n_Passive intellectual attention_ is immediate when we follow in thought\na train of images exciting or interesting _per se_; derived, when the\nimages are interesting only as means to a remote end, or merely because\nthey are associated with something which makes them dear. Owing to the\nway in which immense numbers of real things become integrated into\nsingle objects of thought for us, there is no clear line to be drawn\nbetween immediate and derived attention of an intellectual sort. When\nabsorbed in intellectual attention we may become so inattentive to\nouter things as to be 'absent-minded,' 'abstracted,' or '_distraits_.'\nAll revery or concentrated meditation is apt to throw us into this\nstate.\n\n \"Archimedes, it is well known, was so absorbed in geometrical\n meditation that he was first aware of the storming of Syracuse by his\n own death-wound, and his exclamation on the entrance of the Roman\n soldiers was: _Noli turbare circulos meos!_ In like manner Joseph\n Scaliger, the most learned of men, when a Protestant student in\n Paris, was so engrossed in the study of Homer that he became aware\n of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and of his own escape, only on\n the day subsequent to the catastrophe. The philosopher Carneades was\n habitually liable to fits of meditation so profound that, to prevent\n him sinking from inanition, his maid found it necessary to feed him\n like a child. And it is reported of Newton that, while engaged in his\n mathematical researches, he sometimes forgot to dine. Cardan, one of\n the most illustrious of philosophers and mathematicians, was once,\n upon a journey, so lost in thought that he forgot both his way and\n the object of his journey. To the questions of his driver whether he\n should proceed, he made no answer; and when he came to himself at\n nightfall, he was surprised to find the carriage at a standstill, and\n directly under a gallows. The mathematician Vieta was sometimes so\n buried in meditation that for hours he bore more resemblance to a dead\n person than to a living, and was then wholly unconscious of everything\n going on around him. On the day of his marriage the great Bud\u00e6us\n forgot everything in his philological speculations, and he was only\n awakened to the affairs of the external world by a tardy embassy from\n the marriage-party, who found him absorbed in the composition of his\n _Commentarii_.\"[340]\n\nThe absorption may be so deep as not only to banish ordinary\nsensations, but even the severest pain. Pascal, Wesley, Robert Hall,\nare said to have had this capacity. Dr. Carpenter says of himself that\n\n \"he has frequently begun a lecture whilst suffering neuralgic pain\n so severe as to make him apprehend that he would find it impossible\n to proceed; yet no sooner has he by a determined effort fairly\n launched himself into the stream of thought, than he has found himself\n continuously borne along without the least distraction, until the\n end has come, and the attention has been released; when the pain has\n recurred with a force that has overmastered all resistance, making him\n wonder how he could have ever ceased to feel it.\"[341]\n\nDr. Carpenter speaks of launching himself by a determined _effort_.\nThis effort characterizes what we called _active or voluntary\nattention_. It is a feeling which every one knows, but which most\npeople would call quite indescribable. We get it in the sensorial\nsphere whenever we seek to catch an impression of extreme _faintness_,\nbe it of sight, hearing, taste, smell, or touch; we get it whenever we\nseek to _discriminate_ a sensation merged in a mass of others that are\nsimilar; we get it whenever we _resist the attractions_ of more potent\nstimuli and keep our mind occupied with some object that is naturally\nunimpressive. We get it in the intellectual sphere under exactly\nsimilar conditions: as when we strive to sharpen and make distinct\nan idea which we but vaguely seem to have; or painfully discriminate\na shade of meaning from its similars; or resolutely hold fast to a\nthought so discordant with our impulses that, if left unaided, it would\nquickly yield place to images of an exciting and impassioned kind.\nAll forms of attentive effort would be exercised at once by one whom\nwe might suppose at a dinner-party resolutely to listen to a neighbor\ngiving him insipid and unwelcome advice in a low voice, whilst all\naround the guests were loudly laughing and talking about exciting and\ninteresting things.\n\n_There is no such thing as voluntary attention sustained for more\nthan a few seconds at a time._ What is called sustained voluntary\nattention is a repetition of successive efforts which bring back the\ntopic to the mind.[342] The topic once brought back, if a congenial\none, _develops_; and if its development is interesting it engages\nthe attention passively for a time. Dr. Carpenter, a moment back,\ndescribed the stream of thought, once entered, as 'bearing him along.'\nThis passive interest may be short or long. As soon as it flags, the\nattention is diverted by some irrelevant thing, and then a voluntary\neffort may bring it back to the topic again; and so on, under favorable\nconditions, for hours together. During all this time, however, note\nthat it is not an identical _object_ in the psychological sense (p.\n275), but a succession of mutually related objects forming an identical\n_topic_ only, upon which the attention is fixed. _No one can possibly\nattend continuously to an object that does not change._\n\nNow there are always some objects that for the time being _will not\ndevelop_. They simply _go out_; and to keep the mind upon anything\nrelated to them requires such incessantly renewed effort that the most\nresolute Will ere long gives out and lets its thoughts follow the more\nstimulating solicitations after it has withstood them for what length\nof time it can. There are topics known to every man from which he shies\nlike a frightened horse, and which to get a glimpse of is to shun.\nSuch are his ebbing assets to the spendthrift in full career. But why\nsingle out the spendthrift when to every man actuated by passion the\nthought of interests which negate the passion can hardly for more than\na fleeting instant stay before the mind? It is like 'memento mori' in\nthe heyday of the pride of life. Nature rises at such suggestions, and\nexcludes them from the view:--How long, O healthy reader, can you now\ncontinue thinking of your tomb?--In milder instances the difficulty\nis as great, especially when the brain is fagged. One snatches at\nany and every passing pretext, no matter how trivial or external, to\nescape from the odiousness of the matter in hand. I know a person, for\nexample, who will poke the fire, set chairs straight, pick dust-specks\nfrom the floor, arrange his table, snatch up the newspaper, take down\nany book which catches his eye, trim his nails, waste the morning\n_anyhow_, in short, and all without premeditation,--simply because the\nonly thing he _ought_ to attend to Is the preparation of a noonday\nlesson in formal logic which he detests. Anything but _that!_\n\nOnce more, the object must change. When it is one of sight, it will\nactually become invisible; when of hearing, inaudible,--if we attend\nto it too unmovingly. Helmholtz, who has put his sensorial attention\nto the severest tests, by using his eyes on objects which in common\nlife are expressly overlooked, makes some interesting remarks on this\npoint in his chapter on retinal rivalry.[343] The phenomenon called\nby that name is this, that if we look with each eye upon a different\npicture (as in the annexed stereoscopic slide), sometimes one picture,\nsometimes the other, or parts of both, will come to consciousness, but\nhardly ever both combined. Helmholtz now says:\n\n \"I find that I am able to attend voluntarily, now to one and now to\n the other system of lines; and that then this system remains visible\n alone for a certain time, whilst the other completely vanishes.\n This happens, for example, whenever I try to count the lines first\n of one and then of the other system.... But it is extremely hard to\n chain the attention down to one of the systems for long, unless we\n associate with our looking some distinct purpose which keeps the\n activity of the attention perpetually renewed. Such a one is counting\n the lines, comparing their intervals, or the like. An equilibrium\n of the attention, persistent for any length of time, is under no\n circumstances attainable. The natural tendency of attention when left\n to itself is to wander to ever new things; and so soon as the interest\n of its object is over, so soon as nothing new is to be noticed there,\n it passes, in spite of our will, to something else. If we wish to\n keep it upon one and the same object, we must seek constantly to find\n out something new about the latter, especially if other powerful\n impressions are attracting us away.\"\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 36.]\n\nAnd again criticising an author who had treated of attention as an\nactivity absolutely subject to the conscious will, Helmholtz writes:\n\n \"This is only restrictedly true. We move our eyes by our will; but one\n without training cannot so easily execute the intention of making them\n converge. At any moment, however, he can execute that of looking at a\n near object, in which act convergence is involved. Now just as little\n can we carry out our purpose to keep our attention steadily fixed\n upon a certain object, when our interest in the object is exhausted,\n and the purpose is inwardly formulated in this abstract way. _But\n we can set ourselves new questions about the object, so that a new\n interest in it arises, and then the attention will remain riveted._\n The relation of attention to will is, then, less one of immediate than\n of mediate control.\"\n\nThese words of Helmholtz are of fundamental importance. And if true of\nsensorial attention, how much more true are they of the intellectual\nvariety! The _conditio sine qu\u00e2 non_ of sustained attention to a given\ntopic of thought is that we should roll it over and over incessantly\nand consider different aspects and relations of it in turn. Only in\npathological states will a fixed and ever monotonously recurring idea\npossess the mind.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAnd now we can see why it is that what is called sustained attention\nis the easier, the richer in acquisitions and the fresher and more\noriginal the mind. In such minds, subjects bud and sprout and grow. At\nevery moment, they please by a new consequence and rivet the attention\nafresh. But an intellect unfurnished with materials, stagnant,\nunoriginal, will hardly be likely to consider any subject long. A\nglance exhausts its possibilities of interest. Geniuses are commonly\nbelieved to excel other men in their power of sustained attention.[344]\nIn most of them, it is to be feared, the so-called 'power' is of the\npassive sort. Their ideas coruscate, every subject branches infinitely\nbefore their fertile minds, and so for hours they may be rapt. _But\nit is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making\ngeniuses of them._ And, when we come down to the root of the matter,\nwe see that they differ from ordinary men less in the character of\ntheir attention than in the nature of the objects upon which it is\nsuccessively bestowed. In the genius, these form a concatenated series,\nsuggesting each other mutually by some rational law. Therefore we call\nthe attention 'sustained' and the topic of meditation for hours 'the\nsame.' In the common man the series is for the most part incoherent,\nthe objects have no rational bond, and we call the attention wandering\nand unfixed.\n\nIt is probable that genius tends actually to prevent a man from\nacquiring habits of voluntary attention, and that moderate intellectual\nendowments are the soil in which we may best expect, here as elsewhere,\nthe virtues of the will, strictly so called, to thrive. But, whether\nthe attention come by grace of genius or by dint of will, the longer\none does attend to a topic the more mastery of it one has. And the\nfaculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over\nand over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will.\nNo one is _compos sui_ if he have it not. An education which should\nimprove this faculty would be _the_ education _par excellence_. But\nit is easier to define this ideal than to give practical directions\nfor bringing it about. The only general pedagogic maxim bearing on\nattention is that the more interest the child has in advance in the\nsubject, the better he will attend. Induct him therefore in such a way\nas to knit each new thing on to some acquisition already there; and if\npossible awaken curiosity, so that the new thing shall seem to come as\nan answer, or part of an answer, to a question pre-existing in his mind.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAt present having described the varieties, let us turn to\n\n\nTHE EFFECTS OF ATTENTION.\n\n\nIts remote effects are too incalculable to be recorded. The practical\nand theoretical life of whole species, as well as of individual beings,\nresults from the selection which the habitual direction of their\nattention involves. In Chapters XIV and XV some of these consequences\nwill come to light. Suffice it meanwhile that each of us literally\n_chooses_, by his ways of attending to things, what sort of a universe\nhe shall appear to himself to inhabit.\n\nThe immediate effects of attention are to make us:\n\n_a_) perceive--\n\n_b_) conceive--\n\n_c_) distinguish--\n\n_d_) remember--\n\nbetter than otherwise we could--both more successive things and each\nthing more clearly. It also\n\n(_e_) shortens 'reaction-time.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_a_ and _b_. Most people would say that a sensation attended to becomes\nstronger than it otherwise would be. This point is, however, not quite\nplain, and has occasioned some discussion.[345] From the strength or\nintensity of a sensation must be distinguished its clearness; and to\nincrease _this_ is, for some psychologists, the utmost that attention\ncan do. When the facts are surveyed, however, it must be admitted that\nto some extent the relative intensity of two sensations may be changed\nwhen one of them is attended to and the other not. Every artist knows\nhow he can make a scene before his eyes appear warmer or colder in\ncolor, according to the way he sets his attention. If for warm, he soon\nbegins to _see_ the red color start out of everything; if for cold, the\nblue. Similarly in listening for certain notes in a chord, or overtones\nin a musical sound, the one we attend to sounds probably a little more\nloud as well as more emphatic than it did before. When we mentally\nbreak a series of monotonous strokes into a rhythm, by accentuating\nevery second or third one, etc., the stroke on which the stress of\nattention is laid seems to become stronger as well as more emphatic.\nThe increased visibility of optical after-images and of double images,\nwhich close attention brings about, can hardly be interpreted otherwise\nthan as a real strengthening of the retinal sensations themselves.\nAnd this view is rendered particularly probable by the fact that an\nimagined visual object may, if attention be concentrated upon it long\nenough, acquire before the mind's eye almost the brilliancy of reality,\nand (in the case of certain exceptionally gifted observers) leave a\nnegative after-image of itself when it passes away (see Chapter XVIII).\nConfident expectation of a certain intensity or quality of impression\nwill often make us sensibly see or hear it in an object which really\nfalls far short of it. In face of such facts it is rash to say that\nattention cannot make a sense-impression more intense.\n\nBut, on the other hand, the intensification which may be brought about\nseems never to lead the judgment astray. As we rightly perceive and\nname the same color under various lights, the same sound at various\ndistances; so we seem to make an analogous sort of allowance for\nthe varying amounts of attention with which objects are viewed; and\nwhatever changes of feeling the attention may bring we charge, as it\nwere, to the attention's account, and still perceive and conceive the\nobject as the same.\n\n \"A gray paper appears to us no lighter, the pendulum-beat of a clock\n no louder, no matter how much we increase the strain of our attention\n upon them. No one, by doing this, can make the gray paper look\n white, or the stroke of the pendulum sound like the blow of a strong\n hammer,--everyone, on the contrary, feels the increase as that of his\n own conscious activity turned upon the thing.\"[346]\n\nWere it otherwise, we should not be able to note _intensities_ by\nattending to them. Weak impressions would, as Stumpf says,[347] become\nstronger by the very fact of being observed.\n\n \"I should not be able to observe faint sounds at all, but only such\n as appeared to me of maximal strength, or at least of a strength that\n increased with the amount of my observation. In reality, however, I\n can, with steadily increasing attention, follow a diminuendo perfectly\n well.\"\n\nThe subject is one which would well repay exact experiment, if methods\ncould be devised. Meanwhile there is no question whatever that\nattention augments the _clearness_ of all that we perceive or conceive\nby its aid. But what is meant by clearness here?\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_c. Clearness_, so far as attention produces it, _means distinction\nfrom other things_ and _internal analysis or subdivision_. These are\nessentially products of intellectual _discrimination_, involving\ncomparison, memory, and perception of various relations. The attention\n_per se_ does not distinguish and analyze and relate. The most we can\nsay is that it is a condition of our doing so. And as these processes\nare to be described later, the clearness they produce had better not be\nfarther discussed here. The important point to notice here is that it\nis not attention's _immediate_ fruit.[348]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_d._ Whatever future conclusion we may reach as to this, we cannot deny\nthat _an object once attended to will remain in the memory_, whilst\none inattentively allowed to pass will leave no traces behind. Already\nin Chapter VI (see pp. 163 ff.) we discussed whether certain states\nof mind were 'unconscious,' or whether they were not rather states to\nwhich no attention had been paid, and of whose passage recollection\ncould afterwards find no vestiges. Dugald Stewart says:[349] \"The\nconnection between attention and memory has been remarked by many\nauthors.\" He quotes Quintilian, Locke, and Helvetius; and goes on\nat great length to explain the phenomena of 'secondary automatism'\n(see above, p. 114 ff.) by the presence of a mental action grown so\ninattentive as to preserve no memory of itself. In our chapter on\nMemory, later on, the point will come up again.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_e_) Under this head, the _shortening of reaction-time_, there is a\ngood deal to be said of Attention's effects. Since Wundt has probably\nworked over the subject more thoroughly than any other investigator\nand made it peculiarly his own, what follows had better, as far as\npossible, be in his words. The reader will remember the method and\nresults of experimentation on 'reaction-time,' as given in Chapter III.\n\nThe facts I proceed to quote may also be taken as a supplement to that\nchapter. Wundt writes:\n\n \"When we wait with strained attention for a stimulus, it will often\n happen that instead of registering the stimulus, we react upon some\n entirely different impression,--and this not through confounding the\n one with the other. On the contrary, we are perfectly well aware\n at the moment of making the movement that we respond to the wrong\n stimulus. Sometimes even, though not so often, the latter may be\n another kind of sensation altogether,--one may, for example, in\n experimenting with sound, register a flash of light, produced either\n by accident or design. We cannot well explain these results otherwise\n than by assuming that the strain of the attention towards the\n impression we expect coexists with a preparatory innervation of the\n motor centre for the reaction, which innervation the slightest shock\n then suffices to turn into an actual discharge. This shock may be\n given by any chance impression, even by one to which we never intended\n to respond. When the preparatory innervation has once reached this\n pitch of intensity, the time that intervenes between the stimulus and\n the contraction of the muscles which react, may become vanishingly\n small.\"[350]\n\n \"The perception of an impression is facilitated when the impression\n is preceded by a warning which announces beforehand that it is about\n to occur. This case is realized whenever several stimuli follow each\n other at equal intervals,--when, e.g. we note pendulum movements by\n the eye, or pendulum-strokes by the ear. Each single stroke forms\n here the signal for the next, which is thus met by a fully prepared\n attention. The same thing happens when the stimulus to be perceived\n is preceded, at a certain interval, by a single warning: the time is\n always notably shortened.... I have made comparative observations on\n reaction-time with and without a warning signal. The impression to be\n reacted on was the sound made by the dropping of a ball on the board\n of the 'drop apparatus.'... In a first series no warning preceded the\n stroke of the ball; in the second, the noise made by the apparatus in\n liberating the ball served as a signal.... Here are the averages of\n two series of such experiments:\n\n   Height of Fall.              Average.    Mean Error.  No. of Expts.\n\n   25 cm.         {No warning   0.253       0.051        13\n                  {Warning      0.076       0.060        17\n\n\n    5 cm.         {No warning   0.266       0.036        14\n                  {Warning      0.175       0.035        17\n\n\n \"... In a long series of experiments, (the interval between warning\n and stimulus remaining the same) the reaction-time grows less and\n less, and it is possible occasionally to reduce it to a vanishing\n quantity (a few thousandths of a second), to zero, or even to a\n negative value.[351]... The only ground that we can assign for this\n phenomenon is _the preparation (vorbereitende Spannung) of the\n attention_. It is easy to understand that the reaction-time should be\n shortened by this means; but that it should sometimes sink to zero\n and even assume negative values, may appear surprising. Nevertheless\n this latter case is also explained by what happens in the simple\n reaction-time experiments\" just referred to, in which, \"when the\n strain of the attention has reached its climax, the movement we stand\n ready to execute escapes from the control of on will, and we register\n a wrong signal. In these other experiments, in which a warning\n foretells the moment of the stimulus, it is also plain that attention\n accommodates itself so exactly to the latter's reception that _no\n sooner is it objectively given than it is fully apperceived, and with\n the apperception the motor discharge coincides_.\"[352]\n\nUsually, when the impression is fully anticipated, attention prepares\nthe motor centres so completely for both stimulus and reaction that\nthe only time lost is that of the physiological conduction downwards.\nBut even this interval may disappear, i.e. the stimulus and reaction\nmay become objectively contemporaneous; or more remarkable still,\nthe reaction may be discharged before the stimulus has actually\noccurred.[353] Wundt, as we saw some pages back (p. 411), explains this\nby the effort of the mind so to react that we may feel our own movement\nand the signal which prompts it, both at the same instant. As the\nexecution of the movement must precede our feeling of it, so it must\nalso precede the stimulus, if that and our movement are to be felt at\nonce.\n\nThe peculiar theoretic interest of these experiments lies in their\n_showing expectant attention and sensation to be continuous or\nidentical processes, since they may have identical motor effects_.\nAlthough other exceptional observations show them likewise to be\ncontinuous _subjectively_, Wundt's experiments do not: he seems never,\nat the moment of reacting prematurely, to have been misled into the\nbelief that the real stimulus was there.\n\nAs concentrated attention accelerates perception, so, conversely,\nperception of a stimulus is _retarded by anything which either baffles\nor distracts the attention_ with which we await it.\n\n \"If, e.g., we make reactions on a sound in such a way that weak and\n strong stimuli irregularly alternate so that the observer can never\n expect a determinate strength with any certainty, the reaction-time\n for _all_ the various signals is increased,--and so is the average\n error. I append two examples.... In Series I a strong and a weak\n sound alternated regularly, so that the intensity was each time known\n in advance. In II they came irregularly.\n\n    I. _Regular Alternation._\n\n                          Average Time.  Average Error.  No. of Expts.\n\n   Strong sound           0.116\"         0.010\"          18\n   Weak sound             0.127\"         0.012\"           9\n\n   II. _Irregular Alternation._\n\n   Strong sound           0.189\"         0.038\"           9\n   Weak sound             0.298\"         0.076\"          15\n\n\n \"Still greater is the increase of the time when, unexpectedly into a\n series of strong impressions, a weak one is interpolated, or _vice\n vers\u00e2_. In this way I have seen the time of reaction upon a sound\n so weak as to be barely perceived rise to 0.4\" or 0.5\", and for a\n strong sound to 0 25\". It is also matter of general experience that a\n stimulus expected in a general way, but for whose intensity attention\n cannot be adapted in advance, demands a longer reaction-time. In\n such cases ... the reason for the difference can only lie in the\n fact that wherever a preparation of the attention is impossible, the\n time of both perception and volition is prolonged. Perhaps also the\n conspicuously large reaction-times which are got with stimuli so faint\n as to be just perceptible may be explained by the attention tending\n always to adapt itself for something more than this minimal amount\n of stimulus, so that a state ensues similar to that in the case of\n unexpected stimuli.... Still more than by previously unknown stimuli\n is the reaction-time prolonged by _wholly unexpected_ impressions.\n This is sometimes accidentally brought about, when the observer's\n attention, instead of being concentrated on the coming signal, is\n dispersed. It can be realized purposely by suddenly thrusting into\n a long series of equidistant stimuli a much shorter interval which\n the observer does not expect. The mental effect here is like that of\n being startled;--often the startling is outwardly visible. The time\n of reaction may then easily be lengthened to one quarter of a second\n with strong signals, or with weak ones to a half-second. Slighter, but\n still very noticeable, is the retardation when the experiment is so\n arranged that the observer, ignorant whether the stimulus is to be an\n impression of light, sound, or touch, cannot keep his attention turned\n to any particular sense-organ in advance. One notices then at the same\n time a peculiar unrest, as the feeling of strain which accompanies the\n attention keeps vacillating between the several senses.\n\n \"Complications of another sort arise when what is registered is\n an impression anticipated both in point of quality and strength,\n but accompanied by other stimuli which make the concentration of\n the attention difficult. The reaction-time is here always more or\n less prolonged. The simplest case of the sort is where a momentary\n impression is registered in the midst of another, and continuous,\n sensorial-stimulation of considerable strength. The continuous\n stimulus may belong to the same sense as the stimulus to be reacted\n on, or to another. When it is of the same sense, the retardation it\n causes may be partly due to the distraction of the attention by it,\n but partly also to the fact that the stimulus to be reacted on stands\n out less strongly than if alone, and practically becomes a less\n intense sensation. But other factors in reality are present; for we\n find the reaction-time more prolonged by the concomitant stimulation\n when the stimulus is weak than when it is strong I made experiments\n in which the principal impression, or signal for reaction, was a\n bell-stroke whose strength could be graduated by a spring against the\n hammer with a movable counterpoise. Each set of observations comprised\n two series; in one of which the bell-stroke was registered in the\n ordinary way, whilst in the other a toothed wheel belonging to the\n chronometric apparatus made during the entire experiment a steady\n noise against a metal spring. In one half of the latter series (A)\n the bell-stroke was only moderately strong, so that the accompanying\n noise diminished it considerably, without, however, making it\n indistinguishable. In the other half (B) the bell-sound was so loud as\n to be heard with perfect distinctness above the noise.\n\n                             Mean.  Maximum.  Minimum.  No. of\n                                                        Experiments.\n A            {Without noise  0.189  0.214     0.156    21\n (Bell-stroke {With noise     0.313  0.499     0.183    16\n moderate)    {\n\n B            {Without noise  0.158  0.206     0.133    20\n (Bell-stroke {With noise     0.203  0.295     0.140    19\n loud)        {\n\n\n \"Since, in these experiments, the sound B even with noise made a\n considerably stronger impression than the sound A without, we must\n see in the figures a direct influence of the disturbing noise on the\n process of reaction. This influence is freed from mixture with other\n factors when the momentary stimulus and the concomitant disturbance\n appeal to different senses. I chose, to test this, sight and hearing.\n The momentary signal was an induction-spark leaping from one platinum\n point to another against a dark background. The steady stimulation was\n the noise above described.\n\n Spark.         Mean.  Maximum.  Minimum.  No. of Expts.\n Without noise  0.222  0.284     0.158     20\n With noise     0.300  0.390     0.250     18\n\n\n \"When one reflects that in the experiments with one and the same sense\n the relative intensity of the signal is always depressed [which by\n itself is a retarding condition] the amount of retardation in these\n last observations makes it probable that _the disturbing influence\n upon attention is greater when the stimuli are disparate than when\n they belong to the same sense_. One does not, in fact, find it\n particularly hard to register immediately, when the bell rings in the\n midst of the noise; but when the spark is the signal one has a feeling\n of being coerced, as one turns away from the noise towards it. This\n fact is immediately connected with other properties of our attention.\n The effort of the latter is accompanied by various corporeal\n sensations, according to the sense which is engaged. The innervation\n which exists during the effort of attention is therefore probably a\n different one for each sense-organ.\"[354]\n\nWundt then, after some theoretical remarks which we need not quote now,\ngives a table of retardations, as follows:\n\n                                                         Retardation.\n   1.  Unexpected strength of impression:\n       _a_) Unexpectedly strong sound                    0.073\n       _b_) Unexpectedly weak sound                      0.171\n   2.  Interference by like stimulus (sound by sound)    0.045[355]\n   3.  Interference by unlike stimulus (light by sound)  0.078\n\nIt seems probable, from these results obtained with elementary\nprocesses of mind, that all processes, even the higher ones of\nreminiscence, reasoning, etc., whenever attention is concentrated upon\nthem instead of being diffused and languid, are thereby more rapidly\nperformed.[356]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nStill more interesting reaction-time observations have been made by\nM\u00fcnsterberg. The reader will recollect the fact noted in Chapter\nIII (p. 93) that reaction-time is shorter when one concentrates his\nattention on the expected movement than when one concentrates it on the\nexpected signal. Herr M\u00fcnsterberg found that this is equally the case\nwhen the reaction is no simple reflex, but can take place only after\nan intellectual operation. In a series of experiments the five fingers\nwere used to react with, and the reacter had to use a different finger\naccording as the signal was of one sort or another. Thus when a word in\nthe nominative case was called out he used the thumb, for the dative\nhe used another finger; similarly adjectives, substantives, pronouns,\nnumerals, etc., or, again, towns, rivers, beasts, plants, elements;\nor poets, musicians, philosophers, etc., were co-ordinated each with\nits finger, so that when a word belonging to either of these classes\nwas mentioned, a particular finger and no other had to perform the\nreaction. In a second series of experiments the reaction consisted\nin the utterance of a word in answer to a question, such as \"name an\nedible fish,\" etc.; or \"name the first drama of Schiller,\" etc.; or\n\"which is greater, Hume or Kant?\" etc.; or (first naming apples and\ncherries, and several other fruits) \"which do you prefer, apples or\ncherries?\" etc.; or \"which is Goethe's finest drama?\" etc.; or \"which\nletter comes the later in the alphabet, the letter L or the first\nletter of the most beautiful tree?\" etc.; or \"which is less, 15 or 20\n_minus_ 8?\"[357] etc. etc. etc. Even in this series of reactions _the\ntime was much quicker token the reacter turned his attention in advance\ntowards the answer than when he turned it towards the question_. The\nshorter reaction-time was seldom more than one fifth of a second; the\nlonger, from four to eight times as long.\n\nTo understand such results, one must bear in mind that in these\nexperiments the reacter always knew in advance in a general way the\n_kind_ of question which he was to receive, and consequently the\n_sphere within which_ his possible answer lay.[358] In turning his\nattention, therefore, from the outset towards the answer, those\nbrain-processes in him which were connected with this entire 'sphere'\nwere kept sub-excited, and the question could then discharge with a\nminimum amount of lost time that particular answer out of the 'sphere'\nwhich belonged especially to it. When, on the contrary, the attention\nwas kept looking towards the question exclusively and averted from\nthe possible reply, all this preliminary sub-excitement of motor\ntracts failed to occur, and the entire process of answering had to\nbe gone through with _after_ the question was heard. No wonder that\nthe time was prolonged. It is a beautiful example of the summation\nof stimulations, and of the way in which expectant attention, even\nwhen not very strongly focalized, will prepare the motor centres, and\nshorten the work which a stimulus has to perform on them, in order to\nproduce a given effect when it comes.\n\n\nTHE INTIMATE NATURE OF THE ATTENTIVE PROCESS.\n\n\nWe have now a sufficient number of facts to warrant our considering\nthis more recondite question. And two physiological processes, of which\nwe have got a glimpse, immediately suggest themselves as possibly\nforming in combination a complete reply. I mean\n\n1. _The accommodation or adjustment of the sensory organs_; and\n\n2. _The anticipatory preparation from within of the ideational centres\nconcerned with the object to which the attention is paid._\n\n1. The sense-organs and the bodily muscles which favor their exercise\nare adjusted most energetically in sensorial attention, whether\nimmediate and reflex, or derived. But there are good grounds for\nbelieving that even intellectual attention, attention to the _idea_ of\na sensible object, is also accompanied with some degree of excitement\nof the sense-organs to which the object appeals. The preparation of the\nideational centres exists, on the other hand, wherever our interest in\nthe object--be it sensible or ideal--is _derived_ from, or in any way\nconnected with, other interests, or the presence of other objects, in\nthe mind. It exists as well when the attention thus derived is classed\nas passive as when it is classed as voluntary. So that on the whole\nwe may confidently conclude--since in mature life we never attend to\nanything without our interest in it being in some degree derived from\nits connection with other objects--that _the two processes of sensorial\nadjustment and ideational preparation probably coexist in all our\nconcrete attentive acts._\n\nThe two points must now be proved in more detail. First, as respects\nthe sensorial adjustment.\n\nThat it is present when we attend to _sensible_ things is obvious. When\nwe look or listen we accommodate our eyes and ears involuntarily, and\nwe turn our head and body as well; when we taste or smell we adjust\nthe tongue, lips, and respiration to the object; in feeling a surface\nwe move the palpatory organ in a suitable way; in all these acts,\nbesides making involuntary muscular contractions of a positive sort,\nwe inhibit others which might interfere with the result--we close the\neyes in tasting, suspend the respiration in listening, etc. The result\nis a more or less massive organic feeling that attention is going on.\nThis organic feeling comes, in the way described on page 302, to be\ncontrasted with that of the objects which it accompanies, and regarded\nas peculiarly ours, whilst the objects form the not-me. We treat it\nas a sense of our _own activity_, although it comes in to us from\nour organs after they are accommodated, just as the feeling of any\nobject does. Any object, if _immediately_ exciting, causes a reflex\naccommodation of the sense-organ, and this has two results--first, the\nobject's increase in clearness; and second, the feeling of activity in\nquestion. Both are sensations of an 'afferent' sort.\n\nBut in _intellectual_ attention, as we have already seen, (p. 300),\nsimilar feelings of activity occur. Fechner was the first, I believe,\nto analyze these feelings, and discriminate them from the stronger ones\njust named. He writes:\n\n \"When we transfer the attention from objects of one sense to those of\n another, we have an indescribable feeling (though at the same time\n one perfectly determinate, and reproducible at pleasure), of altered\n _direction_ or differently localized tension (_Spannung_). We feel\n a strain forward in the eyes, one directed sidewise in the ears,\n increasing with the degree of our attention, and changing according as\n we look at an object carefully, or listen to something attentively;\n and we speak accordingly of _straining the attention_. The difference\n is most plainly felt when the attention oscillates rapidly between eye\n and ear; and the feeling localizes itself with most decided difference\n in regard to the various sense-organs, according as we wish to\n discriminate a thing delicately by touch, taste, or smell.\n\n \"But now I have, when I try to vividly recall a picture of memory or\n fancy, a feeling perfectly analogous to that which I experience when\n I seek to apprehend a thing keenly by eye or ear; and this analogous\n feeling is very differently localized. While in sharpest possible\n attention to real objects (as well as to after-images) the strain\n is plainly forwards, and when the attention changes from one sense\n to another only alters its direction between the several external\n sense-organs, leaving the rest of the head free from strain, the\n case is different in memory or fancy, for here the feeling withdraws\n entirely from the external sense-organs, and seems rather to take\n refuge in that part of the head which the brain fills; if I wish, for\n example, to recall a place or person it will arise before me with\n vividness, not according as I strain my attention forwards, but rather\n in proportion as I, so to speak, retract it backwards.\"[359]\n\nIn myself the 'backward retraction' which is felt during attention\nto ideas of memory, etc., seems to be principally constituted by the\nfeeling of an actual rolling outwards and upwards of the eyeballs, such\nas occurs in sleep, and is the exact opposite of their behavior when we\nlook at a physical thing. I have already spoken of this feeling on page\n300.[360] The reader who doubts the presence of these organic feelings\nis requested to read the whole of that passage again.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt has been said, however, that we may attend to an object on the\nperiphery of the visual field and yet not accommodate the eye for\nit. Teachers thus notice the acts of children in the school-room at\nwhom they appear not to be looking. Women in general train their\nperipheral visual attention more than men. This would be an objection\nto the _invariable and universal_ presence of movements of adjustment\nas ingredients of the attentive process. Usually, as is well known,\nno object lying in the marginal portions of the field of vision can\ncatch our attention without at the same time 'catching our eye'--that\nis, fatally provoking such movements of rotation and accommodation as\nwill focus its image on the fovea, or point of greatest sensibility.\nPractice, however, enables us, _with effort_, to attend to a marginal\nobject whilst keeping the eyes immovable. The object under these\ncircumstances never becomes perfectly distinct--the place of its image\non the retina makes distinctness impossible--but (as anyone can satisfy\nhimself by trying) we become more vividly conscious of it than we were\nbefore the effort was made. Helmholtz states the fact so strikingly\nthat I will quote his observation in full. He was trying to combine\nin a single solid percept pairs of stereoscopic pictures illuminated\ninstantaneously by the electric spark. The pictures were in a dark box\nwhich the spark from time to time lighted up; and, to keep the eyes\nfrom wandering betweenwhiles, a pin-hole was pricked through the middle\nof each picture, through which the light of the room came, so that\neach eye had presented to it during the dark intervals a single bright\npoint. With parallel optical axes the points combined into a single\nimage; and the slightest movement of the eyeballs was betrayed by this\nimage at once becoming double. Helmholtz now found that simple linear\nfigures could, when the eyes were thus kept immovable, be perceived\nas solids at a single flash of the spark. But when the figures were\ncomplicated photographs, many successive flashes were required to grasp\ntheir totality.\n\n \"Now it is interesting,\" he says, \"to find that, although we keep\n steadily fixating the pin-holes and never allow their combined image\n to break into two, we can, nevertheless, before the spark comes, keep\n our attention voluntarily turned to any particular portion we please\n of the dark field, so as then, when the spark comes, to receive an\n impression only from such parts of the picture as lie in this region.\n In this respect, then, our attention is quite independent of the\n position and accommodation of the eyes, and of any known alteration in\n these organs; and free to direct itself by a conscious and voluntary\n effort upon any selected portion of a dark and undifferenced field\n of view. This is one of the most important observations for a future\n theory of attention.\"[361]\n\nHering, however, adds the following detail:\n\n \"Whilst attending to the marginal object we must always,\" he says,\n \"_attend at the same time_ to the object directly fixated. If even for\n a single instant we let the latter slip out of our mind, our eye moves\n towards the former, as may be easily recognized by the after-images\n produced, or by the muscular sounds heard. The case is then less\n properly to be called one of translocation, than one of unusually wide\n _dispersion_, of the attention, in which dispersion the largest share\n still falls upon the thing directly looked at,\"[362]\n\nand consequently directly accommodated for. Accommodation exists here,\nthen, as it does elsewhere, and without it we should lose a part\nof our sense of attentive activity. In fact, the _strain_ of that\nactivity (which is remarkably great in the experiment) is due in part\nto unusually strong contractions of the muscles needed to keep the\neyeballs still, which produce unwonted feelings of pressure in those\norgans.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n2. But if the peripheral part of the picture in this experiment be\nnot physically accommodated for, what is meant by its sharing our\nattention? What happens when we 'distribute' or 'disperse' the latter\nupon a thing for which we remain unwilling to 'adjust'? This leads us\nto that second feature in the process, the '_ideational preparation_'\nof which we spoke. _The effort to attend to the marginal region of\nthe picture consists in nothing more nor less than the effort to form\nas clear an idea as is possible of what is there portrayed._ The idea\nis to come to the help of the sensation and make it more distinct. It\ncomes with effort, and such a mode of coming is the remaining part of\nwhat we know as our attention's 'strain' under the circumstances.\nLet us show how universally present in our acts of attention this\nreinforcing imagination, this inward reproduction, this anticipatory\nthinking of the thing we attend to, is.\n\nIt must as a matter of course be present when the attention is of the\nintellectual variety, for the thing attended to then _is_ nothing but\nan idea, an inward reproduction or conception. If then we prove ideal\nconstruction of the object to be present in _sensorial_ attention, it\nwill be present everywhere. When, however, sensorial attention is at\nits height, it is impossible to tell how much of the percept comes from\nwithout and how much from within; but if we find that the _preparation_\nwe make for it always partly consists of the creation of an imaginary\nduplicate of the object in the mind, which shall stand ready to receive\nthe outward impression as if in a matrix, that will be quite enough to\nestablish the point in dispute.\n\nIn Wundt's and Exner's experiments quoted above, the lying in wait for\nthe impressions, and the preparation to react, consist of nothing but\nthe anticipatory imagination of what the impressions or the reactions\nare to be. Where the stimulus is unknown and the reaction undetermined,\ntime is lost, because no stable image can under such circumstances\nbe formed in advance. But where both nature and time of signal and\nreaction are foretold, so completely does the expectant attention\nconsist in premonitory imagination that, as we have seen (Footnote 273;\npp. 373, 377), it may mimic the intensity of reality, or at any rate\nproduce reality's motor effects. It is impossible to read Wundt's and\nExner's pages of description and not to interpret the '_Apperception_'\nand '_Spannung_' and other terms as equivalents of _imagination_. With\nWundt, in particular, the word _Apperception_ (which he sets great\nstore by) is quite interchangeable with both imagination and attention.\nAll three are names for the excitement from within of ideational\nbrain-centres, for which Mr. Lewes's name of _preperception_ seems the\nbest possible designation.\n\nWhere the impression to be caught is very weak, the way not to miss it\nis to sharpen our attention for it by preliminary contact with it in a\nstronger form.\n\n \"If we wish to begin to observe overtones, it is advisable, just\n before the sound which is to be analyzed, to sound very softly the\n note of which we are in search.... The piano and harmonium are well\n fitted for this use, as both give overtones that are strong. Strike\n upon the piano first the _g'_ [of a certain musical example previously\n given in the text]; then, when its vibrations have objectively ceased,\n strike powerfully the note _c_, in whose sound _g'_ is the third\n overtone, and keep your attention steadily bent upon the pitch of the\n just heard _g'_; you will now hear this tone sounding in the midst of\n the _c_.... If you place the resonator which corresponds to a certain\n overtone, for example _g'_ of the sound _c_, against your ear, and\n then make the note _c_ sound, you will hear _g'_ much strengthened by\n the resonator.... This strengthening by the resonator can be used to\n make the naked ear attentive to the sound which it is to catch. For\n when the resonator is gradually removed, the _g'_ grows weaker; but\n the attention, once directed to it, holds it now more easily fast, and\n the observer hears the tone _g'_ now in the natural unaltered sound of\n the note with his unaided ear.\"[363]\n\nWundt, commenting on experiences of this sort, says that\n\n \"on carefully observing, one will always find that one tries first\n to recall the image in memory of the tone to be heard, and that then\n one hears it in the total sound. The same thing is to be noticed\n in weak or fugitive visual impressions. Illuminate a drawing by\n electric sparks separated by considerable intervals, and after the\n first, and often after the second and third spark, hardly anything\n will be recognized. But the confused image is held fast in memory;\n each successive illumination completes it; and so at last we attain\n to a clearer perception. The primary motive to this inward activity\n proceeds usually from the outer impression itself. We hear a sound in\n which, from certain associations, we suspect a certain overtone; the\n next thing is to recall the overtone in memory; and finally we catch\n it in the sound we hear. Or perhaps we see some mineral substance\n we have met before; the impression awakens the memory-image, which\n again more or less completely melts with the impression itself. In\n this way every idea takes a certain time to penetrate to the focus\n of consciousness. And during this time we always find in ourselves\n the peculiar _feeling_ of attention.... The phenomena show that an\n _adaptation_ of attention to the impression takes place. The surprise\n which unexpected impressions give us is due essentially to the fact\n that our attention, at the moment when the impression occurs, is not\n accommodated for it. The accommodation itself is of the double sort,\n relating as it does to the intensity as well as to the quality of\n the stimulus. Different qualities of impression require disparate\n adaptations. And we remark that our feeling of the _strain_ of our\n inward attentiveness increases with every increase in the strength of\n the impressions on whose perception we are intent.\"[364]\n\nThe natural way of conceiving all this is under the symbolic form\nof a brain-cell played upon from two directions. Whilst the object\nexcites it from without, other brain-cells, or perhaps spiritual\nforces, arouse it from within. The latter influence is the 'adaptation\nof the attention.' _The plenary energy of the brain-cell demands the\nco-operation of both factors:_ not when merely present, but when both\npresent and attended to, is the object fully perceived.\n\nA few additional experiences will now be perfectly clear. Helmholtz,\nfor instance, adds this observation to the passage we quoted a while\nago concerning the stereoscopic pictures lit by the electric spark.\n\n \"These experiments,\" he says, \"are interesting as regards the part\n which attention plays in the matter of double images.... For in\n pictures so simple that it is relatively difficult for me to see\n them double, I can succeed in seeing them double, even when the\n illumination is only instantaneous, the moment I strive to _imagine in\n a lively way how they ought then to look_. The influence of attention\n is here pure; for all eye movements are shut out.\"[365]\n\nIn another place[366] the same writer says:\n\n \"When I have before my eyes a pair of stereoscopic drawings which\n are hard to combine, it is difficult to bring the lines and points\n that correspond, to cover each other, and with every little motion of\n the eyes they glide apart. _But if I chance to gain a lively mental\n image (Anschauungsbild) of the represented solid form_ (a thing that\n often occurs by lucky chance), I then move my two eyes with perfect\n certainty over the figure without the picture separating again.\"\n\nAgain, writing of retinal rivalry, Helmholtz says:\n\n \"It is not a trial of strength between two sensations, but depends on\n our fixing or failing to fix the attention. Indeed, there is scarcely\n any phenomenon so well fitted for the study of the causes which are\n capable of determining the attention. It is not enough to form the\n conscious intention of seeing first with one eye and then with the\n other; _we must form as clear a notion as possible of what we expect\n to see. Then it will actually appear_.\"[367]\n\nIn figures 37 and 38, where the result is ambiguous, we can make the\nchange from one apparent form to the other by imagining strongly in\nadvance the form we wish to see. Similarly in those puzzles where\ncertain lines in a picture form by their combination an object that has\nno connection with what the picture ostensibly represents; or indeed in\nevery case where an object is inconspicuous and hard to discern from\nthe background; we may not be able to see it for a long time; but,\nhaving once seen it, we can attend to it again whenever we like, on\naccount of the mental duplicate of it which our imagination now bears.\nIn the meaningless French words '_pas de lieu Rh\u00f4ne que nous_,' who\ncan recognize immediately the English 'paddle your own canoe'?[368]\nBut who that has once noticed the identity can fail to have it arrest\nhis attention again? When watching for the distant clock to strike,\nour mind is so filled with its image that at every moment we think\nwe hear the longed-for or dreaded sound. So of an awaited footstep.\nEvery stir in the wood is for the hunter his game; for the fugitive\nhis pursuers. Every bonnet in the street is momentarily taken by the\nlover to enshroud the head of his idol. The image in the mind _is_ the\nattention; the _preperception_, as Mr. Lewes calls it, is half of the\nperception of the looked-for thing.[369]\n\n[Illustration: FIGS. 37 & 38.]\n\nIt is for this reason that men have no eyes but for those aspects of\nthings which they have already been taught to discern. Any one of us\ncan notice a phenomenon after it has once been pointed out, which not\none in ten thousand could ever have discovered for himself. Even in\npoetry and the arts, some one has to come and tell us what aspects we\nmay single out, and what effects we may admire, before our \u00e6sthetic\nnature can 'dilate' to its full extent and never 'with the wrong\nemotion.' In kindergarten instruction one of the exercises is to make\nthe children see how many features they can point out in such an object\nas a flower or a stuffed bird. They readily name the features they\nknow already, such as leaves, tail, bill, feet. But they may look for\nhours without distinguishing nostrils, claws, scales, etc., until their\nattention is called to these details; thereafter, however, they see\nthem every time. In short, _the only things which we commonly see are\nthose which we preperceive_. and the only things which we preperceive\nare those which have been labelled for us, and the labels stamped into\nour mind. If we lost our stock of labels we should be intellectually\nlost in the midst of the world.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOrganic adjustment, then, and ideational preparation or preperception\nare concerned in all attentive acts. An interesting theory is defended\nby no less authorities than Professors Bain[370] and Ribot,[371] and\nstill more ably advocated by Mr. N. Lange,[372] who will have it\nthat the ideational preparation itself is a consequence of muscular\nadjustment, so that the latter may be called the essence of the\nattentive process throughout. This at least is what the theory of these\nauthors practically amounts to, though the former two do not state it\nin just these terms. The proof consists in the exhibition of cases of\nintellectual attention which organic adjustment accompanies, or of\nobjects in thinking which we have to execute a movement. Thus Lange\nsays that when he tries to imagine a certain colored circle, he finds\nhimself first making with his eyes the movement to which the circle\ncorresponds, and _then_ imagining the color, etc., as a consequence of\nthe movement.\n\n \"Let my reader,\" he adds, \"close his eyes and think of an extended\n object, for instance a _pencil_. He will easily notice that he first\n makes a slight movement [of the eyes] corresponding to the straight\n line, and that he often gets a weak feeling of innervation of the hand\n as if touching the pencil's surface. So, in thinking of a certain\n sound, we turn towards its direction or repeat muscularly its rhythm,\n or articulate an imitation of it.\"[373]\n\nBut it is one thing to point out the presence of muscular contractions\nas constant concomitants of our thoughts, and another thing to\nsay, with Herr Lange, that thought is _made possible_ by muscular\ncontraction alone. It may well be that where the object of thought\nconsists of two parts, one perceived by movement and another not, the\npart perceived by movement is habitually called up first and fixed\nin the mind by the movement's execution, whilst the other part comes\nsecondarily as the movement's mere associate. But even were this the\nrule with all men (which I doubt[374]), it would only be a practical\nhabit, not an ultimate necessity. In the chapter on the Will we shall\nlearn that movements themselves are results of images coming before the\nmind, images sometimes of feelings in the moving part, sometimes of the\nmovement's effects on eye and ear, and sometimes (if the movement be\noriginally reflex or instinctive), of its natural stimulus or exciting\ncause. It is, in truth, contrary to all wider and deeper analogies to\ndeny that any quality of feeling whatever can directly rise up in the\nform of an idea, and to assert that only ideas of movement can call\nother ideas to the mind.\n\nSo much for adjustment and preperception. The only third process I can\nthink of as always present is the inhibition of irrelevant movements\nand ideas. This seems, however, to be a feature incidental to voluntary\nattention rather than the essential feature of attention at large,[375]\nand need not concern us particularly now. Noting merely the intimate\nconnection which our account so far establishes between attention,\non the one hand, and imagination, discrimination, and memory, on the\nother, let us draw a couple of practical inferences, and then pass to\nthe more speculative problem that remains.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe practical inferences are pedagogic. First, _to strengthen attention\nin children_ who care nothing for the subject they are studying and\nlet their wits go wool-gathering. The interest here must be 'derived'\nfrom something that the teacher associates with the task, a reward or a\npunishment if nothing less external comes to mind. Prof. Ribot says:\n\n \"A child refuses to read; he is incapable of keeping his mind fixed\n on the letters, which have no attraction for him; but he looks with\n avidity upon the pictures contained in a book. 'What do they mean?'\n he asks. The father replies: 'When you can read, the book will tell\n you.' After several colloquies like this, the child resigns himself\n and falls to work, first slackly, then the habit grows, and finally\n he shows an ardor which has to be restrained. This is a case of the\n genesis of voluntary attention. An artificial and indirect desire has\n to be grafted on a natural and direct one. Reading has no immediate\n attractiveness, but it has a borrowed one, and that is enough. The\n child is caught in the wheelwork, the first step is made.\"\n\nI take another example, from M. B. Perez:[376]\n\n \"A child of six years, habitually prone to mind-wandering, sat down\n one day to the piano of his own accord to repeat an air by which his\n mother had been charmed. His exercises lasted an hour. The same child\n at the age of seven, seeing his brother busy with tasks in vacation,\n went and sat at his father's desk. 'What are you doing there?' his\n nurse said, surprised at so finding him. 'I am,' said the child,\n 'learning a page of German; it isn't very amusing, but it is for an\n agreeable surprise to mamma.'\"\n\nHere, again, a birth of voluntary attention, grafted this time on a\nsympathetic instead of a selfish sentiment like that of the first\nexample. The piano, the German, awaken no spontaneous attention; but\nthey arouse and maintain it by borrowing a force from elsewhere.[377]\n\nSecond, take that mind-wandering which at a later age may trouble us\n_whilst reading or listening to a discourse_. If attention be the\nreproduction of the sensation from within, the habit of reading not\nmerely with the eye, and of listening not merely with the ear, but of\narticulating to one's self the words seen or heard, ought to deepen\none's attention to the latter. Experience shows that this is the\ncase. I can keep my wandering mind a great deal more closely upon a\nconversation or a lecture if I actively re-echo to myself the words\nthan if I simply hear them; and I find a number of my students who\nreport benefit from voluntarily adopting a similar course.[378]\n\nSecond, _a teacher who wishes to engage the attention of his class\nmust knit his novelties on to things of which they already have\npreperceptions_. The old and familiar is readily attended to by\nthe mind and helps to hold in turn the new, forming, in Herbartian\nphraseology, an '_Apperceptionsmasse_' for it. Of course it is in every\ncase a very delicate problem to know what 'Apperceptionsmasse' to use.\nPsychology can only lay down the general rule.\n\n\nIS VOLUNTARY ATTENTION A RESULTANT OR A FORCE?\n\n\nWhen, a few pages back, I symbolized the 'ideational preparation'\nelement in attention by a brain-cell played upon from within, I added\n'by other brain-cells, or by some spiritual force,' without deciding\nwhich. The question 'which?' is one of those central psychologic\nmysteries which part the schools. When we reflect that the turnings\nof our attention form the nucleus of our inner self; when we see (as\nin the chapter on the Will we shall see) that volition is nothing but\nattention; when we believe that our autonomy in the midst of nature\ndepends on our not being pure effect, but a cause,--\n\n    _Principium quoddam quod fati f\u0153dera rumpat,_\n    _Ex infinito ne causant causa sequatur--_\n\nwe must admit that the question whether attention involve such a\nprinciple of spiritual activity or not is metaphysical as well as\npsychological, and is well worthy of all the pains we can bestow on its\nsolution. It is in fact the pivotal question of metaphysics, the very\nhinge on which our picture of the world shall swing from materialism,\nfatalism, monism, towards spiritualism, freedom, pluralism,--or else\nthe other way.\n\nIt goes back to the automaton-theory. If feeling is an inert\naccompaniment, then of course the brain-cell can be played upon only\nby other brain-cells, and the attention which we give at any time\nto any subject, whether in the form of sensory adaptation or of\n'preperception,' is the fatally predetermined _effect_ of exclusively\nmaterial laws. If, on the other hand, the feeling which coexists with\nthe brain-cells' activity reacts dynamically upon that activity,\nfurthering or checking it, then the attention is in part, at least,\na _cause_. It does not necessarily follow, of course, that this\nreactive feeling should be 'free' in the sense of having its amount\nand direction undetermined in advance, for it might very well be\npredetermined in all these particulars. If it were so, our attention\nwould not be _materially_ determined, nor yet would it be 'free' in the\nsense of being spontaneous or unpredictable in advance. The question is\nof course a purely speculative one, for we have no means of objectively\nascertaining whether our feelings react on our nerve-processes or not;\nand those who answer the question in either way do so in consequence\nof general analogies and presumptions drawn from other fields. As mere\n_conceptions_, the effect-theory and the cause-theory of attention are\nequally clear; and whoever affirms either conception to be true must do\nso on metaphysical or universal rather than on scientific or particular\ngrounds.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAs regards _immediate sensorial attention_ hardly any one is tempted to\nregard it as anything but an effect.[379] We are 'evolved' so as to\nrespond to special stimuli by special accommodative acts which produce\nclear perceptions on the one hand in us, and on the other hand such\nfeelings of inner activity as were above described. The accommodation\nand the resultant feeling _are_ the attention. We don't bestow it, the\nobject draws it from us. The object has the initiative, not the mind.\n\n_Derived attention, where there is no voluntary effort, seems also\nmost plausibly to be a mere effect._ The object again takes the\ninitiative and draws our attention to itself, not by reason of its\nown intrinsic interest, but because it is connected with some other\ninteresting thing. Its brain-process is connected with another that is\neither excited, or tending to be excited, and the liability to share\nthe excitement and become aroused is the liability to 'preperception'\nin which the attention consists. If I have received an insult, I may\nnot be actively thinking of it all the time, yet the thought of it\nis in such a state of heightened irritability, that the place where\nI received it or the man who inflicted it cannot be mentioned in my\nhearing without my attention bounding, as it were, in that direction,\nas the imagination of the whole transaction revives. Where such a\nstirring-up occurs, organic adjustment must exist as well, and the\nideas must innervate to some degree the muscles. Thus the whole process\nof involuntary derived attention is accounted for if we grant that\nthere is something interesting enough to arouse and fix the thought\nof whatever may be connected with it. This fixing _is_ the attention;\nand it carries with it a vague sense of activity going on, and of\nacquiescence, furtherance, and adoption, which makes us feel the\nactivity to be our own.\n\nThis reinforcement of ideas and impressions by the pre-existing\ncontents of the mind was what Herbart had in mind when he gave the name\nof _apperceptive_ attention to the variety we describe. We easily see\nnow why the lover's tap should be heard--it finds a nerve-centre half\nready in advance to explode. We see how we can attend to a companion's\nvoice in the midst of noises which pass unnoticed though objectively\nmuch louder than the words we hear. Each word is _doubly_ awakened;\nonce from without by the lips of the talker, but already before that\nfrom within by the premonitory processes irradiating from the previous\nwords, and by the dim arousal of all processes that are connected with\nthe 'topic' of the talk. The irrelevant noises, on the other hand, are\nawakened only once. They form an unconnected train. The boys at school,\ninattentive to the teacher except when he begins an anecdote, and then\nall pricking up their ears, are as easily explained. The words of the\nanecdote shoot into association with exciting objects which react and\nfix them; the other words do not. Similarly with the grammar heard by\nthe purist and Herbart's other examples quoted on page 418.\n\nEven where the attention is voluntary, it is possible to conceive of\nit as an effect, and not a cause, a product and not an agent. The\nthings we attend to _come to us_ by their own laws. Attention _creates_\nno idea; an idea must already be there before we can attend to it.\nAttention only fixes and retains what the ordinary laws of association\nbring 'before the footlights' of consciousness. But the moment we admit\nthis we see that the attention _per se_, the _feeling_ of attending\nneed no more fix and retain the ideas than it need bring them. The\nassociates which bring them also fix them by the interest which they\nlend. In short, voluntary and involuntary attention may be essentially\nthe same. It is true that where the ideas are intrinsically very\nunwelcome and the effort to attend to them is great, it seems to us\nas if the frequent renewal of the effort were the very cause by which\nthey are held fast, and we naturally think of the effort as an original\nforce. In fact it is only to the _effort to attend_, not to the mere\n_attending_, that we are seriously tempted to ascribe spontaneous\npower. We think we can make more of it _if we will_; and the amount\nwhich we make does not seem a fixed function of the ideas themselves,\nas it would necessarily have to be if our effort were an effect and not\na spiritual force. But even here it is possible to conceive the facts\nmechanically and to regard the effort as a mere effect.\n\nEffort is felt only where there is a conflict of interests in the\nmind. The idea A may be intrinsically exciting to us. The idea Z may\nderive its interest from association with some remoter good. A may\nbe our sweetheart, Z may be some condition of our soul's salvation.\nUnder these circumstances, if we succeed in attending to Z at all it\nis always with expenditure of effort. The 'ideational preparation,'\nthe 'preperception' of A keeps going on of its own accord, whilst\nthat of Z needs incessant pulses of voluntary reinforcement--that\nis, we have the _feeling_ of voluntary reinforcement (or effort) at\neach successive moment in which the thought of Z flares brightly up\nin our mind. Dynamically, however, that may mean only this: that the\nassociative processes which make Z triumph are really the stronger, and\nin A's absence would make us give a 'passive' and unimpeded attention\nto Z; but, so long as A is present, some of of their force is used to\ninhibit the processes concerned with A. Such inhibition is a partial\nneutralization of the brain-energy which would otherwise be available\nfor fluent thought. But what is lost for thought is converted into\nfeeling, in this case into the peculiar feeling of effort, difficulty,\nor strain.\n\nThe stream of our thought is like a river. On the whole easy simple\nflowing predominates in it, the drift of things is with the pull of\ngravity, and effortless attention is the rule. But at intervals an\nobstruction, a set-back, a log-jam occurs, stops the current, creates\nan eddy, and makes things temporarily move the other way. If a real\nriver could feel, it would feel these eddies and set-backs as places\nof effort. \"I am here flowing,\" it would say, \"in the direction of\ngreatest resistance, instead of flowing, as usual, in the direction of\nleast. My effort is what enables me to perform this feat.\" Really, the\neffort would only be a passive index that the feat was being performed.\nThe agent would all the while be the total downward drift of the rest\nof the water, forcing _some_ of it upwards in this spot; and although,\n_on the average_, the direction of least resistance is downwards, that\nwould be no reason for its not being upwards now and then. Just so with\nour voluntary acts of attention. They are momentary arrests, coupled\nwith a peculiar feeling, of portions of the stream. But the arresting\nforce, instead of being this peculiar feeling itself, may be nothing\nbut the processes by which the collision is produced. The feeling of\neffort may be 'an accompaniment,' as Mr. Bradley says, 'more or less\nsuperfluous,' and no more contribute to the result than the pain in a\nman's finger, when a hammer falls on it, contributes to the hammer's\nweight. Thus the notion that our effort in attending is an original\nfaculty, a force additional to the others of which brain and mind are\nthe seat, may be an abject superstition. Attention may have to go, like\nmany a faculty once deemed essential, like many a verbal phantom, like\nmany an idol of the tribe. It may be an excrescence on Psychology. No\nneed of it to drag ideas before consciousness or fix them, when we see\nhow perfectly they drag and fix each other there.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI have stated the effect-theory as persuasively as I can.[380] It\nis a clear, strong, well-equipped conception, and like all such, is\nfitted to carry conviction, where there is no contrary proof. The\nfeeling of effort certainly _may_ be an inert accompaniment and not the\nactive element which it seems. No measurements are as yet performed\n(it is safe to say none ever will be performed) which can show that\nit contributes energy to the result. We _may_ then regard attention\nas a superfluity, or a 'Luxus,' and dogmatize against its causal\nfunction with no feeling in our hearts but one of pride that we are\napplying Occam's razor to an entity that has multiplied itself 'beyond\nnecessity.'\n\nBut Occam's razor, though a very good rule of method, is certainly no\nlaw of nature. The laws of stimulation and of association may well\nbe indispensable actors in all attention's performances, and may\neven be a good enough 'stock-company' to carry on many performances\nwithout aid; and yet they _may_ at times simply form the background\nfor a 'star-performer,' who is no more their 'inert accompaniment' or\ntheir 'incidental product' than Hamlet is Horatio's and Ophelia's.\nSuch a star-performer would be the voluntary effort to attend, if it\nwere an original psychic force. Nature _may_, I say, indulge in these\ncomplications; and the conception that she has done so in this case\nis, I think, just as clear (if not as 'parsimonious' logically) as the\nconception that she has not. To justify this assertion, _let us ask\njust what the effort to attend would effect if it were an original\nforce_.\n\nIt would deepen and prolong the stay in consciousness of innumerable\nideas which else would fade more quickly away. The delay thus gained\nmight not be more than a second in duration--but that second might be\n_critical_; for in the constant rising and falling of considerations\nin the mind, where two associated systems of them are nearly in\nequilibrium it is often a matter of but a second more or less of\nattention at the outset, whether one system shall gain force to occupy\nthe field and develop itself, and exclude the other, or be excluded\nitself by the other. When developed, it may make us act; and that act\nmay seal our doom. When we come to the chapter on the Will, we shall\nsee that the whole drama of the voluntary life hinges on the amount\nof attention, slightly more or slightly less, which rival motor ideas\nmay receive. But the whole feeling of reality, the whole sting and\nexcitement of our voluntary life, depends on our sense that in it\nthings are _really being decided_ from one moment to another, and that\nit is not the dull rattling off of a chain that was forged innumerable\nages ago. This appearance, which makes life and history tingle with\nsuch a tragic zest, _may_ not be an illusion. As we grant to the\nadvocate of the mechanical theory that it may be one, so he must\ngrant to us that it may _not_. And the result is two conceptions of\npossibility face to face with no facts definitely enough known to stand\nas arbiter between them.\n\nUnder these circumstances, one can leave the question open whilst\nwaiting for light, or one can do what most speculative minds do,\nthat is, look to one's general philosophy to incline the beam. The\nbelievers in mechanism do so without hesitation, and they ought not\nto refuse a similar privilege to the believers in a spiritual force.\nI count myself among the latter, but as my reasons are ethical they\nare hardly suited for introduction into a psychological work.[381]\nThe last word of psychology here is ignorance, for the 'forces'\nengaged are certainly too delicate and numerous to be followed in\ndetail. Meanwhile, in view of the strange arrogance with which the\nwildest materialistic speculations persist in calling themselves\n'science,' it is well to recall just what the reasoning is, by which\nthe effect-theory of attention is confirmed. It is an argument from\nanalogy, drawn from rivers, reflex actions and other material phenomena\nwhere no consciousness _appears_ to exist at all, and extended to\ncases where consciousness seems the phenomenon's essential feature.\n_The consciousness doesn't count,_ these reasoners say; it doesn't\nexist for science, it is _nil_; you mustn't think about it at all. The\nintensely reckless character of all this needs no comment. It is making\nthe mechanical theory true _per fas aut nefas_. For the sake of that\ntheory we make inductions from phenomena to others that are startlingly\n_unlike_ them; and we assume that a complication which Nature has\nintroduced (the presence of feeling and of effort, namely) is not\nworthy of scientific recognition at all. Such conduct may conceivably\nbe _wise_, though I doubt it; but scientific, as contrasted with\nmetaphysical, it cannot seriously be called.[382]\n\n\nINATTENTION.\n\n\nHaving spoken fully of attention, let me add a word about _inattention_.\n\nWe do not notice the ticking of the clock, the noise of the city\nstreets, or the roaring of the brook near the house; and even the\ndin of a foundry or factory will not mingle with the thoughts of its\nworkers, if they have been there long enough. When we first put on\nspectacles, especially if they be of certain curvatures, the bright\nreflections they give of the windows, etc., mixing with the field of\nview, are very disturbing. In a few days we ignore them altogether.\nVarious entoptic images, _musc\u00e6 volitantes_, etc., although constantly\npresent, are hardly ever known. The pressure of our clothes and\nshoes, the beating of our hearts and arteries, our breathing, certain\nsteadfast bodily pains, habitual odors, tastes in the mouth, etc., are\nexamples from other senses, of the same lapse into unconsciousness\nof any too unchanging content--a lapse which Hobbes has expressed in\nthe well-known phrase, \"_Semper idem sentire ac non sentire ad idem\nrevertunt_.\"\n\nThe cause of the unconsciousness is certainly not the mere blunting of\nthe sense-organs. Were the sensation important, we should notice it\nwell enough; and we can at any moment notice it by expressly throwing\nour attention upon it,[383] provided it have not become so inveterate\nthat inattention to it is ingrained in our very constitution, as in the\ncase of the _musc\u00e6 volitantes_ the double retinal images, etc. But even\nin these cases artificial conditions of observation and patience soon\ngive us command of the impression which we seek. The inattentiveness\nmust then be a habit grounded on higher conditions than mere sensorial\nfatigue.\n\nHelmholtz has formulated a general law of inattention which we shall\nhave to study in the next chapter but one. Helmholtz's law is that we\nleave all impressions unnoticed which are valueless to us as signs by\nwhich to _discriminate things_. At most such impressions fuse with\ntheir consorts into an aggregate effect. The upper partial tones\nwhich make human voices differ make them differ as wholes only--we\ncannot dissociate the tones themselves. The odors which form integral\nparts of the characteristic taste of certain substances, meat, fish,\ncheese, butter, wine, do not come as odors to our attention. The\nvarious muscular and tactile feelings that make up the perception of\nthe attributes 'wet,' 'elastic,' 'doughy,' etc., are not singled out\nseparately for what they are. And all this is due to an inveterate\nhabit we have contracted, of passing from them immediately to their\nimport and letting their substantive nature alone. They have formed\nconnections in the mind which it is now difficult to break; they are\nconstituents of processes which it is hard to arrest, and which differ\naltogether from what the processes of catching the attention would be.\nIn the cases Helmholtz has in mind, not only we but our ancestors have\nformed these habits. In the cases we started from, however, of the\nmill-wheel, the spectacles, the factory din, the tight shoes, etc., the\nhabits of inattention are more recent, and the manner of their genesis\nseems susceptible, hypothetically at least, of being traced.\n\nHow _can_ impressions that are not needed by the intellect be thus\nshunted off from all relation to the rest of consciousness? Professor\nG. E. M\u00fcller has made a plausible reply to this question, and most of\nwhat follows is borrowed from him.[384] He begins with the fact that\n\n \"When we first come out of a mill or factory, in which we have\n remained long enough to get wonted to the noise, we feel as if\n something were _lacking_. Our total feeling of existence is different\n from what it was when we were in the mill.... A friend writes to me:\n 'I have in my room a little clock which does not run quite twenty-four\n hours without winding. In consequence of this, it often stops. So\n soon as this happens, I notice it, whereas I naturally fail to notice\n it when going. When this first began to happen, there was this\n modification: I suddenly felt an undefined uneasiness or sort of void,\n without being able to say what was the matter; and only after some\n consideration did I find the cause in the stopping of the clock.'\"\n\nThat the stopping of an unfelt stimulus may itself be felt is a\nwell-known fact: the sleeper in church who wakes when the sermon\nends; the miller who does the same when his wheel stands still, are\nstock examples. Now (since every impression falling on the nervous\nsystem must propagate itself somewhither), M\u00fcller suggests that\nimpressions which come to us when the thought-centres are preoccupied\nwith other matters may thereby be blocked or inhibited from invading\nthese centres, and may then overflow into lower paths of discharge.\nAnd he farther suggests that if this process recur often enough, the\nside-track thus created will grow so permeable as to be used, no matter\nwhat may be going on in the centres above. In the acquired inattention\nmentioned, the constant stimulus always caused disturbance _at first_;\nand consciousness of it was extruded successfully only when the brain\nwas _strongly excited_ about other things. Gradually the extrusion\nbecame easier, and at last automatic.\n\nThe side-tracks which thus learn to draft off the stimulations that\ninterfere with thought cannot be assigned with any precision. They\nprobably terminate in organic processes, or insignificant muscular\ncontractions which, when stopped by the cessation of their instigating\ncause, immediately give us the feeling that something is gone from our\nexistence (as M\u00fcller says), or (as his friend puts it) the feeling of a\nvoid.[385]\n\nM\u00fcller's suggestion awakens another. It is a well-known fact that\npersons striving to keep their attention on a difficult subject will\nresort to movements of various unmeaning kinds, such as pacing the\nroom, drumming with the fingers, playing with keys or watch-chain,\nscratching head, pulling mustache, vibrating foot, or what not,\naccording to the individual. There is an anecdote of Sir W. Scott,\nwhen a boy, rising to the head of his class by cutting off from the\njacket of the usual head-boy a button which the latter was in the habit\nof twirling in his fingers during the lesson. The button gone, its\nowner's power of reciting also departed.--Now much of this activity\nis unquestionably due to the overflow of emotional excitement during\nanxious and concentrated thought. It drains away nerve-currents\nwhich if pent up within the thought-centres would very likely make\nthe confusion there worse confounded. But may it not also be a means\nof drafting off all the irrelevant sensations of the moment, and so\nkeeping the attention more exclusively concentrated upon its inner\ntask? Each individual usually has his own peculiar habitual movement of\nthis sort. A downward nerve-path is thus kept constantly open during\nconcentrated thought; and as it seems to be a law of frequent (if not\nof universal) application, that incidental stimuli tend to discharge\nthrough paths that are already discharging rather than through\nothers, the whole arrangement might protect the thought-centres from\ninterference from without. Were this the true _rationale_ of these\npeculiar movements, we should have to suppose that the sensations\nproduced by each phase of the movement itself are also drafted off\nimmediately by the next phase and help to keep the circular process\nagoing. I offer the suggestion for what it is worth; the connection\nof the movements themselves with the continued effort of attention is\ncertainly a genuine and curious fact.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[322] Bain mentions attention in the Senses and the Intellect, p. 558,\nand even gives a theory of it on pp. 370-374 of the Emotions of the\nWill. I shall recur to this theory later on.\n\n[323] \"The first and most important, but also the most difficult, task\nat the outset of an education is to overcome gradually the inattentive\ndispersion of mind which shows itself wherever the organic life\npreponderates over the intellectual. The training of animals ... must\nbe in the first instance based on the awakening of attention (cf.\nAdrian Leonard, _Essai sur l'Education des Animaux_, Lille, 1842), that\nis to say, we must seek to make them gradually perceive separately\nthings which, if left to themselves, would not be attended to, because\nthey would fuse with a great sum of other sensorial stimuli to a\nconfused total impression of which each separate item only darkens and\ninterferes with the rest. Similarly at first with the human child. The\nenormous difficulties of deaf-mute- and especially of idiot-instruction\nis principally due to the slow and painful manner in which we succeed\nin bringing out from the general confusion of perception single items\nwith sufficient sharpness.\" (Waitz, Lehrb. d. Psychol., p. 632.)\n\n[324] Elements, part i, chap. ii, _fin._\n\n[325] Lectures on Metaphysics, lecture xiv.\n\n[326] Nature, vol. iii, p. 281 (1871).\n\n[327] If a lot of dots or strokes on a piece of paper be exhibited for\na moment to a person in _normal_ condition, with the request that he\nsay how many are there, he will find that they break into groups in his\nmind's eye, and that whilst he is analyzing and counting one group in\nhis memory the others dissolve. In short, the impression made by the\ndots changes rapidly into something else. In the _trance-subject_, on\nthe contrary, it seems to _stick_; I find that persons in the hypnotic\nstate easily count the dots in the mind's eye so long as they do not\nmuch exceed twenty in number.\n\n[328] Mr. Cattell made Jevons's experiment in a much more precise way\n(Philosophische Studien, iii, 121 ff.). Cards were ruled with short\nlines, varying in number from four to fifteen, and exposed to the eye\nfor a hundredth of a second. When the number was but four or five, no\nmistakes as a rule were made. For higher numbers the tendency was to\nunder- rather than to over-estimate. Similar experiments were tried\nwith letters and figures, and gave the same result. When the letters\nformed familiar words, three times as many of them could be named as\nwhen their combination was meaningless. If the words formed a sentence,\ntwice as many of them could be caught as when they had no connection.\n\"The sentence was then apprehended as a whole. If not apprehended thus,\nalmost nothing is apprehended of the several words; but if the sentence\nas a whole is apprehended, then the words appear very distinct.\"--Wundt\nand his pupil Dietze had tried similar experiments on rapidly repeated\nstrokes of sound. Wundt made them follow each other in groups, and\nfound that groups of twelve strokes at most could be recognized and\nidentified when they succeeded each other at the most favorable rate,\nnamely, from three to five tenths of a second (Phys. Psych., ii, 215).\nDietze found that by mentally subdividing the groups into sub-groups\nas one listened, as many as forty strokes could be identified as a\nwhole. They were then grasped as eight sub-groups of five, or as five\nof eight strokes each. (Philosophische Studien, ii, 362.)--Later in\nWundt's Laboratory, Bechterew made observations on two _simultaneously_\nelapsing series of metronome strokes, of which one contained one\nstroke more than the other. The most favorable rate of succession was\n0.3 sec., and he then discriminated a group of 18 from one of 18 + 1,\napparently. (Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1889, 272.)\n\n[329] Revue Scientifique, vol. 39, p. 684 (May 28, 1887).\n\n[330] Cf. Chr. Wolff: Psychologia Empirica, \u00a7 245. Wolff's account of\nthe phenomena of attention is in general excellent.\n\n[331] Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, xi, 429-31.\n\n[332] Physiol. Psych., 2d ed. ii, pp. 238-40.\n\n[333] _Ib._ p. 262.\n\n[334] Physiol. Psych., 2d ed. ii, 264-6.\n\n[335] This was the original 'personal equation' observation of Bessel.\nAn Observer looked through his equatorial telescope to note the moment\nat which a star crossed the meridian, the latter being marked in the\ntelescopic field of view by a visible thread, beside which other\nequidistant threads appear. \"Before the star reached the thread he\nlooked at the clock, and then, with eye at telescope, counted the\nseconds by the beat of the pendulum. Since the star seldom passed\nthe meridian at the exact moment of a beat, the observer, in order\nto estimate fractions, had to note its position at the stroke before\nand at the stroke after the passage, and to divide the time as the\nmeridian-line seemed to divide the space. If, e.g., one had counted\n20 seconds, and at the 21st the star seemed removed by _ac_ from the\nmeridian-thread _c_, whilst at the 22d it was at the distance _bc_;\nthen, if _ac: bc_:: 1: 2, the star would have passed at 21 1/8 seconds.\nThe conditions resemble those in our experiment: the star is the\nindex-hand, the threads are the scale; and a time-displacement is to\nbe expected, which with high rapidities may be positive, and negative\nwith low. The astronomic observations do not permit us to measure its\nabsolute amount; but that it exists is made certain by the fact than\nafter all other possible errors are eliminated, there still remains\nbetween different observers a personal difference which is often much\nlarger than that between mere reaction-times, amounting ... sometimes\nto more than a second.\" (_Op. cit._ p. 270.)\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 35.]\n\n[336] Philosophische Studien, ii, 601.\n\n[337] Physiol. Psych., 2d ed. ii, 273-4; 3d ed. ii, 339; Philosophische\nStudien, ii, 621 ff.--I know that I am stupid, but I confess I find\nthese theoretical statements, especially Wundt's, a little hazy.\nHerr v. Tschisch considers it impossible that the perception of the\nindex's position should come in too late, and says it demands no\nparticular attention (p. 622). It seems, however, that this can hardly\nbe the case. Both observers speak of the difficulty of seeing the\nindex at the right moment. The case is quite different from that of\ndistributing the attention impartially over simultaneous momentary\nsensations. The bell or other signal gives a momentary sensation, the\nindex a continuous one, of motion. To note any one _position_ of the\nlatter is to _interrupt_ this sensation of motion and to substitute an\nentirely different percept--one, namely, of position--for it, during\na time however brief. This involves a sudden change in the manner of\nattending to the revolutions of the index; which change _ought_ to\ntake place neither sooner nor later than the momentary impression, and\n_fix_ the index as it is then and there visible. Now this is not a case\nof simply getting two sensations at once and so feeling them--which\nwould be an harmonious act; but of _stopping one_ and changing it into\nanother, whilst we simultaneously get a third. Two of these acts are\ndiscrepant, and the whole three rather interfere with each other. It\nbecomes hard to 'fix' the index at the very instant that we catch the\nmomentary impression; so we fall into a way of fixing it either at the\nlast possible moment before, or at the first possible moment after, the\nimpression comes.\n\nThis at least seems to me the more probable state of affairs. If we\nfix the index before the impression really comes, that means that\nwe perceive it too late. But why do we fix it _before_ when the\nimpressions come slow and simple, and _after_ when they come rapid and\ncomplex? And why under certain conditions is there no displacement\nat all? The answer which suggests itself is that when there is just\nenough leisure between the impressions for the attention to adapt\nitself comfortably both to them and to the index (one second in W.'s\nexperiments), it carries on the two processes at once; when the leisure\nis excessive, the attention, following its own laws of ripening, and\nbeing _ready_ to note the index before the other impression comes,\nnotes it _then_, since that is the moment of easiest action, whilst\nthe impression, which comes a moment later, interferes with noting\nit again; and finally, that when the leisure is insufficient, the\nmomentary impressions, being the more fixed data, are attended to\nfirst, and the index is fixed a little later on. The noting of the\nindex at too early a moment would be the noting of a real fact, with\nits analogue in many other rhythmical experiences. In reaction-time\nexperiments, for example, when, in a regularly recurring series, the\nstimulus is once in a while omitted, the observer sometimes reacts\nas if it came. Here, as Wundt somewhere observes, we catch ourselves\nacting merely because our inward preparation is complete. The\n'fixing' of the index is a sort of action; so that my interpretation\ntallies with facts recognized elsewhere; but Wundt's explanation (if\nI understand it) of the experiments requires us to believe that an\nobserver like v. Tschisch shall steadily and without exception get an\nhallucination of a bell-stroke before the latter occurs, and _not hear\nthe real bell-stroke afterwards_. I doubt whether this is possible,\nand I can think of no analogue to it in the rest of our experience.\nThe whole subject deserves to be gone over again. To Wundt is due\nthe highest credit for his patience in working out the facts. His\nexplanation of them in his earlier work (Vorlesungen \u00fcb. Menschen und\nThierseele, i, 37-42, 365-371) consisted merely in the appeal to the\nunity of consciousness, and may be considered quite crude.\n\n[338] Note that the permanent interests are themselves grounded in\ncertain objects and relations in which our interest is immediate and\ninstinctive.\n\n[339] Herbart: Psychologie als Wissenschaft, \u00a7 128.\n\n[340] Sir W. Hamilton. Metaphysics, lecture xiv.\n\n[341] Mental Physiol., \u00a7 124. The oft-cited case of soldiers not\nperceiving that they are wounded is of an analogous sort.\n\n[342] Prof. J. M. Cattell made experiments to which we shall refer\nfurther on, on the degree to which reaction-times might be shortened by\ndistracting or voluntarily concentrating the attention. He says of the\nlatter series that \"the averages show that the attention can be kept\nstrained, that is, the centres kept in a state of unstable equilibrium,\nfor one second\" (Mind, xi, 240).\n\n[343] Physiologische Optik, \u00a7 32.\n\n[344] \"'Genius,' says Helvetius, 'is nothing but a continued attention\n(_une attention suivie_).' 'Genius,' says Buffon, 'is only a protracted\npatience (_une longue patience_).' 'In the exact sciences, at least,'\nsays Cuvier, 'it is the patience of a sound intellect, when invincible,\nwhich truly constitutes genius.' And Chesterfield has also observed\nthat 'the power of applying an attention, steady and undissipated, to\na single object, is the sure mark of a superior genius.'\" (Hamilton:\nLect. on Metaph., lecture xiv.)\n\n[345] See, e.g., Ulrici: Leib u. Seele, ii, 28; Lotze: Metaphysik, \u00a7\n273; Fechner, Revision d. Psychophysik, xix; G. E. M\u00fcller: Zur Theorie\nd. sinnl. Aufmerksamkeit, $ 1; Stumpf: Tonpsychologie, i, 71.\n\n[346] Fechner, _op. cit._ p. 271.\n\n[347] Tonpsychologie, i, p. 71.\n\n[348] Compare, on clearness as the essential fruit of attention,\nLotze's Metaphysic, \u00a7 273.\n\n[349] Elements, part i, chap. ii.\n\n[350] Physiol. Psych., 2d ed. ii, 226.\n\n[351] By a negative value of the reaction-time Wundt means the case of\nthe reactive movement occurring _before_ the stimulus.\n\n[352] _Op. cit._ ii, 239.\n\n[353] The reader must not suppose this phenomenon to be of frequent\noccurrence. Experienced observers, like Exner and Cattell, deny having\nmet with it in their personal experience.\n\n[354] _Op. cit._ pp. 241-5.\n\n[355] It should be added that Mr. J. M. Cattell (Mind, xi, 33) found,\non repeating Wundt's experiments with a disturbing noise upon two\npractised observers, that the simple reaction-time either for light\nor sound was hardly perceptibly increased. Making strong voluntary\nconcentration of attention shortened it by about 0.013 seconds on an\naverage (p. 240). Performing mental additions whilst waiting for the\nstimulus lengthened it more than anything, apparently. For other,\nless careful, observations, compare Obersteiner, in Brain, i, 439.\nCattell's negative results show how far some persons can abstract their\nattention from stimuli by which others would be disturbed.--A. Bartels\n(Versuche \u00fcber die Ablenkung d. Aufmerksamkeit, Dorpat, 1889) found\nthat a stimulus to one eye sometimes prevented, sometimes improved, the\nperception of a quickly ensuing very faint stimulus to the other.\n\n[356] Cf. Wundt, Physiol. Psych., 1st ed. p. 794.\n\n[357] Beitr\u00e4ge zur Experimentellen Psychologie, Heft i, pp. 73-106\n(1889).\n\n[358] To say the very least, he always brought his articulatory\ninnervation close to the discharging point. Herr M. describes a\ntightening of the head-muscles as characteristic of the attitude of\nattention to the reply.\n\n[359] Psychophysik, Bd. ii, pp. 475-6.\n\n[360] I must say that I am wholly unconscious of the peculiar feelings\nin the scalp which Fechner goes on to describe. \"The feeling of\nstrained attention in the different sense-organs seems to be only a\nmuscular one produced in using these various organs by setting in\nmotion, by a sort of reflex action, the muscles which belong to them.\nOne can ask, then, with what particular muscular contraction the sense\nof strained attention in the effort to recall something is associated?\nOn this question my own feeling gives me a decided answer; it comes to\nme distinctly, not as a sensation of tension in the inside of the head,\nbut as a feeling of strain and contraction in the scalp with a pressure\nfrom without inwards over the whole cranium, undoubtedly caused by a\ncontraction of the muscles of the scalp. This harmonizes very well with\nthe German popular expression _den Kopf zusammennehmen_, etc., etc. In\na former illness, in which I could not endure the slightest effort of\ncontinuous thought, and had no theoretical bias on this question, the\nmuscles of the scalp, especially those of the occiput, assumed a fairly\nmorbid degree of sensibility whenever I tried to _think_.\" (_Ibid._\npp. 490-491.) In an early writing by Professor Mach, after speaking\nof the way in which by attention we decompose complex musical sounds\ninto their elements, this investigator continues: \"It is more than\na figure of speech when one says that we 'search' among the sounds.\nThis hearkening search is very observably a bodily activity, just like\nattentive looking in the case of the eye. If, obeying the drift of\nphysiology, we understand by attention nothing mystical, but a bodily\ndisposition, it is most natural to seek it in the variable tension\nof the muscles of the ear. Just so, what common men call attentive\nlooking reduces itself mainly to accommodating and setting of the\noptic axes.... According to this, it seems to me a very plausible view\nthat quite generally Attention has its seat in the mechanism of the\nbody. If nervous work is being done through certain channels, that by\nitself is a mechanical ground for other channels being closed.\" (Wien.\nSitzungsberichte, Math. Naturw., xlviii, 2, 297. 1863.)\n\n[361] Physiol. Optik, p. 741.\n\n[362] Hermann's Handbuch, iii, i, 548.\n\n[363] Helmholtz: Tonempfindungen, 3d ed. 85-9 (Engl. tr., 2d ed. 50,\n51; see also pp. 60-1).\n\n[364] Physiol. Psych., ii, 209.\n\n[365] Physiol. Optik, 741.\n\n[366] P. 728.\n\n[367] Popular Scientific Lectures, Eng. Trans., p. 295.\n\n[368] Similarly in the verses which some one tried to puzzle me with\nthe other day: \"_Gui n'a beau dit, qui sabot dit, nid a beau dit elle?_\"\n\n[369] I cannot refrain from referring in a note to an additional set\nof facts instanced by Lotze in his Medizinische Psychologie, \u00a7 431,\nalthough I am not satisfied with the explanation, fatigue of the\nsense-organ, which _he_ gives. \"In quietly lying and contemplating a\nwall-paper pattern, sometimes it is the ground, sometimes the design,\nwhich is clearer and consequently comes nearer.... Arabesques of\nmonochromic many-convoluted lines now strike us as composed of one,\nnow of another connected linear system, and all without any intention\non our part. [This is beautifully seen in Moorish patterns; but a\nsimple diagram like Fig. 39 also shows it well. We see it sometimes\nas two large triangles superposed, sometimes as a hexagon with angles\nspanning its sides, sometimes as six small triangles stuck together at\ntheir corners.]... Often it happens in revery that when we stare at a\npicture, suddenly some one of its features will be lit up with especial\nclearness, although neither its optical character nor its meaning\ndiscloses any motive for such an arousal of the attention.... To one\nin process of becoming drowsy the surroundings alternately fade into\ndarkness and abruptly brighten up. The talk of the bystanders seems now\nto come from indefinite distances; but at the next moment it startles\nus by its threatening loudness at our very ear,\" etc. These variations,\nwhich everyone will have noticed, are, it seems to me, easily\nexplicable by the very unstable equilibrium of our ideational centres,\nof which constant change is the law. We _conceive_ one set of lines as\nobject, the other as background, and forthwith the first set becomes\nthe set we _see_. There need be no _logical_ motive for the conceptual\nchange, the irradiations of brain-tracts by each other, according to\naccidents of nutrition, 'like sparks in burnt-up paper,' suffice. The\nchanges during drowsiness are still more obviously due to this cause.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 39.]\n\n[370] The Emotions and the Will, 3d ed. p. 370.\n\n[371] Psychologie de l'Attention (1889), p. 32 ff.\n\n[372] Philosophische Studien, iv, 413 ff.\n\n[373] See Lange, _loc. cit._ p. 417, for another proof of his view,\ndrawn from the phenomenon of retinal rivalry.\n\n[374] Many of my students have at my request experimented with imagined\nletters of the alphabet and syllables, and they tell me that they\ncan see them inwardly as total colored pictures without following\ntheir outlines with the eye. I am myself a bad visualizer, and make\nmovements all the while.--M. L. Marillier, in an article of eminent\nintrospective power which appeared after my text was written (Remarques\nsur le M\u00e9canisme de l'Attention, in Revue Philosophique, vol. xxvii, p.\n566), has contended against Ribot and others for the non-dependence of\nsensory upon motor images in their relations to attention. I am glad to\ncite him as an ally.\n\n[375] Drs. Ferrier (Functions of the Brain, \u00a7\u00a7 102-3) and Obersteiner\n(Brain, i, 439 ff.) treat it as the essential feature. The author\nwhose treatment of the subject is by far the most thorough and\nsatisfactory is Prof. G. E. M\u00fcller, whose little work Zur Th\u00e9orie der\nsinnlichen Aufmerksamkeit, Inauguraldissertation, Leipzig, Edelmann\n(1874?), is for learning and acuteness a model of what a monograph\nshould be. I should like to have quoted from it, but the Germanism\nof its composition makes quotation quite impossible. See also G. H.\nLewes: Problems of Life and Mind, 3d Series, Prob. 2, chap. 10; G.\nH. Schneider: Der menschliche Wille, 294 ff., 309 ff.; C. Stumpf:\nTonpsychologie, i, 67-75; W. B. Carpenter: Mental Physiology, chap. 3;\nCappie in 'Brain,' July 1886 (hyper\u00e6mia-theory); J. Sully in 'Brain,'\nOct. 1890.\n\n[376] L'Enfant de trois \u00e0 sept Ans, p. 108.\n\n[377] Psychologie de l'Attention, p. 53.\n\n[378] Repetition of this sort does not confer _intelligence_ of what\nis said, it only keeps the mind from wandering into other channels.\nThe intelligence sometimes comes in beats, as it were, at the end of\nsentences, or in the midst of words which were mere words until then.\nSee above, p. 281.\n\n[379] The reader will please observe that I am saying all that can\n_possibly_ be said in favor of the effect-theory, since, inclining\nas I do myself to the cause-theory, I do not want to undervalue the\nenemy. As a matter of fact, one might begin to take one's stand against\nthe effect theory at the outset, with the phenomenon of immediate\nsensorial attention. One might say that attention causes the movements\nof adjustment of the eyes, for example, and is not merely their effect.\nHering writes most emphatically to this effect: \"The movements from\none point of fixation to another are occasioned and regulated by the\nchanges of place of the attention. When an object, seen at first\nindirectly, draws our attention to itself, the corresponding movement\nof the eye follows without further ado, as a consequence of the\nattention's migration and of our effort to make the object distinct.\nThe wandering of the attention entails that of the fixation point.\nBefore its movement begins, its goal is already in consciousness and\ngrasped by the attention, and the location of this spot in the total\nspace seen is what determines the direction and amount of the movement\nof the eye.\" (Hermann's Handbuch, p. 534.) I do not here insist on\nthis, because it is hard to tell whether the attention or the movement\ncomes first (Hering's reasons, pp. 535-6, also 544-6, seem to me\nambiguous), and because, even if the attention to the object does come\nfirst, it may be a mere effect of stimulus and association. Mach's\ntheory that the _will to look_ is the _space-feeling itself_ may be\ncompared with Hering's in this place. See Mach's Beitr\u00e4ge zur Analyse\nder Empfindungen (1886), pp. 55 ff.\n\n[380] F. H. Bradley, \"Is there a Special Activity of Attention?\" in\n'Mind,' xi, 305, and Lipps, Grundtatsachen, chaps. iv and xxx, have\nstated it similarly.\n\n[381] More will be said of the matter when we come to the chapter on\nthe Will.\n\n[382] See, for a defence of the notion of inward activity, Mr. James\nWard's searching articles in 'Mind,' xii, 45 and 564.\n\n[383] It must be admitted that some little time will often elapse\nbefore this effort succeeds. As a child, I slept in a nursery with a\nvery loud-ticking clock, and remember my astonishment more than once,\non listening for its tick, to find myself unable to catch it for what\nseemed a long space of time; then suddenly it would break into my\nconsciousness with an almost startling loudness.--M. Delb\u0153uf somewhere\nnarrates how, sleeping in the country near a mill-dam, he woke in the\nnight and thought the water had ceased to flow, but on looking out of\nthe open window saw it flowing in the moonlight, and then heard it too.\n\n[384] Zur Theorie d. sinnl. Aufmerksamkeit, p. 128 foll.\n\n[385] I have begun to inquire experimentally whether any of the\nmeasurable functions of the workmen change after the din of machinery\nstops at a workshop. So far I have found no constant results as regards\neither pulse, breathing, or strength of squeeze by the hand. I hope to\nprosecute the inquiry farther (May, 1890).\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII.\n\nCONCEPTION.\n\nTHE SENSE OF SAMENESS.\n\n\nIn Chapter VIII, p. 221, the distinction was drawn between two kinds of\nknowledge of things, bare acquaintance with them and knowledge about\nthem. The possibility of two such knowledges depends on a fundamental\npsychical peculiarity which may be entitled \"_the principle of\nconstancy in the mind's meanings_\" and which may be thus expressed:\n\"_The same matters can be thought of in successive portions of the\nmental stream, and some of these portions can know that they mean\nthe same matters which the other portions meant._\" One might put it\notherwise by saying that \"_the mind can always intend, and know when it\nintends, to think of the Same._\"\n\nThis _sense of sameness_ is the very keel and backbone of our thinking.\nWe saw in Chapter X how the consciousness of personal identity reposed\non it, the present thought finding in its memories a warmth and\nintimacy which it recognizes as the same warmth and intimacy it now\nfeels. This sense of identity of the knowing subject is held by some\nphilosophers to be the only vehicle by which the world hangs together.\nIt seems hardly necessary to say that a sense of identity of the known\nobject would perform exactly the same unifying function, even if the\nsense of subjective identity were lost. And without the intention to\nthink of the same outer things over and over again, and the sense that\nwe were doing so, our sense of our own personal sameness would carry us\nbut a little way towards making a universe of our experience.\n\nNote, however, that we are in the first instance speaking of the sense\nof sameness from the point of view of the mind's structure alone, and\nnot from the point of view of the universe. We are psychologizing, not\nphilosophizing, That is, we do not care whether there be any _real_\nsameness in _things_ or not, or whether the mind be true or false in\nits assumptions of it. Our principle only lays it down that the mind\nmakes continual use of the _notion_ of sameness, and if deprived of\nit, would have a different structure from what it has. In a word, the\nprinciple that the mind can mean the Same is true of its _meanings_,\nbut not necessarily of aught besides.[386] The mind must conceive as\npossible that the Same should be before it, for our experience to be\nthe sort of thing it is. Without the psychological sense of identity,\nsameness might rain down upon us from the outer world for ever and we\nbe none the wiser. With the psychological sense, on the other hand,\nthe outer world might be an unbroken flux, and yet we should perceive\na repeated experience. Even now, the world may be a place in which\nthe same thing never did and never will come twice. The thing we mean\nto point at may change from top to bottom and we be ignorant of the\nfact. But in our meaning itself we are not deceived; our intention is\nto think of the same. The name which I have given to the principle,\nin calling it the law of constancy in our meanings, accentuates its\nsubjective character, and justifies us in laying it down as the most\nimportant of all the features of our mental structure.\n\nNot all psychic life need be assumed to have the sense of sameness\ndeveloped in this way. In the consciousness of worms and polyps,\nthough the same realities may frequently impress it, the feeling of\nsameness may seldom emerge. We, however, running back and forth, like\nspiders on the web they weave, feel ourselves to be working over\nidentical materials and thinking them in different ways. And the man\nwho identifies the materials most is held to have the most philosophic\nhuman mind.\n\n\nCONCEPTION DEFINED.\n\n\n_The function by which we thus identify a numerically distinct and\npermanent subject of discourse is called_ CONCEPTION; and the thoughts\nwhich are its vehicles are called _concepts_. But the word 'concept'\nis often used as if it stood for the object of discourse itself; and\nthis looseness feeds such evasiveness in discussion that I shall avoid\nthe use of the expression concept altogether, and speak of 'conceiving\nstate of mind,' or something similar, instead. The word 'conception'\nis unambiguous. It properly denotes neither the mental state nor what\nthe mental state signifies, but the relation between the two, namely,\nthe _function_ of the mental state in signifying just that particular\nthing. It is plain that one and the same mental state can be the\nvehicle of many conceptions, can mean a particular thing, and a great\ndeal more besides. If it has such a multiple conceptual function, it\nmay be called an act of compound conception.\n\nWe may conceive realities supposed to be extra-mental, as steam-engine;\nfictions, as mermaid; or mere _entia rationis_, like difference or\nnonentity. But whatever we do conceive, our conception is of that and\nnothing else--nothing else, that is, _instead_ of that, though it may\nbe of much else _in addition_ to that. Each act of conception results\nfrom our attention singling out some one part of the mass of matter\nfor thought which the world presents, and holding fast to it, without\nconfusion.[387] Confusion occurs when we do not know whether a certain\nobject proposed to us is the same with one of our meanings or not;\nso that the conceptual function requires, to be complete, that the\nthought should not only say 'I mean this,' but also say 'I don't mean\nthat.'[388]\n\nEach conception thus eternally remains what it is, and never can\nbecome another. The mind may change its states, and its meanings, at\ndifferent times; may drop one conception and take up another, but the\ndropped conception can in no intelligible sense be said to _change\ninto_ its successor. The paper, a moment ago white, I may now see to\nhave been scorched black. But my conception 'white' does not change\ninto my conception 'black.' On the contrary, it stays alongside of the\nobjective blackness, as a different meaning in my mind, and by so doing\nlets me judge the blackness as the paper's change. Unless it stayed, I\nshould simply say 'blackness' and know no more. Thus, amid the flux of\nopinions and of physical things, the world of conceptions, or things\nintended to be thought about, stands stiff and immutable, like Plato's\nRealm of Ideas.[389]\n\nSome conceptions are of things, some of events, some of qualities. Any\nfact, be it thing, event, or quality, may be conceived sufficiently\nfor purposes of identification, if only it be singled out and marked\nso as to separate it from other things. Simply calling it 'this' or\n'that' will suffice. To speak in technical language, a subject may\nbe conceived by its _denotation_, with no _connotation_, or a very\nminimum of connotation, attached. The essential point is that it should\nbe re-identified by us as that which the talk is about; and no full\nrepresentation of it is necessary for this, even when it is a fully\nrepresentable thing.\n\nIn this sense, creatures extremely low in the intellectual scale may\nhave conception. All that is required is that they should recognize\nthe same experience again. A polyp would be a conceptual thinker if a\nfeeling of 'Hollo! thingumbob again!' ever flitted through its mind.\n\nMost of the objects of our thought, however, are to some degree\nrepresented as well as merely pointed out. Either they are things\nand events perceived or imagined, or they are qualities apprehended\nin a positive way. Even where we have no intuitive acquaintance with\nthe nature of a thing, if we know any of the relations of it at all,\nanything _about_ it, that is enough to individualize and distinguish\nit from all the other things which we might mean. Many of our topics\nof discourse are thus _problematical_, or defined by their relations\nonly. We think of a thing _about_ which certain facts must obtain,\nbut we do not yet know how the thing will look when it is realized.\nThus we conceive of a perpetual-motion machine. It is a _qu\u00e6situm_\nof a perfectly definite kind,--we can always tell whether the actual\nmachines offered us do or do not agree with what we mean by it. The\nnatural possibility or impossibility of the thing does not touch the\nquestion of its conceivability in this problematic way. 'Round square,'\n'black-white-thing,' are absolutely definite conceptions; it is a mere\naccident, as far as conception goes, that they happen to stand for\nthings which nature never lets us sensibly perceive.[390]\n\n\nCONCEPTIONS ARE UNCHANGEABLE.\n\n\nThe fact that the same real topic of discourse is at one time\nconceived as a mere 'that' or 'that which, etc.,' and is at another\ntime conceived with additional specifications, has been treated by\nmany authors as a proof that conceptions themselves are fertile\nand self-developing. A conception, according to the Hegelizers in\nphilosophy, 'develops its own significance,' 'makes explicit what it\nimplicitly contained,' passes, on occasion, 'over into its opposite,'\nand in short loses altogether the blankly self-identical character we\nsupposed it to maintain. The figure we viewed as a polygon appears to\nus now as a sum of juxtaposed triangles; the number hitherto conceived\nas thirteen is at last noticed to be six plus seven, or prime; the man\nthought honest is believed a rogue. Such changes of our opinion are\nviewed by these thinkers as evolutions of our conception, from within.\n\nThe facts are unquestionable; our knowledge does grow and change by\nrational and inward processes, as well as by empirical discoveries.\nWhere the discoveries are empirical, no one pretends that the\npropulsive agency, the force that makes the knowledge develop, is\nmere conception. All admit it to be our continued exposure to the\n_thing_, with its power to impress our senses. Thus strychnin, which\ntastes bitter, we find will also kill, etc. Now I say that where the\nnew knowledge merely comes from _thinking_, the facts are essentially\nthe same, and that _to talk of self-development on the part of\nour conceptions is a very bad way of stating the case_. Not new\nsensations, as in the empirical instance, but new conceptions, are the\nindispensable conditions of advance.\n\nFor if the alleged cases of self-development be examined it will\nbe found, I believe, that the new truth affirms in every case a\n_relation_ between the original subject of conception and some new\nsubject conceived later on. These new subjects of conception arise in\nvarious ways. Every one of our conceptions is of something which our\nattention originally tore out of the continuum of felt experience,\nand provisionally isolated so as to make of it an individual topic\nof discourse. Every one of them has a way, if the mind is left alone\nwith it, of suggesting other parts of the continuum from which it was\ntorn, for conception to work upon in a similar way. This 'suggestion'\nis often no more than what we shall later know as the association\nof ideas. Often, however, it is a sort of invitation to the mind to\nplay, add lines, break number-groups, etc. Whatever it is, it brings\nnew conceptions into consciousness, which latter thereupon may or may\nnot expressly attend to the relation in which the new stands to the\nold. Thus I have a conception of equidistant lines. Suddenly, I know\nnot whence, there pops into my head the conception of their meeting.\nSuddenly again I think of the meeting and the equidistance both\ntogether, and perceive them incompatible. \"_Those_ lines will never\nmeet,\" I say. Suddenly again the word 'parallel' pops into my head.\n'They are parallels,' I continue; and so on. Original conceptions to\nstart with; adventitious conceptions pushed forward by multifarious\npsychologic causes; comparisons and combinations of the two; resultant\nconceptions to end with; which latter may be of either rational or\nempirical relations.\n\nAs regards these relations, they are conceptions of the second degree,\nas one might say, and their birthplace is the mind itself. In Chapter\nXXVIII I shall at considerable length defend the mind's claim to\noriginality and fertility in bringing them forth. But no single one\nof the mind's conceptions is fertile _of itself_ as the opinion which\nI criticise pretends. When the several notes of a chord are sounded\ntogether, we get a new feeling from their combination. This feeling is\ndue to the mind reacting upon that group of sounds in that determinate\nway, and no one would think of saying of any single note of the chord\nthat it 'developed' of itself into the other notes or into the feeling\nof harmony. So of Conceptions. No one of them develops into any other.\nBut if two of them are thought at once, their _relation_ may come to\nconsciousness, and form matter for a third conception.\n\nTake 'thirteen' for example, which is said to develop into 'prime.'\nWhat really happens is that we compare the utterly changeless\nconception of thirteen with various other conceptions, those of the\ndifferent multiples of two, three, four, five, and six, and ascertain\nthat it _differs_ from them all. Such difference is a freshly\nascertained relation. It is only for mere brevity's sake that we call\nit a property of the original thirteen, the property of being prime.\nWe shall see in the next chapter that (if we count out \u00e6sthetic and\nmoral relations between things) the only important relations of which\nthe mere inspection of conceptions makes us aware are relations of\ncomparison, that is, of difference and no-difference, between them. The\njudgment 6 + 7 = 13 expresses the relation of _equality_ between two\nideal objects, 13 on the one hand and 6 + 7 on the other, successively\nconceived and compared. The judgments 6 + 7 > 12, or 6 + 7 < 14,\nexpress in like manner relations of inequality between ideal objects.\nBut if it be unfair to say that the conception of 6 + 7 generates that\nof 12 or of 14, surely it is as unfair to say that it generates that of\n13.\n\nThe conceptions of 12, 13, and 14 are each and all generated by\nindividual acts of the mind, playing with its materials. When,\ncomparing two ideal objects, we find them equal, the conception of one\nof them may be that of a whole and of the other that of all its parts.\nThis particular case is, it seems to me, the only case which makes\nthe notion of one conception evolving into another sound plausible.\nBut even in this case the conception, as such, of the whole does not\nevolve into the conception, as such, of the parts. Let the conception\nof some object as a whole be given first. To begin with, it points\nto and identifies for future thought a certain _that_. The 'whole'\nin question might be one of those mechanical puzzles of which the\ndifficulty is to unlock the parts. In this case, nobody would pretend\nthat the richer and more elaborate conception which we gain of the\npuzzle after solving it came directly out of our first crude conception\nof it, for it is notoriously the outcome of experimenting with our\nhands. It is true that, as they both mean _that same puzzle_, our\nearlier thought and our later thought have one conceptual function, are\nvehicles of one conception. But in addition to being the vehicle of\nthis bald unchanging conception, 'that same puzzle,' the later thought\nis the vehicle of all those other conceptions which it took the manual\nexperimentation to acquire. Now, it is just the same where the whole\nis mathematical instead of being mechanical. Let it be a polygonal\nspace, which we cut into triangles, and of which we then affirm that\nit _is_ those triangles. Here the experimentation (although usually\ndone by a pencil in the hands) may be done by the unaided imagination.\nWe hold the space, first conceived as polygonal simply, in our mind's\neye until our attention wandering to and fro within it has carved it\ninto the triangles. The triangles are a new conception, the result of\nthis new operation. Having once conceived them, however, and compared\nthem with the old polygon which we originally conceived and which we\nhave never ceased conceiving, we judge them to fit exactly into its\narea. The earlier and later conceptions, we say, are of one and the\nsame space. But this relation between triangles and polygon which the\nmind cannot help finding if it compares them at all, is very badly\nexpressed by saying that the old conception has developed into the new.\nNew conceptions come from new sensations, new movements, new emotions,\nnew associations, new acts of attention, and new comparisons of old\nconceptions, and not in other ways. Endogenous prolification is not a\nmode of growth to which conceptions can lay claim.\n\nI hope, therefore, that I shall not be accused of huddling mysteries\nout of sight, when I insist that the psychology of conception is\nnot the place in which to treat of those of continuity and change.\nConceptions form the one class of entities that cannot under any\ncircumstances change. They can cease to be, altogether; or they can\nstay, as what they severally are; but there is for them no middle\nway. They form an essentially discontinuous system, and translate the\nprocess of our perceptual experience, which is naturally a flux, into a\nset of stagnant and petrified terms. The very conception of flux itself\nis an absolutely changeless meaning in the mind: it signifies just that\none thing, flux, immovably.--And, with this, the doctrine of the flux\nof the concept may be dismissed, and need not occupy our attention\nagain.[391]\n\n\n'ABSTRACT' IDEAS.\n\n\nWe have now to pass to a less excusable mistake. There are philosophers\nwho deny that associated things can be broken asunder at all, even\nprovisionally, by the conceiving mind. The opinion known as Nominalism\nsays that we really never frame any conception of the partial elements\nof an experience, but are compelled, whenever we think it, to think it\nin its totality, just as it came.\n\nI will be silent of medi\u00e6val Nominalism, and begin with Berkeley,\nwho is supposed to have rediscovered the doctrine for himself. His\nasseverations against 'abstract ideas' are among the oftenest quoted\npassages in philosophic literature.\n\n \"It is agreed,\" he says, \"on all hands that the qualities or modes\n of things do never really exist each of them apart by itself, and\n separated from all others, but are mixed, as it were, and blended\n together, several in the same object. But, we are told, the mind being\n able to consider each quality singly, or abstracted from those other\n qualities with which it is united, does by that means frame to itself\n abstract ideas.... After this manner, it is said, we come by the\n abstract idea of man, or, if you please, humanity, or human nature;\n wherein it is true there is included color, because there is no man\n but has some color, but then it can be neither white, nor black, nor\n any particular color, because there is no one particular color wherein\n all men partake. So likewise there is included stature, but then it\n is neither tall stature nor low stature, nor yet middle stature, but\n something abstracted from all these. And so of the rest.... Whether\n others have this wonderful faculty of abstracting their ideas, they\n best can tell: for myself, I find indeed I have a faculty of imagining\n or representing to myself the ideas of those particular things I have\n perceived and of variously compounding and dividing them.... I can\n consider the hand, the eye, the nose, each by itself abstracted or\n separated from the rest of the body. But then, whatever hand or eye\n I imagine, it must have some particular shape and color. Likewise\n the idea of man that I frame to myself must be either of a white, or\n a black, or a tawny, a straight, or a crooked, a tall, or a low, or\n a middle-sized man. I cannot by any effort of thought conceive the\n abstract idea above described. And it is equally impossible for me to\n form the abstract idea of motion distinct from the body moving, and\n which is neither swift nor slow, curvilinear nor rectilinear; and the\n like may be said of all other abstract general ideas whatsoever....\n And there is ground to think most men will acknowledge themselves to\n be in my case. The generality of men which are simple and illiterate\n never pretend to abstract notions. It is said they are difficult, and\n not to be attained without pains and study.\n\n \"Now I would fain know at what time it is men are employed in\n surmounting that difficulty, and furnishing themselves with those\n necessary helps for discourse. It cannot be when they are grown up,\n for then it seems they are not conscious of any such painstaking; it\n remains therefore to be the business of their childhood. And surely\n the great and multiplied labor of framing abstract notions will be\n found a hard task for that tender age. Is it not a hard thing to\n imagine that a couple of children cannot prate together of their\n sugar-plums and rattles and the rest of their little trinkets, till\n they have first tacked together numberless inconsistencies, and so\n framed in their minds abstract general ideas, and annexed them to\n every common name they make use of?\"[392]\n\nThe note, so bravely struck by Berkeley, could not, however, be well\nsustained in face of the fact patent to every human being that we\n_can_ mean color without meaning any particular color, and stature\nwithout meaning any particular height. James Mill, to be sure, chimes\nin heroically in the chapter on Classification of his 'Analysis'; but\nin his son John the nominalistic voice has grown so weak that, although\n'abstract ideas' are repudiated as a matter of traditional form, the\nopinions uttered are really nothing but a conceptualism ashamed to call\nitself by its own legitimate name.[393] Conceptualism says the mind can\nconceive any quality or relation it pleases, and mean nothing but it,\nin isolation from everything else in the world. This is, of course, the\ndoctrine which we have professed. John Mill says:\n\n \"The formation of a Concept does not consist in separating the\n attributes which are said to compose it from all other attributes\n of the same object, and enabling us to conceive those attributes,\n disjoined from any others. We neither conceive them, nor think\n them, nor cognize them in any way, as a thing apart, but solely as\n forming, in combination with numerous other attributes, the idea of an\n individual object. But, though meaning them only as part of a larger\n agglomeration, we have the power of fixing our attention on them, to\n the neglect of the other attributes with which we think them combined.\n _While the concentration of attention lasts, if it is sufficiently\n intense, we may be temporarily unconscious of any of the other\n attributes, and may really, for a brief interval, have nothing-present\n to our mind but the attributes constituent of the concept_.... General\n concepts, therefore, we have, properly speaking, none; we have only\n complex ideas of objects in the concrete: but we are able to _attend\n exclusively to certain parts_ of the concrete idea: and by that\n _exclusive attention_ we enable those parts to _determine exclusively\n the course of our thoughts_ as subsequently called up by association;\n and are in a condition to carry on a train of meditation or reasoning\n relating to those parts only, _exactly as if_ we were able to\n _conceive_ them separately from the rest.\"[394]\n\nThis is a lovely example of Mill's way of holding piously to his\ngeneral statements, but conceding in detail all that their adversaries\nask. If there be a better description extant, of a mind in possession\nof an 'abstract idea,' than is contained in the words I have\nitalicized, I am unacquainted with it. The Berkeleyan nominalism thus\nbreaks down.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is easy to lay bare the false assumption which underlies the whole\ndiscussion of the question as hitherto carried on. That assumption is\nthat ideas, in order to know, must be cast in the exact likeness of\nwhatever things they know, and that the only things that can be known\nare those which ideas can resemble. The error has not been confined\nto nominalists. _Omnis cognitio fit per assimilationem cognoscentis\net cogniti_ has been the maxim, more or less explicitly assumed, of\nwriters of every school. Practically it amounts to saying that an idea\nmust _be_ a duplicate edition of what it knows[395]--in other words,\nthat it can only know itself--or, more shortly still, that knowledge\nin any strict sense of the word, as a self-transcendent function, is\nimpossible.\n\nNow our own blunt statements about the ultimateness of the cognitive\nrelation, and the difference between the 'object' of the thought and\nits mere 'topic' or 'subject of discourse' (cf. pp. 275 ff.), are all\nat variance with any such theory; and we shall find more and more\noccasion, as we advance in this book, to deny its general truth. All\nthat a state of mind need do, in order to take cognizance of a reality,\nintend it, or be 'about' it, is to lead to a remoter state of mind\nwhich either acts upon the reality or resembles it. The only class of\nthoughts which can with any show of plausibility be said to resemble\ntheir objects are sensations. The stuff of which all our other thoughts\nare composed is symbolic, and a thought attests its pertinency to a\ntopic by simply _terminating_, sooner or later, in a sensation which\nresembles the latter.\n\nBut Mill and the rest believe that a thought must _be_ what it means,\nand mean what it _is_, and that if it be a picture of an entire\nindividual, it cannot mean any part of him to the exclusion of the\nrest. I say nothing here of the preposterously false descriptive\npsychology involved in the statement that the only things we can\nmentally picture are individuals completely determinate in all\nregards. Chapter XVIII will have something to say on that point, and\nwe can ignore it here. For even if it were true that our images were\nalways of concrete individuals, it would not in the least follow that\nour meanings were of the same.\n\n_The sense of our meaning is an entirely peculiar element of the\nthought._ It is one of those evanescent and 'transitive' facts of mind\nwhich introspection cannot turn round upon, and isolate and hold up\nfor examination, as an entomologist passes round an insect on a pin.\nIn the (somewhat clumsy) terminology I have used, it pertains to the\n'fringe' of the subjective state, and is a 'feeling of tendency,' whose\nneural counterpart is undoubtedly a lot of dawning and dying processes\ntoo faint and complex to be traced. The geometer, with his one definite\nfigure before him, knows perfectly that his thoughts apply to countless\nother figures as well, and that although he _sees_ lines of a certain\nspecial bigness, direction, color, etc., he _means_ not one of these\ndetails. When I use the word _man_ in two different sentences, I may\nhave both times exactly the same sound upon my lips and the same\npicture in my mental eye, but I may mean, and at the very moment of\nuttering the word and imagining the picture, know that I mean, two\nentirely different things. Thus when I say: \"What a wonderful man\nJones is!\" I am perfectly aware that I mean by man to exclude Napoleon\nBonaparte or Smith. But when I say: \"What a wonderful thing Man is!\"\nI am equally well aware that I mean to _in_clude not only Jones, but\nNapoleon and Smith as well. This added consciousness is an absolutely\npositive sort of feeling, transforming what would otherwise be mere\nnoise or vision into something _understood_; and determining the sequel\nof my thinking, the later words and images, in a perfectly definite\nway. We saw in Chapter IX that the image _per se_, the nucleus, is\n_functionally_ the least important part of the thought. _Our doctrine,\ntherefore, of the 'fringe' leads to a perfectly satisfactory decision\nof the nominalistic and conceptualistic controversy,_ so far as it\ntouches psychology. _We must decide in favor of the conceptualists,_\nand affirm that the power to think things, qualities, relations, or\nwhatever other elements there may be, isolated and abstracted from\nthe total experience in which they appear, is the most indisputable\nfunction of our thought.\n\n\nUNIVERSALS.\n\n\nAfter abstractions, universals! The 'fringe,' which lets us believe in\nthe one, lets us believe in the other too. An individual conception\nis of something restricted, in its application, to a single case. A\nuniversal or general conception is of an entire class, or of something\nbelonging to an entire class, of things. The conception of an abstract\nquality is, taken by itself, neither universal nor particular.[396] If\nI abstract _white_ from the rest of the wintry landscape this morning,\nit is a perfectly definite conception, a self-identical quality which I\nmay mean again; but, as I have not yet individualized it by expressly\nmeaning to restrict it to this particular snow, nor thought at all of\nthe possibility of other things to which it may be applicable, it is\nso far nothing but a 'that,' a 'floating adjective,' as Mr. Bradley\ncalls it, or a topic broken out from the rest of the world. Properly\nit is, in this state, a singular--I have 'singled it out;' and when,\nlater, I universalize or individualize its application, and my thought\nturns to mean either _this_ white or _all possible_ whites, I am in\nreality meaning two new things and forming two new conceptions.[397]\nSuch an alteration of my meaning has nothing to do with any change\nin the image I may have in my mental eye, but solely with the vague\nconsciousness that surrounds the image, of the sphere to which it is\nintended to apply. We can give no more definite account of this vague\nconsciousness than has been given on pp. 249-266. But that is no\nreason for denying its presence.[398]\n\nBut the nominalists and traditional conceptualists find matter for an\ninveterate quarrel in these simple facts. Full of their notion that\nan idea, feeling, or state of consciousness can at bottom only be\naware of its own quality; and agreeing, as they both do, that such an\nidea or state of consciousness is a perfectly determinate, singular,\nand transitory thing; they find it impossible to conceive how it\nshould become the vehicle of a knowledge of anything permanent or\nuniversal. \"To know a universal, it must be universal; for like can\nonly be known by like,\" etc. Unable to reconcile these incompatibles,\nthe knower and the known, each side immolates one of them to save the\nother. The nominalists 'settle the hash' of the thing known by denying\nit to be ever a genuine universal; the conceptualists despatch the\nknower by denying it to be a state of mind, in the sense of being\na perishing segment of thoughts' stream, consubstantial with other\nfacts of sensibility. They invent, instead of it, as the vehicle of\nthe knowledge of universals, an _actus purus intellectus_, or an Ego,\nwhose function is treated as quasi-miraculous and nothing if not\nawe-inspiring, and which it is a sort of blasphemy to approach with the\nintent to explain and make common, or reduce to lower terms. Invoked\nin the first instance as a vehicle for the knowledge of universals,\nthe higher principle presently is made the indispensable vehicle of\nall thinking whatever, for, it is contended, \"a universal element is\npresent in every thought.\" The nominalists meanwhile, who dislike\n_actus purus_ and awe-inspiring principles and despise the reverential\nmood, content themselves with saying that we are mistaken in supposing\nwe ever get sight of the face of an universal; and that what deludes us\nis nothing but the swarm of 'individual ideas' which may at any time be\nawakened by the hearing of a name.\n\nIf we open the pages of either school, we find it impossible to tell,\nin all the whirl about universal and particular, when the author\nis talking about universals in the mind, and when about objective\nuniversals, so strangely are the two mixed together. James Ferrier, for\nexample, is the most brilliant of anti-nominalist writers. But who is\nnimble-witted enough to count, in the following sentences from him, the\nnumber of times he steps from the known to the knower, and attributes\nto both whatever properties he finds in either one?\n\n \"To think is to pass from the singular or particular to the idea\n [concept] or universal.... Ideas are necessary because no thinking\n can take place without them. They are universal, inasmuch as they\n are completely divested of the particularity which characterizes\n all the phenomena of mere sensation. To grasp the nature of this\n universality is not easy. Perhaps the best means by which this end\n may be compassed is by contrasting it with the particular. It is not\n difficult to understand that a sensation, a phenomenon of sense, is\n never more than the particular which it is. As such, that is, in its\n strict particularity, it is absolutely unthinkable. In the very act\n of being thought, something more than it emerges, and this something\n more cannot be again the particular.... Ten particulars _per se_\n cannot be thought of any more than one particular can be thought\n of;... there always emerges in thought an additional something, which\n is the possibility of other particulars to an indefinite extent....\n The indefinite additional something which they are instances of is a\n universal.... The idea or universal cannot possibly be pictured in the\n imagination, for this would at once reduce it to the particular....\n This inability to form any sort of picture or representation of\n an idea does not proceed from any imperfection or limitation of\n our faculties, but is a quality inherent in the very nature of\n intelligence. A contradiction is involved in the supposition that an\n idea or a universal can become the object either of sense or of the\n imagination. An idea is thus diametrically opposed to an image.\"[399]\n\nThe nominalists, on their side, admit a _quasi_-universal, something\nwhich we think _as if it were_ universal, though it is not; and in\nall that they say about this something, which they explain to be 'an\nindefinite number of particular ideas,' the same vacillation between\nthe subjective and the objective points of view appears. The reader\nnever can tell whether an 'idea' spoken of is supposed to be a knower\nor a known. The authors themselves do not distinguish. They want to get\nsomething in the mind which shall _resemble_ what is out of the mind,\nhowever vaguely, and they think that when that fact is accomplished, no\nfarther questions will be asked. James Mill writes:[400]\n\n \"The word, man, we shall say, is first applied to an individual; it\n is first associated with the idea of that individual, and acquires\n the power of calling up the idea of him; it is next applied to\n another individual and acquires the power of calling up the idea of\n him; so of another and another, till it has become associated with\n an indefinite number, and has acquired the power of calling up an\n indefinite number of those ideas indifferently. What happens? It\n does call up an indefinite number of the ideas of individuals as\n often as it occurs; and calling them in close connection, it forms\n a species of complex idea of them.... It is also a fact, that when\n an idea becomes to a certain extent complex, from the multiplicity\n of the ideas it _comprehends_, it is of necessity indistinct;... and\n this indistinctness has, doubtless, been a main cause of the mystery\n which has appeared to belong to it.... It thus appears that the word\n _man_ is not a word having a very simple idea, as was the opinion of\n the realists; nor a word having no idea at all, as was that of the\n [earlier] nominalists; but a word calling up an indefinite number of\n ideas, by the irresistible laws of association, and forming them into\n one very complex and indistinct, but not therefore unintelligible,\n idea.\"\n\nBerkeley had already said:[401]\n\n \"A word becomes general by being made the sign, not of an abstract\n general idea, but of many several particular ideas, any one of which\n it indifferently suggests to the mind. An idea which, considered in\n itself, is particular, becomes general by being made to represent or\n stand for all other particular ideas of the same sort.\"\n\n'Stand for,' not _know_; 'becomes general,' not becomes _aware\nof something_ general; 'particular ideas,' not particular\n_things_--everywhere the same timidity about begging the fact of\nknowing, and the pitifully impotent attempt to foist it in the shape\nof a mode of _being_ of 'ideas.' If the fact to be conceived be the\nindefinitely numerous actual and possible members of a class, then it\nis assumed that if we can only get enough ideas to huddle together\nfor a moment in the mind, the _being_ of each several one of them\nthere will be an equivalent for the _knowing_, or _meaning_, of _one_\nmember of the class in question; and their number will be so large as\nto confuse our tally and leave it doubtful whether all the possible\nmembers of the class have thus been satisfactorily told off or not.\n\nOf course this is nonsense. An idea neither is what it knows, nor knows\nwhat it is; nor will swarms of copies of the same 'idea,' recurring in\nstereotyped form, or 'by the irresistible laws of association formed\ninto one idea,' ever be the same thing as a thought of '_all the\npossible members_' of a class. We must mean _that_ by an altogether\nspecial bit of consciousness _ad hoc_. But it is easy to translate\nBerkeley's, Hume's, and Mill's notion of a swarm of ideas into cerebral\nterms, and so to make them stand for something real; and, in this\nsense, I think the doctrine of these authors less hollow than the\nopposite one which makes the vehicle of universal conceptions to be\nan _actus purus_ of the soul. If each 'idea' stand for some special\nnascent nerve-process, then the aggregate of these nascent processes\nmight have for its conscious correlate a psychic 'fringe,' which should\nbe just that universal meaning, or intention that the name or mental\npicture employed should mean all the possible individuals of the class.\nEvery peculiar complication of brain-processes must have some peculiar\ncorrelate in the soul. To one set of processes will correspond the\nthought of an indefinite taking of the extent of a word like _man_;\nto another set that of a particular taking; and to a third set that\nof a universal taking, of the extent of the same word. The thought\ncorresponding to either set of processes, is always itself a unique and\nsingular event, whose dependence on its peculiar nerve-process I of\ncourse am far from professing to explain.[402]\n\nTruly in comparison with the fact that every conception, whatever\nit be of, is one of the mind's immutable possessions, the question\nwhether a single thing, or a whole class of things, or only an\nunassigned quality, be meant by it, is an insignificant matter of\ndetail. Our meanings are of singulars, particulars, indefinites, and\nuniversals, mixed together in every way. A singular individual is as\nmuch _conceived_ when he is isolated and identified away from the\nrest of the world in my mind, as is the most rarefied and universally\napplicable quality he may possess--_being_, for example, when treated\nin the same way.[403] From every point of view, the overwhelming and\nportentous character ascribed to universal conceptions is surprising.\nWhy, from Plato and Aristotle downwards, philosophers should have vied\nwith each other in scorn of the knowledge of the particular, and in\nadoration of that of the general, is hard to understand, seeing that\nthe more adorable knowledge ought to be that of the more adorable\nthings, and that the _things_ of worth are all concretes and singulars.\nThe only value of universal characters is that they help us, by\nreasoning, to know new truths about individual things. The restriction\nof one's meaning, moreover, to an individual thing, probably requires\neven more complicated brain-processes than its extension to all the\ninstances of a kind; and the mere mystery, as such, of the knowledge,\nis equally great, whether generals or singulars be the things known. In\nsum, therefore, the traditional universal-worship can only be called a\nbit of perverse sentimentalism, a philosophic 'idol of the cave.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt may seem hardly necessary to add (what follows as a matter of\ncourse from pp. 229-237, and what has been implied in our assertions\nall along) that _nothing can be conceived twice over without being\nconceived in entirely different states of mind_. Thus, my arm-chair is\none of the things of which I have a conception; I knew it yesterday\nand recognized it when I looked at it. But if I think of it to-day as\nthe same arm-chair which I looked at yesterday, it is obvious that\nthe very conception of it as the same is an additional complication\nto the thought, whose inward constitution must alter in consequence.\nIn short, it is logically impossible that the same thing should be\n_known as the same_ by two successive copies of the same thought. As\na matter of fact, the thoughts by which we know that we mean the same\nthing are apt to be very different indeed from each other. We think\nthe thing now in one context, now in another; now in a definite image,\nnow in a symbol. Sometimes our sense of its identity pertains to the\nmere fringe, sometimes it involves the nucleus, of our thought. We\nnever can break the thought asunder and tell just which one of its\nbits is the part that lets us know which subject is referred to; but\nnevertheless we always _do_ know which of all possible subjects we have\nin mind. Introspective psychology must here throw up the sponge; the\nfluctuations of subjective life are too exquisite to be arrested by its\ncoarse means. It must confine itself to bearing witness to the fact\nthat all sorts of different subjective states do form the vehicle by\nwhich the same is known; and it must contradict the opposite view.\n\nThe ordinary Psychology of 'ideas' constantly talks as if the vehicle\nof the same thing-known must be the same recurrent state of mind,\nand as if the having over again of the same 'idea' were not only a\nnecessary but a sufficient condition for meaning the same thing twice.\nBut this recurrence of the same idea would utterly defeat the existence\nof a repeated knowledge of anything. It would be a simple reversion\ninto a pre-existent state, with nothing gained in the interval, and\nwith complete unconsciousness of the state having existed before. Such\nis not the way in which we think. As a rule we are fully aware that\nwe have thought before of the thing we think of now. The continuity\nand permanency of the topic is of the essence of our intellection.\nWe recognize the old problem, and the old solutions; and we go on to\nalter and improve and substitute one predicate for another without ever\nletting the subject change.\n\nThis is what is meant when it is said that thinking consists in making\n_judgments_. A succession of judgments may all be about the same thing.\nThe general practical postulate which encourages us to keep thinking\nat all is that by going on to do so we shall judge better _of the same\nthings_ than if we do not.[404] In the successive judgments, all sorts\nof new operations are performed on the things, and all sorts of new\nresults brought out, without the sense of the main topic ever getting\nlost. At the outset, we merely _have_ the topic; then we _operate_ on\nit; and finally we have it again in a richer and truer way. A compound\nconception has been substituted for the simple one, but with full\nconsciousness that both are of the Same.\n\nThe distinction between having and operating is as natural in the\nmental as in the material world. As our hands may hold a bit of wood\nand a knife, and yet do naught with either; so our mind may simply\nbe aware of a thing's existence, and yet neither attend to it nor\ndiscriminate it, neither locate nor count nor compare nor like nor\ndislike nor deduce it, nor recognize it articulately as having been\nmet with before. At the same time we know that, instead of staring at\nit in this entranced and senseless way, we may rally our activity in\na moment, and locate, class, compare, count, and judge it. There is\nnothing involved in all this which we did not postulate at the very\noutset of our introspective work: realities, namely, _extra mentem_,\nthoughts, and possible relations of cognition between the two. The\nresult of the thoughts' operating on the data given to sense is to\ntransform the order in which experience _comes_ into an entirely\ndifferent order, that of the _conceived_ world. There is no spot of\nlight, for example, which I pick out and proceed to define as a pebble,\nwhich is not thereby torn from its mere time- and space-neighbors,\nand thought in conjunction with things physically parted from it by\nthe width of nature. Compare the form in which facts appear in a\ntext-book of physics, as logically subordinated laws, with that in\nwhich we naturally make their acquaintance. The conceptual scheme is\na sort of sieve in which we try to gather up the world's contents.\nMost facts and relations fall through its meshes, being either too\nsubtle or insignificant to be fixed in any conception. But whenever a\nphysical reality is caught and identified as the same with something\nalready conceived, it remains on the sieve, and all the predicates\nand relations of the conception with which it is identified become\nits predicates and relations too; it is subjected to the sieve's\nnetwork, in other words. Thus comes to pass what Mr. Hodgson calls\nthe translation of the perceptual into the conceptual order of the\nworld.[405] In Chapter XXII we shall see how this translation always\ntakes place for the sake of some subjective _interest_, and how the\nconception with which we handle a bit of sensible experience is\nreally nothing but a teleological instrument. _This whole function\nof conceiving, of fixing, and holding fast to meanings, has no\nsignificance apart from the fact that the conceiver is a creature with\npartial purposes and private ends._ There remains, therefore, much more\nto be said about conception, but for the present this will suffice.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[386] There are two other 'principles of identity' in philosophy.\nThe _ontological_ one asserts that every real thing is what it is,\nthat _a_ is _a_, and _b, b_. The _logical_ one says that what is once\ntrue of the subject of a judgment is always true of that subject.\nThe ontological law is a tautological truism; the logical principle\nis already more, for it implies subjects unalterable by time. The\n_psychological_ law also implies facts which might not be realized:\nthere might be no succession of thoughts; or if there were, the later\nones might not think of the earlier; or if they did, they might not\nrecall the content thereof; or, recalling the content, they might not\ntake it as 'the same' with anything else.\n\n[387] In later chapters we shall see that determinate relations exist\nbetween the various data thus fixed upon by the mind. These are called\n_a priori_ or axiomatic relations. Simple inspection of the data\nenables us to perceive them; and one inspection is as effective as\na million for engendering in us the conviction that between _those_\ndata that relation must always hold. To change the relation we should\nhave to make the data different. 'The guarantee for the uniformity\nand adequacy' of the data can only be the mind's own power to fix\nupon any objective content, and to mean that content as often as it\nlikes. This right of the mind to 'construct' permanent ideal objects\nfor itself out of the data of experience seems, singularly enough,\nto be a stumbling-block to many. Professor Robertson in his clear\nand instructive article 'Axioms' in the Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica (9th\nedition) suggests that it may only be where _movements_ enter into the\nconstitution of the ideal object (as they do in geometrical figures)\nthat we can \"_make_ the ultimate relations to be what for us they\nmust be in all circumstances.\" He makes, it is true, a concession\nin favor of conceptions of number abstracted from \"subjective\noccurrences succeeding each other in time\" because these also are\nacts \"of construction, dependent on the power we have of voluntarily\ndetermining the flow of subjective consciousness.\" \"The content of\npassive sensation,\" on the other hand, \"may indefinitely vary beyond\nany control of ours.\" What if it do vary, so long as we can continue\nto think of and mean the qualities it varied from? We can 'make' ideal\nobjects for ourselves out of irrecoverable bits of passive experience\nquite as perfectly as out of easily repeatable active experiences. And\nwhen we have got our objects together and compared them, we do not\n_make_, but _find_, their relations.\n\n[388] Cf. Hodgson, Time and Space, \u00a7 46. Lotze, Logic, \u00a7 11.\n\n[389] \"For though a man in a fever should from sugar have a bitter\ntaste which at another time would produce a sweet one, yet the idea of\nbitter in that man's mind would be as distinct as if he had tasted only\ngall.\" (Locke's Essay bk. ii, chap. xi, \u00a7 3. Read the whole section!)\n\n[390] Black round things, square white things, _per contra_, Nature\ngives us freely enough. But the combinations which she refuses to\nrealize may exist as distinctly, in the shape of postulates, as\nthose which she gives may exist in the shape of positive images, in\nour mind. As a matter of fact, she _may_ realize a warm cold thing\nwhenever two points of the skin, so near together as not to be locally\ndistinguished, are touched, the one with a warm, the other with a cold,\npiece of metal. The warmth and the cold are then often felt as if in\nthe same objective place. Under similar conditions two objects, one\nsharp and the other blunt, may feel like one sharp blunt thing. The\nsame space may appear of two colors if, by optical artifice, one of the\ncolors is made to appear as if seen _through_ the other.--Whether any\ntwo attributes whatever shall be compatible or not, in the sense of\nappearing or not to occupy the same place and moment, depends simply\non _de facto_ peculiarities of natural bodies and of our sense-organs.\n_Logically_, anyone combination of qualities is to the full as\n_conceivable_ as any other, and has as distinct a meaning for thought.\nWhat necessitates this remark is the confusion deliberately kept up\nby certain authors (e.g. Spencer, Psychology, \u00a7\u00a7 420-7) between the\ninconceivable and the not-distinctly-imaginable. How do we know _which_\nthings we cannot imagine unless by first conceiving them, meaning\n_them_ and not other things?\n\n[391] Arguments seldom make converts in matters philosophical; and\nsome readers, I know, who find that they conceive a certain matter\ndifferently from what they did, will still prefer saying they have two\ndifferent editions of the same conception, one evolved from the other,\nto saying they have two different conceptions of the same thing. It\ndepends, after all, on how we define conception. We ourselves defined\nit as the function by which a state of mind means to think the same\nwhereof it thought on a former occasion. Two states of mind will\naccordingly be two editions of the same conception just so far as\neither does mean to think what the other thought; but no farther. If\neither mean to think what the other did not think, it is a different\nconception from the other. And if either mean to think all that the\nother thought, _and more_, it is a different conception, so far as the\n_more_ goes. In this last case one state of mind has two conceptual\nfunctions. Each thought decides, by its own authority, which, out of\nall the conceptive functions open to it, it shall now renew; with\nwhich other thought it shall identify itself as a conceiver, and just\nhow far. \"The same A which I once meant,\" it says, \"I shall now mean\nagain, and mean it with C as its predicate (or what not) instead of B,\nas before.\" In all this, therefore, there is absolutely no changing,\nbut only uncoupling and recoupling of conceptions. Compound conceptions\ncome, as functions of new states of mind. Some of these functions are\nthe same with previous ones, some not. Any changed opinion, then,\n_partly_ contains new editions (absolutely identical with the old,\nhowever) of former conceptions, _partly_ absolutely new conceptions.\nThe division is a perfectly easy one to make in each particular case.\n\n[392] Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction, \u00a7\u00a7 10, 14.\n\n[393] 'Conceptualisme honteux,' Rabier, Psychologie, 310.\n\n[394] Exam. of Hamilton, p. 393. Cf. also Logic, bk. ii, chap. v, \u00a7 1,\nand bk iv, chap ii, \u00a7 1.\n\n[395] E.g.: \"The knowledge of things must mean that the mind finds\nitself in them, or that, in some way, the difference between them and\nthe mind is dissolved.\" (E. Caird, Philosophy of Kant, first edition,\np. 553.)\n\n[396] The traditional conceptualist doctrine is that an abstract must\n_eo ipso_ be a universal. Even modern and independent authors like\nProf. Dewey (Psychology, 207) obey the tradition: \"The mind seizes\nupon some one aspect,... abstracts or prescinds it. This very seizure\nof some one element generalizes the one abstracted.... Attention, in\ndrawing it forth, makes it a distinct content of consciousness, and\nthus universalizes it; it is considered no longer in its particular\nconnection with the object, but on its own account; that is, as an\nidea, or what it signifies to the mind; and significance is always\nuniversal.\"\n\n[397] C. F. Reid's Intellectual Powers, Essay v, chap.\niii.--_Whiteness_ is one thing, _the whiteness of this sheet of paper_\nanother thing.\n\n[398] Mr. F. H. Bradley says the conception or the 'meaning' \"consists\nof a part of the content, cut off, fixed by the mind, and considered\napart from the existence of the sign. It would not be correct to add,\nand referred away to another real subject; for where we think without\njudging, and where we deny, that description would not be applicable.\"\nThis seems to be the same doctrine as ours; the application to one or\nto all subjects of the abstract fact conceived (i.e. its individuality\nor its universality), constituting a new conception. I am, however,\nnot quite sure that Mr. Bradley steadily maintains this ground. Cf.\nthe first chapter of his Principles of Logic. The doctrine I defend\nis stoutly upheld in Rosmini's Philosophical System, Introduction by\nThomas Davidson, p. 43 (London, 1882).\n\n[399] Lectures on Greek Philosophy, pp. 33-39.\n\n[400] Analysis, chap. viii.\n\n[401] Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction, \u00a7\u00a7 11, 12.\n\n[402] It may add to the effect of the text to quote a passage from the\nessay in 'Mind,' referred to on p. 224.\n\n\"Why may we not side with the conceptualists in saying that the\nuniversal sense of a word does correspond to a mental fact of _some_\nkind, but at the same time, agreeing with the nominalists that all\nmental facts are modifications of subjective sensibility, why may we\nnot call that fact a 'feeling'? _Man_ meant for _mankind_ is in short\na different feeling from _man_ as a mere noise, or from _man_ meant\nfor _that_ man, to wit, John Smith alone. Not that the difference\nconsists simply in the fact that, when taken universally, the word\nhas one of Mr. Galton's 'blended' images of man associated with it.\nMany persons have seemed to think that these blended or, as Prof.\nHuxley calls them, 'generic' images are equivalent to concepts. But,\nin itself, a blurred thing is just as particular as a sharp thing; and\nthe generic character of either sharp image or blurred image depends on\nits being felt _with its representative function_. This function is the\nmysterious _plus_, the understood meaning. But it is nothing applied to\nthe image from above, no pure act of reason inhabiting a supersensible\nand semi-supernatural plane. It can be diagrammatized as continuous\nwith all the other segments of the subjective stream. It is just that\nstaining, fringe, or halo of obscurely felt relation to masses of other\nimagery about to come, but not yet distinctly in focus, which we have\nso abundantly set forth [in Chapter IX].\n\n\"If the image come unfringed, it reveals but a simple quality, thing,\nor event; if it come fringed, it may reveal something expressly taken\nuniversally or in a scheme of relations. The difference between thought\nand feeling thus reduces itself, in the last subjective analysis, to\nthe presence or absence of 'fringe.' And this in turn reduces itself,\nwith much probability, in the last physiological analysis, to the\nabsence or presence of sub-excitements in other convolutions of the\nbrain than those whose discharges underlie the more definite nucleus,\nthe substantive ingredient, of the thought,--in this instance, the word\nor image it may happen to arouse.\n\n\"The contrast is not, then, as the Platonists would have it, between\ncertain subjective facts called images and sensations, and others\ncalled acts of relating intelligence; the former being blind perishing\nthings, knowing not even their own existence as such, whilst the latter\ncombine the poles in the mysterious synthesis of their cognitive sweep.\nThe contrast is really between two _aspects_, in which all mental\nfacts without exception may be taken; their structural aspect, as\nbeing subjective, and their functional aspect, as being cognitions.\nIn the former aspect, the highest as well as the lowest is a feeling,\na peculiarly tinged segment of the stream. This tingeing is its\nsensitive body, the _wie ihm zu Muthe ist_, the way it feels whilst\npassing. In the latter aspect, the lowest mental fact as well as the\nhighest may grasp some bit of truth as its content, even though that\ntruth were as relationless a matter as a bare unlocalized and undated\nquality of pain. From the cognitive point of view, all mental facts\nare intellections. From the subjective point of view all are feelings.\nOnce admit that the passing and evanescent are as real parts of the\nstream as the distinct and comparatively abiding; once allow that\nfringes and halos, inarticulate perceptions, whereof the objects are as\nyet unnamed, mere nascencies of cognition, premonitions, awarenesses\nof direction, are thoughts _sui generis_, as much as articulate\nimaginings and propositions are; once restore, I say, the _vague_ to\nits psychological rights, and the matter presents no further difficulty.\n\n\"And then we see that the current opposition of Feeling to Knowledge\nis quite a false issue. If every feeling is at the same time a bit\nof knowledge, we ought no longer to talk of mental states differing\nby having more or less of the cognitive quality; they only differ in\nknowing more or less, in having much fact or little fact for their\nobject. The feeling of a broad scheme of relations is a feeling that\nknows much; the feeling of a simple quality is a feeling that knows\nlittle. But the knowing itself, whether of much or of little, has the\nsame essence, and is as good knowing in the one case as in the other.\nConcept and image, thus discriminated through their objects, are\nconsubstantial in their inward nature, as modes of feeling. The one,\nas particular, will no longer be held to be a relatively base sort\nof entity, to be taken as a matter of course, whilst the other, as\nuniversal, is celebrated as a sort of standing miracle, to be adored\nbut not explained. Both concept and image, _qu\u00e2_ subjective, are\nsingular and particular. Both are moments of the stream, which come\nand in an instant are no more. The word universality has no meaning as\napplied to their psychic body or structure, which is always finite. It\nonly has a meaning when applied to their use, import, or reference to\nthe kind of object they may reveal. The representation, as such, of\nthe universal object is as particular as that of an object about which\nwe know so little that the interjection 'Ha!' is all it can evoke from\nus in the way of speech. Both should be weighed in the same scales,\nand have the same measure meted out to them whether of worship or of\ncontempt.\" (Mind, ix, pp. 18-19.)\n\n[403] Hodgson, Time and Space, p. 404.\n\n[404] Compare the admirable passage in Hodgson's Time and Space, p. 310.\n\n[405] Philosophy of Reflection, i, 273-308.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII.\n\nDISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON.\n\n\nIt is matter of popular observation that some men have sharper senses\nthan others, and that some have acuter minds and are able to 'split\nhairs' and see two shades of meaning where the majority see but one.\nLocke long ago set apart the faculty of discrimination as one in which\nmen differ individually. What he wrote is good enough to quote as an\nintroduction to this chapter:\n\n \"Another faculty we may take notice of in our minds is that of\n discerning and distinguishing between the several ideas it has. It\n is not enough to have a confused perception of something in general:\n unless the mind had a distinct perception of different objects and\n their qualities, it would be capable of very little knowledge; though\n the bodies that affect us were as busy about us as they are now,\n and the mind were continually employed in thinking. On this faculty\n of distinguishing one thing from another depends the evidence and\n certainty of several even very general propositions, which have passed\n for innate truths; because men, overlooking the true cause why those\n propositions find universal assent, impute it wholly to native uniform\n impressions; whereas it in truth depends upon this clear discerning\n faculty of the mind, whereby it perceives two ideas to be the same or\n different. But of this more hereafter?\n\n \"How much the imperfection of accurately discriminating ideas one from\n another lies either in the dulness or faults of the organs of sense,\n or want of acuteness, exercise, or attention in the understanding, or\n hastiness and precipitancy natural to some tempers, I will not here\n examine: it suffices to take notice that this is one of the operations\n that the mind may reflect on and observe in itself. It is of that\n consequence to its other knowledge, that so far as this faculty is in\n itself dull, or not rightly made use of for the distinguishing one\n thing from another, so far our notions are confused, and our reason\n and judgment disturbed or misled. If in having our ideas in the\n memory ready at hand consists quickness of parts; in this of having\n them unconfused, and being able nicely to distinguish one thing from\n another where there is but the least difference, consists in a great\n measure the exactness of judgment and clearness of reason which is to\n be observed in one man above another. And hence, perhaps, may be given\n some reason of that common observation,--that men who have a great\n deal of wit and prompt memories have not always the clearest judgment\n or deepest reason. For, wit lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and\n putting those together with quickness and variety wherein can be found\n any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and\n agreeable visions in the fancy; judgment, on the contrary, lies quite\n on the other side, in separating carefully one from another ideas\n wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being\n misled by similitude and by affinity to take one thing for another.\n This is a way of proceeding quite contrary to metaphor and allusion,\n wherein for the most part lies that entertainment and pleasantry of\n wit which strikes so lively on the fancy, and therefore, so acceptable\n to all people because its beauty appears at first sight, and there is\n required no labor of thought to examine what truth or reason there is\n in it.\"[406]\n\nBut Locke's descendants have been slow to enter into the path whose\nfruitfulness was thus pointed out by their master, and have so\nneglected the study of discrimination that one might almost say that\nthe classic English psychologists have, as a school, hardly recognized\nit to exist. 'Association' has proved itself in their hands the one\nall-absorbing power of the mind. Dr. Martineau, in his review of Bain,\nmakes some very weighty remarks on this onesidedness of the Lockian\nschool. Our mental history, says he, is, in its view,\n\n \"a perpetual formation of new compounds: and the words 'association,'\n 'cohesion,' 'fusion,' 'indissoluble connection,' all express the\n change from plurality of data to some unity of result. An explanation\n of the process therefore requires two things: a true enumeration of\n the primary constituents, and a correct statement of their laws of\n combination: just as, in chemistry, we are furnished with a list of\n the simple elements, and the with then principles of their synthesis.\n Now the latter of these two conditions we find satisfied by the\n association-psychologists: but not the former. They are not agreed\n upon their catalogue of elements, or the marks by which they may know\n the simple from the compound. The psychologic unit is not fixed; that\n which is called one impression by Hartley is treated as half-a-dozen\n or more by Mill: and the tendency of the modern teachers on this point\n is to recede more and more from the better-chosen track of their\n master. Hartley, for example, regarded the whole present effect upon\n us of any single object--say, an orange--as a single sensation; and\n the whole vestige it left behind, as a single 'idea of sensation.'\n His modern disciples, on the other hand, consider this same effect\n as an aggregate from a plurality of sensations, and the ideal trace\n it leaves as highly compound. 'The idea of an object,' instead of\n being an elementary starting-point with them, is one of the elaborate\n results of repetition and experience; and is continually adduced as\n remarkably illustrating the fusing power of habitual association. Thus\n James Mill observes:\n\n \"'It is to this great law of association that we trace the formation\n of our ideas of what we call external objects; that is, the ideas of\n a certain number of sensations, received together so frequently that\n they coalesce as it were, and are spoken of under the idea of unity.\n Hence, what we call the idea of a tree, the idea of a stone, the\n idea of a horse, the idea of a man. In using the names, tree, horse,\n man, the names of what I call objects, I am referring, and can be\n referring, only to my own sensations; in fact, therefore, only naming\n a certain number of sensations regarded as in a particular state of\n combination, that is, concomitance. Particular sensations of sight,\n of touch, of the muscles, are the sensations to the ideas of which,\n color, extension, roughness, hardness, smoothness, taste, smell, so\n coalescing as to appear one idea, I give the name of the idea of a\n tree.'[407]\n\n \"To precisely the same effect Mr. Bain remarks:\n\n \"'External objects usually affect us through a plurality of senses.\n The pebble on the sea-shore is pictured on the eye as form and color.\n We take it up in the hand and repeat the impression of form, with\n the additional feeling of touch. Knock two together, and there is a\n characteristic sound. To preserve the impression of an object of this\n kind, there must be an association of all these different effects.\n Such association, when matured and firm, is our idea, our intellectual\n grasp of the pebble. Passing to the organic world, and plucking a\n rose, we have the same effects of form to the eye and hand, color and\n touch, with new effects of odor and taste. A certain time is requisite\n for the coherence of all these qualities in one aggregate, so as to\n give us for all purposes the enduring image of the rose. When fully\n acquired, any one of the characteristic impressions will revive the\n others; the odor, the sight, the feeling of the thorny stalk--each of\n these by itself will hoist the entire impression into the view.'[408]\n\n \"Now, this order of derivation, making our objective knowledge begin\n with plurality of impression and arrive at unity, we take to be a\n complete inversion of our psychological history. Hartley, we think,\n was perfectly right in taking no notice of the number of inlets\n through which an object delivers its effect upon us, and, in spite of\n this circumstance, treating the effect as one.... Even now, after life\n has read us so many analytic lessons, in proportion as we can fix the\n attitude of our scene and ourselves, the sense of plurality in our\n impressions retreats, and we lapse into an undivided consciousness;\n losing, for instance, the separate notice of any uniform hum in the\n ear, or light in the eye, or weight of clothes on the body, though\n not one of them is inoperative on the complexion of our feeling. This\n law, once granted, must be carried far beyond Hartley's point. Not\n only must each object present itself to us integrally before it shells\n off into its qualities, but the whole scene around us must disengage\n for us object after object from its still background by emergence and\n change; and even our self-detachment from the world over against us\n must wait for the start of collision between the force we issue and\n that which we receive. To confine ourselves to the simplest case:\n when a red ivory ball, seen for the first time, has been withdrawn,\n it will leave a mental representation of itself, in which all that it\n simultaneously gave us will indistinguishably coexist. Let a white\n ball succeed to it; now, and not before, will an attribute detach\n itself, and the color, by force of contrast, be shaken out into the\n foreground. Let the white ball be replaced by an egg: and this new\n difference will bring the form into notice from its previous slumber.\n And thus, that which began by being simply an object, cut out from the\n surrounding scene, becomes for us first a _red_ object, and then a\n _red round_ object; and so on. Instead, therefore, of the qualities,\n as separately given, subscribing together and adding themselves up\n to present us with the object as their aggregate, the object is\n beforehand with them, and from its integrity delivers them out to our\n knowledge, one by one. In this disintegration, the primary nucleus\n never loses its substantive character or name; whilst the difference\n which it throws off appears as a mere attribute, expressed by an\n adjective. Hence it is that we are compelled to think of the object as\n _having_, not as _being_, its qualities; and can never heartily admit\n the belief of any loose lot of attributes really fusing themselves\n into a _thing_. The unity of the original whole is not felt to go\n to pieces and be resolved into the properties which it successively\n gives off; it retains a residuary existence, which constitutes it\n a _substance_, as against the emerging quality, which is only its\n _phenomenal predicate_. Were it not for this perpetual process of\n differentiation of self from the world, of object from its scene,\n of attribute from object, no step of Abstraction could be taken; no\n qualities could fall under our notice; and had we ten thousand senses,\n they would all converge and meet in but one consciousness. But if this\n be so, it is an utter falsification of the order of nature to speak\n of sensations grouping themselves into aggregates, and so composing\n for us the objects of which we think; and the whole language of\n the theory, in regard to the field of synchronous existences, is a\n direct inversion of the truth. Experience proceeds and intellect is\n trained, not by Association, but by _Dissociation_, not by reduction\n of pluralities of impression to one, but by the opening out of one\n into many; and a true psychological history must expound itself in\n analytic rather than synthetic terms. Precisely those ideas--of\n Substance, of Mind, of Cause, of Space--which this system treats as\n infinitely complex, the last result of myriads of confluent elements,\n are in truth the residuary simplicities of consciousness, whose\n stability the eddies and currents of phenomenal experience have left\n undisturbed.\"[409]\n\nThe truth is that Experience is trained by _both_ association and\ndissociation, and that psychology must be writ _both_ in synthetic and\nin analytic terms. Our original sensible totals are, on the one hand,\nsubdivided by discriminative attention, and, on the other, united\nwith other totals,--either through the agency of our own movements,\ncarrying our senses from one part of space to another, or because new\nobjects come successively and replace those by which we were at first\nimpressed. The 'simple impression' of Hume, the 'simple idea' of Locke\nare both abstractions, never realized in experience. Experience, from\nthe very first, presents us with concreted objects, vaguely continuous\nwith the rest of the world which envelops them in space and time, and\npotentially divisible into inward elements and parts. These objects\nwe break asunder and reunite. We must treat them in both ways for our\nknowledge of them to grow; and it is hard to say, on the whole, which\nway preponderates. But since the elements with which the traditional\nassociationism performs its constructions--'simple sensations,'\nnamely--are all products of discrimination carried to a high pitch, it\nseems as if we ought to discuss the subject of analytic attention and\ndiscrimination first.\n\nThe noticing of any _part_ whatever of our object is an act of\ndiscrimination. Already on p. 404 I have described the manner in which\nwe often spontaneously lapse into the undiscriminating state, even with\nregard to objects which we have already learned to distinguish. Such\nan\u00e6sthetics as chloroform, nitrous oxide, etc., sometimes bring about\ntransient lapses even more total, in which numerical discrimination\nespecially seems gone; for one sees light and hears sound, but whether\none or many lights and sounds is quite impossible to tell. Where the\nparts of an object have already been discerned, and each made the\nobject of a special discriminative act, we can with difficulty feel\nthe object again in its pristine unity; and so prominent may our\nconsciousness of its composition be, that we may hardly believe that it\never could have appeared undivided. But this is an erroneous view, the\nundeniable fact being that _any number of impressions, from any number\nof sensory sources, falling simultaneously on a mind_ WHICH HAS NOT YET\nEXPERIENCED THEM SEPARATELY, _will fuse into a single undivided object\nfor that mind._ The law is that all things fuse that _can_ fuse, and\nnothing separates except what must. What makes impressions separate\nwe have to study in this chapter. Although they separate easier if\nthey come in through distinct nerves, yet distinct nerves are not an\nunconditional ground of their discrimination, as we shall presently\nsee. The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at\nonce, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion; and to the\nvery end of life, our location of all things in one space is due to the\nfact that the original extents or bignesses of all the sensations which\ncame to our notice at once, coalesced together into one and the same\nspace. There is no other reason than this why \"the hand I touch and see\ncoincides spatially with the hand I immediately feel.\"[410]\n\nIt is true that we may sometimes be tempted to exclaim, when once a\nlot of hitherto unnoticed details of the object lie before us, \"How\ncould we ever have been ignorant of these things and yet have felt\nthe object, or drawn the conclusion, as if it were a _continuum_, a\n_plenum_? There would have been _gaps_--but we felt no gaps; wherefore\nwe must have seen and heard these details, leaned upon these steps;\nthey must have been operative upon our minds, just as they are now,\nonly _unconsciously_, or at least _inattentively_. Our first unanalyzed\nsensation was really composed of these elementary sensations, our first\nrapid conclusion was really based on these intermediate inferences, all\nthe while, only we failed to note the fact.\" But this is nothing but\nthe fatal 'psychologist's fallacy' (p. 196) of treating an inferior\nstate of mind as if it must somehow know implicitly all that is\nexplicitly known _about the same topic_ by superior states of mind.\nThe thing thought of is unquestionably the same, but it is thought\ntwice over in two absolutely different psychoses,--once as an unbroken\nunit, and again as a sum of discriminated parts. It is not one thought\nin two editions, but two entirely distinct thoughts of one thing.\nAnd each thought is within itself a _continuum_, a _plenum_, needing\nno contributions from the other to fill up its gaps. As I sit here,\nI think objects, and I make inferences, which the future is sure to\nanalyze and articulate and riddle with discriminations, showing me\nmany things wherever I now notice one. Nevertheless, my thought feels\nquite sufficient unto itself for the time being; and ranges from pole\nto pole, as free, and as unconscious of having overlooked anything, as\nif it possessed the greatest discriminative enlightenment. We all cease\nanalyzing the world at some point, and notice no more differences. The\nlast units with which we stop are our objective elements of being.\nThose of a dog are different from those of a Humboldt; those of a\npractical man from those of a metaphysician. But the dog's and the\npractical man's thoughts _feel_ continuous, though to the Humboldt or\nthe metaphysician they would appear full of gaps and defects. And they\n_are_ continuous, _as thoughts_. It is only _as mirrors of things_ that\nthe superior minds find them full of omissions. And when the omitted\nthings are discovered and the unnoticed differences laid bare, it is\nnot that the old _thoughts_ split up, but that _new thoughts supersede_\nthem, which make new judgments about the same objective world.\n\n\nTHE PRINCIPLE OF MEDIATE COMPARISON.\n\n\nWhen we discriminate an element, we may contrast it with the case of\nits own absence, of its simply not being there, without reference\nto what _is_ there; or we may also take the latter into account.\nLet the first sort of discrimination be called _existential_, the\nlatter _differential_ discrimination. A peculiarity of differential\ndiscriminations is that they result in a perception of differences\nwhich are felt as _greater or less_ one than the other. Entire groups\nof differences may be ranged in series: the musical scale, the color\nscale, are examples. Every department of our experience may have\nits data written down in an evenly gradated order, from a lowest to\na highest member. And any one datum may be a term in several such\norders. A given note may have a high place in the pitch-series, a low\nplace in the loudness-series, and a medium place in the series of\nagreeablenesses. A given tint must, in order to be fully determined,\nhave its place assigned in the series of qualities, in the series\nof purities (freedom from white), and in the series of intensities\nor brightnesses. It may be low in one of these respects, but high\nin another. In passing from term to term in any such series we are\nconscious not only of each step of difference being equal to (or\ngreater or less than) the last, but we are conscious of proceeding\nin a _uniform direction_, different from other possible directions.\nThis _consciousness of serial increase of differences_ is one of the\nfundamental facts of our intellectual life. More, _more_, MORE, of the\nsame kind of difference, we say, as we advance from term to term, and\nrealize that the farther on we get the larger grows the breach between\nthe term we are at and the one from which we started. Between any two\nterms of such a series the difference is greater than that between\nany intermediate terms, or than that between an intermediate term and\neither of the extremes. The louder than the loud is louder than the\nless loud; the farther than the far is farther than the less far; the\nearlier than the early is earlier than the late; the higher than the\nhigh is higher than the low; the bigger than the big is bigger than\nthe small; or, to put it briefly and universally, _the more than the\nmore is more than the less_; such is _the great synthetic principle of\nmediate comparison which is involved in the possession by the human\nmind of the sense of serial increase_. In Chapter XXVIII we shall see\nthe altogether overwhelming importance of this principle in the conduct\nof all our higher rational operations.\n\n\nARE ALL DIFFERENCES DIFFERENCES OF COMPOSITION?\n\n\nEach of the differences in one of these uniform series feels like a\ndefinite sensible quantity, and each term seems like the last term with\nthis quantity added. In many concrete objects which differ from one\nanother we can plainly see that the difference does consist singly\nin the fact that one object is the same as the other _plus_ something\nelse, or that they both have an identical part, to which each adds\na distinct remainder. Thus two pictures may be struck from the same\nblock, but one of them may differ in having color added; or two carpets\nmay show an identical pattern which in each is woven in distinct hues.\nSimilarly, two classes of sensation may have the same emotional tone\nbut negate each other in remaining respects--a dark color and a deep\nsound, for example; or two faces may have the same shape of nose but\neverything else unlike. The similarity of the same note sounded by\ninstruments of different timbre is explained by the coexistence of\na fundamental tone common to both, with over-tones in one which the\nother lacks. Dipping my hand into water and anon into a colder water,\nI may then observe certain additional feelings, broader and deeper\nirradiations of the cold, so to speak, which were not in the earlier\nexperience, though for aught I can tell, the feelings may be otherwise\nthe same. 'Hefting' first one weight, and then another, new feelings\nmay start out in my elbow-joint, wrist, and elsewhere, and make me call\nthe second weight the heavier of the twain. In all these cases each\nof the differing things may be represented by two parts, one that is\ncommon to it and the others, and another that is peculiar to itself. If\nthey form a series, _A, B, C, D,_ etc., and the common part be called\n_X_, whilst the lowest difference be called _d_, then the composition\nof the series would be as follows:\n\n    _A_ = _X_ + _d_;\n    _B_ = (_X_ + _d_) + _d_, or _X_ + 2_d_;\n    _C_ = _X_ + 3_d_;\n    _D_ = _X_ + 4_d_;\n    ........\n\nIf _X_ itself were ultimately composed of _d_'s we should have\nthe entire series explained as due to the varying combination and\nre-combination with itself of an unvarying element; and all the\napparent differences of quality would be translated into differences\nof quantity alone. This is the sort of reduction which the atomic\ntheory in physics and the mind-stuff theory in psychology regard as\ntheir ideal. So that, following the analogy of our instances, one might\neasily be tempted to generalize and to say that all difference is\nbut addition and subtraction, and that what we called 'differential'\ndiscrimination is only 'existential' discrimination in disguise; that\nis to say, that where _A_ and _B_ differ, we merely discern something\nin the one which the other is without. _Absolute identity in things\nup to a certain point, then absolute non-identity,_ would on this\ntheory take the place of those ultimate qualitative unlikenesses\nbetween them, in which we naturally believe; and the mental function\nof discrimination, ceasing to be regarded as an ultimate one, would\nresolve itself into mere logical affirmation and negation, or\nperception that a feature found in one thing, in another does not exist.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTheoretically, however, this theory is full of difficulty. If all the\ndifferences which we feel were _in one direction_, so that all objects\ncould be arranged in one series (however long), it might still work.\nBut when we consider the notorious fact that objects differ from each\nother in _divergent directions_, it grows well nigh impossible to make\nit do so. For then, supposing that an object differed from things\nin one direction by the increment _d_, it would have to differ from\nthings in another direction by a different sort of increment, call it\n_d'_; so that, after getting rid of qualitative unlikeness between\nobjects, we should have it back on our hands again between their\nincrements. We may of course re-apply our method, and say that the\ndifference between _d_ and _d'_ is not a qualitative unlikeness, but a\nfact of composition, one of them being the same as the other _plus_ an\nincrement of still higher order, _\u03b4_ for example, added. But when we\nrecollect that everything in the world can be compared with everything\nelse, and that the number of directions of difference is indefinitely\ngreat, then we see that the complication of self-compoundings of the\nultimate differential increment by which, on this theory, all the\ninnumerable unlikenesses of the world are explained, in order to avoid\nwriting any of them down as ultimate differences of kind, would beggar\nall conception. It is the mind-dust theory; with all its difficulties\nin a particularly uncompromising form; and all for the sake of the\nfantastic pleasure of being able arbitrarily to say that there is\nbetween the things in the world and between the 'ideas' in the mind\nnothing but absolute sameness and absolute not-sameness of elements,\nthe not-sameness admitting no degrees.\n\nTo me it seems much wiser to turn away from such transcendental\nextravagances of speculation, and to abide by the natural appearances.\nThese would leave unlikeness as an indecomposable relation amongst\nthings, and a relation moreover of which there were all degrees.\nAbsolute not-sameness would be the maximal degree, absolute sameness\nthe minimal degree of this unlikeness, the discernment of which would\nbe one of our ultimate cognitive powers.[411] Certainly the natural\nappearances are dead against the notion that no qualitative differences\nexist. With the same clearness with which, in certain objects, we do\nfeel a difference to be a mere matter of _plus_ and _minus_, in other\nobjects we feel that this is not the case. Contrast our feeling of\nthe difference between the length of two lines with our feeling of\nthe difference between blue and yellow, or with that between right\nand left. Is right equal to left with something added? Is blue yellow\n_plus_ something? If so, _plus_ what?[412] So long as we stick to\n_verifiable_ psychology, _we are forced to admit that differences of\nsimple_ KIND _form an irreducible sort of relation_ between some of\nthe elements of our experience, and forced to deny that differential\ndiscrimination can everywhere be reduced to the mere ascertainment\nthat elements present in one fact, in another fail to exist. The\nperception that an element exists in one thing and does not exist in\nanother and the perception of qualitative difference are, in short,\nentirely disconnected mental functions.[413]\n\nBut at the same time that we insist on this, we must also admit that\ndifferences of quality, however abundant, are not the only distinctions\nwith which our mind has to deal. Differences which seem of mere\ncomposition, of number, of _plus_ and _minus_, also abound.[414] But it\nwill be best for the present to disregard all these quantitative cases\nand, taking the others (which, by the least favorable calculation, will\nstill be numerous enough), to consider next _the manner in which we\ncome to cognize simple differences of kind_. We cannot _explain_ the\ncognition; we can only ascertain the conditions by virtue of which it\noccurs.\n\n\nTHE CONDITIONS OF DISCRIMINATION.\n\n\n_What, then, are the conditions under which we discriminate things\ndiffering in a simple way?_\n\nFirst, _the things must_ BE _different_, either in time, or place, or\nquality. If the difference in any of these regards is sufficiently\ngreat, then we cannot overlook it, except by not noticing the things\nat all. No one can help singling out a black stripe on a white ground,\nor feeling the contrast between a bass note and a high one sounded\nimmediately after it. Discrimination is here _involuntary_. But where\nthe objective difference is less, discrimination need not so inevitably\noccur, and may even require considerable effort of attention to be\nperformed at all.\n\nAnother condition which then favors it is that the sensations excited\nby _the differing objects should not come to us simultaneously but fall\nin immediate_ SUCCESSION upon the same organ. It is easier to compare\nsuccessive than simultaneous sounds, easier to compare two weights\nor two temperatures by testing one after the other with the same\nhand, than by using both hands and comparing both at once. Similarly\nit is easier to discriminate shades of light or color by moving the\neye from one to the other, so that they successively stimulate the\nsame retinal tract. In testing the local discrimination of the skin,\nby applying compass-points, it is found that they are felt to touch\ndifferent spots much more readily when set down one after the other\nthan when both are applied at once. In the latter case they may be two\nor three inches apart on the back, thighs, etc., and still feel as\nif they were set down in one spot. Finally, in the case of smell and\ntaste it is well-nigh impossible to compare simultaneous impressions\nat all. The reason why successive impression so much favors the result\nseems to be that there is a real _sensation of difference_, aroused\nby the shock of transition from one perception to another which is\nunlike the first. This sensation of difference has its own peculiar\nquality, as difference, which remains sensible, no matter of what sort\nthe terms may be, between which it obtains. It is, in short, one of\nthose transitive feelings, or feelings of relation, of which I treated\nin a former place (pp. 245 ff.); and, when once aroused, its object\nlingers in the memory along with the substantive terms which precede\nand follow, and enables our _judgments of comparison_ to be made.\nWe shall soon see reason to believe that no two terms can possibly\nbe _simultaneously_ perceived to differ, unless, in a preliminary\noperation, we have successively attended to each, and, in so doing, had\nthe transitional sensation of difference between them aroused. A field\nof consciousness, however complex, is never analyzed unless some of\nits ingredients have changed. We _now_ discern, 'tis true, a multitude\nof coexisting things about us at every moment: but this is because we\nhave had a long education, and each thing we now see distinct has been\nalready differentiated from its neighbors by repeated appearances in\nsuccessive order. To the infant, sounds, sights, touches, and pains,\nform probably one unanalyzed bloom of confusion.[415]\n\nWhere the difference between the successive sensations is but slight,\nthe transition between them must be made as immediate as possible, and\nboth must be compared _in memory_, in order to get the best results.\nOne cannot judge accurately of the difference between two similar\nwines, whilst the second is still in one's mouth. So of sounds,\nwarmths, etc.--we must get the dying phases of both sensations of the\npair we are comparing. Where, however, the difference is strong, this\ncondition is immaterial, and we can then compare a sensation actually\nfelt with another carried in memory only. The longer the interval of\ntime between the sensations, the more uncertain is their discrimination.\n\nThe difference, thus immediately felt between two terms, is independent\nof our ability to identify either of the terms by itself. I can feel\ntwo distinct spots to be touched on my skin, yet not know which is\nabove and which below. I can observe two neighboring musical tones to\ndiffer, and still not know which of the two is the higher in pitch.\nSimilarly I may discriminate two neighboring tints, whilst remaining\nuncertain which is the bluer or the yellower, or _how_ either differs\nfrom its mate.[416]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWith such direct perceptions of difference as this, we must not\nconfound those entirely unlike cases in which we _infer_ that two\nthings must differ because we know enough _about_ each of them taken\nby itself to warrant our classing them under distinct heads. It often\nhappens, when the interval is long between two experiences, that our\njudgments are guided, not so much by a positive image or copy of the\nearlier one, as by our recollection of certain facts about it. Thus I\nknow that the sunshine to-day is less bright than on a certain day last\nweek, because I then said it was quite dazzling, a remark I should not\nnow care to make. Or I know myself to feel better now than I was last\nsummer, because I can now psychologize, and then I could not. We are\nconstantly busy comparing feelings with whose quality our imagination\nhas no sort of _acquaintance_ at the time--pleasures, or pains, for\nexample. It is notoriously hard to conjure up in imagination a lively\nimage of either of these classes of feeling. The associationists may\nprate of an idea of pleasure being a pleasant idea, of an idea of\npain being a painful one, but the unsophisticated sense of mankind is\nagainst them, agreeing with Homer that the memory of griefs when past\nmay be a joy, and with Dante that there is no greater sorrow than, in\nmisery, to recollect one's happier time.\n\nFeelings remembered in this imperfect way _must_ be compared with\npresent or recent feelings by the aid of what we know about them. We\nidentify the remote experience in such a case by _conceiving it_. The\nmost perfect way of conceiving it is by defining it in terms of some\nstandard scale. If I know the thermometer to stand at zero to-day and\nto have stood at 32\u00b0 last Sunday, I know to-day to be colder, and I\nknow just how much colder, than it was last Sunday. If I know that a\ncertain note was _c_, and that this note is _d_, I know that this note\nmust be the higher of the two.\n\nThe inference that two things differ because their concomitants,\neffects, names, kinds, or--to put it generally--their _signs_, differ,\nis of course susceptible of unlimited complication. The sciences\nfurnish examples, in the way in which men are led, by noticing\ndifferences in effects, to assume new hypothetical causes, differing\nfrom any known heretofore. But no matter how many may be the steps\nby which such inferential discriminations are made, _they all end in\na direct intuition of difference somewhere_. The _last_ ground for\ninferring that A and B differ must be that, whilst A is an _m_, B is\nan _n_, and that _m_ and _n_ are _seen to differ_. Let us then neglect\nthe complex cases, the A's and the B's, and go back to the study of the\nunanalyzable perception of difference between their signs, the _m_'s\nand the _n_'s, when these are seemingly simple terms.\n\nI said that in their immediate succession the shock of their difference\nwas _felt_. It is felt _repeatedly_ when we go back and forth from\n_m_ to _n_; and we make a point of getting it thus repeatedly (by\nalternating our attention at least) whenever the shock is so slight\nas to be with difficulty perceived. But in addition to being felt\nat the brief instant of transition, the difference also feels as\nif incorporated and taken up into the second term, which feels\n'different-from-the-first' even while it lasts. It is obvious that the\n'second term' of the mind in this case is not bald _n_, but a very\ncomplex object; and that the sequence is not simply first '_m_,' then\n'_difference_,' then '_n_'; but first '_m_,' then '_difference_,' then\n'_n-different-from-m_.' The several thoughts, however, to which these\nthree several objects are revealed, are three ordinary 'segments' of\nthe mental 'stream.'\n\nAs our brains and minds are actually made, it is impossible to get\ncertain _m_'s and _n_'s in immediate sequence and to keep them _pure_.\nIf kept pure, it would mean that they remained uncompared. With us,\ninevitably, by a mechanism which we as yet fail to understand, the\nshock of difference is felt between them, and the second object is not\n_n_ pure, but _n-as-different-from-m_.[417] It is no more a paradox\nthat under these conditions this cognition of _m_ and _n_ in mutual\nrelation should occur, than that under other conditions the cognition\nof _m_'s or _n_'s simple quality should occur. But as it has been\ntreated as a paradox, and as a spiritual agent, not itself a portion\nof the stream, has been invoked to account for it, a word of further\nremark seems desirable.\n\nMy account, it will be noted, is merely a description of the facts\nas they occur: feelings (or thoughts) each knowing something, but\nthe later one knowing, if preceded by a certain earlier one, a more\ncomplicated object than it would have known had the earlier one not\nbeen there. I offer no _explanation_ of such a sequence of cognitions.\nThe explanation (I devoutly expect) will be found some day to depend\non cerebral conditions. Until it is forthcoming, we can only treat the\nsequence as a special case of the general law that every experience\nundergone by the brain leaves in it a modification which is one factor\nin determining what manner of experiences the following ones shall be\n(_cf._ pp. 232-236). To anyone who denies the possibility of such a law\nI have nothing to say, until he brings his proofs.\n\nThe sensationalists and the spiritualists meanwhile (filled both of\nthem with their notion that the mind must in some fashion _contain_\nwhat it knows) begin by giving a crooked account of the facts. Both\nadmit that for _m_ and _n_ to be known in any way whatever, little\nrounded and finished off duplicates of each must be contained in the\nmind as separate entities. These pure ideas, so called, of _m_ and _n_\nrespectively, succeed each other there. And since they _are distinct_,\nsay the sensationalists, they are _eo ipso_ distinguished. \"To have\nideas different and ideas distinguished, are synonymous expressions;\ndifferent and distinguished meaning exactly the same thing,\" says James\nMill.[418] \"Distinguished!\" say the spiritualists, \"distinguished _by\nwhat_, forsooth? Truly the respective ideas of _m_ and of _n_ in the\nmind are distinct. But for that very reason neither can distinguish\nitself from the other, for to do that it would have to be aware of the\nother, and thus for the time being become the other, and that would\nbe to get mixed up with the other and to lose its own distinctness.\nDistinctness of ideas and idea of distinctness, are not one thing, but\ntwo. This last is a _relation_. Only a _relating principle_, opposed\nin nature to all facts of feeling, an Ego, Soul, or Subject, is\ncompetent, by being present to both of the ideas alike, to hold them\ntogether and at the same time to keep them distinct.\"\n\nBut if the plain facts be admitted that the _pure_ idea of '_n_' is\n_never in the mind at all_, when '_m_' has once gone before; and that\nthe feeling '_n-different-from-m_' is itself an absolutely unique\npulse of thought, the bottom of this precious quarrel drops out and\nneither party is left with anything to fight about. Surely such a\nconsummation ought to be welcomed, especially when brought about, us\nhere, by a formulation of the facts which offers itself so naturally\nand unsophistically.[419]\n\nWe may, then, conclude our examination of the manner in which simple\ninvoluntary discrimination comes about, by saying, 1) that its vehicle\nis a thought possessed of a knowledge of both terms compared and of\ntheir difference; 2) that the necessary and sufficient condition (as\nthe human mind goes) for arousing this thought is that a thought or\nfeeling of one of the terms discriminated should, as immediately as\npossible, precede that in which the other term is known; and 3) and\nthat the thought which knows the second term will then also know the\ndifference (or in more difficult cases will be continuously succeeded\nby one which does know the difference) and both of the terms between\nwhich it holds.\n\nThis last thought need, however, not _be_ these terms with their\ndifference, nor _contain_ them. A man's thought can know and mean\nall sorts of things without those things getting bodily into it--the\ndistant, for example, the future, and the past.[420] The vanishing\nterm in the case which occupies us vanishes; but because it is the\nspecific term it is and nothing else, it leaves a specific influence\nbehind it when it vanishes, the effect of which is to determine the\nsucceeding pulse of thought in a perfectly characteristic way. Whatever\nconsciousness comes next must know the vanished term and call it\ndifferent from the one now there.\n\nHere we are at the end of our tether about involuntary discrimination\nof successively felt simple things; and must drop the subject,\nhopeless of seeing any deeper into it for the present, and turn to\ndiscriminations of a less simple sort.\n\n\nTHE PROCESS OF ANALYSIS.\n\n\nAnd first, of the discrimination of simultaneously felt impressions!\nOur first way of looking at a reality is often to suppose it simple,\nbut later we may learn to perceive it as compound. This new way of\nknowing the same reality may conveniently be called by the name of\n_Analysis_. It is manifestly one of the most incessantly performed of\nall our mental processes, so let us examine the conditions under which\nit occurs.\n\nI think we may safely lay down at the outset this fundamental\nprinciple, that _any total impression made on the mind must be\nunanalyzable, whose elements are never experienced apart_. The\ncomponents of an absolutely changeless group of not-elsewhere-occurring\nattributes could never be discriminated. If all cold things were wet\nand all wet things cold, if all hard things pricked our skin, and no\nother things did so; is it likely that we should discriminate between\ncoldness and wetness, and hardness and pungency respectively? If all\nliquids were transparent and no non-liquid were transparent, it would\nbe long before we had separate names for liquidity and transparency. If\nheat were a function of position above the earth's surface, so that the\nhigher a thing was the hotter it became, one word would serve for hot\nand high. We have, in fact, a number of sensations whose concomitants\nare almost invariably the same, and we find it, accordingly, almost\nimpossible to analyze them out from the totals in which they are found.\nThe contraction of the diaphragm and the expansion of the lungs, the\nshortening of certain muscles and the rotation of certain joints, are\nexamples. The converging of the eyeballs and the accommodation for near\nobjects are, for each distance of the object (in the common use of the\neyes) inseparably linked, and neither can (without a sort of artificial\ntraining which shall presently be mentioned) be felt by itself. We\nlearn that the _causes_ of such groups of feelings are multiple, and\ntherefore we frame theories about the composition of the feelings\nthemselves, by 'fusion,' 'integration,' 'synthesis,' or what not. But\nby direct introspection no analysis of them is ever made. A conspicuous\ncase will come to view when we treat of the emotions. Every emotion\nhas its 'expression,' of quick breathing, palpitating heart, flushed\nface, or the like. The expression gives rise to bodily feelings; and\nthe emotion is thus necessarily and invariably accompanied by these\nbodily feelings. The consequence is that it is impossible to apprehend\nit as a spiritual state by itself, or to analyze it away from the\nlower feelings in question. It is in fact impossible to prove that it\nexists as a distinct psychic fact. The present writer strongly doubts\nthat it does so exist. But those who are most firmly persuaded of its\nexistence must wait, to prove their point, until they can quote some as\nyet unfound pathological case of an individual who shall have emotions\nin a body in which either complete paralysis will have prevented their\nexpression, or complete an\u00e6sthesia will have made the latter unfelt.\n\nIn general, then, if an object affects us simultaneously in a number of\nways, _abcd_, we get a peculiar integral impression, which thereafter\ncharacterizes to our mind the individuality of that object, and becomes\nthe sign of its presence; and which is only resolved into _a, b, c, d,_\nrespectively by the aid of farther experiences. These we now may turn\nto consider.\n\n_If any single quality or constituent, a, of such an object, have\npreviously been known by us isolatedly,_ or have in any other manner\nalready become an object of separate acquaintance on our part, so that\nwe have an image of it, distinct or vague, in our mind, disconnected\nwith _bcd, then that constituent a may be analyzed out from the total\nimpression_. Analysis of a thing means separate attention to each of\nits parts. In Chapter XI we saw that one condition of attending to a\nthing was the formation from within of a separate image of that thing,\nwhich should, as it were, go out to meet the impression received.\nAttention being the condition of analysis, and separate imagination\nbeing the condition of attention, it follows also that separate\nimagination is the condition of analysis. _Only such elements as we\nare acquainted with, and can imagine, separately, can be discriminated\nwithin a total sense-impression_. The image seems to welcome its own\nmate from out of the compound, and to heighten the feeling thereof;\nwhereas it dampens and opposes the feeling of the other constituents;\nand thus the compound becomes broken for our consciousness into parts.\n\nAll the facts cited in Chapter XI, to prove that attention involves\ninward reproduction, go to prove this point as well. In looking for any\nobject in a room, for a book in a library, for example, we detect it\nthe more readily if, in addition to merely knowing its name, etc., we\ncarry in our mind a distinct image of its appearance. The assaf\u0153tida\nin 'Worcestershire sauce' is not obvious to anyone who has not tasted\nassaf\u0153tida _per se_. In a 'cold' color an artist would never be able to\nanalyze out the pervasive presence of _blue_, unless he had previously\nmade acquaintance with the color blue by itself. All the colors we\nactually experience are mixtures. Even the purest primaries always come\nto us with some white. Absolutely pure red or green or violet is never\nexperienced, and so can never be discerned in the so-called primaries\nwith which we have to deal: the latter consequently pass for pure.--The\nreader will remember how an overtone can only be attended to in the\nmidst of its consorts in the voice of a musical instrument, by sounding\nit previously alone. The imagination, being then full of it, hears\nthe like of it in the compound tone. Helmholtz, whose account of this\nobservation we formerly quoted, goes on to explain the difficulty of\nthe case in a way which beautifully corroborates the point I now seek\nto prove. He says:\n\n \"The ultimate simple elements of the sensation of tone, simple tones\n themselves, are rarely heard alone. Even those instruments by which\n they can be produced (as tuning-forks before resonance-chambers),\n when strongly excited, give rise to weak harmonic upper partials,\n partly within and partly without the ear.... Hence the opportunities\n are very scanty for impressing on our memory an exact and sure image\n of these simple elementary tones. But if the constituents are only\n indefinitely and vaguely known, the analysis of their sum into them\n must be correspondingly uncertain. If we do not know with certainty\n how much of the musical tone under consideration is to be attributed\n to its prime, we cannot but be uncertain as to what belongs to the\n partials. Consequently we must begin by making the individual elements\n which have to be distinguished individually audible, so as to obtain\n an entirely fresh recollection of the corresponding sensation, and the\n whole business requires undisturbed and concentrated attention. We are\n even without the ease that can be obtained by frequent repetitions of\n the experiment, such as we possess in the analysis of musical chords\n into their individual notes. In that case we hear the individual notes\n sufficiently often by themselves, whereas we rarely hear simple tones,\n and may almost be said never to hear the building up of a compound\n from its simple tones.\"[421]\n\n\nTHE PROCESS OF ABSTRACTION.\n\n\nVery few elements of reality are experienced by us in absolute\nisolation. The most that usually happens to a constituent _a_, of a\ncompound phenomenon _abcd_, is that its _strength_ relatively to _bcd_\nvaries from a maximum to a minimum; or that it appears linked with\n_other_ qualities, in other compounds, as _aefg_, or _ahik_. Either\nof these vicissitudes in the mode of our experiencing _a_ may, under\nfavorable circumstances, lead us to feel the difference between it and\nits concomitants, and to single it out--not absolutely, it is true, but\napproximately--and so to analyze the compound of which it is a part.\nThe act of singling out is then called _abstraction_, and the element\ndisengaged is an _abstract_.\n\nConsider the case of fluctuations of relative strength or intensity\nfirst. Let there be three grades of the compound, as _Abcd, abcd,_ and\n_abcD_. In passing between these compounds, the mind will feel shocks\nof difference. The differences, moreover, will serially increase, and\ntheir direction will be felt as of a distinct sort. The increase from\n_abcd_ to _Abcd_ is on the _a_ side; that to _abcD_ is on the _d_ side.\nAnd these two differences of direction are differently felt. I do not\nsay that this discernment of the _a_-direction from the _d_-direction\nwill give us an actual intuition either of _a_ or of _d_ in the\nabstract. But it leads us to _conceive_ or _postulate_ each of these\nqualities, and to define it as the _extreme_ of a certain direction.\n'Dry' wines and 'sweet' wines, for example, differ, and form a series.\nIt happens that we have an experience of sweetness pure and simple in\nthe taste of sugar, and this we can analyze out of the wine-taste.\nBut no one knows what 'dryness' tastes like, all by itself. It must,\nhowever, be something extreme in the dry direction; and we should\nprobably not fail to recognize it as the original of our abstract\nconception, in case we ever did come across it. In some such way we get\nto form notions of the flavor of meats, apart from their feeling to the\ntongue, or of that of fruits apart from their acidity, etc., and we\nabstract the touch of bodies as distinct from their temperature. We may\neven apprehend the quality of a muscle's contraction as distinguished\nfrom its extent, or one muscle's contraction from another's, as when,\nby practising with prismatic glasses, and varying our eyes' convergence\nwhilst our accommodation remains the same, we learn the direction\nin which our feeling of the convergence differs from that of the\naccommodation.\n\nBut the fluctuation in a quality's intensity is a less efficient aid\nto our abstracting of it than the diversity of the other qualities in\nwhose company it may appear. _What is associated now with one thing and\nnow with another tends to become dissociated from either, and to grow\ninto an object of abstract contemplation by the mind._ One might call\nthis the _law of dissociation by varying concomitants_. The practical\nresult of it will be to allow the mind which has thus dissociated and\nabstracted a character to analyze it out of a total, whenever it meets\nwith it again. The law has been frequently recognized by psychologists,\nthough I know of none who has given it the emphatic prominence in our\nmental history which it deserves. Mr. Spencer says:\n\n \"If the property A occurs here along with the properties B, C, D,\n there along with C, F, H, and again with E, G, B,... it must happen\n that by multiplication of experiences the impressions produced by\n these properties on the organism will be disconnected and rendered\n so far independent in the organism as the properties are in the\n environment, whence must eventually result a power to recognize\n attributes in themselves, apart from particular bodies.\"[422]\n\nAnd still more to the point Dr. Martineau, in the passage I have\nalready quoted, writes:\n\n \"When a red ivory ball, seen for the first time, has been withdrawn,\n it will leave a mental representation of itself, in which all that\n it simultaneously gave us will indistinguishably coexist. Let a white\n ball succeed to it; now, and not before, will an attribute detach\n itself, and the _color_, by force of contrast, be shaken out into\n the foreground. Let the white ball be replaced by an egg, and this\n new difference will bring the _form_ into notice from its previous\n slumber, and thus that which began by being simply an object cut out\n from the surrounding scene becomes for us first a _red_ object, then a\n _red round_ object, and so on.\"\n\n_Why_ the repetition of the character in combination with different\nwholes will cause it thus to break up its adhesion with any one of\nthem, and roll out, as it were, alone upon the table of consciousness,\nis a little of a mystery. One might suppose the nerve-processes of the\nvarious concomitants to neutralize or inhibit each other more or less\nand to leave the process of the common term alone distinctly active.\nMr. Spencer appears to think that the mere fact that the common term\nis repeated more often than any one of its associates will, of itself,\ngive it such a degree of intensity that its abstraction must needs\nensue.\n\nThis has a plausible sound, but breaks down when examined closely. For\nit is not always the often-repeated character which is first noticed\nwhen its concomitants have varied a certain number of times; it is\neven more likely to be the most novel of all the concomitants, which\nwill arrest the attention. If a boy has seen nothing all his life but\nsloops and schooners, he will probably never distinctly have singled\nout in his notion of 'sail' the character of being hung lengthwise.\nWhen for the first time he sees a square-rigged ship, the opportunity\nof extracting the lengthwise mode of hanging as a special accident, and\nof dissociating it from the general notion of sail, is offered. But\nthere are twenty chances to one that that will not be the form of the\nboy's consciousness. What he _notices_ will be the new and exceptional\ncharacter of being hung crosswise. He will go home and speak of\nthat, and perhaps never consciously formulate what the more familiar\npeculiarity consists in.\n\nThis mode of abstraction is realized on a very wide scale, because the\nelements of the world in which we find ourselves appear, as a matter of\nfact, here, there, and everywhere, and are changing their concomitants\nall the while. But on the other hand the abstraction is, so to speak,\nnever complete, the analysis of a compound never perfect, because\nno element is ever given to us absolutely alone, and we can never\ntherefore approach a compound with the image in our mind of any one of\nits components in a perfectly pure form. Colors, sounds, smells, are\njust as much entangled with other matter as are more formal elements of\nexperience, such as extension, intensity, effort, pleasure, difference,\nlikeness, harmony, badness, strength, and even consciousness itself.\nAll are embedded in one world. But by the fluctuations and permutations\nof which we have spoken, we come to form a pretty good notion of\nthe _direction_ in which each element differs from the rest, and so\nwe frame the notion of it as a _terminus_, and continue to mean it\nas an individual thing. In the case of many elements, the simple\nsensibles, like heat, cold, the colors, smells, etc., the extremes\nof the directions are almost touched, and in these instances we have\na comparatively exact perception of what it is we mean to abstract.\nBut even this is only an approximation; and in literal mathematical\nstrictness _all_ our abstracts must be confessed to be but imperfectly\nimaginable things. At bottom the process is one of _conception_, and is\neverywhere, even in the sphere of simple sensible qualities, the same\nas that by which we are usually understood to attain to the notions of\nabstract goodness, perfect felicity, absolute power, and the like: the\ndirect perception of a difference between compounds, and the imaginary\nprolongation of the direction of the difference to an ideal terminus,\nthe notion of which we fix and keep as one of our permanent subjects of\ndiscourse.\n\nThis is all that I can say usefully about abstraction, or about\nanalysis, to which it leads.\n\n\nTHE IMPROVEMENT OF DISCRIMINATION BY PRACTICE.\n\n\nIn all the cases considered hitherto I have supposed the differences\ninvolved to be so large as to be flagrant, and the discrimination,\nwhere successive, was treated as involuntary. But, so far from being\nalways involuntary, discriminations are often difficult in the extreme,\nand by most men never performed. Professor de Morgan, thinking, it is\ntrue, rather of conceptual than of perceptive discrimination, wrote,\nwittily enough:\n\n \"The great bulk of the illogical part of the educated\n community--whether majority or minority I know not; perhaps six of one\n and half a dozen of the other--have not power to make a distinction,\n and of course cannot be made to take a distinction, and of course\n never attempt to shake a distinction. With them all such things are\n evasions, subterfuges, come-offs, loop-holes, etc. They would hang a\n man for horse-stealing under a statute against sheep-stealing; and\n would laugh at you if you quibbled about the distinction between a\n horse and a sheep.\"[423]\n\nAny personal or practical interest, however, in the results to be\nobtained by distinguishing, makes one's wits amazingly sharp to\ndetect differences. The culprit himself is not likely to overlook the\ndifference between a horse and a sheep. And long training and practice\nin distinguishing has the same effect as personal interest. Both of\nthese agencies give to small amounts of objective difference the same\neffectiveness upon the mind that, under other circumstances, only large\nones would have. Let us seek to penetrate the _modus operandi_ of their\ninfluence--beginning with that of practice and habit.\n\nThat 'practice makes perfect' is notorious in the field of motor\naccomplishments. But motor accomplishments depend in part on sensory\ndiscrimination. Billiard-playing, rifle-shooting, tight-rope-dancing,\ndemand the most delicate appreciation of minute disparities of\nsensation, as well as the power to make accurately graduated muscular\nresponse thereto. In the purely sensorial field we have the well-known\nvirtuosity displayed by the professional buyers and testers of various\nkinds of goods. One man will distinguish by taste between the upper\nand the lower half of a bottle of old Madeira. Another will recognize,\nby feeling the flour in a barrel, whether the wheat was grown in Iowa\nor Tennessee. The blind deaf-mute, Laura Bridgman, had so improved her\ntouch as to recognize, after a year's interval, the hand of a person\nwho once had shaken hers; and her sister in misfortune, Julia Brace, is\nsaid to have been employed in the Hartford Asylum to sort the linen\nof its multitudinous inmates, after it came from the wash, by her\nwonderfully educated sense of smell.\n\nThe fact is so familiar that few, if any, psychologists have even\nrecognized it as needing explanation. They have seemed to think that\npractice must, in the nature of things, improve the delicacy of\ndiscernment, and have let the matter rest. At most they have said:\n\"Attention accounts for it; we attend more to habitual things, and what\nwe attend to we perceive more minutely.\" This answer is true, but too\ngeneral; it seems to me that we can be a little more precise.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_There are at least two distinct causes_ which we can see at work\nwhenever experience improves discrimination:\n\nFirst, the _terms_ whose difference comes to be felt contract disparate\nassociates and these help to drag them apart.\n\nSecond, the _difference_ reminds us of larger differences of the same\nsort, and these help us to notice it.\n\nLet us study the first cause first, and begin by supposing two\ncompounds, of ten elements apiece. Suppose no one element of either\ncompound to differ from the corresponding element of the other compound\nenough to be distinguished from it if the two are compared alone, and\nlet the amount of this imperceptible difference be called equal to 1.\nThe compounds will differ from each other, however, in ten different\nways; and, although each difference by itself might pass unperceived,\nthe total difference, equal to 10, may very well be sufficient to\nstrike the sense. In a word, _increasing the number of 'points'\ninvolved in a difference may excite our discrimination as effectually\nas increasing the amount of difference at any one point_. Two men whose\nmouth, nose, eyes, cheeks, chin, and hair, all differ slightly, will\nbe as little confounded by us, as two appearances of the same man one\nwith, and the other without, a false nose. The only contrast in the\ncases is that we can easily name the _point_ of difference in the one,\nwhilst in the other we cannot.\n\nTwo things, then, B and C, indistinguishable when compared together\nalone, may each contract adhesions with different associates, and the\ncompounds thus formed may, as wholes, be judged very distinct. _The\neffect of practice in increasing discrimination must then, in part\nbe due to the reinforcing effect, upon an original slight difference\nbetween the terms, of additional differences between the diverse\nassociates which they severally affect._ Let B and C be the terms: If\nA contract adhesions with B, and C with D, AB may appear very distinct\nfrom CD, though B and C _per se_ might have been almost identical.\n\nTo illustrate, how does one learn to distinguish claret from burgundy?\nProbably they have been drunk on different occasions. When we first\ndrank claret we heard it called by that name, we were eating such and\nsuch a dinner, etc. Next time we drink it, a dim reminder of all those\nthings chimes through us as we get the taste of the wine. When we try\nburgundy our first impression is that it is a kind of claret; but\nsomething falls short of full identification, and presently we hear it\ncalled burgundy. During the next few experiences, the discrimination\nmay still be uncertain--\"which,\" we ask ourselves, \"of the two wines is\nthis present specimen?\" But at last the claret-flavor recalls pretty\ndistinctly its own name, 'claret,' \"that wine I drank at So-and-so's\ntable,\" etc.; and the burgundy-flavor recalls the name burgundy and\nsome one else's table. _And only when this different_ SETTING _has\ncome to each is our discrimination between the two flavors solid and\nstable._ After a while the tables and other parts of the setting,\nbesides the name, grow so multifarious as not to come up distinctly\ninto consciousness; but _pari passu_ with this, the adhesion of each\nwine with its own _name_ becomes more and more inveterate, and at last\neach flavor suggests instantly and certainly its own name and nothing\nelse. The names differ far more than the flavors, and help to stretch\nthese latter farther apart. Some such process as this must go on in all\nour experience. Beef and mutton, strawberries and raspberries, odor of\nrose and odor of violet, contract different adhesions which reinforce\nthe differences already felt in the terms.\n\nThe reader may say that this has nothing to do with making us feel the\n_difference_ between the two terms. It is merely fixing, identifying,\nand so to speak substantializing, the _terms_. But what we feel as\ntheir _difference_, we should feel, even though we were unable to name\nor otherwise identify the terms.\n\nTo which I reply that I believe that the difference is always concreted\nand made to seem _more substantial_ by recognizing the terms. I went\nout for instance the other day and found that the snow just fallen\nhad a very odd look, different from the common appearance of snow. I\npresently called it a 'micaceous' look; and it seemed to me as if, the\nmoment I did so, the difference grew more distinct and fixed than it\nwas before. The other connotations of the word 'micaceous' dragged the\nsnow farther away from ordinary snow and seemed even to aggravate the\npeculiar look in question. I think some such effect as this on our way\nof feeling a difference will be very generally admitted to follow from\nnaming the terms between which it obtains; although I admit myself that\nit is difficult to show coercively that naming or otherwise identifying\nany given pair of hardly distinguishable terms is essential to their\nbeing felt as different at _first_.[424]\n\nI offer the explanation only as a partial one: it certainly is\nnot complete. Take the way in which _practice refines our local\ndiscrimination on the skin_, for example. Two compass-points touching\nthe palm of the hand must be kept, say, half an inch asunder in order\nnot to be mistaken for one point. But at the end of an hour or so of\npractice with them we can distinguish them as two, even when less than\na quarter of an inch apart. If the same two regions of the skin were\nconstantly touched, in this experience, the explanation we have been\nconsidering would perfectly apply. Suppose a line _a b c d e f_ of\npoints upon the skin. Suppose the local difference of feeling between\n_a_ and _f_ to be so strong as to be instantly recognized when the\npoints are simultaneously touched, but suppose that between _c_ and\n_d_ to be at first too small for this purpose. If we began by putting\nthe compasses on _a_ and _f_ and gradually contracted their opening,\nthe strong doubleness recognized at first would still be _suggested_,\nas the compass-points approached the positions _c_ and _d_; for the\npoint _e_ would be so near _f_, and so like it, as not to be aroused\nwithout _f_ also coming to mind. Similarly _d_ would recall _e_ and,\nmore remotely, _f_. In such wise _c--d_ would no longer be bare _c--d_,\nbut something more like _abc--def_,--palpably differing impressions.\nBut in actual experience the education can take place in a much less\nmethodical way, and we learn at last to discriminate _c_ and _d_\nwithout any constant adhesion being contracted between one of these\nspots and _ab_, and the other and _ef_. Volkmann's experiments show\nthis. He and Fechner, prompted by Czermak's observation that the skin\nof the blind was twice as discriminative as that of seeing folks,\nsought by experiment to show the effects of practice upon themselves.\nThey discovered that even within the limits of a single sitting the\ndistances at which points were felt double might fall at the end to\nconsiderably less than half of their magnitude at the beginning; and\nthat some, though not all, of this improved sensibility was retained\nnext day. But they also found that exercising one part of the skin in\nthis way improved the discrimination not only of the corresponding part\nof the opposite side of the body, but of the neighboring parts as well.\nThus, at the beginning of an experimental sitting, the compass-points\nhad to be a Paris line asunder, in order to be distinguished by the\nlittle-finger-tip. But after exercising the _other fingers_, it was\nfound that the little-finger-tip could discriminate points only half a\nline apart.[425] The same relation existed betwixt divers points of the\narm and hand.[426]\n\nHere it is clear that the cause which I first suggested fails to apply,\nand that we must invoke another.\n\nWhat are the exact experimental phenomena? The spots, as such, are\nnot distinctly located, and the difference, as such, between their\nfeelings, is not distinctly felt, until the interval is greater than\nthe minimum required for the mere perception of their _doubleness_.\nWhat we first feel is a bluntness, then a suspicion of doubleness,\nwhich presently becomes a distinct doubleness, and at last two\ndifferent-feeling and differently placed spots with a definite tract\nof space between them. Some of the places we try give us this latest\nstage of the perception immediately; some only give us the earliest;\nand between them are intermediary places. But as soon as the _image of\nthe doubleness_ as it is felt in the more discriminative places gets\nlodged in our memory, it helps us to find its like in places where\notherwise we might have missed it, much as the recent hearing of an\n'overtone' helps us to detect the latter in a compound sound (_supra_,\npp. 439-40). A dim doubleness grows clearer by being assimilated to\nthe image of a distincter doubleness felt a moment before. It is\ninterpreted by means of the latter. And so is any difference, like any\nother sort of impression, more easily perceived when we carry in our\nmind to meet it a distinct image of what sort of a thing we are to look\nfor, of what its nature is likely to be.[427]\n\n_These two processes_, the reinforcement of the terms by disparate\nassociates, and the filling of the memory with past differences, of\nsimilar direction with the present one, but of more conspicuous amount,\n_are the only explanations I can offer of the effects of education\nin this line_. What is accomplished by both processes is essentially\nthe same thing: they make small differences affect us as if they were\nlarge ones--that large differences should affect us as they do remains\nan inexplicable fact. In principle these two processes ought to be\nsufficient to account for all possible cases. Whether in fact they are\nsufficient, whether there be no residual factor which we have failed to\ndetect and analyze out, I will not presume to decide.\n\n\nPRACTICAL INTERESTS LIMIT DISCRIMINATION.\n\n\nIt will be remembered that on page 509 personal interest was named\nas a sharpener of discrimination alongside of practice. But personal\ninterest probably acts through attention and not in any immediate or\nspecific way. A distinction in which we have a practical stake is one\nwhich we concentrate our minds upon and which we are on the look-out\nfor. We draw it frequently, and we get all the benefits of so doing,\nbenefits which have just been explained. Where, on the other hand,\na distinction has no practical interest, where we gain nothing by\nanalyzing a feature from out of the compound total of which it forms\na part, we contract a habit of leaving it unnoticed, and at last grow\ncallous to its presence. Helmholtz was the first psychologist who dwelt\non these facts as emphatically as they deserve, and I can do no better\nthan quote his very words.\n\n \"We are accustomed,\" he says, \"in a large number of cases where\n sensations of different kinds, or in different parts of the body,\n exist simultaneously, to recognize that they are distinct as soon as\n they are perceived, and to direct our attention at will to any one of\n them separately. Thus at any moment we can be separately conscious of\n what we see, of what we hear, of what we feel; and distinguish what we\n feel in a finger or in the great toe, whether pressure, gentle touch,\n or warmth. So also in the field of vision. Indeed, as I shall endeavor\n to show in what follows, we readily distinguish our sensations\n from one another _when we have a precise knowledge_ that they are\n composite, as, for example, when we have become certain, by frequently\n repeated and invariable experience, that our present sensation arises\n from the simultaneous action of many independent stimuli, each of\n which usually excites an equally well-known individual sensation.\"\n\nThis, it will be observed, is only another statement of our law, that\nthe only individual components which we can pick out of compounds are\nthose of which we have independent knowledge in a separate form.\n\n \"This induces us to think that nothing can be easier, when a number of\n different sensations are simultaneously excited, than to distinguish\n them individually from each other, and that this is an innate faculty\n of our minds.\n\n \"Thus we find, among other things, that it is quite a matter of course\n to hear separately the different musical tones which come to our\n senses collectively; and we expect that in every case when two of them\n occur together, we shall be able to do the like.\n\n \"The matter becomes very different when we set to work to investigate\n the more unusual cases of perception, and seek more completely to\n understand the conditions under which the above-mentioned distinction\n can or cannot be made, as is the case in the physiology of the senses.\n We then become aware that _two different kinds or grades must be\n distinguished in our becoming conscious of a sensation_. The lower\n grade of this consciousness is that in which the influence of the\n sensation in question makes itself felt only in the conceptions we\n form of external things and processes, and assists in determining\n them. This can take place without our needing, or indeed being\n able, to ascertain to what particular part of our sensations we owe\n this or that circumstance in our perceptions. In this case we will\n say that the impression of the sensation in question is _perceived\n synthetically_. The second higher grade is when we immediately\n distinguish the sensation in question as an existing part of the\n sum of the sensations excited in us. We will say, then, that the\n sensation is _perceived analytically_. The two cases must be carefully\n distinguished from each other.\"[428]\n\nBy the sensation being perceived synthetically, Helmholtz means that\nit is not discriminated at all, but only felt in a mass with other\nsimultaneous sensations. That it _is_ felt there he thinks is proved\nby the fact that our _judgment_ of the total will change if anything\noccurs to alter the _outer cause_ of the sensation.[429] The following\npages from an earlier edition show what the concrete cases of synthetic\nperception and what those of analytic perception are wont to be:\n\n \"In the use of our senses, practice and experience play a much larger\n part than we ordinarily suppose. Our sensations are in the first\n instance important only in so far as they enable us to judge rightly\n of the world about us; and our practice in discriminating between them\n usually goes only just far enough to meet this end. We are, however,\n too much disposed to think that we must be immediately conscious of\n every ingredient of our sensations. This natural prejudice is due\n to the fact that we are indeed conscious, immediately and without\n effort, of everything in our sensations which has a bearing upon those\n practical purposes, for the sake of which we wish to know the outer\n world. Daily and hourly, during our whole life, we keep our senses in\n training for this end exclusively, and for its sake our experiences\n are accumulated. But even within the sphere of these sensations, which\n do correspond to outer things, training and practice make themselves\n felt. It is well known how much finer and quicker the painter is in\n discriminating colors and illuminations than one whose eye is not\n trained in these matters; how the musician and the musical-instrument\n maker perceive with ease and certainty differences of pitch and tone\n which for the ear of the layman do not exist; and how even in the\n inferior realms of cookery and wine-judging it takes a long habit of\n comparing to make a master. But more strikingly still is seen the\n effect of practice when we pass to sensations which depend only on\n inner conditions of our organs, and which, not corresponding at all to\n outer things or to their effects upon us, are therefore of no value\n in giving us information about the outer world. The physiology of the\n sense-organs has, in recent times, made us acquainted with a number\n of such phenomena, discovered partly in consequence of theoretic\n speculations and questionings, partly by individuals, like Goethe and\n Purkinje, specially endowed by nature with talent for this sort of\n observation. These so-called subjective phenomena are extraordinarily\n hard to find; and when they are once found, special aids for the\n attention are almost always required to observe them. It is usually\n hard to notice the phenomenon again even when one knows already the\n description of the first observer. The reason is that we are not only\n unpractised in singling out these subjective sensations, but that\n we are, on the contrary, most thoroughly trained in abstracting our\n attention from them, because they would only hinder us in observing\n the outer world. Only when their intensity is so strong as actually to\n hinder us in observing the outer world do we begin to notice them; or\n they may sometimes, in dreaming and delirium, form the starting point\n of hallucinations.\n\n \"Let me give a few well-known cases, taken from physiological optics,\n as examples. Every eye probably contains _musc\u00e6 volitantes_, so\n called; these are fibres, granules, etc., floating in the vitreous\n humor, throwing their shadows on the retina, and appearing in the\n field of vision as little dark moving spots. They are most easily\n detected by looking attentively at a broad, bright, blank surface\n like the sky. Most persons who have not had their attention expressly\n called to the existence of these figures are apt to notice them for\n the first time when some ailment befalls their eyes and attracts\n their attention to the subjective state of these organs. The usual\n complaint then is that the _musc\u00e6 volitantes_ came in with the malady;\n and this often makes the patients very anxious about these harmless\n things, and attentive to all their peculiarities. It is then hard work\n to make them believe that these figures have existed throughout all\n their previous life, and that all healthy eyes contain them. I knew\n an old gentleman who once had occasion to cover one of his eyes which\n had accidentally become diseased, and who was then in no small degree\n shocked at finding that his other eye was totally blind; with a sort\n of blindness, moreover, which must have lasted years, and yet he never\n was aware of it.\n\n \"Who, besides, would believe without performing the appropriate\n experiments, that when one of his eyes is closed there is a great gap,\n the so-called 'blind spot,' not far from the middle of the field of\n the open eye, in which he sees nothing at all, but which he fills out\n with his imagination? Mariotte, who was led by theoretic speculations\n to discover this phenomenon, awakened no small surprise when he\n showed it at the court of Charles II. of England. The experiment was\n at that time repeated with many variations, and became a fashionable\n amusement. The gap is, in fact, so large that seven full moons\n alongside of each other would not cover its diameter, and that a\n man's face 6 or 7 feet off disappears within it. In our ordinary use\n of vision this great hole in the field fails utterly to be noticed;\n because our eyes are constantly wandering, and the moment an object\n interests us we turn them full upon it. So it follows that the object\n which at any actual moment excites our attention never happens to\n fall upon this gap, and thus it is that we never grow conscious of\n the blind spot in the field. In order to notice it, we must first\n purposely rivet our gaze upon one object and then move about a second\n object in the neighborhood of the blind spot, striving meanwhile to\n _attend_ to this latter without moving the direction of our gaze\n from the first object. This runs counter to all our habits, and is\n therefore a difficult thing to accomplish. With some people it is\n even an impossibility. But only when it is accomplished do we see the\n second object vanish and convince ourselves of the existence of this\n gap.\n\n \"Finally, let me refer to the double images of ordinary binocular\n vision. Whenever we look at a point with both eyes, all objects on\n this side of it or beyond it appear double. It takes but a moderate\n effort of observation to ascertain this fact; and from this we may\n conclude that we have been seeing the far greater part of the external\n world double all our lives, although numbers of persons are unaware\n of it, and are in the highest degree astonished when it is brought\n to their attention. As a matter of fact, we never _have_ seen in\n this double fashion any particular object upon which our attention\n was directed at the time; for upon such objects we always converge\n both eyes. In the habitual use of our eyes, our attention is always\n withdrawn from such objects as give us double images at the time; this\n is the reason why we so seldom learn that these images exist. In order\n to find them we must set our attention a new and unusual task; we must\n make it explore the lateral parts of the field of vision, not, as\n usual, to find what objects are there, but to analyze our sensations.\n Then only do we notice this phenomenon.[430]\n\n \"The same difficulty which is found in the observation of subjective\n sensations to which no external object corresponds is found also in\n the analysis of compound sensations which correspond to a single\n object. Of this sort are many of our sensations of sound. When the\n sound of a violin, no matter how often we hear it, excites over and\n over again in our ear the same sum of partial tones, the result is\n that our feeling of this sum of tones ends by becoming for our mind a\n mere sign for the voice of the violin. Another combination of partial\n tones becomes the sensible sign of the voice of a clarionet, etc. And\n the oftener any such combination is heard, the more accustomed we grow\n to perceiving it as an integral total, and the harder it becomes to\n analyze it by immediate observation. I believe that this is one of the\n principal reasons why the analysis of the notes of the human voice in\n singing is relatively so difficult. Such fusions of many sensations\n into what, to conscious perception, seems a simple whole, abound in\n all our senses.\n\n \"Physiological optics affords other interesting examples. The\n perception of the bodily form of a near object comes about through the\n combination of two diverse pictures which the eyes severally receive\n from it, and whose diversity is due to the different position of each\n eye, altering the perspective view of what is before it. Before the\n invention of the stereoscope this explanation could only be assumed\n hypothetically; but it can now be proved at any moment by the use of\n the instrument. Into the stereoscope we insert two flat drawings,\n representing the two perspective views of the two eyes, in such a\n manner that each eye sees its own view in the proper place; and we\n obtain, in consequence, the perception of a single extended solid, as\n complete and vivid as if we had the real object before us.\n\n \"Now we can, it is true, by shutting one eye after the other and\n attending to the point, recognize the difference in the pictures--at\n least when it is not too small. But, for the stereoscopic perception\n of solidity, pictures suffice whose difference is so extraordinarily\n slight as hardly to be recognized by the most careful comparison;\n and it is certain that, in our ordinary careless observing of bodily\n objects, we never dream that the perception is due to two perspective\n views fused into one, because it is an entirely different kind of\n perception from that of either flat perspective view by itself. It\n is certain, therefore, that two different sensations of our two eyes\n fuse into a third perception entirely different from either. Just\n as partial tones fuse into the perception of a certain instrument's\n voice; and just as we learn to separate the partial tones of a\n vibrating string by pinching a nodal point and letting them sound\n in isolation; so we learn to separate the images on the two eyes by\n opening and closing them alternately.\n\n \"There are other much more complex instances of the way in which\n many sensations may combine to serve as the basis of a quite simple\n perception. When, for example we perceive an object in a certain\n _direction_, we must somehow be impressed by the fact that certain\n of our optic nerve-fibres, and no others, are impressed by its\n light. Furthermore, we must rightly judge the position of our eyes\n in our head, and of our head upon our body, by means of feelings in\n our eye-muscles and our neck-muscles respectively. If any of these\n processes is disturbed we get a false perception of the object's\n position. The nerve-fibres can be changed by a prism before the eye;\n or the eyeball's position changed by pressing the organ towards one\n side; and such experiments show that, for the simple seeing of the\n position of an object, sensations of these two sorts must concur. But\n it would be quite impossible to gather this directly from the sensible\n impression which the object makes. Even when we have made experiments\n and convinced ourselves in every possible manner that such must be\n the fact, it still remains hidden from our immediate introspective\n observation.\n\n \"These examples\" [of 'synthetic perception,' perception in which each\n contributory sensation is felt _in_ the whole, and is a co-determinant\n of what the whole shall be, but does not attract the attention to its\n separate self] \"may suffice to show the vital part which the direction\n of attention and practice in observing play in sense-perception. To\n apply this now to the ear. The ordinary task which our ear has to\n solve when many sounds assail it at once is to discern the voices of\n the several sounding bodies or instruments engaged; beyond this it has\n no objective interest in analyzing. We wish to know, when many men\n are speaking together, what each one says, when many instruments and\n voices combine, which melody is executed by each. Any deeper analysis,\n such as that of each separate note into its partial tones (although\n it might be performed by the same means and faculty of hearing as the\n first analysis) would tell us nothing new about the sources of sound\n actually present, but might lead us astray as to their number. For\n this reason we confine our attention in analyzing a mass of sound to\n the several instruments' voices, and expressly abstain, as it were,\n from discriminating the elementary components of the latter. In this\n last sort of discrimination we are as unpractised as we are, on the\n contrary, well trained in the former kind.\"[431]\n\nAfter all we have said, no comment seems called for upon these\ninteresting and important facts and reflections of Helmholtz.\n\n\nREACTION-TIME AFTER DISCRIMINATION.\n\n\nThe _time required for discrimination_ has been made a subject of\nexperimental measurement. Wundt calls it _Unterscheidungszeit_. His\nsubjects (whose simple reaction-time--see p. 85 ff.--had previously\nbeen determined) were required to make a movement, always the same,\nthe instant they discerned _which_ of two or more signals they\nreceived. The exact time of the signal and that of the movement were\nautomatically registered by a galvanic chronoscope. The particular\nsignal to be received was unknown in advance, and the excess of time\noccupied by those reactions in which its character had first to be\ndiscerned, over the simple reaction-time, measured, according to Wundt,\nthe time required for the act of discrimination. It was found longer\nwhen four different signals were irregularly used than when only\ntwo were used. In the former case it averaged, for three observers\nrespectively (the signals being the sudden appearance of a black or of\na white object),\n\n    0.050 sec.;\n    0.047 sec.\n    0.079 sec.\n\nIn the latter case, a red and a green signal being added to the former\nones, it became, for the same observers,\n\n    0.157;\n    0.073;\n    0.132.[432]\n\nLater, in Wundt's Laboratory, Herr Tischer made many careful\nexperiments after the same method, where the facts to be discriminated\nwere the different degrees of loudness in the sound which served as\na signal. I subjoin Herr Tischer's table of results, explaining that\neach vertical column after the first gives the average results obtained\nfrom a distinct individual, and that the figure in the first column\nstands for the number of possible loudnesses that might be expected in\nthe particular series of reactions made. The times are expressed in\nthousandths of a second.\n\n    2 |  6    |  8.5  |  10.75 |  10.7 |  33   |  53\n    3 |  10   |  14.4 |  19.9  |  22.7 |  58.5 |  57.8\n    4 |  16.7 |  20.8 |  29    |  29.1 |  75   |  84\n    5 |  25.6 |  31   |  ...   |  40.1 |  95.5 |  138[433]\n\n\n\nThe interesting points here are the great individual variations, and\nthe rapid way in which the time for discrimination increases with the\nnumber of possible terms to discriminate. The individual variations are\nlargely due to want of practice in the particular task set, but partly\nalso to discrepancies in the psychic process. One gentleman said,\nfor example, that in the experiments with three sounds, he kept the\nimage of the middle one ready in his mind, and compared what he heard\nas either louder, lower, or the same. His discrimination among three\npossibilities became thus very similar to a discrimination between\ntwo.[434]\n\nMr. J. M. Cattell found he could get no results by this method,[435]\nand reverted to one used by observers previous to Wundt and which\nWundt had rejected. This is the _einfache Wahlmethode_, as Wundt calls\nit. The reacter awaits the signal and reacts if it is of one sort, but\nomits to act if it is of another sort. The reaction thus occurs after\ndiscrimination; the motor impulse cannot be sent to the hand until the\nsubject knows what the signal is. The nervous impulse, as Mr. Cattell\nsays, must probably travel to the cortex and excite changes there,\ncausing in consciousness the perception of the signal. These changes\noccupy the time of discrimination (or perception-time, as it is called\nby Mr. C.) But _then_ a nervous impulse must descend from the cortex\nto the lower motor centre which stands primed and ready to discharge;\nand this, as Mr. C. says, gives a will-time as well. The total\nreaction-time thus includes both 'will-time' and 'discrimination-time.'\nBut as the centrifugal and centripetal processes occupying these two\ntimes respectively are probably about the same, and the time used\nin the cortex is about equally divided between the perception of\nthe signal and the preparation of the motor discharge, if we divide\nit equally between perception (discrimination) and volition, the\nerror cannot be great.[436] We can moreover change the nature of the\nperception without altering the will-time, and thus investigate with\nconsiderable thoroughness the length of the perception-time.\n\nGuided by these principles, Prof. Cattell found the time required for\ndistinguishing a white signal from no signal to be, in two observers:\n\n    0.030 sec. and 0.050 sec;\n\nthat for distinguishing one color from another was similarly:\n\n    0.100 and 0.110;\n\nthat for distinguishing a certain color from ten other colors:\n\n    0.105 and 0.117;\n\nthat for distinguishing the letter A in ordinary print from the letter\nZ:\n\n    0.142 and 0.137;\n\nthat for distinguishing a given letter from all the rest of the alphabet\n(not reacting until that letter appeared)\n\n    0.119 and 0.116;\n\nthat for distinguishing a word from any of twenty-five other words, from\n\n    0.118 sec. to 0.158 sec.\n\nThe difference depending on the length of the words and the familiarity\nof the language to which they belonged.\n\nProf. Cattell calls attention to the fact that the time for\ndistinguishing a word is often but little more than that for\ndistinguishing a letter:\n\n \"We do not, therefore, distinguish separately the letters of which a\n word is composed, but the word as a whole. The application of this in\n teaching children to read is evident.\"\n\nHe also finds a great difference in the time with which various letters\nare distinguished, E being particularly bad.[437]\n\nI have, in describing these experiments, followed the example of\nprevious writers and spoken as if the process by which the nature of\nthe signal determines the reaction were identical with the ordinary\nconscious process of discriminative perception and volition. I am\nconvinced, however, that this is not the case; and that although the\nresults are the same, the form of consciousness is quite different.\nThe reader will remember my contention (_supra_, p. 90 ff.) that the\nsimple reaction-time (usually supposed to include a conscious process\nof perceiving) really measures nothing but a reflex act. Anyone who\nwill perform reactions with discrimination will easily convince\nhimself that the process here also is far more like a reflex, than\nlike a deliberate, operation. I have made, with myself and students,\na large number of measurements where the signal expected was in one\nseries a touch _somewhere_ on the skin of the back and head, and in\nanother series a spark _somewhere_ in the field of view. The hand\nhad to move as quickly as possible towards the place of the touch\nor the spark. It did so infallibly, and sensibly instantly; whilst\nboth place and movement seemed to be _perceived_ only a moment\nlater, in memory. These experiments were undertaken for the express\npurpose of ascertaining whether the movement at the sight of the\nspark was discharged _immediately_ by the visual perception, or\nwhether a 'motor-idea' had to intervene between the perception of the\nspark and the reaction.[438] The first thing that was manifest to\nintrospection was that no perception or idea of _any_ sort preceded\nthe reaction. It jumped of itself, whenever the signal came; and\nperception was retrospective. We must suppose, then, that the state of\neager expectancy of a certain definite range of possible discharges,\ninnervates a whole set of paths in advance, so that when a particular\nsensation comes it is drafted into its appropriate motor outlet too\nquickly for the perceptive process to be aroused. In the experiments\nI describe, the conditions were most favorable for rapidity, for the\nconnection between the signals and their movements might almost be\ncalled innate. It is instinctive to move the hand towards a thing seen\nor a skin-spot touched. But where the movement is _conventionally_\nattached to the signal, there would be more chance for delay, and\nthe amount of practice would then determine the speed. This is well\nshown in Tischer's results, quoted on p. 524, where the most practised\nobserver, Tischer himself, reacted in one eighth of the time needed\nby one of the others.[439] But what all investigators have aimed to\ndetermine in these experiments is the _minimum_ time. I trust I have\nsaid enough to convince the student that this minimum time by no means\nmeasures what we consciously know as discrimination. It only measures\nsomething which, under the experimental conditions, leads to a similar\nresult. But it is the bane of psychology to suppose that where results\nare similar, processes must be the same. Psychologists are too apt to\nreason as geometers would, if the latter were to say that the diameter\nof a circle is the same thing as its semi-circumference, because,\nforsooth, they terminate in the same two points.[440]\n\n\nTHE PERCEPTION OF LIKENESS.\n\n\nThe perception of likeness is practically very much bound up with\nthat of difference. That is to say, the only differences we note _as_\ndifferences, and estimate quantitatively, and arrange along a scale,\nare those comparatively limited differences which we find between\nmembers of a common genus. The force of gravity and the color of this\nink are things it never occurred to me to compare until now that I\nam casting about for examples of the incomparable. Similarly the\nelastic quality of this india-rubber band, the comfort of last night's\nsleep, the good that can be done with a legacy, these are things too\ndiscrepant to have ever been compared ere now. Their relation to each\nother is less that of difference than of mere logical negativity. To be\nfound _different_, things must as a rule have some commensurability,\nsome aspect in common, which suggests the possibility of their\nbeing treated in the same way. This is of course not a theoretic\nnecessity--for any distinction may be called a 'difference,' if one\nlikes--but a practical and linguistic remark.\n\nThe _same things, then, which arouse the perception of difference\nusually arouse that of resemblance also_. And the analysis of them,\nso as to define wherein the difference and wherein the resemblance\nrespectively consists, is called _comparison_. If we start to deal with\nthe things as simply the same or alike, we are liable to be surprised\nby the difference. If we start to treat them as merely different, we\nare apt to discover how much they are alike. _Difference, commonly so\ncalled, is thus between species of a genus._ And the faculty by which\nwe perceive the resemblance upon which the genus is based, is just\nas ultimate and inexplicable a mental endowment as that by which we\nperceive the differences upon which the species depend. There is a\nshock of likeness when we pass from one thing to another which in the\nfirst instance we merely discriminate numerically, but, at the moment\nof bringing our attention to bear, perceive to be _similar_ to the\nfirst; just as there is a shock of difference when we pass between two\ndissimilars.[441] The objective extent of the likeness, just like that\nof the difference, determines the magnitude of the shock. The likeness\nmay be so evanescent, or the basis of it so habitual and little liable\nto be attended to, that it will escape observation altogether. Where,\nhowever, we find it, there we make a genus of the things compared; and\ntheir discrepancies and incommensurabilities in other respects can\nthen figure as the _differential_ of so many species. As 'thinkables'\nor 'existents' even the smoke of a cigarette and the worth of a\ndollar-bill are comparable--still more so as 'perishables,' or as\n'enjoyables.'\n\nMuch, then, of what I have said of difference in the course of this\nchapter will apply, with a simple change of language, to resemblance as\nwell. We go through the world, carrying on the two functions abreast,\ndiscovering differences in the like, and likenesses in the different.\nTo abstract the _ground_ of either difference or likeness (where it\nis not ultimate) demands an analysis of the given objects into their\nparts. So that all that was said of the dependence of analysis upon a\npreliminary separate acquaintance with the character to be abstracted,\nand upon its having varied concomitants, finds a place in the\npsychology of resemblance as well as in that of difference.\n\nBut when all is said and done about the conditions which favor our\nperception of resemblance and our abstraction of its ground, the\ncrude fact remains, that _some people are far more sensitive to\nresemblances, and far more ready to point out wherein they consist,\nthan others are_. They are the wits, the poets, the inventors, the\nscientific men, the practical geniuses. _A native talent for perceiving\nanalogies_ is reckoned by Prof. Bain, and by others before and after\nhim, as _the leading fact in genius of every order_. But as this\nchapter is already long, and as the question of genius had better wait\ntill Chapter XXII, where its practical consequences can be discussed at\nthe same time, I will say nothing more at present either about it or\nabout the faculty of noting resemblances. If the reader feels that this\nfaculty is having small justice done it at my hands, and that it ought\nto be wondered at and made much more of than has been done in these\nlast few pages, he will perhaps find some compensation when that later\nchapter is reached. I think I emphasize it enough when I call it one of\nthe ultimate foundation-pillars of the intellectual life, the others\nbeing Discrimination, Retentiveness, and Association.\n\n\nTHE MAGNITUDE OF DIFFERENCES.\n\n\nOn page 489 I spoke of differences being greater or less, and of\ncertain groups of them being susceptible of a linear arrangement\nexhibiting serial _increase_. A series whose terms grow more and more\ndifferent from the starting point is one whose terms grow less and\nless like it. They grow more and more like it if you read them the\nother way. So that likeness and unlikeness to the starting point are\nfunctions inverse to each other, of the position of any term in such a\nseries.\n\nProfessor Stumpf introduces the word _distance_ to denote the position\nof a term in any such series. The less like is the term, the more\ndistant it is from the starting point. The ideally regular series of\nthis sort would be one in which the distances--the steps of resemblance\nor difference--between all pairs of adjacent terms were equal. This\nwould be an evenly gradated series. And it is an interesting fact in\npsychology that we are able, in many departments of our sensibility,\nto arrange the terms without difficulty in this evenly gradated way.\nDifferences, in other words, between diverse pairs of terms, _a_ and\n_b_, for example, on the one hand, and _c_ and _d_ on the other,[442]\ncan be judged equal or diverse in amount. The distances from one term\nto another in the series are equal. Linear magnitudes and musical notes\nare perhaps the impressions which we easiest arrange in this way.\nNext come shades of light or color, which we have little difficulty\nin arranging by steps of difference of sensibly equal value. Messrs.\nPlateau and Delb\u0153uf have found it fairly easy to determine what shade\nof gray will be judged by every one to hit the exact middle between a\ndarker and a lighter shade.[443]\n\nHow now do we so readily recognize the equality of two differences\nbetween different pairs of terms? or, more briefly, how do we recognize\nthe _magnitude_ of a difference at all? Prof. Stumpf discusses this\nquestion in an interesting way;[444] and comes to the conclusion that\nour feeling for the size of a difference, and our perception that\nthe terms of two diverse pairs are equally or unequally distant from\neach other, can be explained by no simpler mental process, but, like\nthe shock of difference itself, must be regarded as for the present\nan unanalyzable endowment of the mind. This acute author rejects in\nparticular the notion which would make our judgment of the distance\nbetween two sensations depend upon our _mentally traversing the\nintermediary steps_. We may of course do so, and may often find it\nuseful to do so, as in musical intervals, or figured lines, But we need\nnot do so; and nothing more is really _required_ for a comparative\njudgment of the amount of a 'distance' than three or four impressions\nbelonging to a common kind.\n\nThe vanishing of all perceptible difference between two numerically\ndistinct things makes them _qualitatively the same_ or _equal_.\nEquality, or _qualitative_ (as distinguished from numerical)\n_identity_, is thus nothing but the _extreme degree of likeness_.[445]\n\nWe saw above (p. 492) that some persons consider that the difference\nbetween two objects is constituted of two things, viz., their absolute\nidentity in certain respects, _plus_ their absolute non-identity in\nothers. We saw that this theory would not apply to all cases (p. 493).\nSo here any theory which would base likeness on identity, and not\nrather identity on likeness, must fail. It is supposed perhaps, by\nmost people, that two resembling things owe their resemblance to their\nabsolute identity in respect of some attribute or attributes, combined\nwith the absolute non-identity of the rest of their being. This, which\nmay be true of compound things, breaks down when we come to simple\nimpressions.\n\n \"When we compare a deep, a middle, and a high note, e.g. _C, f_ sharp,\n _a'''_, we remark immediately that the first is less like the third\n than the second is. The same would be true of _c d e_ in the same\n region of the scale. Our very calling one of the notes a 'middle'\n note is the expression of a judgment of this sort. But where here is\n the identical and where the non-identical part? We cannot think of\n the overtones; for the first-named three notes have none in common,\n at least not on musical instruments. Moreover, we might take simple\n tones, and still our judgment would be unhesitatingly the same,\n provided the tones were not chosen too close together.... Neither can\n it be said that the identity consists in their all being sounds, and\n not a sound, a smell, and a color, respectively. For this identical\n attribute comes to each of them in equal measure, whereas the first,\n being less like the third than the second is, ought, on the terms\n of the theory we are criticising, to have less of the identical\n quality.... It thus appears impracticable to define all possible cases\n of likeness as partial identity _plus_ partial disparity; and it is\n vain to seek in all cases for identical elements.\"[446]\n\nAnd as all compound resemblances are based on simple ones like these,\nit follows that likeness _\u00fcberhaupt_ must not be conceived as a special\ncomplication of identity, but rather that identity must be conceived as\na special degree of likeness, according to the proposition expressed at\nthe outset of the paragraph that precedes. Likeness and difference are\nultimate relations perceived. As a matter of fact, no two sensations,\nno two objects of all those we know, are in scientific rigor identical.\nWe call those of them identical whose difference is unperceived.\nOver and above this we have a _conception_ of absolute sameness, it\nis true, but this, like so many of our conceptions (cf. p. 508), is\nan ideal construction got by following a certain direction of serial\nincrease to its maximum supposable extreme. It plays an important\npart, among other permanent meanings possessed by us, in our ideal\nintellectual constructions. But it plays no part whatever in explaining\npsychologically how we perceive likenesses between simple things.\n\n\nTHE MEASURE OF DISCRIMINATIVE SENSIBILITY.\n\n\nIn 1860, Professor G. T. Fechner of Leipzig, a man of great learning\nand subtlety of mind, published two volumes entitled 'Psychophysik,'\ndevoted to establishing and explaining a law called by him the\npsychophysic law, which he considered to express the deepest and most\nelementary relation between the mental and the physical worlds. It is\na formula for the connection between the amount of our sensations and\nthe amount of their outward causes. Its simplest expression is, that\nwhen we pass from one sensation to a stronger one of the same kind, the\nsensations increase proportionally to the logarithms of their exciting\ncauses. Fechner's book was the starting point of a new department of\nliterature, which it would be perhaps impossible to match for the\nqualities of thoroughness and subtlety, but of which, in the humble\nopinion of the present writer, the proper psychological outcome is just\n_nothing_. The psychophysic law controversy has prompted a good many\nseries of observations on sense-discrimination, and has made discussion\nof them very rigorous. It has also cleared up our ideas about the best\nmethods for getting average results, when particular observations vary;\nand beyond this it has done nothing; but as it is a chapter in the\nhistory of our science, some account of it is here due to the reader.\n\nFechner's train of thought has been popularly expounded a great many\ntimes. As I have nothing new to add, it is but just that I should quote\nan existing account. I choose the one given by Wundt in his Vorlesungen\n\u00fcber Menschen und Thierseele, 1863, omitting a good deal:\n\n \"How much stronger or weaker one sensation is than another, we are\n never able to say. Whether the sun be a hundred or a thousand times\n brighter than the moon, a cannon a hundred or a thousand times louder\n than a pistol, is beyond our power to estimate. The natural measure of\n sensation which we possess enables us to judge of the equality, of the\n 'more' and of the 'less,' but not of 'how many times more or less.'\n This natural measure is, therefore, as good as no measure at all,\n whenever it becomes a question of accurately ascertaining intensities\n in the sensational sphere. Even though it may teach us in a general\n way that with the strength of the outward physical stimulus the\n strength of the concomitant sensation waxes or wanes, still it leaves\n us without the slightest knowledge of whether the sensation varies in\n exactly the same proportion as the stimulus itself, or at a slower\n or a more rapid rate. In a word, we know by our natural sensibility\n nothing of the _law_ that connects the sensation and its outward cause\n together. To find this law we must first find an exact measure for the\n sensation itself; we must be able to say: A stimulus of strength _one_\n begets a sensation of strength _one_; a stimulus of strength _two_\n begets a sensation of strength _two_, or _three_, or _four_, etc. But\n to do this we must first know what a sensation two, three, or four\n times greater than another signifies....\n\n \"Space magnitudes we soon learn to determine exactly because we only\n measure one space against another. The measure of mental magnitudes\n is far more difficult.... But the problem of measuring the magnitude\n of _sensations_ is the first step in the bold enterprise of making\n mental magnitudes altogether subject to exact measurement.... Were\n our whole knowledge limited to the fact that the sensation rises when\n the stimulus rises, and falls when the latter falls, much would not\n be gained. But even immediate unaided observation teaches us certain\n facts which, at least in a general way, suggest the law according to\n which the sensations vary with their outward cause.\n\n \"Every one knows that in the stilly night we hear things unnoticed in\n the noise of day. The gentle ticking of the clock, the air circulating\n through the chimney, the cracking of the chairs in the room, and a\n thousand other slight noises, impress themselves upon our ear. It is\n equally well known that in the confused hubbub of the streets, or the\n clamor of a railway, we may lose not only what our neighbor says to\n us, but even not hear the sound of our own voice. The stars which are\n brightest at night are invisible by day; and although we see the moon\n then, she is far paler than at night. Everyone who has had to deal\n with weights knows that if to a pound in the hand a second pound be\n added, the difference is immediately felt; whilst if it be added to a\n hundredweight, we are not aware of the difference at all....\n\n \"The sound of the clock, the light of the stars, the pressure of\n the pound, these are all _stimuli_ to our senses, and stimuli whose\n outward amount remains the same. What then do these experiences teach?\n Evidently nothing but this, that one and the same stimulus, according\n to the circumstances under which it operates, will be felt either\n more or less intensely, or not felt at all. Of what sort now is the\n alteration in the circumstances, upon which this alteration in the\n feeling may depend? On considering the matter closely we see that it\n is everywhere of one and the same kind. The tick of the clock is a\n feeble stimulus for our auditory nerve, which we hear plainly when\n it is alone, but not when it is added to the strong stimulus of the\n carriage-wheels and other noises of the day. The light of the stars is\n a stimulus to the eye. But if the stimulation which this light exerts\n be added to the strong stimulus of daylight, we feel nothing of it,\n although we feel it distinctly when it unites itself with the feebler\n stimulation of the twilight. The pound-weight is a stimulus to our\n skin, which we feel when it joins itself to a preceding stimulus of\n equal strength, but which vanishes when it is combined with a stimulus\n a thousand times greater in amount.\n\n \"We may therefore lay it down as a general rule that a stimulus,\n in order to be felt, may be so much the smaller if the already\n pre-existing stimulation of the organ is small, but must be so much\n the larger, the greater the pre-existing stimulation is. From\n this in a general way we can perceive the connection between the\n stimulus and the feeling it excites. At least thus much appears,\n that the law of dependence is not as simple a one as might have been\n expected beforehand. The simplest relation would obviously be that\n the sensation should increase in identically the same ratio as the\n stimulus, thus that if a stimulus of strength _one_ occasioned a\n sensation _one_, a stimulus of _two_ should occasion sensation _two_,\n stimulus _three_, sensation _three_, etc. But if this simplest of\n all relations prevailed, a stimulus added to a pre-existing strong\n stimulus ought to provoke as great an increase of feeling as if it\n were added to a pre-existing weak stimulus; the light of the stars\n e.g., ought to make as great an addition to the daylight as it does\n to the darkness of the nocturnal sky. This we know not to be the\n case: the stars are invisible by day, the addition they make to our\n sensation then is unnoticeable, whereas the same addition to our\n feeling of the twilight is very considerable indeed. So it is clear\n that the strength of the sensations does not increase in proportion\n to the amount of the stimuli, but more slowly. And now comes the\n question, in what proportion does the increase of the sensation\n grow less as the increase of the stimulus grows greater. To answer\n this question, every-day experiences do not suffice. We need exact\n measurements both of the amounts of the various stimuli, and of the\n intensity of the sensations themselves.\n\n \"How to execute these measurements, however, is something which daily\n experience suggests. To measure the strength of sensations is, as we\n saw, impossible; we can only measure the difference of sensations.\n Experience showed us what very unequal differences of sensation\n might come from equal differences of outward stimulus. But all these\n experiences expressed themselves in one kind of fact, that the same\n difference of stimulus could in one case be felt, and in another\n case not felt at all--a pound felt if added to another pound, but\n not if added to a hundred-weight.... We can quickest reach a result\n with our observations if we start with an arbitrary strength of\n stimulus, notice what sensation it gives us, and then _see how much\n we can increase the stimulus without making the sensation seem to\n change_. If we carry out such observations with stimuli of varying\n absolute amounts, we shall be forced to choose in an equally varying\n way the amounts of addition to the stimulus which are capable of\n giving us a just barely perceptible feeling of _more_. A light, to be\n just perceptible in the twilight need not be near as bright as the\n starlight; it must be far brighter to be just perceived during the\n day. If now we institute such observations for all possible strengths\n of the various stimuli, and note for each strength the amount of\n addition of the latter required to produce a barely perceptible\n alteration of sensation, we shall have a series of figures in which is\n immediately expressed the law according to which the sensation alters\n when the stimulation is increased....\"\n\nObservations according to this method are particularly easy to make\nin the spheres of light-, sound-, and pressure-sensation.... Beginning\nwith the latter case,\n\n \"We find a surprisingly simple result. The barely sensible addition to\n the original weight _must stand exactly in the same proportion to it_,\n be the _same fraction_ of it, no matter what the absolute value may be\n of the weights on which the experiment is made.... As the average of\n a number of experiments, this fraction is found to be about 1/3; that\n is, no matter what pressure there may already be made upon the skin,\n an increase or a diminution of the pressure will be _felt_, as soon\n as the added or subtracted weight amounts to one third of the weight\n originally there.\"\n\nWundt then describes how differences may be observed in the muscular\nfeelings, in the feelings of heat, in those of light, and in those of\nsound; and he concludes his seventh lecture (from which our extracts\nhave been made) thus:\n\n \"So we have found that all the senses whose stimuli we are enabled to\n measure accurately, obey a uniform law. However various may be their\n several delicacies of discrimination, _this_ holds true of all, that\n _the increase of the stimulus necessary to produce an increase of the\n sensation bears a constant ratio to the total stimulus_. The figures\n which express this ratio in the several senses may be shown thus in\n tabular form:\n\n    Sensation of light,   1/100\n    Muscular sensation,   1/17\n    Feeling of pressure,  1/3\n    Feeling of warmth,    1/3\n    Feeling of sound,     1/3\n\n \"These figures are far from giving as accurate a measure as might be\n desired. But at least they are fit to convey a general notion of the\n relative discriminative susceptibility of the different senses....\n The important law which gives in so simple a form the relation of the\n sensation to the stimulus that calls it forth was first discovered\n by the physiologist Ernst Heinrich Weber to obtain in special cases.\n Gustav Theodor Fechner first proved it to be a law for all departments\n of sensation. Psychology owes to him the first comprehensive\n investigation of sensations from a physical point of view, the first\n basis of an exact Theory of Sensibility.\"\n\nSo much for a general account of what Fechner calls Weber's law. The\n'exactness' of the theory of sensibility to which it leads consists in\nthe supposed fact that it gives the means of representing sensations\nby numbers. The _unit_ of any kind of sensation will be that increment\nwhich, when the stimulus is increased, we can just barely perceive\nto be added. The total number of units which any given sensation\ncontains will consist of the total number of such increments which may\nbe perceived in passing from no sensation of the kind to a sensation\nof the present amount. We cannot get at this number directly, but we\ncan, now that we know Weber's law, get at it by means of the physical\nstimulus of which it is a function. For if we know how much of the\nstimulus it will take to give a barely perceptible sensation, and then\nwhat percentage of addition to the stimulus will constantly give a\nbarely perceptible increment to the sensation, it is at bottom only a\nquestion of compound interest to compute, out of the total amount of\nstimulus which we may be employing at any moment, the number of such\nincrements, or, in other words, of sensational units to which it may\ngive rise. This number bears the same relation to the total stimulus\nwhich the time elapsed bears to the capital plus the compound interest\naccrued.\n\nTo take an example: If stimulus A just falls short of producing a\nsensation, and if _r_ be the percentage of itself which must be added\nto it to get a sensation which is barely perceptible--call this\nsensation 1--then we should have the series of sensation-numbers\ncorresponding to their several stimuli as follows:\n\n    Sensation 0 = stimulus A;\n    Sensation 1 = stimulus A (1 + r);\n    Sensation 2 = stimulus A (1 + r)^2;\n    Sensation 3 = stimulus A (1 + r)^3;\n    .....\n    Sensation _n_ = stimulus A (1 + r)^_n_.\n\nThe sensations here form an arithmetical series, and the stimuli a\ngeometrical series, and the two series correspond term for term. Now,\nof two series corresponding in this way, the terms of the arithmetical\none are called the logarithms of the terms corresponding in rank to\nthem in the geometrical series. A conventional arithmetical series\nbeginning with zero has been formed in the ordinary logarithmic tables,\nso that we may truly say (assuming our facts to be correct so far)\nthat the _sensations vary in the same proportion as the logarithms of\ntheir respective stimuli_. And we can thereupon proceed to compute\nthe number of units in any given sensation (considering the unit of\nsensation to be equal to the just perceptible increment above zero,\nand the unit of stimulus to be equal to the increment of stimulus\n_r_, which brings this about) by multiplying the logarithm of the\nstimulus by a constant factor which must vary with the particular kind\nof sensation in question. If we call the stimulus R, and the constant\nfactor C, we get the formula\n\n    S = C log R,\n\nwhich is what Fechner calls the _psychophysischer Maasformel_. This, in\nbrief, is Fechner's reasoning, as I understand it.\n\nThe _Maasformel_ admits of mathematical development in various\ndirections, and has given rise to arduous discussions into which I\nam glad to be exempted from entering here, since their interest is\nmathematical and metaphysical and not primarily psychological at\nall.[447] I must say a word about them metaphysically a few pages later\non. Meanwhile it should be understood that no human being, in any\ninvestigation into which sensations entered, has ever used the numbers\ncomputed in this or any other way in order to test a theory or to reach\na new result. The whole notion of measuring sensations numerically,\nremains in short a mere mathematical speculation about possibilities,\nwhich has never been applied to practice. Incidentally to the\ndiscussion of it, however, a great many particular facts have been\ndiscovered about discrimination which merit a place in this chapter.\n\nIn the first place it is found, when the difference of two sensations\napproaches the limit of discernibility, that at one moment we discern\nit and at the next we do not. There are accidental fluctuations in\nour inner sensibility which make it impossible to tell just what the\nleast discernible increment of the sensation is without taking the\naverage of a large number of appreciations. These _accidental errors_\nare as likely to increase as to diminish our sensibility, and are\neliminated in such an average, for those above and those below the line\nthen neutralize each other in the sum, and the normal sensibility,\nif there be one (that is, the sensibility due to constant causes as\ndistinguished from these accidental ones), stands revealed. The best\nway of getting at the average sensibility has been very minutely worked\nover. Fechner discussed three methods, as follows:\n\n(1) _The Method of just-discernible Differences._ Take a standard\nsensation _S_, and add to it until you distinctly feel the addition\n_d_; then subtract from _S_ + _d_ until you distinctly feel the effect\nof the subtraction;[448] call the difference here _d'_. The least\ndiscernible difference sought is _d_ + _d'_/2; and the ratio of this\nquantity to the original _S_ (or rather to _S_ + _d_ - _d'_) is what\nFechner calls the difference-threshold. _This difference-threshold\nshould be a constant fraction_ (no matter what is the size of _S_) _if\nWeber's law holds universally true._ The difficulty in applying this\nmethod is that we are _so often in doubt_ whether anything has been\nadded to _S_ or not. Furthermore, if we simply take the smallest _d_\nabout which we are _never_ in doubt or in error, we certainly get our\nleast discernible difference larger than it ought theoretically to\nbe.[449]\n\nOf course the _sensibility_ is small when the least discernible\ndifference is large, and _vice vers\u00e2_; in other words, it and the\ndifference-threshold are inversely related to each other.\n\n(2) _The Method of True and False Cases._ A sensation which is barely\ngreater than another will, on account of accidental errors in a long\nseries of experiments, sometimes be judged equal, and sometimes\nsmaller; i.e., we shall make a certain number of false and a certain\nnumber of true judgments about the difference between the two\nsensations which we are comparing.\n\n \"But the larger this difference is, the more the number of the\n true judgments will increase at the expense of the false ones; or,\n otherwise expressed, the nearer to unity will be the fraction whose\n denominator represents the whole number of judgments, and whose\n numerator represents those which are true. If _m_ is a ratio of this\n nature, obtained by comparison of two stimuli, _A_ and _B_, we may\n seek another couple of stimuli, _a_ and _b_, which when compared will\n give the same ratio of true to false cases.\"[450]\n\nIf this were done, and the ratio of _a_ to _b_ then proved to be equal\nto that of _A_ to _B_, that would prove that pairs of small stimuli\nand pairs of large stimuli may affect our discriminative sensibility\nsimilarly so long as the ratio of the components to each other within\neach pair is the same. In other words, it would in so far forth prove\nthe Weberian law. Fechner made use of this method to ascertain his\nown power of discriminating differences of weight, recording no less\nthan 24,576 separate judgments, and computing as a result that his\ndiscrimination for the same relative increase of weight was less good\nin the neighborhood of 500 than of 300 grams, but that after 500 grams\nit improved up to 3000, which was the highest weight he experimented\nwith.\n\n(3) _The Method of Average Errors_ consists in taking a standard\nstimulus and then trying to make another one of the same sort exactly\nequal to it. There will in general be an error whose amount is large\nwhen the discriminative sensibility called in play is small, and _vice\nvers\u00e2_. The sum of the errors, no matter whether they be positive or\nnegative, divided by their number, gives the average error. This,\nwhen certain corrections are made, is assumed by Fechner to be the\n'reciprocal' of the discriminative sensibility in question. It should\nbear a constant proportion to the stimulus, no matter what the absolute\nsize of the latter may be, if Weber's law hold true.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThese methods deal with just perceptible differences. Delb\u0153uf and Wundt\nhave experimented with larger differences by means of what Wundt calls\nthe _M\u00e9thode der mittleren Abstufungen_, and what we may call\n\n(4) _The Method of Equal-appearing Intervals._ This consists in so\narranging three stimuli in a series that the intervals between the\nfirst and the second shall appear equal to that between the second\nand the third. At first sight there seems to be no direct logical\nconnection between this method and the preceding ones. By them we\ncompare equally _perceptible_ increments of stimulus in different\nregions of the latter's scale; but by the fourth method we compare\nincrements which strike us as equally _big_. But what we can but just\nnotice as an increment need not appear always of the same bigness after\nit is noticed. On the contrary, it will appear much bigger when we are\ndealing with stimuli that are already large.\n\n(5) The method of doubling the _stimulus_ has been employed by Wundt's\ncollaborator, Merkel, who tried to make one stimulus seem just double\nthe other, and then measured the objective relation of the two. The\nremarks just made apply also to this case.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSo much for the methods. The results differ in the hands of different\nobservers. I will add a few of them, and will take first the\n_discriminative sensibility to light_.\n\nBy the first method, Volkmann, Aubert, Masson, Helmholtz, and Kr\u00e4pelin\nfind figures varying from 1/3 or 1/4 to 1/195 of the original\nstimulus. The smaller fractional increments are discriminated when the\nlight is already fairly strong, the larger ones when it is weak or\nintense. That is, the discriminative sensibility is low when weak or\noverstrong lights are compared, and at its best with a certain medium\nillumination. It is thus a function of the light's intensity; but\nthroughout a certain range of the latter it keeps constant, and _in so\nfar forth_ Weber's law is verified for light. Absolute figures cannot\nbe given, but Merkel, by method 1, found that Weber's law held good for\nstimuli (measured by his arbitrary unit) between 96 and 4096, beyond\nwhich intensity no experiments were made.[451] K\u00f6nig and Brodhun\nhave given measurements by method 1 which cover the most extensive\nseries, and moreover apply to six different colors of light. These\nexperiments (performed in Helmholtz's laboratory, apparently,) ran from\nan intensity called 1 to one which was 100,000 times as great. From\nintensity 2000 to 20,000 Weber's law held good; below and above this\nrange discriminative sensibility declined. The increment discriminated\nhere was the same for all colors of light, and lay (according to the\ntables) between 1 and 2 per cent of the stimulus.[452] Delb\u0153uf had\nverified Weber's law for a certain range of luminous intensities by\nmethod 4; that is, he had found that the objective intensity of a light\nwhich appeared midway between two others was really the geometrical\nmean of the latter's intensities. But A. Lehmann and afterwards\nNeiglick, in Wundt's laboratory, found that effects of contrast played\nso large a part in experiments performed in this way that Delb\u0153uf's\nresults could not be held conclusive. Merkel, repeating the experiments\nstill later, found that the objective intensity of the light which we\njudge to stand midway between two others neither stands midway nor is\na geometric mean. The discrepancy from both figures is enormous, but\nis least large from the midway figure or arithmetical mean of the two\nextreme intensities.[453] Finally, the stars have from time immemorial\nbeen arranged in 'magnitudes' supposed to differ by equal-seeming\nintervals. Lately their intensities have been gauged photometrically,\nand the comparison of the subjective with the objective series has been\nmade. Prof. J. Jastrow is the latest worker in this field. He finds,\ntaking Pickering's Harvard photometric tables as a basis, that the\nratio of the average intensity of each 'magnitude' to that below it\ndecreases as we pass from lower to higher magnitudes, showing a uniform\ndeparture from Weber's law, if the method of equal-appearing intervals\nbe held to have any direct relevance to the latter.[454]\n\n_Sounds_ are less delicately discriminated in intensity than lights.\nA certain difficulty has come from disputes as to the measurement of\nthe objective intensity of the stimulus. Earlier inquiries made the\nperceptible increase of the stimulus to be about 1/3 of the latter.\nMerkel's latest results of the method of just perceptible differences\nmake it about 3/10 for that part of the scale of intensities during\nwhich Weber's law holds good, which is from 20 to 5000 of M.'s\narbitrary unit.[455] Below this the fractional increment must be\nlarger. Above it no measurements were made.\n\nFor _pressure and muscular sense_ we have rather divergent results.\nWeber found by the method of just-perceptible differences that persons\ncould distinguish an increase of weight of 1/40 when the two weights\nwere successively lifted by the same hand. It took a much larger\nfraction to be discerned when the weights were laid on a hand which\nrested on the table. He seems to have verified his results for only\ntwo pairs of differing weights,[456] and on this founded his 'law.'\nExperiments in Hering's laboratory on lifting 11 weights, running\nfrom 250 to 2750 grams showed that the least perceptible increment\nvaried from 1/21 for 250 grams to 1/114 for 2500. For 2750 it rose to\n1/98 again. Merkel's recent and very careful experiments, in which\nthe finger pressed down the beam of a balance counterweighted by from\n25 to 8020 grams, showed that between 200 and 2000 grams a constant\nfractional increase of about 1/13 was felt when there was no movement\nof the finger, and of about 1/19 when there was movement. Above and\nbelow these limits the discriminative power grew less. It was greater\nwhen the pressure was upon one square millimeter of surface than when\nit was upon seven.[457]\n\n_Warmth and taste_ have been made the subject of similar investigations\nwith the result of verifying something like Weber's law. The\ndetermination of the unit of stimulus is, however, so hard here\nthat I will give no figures. The results may be found in Wundt's\nPhysiologische Psychologie, 3d Ed. i, 370-2.\n\n_The discrimination of lengths by the eye_ has been found also to obey\nto a certain extent Weber's law. The figures will all be found in G. E.\nM\u00fcller, _op. cit._ part ii, chap. x, to which the reader is referred.\nProfessor Jastrow has published some experiments, made by what may be\ncalled a modification of the method of equal-appearing differences,\non our estimation of the length of sticks, by which it would seem\nthat the estimated intervals and the real ones are directly and not\nlogarithmically proportionate to each other. This resembles Merkel's\nresults by that method for weights, lights, and sounds, and differs\nfrom Jastrow's own finding about star-magnitudes.[458]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIf we look back over these facts as a whole, we see that it is not any\nfixed amount added to an impression that makes us notice an increase\nin the latter, but that the amount depends on how large the impression\nalready is. The amount is expressible as a certain fraction of the\nentire impression to which it is added; and it is found that the\nfraction is a well-nigh constant figure throughout an entire region\nof the scale of intensities of the impression in question. Above and\nbelow this region the fraction increases in value. This is _Weber's\nlaw_, which in so far forth expresses an empirical generalization of\npractical importance, without involving any theory whatever or seeking\nany absolute measure of the sensations themselves. It is in the\n\n\n_Theoretic Interpretation of Weber's Law_\n\n\nthat Fechner's originality exclusively consists, in his assumptions,\nnamely, 1) that the just-perceptible increment is the _sensation-unit_,\nand is in all parts of the scale the same (mathematically expressed,\n\u0394_s_= const.); 2) that all our sensations consist of sums of these\nunits; and finally, 3) that the reason why it takes a constant\nfractional increase of the stimulus to awaken this unit lies in\nan ultimate law of the connection of mind with matter, whereby\nthe quantities of our feelings are related logarithmically to\nthe quantities of their objects. Fechner seems to find something\ninscrutably sublime in the existence of an ultimate 'psychophysic' law\nof this form.\n\nThese assumptions are all peculiarly fragile. To begin with, the\n_mental fact_ which in the experiments corresponds to the increase\nof the stimulus is not an _enlarged sensation_, but a _judgment that\nthe sensation is enlarged_. What Fechner calls the 'sensation' is\nwhat appears to the mind as the _objective phenomenon_ of light,\nwarmth, weight, sound, impressed part of body, etc. Fechner tacitly\nif not openly assumes that such a _judgment of increase_ consists\nin the simple fact that an _increased number_ of sensation-units\nare present to the mind; and that the judgment is thus itself a\nquantitatively bigger mental thing when it judges large differences,\nor differences between large terms, than when it judges small ones.\nBut these ideas are really absurd. The hardest sort of judgment, the\njudgment which strains the attention most (if _that_ be any criterion\nof the judgment's 'size'), is that about the _smallest_ things and\ndifferences. But really it has no meaning to talk about one judgment\nbeing bigger than another. And even if we leave out judgments and\ntalk of sensations only, we have already found ourselves (in Chapter\nVI) quite unable to read any clear meaning into the notion that they\nare masses of units combined. To introspection, our feeling of pink\nis surely not a portion of our feeling of scarlet; nor does the light\nof an electric arc seem to contain that of a tallow-candle in itself.\nCompound _things_ contain parts; and one such thing may have twice\nor three times as many parts as another. But when we take a simple\nsensible quality like light or sound, and say that there is now twice\nor thrice as much of it present as there was a moment ago, although\nwe seem to mean the same thing as if we were talking of compound\nobjects, we really mean something different. We mean that if we were\nto arrange the various possible degrees of the quality in a scale of\nserial increase, the _distance, interval_, or _difference_ between the\nstronger and the weaker specimen before us would seem about as great\nas that between the weaker one and the beginning of the scale. _It is\nthese_ RELATIONS, _these_ DISTANCES, _which we are measuring and not\nthe composition of the qualities themselves_, as Fechner thinks. Whilst\nif we turn to objects which _are_ divisible, surely a big object may be\nknown in a little thought. Introspection shows moreover that in most\nsensations a new _kind_ of feeling invariably accompanies our judgment\nof an increased impression; and this is a fact which Fechner's formula\ndisregards.[459]\n\nBut apart from these _a priori_ difficulties, and even supposing that\nsensations did consist of added units, Fechner's assumption that all\n_equally perceptible_ additions are _equally great_ additions is\nentirely arbitrary. Why might not a small addition to a small sensation\nbe as _perceptible_ as a large addition to a large one? In this case\nWeber's law would apply not to the additions themselves, but only to\ntheir perceptibility. Our _noticing_ of a difference of units in two\nsensations would depend on the latter being in a fixed ratio. But\nthe _difference itself_ would depend directly on that between their\nrespective stimuli. So many units added to the stimulus, so many\nadded to the sensation, and if the stimulus grew in a certain ratio,\nin exactly the same ratio would the sensation also grow, though its\n_perceptibility_ grew according to the logarithmic law.[460]\n\nIf _A_ stand for the smallest difference which _we perceive_, then we\nshould have, instead of the formula \u0394_s_ = const., which is Fechner's,\nthe formula \u0394_s_/_s_ = const., a formula which interprets all the\n_facts_ of Weber's law, in an entirely different theoretic way from\nthat adopted by Fechner.[461]\n\nThe entire superstructure which Fechner rears upon the facts is thus\nnot only seen to be arbitrary and subjective, but in the highest degree\nimprobable as well. The departures from Weber's law in regions where\nit does not obtain, he explains by the compounding with it of other\nunknown laws which mask its effects. As if _any_ law could not be\nfound in _any_ set of phenomena, provided one have the wit to invent\nenough other coexisting laws to overlap and neutralize it! The whole\noutcome of the discussion, so far as Fechner's theories are concerned,\nis indeed _nil. Weber's law alone remains true, as an empirical\ngeneralization of fair extent:_ What we add to a large stimulus\nwe notice less than what we add to a small one, unless it happen\n_relatively to the stimulus_ to be as great.\n\n\n_Weber's law is probably purely physiological._\n\n\nOne can express this state of things otherwise by saying that the\nwhole of the stimulus does not seem to be effective in giving us the\nperception of 'more,' and the simplest interpretation of such a state\nof things would be _physical_. The loss of effect would take place in\nthe nervous system. If our feelings resulted from a condition of the\nnerve-molecules which it grew ever more difficult for the stimulus\nto increase, our feelings would naturally grow at a slower rate than\nthe stimulus itself. An ever larger part of the latter's work would\ngo to overcoming the resistances, and an ever smaller part to the\nrealization of the feeling-bringing state. Weber's law would thus be a\nsort of _law of friction_ in the neural machine.[462] Just how these\ninner resistances and frictions are to be conceived is a speculative\nquestion. Delb\u0153uf has formulated them as fatigue; Bernstein and Ward,\nas irradiations. The latest, and probably the most 'real,' hypothesis\nis that of Ebbinghaus, who supposes that the intensity of sensation\ndepends on the _number_ of neural molecules which are disintegrated in\nthe unit of time. There are only a certain number at any time which are\n_capable_ of disintegrating; and whilst most of these are in an average\ncondition of instability, some are almost stable and some already near\nto decomposition. The smallest stimuli affect these latter molecules\nonly; and as they are but few, the sensational effect from adding a\ngiven quantity of stimulus _at first_ is relatively small. Medium\nstimuli affect the majority of the molecules, but affect fewer and\nfewer in proportion as they have already diminished their number. The\nlatest additions to the stimuli find all the medium molecules already\ndisintegrated, and only affect the small relatively indecomposable\nremainder, thus giving rise to increments of feeling which are\ncorrespondingly small. (Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, 45, 113.)\n\nIt is surely in some such way as this that Weber's law is to be\ninterpreted, if it ever is. The Fechnerian _Maasformel_ and the\nconception of it as an ultimate 'psychophysic law' will remain an 'idol\nof the den,' if ever there was one. Fechner himself indeed was a German\n_Gelehrter_ of the ideal type, at once simple and shrewd, a mystic and\nan experimentalist, homely and daring, and as loyal to facts as to his\ntheories. But it would be terrible if even such a dear old man as this\ncould saddle our Science forever with his patient whimsies, and, in\na world so full of more nutritious objects of attention, compel all\nfuture students to plough through the difficulties, not only of his own\nworks, but of the still drier ones written in his refutation. Those who\ndesire this dreadful literature can find it; it has a 'disciplinary\nvalue;' but I will not even enumerate it in a foot-note. The only\namusing part of it is that Fechner's critics should always feel bound,\nafter smiting his theories hip and thigh and leaving not a stick of\nthem standing, to wind up by saying that nevertheless to him belongs\nthe _imperishable glory_, of first formulating them and thereby turning\npsychology into an _exact science_,\n\n    \"'And everybody praised the duke\n    Who this great fight did win.'\n    'But what good came of it at last?'\n    Quoth little Peterkin.\n    'Why, that I cannot tell,' said he,\n    'But 'twas a famous victory!'\"\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[406] Human Understanding, ii, xi, 1, 2.\n\n[407] Analysis, vol. i, p. 71.\n\n[408] The Senses and the Intellect, page 411.\n\n[409] Essays Philosophical and Theological: First Series, pp. 268-273.\n\n[410] Montgomery in 'Mind,' x, 527. Cf. also Lipps: Grundtatsachen des\nSeelenlebens, p. 579 ff.; and see below, Chapter XIX.\n\n[411] Stumpf (Tonpsychologie, i, 116 ff.) tries to prove that the\ntheory that all differences are differences of composition leads\nnecessarily to an infinite regression when we try to determine the\nunit. It seems to me that in his particular reasoning he forgets the\nultimate units of the mind-stuff theory. I cannot find the completed\ninfinite to be one of the obstacles to belief in this theory, although\nI fully accept Stumpf's general reasoning, and am only too happy to\nfind myself on the same side with such an exceptionally clear thinker.\nThe strictures by Wahle in the Vierteljsch. f. wiss. Phil. seem to\nme to have no force, since the writer does not discriminate between\nresemblance of things obviously compound and that of things sensibly\nsimple.\n\n[412] The _belief that the causes_ of effects felt by us to differ\nqualitatively are facts which differ only in quantity (e.g. that blue\nis caused by so many ether-waves, and yellow by a smaller number)\nmust not be confounded with the feeling that the effects differ\nquantitatively themselves.\n\n[413] Herr G. H. Schneider, in his youthful pamphlet (Die\nUnterscheidung, 1877) has tried to show that there are no\npositively existent elements of sensibility, no substantive\nqualities between which differences obtain, but that the terms\nwe call such, the sensations, are but sums of differences, loci\nor starting points whence many directions of difference proceed.\n'_Unterschiedsempfindungs-Complexe_' are what he calls them. This\nabsurd carrying out of that 'principle of relativity' which we shall\nhave to mention in Chapter XVII may serve as a counterpoise to the\nmind-stuff theory, which says that there are nothing but substantive\nsensations, and denies the existence of relations of difference between\nthem at all.\n\n[414] Cf. Stumpf, Tonpsychologie, i, 121, and James Ward, Mind, i, 464.\n\n[415] The ordinary treatment of this is to call it the result of the\n_fusion_ of a lot of sensations, in themselves separate. This is pure\nmythology, as the sequel will abundantly show.\n\n[416] \"We often begin to be dimly aware of a difference in a sensation\nor group of sensations, before we can assign any definite character\nto that which differs. Thus we detect a strange or foreign ingredient\nor flavor in a familiar dish, or of tone in a familiar tune, and\nyet are wholly unable for a while to say what the intruder is like.\nHence perhaps discrimination may be regarded as the earliest and\nmost primordial mode of intellectual activity.\" (Sully: Outlines of\nPsychology, p. 142. _Cf._ also G. H. Schneider: Die Unterscheidung, pp.\n9-10.)\n\n[417] In cases where the difference is slight, we may need, as\npreviously remarked, to get the dying phase of _n_ as well as of _m_\nbefore _n-different-from-m_ is distinctly felt. In that case the\ninevitably successive feelings (as far as we can sever what is so\ncontinuous) would be four, _m, difference, n, n-different-from-m_. This\nslight additional complication alters not a whit the essential features\nof the case.\n\n[418] Analysis. J. S. Mill's ed., ii, 17. Cf. also pp. 12, 14.\n\n[419] There is only one obstacle, and that is our inveterate tendency\nto believe that where two things or qualities are compared, it\n_must_ be that exact duplicates of both have got into the mind and\nhave matched themselves against each other there. To which the first\nreply is the empirical one of \"Look into the mind and see.\" When I\nrecognize a weight which I now lift as _inferior_ to the one I just\nlifted; when, with my tooth now aching, I perceive the pain to be\n_less_ intense than it was a minute ago; the two things in the mind\nwhich are compared would, by the authors I criticise, be admitted to\nbe an actual sensation and an image in the memory. An image in the\nmemory, by general consent of these same authors, is admitted to be a\nweaker thing than a sensation. Nevertheless it is in these instances\njudged stronger; that is, an object supposed to be known only in so\nfar forth as this image represents it, is judged stronger. Ought not\nthis to shake one's belief in the notion of separate representative\n'ideas' weighing themselves, or being weighed by the Ego, against each\nother in the mind? And let it not be said that what makes us judge the\nfelt pain to be weaker than the imagined one of a moment since is our\nrecollection of the _downward nature of the shock of difference_ which\nwe felt as we passed to the present moment from the one before it. That\nshock does undoubtedly have a different character according as it comes\nbetween terms of which the second diminishes or increases; and it may\nbe admitted that in cases Where the past term is doubtfully remembered,\nthe memory of the shock as _plus_ or _minus_, might sometimes enable us\nto establish a relation which otherwise we should not perceive. But one\ncould hardly expect the memory of this shock to overpower our actual\ncomparison of terms, both of which are _present_ (as are the image\nand the sensation in the case supposed), and make us judge the weaker\none to be the stronger.--And hereupon comes the second reply: Suppose\nthe mind does compare two realities by comparing two ideas of its own\nwhich represent them--what is gained? The same mystery is still there.\nThe ideas must still be _known_; and, as the attention in comparing\noscillates from one to the other, past must be known with present just\nas before. If you must end by simply saying that your 'Ego,' whilst\n_being_ neither the idea of _m_ nor the idea of _n_, yet knows and\ncompares both, why not allow your pulse of thought, which _is_ neither\nthe thing _m_ nor the thing _n_, to know and compare both directly?\n'Tis but a question of how to _name_ the facts least artificially.\nThe egoist _explains_ them, by naming them as an Ego 'combining' or\n'synthetizing' two ideas, no more than we do by naming them a pulse of\nthought knowing two facts.\n\n[420] I fear that few will be converted by my words, so obstinately\ndo thinkers of all schools refuse to admit the unmediated function of\n_knowing a thing_, and so incorrigibly do they substitute _being the\nthing_ for it. E.g., in the latest utterance of the spiritualistic\nphilosophy (Bowne's Introduction to Psychological Theory, 1887,\npublished only three days before this writing) one of the first\nsentences which catch my eye is this: \"What remembers? The spiritualist\nsays, the soul remembers; it abides across the years and the flow of\nthe body, and _gathering up its past, carries it with it_\" (p. 28).\nWhy, for heaven's sake, O Bowne, cannot you say '_knows it_'? If there\nis anything our soul does _not_ do to its past, it is to carry it with\nit.\n\n[421] Sensations of Tone, 2d English Ed., p. 65.\n\n[422] Psychology, i, 345.\n\n[423] A Budget of Paradoxes, p. 380.\n\n[424] The explanation I offer presupposes that a difference too faint\nto have any direct effect in the way of making the mind notice it _per\nse_ will nevertheless be strong enough to keep its 'terms' from calling\nup identical associates. It seems probable from many observations that\nthis is the case. All the facts of 'unconscious' inference are proofs\nof it. We say a painting 'looks' like the work of a certain artist,\nthough we cannot name the characteristic differenti\u00e6. We see by a\nman's face that he is sincere, though we can give no definite reason\nfor our faith. The facts of sense-perception quoted from Helmholtz\na few pages below will be additional examples. Here is another good\none, though it will perhaps be easier understood after reading the\nchapter on Space-perception than now. Take two stereoscopic slides and\nrepresent on each half-slide a pair of spots, _a_ and _b_, but make\ntheir distances such that the _a_'s are equidistant on both slides,\nwhilst the _b_'s are nearer together on slide 1 than on slide 2. Make\nmoreover the distance _ab = ab'''_ and the distance _ab' = ab''_. Then\nlook successively at the two slides stereoscopically, so that the\n_a_'s in both are directly fixated (that is fall on the two fove\u00e6, or\ncentres of distinctest vision). The _a_'s will then appear single, and\nso probably will the _b_'s. But the now single-seeming _b_ on slide 1\nwill look nearer, whilst that on slide 2 will look farther than the\n_a_. But, if the diagrams are rightly drawn, _b_ and _b'''_ must affect\n'identical' spots, spots equally far to the right of the fovea, _b_ in\nthe left eye and _b'''_ in the right eye. The same is true of _b'_ and\n_b''_. Identical spots are spots whose sensations cannot possibly be\ndiscriminated as such. Since in these two observations, however, they\ngive rise to such opposite perceptions of distance, and prompt such\nopposite tendencies to movement (since in slide 1 we _converge_ in\nlooking from _a_ to _b_, whilst in slide 2 we _diverge_), it follows\nthat two processes which occasion feelings quite indistinguishable to\ndirect consciousness may nevertheless be each allied with disparate\nassociates both of a sensorial and of a motor kind. Cf. Donders, Archiv\nf. Ophthalmologie, Bd. 13 (1867). The basis of his essay is that we\ncannot _feel_ on which eye any particular element of a compound picture\nfalls, but its effects on our total perception differ in the two eyes.\n\n                       _a    b_        _a  b'_\n\n    _Slide_ 1.         .    .          .  .\n\n                       _a b''_          _a   b'''_\n    _Slide_ 2.         .  .             .    .\n\n\n[425] A. W. Volkmann: Ueber den Einfluss der Uebung, etc., Leipzig\nBerichte, Math.-phys. Classe. x, 1858, p. 67.\n\n[426] _Ibid._ Tabelle 1, p. 43.\n\n[427] Professor Lipps accounts for the tactile discrimination of the\nblind in a way which (divested of its 'mythological' assumptions) seems\nto me essentially to agree with this. Stronger ideas are supposed to\nraise weaker ones over the threshold of consciousness by fusing with\nthem, the tendency to fuse being proportional to the similarity of the\nideas _Cf._ Grundtatsachen, etc., pp. 232-3; also pp. 118, 492, 526-7.\n\n[428] Sensations of Tone, 2d. English Edition, p. 62.\n\n[429] Compare as to this, however, what I said above, Chapter V, pp.\n172-176.\n\n[430] When a person squints, double images are formed in the centre\nof the field. As a matter of fact, most squinters are found blind\nof one eye, or almost so; and it has long been supposed amongst\nophthalmologists that the blindness is a secondary affection\nsuperinduced by the voluntary suppression of one of the sets of double\nimages, in other words by the positive and persistent refusal to use\none of the eyes. This explanation of the blindness has, however, been\ncalled in question of late years. See, for a brief account of the\nmatter, O. F. Wadsworth in Boston Med. and Surg. Journ., cxvi, 49 (Jan.\n20, '87), and the replies by Derby and others a little later.--W. J.\n\n[431] Tonempfindungen, Dritte Auflage, pp. 102-107.--The reader who\nhas assimilated the contents of our Chapter V, above, will doubtless\nhave remarked that the illustrious physiologist has fallen, in these\nparagraphs, into that sort of interpretation of the facts which\nwe there tried to prove erroneous. Helmholtz, however, is no more\ncareless than most psychologists in confounding together the object\nperceived, the organic conditions of the perception, and the sensations\nwhich _would_ be excited by the several parts of the object, or by\nthe several organic conditions, _provided_ they came into action\nseparately or were separately attended to, and in assuming that\nwhat is true of any one of these sorts of fact must be true of the\nother sorts also. If each organic condition or part of the object\nis there, its sensation, he thinks, must be there also, only in a\n'synthetic'--which is indistinguishable from what the authors whom we\nformerly reviewed called an 'unconscious'--state. I will not repeat\narguments sufficiently detailed in the earlier chapter (see especially\npp. 170-176), but simply say that what he calls the 'fusion of many\n_sensations_ into one' is really the production of one sensation by the\nco-operation of many _organic conditions_; and that what perception\nfails to discriminate (when it is 'synthetic') is not _sensations_\nalready existent but not singled out, but new objective _facts_, judged\ntruer than the facts already synthetically perceived--two views of the\nsolid body, many harmonic tones, instead of one view and one tone,\nstates of the eyeball-muscles thitherto unknown, and the like. These\nnew facts, when first discovered, are known in states of consciousness\nnever till that moment exactly realized before, states of consciousness\nwhich at the same time judge them to be determinations of the same\n_matter of fact_ which was previously realized. All that Helmholtz\nsays of the conditions which hinder and further analysis applies just\nas naturally to the analysis, through the advent of _new_ feelings, of\n_objects_ into their elements, as to the analysis of aggregate feelings\ninto elementary feelings supposed to have been hidden in them all the\nwhile.\n\nThe reader can himself apply this criticism to the following passages\nfrom Lotze and Stumpf respectively, which I quote because they are the\nablest expressions of the view opposed to my own. Both authors, it\nseems to me, commit the psychologist's fallacy, and allow their later\nknowledge of the things felt to be foisted into their account of the\nprimitive way of feeling them.\n\nLotze says: \"It is indubitable that the simultaneous assault of a\nvariety of different stimuli on different senses, or even on the same\nsense, puts us into a state of confused general feeling in which we\nare certainly not conscious of clearly distinguishing the different\nimpressions. Still it does not follow that in such a case we have a\npositive perception of an actual unity of the contents of our ideas,\narising from their mixture; our state of mind seems rather to consist\nin (1) the consciousness of our inability to separate what really has\nremained diverse, and (2) in the general feeling of the disturbance\nproduced in the economy of our body by the simultaneous assault of\nthe stimuli.... Not that the sensations melt into one another, but\nsimply that the act of distinguishing them is absent; and this again\ncertainly not so far that the fact of the difference remains entirely\nunperceived, but only so far as to prevent us from determining the\namount of the difference, and from apprehending other relations between\nthe different impressions. Anyone who is annoyed at one and the same\ntime by glowing heat, dazzling light, deafening noise, and an offensive\nsmell, will certainly not fuse these disparate sensations into a single\none with a single content which could be sensuously perceived; they\nremain for him in separation, and he merely finds it impossible to be\nconscious of one of them apart from the others. But, further, he will\nhave a feeling of discomfort--what I mentioned above as the _second_\nconstituent of his whole state. For every stimulus which produces in\nconsciousness a definite content of sensation is also a definite degree\nof disturbance, and therefore makes a call upon the forces of the\nnerves; and the sum of these little changes, which in their character\nas disturbances are not so diverse as the contents of consciousness\nthey give rise to, produce the general feeling which, added to the\ninability to distinguish, deludes us into the belief in an actual\nabsence of diversity in our sensations. It is only in some such way as\nthis, again, that I can imagine that state which is sometimes described\nas the beginning of our whole education, a state which in itself is\nsupposed to be simple, and to be afterwards divided into different\nsensations by an activity of separation. No activity of separation\nin the world could establish differences where no real diversity\nexisted; for it would have nothing to guide it to the places where it\nwas to establish them, or to indicate the width it was to give them.\"\n(Metaphysic, \u00a7 260, English translation.)\n\nStumpf writes as follows: \"Of coexistent sensations there are always\na large number undiscriminated in consciousness, or (if one prefer\nto call what is undiscriminated unconscious) in the soul. They\nare, however, not fused into a simple quality. When, on entering a\nroom, we receive sensations of odor and warmth together, without\nexpressly attending to either, the two qualities of sensation are\nnot, as it were, an entirely new simple quality, which first at the\nmoment in which attention analytically steps in _changes into_ smell\nand warmth.... In such cases we find ourselves in presence of an\nindefinable, unnamable total of feeling. And when, after successfully\nanalyzing this total, we call it back to memory, as it was in its\nunanalyzed state, and compare it with the elements we have found, the\nlatter (as it seems to me) may be recognized as real parts contained\nin the former, and the former seen to be their sum. So, for example,\nwhen we clearly perceive that the content of our sensation of oil\nof peppermint is partly a sensation of taste and partly one of\ntemperature.\" (Tonpsychologie, i, 107.)\n\nI should prefer to say that we perceive that objective fact, known to\nus as the peppermint taste, to contain those other objective facts\nknown as aromatic or sapid quality, and coldness, respectively. No\nground to suppose that the vehicle of this last very complex perception\nhas any identity with the earlier psychosis--least of all is contained\nin it.\n\n[432] Physiol. Psych., ii, 248.\n\n[433] Wundt's Philos. Studien, i, 527.\n\n[434] _Ibid._ p. 530.\n\n[435] Mind, xi, 377 ff. He says: \"I apparently either distinguished\nthe impression and made the motion simultaneously, or if I tried to\navoid this by waiting until I had formed a distinct impression before\nI began to make the motion, I added to the simple reaction, not only a\nperception, but a volition.\"--Which remark may well confirm our doubts\nas to the strict _psychologic_ worth of any of these measurements.\n\n[436] Mind, xi, 379.\n\n[437] For other determinations of discrimination-time by this method\ncf. v. Kries and Auerbach, Archiv f. Physiologie, Bd. i, p. 297 ff.\n(these authors get much smaller figures); Friedrich, Psychologische\nStudien, i, 39. Chapter ix of Buccola's book, Le Legge del tempo, etc.,\ngives a full account of the subject.\n\n[438] If so, the reactions upon the spark would have to be slower than\nthose upon the touch. The investigation was abandoned because it was\nfound impossible to narrow down the difference between the conditions\nof the sight-series and those of the touch-series, to nothing more than\nthe possible presence in the latter of the intervening motor-idea.\nOther disparities could not be excluded.\n\n[439] Tischer gives figures from quite unpractised individuals, which\nI have not quoted. The discrimination-time of one of them is 22 times\nlonger than Tischer's own! (Psychol. Studien, i, 527.)\n\n[440] Compare Lipps's excellent passage to the same critical effect\nin his Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens, pp. 390-393.--I leave my\ntext just as it was written before the publication of Lange's and\nM\u00fcnsterberg's results cited on pp. 92 and 432. Their 'shortened' or\n'muscular' times, got when the expectant attention was addressed to the\npossible reactions rather than to the stimulus, constitute the minimal\nreaction-time of which I speak, and all that I say in the text falls\nbeautifully into line with their results.\n\n[441] Cf. Sully: Mind, x, 494-5; Bradley: _ibid._ xi, 83; Bosanquet:\n_ibid._ xi, 405.\n\n[442] The judgment becomes easier if the two couples of terms have one\nmember in common, if _a--b_ and _b--c_, for example, are compared.\nThis, as Stumpf says (Tonpsychologie, i, 131), is probably because the\nintroduction of the fourth term brings involuntary cross-comparisons\nwith it, _a_ and _b_ with _d, b_ with _c_, etc., which confuses us\nby withdrawing our attention from the relations we ought alone to be\nestimating.\n\n[443] J. Delb\u0153uf: \u00c9l\u00e9ments de Psychophysique (Paris, 1883), p. 64.\nPlateau in Stumpf, Tonpsych., i, 125. I have noticed a curious\nenlargement of certain 'distances' of difference under the influence\nof chloroform. The jingling of the bells on the horses of a horse-car\npassing the door, for example, and the rumbling of the vehicle itself,\nwhich to our ordinary hearing merge together very readily into a\n_quasi_-continuous body of sound, have seemed so far apart as to\nrequire a sort of mental facing in opposite directions to get from one\nto the other, as if they belonged in different worlds. I am inclined to\nsuspect, from certain data, that the ultimate philosophy of difference\nand likeness will have to be built upon experiences of intoxication,\nespecially by nitrous oxide gas, which lets us into intuitions the\nsubtlety whereof is denied to the waking state. Cf. B. P. Blood: The\nAn\u00e6sthetic Revelation, and the Gist of Philosophy (Amsterdam, N. Y.,\n1874). Cf. also Mind, vii, 200.\n\n[444] _Op. cit._ p. 126 ff.\n\n[445] Stumpf, pp. 111-121.\n\n[446] Stumpf, pp. 116-7. I have omitted, so as not to make my text\ntoo intricate, an extremely acute and conclusive paragraph, which I\nreproduce here: \"We may generalize: Wherever a number of sensible\nimpressions are apprehended _as a series_, there in the last instance\nmust perceptions of simple likeness be found. _Proof:_ Assume that\nall the terms of a series, e.g. the qualities of tone, _c d e f g_,\nhave something in common,--_no matter what it is_, call it _X_; then I\nsay that the differing parts of each of these terms must not only be\ndifferently constituted in each, but must _themselves form a series_,\nwhose existence is the ground for our apprehending the original terms\nin serial form. We thus get instead of the original series _a b c d\nef_ ... the equivalent series _X\u0251, X\u03b2, X\u0263_,... etc. What is gained?\nThe question immediately arises: How is _\u0251 \u03b2 \u0263_ known as a series?\nAccording to the theory, these elements must themselves be made up of a\npart common to all, and of parts differing in each, which latter parts\nform a new series, and so on _ad infinitum_, which is absurd.\"\n\n[447] The most important ameliorations of Fechner's formula are\nDelb\u0153uf's in his Recherches sur la Mesure des Sensations (1873), p. 35,\nand Elsas's in his pamphlet \u00dcber die Psychophysik (1886) p. 16.\n\n[448] Reversing the order is for the sake of letting the opposite\naccidental errors due to 'contrast' neutralize each other.\n\n[449] Theoretically it would seem that it ought to be equal to the sum\nof all the additions which we judge to be increases divided by the\ntotal number of judgments made.\n\n[450] J. Delb\u0153uf, \u00c9l\u00e9ments de Psychophysique (1883), p. 9.\n\n[451] Philos. Studien, iv, 588.\n\n[452] Berlin Acad. Sitzungsberichte, 1888, p. 917. Other observers\n(Dobrowolsky, Lamausky) found great differences in different colors.\n\n[453] See Merkel's tables, _loc. cit._ p. 568.\n\n[454] American Journal of Psychology, i, 125. The rate of decrease is\nsmall but steady, and I cannot well understand what Professor J. means\nby saying that his figures verify Weber's law.\n\n[455] Philosophische Studien, v, 514-5.\n\n[456] Cf. G. E. M\u00fcller: Zur Grundlegung der Psychophysik, \u00a7\u00a7 68-70.\n\n[457] Philosophische Studien, v, 287 ff.\n\n[458] American J. of Psychology, iii, 44-7.\n\n[459] Cf. Stumpf, Tonpsychologie, pp. 397-9. \"One sensation cannot be\na multiple of another. If it could, we ought to be able to subtract\nthe one from the other, and to feel the remainder by itself. Every\nsensation presents itself as an indivisible unit.\" Professor von Kries,\nin the Viertejahrschrift f\u00fcr wiss. Philosophie, vi, 257 ff., shows very\nclearly the absurdity of supposing that our stronger sensations contain\nour weaker ones as parts. They differ as qualitative units. Compare\nalso J. Tannery in Delb\u0153uf's \u00c9l\u00e9ments de Psychophysique (1883), p. 134\nff.; J. Ward in Mind, i, 464: Lotze, Metaphysik, \u00a7 258.\n\n[460] F Brentano, Psychologie, i, 9, 88 ff.--Merkel thinks that his\nresults with the method of equal-appearing intervals show that we\ncompare considerable intervals with each other by a different law from\nthat by which we notice barely perceptible intervals. The stimuli form\nan arithmetical series (a pretty wild one according to his figures)\nin the former case, a geometrical one in the latter--at least so I\nunderstand this valiant experimenter but somewhat obscure if acute\nwriter.\n\n[461] This is the formula which Merkel thinks he has verified (if I\nunderstand him aright) by his experiments by method 4.\n\n[462] Elsas: Ueber die Psychophysik (1856), p. 41. When the pans\nof a balance are already loaded, but in equilibrium, it takes a\nproportionally larger weight added to one of them to incline the beam.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV.[463]\n\nASSOCIATION.\n\n\nAfter discrimination, association! Already in the last chapter I\nhave had to invoke, in order to explain the improvement of certain\ndiscriminations by practice, the 'association' of the objects to be\ndistinguished, with other more widely differing ones. It is obvious\nthat the advance of our knowledge _must_ consist of both operations;\nfor objects at first appearing as wholes are analyzed into parts,\nand objects appearing separately are brought together and appear as\nnew compound wholes to the mind. Analysis and synthesis are thus\nthe incessantly alternating mental activities, a stroke of the one\npreparing the way for a stroke of the other, much as, in walking,\na man's two legs are alternately brought into use, both being\nindispensable for any orderly advance.\n\nThe manner in which trains of imagery and consideration follow each\nother through our thinking, the restless flight of one idea before\nthe next, the transitions our minds make between things wide as\nthe poles asunder, transitions which at first sight startle us by\ntheir abruptness, but which, when scrutinized closely, often reveal\nintermediating links of perfect naturalness and propriety--all this\nmagical, imponderable streaming has from time immemorial excited\nthe admiration of all whose attention happened to be caught by its\nomnipresent mystery. And it has furthermore challenged the race of\nphilosophers to banish something of the mystery by formulating the\nprocess in simpler terms. The problem which the philosophers have set\nthemselves is that of ascertaining _principles of connection_ between\nthe thoughts which thus appear to sprout one out of the other, whereby\ntheir peculiar succession or coexistence may be explained.\n\nBut immediately an ambiguity arises: which sort of connection is meant?\nconnection _thought-of_, or connection _between thoughts_? These are\ntwo entirely different things, and only in the case of one of them\nis there any hope of finding 'principles.' The jungle of connections\n_thought of_ can never be formulated simply. Every conceivable\nconnection may be thought of--of coexistence, succession, resemblance,\ncontrast, contradiction, cause and effect, means and end, genus and\nspecies, part and whole, substance and property, early and late, large\nand small, landlord and tenant, master and servant,--Heaven knows what,\nfor the list is literally inexhaustible. The only simplification which\ncould possibly be aimed at would be the reduction of the relations to\na smaller number of types, like those which such authors as Kant and\nRenouvier call the 'categories' of the understanding.[464] According as\nwe followed one category or another we should sweep, with our thought,\nthrough the world in this way or in that. And all the categories would\nbe logical, would be relations of reason. They would fuse the items\ninto a continuum. Were _this_ the sort of connection sought between one\nmoment of our thinking and another, our chapter might end here. For the\nonly summary description of these infinite possibilities of transition,\nis that they are all _acts of reason_, and that the mind proceeds from\none object to another by some rational path of connection. The trueness\nof this formula is only equalled by its sterility, for psychological\npurposes. Practically it amounts to simply referring the inquirer to\nthe relations between facts or things, and to telling him that his\nthinking follows them.\n\nBut as a matter of fact, his thinking only sometimes follows them,\nand these so-called 'transitions of reason' are far from being all\nalike reasonable. If pure thought runs all our trains, why should she\nrun some so fast and some so slow, some through dull flats and some\nthrough gorgeous scenery, some to mountain-heights and jewelled mines,\nothers through dismal swamps and darkness?--and run some off the track\naltogether, and into the wilderness of lunacy? Why do we spend years\nstraining after a certain scientific or practical problem, but all in\nvain--thought refusing to evoke the solution we desire? And why, some\nday, walking in the street with our attention miles away from that\nquest, does the answer saunter into our minds as carelessly as if it\nhad never been called for--suggested, possibly, by the flowers on the\nbonnet of the lady in front of us, or possibly by nothing that we can\ndiscover? If reason can give us relief then, why did she not do so\nearlier?\n\nThe truth must be admitted that thought works under conditions imposed\n_ab extra_. The great law of habit itself--that twenty experiences\nmake us recall a thing better than one, that long indulgence in error\nmakes right thinking almost impossible--seems to have no essential\nfoundation in reason. The business of thought is with truth--the number\nof experiences ought to have nothing to do with her hold of it; and she\nought by right to be able to hug it all the closer, after years wasted\nout of its presence. The contrary arrangements seem quite fantastic\nand arbitrary, but nevertheless are part of the very bone and marrow\nof our minds. Reason is only one out of a thousand possibilities in\nthe thinking of each of us. Who can count all the silly fancies, the\ngrotesque suppositions, the utterly irrelevant reflections he makes in\nthe course of a day? Who can swear that his prejudices and irrational\nbeliefs constitute a less bulky part of his mental furniture than\nhis clarified opinions? It is true that a presiding arbiter seems\nto sit aloft in the mind, and emphasize the better suggestions into\npermanence, while it ends by dropping out and leaving unrecorded the\nconfusion. But this is all the difference. The _mode of genesis_ of\nthe worthy and the worthless seems the same. The laws of our actual\nthinking, of the _cogitatum_, must account alike for the bad and the\ngood materials on which the arbiter has to decide, for wisdom and for\nfolly. The laws of the arbiter, of the _cogitandum_, of what we _ought_\nto think, are to the former as the laws of ethics are to those of\nhistory. Who but an Hegelian historian ever pretended that reason in\naction was _per se_ a sufficient explanation of the political changes\nin Europe?\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_There are, then, mechanical conditions on which thought depends,\nand which,_ to say the least, _determine the order in which is\npresented the content or material for her comparisons, selections, and\ndecisions._ It is a suggestive fact that Locke, and many more recent\nContinental psychologists, have found themselves obliged to invoke a\nmechanical process to account for the _aberrations_ of thought, the\nobstructive preprocessions, the frustrations of reason. This they found\nin the law of habit, or what we now call Association by Contiguity.\nBut it never occurred to these writers that a process which could\ngo the length of actually producing some ideas and sequences in the\nmind might safely be trusted to produce others too; and that those\nhabitual associations which further thought may also come from the\nsame mechanical source as those which hinder it. Hartley accordingly\nsuggested habit as a sufficient explanation of all connections of our\nthoughts, and in so doing planted himself squarely upon the properly\npsychological aspect of the problem of connection, and sought to treat\nboth rational and irrational connections from a single point of view.\nThe problem which he essayed, however lamely, to answer, was that of\nthe connection between our psychic states considered purely as such,\nregardless of the objective connections of which they might take\ncognizance. How does a man come, after thinking of A, to think of B\nthe next moment? or how does he come to think A and B always together?\nThese were the phenomena which Hartley undertook to explain by cerebral\nphysiology. I believe that he was, in many essential respects, on the\nright track, and I propose simply to revise his conclusions by the aid\nof distinctions which he did not make.\n\nBut the whole historic doctrine of psychological association is tainted\nwith one huge error--that of the construction of our thoughts out of\nthe confounding of themselves together of immutable and incessantly\nrecurring 'simple ideas.' It is the cohesion of these which the\n'principles of association' are considered to account for. In Chapters\nVI and IX we saw abundant reasons for treating the doctrine of simple\nideas or psychic atoms as mythological; and, in all that follows, our\nproblem will be to keep whatever truths the associationist doctrine has\ncaught sight of without weighing it down with the untenable incumbrance\nthat the association is between 'ideas.'\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_Association_, so far as the word stands for an _effect, is between_\nTHINGS THOUGHT OF--_it is_ THINGS, _not ideas, which are associated in\nthe mind._ We ought to talk of the association of _objects_, not of the\nassociation of _ideas_. And so far as association stands for a _cause_,\nit is between _processes in the brain_--it is these which, by being\nassociated in certain ways, determine what successive objects shall be\nthought. Let us proceed towards our final generalizations by surveying\nfirst a few familiar facts.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe laws of motor habit in the lower centres of the nervous system\nare disputed by no one. A series of movements repeated in a certain\norder tend to unroll themselves with peculiar ease in that order for\never afterward. Number one awakens number two, and that awakens number\nthree, and so on, till the last is produced. A habit of this kind\nonce become inveterate may go on automatically. And so it is with the\nobjects with which our thinking is concerned. With some persons each\nnote of a melody, heard but once, will accurately revive in its proper\nsequence. Small boys at school learn the inflections of many a Greek\nnoun, adjective, or verb, from the reiterated recitations of the upper\nclasses falling on their ear as they sit at their desks. All this\nhappens with no voluntary effort on their part and with no thought of\nthe spelling of the words. The doggerel rhymes which children use in\ntheir games, such as the formula\n\n    \"Ana mana mona mike\n    Barcelona bona strike,\"\n\nused for 'counting out,' form another familiar example of things heard\nin sequence cohering in the same order in the memory.\n\nIn touch we have a smaller number of instances, though probably every\none who bathes himself in a certain fixed manner is familiar with the\nfact that each part of his body over which the water is squeezed from\nthe sponge awakens a premonitory tingling consciousness in that portion\nof skin which is habitually the next to be deluged. Tastes and smells\nform no very habitual series in our experience. But even if they did,\nit is doubtful whether habit would fix the order of their reproduction\nquite so well as it does that of other sensations. In vision, however,\nwe have a sense in which the order of reproduced things is very nearly\nas much influenced by habit as is the order of remembered sounds.\nRooms, landscapes, buildings, pictures, or persons with whose look we\nare very familiar, surge up before the mind's eye with all the details\nof their appearance complete, so soon as we think of any one of their\ncomponent parts. Some persons, in reciting printed matter by heart,\nwill seem to see each successive word, before they utter it, appear in\nits order on an imaginary page. A certain chess-player, one of those\nheroes who train themselves to play several games at once blindfold,\nis reported to say that in bed at night after a match the games are\nplayed all over again before his mental eye, each board being pictured\nas passing in turn through each of its successive stages. In this case,\nof course, the intense previous voluntary strain of the power of visual\nrepresentation is what facilitated the fixed order of revival.\n\nAssociation occurs as amply between impressions of different senses as\nbetween homogeneous sensations. Seen things and heard things cohere\nwith each other, and with odors and tastes, in representation, in the\nsame order in which they cohered as impressions of the outer world.\nFeelings of contact reproduce similarly the sights, sounds, and tastes\nwith which experience has associated them. In fact, the 'objects' of\nour perception, as trees, men, houses, microscopes, of which the real\nworld seems composed, are nothing but clusters of qualities which\nthrough simultaneous stimulation have so coalesced that the moment one\nis excited actually it serves as a sign or cue for the idea of the\nothers to arise. Let a person enter his room in the dark and grope\namong the objects there. The touch of the matches will instantaneously\nrecall their appearance. If his hand comes in contact with an orange\non the table, the golden yellow of the fruit, its savor and perfume\nwill forthwith shoot through his mind. In passing the hand over the\nsideboard or in jogging the coal-scuttle with the foot, the large\nglossy dark shape of the one and the irregular blackness of the other\nawaken like a flash and constitute what we call the recognition of the\nobjects. The voice of the violin faintly echoes through the mind as the\nhand is laid upon it in the dark, and the feeling of the garments or\ndraperies which may hang about the room is not _understood_ till the\nlook correlative to the feeling has in each case been resuscitated.\nSmells notoriously have the power of recalling the other experiences in\nwhose company they were wont to be felt, perhaps long years ago; and\nthe voluminous emotional character assumed by the images which suddenly\npour into the mind at such a time forms one of the staple topics of\npopular psychologic wonder--\n\n    \"Lost and gone and lost and gone!\n    A breath, a whisper--some divine farewell--\n    Desolate sweetness--far and far away.\"\n\nWe cannot hear the din of a railroad tram or the yell of its whistle,\nwithout thinking of its long, jointed appearance and its headlong\nspeed, nor catch a familiar voice in a crowd without recalling, with\nthe name of the speaker, also his face. But the most notorious and\nimportant case of the mental combination of auditory with optical\nimpressions originally experienced together is furnished by language.\nThe child is offered a new and delicious fruit and is at the same\ntime told that it is called a 'fig.' Or looking out of the window he\nexclaims, \"What a funny horse!\" and is told that it is a 'piebald'\nhorse. When learning his letters, the sound of each is repeated to him\nwhilst its shape is before his eye. Thenceforward, long as he may live,\nhe will never see a fig, a piebald horse, or a letter of the alphabet\nwithout the name which he first heard in conjunction with each clinging\nto it in his mind; and inversely he will never hear the name without\nthe faint arousal of the image of the object.[465]\n\n\nTHE RAPIDITY OF ASSOCIATION.\n\n\nReading exemplifies this kind of cohesion even more beautifully. It is\nan uninterrupted and protracted recall of sounds by sights which have\nalways been coupled with them in the past. I find that I can name six\nhundred letters in two minutes on a printed page. Five distinct acts\nof association between sight and sound (not to speak of all the other\nprocesses concerned) must then have occurred in each second in my mind.\nIn reading entire words the speed is much more rapid. Valentin relates\nin his Physiology that the reading of a single page of the proof,\ncontaining 2629 letters, took him 1 minute and 32 seconds. In this\nexperiment each letter was _understood_ in 1/28 of a second, but owing\nto the integration of letters into entire words, forming each a single\naggregate impression directly associated with a single acoustic image,\nwe need not suppose as many as 28 separate associations in a sound. The\nfigures, however, suffice to show with what extreme rapidity an actual\nsensation recalls its customary associates. Both in fact seem to our\nordinary attention to come into the mind at once.\n\nThe time-measuring psychologists of recent days have tried their\nhand at this problem by more elaborate methods. Galton, using a very\nsimple apparatus, found that the sight of an unforeseen word would\nawaken an associated 'idea' in about 5/6 of a second.[466] Wundt next\nmade determinations in which the 'cue' was given by single-syllabled\nwords called out by an assistant. The person experimented on had to\npress a key as soon as the sound of the word awakened an associated\nidea. Both word and reaction were chronographically registered, and\nthe total time-interval between the two amounted, in four observers,\nto 1.009, 0.896, 1.037, and 1.154 seconds respectively. From this the\nsimple physiological reaction-time and the time of merely identifying\nthe word's sound (the 'apperception-time,' as Wundt calls it) must be\nsubtracted, to get the exact time required for the associated idea\nto arise. These times were separately determined and subtracted. The\ndifference, called by Wundt the _association-time_, amounted, in the\nsame four persons, to 706, 723, 752, and 874 thousandths of a second\nrespectively.[467] The length of the last figure is due to the fact\nthat the person reacting (President G. S. Hall) was an American,\nwhose associations with German words would naturally be slower than\nthose of natives. The shortest association-time noted was when the\nword 'Sturm' suggested to Prof. Wundt the word 'Wind' in 0.341\nsecond.[468]--Finally, Mr. Cattell made some interesting observations\nupon the association-time between the look of letters and their names.\n\"I pasted letters,\" he says, \"on a revolving drum, and determined\nat what rate they could be read aloud as they passed by a slit in a\nscreen.\" He found it to vary according as one, or more than one letter,\nwas visible at a time through the slit, and gives half a second as\nabout the time which it takes to see and name a single letter seen\nalone.\n\n \"When two or more letters are always in view, not only do the\n processes of seeing and naming overlap, but while the subject is\n seeing one letter he begins to see the ones next following, and so\n can read them more quickly. Of the nine persons experimented on, four\n could read the letters faster when five were in view at once, but were\n not helped by a sixth letter; three were not helped by a fifth, and\n two not by a fourth letter. This shows that while one idea is in the\n centre, two, three, or four additional ideas may be in the background\n of consciousness. The second letter in view shortens the time about\n 1/40, the third 1/60, the fourth 1/100, the fifth 1/200 sec.\n\n \"I find it takes about twice as long to read (aloud, as fast as\n possible) words which have no connection as words which make sentences\n and letters which have no connection as letters which make words.\n When the words make sentences and the letters words, not only do the\n processes of seeing and naming overlap, but by one mental effort the\n subject can recognize a whole group of words or letters, and by one\n will-act choose the motions to be made in naming, so that the rate\n at which the words and letters are read is really only limited by\n the maximum rapidity at which the speech-organs can be moved. As the\n result of a large number of experiments, the writer found that he had\n read words not making sentences at the rate of 1/4 sec, words making\n sentences (a passage from Swift) at the rate of 1/8 sec., per word....\n The rate at which a person reads a foreign language is proportional to\n his familiarity with the language. For example, when reading as fast\n as possible the writer's rate was, English 138, French 167, German\n 250, Italian 327, Latin 434, and Greek 484; the figures giving the\n thousandths of a second taken to read each word. Experiments made on\n others strikingly confirm these results. The subject does not know\n that he is reading the foreign language more slowly than his own; this\n explains why foreigners seem to talk so fast. This simple method of\n determining a person's familiarity with a language might be used in\n school examinations.\n\n \"The time required to see and name colors and pictures of objects was\n determined in the same way. The time was found to be about the same\n (over 1/2 sec.) for colors as for pictures, and about twice as long\n as for words and letters. Other experiments I have made show that we\n can recognize a single color or picture in a slightly shorter time\n than a word or letter, but take longer to name it. This is because, in\n the case of words and letters, the association between the idea and\n name has taken place so often that the process has become automatic,\n whereas in the case of colors and pictures we must by a voluntary\n effort choose the name.\"[469]\n\nIn later experiments Mr. Cattell studied the time for various\nassociations to be performed, the termini (i.e., cue and answer) being\nwords. A word in one language was to call up its equivalent in another,\nthe name of an author the tongue in which he wrote, that of a city the\ncountry in which it lay, that of a writer one of his works, etc. The\nmean variation from the average is very great in all these experiments;\nand the interesting feature which they show is the existence of\ncertain constant differences between associations of different sorts.\nThus:\n\n   From _country_ to _city_,     Mr. C.'s time was 0.340 sec.\n   From _season_ to _month_,     Mr. C.'s time was 0.399\n   From _language_ to _author_,  Mr. C.'s time was 0.523\n   From _author_ to _work_,      Mr. C.'s time was 0.596\n\n\nThe average time of two observers, experimenting on eight different\ntypes of association, was 0.420 and 0.436 sec. respectively.[470] The\nvery wide range of variation is undoubtedly a consequence of the fact\nthat the words used as cues, and the different types of association\nstudied, differ much in their degree of familiarity.\n\n \"For example, B is a teacher of mathematics; C has busied himself more\n with literature. C knows quite as well as B that 7 + 5 = 12, yet he\n needs 1/10 a second longer to call it to mind; B knows quite as well\n as C that Dante was a poet, but needs 1/20 of a second longer to think\n of it. Such experiments lay bare the mental life in a way that is\n startling and not always gratifying.\"[471]\n\n\nTHE LAW OF CONTIGUITY.\n\n\nTime-determinations apart, the facts we have run over can all be summed\nup in the simple statement that _objects once experienced together tend\nto become associated in the imagination, so that when any one of them\nis thought of, the others are likely to be thought of also, in the same\norder of sequence or coexistence as before_. This statement we may name\nthe law of _mental association by contiguity_.[472]\n\nI preserve this name in order to depart as little as possible from\ntradition, although Mr. Ward's designation of the process as that of\nassociation by _continuity_[473] or Wundt's as that of _external_\nassociation (to distinguish it from the _internal_ association which\nwe shall presently learn to know under the name of association by\nsimilarity)[474] are perhaps better terms. Whatever we name the law,\nsince it expresses merely a phenomenon of mental _habit, the most\nnatural way of accounting for it is to conceive it as a result of\nthe laws of habit in the nervous system; in other words, it is to\nascribe it to a physiological cause._ If it be truly a law of those\nnerve-centres which co-ordinate sensory and motor processes together\nthat paths once used for coupling any pair of them are thereby made\nmore permeable, there appears no reason why the same law should not\nhold good of ideational centres and their coupling-paths as well.[475]\nParts of these centres which have once been in action together will\nthus grow so linked that excitement at one point will irradiate\nthrough the system. The chances of complete irradiation will be\nstrong in proportion as the previous excitements have been frequent,\nand as the present points excited afresh are numerous. If all points\nwere originally excited together, the irradiation may be sensibly\nsimultaneous throughout the system, when any single point or group\nof points is touched off. But where the original impressions were\nsuccessive--the conjugation of a Greek verb, for example--awakening\nnerve-tracts in a definite order, they will now, when one of them\nawakens, discharge into each other in that definite order and in no\nother way.\n\nThe reader will recollect all that has been said of increased tension\nin nerve-tracts and of the summation of stimuli (p. 82 ff.). We must\ntherefore suppose that in these ideational tracts as well as elsewhere,\nactivity may be awakened, in any particular locality, by the summation\ntherein of a number of tensions, each incapable alone of provoking\nan actual discharge. Suppose for example the locality M to be in\nfunctional continuity with four other localities, K, L, N, and O.\nSuppose moreover that on four previous occasions it has been separately\ncombined with each of these localities in a common activity. M may then\nbe indirectly awakened by any cause which tends to awaken either K, L,\nN, or O. But if the cause which awakens K, for instance, be so slight\nas only to increase its tension without arousing it to full discharge,\nK will only succeed in slightly increasing the tension of M. But if at\nthe same time the tensions of L, N, and O are similarly increased, the\ncombined effects of all four upon M may be so great as to awaken an\nactual discharge in this latter locality. In like manner if the paths\nbetween M and the four other localities have been so slightly excavated\nby previous experience as to require a very intense excitement in\neither of the localities before M can be awakened, a less strong\nexcitement than this in any one will fail to reach M. But if all four\nat once are mildly excited, their compound effect on M may be adequate\nto its full arousal.\n\n_The psychological law of association_ of objects thought of through\ntheir previous contiguity in thought or experience _would thus be an\neffect, within the mind, of the physical fact that nerve-currents\npropagate themselves easiest through those tracts of conduction which\nhave been already most in use._ Descartes and Locke hit upon this\nexplanation, which modern science has not yet succeeded in improving.\n\n \"Custom,\" says Locke, \"settles habits of thinking in the\n understanding, as well as of determining in the will, and of motions\n in the body; all which seem to be but _trains of motion in the animal\n spirits_ [by this Locke meant identically what we understand by\n _neural processes_] which, once set agoing, continue in the same steps\n they have been used to, which by often treading are worn into a smooth\n path, and the motion in it becomes easy and, as it were, natural.\"[476]\n\nHartley was more thorough in his grasp of the principle. The sensorial\nnerve-currents, produced when objects are fully present, were for\nhim 'vibrations,' and those which produce ideas of objects in their\nabsence were 'miniature vibrations.' And he sums up the cause of mental\nassociation in a single formula by saying:\n\n \"Any vibrations, A, B, C, etc., by being associated together a\n sufficient Number of Times, get such a Power over _a, b, c,_ etc., the\n corresponding Miniature Vibrations, that any of the Vibrations A, when\n impressed alone, shall be able to excite _b, c,_ etc., the Miniatures\n of the rest.\"[477]\n\nIt is evident that if there be any law of neural habit similar to\nthis, the contiguities, coexistences, and successions, met with in\nouter experience, must inevitably be copied more or less perfectly in\nour thought. If A B C D E be a sequence of outer impressions (they\nmay be events or they may be successively experienced properties of\nan object) which once gave rise to the successive 'ideas' _a b c d\ne_, then no sooner will A impress us again and awaken the _a_, than\n_b c d e_ will arise as ideas even before B C D E have come in as\nimpressions. In other words, the order of impressions will the next\ntime be _anticipated_; and the mental order will so far forth copy the\norder of the outer world. Any object when met again will make us expect\nits former concomitants, through the overflowing of its brain-tract\ninto the paths which lead to theirs. And all these suggestions will be\neffects of a material law.\n\nWhere the associations are, as here, of successively appearing things,\nthe distinction I made at the outset of the chapter, between a\nconnection _thought of_ and a connection _of thoughts_, is unimportant.\nFor the connection thought of is concomitance or succession; and the\nconnection between the thoughts is just the same. The 'objects' and the\n'ideas' fit into parallel schemes, and may be described in identical\nlanguage, as contiguous things tending to be thought again together, or\ncontiguous ideas tending to recur together.\n\nNow were these cases fair samples of all association, the distinction\nI drew might well be termed a _Spitzfindigkeit_ or piece of pedantic\nhair-splitting, and be dropped. But as a matter of fact we cannot treat\nthe subject so simply. The same outer object may suggest _either of\nmany_ realities formerly associated with it--for in the vicissitudes of\nour outer experience we are constantly liable to meet the same thing\nin the midst of differing companions--and a philosophy of association\nthat should merely say that it will suggest one of these, or even of\nthat one of them which it has oftenest accompanied, would go but a\nvery short way into the _rationale_ of the subject. This, however, is\nabout as far as most associationists have gone with their 'principle\nof contiguity.' Granted an object, A, they never tell us beforehand\nwhich of its associates it _will_ suggest; their wisdom is limited to\nshowing, after it _has_ suggested a second object, that that object\nwas once an associate. They have had to supplement their principle\nof Contiguity by other principles, such as those of Similarity and\nContrast, before they could begin to do justice to the richness of the\nfacts.\n\n\nTHE ELEMENTARY LAW OF ASSOCIATION.\n\n\nI shall try to show, in the pages which immediately follow, that there\nis no other _elementary_ causal law of association than the law of\nneural habit. All the _materials_ of our thought are due to the way\nin which one elementary process of the cerebral hemispheres tends to\nexcite whatever other elementary process it may have excited at some\nformer time. The number of elementary processes at work, however, and\nthe nature of those which at any time are fully effective in rousing\nthe others, determine the character of the total brain-action, and,\nas a consequence of this, they determine the object thought of at the\ntime. According as this resultant object is one thing or another, we\ncall it a product of association by contiguity or of association by\nsimilarity, or contrast, or whatever other sorts we may have recognized\nas ultimate. Its production, however, is, in each one of these cases,\nto be explained by a merely quantitative variation in the elementary\nbrain-processes momentarily at work under the law of habit, so that\n_psychic_ contiguity, similarity, etc., are derivatives of a single\nprofounder kind of fact.\n\nMy thesis, stated thus briefly, will soon become more clear; and at the\nsame time certain disturbing factors, which co-operate with the law of\nneural habit, will come to view.\n\nLet us then assume as the _basis_ of all our subsequent reasoning this\nlaw: _When two elementary brain-processes have been active together\nor in immediate succession, one of them, on reoccurring, tends to\npropagate its excitement into the other._\n\nBut, as a matter of fact, every elementary process has found itself at\ndifferent times excited in conjunction with _many_ other processes,\nand this by unavoidable outward causes. Which of these others it shall\nawaken now becomes a problem. Shall _b_ or _c_ be aroused next by the\npresent _a_? We must make a further postulate, based, however, on\nthe fact of _tension_ in nerve-tissue, and on the fact of summation\nof excitements, each incomplete or latent in itself, into an open\nresultant.[478] The process _b_, rather than _c_, will awake, if in\naddition to the vibrating tract _a_ some other tract _d_ is in a state\nof sub-excitement, and formerly was excited with _b_ alone and not with\n_a_. In short, we may say:\n\n_The amount of activity at any given point in the brain-cortex is\nthe sum of the tendencies of all other points to discharge into it,\nsuch tendencies being proportionate_ (1) _to the number of times the\nexcitement of each other point may have accompanied that of the point\nin question_; (2) _to the intensity of such excitements; and_ (3) _to\nthe absence of any rival point functionally disconnected with the first\npoint, into which the discharges might be diverted._\n\nExpressing the fundamental law in this most complicated way leads to\nthe greatest ultimate simplification. Let us, for the present, only\ntreat of spontaneous trains of thought and ideation, such as occur in\nrevery or musing. The case of voluntary thinking toward a certain end\nshall come up later.\n\nTake, to fix our ideas, the two verses from 'Locksley Hall':\n\n    \"I, the heir of all _the ages_ in the foremost files of time,\"\n\nand--\n\n    \"For I doubt not through _the ages_ one increasing purpose runs.\"\n\nWhy is it that when we recite from memory one of these lines, and get\nas far as _the ages_, that portion of the _other_ line which follows,\nand, so to speak, sprouts out of _the ages_, does not also sprout out\nof our memory, and confuse the sense of our words? Simply because\nthe word that follows _the ages_ has its brain-process awakened not\nsimply by the brain-process of _the ages_ alone, but by it _plus_ the\nbrain-processes of all the words preceding _the ages_. The word _ages_\nat its moment of strongest activity would, _per se_, indifferently\ndischarge into either 'in' or 'one.' So would the previous words (whose\ntension is momentarily much less strong than that of _ages_) each of\nthem indifferently discharge into either of a large number of other\nwords with which they have been at different times combined. But when\nthe processes of '_I, the heir of all the ages_,' simultaneously\nvibrate in the brain, the last one of them in a maximal, the others in\na fading phase of excitement; then the strongest line of discharge will\nbe that which they _all alike_ tend to take. '_In_' and not '_one_' or\nany other word will be the next to awaken, for its brain-process has\npreviously vibrated in unison not only with that of _ages_, but with\nthat of all those other words whose activity is dying away. It is a\ngood case of the effectiveness over thought of what we called on p. 258\na 'fringe.'\n\nBut if some one of these preceding words--'heir,' for example--had an\nintensely strong association with some brain-tracts entirely disjoined\nin experience from the poem of 'Locksley Hall'--if the reciter, for\ninstance, were tremulously awaiting the opening of a will which might\nmake him a millionaire--it is probable that the path of discharge\nthrough the words of the poem would be suddenly interrupted at the word\n'heir.' His _emotional interest in that word_ would be such that its\n_own special associations would prevail_ over the combined ones of the\nother words. He would, as we say, be abruptly reminded of his personal\nsituation, and the poem would lapse altogether from his thoughts.\n\nThe writer of these pages has every year to learn the names of a large\nnumber of students who sit in alphabetical order in a lecture-room. He\nfinally learns to call them by name, as they sit in their accustomed\nplaces. On meeting one in the street, however, early in the year, the\nface hardly ever recalls the name, but it may recall the place of its\nowner in the lecture-room, his neighbors' faces, and consequently\nhis general alphabetical position; and then, usually as the common\nassociate of all these combined data, the student's name surges up in\nhis mind.\n\nA father wishes to show to some guests the progress of his rather dull\nchild in Kindergarten instruction. Holding the knife upright on the\ntable, he says, \"What do you call that, my boy?\" \"I calls it a _knife_,\nI does,\" is the sturdy reply, from which the child cannot be induced\nto swerve by any alteration in the form of question, until the father\nrecollecting that in the Kindergarten a pencil was used, and not a\nknife, draws a long one from his pocket, holds it in the same way,\nand then gets the wished-for answer, \"I calls it _vertical_.\" All the\nconcomitants of the Kindergarten experience had to recombine their\neffect before the word 'vertical' could be reawakened.\n\nProfessor Bain, in his chapters on 'Compound Association,' has treated\nin a minute and exhaustive way of this type of mental sequence, and\nwhat he has done so well need not be here repeated.[479]\n\n\n_Impartial Redintegration._\n\n\nThe ideal working of the law of compound association, were it\nunmodified by any extraneous influence, would be such as to keep the\nmind in a perpetual treadmill of concrete reminiscences from which no\ndetail could be omitted. Suppose, for example, we begin by thinking\nof a certain dinner-party. The only thing which all the components of\nthe dinner-party could combine to recall would be the first concrete\noccurrence which ensued upon it. All the details of this occurrence\ncould in turn only combine to awaken the next following occurrence, and\nso on. If _a, b, c, d, e,_ for instance, be the elementary nerve-tracts\nexcited by the last act of the dinner-party, call this act A, and _l,\nm, n, o, p,_ be those of walking home through the frosty night, which\nwe may call B, then the thought of A must awaken that of B, because\n_a, b, c, d, e,_ will each and all discharge into _l_ through the\npaths by which their original discharge took place. Similarly they\nwill discharge into _m, n, o,_ and _p_; and these latter tracts will\nalso each reinforce the other's action because, in the experience B,\nthey have already vibrated in unison. The lines in Fig. 40 symbolize\nthe summation of discharges into each of the components of B, and the\nconsequent strength of the combination of influences by which B in its\ntotality is awakened.\n\nHamilton first used the word 'redintegration' to designate all\nassociation. Such processes as we have just described might in an\nemphatic sense be termed redintegrations, for they would necessarily\nlead, if unobstructed, to the reinstatement in thought of the _entire_\ncontent of large trains of past experience. From this complete\nredintegration there could be no escape save through the irruption\nof some new and strong present impression of the senses, or through\nthe excessive tendency of some one of the elementary brain-tracts to\ndischarge independently into an aberrant quarter of the brain. Such\nwas the tendency of the word 'heir' in the verse from 'Locksley Hall,'\nwhich was our first example. How such tendencies are constituted we\nshall have soon to inquire with some care. Unless they are present,\nthe panorama of the past, once opened, must unroll itself with fatal\nliterality to the end, unless some outward sound, sight, or touch\ndivert the current of thought.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 40.]\n\nLet us call this process _impartial redintegration_. Whether it ever\noccurs in an absolutely complete form is doubtful. We all immediately\nrecognize, however, that in some minds there is a much greater tendency\nthan in others for the flow of thought to take this form. Those\ninsufferably garrulous old women, those dry and fanciless beings who\nspare you no detail, however petty, of the facts they are recounting,\nand upon the thread of whose narrative all the irrelevant items cluster\nas pertinaciously as the essential ones, the slaves of literal fact,\nthe stumblers over the smallest abrupt step in thought, are figures\nknown to all of us. Comic literature has made her profit out of\nthem. Juliet's nurse is a classical example. George Eliot's village\ncharacters and some of Dickens's minor personages supply excellent\ninstances.\n\nPerhaps as successful a rendering as any of this mental type is\nthe character of Miss Bates in Miss Austen's 'Emma.' Hear how she\nredintegrates:\n\n \"'But where could _you_ hear it?' cried Miss Bates. 'Where could you\n possibly hear it, Mr. Knightley? For it is not five minutes since I\n received Mrs. Cole's note--no, it cannot be more than five--or at\n least ten--for I had got my bonnet and spencer on, just ready to come\n out--I was only gone down to speak to Patty again about the pork--Jane\n was standing in the passage--were not you, Jane?--for my mother was\n so afraid that we had not any salting-pan large enough. So I said\n I would go down and see, and Jane said: \"Shall I go down instead?\n for I think you have a little cold, and Patty has been washing the\n kitchen.\" \"Oh, my dear,\" said I--well, and just then came the note.\n A Miss Hawkins--that's all I know--a Miss Hawkins, of Bath. But, Mr.\n Knightley, how could you possibly have heard it? for the very moment\n Mr. Cole told Mrs. Cole of it, she sat down and wrote to me. A Miss\n Hawkins--'\"\n\nBut in every one of us there are moments when this complete\nreproduction of all the items of a past experience occurs. What are\nthose moments? They are moments of emotional recall of the past as\nsomething which once was, but is gone for ever--moments, the interest\nof which consists in the feeling that our self was once other than\nit now is. When this is the case, any detail, however minute, which\nwill make the past picture more complete, will also have its effect in\nswelling that total contrast between _now_ and _then_ which forms the\ncentral interest of our contemplation.\n\n\nORDINARY OR MIXED ASSOCIATION.\n\n\nThis case helps us to understand why it is that the ordinary\nspontaneous flow of our ideas does not follow the law of impartial\nredintegration. _In no revival of a past experience are all the\nitems of our thought equally operative in determining what the next\nthought shall be. Always some ingredient is prepotent over the rest._\nIts special suggestions or associations in this case will often be\ndifferent from those which it has in common with the whole group of\nitems; and its tendency to awaken these outlying associates will\ndeflect the path of our revery. Just as in the original sensible\nexperience our attention focalized itself upon a few of the impressions\nof the scene before us, so here in the reproduction of those\nimpressions an equal partiality is shown, and some items are emphasized\nabove the rest. What these items shall be is, in most cases of\nspontaneous revery, hard to determine beforehand. In subjective terms\nwe say that _the prepotent items are those which appeal most to our_\nINTEREST.\n\nExpressed in brain-terms, the law of interest will be: _some one\nbrain-process is always prepotent above its concomitants in arousing\naction elsewhere._\n\n \"Two processes,\" says Mr. Hodgson,[480] \"are constantly going on\n in redintegration. The one a process of corrosion, melting, decay;\n the other a process of renewing, arising, becoming.... No object of\n representation remains long before consciousness in the same state,\n but fades, decays, and becomes indistinct. Those parts of the object,\n however, which possess an interest resist this tendency to gradual\n decay of the whole object.... This inequality in the object--some\n parts, the uninteresting, submitting to decay; others, the interesting\n parts, resisting it--when it has continued for a certain time, ends in\n becoming a new object.\"\n\nOnly where the interest is diffused equally over all the parts (as\nin the emotional memory just referred to, where, as all _past_, they\nall interest us alike) is this law departed from. It will be least\nobeyed by those minds which have the smallest variety and intensity\nof interests--those who, by the general flatness and poverty of their\n\u00e6sthetic nature, are kept for ever rotating among the literal sequences\nof their local and personal history.\n\nMost of us, however, are better organized than this, and our musings\npursue an erratic course, swerving continually into some new direction\ntraced by the shifting play of interest as it ever falls on some\npartial item in each complex representation that is evoked. Thus it\nso often comes about that we find ourselves thinking at two nearly\nadjacent moments of things separated by the whole diameter of space\nand time. Not till we carefully recall each step of our cogitation do\nwe see how naturally we came by Hodgson's law to pass from one to the\nother. Thus, for instance, after looking at my clock just now (1879),\nI found myself thinking of a recent resolution in the Senate about our\nlegal-tender notes. The clock called up the image of the man who had\nrepaired its gong. He suggested the jeweller's shop where I had last\nseen him; that shop, some shirt-studs which I had bought there; they,\nthe value of gold and its recent decline; the latter, the equal value\nof greenbacks, and this, naturally, the question of how long they were\nto last, and of the Bayard proposition. Each of these images offered\nvarious points of interest. Those which formed the turning-points of\nmy thought are easily assigned. The gong was momentarily the most\ninteresting part of the clock, because, from having begun with a\nbeautiful tone, it had become discordant and aroused disappointment.\nBut for this the clock might have suggested the friend who gave it to\nme, or any one of a thousand circumstances connected with clocks. The\njeweller's shop suggested the studs, because they alone of all its\ncontents were tinged with the egoistic interest of possession. This\ninterest in the studs, their value, made me single out the material\nas its chief source, etc., to the end. Every reader who will arrest\nhimself at any moment and say, \"How came I to be thinking of just\nthis?\" will be sure to trace a train of representations linked together\nby lines of contiguity and points of interest inextricably combined.\nThis is the ordinary process of the association of ideas as it\nspontaneously goes on in average minds. _We may call it_ ORDINARY, _or_\nMIXED, ASSOCIATION.\n\nAnother example of it is given by Hobbes in a passage which has been\nquoted so often as to be classical:\n\n \"In a discourse of our present civil war, what could seem more\n impertinent than to ask (as one did) what was the value of a Roman\n penny? Yet the coherence to me was manifest enough. For the thought of\n the war introduced the thought of the delivering up the King to his\n enemies; the thought of that brought in the thought of the delivering\n up of Christ; and that again the thought of the thirty pence, which\n was the price of that treason: and thence easily followed that\n malicious question; and all this in a moment of time; for thought is\n quick.\"[481]\n\nCan we determine, now, when a certain portion of the going thought\nhas, by dint of its interest, become so prepotent as to make its own\nexclusive associates the dominant features of the coming thought--can\nwe, I say, determine _which_ of its own associates shall be evoked? For\nthey are many. As Hodgson says:\n\n \"The interesting parts of the decaying object are free to combine\n again with any objects or parts of objects with which at any time they\n have been combined before. All the former combinations of these parts\n may come back into consciousness; one must; but which will?\"\n\nMr. Hodgson replies:\n\n \"There can be but one answer: that which has been most _habitually_\n combined with them before. This new object begins at once to form\n itself in consciousness, and to group its parts round the part still\n remaining from the former object; part after part comes out and\n arranges itself in its old position; but scarcely has the process\n begun, when the original law of interest begins to operate on this\n new formation, seizes on the interesting parts and impresses them on\n the attention to the exclusion of the rest, and the whole process is\n repeated again with endless variety. I venture to propose this as a\n complete and true account of the whole process of redintegration.\"\n\nIn restricting the discharge from the interesting item into that\nchannel which is simply most _habitual_ in the sense of most frequent,\nHodgson's account is assuredly imperfect. An image by no means always\nrevives its most frequent associate, although frequency is certainly\none of the most potent determinants of revival. If I abruptly utter\nthe word _swallow_, the reader, if by habit an ornithologist, will\nthink of a bird; if a physiologist or a medical specialist in throat\ndiseases, he will think of deglutition. If I say _date_, he will, if\na fruit-merchant or an Arabian traveller, think of the produce of the\npalm; if an habitual student of history, figures with A.D. or B.C.\nbefore them will rise in his mind. If I say _bed, bath, morning,_\nhis own daily toilet will be invincibly suggested by the combined\nnames of three of its habitual associates. But frequent lines of\ntransition are often set at naught. The sight of C. Goring's 'System\nder kritischen Philosophie' has most frequently awakened in me thoughts\nof the opinions therein propounded. The idea of suicide has never been\nconnected with the volumes. But a moment since, as my eye fell upon\nthem, suicide was the thought that flashed into my mind. Why? Because\nbut yesterday I received a letter from Leipzig informing me that this\nphilosopher's recent death by drowning was an act of self-destruction.\nThoughts tend, then, to awaken their most recent as well as their most\nhabitual associates. This is a matter of notorious experience, too\nnotorious, in fact, to need illustration. If we have seen our friend\nthis morning, the mention of his name now recalls the circumstances\nof that interview, rather than any more remote details concerning\nhim. If Shakespeare's plays are mentioned, and we were last night\nreading 'Richard II.,' vestiges of that play rather than of 'Hamlet'\nor 'Othello' float through our mind. Excitement of peculiar tracts,\nor peculiar modes of general excitement in the brain, leave a sort of\ntenderness or exalted sensibility behind them which takes days to die\naway. As long as it lasts, those tracts or those modes are liable to\nhave their activities awakened by causes which at other times might\nleave them in repose. Hence, _recency_ in experience is a prime factor\nin determining revival in thought.[482]\n\n_Vividness_ in an original experience may also have the same effect as\nhabit or recency in bringing about likelihood of revival. If we have\nonce witnessed an execution, any subsequent conversation or reading\nabout capital punishment will almost certainly suggest images of that\nparticular scene. Thus it is that events lived through only once, and\nin youth, may come in after-years, by reason of their exciting quality\nor emotional intensity, to serve as types or instances used by our\nmind to illustrate any and every occurring topic whose interest is\nmost remotely pertinent to theirs. If a man in his boyhood once talked\nwith Napoleon, any mention of great men or historical events, battles\nor thrones, or the whirligig of fortune, or islands in the ocean,\nwill be apt to draw to his lips the incidents of that one memorable\ninterview. If the word _tooth_ now suddenly appears on the page before\nthe reader's eye, there are fifty chances out of a hundred that, if\nhe gives it time to awaken any image, it will be an image of some\noperation of dentistry in which he has been the sufferer. Daily he\nhas touched his teeth and masticated with them; this very morning he\nbrushed them, chewed his breakfast and picked them; but the rarer and\nremoter associations arise more promptly because they were so much more\nintense.[483]\n\nA fourth factor in tracing the course of reproduction is _congruity\nin emotional tone_ between the reproduced idea and our mood. The same\nobjects do not recall the same associates when we are cheerful as when\nwe are melancholy. Nothing, in fact, is more striking than our utter\ninability to keep up trains of joyous imagery when we are depressed\nin spirits. Storm, darkness, war, images of disease, poverty, and\nperishing afflict unremittingly the imaginations of melancholiacs.\nAnd those of sanguine temperament, when their spirits are high, find\nit impossible to give any permanence to evil forebodings or to gloomy\nthoughts. In an instant the train of association dances off to flowers\nand sunshine, and images of spring and hope. The records of Arctic or\nAfrican travel perused in one mood awaken no thoughts but those of\nhorror at the malignity of Nature; read at another time they suggest\nonly enthusiastic reflections on the indomitable power and pluck of\nman. Few novels so overflow with joyous animal spirits as 'The Three\nGuardsmen' of Dumas. Yet it may awaken in the mind of a reader\ndepressed with sea-sickness (as the writer can personally testify) a\nmost dismal and woeful consciousness of the cruelty and carnage of\nwhich heroes like Athos, Porthos, and Aramis make themselves guilty.\n\n_Habit, recency, vividness, and emotional congruity_ are, then, all\nreasons why one representation rather than another should be awakened\nby the interesting portion of a departing thought. We may say with\ntruth that _in the majority of cases the coming representation will\nhave been either habitual, recent, or vivid, and will be congruous._ If\nall these qualities unite in any one absent associate, we may predict\nalmost infallibly that that associate of the going thought will form\nan important ingredient in the coming thought. In spite of the fact,\nhowever, that the succession of representations is thus redeemed from\nperfect indeterminism and limited to a few classes whose characteristic\nquality is fixed by the nature of our past experience, it must still\nbe confessed that an immense number of terms in the linked chain of\nour representations fall outside of all assignable rule. To take\nthe instance of the clock given on page 586. Why did the jeweller's\nshop suggest the shirt-studs rather than a chain which I had bought\nthere more recently, which had cost more, and whose sentimental\nassociations were much more interesting? Both chain and studs had\nexcited brain-tracts simultaneously with the shop. The only reason why\nthe nerve-stream from the shop-tract switched off into the stud-tract\nrather than into the chain-tract must be that the stud-tract happened\nat that moment to lie more open, either because of some accidental\nalteration in its nutrition or because the incipient sub-conscious\ntensions of the brain as a whole had so distributed their equilibrium,\nthat it was more unstable here than in the chain-tract. Any reader's\nintrospection will easily furnish similar instances. It thus remains\ntrue that to a certain extent, even in those forms of ordinary mixed\nassociation which lie nearest to impartial redintegration, _which_\nassociate of the interesting item shall emerge must be called largely a\nmatter of accident--accident, that is, for our intelligence. No doubt\nit is determined by cerebral causes, but they are too subtile and\nshifting for our analysis.\n\n\nASSOCIATION BY SIMILARITY.\n\n\nIn partial or mixed association we have all along supposed the\ninteresting portion of the disappearing thought to be of considerable\nextent, and to be sufficiently complex to constitute by itself a\nconcrete object. Sir William Hamilton relates, for instance, that\nafter thinking of Ben Lomond he found himself thinking of the Prussian\nsystem of education, and discovered that the links of association\nwere a German gentleman whom he had met on Ben Lomond, Germany, etc.\nThe interesting part of Ben Lomond, as he had experienced it, the\npart operative in determining the train of his ideas was the complex\nimage of a particular man. But now let us suppose that that selective\nagency of interested attention, which may thus convert impartial\nredintegration into partial association--let us suppose that it refines\nitself still further and accentuates a portion of the passing thought,\nso small as to be no longer the image of a concrete thing, but only\nof an abstract quality or property. Let us moreover suppose that the\npart thus accentuated persists in consciousness (or, in cerebral\nterms, has its brain-process continue) after the other portions of the\nthought have faded. _This small surviving portion will then surround\nitself with its own associates_ after the fashion we have already\nseen, and the relation between the new thought's object and the object\nof the faded thought will be a _relation of similarity_. The pair of\nthoughts will form an instance of what is called '_Association by\nSimilarity_.'[484]\n\nThe similars which are here associated, or of which the first is\nfollowed by the second in the mind, are seen to be _compounds_.\nExperience proves that this is always the case. _There is no tendency\non the part of_ SIMPLE _'ideas,' attributes, or qualities to remind us\nof their like._ The thought of one shade of blue does not remind us of\nthat of another shade of blue, etc., unless indeed we have in mind some\ngeneral purpose like naming the tint, when we should naturally think\nof other blues of the scale, through 'mixed association' of purpose,\nnames, and tints, together. But there is no elementary tendency of pure\nqualities to awaken their similars in the mind.\n\nWe saw in the chapter on Discrimination that two compound things are\nsimilar when some one quality or group of qualities is shared alike by\nboth, although as regards their other qualities they may have nothing\nin common. The moon is similar to a gas-jet, it is also similar to a\nfoot-ball; but a gas-jet and a foot-ball are not similar to each other.\nWhen we affirm the similarity of two compound things, we should always\nsay _in what respect it obtains_. Moon and gas-jet are similar in\nrespect of luminosity, and nothing else; moon and foot-ball in respect\nof rotundity, and nothing else. Foot-ball and gas-jet are in no respect\nsimilar--that is, they possess no common point, no identical attribute.\nSimilarity, in compounds, is partial identity. When the _same_\nattribute appears in two phenomena, though it be their only common\nproperty, the two phenomena are similar in so far forth. To return\nnow to our associated representations. If the thought of the moon is\nsucceeded by the thought of a foot-ball, and that by the thought of one\nof Mr. X's railroads, it is because the attribute rotundity in the moon\nbroke away from all the rest and surrounded itself with an entirely new\nset of companions--elasticity, leathery integument, swift mobility in\nobedience to human caprice, etc.; and because the last-named attribute\nin the foot-ball in turn broke away from its companions, and, itself\npersisting, surrounded itself with such new attributes as make up the\nnotions of a 'railroad king,' of a rising and falling stock-market, and\nthe like.\n\nThe gradual passage from impartial redintegration to similar\nassociation through what we have called ordinary mixed association may\nbe symbolized by diagrams. Fig. 41 is impartial redintegration, Fig. 42\nis mixed, and Fig. 43 similar association. A in each is the passing,\nB the coming thought. In 'impartial,' all parts of A are equally\noperative in calling up B. In 'mixed,' most parts of A are inert. The\npart M alone breaks out and awakens B. In 'similar,' the focalized\npart M is much smaller than in the previous case, and after awakening\nits new set of associates, instead of fading out itself, it continues\npersistently active along with them, forming an identical part in the\ntwo ideas, and making these, _pro tanto_, resemble each other.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 41.]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 42.]\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 43.]\n\nWhy a single portion of the passing thought should break out from its\nconcert with the rest and act, as we say, on its own hook, why the\nother parts should become inert, are mysteries which we can ascertain\nbut not explain. Possibly a minuter insight into the laws of neural\naction will some day clear the matter up; possibly neural laws will\nnot suffice, and we shall need to invoke a dynamic reaction of the form\nof consciousness upon its content. But into this we cannot enter now.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nTo sum up, then, we see that _the difference between the three kinds\nof association reduces itself to a simple difference in the amount\nof that portion of the nerve-tract supporting the going thought\nwhich is operative in calling up the thought which comes._ But the\n_modus operandi_ of this active part is the same, be it large or be\nit small. The items constituting the coming object waken in every\ninstance because their nerve-tracts once were excited continuously\nwith those of the going object or its operative part. This ultimate\nphysiological law of habit among the neural elements is what _runs_ the\ntrain. The direction of its course and the form of its transitions,\nwhether redintegrative, associative, or similar, are due to unknown\nregulative or determinative conditions which accomplish their effect by\nopening this switch and closing that, setting the engine sometimes at\nhalf-speed, and coupling or uncoupling cars.\n\nThis last figure of speech, into which I have glided unwittingly,\naffords itself an excellent instance of association by similarity.\nI was thinking of the deflections of the course of ideas. Now, from\nHobbes's time downward, English writers have been fond of speaking of\nthe _train_ of our representations. This word happened to stand out in\nthe midst of my complex thought with peculiarly sharp accentuation, and\nto surround itself with numerous details of railroad imagery. Only such\ndetails became clear, however, as had their nerve-tracts besieged by a\ndouble set of influences--those from _train_ on the one hand, and those\nfrom the _movement of thought_ on the other. It may possibly be that\nthe prepotency of the suggestions of the word _train_ at this moment\nwere due to the recent excitation of the railroad brain-tract by the\ninstance chosen a few pages back of ii railroad king playing foot-ball\nwith the stock-market.\n\nIt is apparent from such an example how inextricably complex are all\nthe contributory factors whose resultant is the line of our reverie.\nIt would be folly in most cases to attempt to trace them out. From an\ninstance like the above, where the pivot of the Similar Association\nwas formed by a definite concrete word, _train_, to those where it is\nso subtile as utterly to elude our analysis, the passage is unbroken.\nWe can form a series of examples. When Mr. Bagehot says that the mind\nof the savage, so far from being in a state of nature, is _tattooed_\nall over with monstrous superstitions, the case is very like the one\nwe have just been considering. When Sir James Stephen compares our\nbelief in the uniformity of nature, the congruity of the future with\nthe past, to a man rowing one way and looking another, and steering\nhis boat by keeping her stern in a line with an object behind him,\nthe operative link becomes harder to dissect out. It is subtler still\nin Dr. Holmes's phrase, that stories in passing from mouth to mouth\nmake a great deal of lee-way in proportion to their headway; or in\nMr. Lowell's description of German sentences, that they have a way of\nyawing and going stern-foremost and not minding the helm for several\nminutes after it has been put down. And finally, it is a real puzzle\nwhen the color pale-blue is said to have feminine and blood-red\nmasculine affinities. And if I hear a friend describe a certain family\nas having _blotting-paper_ voices, the image, though immediately felt\nto be apposite, baffles the utmost powers of analysis. The higher poets\nall use abrupt epithets, which are alike intimate and remote, and, as\nEmerson says, sweetly torment us with invitations to their inaccessible\nhomes.\n\nIn these latter instances we must suppose that there is an identical\nportion in the similar objects, and that its brain-tract is\nenergetically operative, without, however, being sufficiently isolable\nin its activity as to stand out _per se_, and form the condition of a\ndistinctly discriminated 'abstract idea.' We cannot even by careful\nsearch see the bridge over which we passed from the heart of one\nrepresentation to that of the next. In some brains, however, this\nmode of transition is extremely common. It would be one of the most\nimportant of physiological discoveries could we assign the mechanical\nor chemical difference which makes the thoughts of one brain cling\nclose to impartial redintegration, while those of another shoot about\nin all the lawless revelry of similarity. Why, in these latter brains,\naction should tend to focalize itself in small spots, while in the\nothers it fills patiently its broad bed, it seems impossible to guess.\nWhatever the difference may be, it is what separates the man of genius\nfrom the prosaic creature of habit and routine thinking. In Chapter\nXXII we shall need to recur again to this point.\n\n\nASSOCIATION IN VOLUNTARY THOUGHT.\n\n\nHitherto we have assumed the process of suggestion of one object by\nanother to be spontaneous. The train of imagery wanders at its own\nsweet will, now trudging in sober grooves of habit, now with a hop,\nskip, and jump darting across the whole field of time and space.\nThis is revery, or musing; but great segments of the flux of our\nideas consist of something very different from this. They are guided\nby a distinct purpose or conscious interest. As the Germans say, we\n_nachdenken_, or think towards a certain end. It is now necessary to\nexamine what modification is made in the trains of our imagery by\nthe having of an end in view. The course of our ideas is then called\n_voluntary_.\n\nPhysiologically considered, we must suppose that a purpose means\nthe persistent activity of certain rather definite brain-processes\nthroughout the whole course of thought. Our most usual cogitations are\nnot pure reveries, absolute driftings, but revolve about some central\ninterest or topic to which most of the images are relevant, and towards\nwhich we return promptly after occasional digressions. This interest\nis subserved by the persistently active brain-tracts we have supposed.\nIn the mixed associations which we have hitherto studied, the parts of\neach object which form the pivots on which our thoughts successively\nturn have their interest largely determined by their connection with\nsome _general interest_ which for the time has seized upon the mind.\nIf we call Z the brain-tract of general interest, then, if the object\n_abc_ turns up, and _b_ has more associations with Z than have either\n_a_ or _c, b_ will become the object's interesting, pivotal portion,\nand will call up its own associates exclusively. For the energy of\n_b_'s brain-tract will be augmented by Z's activity,--an activity\nwhich, from lack of previous connection between Z and _a_ or _c_, does\nnot influence _a_ or _c_. If, for instance, I think of Paris whilst I\nam _hungry_, I shall not improbably find that its _restaurants_ have\nbecome the pivot of my thought, etc., etc.\n\nBut in the theoretic as well as in the practical life there are\ninterests of a more acute sort, taking the form of definite images\nof some achievement, be it action or acquisition, which we desire to\neffect. The train of ideas arising under the influence of such an\ninterest constitutes usually the thought of the _means_ by which the\nend shall be attained. If the end by its simple presence does not\ninstantaneously suggest the means, the search for the latter becomes\nan intellectual _problem_. The solution of problems is the most\ncharacteristic and peculiar sort of voluntary thinking. Where the\nend thought of is some outward deed or gain, the solution is largely\ncomposed of the actual motor processes, walking, speaking, writing,\netc., which lead up to it. Where the end is in the first instance only\nideal, as in laying out a place of operations, the steps are purely\nimaginary. In both of these cases the discovery of the means may form\na new sort of end, of an entirely peculiar nature, an end, namely,\nwhich we intensely desire before we have attained it, but of the nature\nof which, even whilst most strongly craving it, we have no distinct\nimagination whatever. Such an end is a problem.\n\nThe same state of things occurs whenever we seek to recall something\nforgotten, or to state the reason for a judgment which we have made\nintuitively. The desire strains and presses in a direction which it\nfeels to be right but towards a point which it is unable to see. In\nshort, the _absence of an item_ is a determinant of our representations\nquite as positive as its presence can ever be. The gap becomes no\nmere void, but what is called an _aching_ void. If we try to explain\nin terms of brain-action how a thought which only potentially\nexists can yet be effective, we seem driven to believe that the\nbrain-tract thereof must actually be excited, but only in a minimal\nand sub-conscious way. Try, for instance, to symbolize what goes on in\na man who is racking his brains to remember a thought which occurred\nto him last week. The associates of the thought are there, many of\nthem at least, but they refuse to awaken the thought itself. We cannot\nsuppose that they do not irradiate _at all_ into its brain-tract,\nbecause his mind quivers on the very edge of its recovery. Its actual\nrhythm sounds in his ears; the words seem on the imminent point of\nfollowing, but fail. What it is that blocks the discharge and keeps the\nbrain-excitement here from passing beyond the nascent into the vivid\nstate cannot be guessed. But we see in the philosophy of desire and\npleasure, that such nascent excitements, spontaneously tending to a\ncrescendo, but inhibited or checked by other causes, may become potent\nmental stimuli and determinants of desire. All questioning, wonder,\nemotion of curiosity, must be referred to cerebral causes of some\nsuch form as this. The great difference between the effort to recall\nthings forgotten and the search after the means to a given end, is that\nthe latter have not, whilst the former have, already formed a part\nof our experience. If we first study _the mode of recalling a thing\nforgotten_, we can take up with better understanding the voluntary\nquest of the unknown.\n\nThe forgotten thing is felt by us as a gap in the midst of certain\nother things. If it is a thought, we possess a dim idea of where we\nwere and what we were about when it occurred to us. We recollect the\ngeneral subject to which it relates. But all these details refuse to\nshoot together into a solid whole, for the lack of the vivid traits\nof this missing thought, the relation whereof to each detail forms\nnow the main interest of the latter. We keep running over the details\nin our mind, dissatisfied, craving something more. From each detail\nthere radiate lines of association forming so many tentative guesses.\nMany of these are immediately seen to be irrelevant, are therefore\nvoid of interest, and lapse immediately from consciousness. Others are\nassociated with the other details present, and with the missing thought\nas well. When _these_ surge up, we have a peculiar feeling that we are\n'warm,' as the children say when they play hide and seek; and such\nassociates as these we clutch at and keep before the attention. Thus\nwe recollect successively that when we had the thought in question we\nwere at the dinner-table; then that our friend J. D. was there; then\nthat the subject talked about was so and so; finally, that the thought\ncame _\u00e0 propos_ of a certain anecdote, and then that it had something\nto do with a French quotation. Now all these added associations _arise\nindependently of the will_, by the spontaneous process we know so well.\n_All that the will does is to emphasize and linger over those which\nseem pertinent, and ignore the rest._ Through this hovering of the\nattention in the neighborhood of the desired object, the accumulation\nof associates becomes so great that the combined tensions of their\nneural processes break through the bar, and the nervous wave pours\ninto the tract which has so long been awaiting its advent. And as the\nexpectant, sub-conscious itching there, bursts into the fulness of\nvivid feeling, the mind finds an inexpressible relief.\n\nThe whole process can be rudely symbolized in a diagram. Call the\nforgotten thing Z, the first facts with which we felt it was related,\n_a, b,_ and _c_, and the details finally operative in calling it up,\n_l, m,_ and _n_. Each circle will then stand for the brain-process\nunderlying the thought of the object denoted by the letter contained\nwithin it. The activity in Z will at first be a mere tension; but as\nthe activities in _a, b,_ and _c_ little by little irradiate into _l,\nm,_ and _n,_ and as _all_ these processes are somehow connected with\nZ, their combined irradiations upon Z, represented by the centripetal\narrows, succeed in helping the tension there to overcome the\nresistance, and in rousing Z also to full activity.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 44.]\n\nThe tension present from the first in Z, even though it keep below\nthe threshold of discharge, is probably to some degree co-operative\nwith _a, b, c_ in determining that _l, m, n_ shall awake. Without Z's\ntension there might be a slower accumulation of objects connected with\nit. But, as aforesaid, the objects come before us through the brain's\nown laws, and the Ego of the thinker can only remain on hand, as it\nwere, to recognize their relative values and brood over some of them,\nwhilst others are let drop. As when we have lost a material object we\ncannot recover it by a direct effort, but only through moving about\nsuch neighborhoods wherein it is likely to lie, and trusting that it\nwill then strike our eye; so here, by not letting our attention leave\nthe neighborhood of what we seek, we trust that it will end by speaking\nto us of its own accord.[485]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_Turn now to the case of finding the unknown means to a distinctly\nconceived end._ The end here stands in the place of _a, b, c,_ in the\ndiagram. It is the starting-point of the irradiations of suggestion;\nand here, as in that case, what the voluntary attention does is only\nto dismiss some of the suggestions as irrelevant, and hold fast to\nothers which are felt to be more pertinent--let these be symbolized by\n_l, m, n_. These latter at last accumulate sufficiently to discharge\nall together into Z, the excitement of which process is, in the mental\nsphere, equivalent to the solution of our problem. The only difference\nbetween this case and the last, is that in this one there need be\nno original sub-excitement in Z, co-operating from the very first.\nWhen we seek a forgotten name, we must suppose the name's centre\nto be in a state of active tension from the very outset, because of\nthat peculiar feeling of _recognition_ which we get at the moment of\nrecall. The plenitude of the thought seems here but a maximum degree\nof something which our mind divined in advance. It instantaneously\nfills a socket completely moulded to its shape; and it seems most\nnatural to ascribe the identity of quality in our feeling of the gaping\nsocket and our feeling of what comes to fill it, to the sameness of a\nnerve-tract excited in different degrees. In the solving of a problem,\non the contrary, the recognition that we have found the means is much\nless immediate. Here, what we are aware of in advance seems to be\nits relations with the items we already know. It must bear a causal\nrelation, or it must be an effect, or it must contain an attribute\ncommon to two items, or it must be a uniform concomitant, or what not.\nWe know, in short, a lot _about_ it, whilst as yet we have no knowledge\nof _acquaintance_ with it (see p. 221), or in Mr. Hodgson's language,\n\"we know what we want to find beforehand, in a certain sense, in its\nsecond intention, and do not know it, in another sense, in its first\nintention.\"[486] Our intuition that one of the ideas which turn up is,\nat last, our _qu\u00e6situm_, is due to our recognition that its relations\nare identical with those we had in mind, and this may be a rather slow\nact of judgment. In fact, every one knows that an object may be for\nsome time present to his mind before its relations to other matters are\nperceived. To quote Hodgson again:\n\n \"The mode of operation is common to voluntary memory and reason....\n But reasoning adds to memory the function of comparing or judging the\n images which arise.... Memory aims at filling the gap with an image\n which has at some particular time filled it before, reasoning with one\n which bears certain time-and space-relations to the images before and\n after\"--\n\nor, to use perhaps clearer language, one which stands in determinate\nlogical relations to those data round about the gap which filled our\nmind at the start. This feeling of the blank form of relationship\nbefore we get the material quality of the thing related will surprise\nno one who has read Chapter IX.\n\nFrom the guessing of newspaper enigmas to the plotting of the policy of\nan empire there is no other process than this. We trust to the laws of\ncerebral nature to present us spontaneously with the appropriate idea:\n\n \"Our only command over it is by the effort we make to keep the painful\n unfilled gap in consciousness.[487]... Two circumstances are important\n to notice: the first is, that volition has no power of calling up\n images, but only of rejecting and selecting from those offered by\n spontaneous redintegration.[488] But the rapidity with which this\n selection is made, owing to the familiarity of the ways in which\n spontaneous redintegration runs, gives the process of reasoning the\n appearance of evoking images that are foreseen to be conformable to\n the purpose. There is no seeing them before they are offered; there\n is no summoning them before they are seen. The other circumstance is,\n that every kind of reasoning is nothing, in its simplest form, but\n attention.\"[489]\n\nIt is foreign to our purpose here to enter into any detailed analysis\nof the different classes of mental pursuit. In a scientific research\nwe get perhaps as rich an example as can be found. The inquirer starts\nwith a fact of which he seeks the reason, or with an hypothesis of\nwhich he seeks the proof. In either case he keeps turning the matter\nincessantly in his mind until, by the arousal of associate upon\nassociate, some habitual, some similar, one arises which he recognizes\nto suit his need. This, however, may take years. No rules can be given\nby which the investigator may proceed straight to his result; but both\nhere and in the case of reminiscence the accumulation of helps in the\nway of associations may advance more rapidly by the use of certain\nroutine methods. In striving to recall a thought, for example, we may\nof set purpose run through the successive classes of circumstance with\nwhich it may possibly have been connected, trusting that when the\nright member of the class has turned up it will help the thought's\nrevival. Thus we may run through all the _places_ in which we may have\nhad it. We may run through the _persons_ whom we remember to have\nconversed with, or we may call up successively all the _books_ we have\nlately been reading. If we are trying to remember a person we may run\nthrough a list of streets or of professions. Some item out of the lists\nthus methodically gone over will very likely be associated with the\nfact we are in need of, and may suggest it or help to do so. And yet\nthe item might never have arisen without such systematic procedure. In\nscientific research this accumulation of associates has been methodized\nby Mill under the title of 'The Four Methods of Experimental Inquiry.'\nBy the 'method of agreement,' by that of 'difference,' by those of\n'residues' and 'concomitant variations'(which cannot here be more\nnearly defined), we make certain lists of cases; and by ruminating\nthese lists in our minds the cause we seek will be more likely to\nemerge. But the final stroke of discovery is only prepared, not\neffected, by them. The brain-tracts must, of their own accord, shoot\nthe right way at last, or we shall still grope in darkness. That in\nsome brains the tracts _do_ shoot the right way much oftener than in\nothers, and that we cannot tell why,--these are ultimate facts to which\nwe must never close our eyes. Even in forming our lists of instances\naccording to Mill's methods, we are at the mercy of the spontaneous\nworkings of Similarity in our brain. How are a number of facts,\nresembling the one whose cause we seek, to be brought together in a\nlist unless the one will rapidly suggest the other through association\nby similarity?\n\n\nSIMILARITY NO ELEMENTARY LAW.\n\n\nSuch is the analysis I propose, first of the three main types of\nspontaneous association, and then of voluntary association. It will\nbe observed that the _object called up may bear any logical relation\nwhatever to the one which suggested it_. The law requires only that\none condition should be fulfilled. The fading object must be due to\na brain-process some of whose elements awaken through habit some\nof the elements of the brain-process of the object which comes to\nview. This awakening is the operative machinery, the causal agency,\nthroughout, quite as much so in the kind of association I have called\nby the name of Similarity, as in any other sort. The similarity between\nthe objects, or between the thoughts (if similarity there be between\nthese latter), has no causal agency in carrying us from one to the\nother. It is but a result--the effect of the usual causal agent when\nthis happens to work in a certain particular and assignable way. But\nordinary writers talk as if the similarity of the objects were itself\nan agent, co-ordinate with habit, and independent of it, and like it\nable to push objects before the mind. This is quite unintelligible. The\nsimilarity of two things does not exist till both things are there--it\nis meaningless to talk of it as an _agent of production_ of anything,\nwhether in the physical or the psychical realms.[490] It is a relation\nwhich the mind perceives after the fact, just as it may perceive the\nrelations of superiority, of distance, of causality, of container and\ncontent, of substance and accident, or of contrast, between an object\nand some second object which the associative machinery calls up.[491]\n\nThere are, nevertheless, able writers who not only insist on preserving\nassociation by similarity as a distinct elementary law, but who make\nit the most elementary law, and seek to derive contiguous association\nfrom it. Their reasoning is as follows: When the present impression\nA awakens the idea _b_ of its past contiguous associate B, how can\nthis occur except through first reviving an image _a_ of its own past\noccurrence. _This_ is the term directly connected with _b_; so that\nthe process instead of being simply A--_b_ is A--_a--b_. Now A and\n_a_ are similars; therefore no association by contiguity can occur\nexcept through a previous association by similarity. The most important\nsupposition here made is that every impression on entering the mind\nmust needs awaken an image of its past self, in the light of which it\nis 'apperceived' or understood, and through the intermediation of which\nit enters into relation with the mind's other objects. This assumption\nis almost universally made; and yet it is hard to find any good reason\nfor it. It first came before us when we were reviewing the facts of\naphasia and mental blindness (see p. 50 ff.). But we then saw no need\nof optical and auditory images to interpret optical and auditory\nsensations by. On the contrary, we agreed that auditory sensations were\nunderstood by us only so far as they awakened _non_-auditory images,\nand optical sensations only so far as they awakened _non_-optical\nimages. In the chapters on Memory, on Reasoning, and on Perception the\nsame assumption will meet us again, and again will have to be rejected\nas groundless. The sensational process A and the ideational process _a_\nprobably occupy essentially the same tracts. When the outer stimulus\ncomes and those tracts vibrate with the sensation A, they discharge\nas directly into the paths which lead to B as when there is no outer\nstimulus and they only vibrate with the idea _a_. To say that the\nprocess A can only reach these paths by the help of the weaker process\n_a_ is like saying that we need a candle to see the sun by. A replaces\n_a_, does all that _a_ does and more; and there is no intelligible\nmeaning, to my mind, in saying that the weaker process coexists with\nthe stronger. I therefore consider that these writers are altogether\nwrong. The only plausible proof they give of the coexistence of _a_\nwith A is when A gives us a _sense of familiarity_ but fails to awaken\nany distinct thought of past contiguous associates. In a later chapter\nI shall consider this case. Here I content myself with saying that it\ndoes not seem conclusive as to the point at issue; and that I still\nbelieve association of coexistent or sequent impressions to be the one\n_elementary_ law.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nCONTRAST _has also been held to be an independent agent in\nassociation._ But the reproduction of an object contrasting with one\nalready in the mind is easily explained on our principles. Recent\nwriters, in fact, all reduce it either to similarity or contiguity.\nContrast always presupposes generic similarity; it is only the\n_extremes of a class_ which are contrasted, black and white, not\nblack and sour, or white and prickly. A machinery which reproduces\na similar at all, may reproduce the _opposite_ similar, as well as\nany intermediate term. Moreover, the greater number of contrasts are\nhabitually coupled in speech, young and old, life and death, rich and\npoor, etc., and are, as Dr. Bain says, in everybody's memory.[492]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI trust that the student will now feel that the way to a deeper\nunderstanding of the order of our ideas lies in the direction of\ncerebral physiology. The _elementary_ process of revival can be nothing\nbut the law of habit. Truly the day is distant when physiologists\nshall actually trace from cell-group to cell-group the irradiations\nwhich we have hypothetically invoked. Probably it will never arrive.\nThe schematism we have used is, moreover, taken immediately from the\nanalysis of objects into their elementary parts, and only extended by\nanalogy to the brain. And yet it is only as incorporated in the brain\nthat such a schematism can represent anything _causal_. This is, to my\nmind, the conclusive reason for saying that the order of _presentation\nof the mind's materials_ is due to cerebral physiology alone.\n\nThe law of accidental prepotency of certain processes over others\nfalls also within the sphere of cerebral probabilities. Granting such\ninstability as the brain-tissue requires, certain points must always\ndischarge more quickly and strongly than others; and this prepotency\nwould shift its place from moment to moment by accidental causes,\ngiving us a perfect mechanical diagram of the capricious play of\nsimilar association in the most gifted mind. The study of dreams\nconfirms this view. The usual abundance of paths of irradiation seems,\nin the dormant brain, reduced. A few only are pervious, and the most\nfantastic sequences occur because the currents run--'like sparks in\nburnt-up paper'--wherever the nutrition of the moment creates an\nopening, but nowhere else.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe _effects of interested attention and volition_ remain. These\nactivities seem to hold fast to certain elements, and by emphasizing\nthem and dwelling on them, to make their associates the only ones which\nare evoked. _This_ is the point at which an anti-mechanical psychology\nmust, if anywhere, make it stand in dealing with association.\nEverything else is pretty certainly due to cerebral laws. My own\nopinion on the question of active attention and spiritual spontaneity\nis expressed elsewhere. But even though there be a mental spontaneity,\nit can certainly not create ideas or summon them _ex abrupto_. Its\npower is limited to _selecting_ amongst those which the associative\nmachinery has already introduced or tends to introduce. If it can\nemphasize, reinforce, or protract for a second either one of these, it\ncan do all that the most eager advocate of free will need demand; for\nit then decides the direction of the next associations by making them\nhinge upon the emphasized term; and determining in this wise the course\nof the man's thinking, it also determines his acts.\n\n\nTHE HISTORY OF OPINION CONCERNING ASSOCIATION\n\n\nmay be briefly glanced at ere we end the chapter.[493] Aristotle seems\nto have caught both the facts and the principle of explanation; but\nhe did not expand his views, and it was not till the time of Hobbes\nthat the matter was again touched on in a definite way. Hobbes first\nformulated the problem of the succession of our thoughts. He writes in\nLeviathan, chapter iii, as follows:\n\n \"By consequence, or train of thoughts, I understand that succession\n of one thought to another which is called, to distinguish it from\n discourse in words, _mental discourse_. When a man thinketh on\n anything whatsoever, his next thought after is not altogether so\n casual as it seems to be. Not every thought to every thought succeeds\n indifferently. But as we have no imagination, whereof we have not\n formerly had sense, in whole or in parts; so we have no transition\n from one imagination to another, whereof we never had the like before\n in our senses. The reason whereof is this. All fancies are motions\n within us, relics of those made in the sense: and those motions that\n immediately succeeded one another in the sense continue also together\n after sense: insomuch as the former coming again to take place, and\n be predominant, the latter followeth, by coherence of the matter\n moved, in such manner, as water upon a plane table is drawn which way\n any one part of it is guided by the finger. But because in sense,\n to one and the same thing perceived, sometimes one thing, sometimes\n another succeedeth, it comes to pass in time that, in the imagining of\n anything, there is no certainty what we shall imagine next; only this\n is certain, it shall be something that succeeded the same before, at\n one time or another. This train of thoughts, or mental discourse, is\n of two sorts. The first is _unguided, without design,_ and inconstant;\n wherein there is no passionate thought, to govern and direct those\n that follow, to itself, as the end and scope of some desire, or other\n passion.... The second is more constant; as being _regulated_ by\n some desire and design. For the impression made by such things as we\n desire, or fear, is strong and permanent, or, if it cease for a time,\n of quick return: so strong is it, sometimes, as to hinder and break\n our sleep. From desire ariseth the thought of some means we have\n seen produce the like of that which we aim at; and from the thought\n of that, the thought of means to that mean; and so continually, till\n we come to some beginning within our own power. And because the end,\n by the greatness of the impression, comes often to mind, in case our\n thoughts begin to wander, they are quickly again reduced into the way:\n which observed by one of the seven wise men, made him give men this\n precept, which is now worn out, _Respite finem_; that is to say, in\n all your actions, look often upon what you would have, as the thing\n that directs all your thoughts in the way to attain it.\n\n \"The train of regulated thoughts is of two kinds; one, when of an\n effect imagined we seek the causes, or means that produce it: and this\n is common to man and beast. The other is, when imagining anything\n whatsoever, we seek all the possible effects that can by it be\n produced; that is to say, we imagine what we can do with it, when we\n have it. Of which I have not at any time seen any sign, but in man\n only; for this is a curiosity hardly incident to the nature of any\n living creature that has no other passion but sensual, such as are\n hunger, thirst, lust, and anger. In sum, the discourse of the mind,\n when it is governed by design, is nothing but _seeking_ or the faculty\n of invention, which the Latins called _sagacitas_, and _sollertia_; a\n hunting out of the causes, of some effect, present or past; or of the\n effects, of some present or past cause.\"\n\nThe most important passage after this of Hobbes is Hume's:\n\n \"As all simple ideas may be separated by the imagination, and may\n be united again in what form it pleases, nothing would be more\n unaccountable than the operations of that faculty, were it not guided\n by some universal principles, which render it, in some measure,\n uniform with itself in all times and places. Were ideas entirely loose\n and unconnected, chance alone would join them; and 'tis impossible the\n same simple ideas should fall regularly into complex ones (as they\n commonly do) without some bond of union among them, some associating\n quality, by which one idea naturally introduces another. This uniting\n principle among ideas is not to be considered as an inseparable\n connection; for that has been already excluded from the imagination.\n Nor yet are we to conclude that without it the mind cannot join two\n ideas; for nothing is more free than that faculty: but we are only to\n regard it as a gentle force, which commonly prevails, and is the cause\n why, among other things, languages so nearly correspond to each other;\n nature in a manner pointing to every one those simple ideas which are\n most proper to be united in a complex one. The qualities from which\n this association arises, and by which the mind is after this manner\n conveyed from one idea to another, are three, viz., RESEMBLANCE,\n CONTIGUITY in time or place, and CAUSE and EFFECT.\n\n \"I believe it will not be very necessary to prove that these qualities\n produce an association among ideas, and upon the appearance of one\n idea naturally introduce another. 'Tis plain that in the course of our\n thinking, and in the constant revolution of our ideas, our imagination\n runs easily from one idea to any other that _resembles_ it, and that\n this quality alone is to the fancy a sufficient bond and association.\n 'Tis likewise evident, that as the senses, in changing their objects,\n are necessitated to change them regularly, and take them as they\n lie _contiguous_ to each other, the imagination must by long custom\n acquire the same method of thinking, and run along the parts of space\n and time in conceiving its objects. As to the connection that is\n made by the relation of _cause and effect_, we shall have occasion\n afterwards to examine it to the bottom, and therefore shall not at\n present insist upon it. 'Tis sufficient to observe that there is no\n relation which produces a stronger connection in the fancy, and makes\n one idea more readily recall another, than the relation of cause and\n effect betwixt their objects.... These are therefore the principles\n of union or cohesion among our simple ideas, and in the imagination\n supply the place of that inseparable connection by which they are\n united in our memory. Here is a kind of ATTRACTION, which in the\n mental world will be found to have as extraordinary effects as in\n the natural, and to show itself in as many and as various forms. Its\n effects are everywhere conspicuous; but as to its causes, they are\n mostly unknown, and must be resolved into _original_ qualities of\n human nature, which I pretend not to explain.\"[494]\n\nHume did not, however, any more than Hobbes, follow out the effects of\nwhich he speaks, and the task of popularizing the notion of association\nand making an effective school based on association of ideas alone was\nreserved for Hartley[495] and James Mill.[496] These authors traced\nminutely the presence of association in all the cardinal notions and\noperations of the mind. The several 'faculties' of the Mind were\ndispossessed; the one principle of association between ideas did all\ntheir work. As Priestley says:\n\n \"Nothing is requisite to make any man whatever he is, but a sentient\n principle with this single law.... Not only all our intellectual\n pleasures and pains but all the phenomena of memory, imagination,\n volition, reasoning and every other mental affection and operation,\n are but different modes or cases of the association of ideas.\"[497]\n\nAn eminent French psychologist, M. Ribot, repeats Hume's comparison of\nthe law of association with that of gravitation, and goes on to say:\n\n \"It is remarkable that this discovery was made so late. Nothing is\n simpler, apparently, than to notice that this law of association is\n the truly fundamental, irreducible phenomenon of our mental life;\n that it is at the bottom of all our acts; that it permits of no\n exception; that neither dream, revery, mystic ecstasy, nor the most\n abstract reasoning can exist without it; that its suppression would be\n equivalent to that of thought itself. Nevertheless no ancient author\n understood it, for one cannot seriously maintain that a few scattered\n lines in Aristotle and the Stoics constitute a theory and clear view\n of the subject. It is to Hobbes, Hume, and Hartley that we must\n attribute the origin of these studies on the connection of our ideas.\n The discovery of the ultimate law of our psychologic acts has this,\n then, in common with many other discoveries: it came late and seems so\n simple that it may justly astonish us.\n\n \"Perhaps it is not superfluous to ask in what this manner of\n explanation is superior to the current theory of Faculties.[498] The\n most extended usage consists, as we know, in dividing intellectual\n phenomena into classes, in separating those which differ, in grouping\n together those of the same nature and in giving to these a common name\n and in attributing them to the same cause; it is thus that we have\n come to distinguish those diverse aspects of intelligence which are\n called judgment, reasoning, abstraction, perception, etc. This method\n is precisely the one followed in Physics, where the words caloric,\n electricity, gravity, designate the unknown causes of certain groups\n of phenomena. If one thus never forgets that the diverse faculties are\n only the unknown causes of known phenomena, that they are simply a\n convenient means of classifying the facts and speaking of them, if one\n does not fall into the common fault of making out of them substantial\n entities, creations which now agree, now disagree, so forming in the\n intelligence a little republic; then, we can see nothing reprehensible\n in this distribution into faculties, conformable as it is to the\n rules of a sound method and of a good natural classification. In what\n then is Mr. Bain's procedure superior to the method of the faculties?\n It is that the latter is simply a _classification_ while his is an\n _explanation_. Between the psychology which traces intellectual facts\n back to certain faculties, and that which reduces them to the single\n law of association, there is, according to our way of thinking, the\n same difference that we find in Physics between those who attribute\n its phenomena to five or six causes, and those who derive gravity\n caloric, light, etc., from motion. The system of the faculties\n explains nothing because each one of them is only a _flatus vocis_\n which is of value merely through the phenomena which it contains, and\n signifies nothing more than these phenomena. The new theory, on the\n contrary, shows that the different processes of intelligence are only\n diverse cases of a single law; that imagination, deduction, induction,\n perception, etc., are but so many determinate ways in which ideas\n may combine with each other; and that the differences of faculties\n are only differences of association. It _explains_ all intellectual\n facts, certainly not after the manner of Metaphysics which demands\n the ultimate and absolute reason of things; but after the manner of\n Physics which seeks only their secondary and immediate cause.\"[499]\n\nThe inexperienced reader may be glad of a brief indication of the\nmanner in which all the different mental operations may be conceived to\nconsist of images of sensation associated together.\n\n_Memory_ is the association of a present image with others known to\nbelong to the past. _Expectation_ the same, with future substituted for\npast. _Fancy_, the association of images without temporal order.\n\n_Belief_ in anything _not_ present to sense is the very lively,\nstrong, and steadfast association of the image of that thing with some\npresent sensation, so that as long as the sensation persists the image\ncannot be excluded from the mind.\n\n_Judgment_ is 'transferring the idea of _truth_ by association from one\nproposition to another that resembles it.'[500]\n\n_Reasoning_ is the perception that \"whatever has any mark has that\nwhich it is a mark of\"; in the concrete case the mark or middle term\nbeing always _associated_ with each of the other terms and so serving\nas a link by which they are themselves indirectly associated together.\nThis same kind of transfer of a sensible experience associated\nwith another to a third also associated with that other, serves to\nexplain emotional facts. When we are pleased or hurt we express it,\nand the expression associates itself with the feeling. Hearing the\nsame expression from another revives the associated feeling, and we\n_sympathize_, i.e. grieve or are glad with him.\n\nThe other social affections, _Benevolence, Conscientiousness,\nAmbition,_ etc., arise in like manner by the transfer of the bodily\npleasure experienced as a reward for social service, and hence\nassociated with it, to the act of service itself, the link of reward\nbeing dropped out. Just so _Avarice_ when the miser transfers the\nbodily pleasures associated with the spending of money to the money\nitself, dropping the link of spending.\n\n_Fear_ is a transfer of the bodily hurt associated by experience\nwith the thing feared, to the thought of the thing, with the precise\nfeatures of the hurt left out. Thus we fear a dog without distinctly\nimagining his bite.\n\n_Love_ is the association of the agreeableness of certain sensible\nexperiences with the idea of the object capable of affording them.\nThe experiences themselves may cease to be distinctly imagined after\nthe notion of their pleasure has been transferred to the object,\nconstituting our love therefor.\n\n_Volition_ is the association of ideas of muscular motion with the\nideas of those pleasures which the motion produces. The motion at first\noccurs automatically and results in a pleasure unforeseen. The latter\nbecomes so associated with the motion that whenever we think of it the\nidea of the motion arises; and the idea of the motion when vivid causes\nthe motion to occur. This is an act of will.\n\nNothing is easier than for a philosopher of this school to explain from\nexperience such a notion as that of infinitude.\n\n \"He sees in it an ordinary manifestation of one of the laws of the\n association of ideas,--the law that the idea of a thing irresistibly\n suggests the idea of any other thing which has been often experienced\n in close conjunction with it, and not otherwise. As we have never\n had experience of any point of space without other points beyond\n it, nor of any point of time without others following it, the law\n of indissoluble association makes it impossible for us to think of\n any point of space or time, however distant, without having the idea\n irresistibly realized, in imagination, of other points still more\n remote. And thus the supposed original and inherent property of these\n two ideas is completely explained and accounted for by the law of\n association; and we are enabled to see that if Space or Time were\n really susceptible of termination, we should be just as unable as we\n now are to conceive the idea.\"[501]\n\nThese examples of the Associationist Psychology are with the exception\nof the last, very crudely expressed, but they suffice for our temporary\nneed. Hartley and James Mill[502] improved upon Hume so far as to\nemploy but a single principle of association, that of contiguity or\nhabit. Hartley ignores resemblance, James Mill expressly repudiates it\nin a passage which is assuredly one of the curiosities of literature:\n\n \"I believe it will be found that we are accustomed to see like things\n together. When we see a tree, we generally see more trees than one;\n a sheep, more sheep than one; a man, more men than one. From this\n observation, I think, we may refer resemblance to the law of frequency\n [i.e., contiguity], of which it seems to form only a particular case.\"\n\nMr. Herbert Spencer has still more recently tried to construct a\nPsychology which ignores Association by Similarity,[503] and in\na chapter, which also is a curiosity, he tries to explain the\nassociation of two ideas by a conscious reference of the first to the\npoint of time when its sensation was experienced, which point of time\nis no sooner thought of than its content, namely, the second idea,\narises. Messrs. Bain and Mill, however, and the immense majority of\ncontemporary psychologists retain both Resemblance and Contiguity as\nirreducible principles of Association.\n\nProfessor Bain's exposition of association is by common consent\nlooked upon as the best expression of the English school. Perception\nof agreement and difference, retentiveness, and the two sorts of\nassociation, contiguity and similarity, are by him regarded as\nconstituting all that is meant by intellect proper. His pages are\npainstaking and instructive from a descriptive point of view; though,\nafter my own attempt to deal with the subject causally, I can hardly\naward to them any profound _explanatory_ value. Association by\nSimilarity, too much neglected by the British school before Bain,\nreceives from him the most generous exemplification. As an instructive\npassage, the following, out of many equally good, may be chosen to\nquote:\n\n \"We may have similarity in form with diversity of use, and similarity\n of use with diversity of form. A rope suggests other ropes and\n cords, if we look to the appearance; but looking to the _use_, it\n may suggest an iron cable, a wooden prop, an iron girding, a leather\n band, or bevelled gear. In spite of diversity of appearance, the\n suggestion turns on what answers a common end. If we are very much\n attracted by sensible appearances, there will be the more difficulty\n in recalling things that agree only in the use; if, on the other\n hand, we are profoundly sensitive to the one point of practical\n efficiency as a tool, the peculiarities not essential to this will\n be little noticed, and we shall be ever ready to revive past objects\n corresponding in use to some one present, although diverse in all\n other circumstances. We become oblivious to the difference between a\n horse, a steam-engine, and a waterfall, when our minds are engrossed\n with the one circumstance of moving power. The diversity in these\n had no doubt for a long time the effect of keeping back their first\n identification; and to obtuse intellects, this identification might\n have been for ever impossible. A strong concentration of mind upon the\n single peculiarity of mechanical force, and a degree of indifference\n to the general aspect of the things themselves, must conspire with\n the intellectual energy of resuscitation by similars, in order to\n summon together in the view three structures so different. We can\n see, by an instance like this, how new adaptations of existing\n machinery might arise in the mind of a mechanical inventor. When it\n first occurred to a reflecting mind that moving water had a property\n identical with human or brute force, namely, the property of setting\n other masses in motion, overcoming inertia and resistance,--when the\n sight of the stream suggested through this point of likeness the\n power of the animal,--a new addition was made to the class of prime\n movers, and when circumstances permitted, this power could become a\n substitute for the others. It may seem to the modern understanding,\n familiar with water-wheels and drifting rafts, that the similarity\n here was an extremely obvious one. But if we put ourselves back into\n an early state of mind, when running water affected the mind by its\n brilliancy, its roar, and irregular devastation, we may easily suppose\n that to identify this with animal muscular energy was by no means an\n obvious effect. Doubtless when a mind arose, insensible by natural\n constitution to the superficial aspects of things, and having withal\n a great stretch of identifying intellect, such a comparison would\n then be possible. We may pursue the same example one stage further,\n and come to the discovery of steam power, or the identification of\n expanding vapor with the previously known sources of mechanical\n force. To the common eye, for ages, vapor presented itself as clouds\n in the sky; or as a hissing noise at the spout of a kettle, with the\n formation of a foggy curling cloud at a few inches' distance. The\n forcing up of the lid of a kettle may also have been occasionally\n observed. But how long was it ere any one was struck with the\n parallelism of this appearance with a blast of wind, a rush of water,\n or an exertion of animal muscle? The discordance was too great to be\n broken through by such a faint and limited amount of likeness. In one\n mind, however, the identification did take place, and was followed\n out into its consequences. The likeness had occurred to other minds\n previously, but not with the same results. Such minds must have been\n in some way or other distinguished above the millions of mankind; and\n we are now endeavoring to give the explanation of their superiority.\n The intellectual character of Watt contained all the elements\n preparatory to a great stroke of similarity in such a case;--a high\n susceptibility, both by nature and by education, to the mechanical\n properties of bodies; ample previous knowledge or familiarity; and\n indifference to the superficial and sensational effects of things.\n It is not only possible, however, but exceedingly probable, that\n many men possessed all these accomplishments; they are of a kind not\n transcending common abilities. They would in some degree attach to a\n mechanical education almost as a matter of course. That the discovery\n was not sooner made supposes that something farther, and not of common\n occurrence, was necessary; and this additional endowment appears to be\n the identifying power of Similarity in general; the tendency to detect\n likeness in the midst of disparity and disguise. This supposition\n accounts for the fact, and is consistent with the known intellectual\n character of the inventor of the steam-engine.\"[504]\n\nDr. Hodgson's account of association is by all odds the best yet\npropounded in English.[505] All these writers hold more or less\nexplicitly to the notion of atomistic 'ideas' which recur. In Germany,\nthe same mythological supposition has been more radically grasped,\nand carried out to a still more logical, if more repulsive, extreme,\nby Herbart[506] and his followers, who until recently may be said to\nhave reigned almost supreme in their native country.[507] For Herbart\neach idea is a permanently existing entity, the entrance whereof into\nconsciousness is but an accidental determination of its being. So far\nas it succeeds in occupying the theatre of consciousness, it crowds\nout another idea previously there. This act of inhibition gives it,\nhowever, a sort of hold on the other representation which on all later\noccasions facilitates its following the other into the mind. The\ningenuity with which most special cases of association are formulated\nin this mechanical language of struggle and inhibition, is great, and\nsurpasses in analytic thoroughness anything that has been done by the\nBritish school. This, however, is a doubtful merit, in a case where\nthe elements dealt with are artificial; and I must confess that to my\nmind there is something almost hideous in the glib Herbartian jargon\nabout _Vorstellungsmassen_ and their _Hemmungen_ and _Hemmungssummen_,\nand _sinken_ and _erheben_ and _schweben_, and _Verschmelzungen_\nand _Complexionen_. Herr Lipps, the most recent systematic German\nPsychologist, has, I regret to say, carried out the theory of ideas\nin a way which the great originality, learning, and acuteness he\nshows make only the more regrettable.[508] Such elaborately artificial\nconstructions are, it seems to me, only a burden and a hindrance, not a\nhelp, to our science.[509]\n\nIn French, M. Rabier in his chapter on Association,[510] handles the\nsubject more vigorously and acutely than any one. His treatment of it,\nthough short, seems to me for general soundness to rank second only to\nHodgson's.\n\nIn the last chapter we already invoked association to account for\nthe effects of use in improving discrimination. In later chapters\nwe shall see abundant proof of the immense part which it plays in\nother processes, and shall then readily admit that few principles of\nanalysis, in any science, have proved more fertile than this one,\nhowever vaguely formulated it often may have been. Our own attempt to\nformulate it more definitely, and to escape the usual confusion between\ncausal agencies and relations merely known, must not blind us to the\nimmense services of those by whom the confusion was unfelt. From this\npractical point of view it would be a true _ignoratio elenchi_ to\nflatter one's self that one has dealt a heavy blow at the psychology of\nassociation, when one has exploded the theory of atomistic ideas, or\nshown that contiguity and similarity between ideas can only be there\nafter association is done.[511] The whole body of the associationist\npsychology remains standing after you have translated 'ideas' into\n'objects,' on the one hand, and 'brain-processes' on the other; and the\nanalysis of faculties and operations is as conclusive in these terms as\nin those traditionally used.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[463] The theory propounded in this chapter, and a good many pages of\nthe text, were originally published in the Popular Science Monthly for\nMarch, 1880.\n\n[464] Compare Renouvier's criticism of associationism in his Essais de\nCritique g\u00e9n\u00e9rale, Logique, ii, p. 493 foll.\n\n[465] Unless the name belong to a rapidly uttered sentence, when no\nsubstantive image may have time to arise.\n\n[466] In his observations he says that time was lost in mentally taking\nin the word which was the cue, \"owing to the quiet unobtrusive way in\nwhich I found it necessary to bring it into view, so as not to distract\nthe thoughts. Moreover, a substantive standing by itself is usually the\nequivalent of too abstract an idea for us to conceive properly without\ndelay. Thus it is very difficult to get a quick conception of the word\n'carriage,' because there are so many different kinds--two-wheeled,\nfour-wheeled, open and closed, and in so many different possible\npositions, that the mind possibly hesitates amidst an obscure sense of\nmany alternations that cannot blend together. But limit the idea to say\na landau, and the mental association declares itself more quickly.\"\n(Inquiries, etc., p. 190.)\n\n[467] Physiol. Psych., ii, 280 fol.\n\n[468] For interesting remarks on the sorts of things associated, in\nthese experiments, with the prompting word, see Galton, _op. cit._ pp.\n185-203, and Trautscholdt in Wundt's Psychologische Studien, i, 213.\n\n[469] Mind, xi, 64-5.\n\n[470] This value is much smaller than that got by Wundt as above. No\nreason for the difference is suggested by Mr. Cattell. Wundt calls\nattention to the fact that the figures found by him give an average,\n0.720'', exactly equal to the _time interval_ which in his experiments\n(_vide infra_, chapter on Time) was reproduced without error either\nway, and to that required, according to the Webers, for the legs to\nswing in rapid locomotion. \"It is not improbable,\" he adds, \"that\nthis psychic constant, of the mean association-time and of the most\ncorrect appreciation of a time-interval, may have been developed under\nthe influence of the most usual bodily movements, which also have\ndetermined the manner in which we tend to subdivide rhythmically longer\nperiods of time.\" (Physiol. Psych., ii, 286). The _rapprochement_\nis of that tentative sort which it is no harm for psychologists to\nmake, provided they recollect how very fictitious and incomparable\nmutually all these averages derived from different observers, working\nunder different conditions, are. Mr. Cattell's figure throws Wundt's\ningenious parallel entirely out of line.--The only measurements of\nassociation-time which so far seem likely to have much theoretic\nimportance are a few made on insane patients by Von Tschisch (Mendel's\nNeurologisches Centralblatt, 15 Mai, 1885, 3 Jhrg., p. 217). The\nsimple reaction time was found about normal in three patients, one\nwith progressive paralysis, one with inveterate mania of persecution,\none recovering from ordinary mania. In the convalescent maniac and\nthe paralytic, however, the association-time was hardly half as much\nas Wundt's normal figure (0.28'' and 0.23'' instead of 0.7'--smaller\nalso than Cattell's), whilst in the sufferer from delusions of\npersecution and hallucinations it was twice as great as normal (1.39''\ninstead of 0.7''). This latter patient's time was sixfold that of the\nparalytic. Herr von Tschisch remarks on the connection of the short\ntimes with diminished power for clear and consistent processes of\nthought, and on that of the long times with the persistent fixation\nof the attention upon monotonous objects (delusions). Miss Marie\nWalitzky (Revue Philosophique, xxviii, 583) has carried Von Tschisch's\nobservations still farther, making 18,000 measurements in all. She\nfound association-time increased in paralytic dementia and diminished\ninmania. Choice time, on the contrary, is increased in mania.\n\n[471] Mind, xii, 67-74.\n\n[472] Compare Bain's law of Association by Contiguity: \"Actions,\nSensations, and States of Feeling, occurring together or in close\nsuccession, tend to grow together, or cohere, in such a way that, when\nany one of them is afterwards presented to the mind, the others are\napt to be brought up in idea\" (Senses and Intellect, p. 327). Compare\nalso Hartley's formulation: \"Any sensations A, B, C, etc., by being\nassociated with one another a sufficient Number of Times, get such a\npower over the corresponding Ideas _a, b, c,_ etc., that anyone of the\nsensations A, when impressed alone, shall be able to excite in the Mind\n_b, c,_ etc., the ideas of the rest.\" (Observations on Man, part i,\nchap. i, \u00a7 2, Prop. x.) The statement in the text differs from these\nin holding fast to the objective point of view. It is _things_, and\nobjective _properties in things_, which are associated in our thought.\n\n[473] Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica, 9th Ed., article Psychology, p. 60. col.\n2.\n\n[474] Physiol. Psych., 2d ed. ii, 300.\n\n[475] The difficulty here as with habit _\u00fcberhaupt_ is in seeing\nhow new paths come _first_ to be formed (cf. above, p. 109).\nExperience shows that a new path _is_ formed between centres for\nsensible impressions whenever these vibrate together or in rapid\nsuccession. A child sees a certain bottle and hears it called 'milk,'\nand thenceforward thinks the name when he again sees the bottle.\nBut why the successive or simultaneous excitement of two centres\nindependently stimulated from without, one by sight and the other\nby hearing, _should_ result in a path between them, one does not\nimmediately see. We can only make hypotheses. Any hypothesis of the\nspecific mode of their formation which tallies well with the observed\nfacts of association will be in so far forth credible, in spite\nof possible obscurity. Herr M\u00fcnsterberg thinks (Beitr\u00e4ge zur exp.\nPsychologie, Heft i, p. 132) that between centres excited successively\nfrom without no path ought to be formed, and that consequently all\ncontiguous association is between _simultaneous_ experiences. Mr. Ward\n(_loc. cit._) thinks, on the contrary, that it can only be between\n_successive_ experiences: \"The association of objects simultaneously\npresented can be resolved into an association of objects successively\nattended to.... It seems hardly possible to mention a case in which\nattention to the associated objects could not have been successive. In\nfact, an aggregate of objects on which attention could be focussed at\nonce would be already associated.\" Between these extreme possibilities,\nI have refrained from deciding in the text, and have described\ncontiguous association as holding between both successively and\ncoexistently presented objects. The physiological question as to how\nwe may conceive the paths to originate had better be postponed till it\ncomes to us again in the chapter on the Will, where we can treat it in\na broader way. It is enough here to have called attention to it as a\nserious problem.\n\n[476] Essay, bk. ii, chap. xxxiii, \u00a7 6. Compare Hume, who, like Locke,\nonly uses the principle to account for unreasonable and obstructive\nmental associations:\n\n\"'Twould have been easy to have made an imaginary dissection of the\nbrain, and have shown why, upon our conception of any idea, the animal\nspirits run into all the contiguous traces, and rouse up the other\nideas that are related to it. But though I have neglected any advantage\nwhich I might have drawn from this topic in explaining the relations of\nideas, I am afraid I must here have recourse to it, in order to account\nfor the mistakes that arise from these relations. I shall therefore\nobserve, that as the mind is endowed with a power of exciting any idea\nit pleases; whenever it dispatches the spirits into that region of the\nbrain in which the idea is placed, these spirits always excite the\nidea, when they run precisely into the proper traces, and rummage that\ncell which belongs to the idea. But as their motion is seldom direct,\nand naturally turns a little to the one side or the other: for this\nreason the animal spirits, falling into the contiguous traces, present\nother related ideas in lieu of that which the mind desired at first\nto survey. This change we are not always sensible of; but continuing\nstill the same train of thought, make use of the related idea which is\npresented to us, and employ it in our reasoning, as if it were the same\nwith what we demanded. This is the cause of many mistakes and sophisms\nin philosophy; as will naturally be imagined, and as it would be easy\nto show, if there was occasion.\"\n\n[477] _Op. cit._ prop. xi.\n\n[478] See Chapter III, pp. 82-5.\n\n[479] I strongly advise the student to read his Senses and Intellect,\npp. 544-556.\n\n[480] Time and Space, p. 266. Compare Coleridge: \"The true practical\ngeneral law of association is this: that whatever makes certain parts\nof a total impression more vivid or distinct than the rest will\ndetermine the mind to recall these, in preference to others equally\nlinked together by the common condition of contemporaeity or of\n_contiguity_. But the will itself, by confining and intensifying the\nattention, may arbitrarily give vividness or distinctness to any object\nwhatsoever.\" (Biographia Litteraria, Chap. v.)\n\n[481] Leviathan, pt. i, chap. iii, _init._\n\n[482] I refer to a recency of a few hours. Mr. Galton found that\nexperiences from boyhood and youth were more likely to be suggested by\nwords seen at random than experiences of later years. See his highly\ninteresting account of experiments in his Inquiries into Human Faculty,\npp. 191-203.\n\n[483] For other instances see Wahle, in Vierteljsch. f. Wiss. Phil.,\nix, 144-417 (1885).\n\n[484] I retain the title of association by similarity in order not to\ndepart from common usage. The reader will observe, however, that my\nnomenclature is not based on the same principle throughout. Impartial\nredintegration connotes neural processes; similarity is an objective\nrelation perceived by the mind; ordinary or mixed association is a\nmerely denotative word. _Total recall, partial recall,_ and _focalized\nrecall,_ of associates, would be better terms. But as the _denotation_\nof the latter word is almost identical with that of association by\nsimilarity, I think it better to sacrifice propriety to popularity, and\nto keep the latter well-worn phrase.\n\n[485] No one has described this process better than Hobbes: \"Sometimes\na man seeks what he hath lost; and from that place and time wherein\nhe misses it, his mind runs back from place to place and time to time\nto and where and when he had it; that is to say, to find some certain\nand limited time and place, in which to begin a method of seeking.\nAgain, from thence his thoughts run over the same places and times to\nfind what action or other occasion might make him lose it. This we\ncall _Remembrance_, or calling to mind. Sometimes a man knows a place\ndeterminate, within the compass whereof he is to seek; and then his\nthoughts run over all the parts thereof, in the same manner as one\nwould sweep a room to find a jewel, or as a spaniel ranges the field\ntill he find a scent, or as a man should run over the alphabet to start\na rhyme.\" (Leviathan, 165, p. 10.)\n\n[486] Theory of Practice, vol. i, p. 394.\n\n[487] _Ibid._ p. 394.\n\n[488] All association is called redintegration by Hodgson.\n\n[489] _Ibid._ p. 400. Compare Bain, Emotions and Will, p. 377. \"The\noutgoings of the mind are necessarily random; the end alone is the\nthing that is clear to the view, and with that there is a perception of\nthe fitness of every passing suggestion. The volitional energy keeps\nup the attention on the active search; and the moment that anything in\npoint rises before the mind, it springs upon that like a wild beast\nupon its prey.\"\n\n[490] Compare what is said of the principle of Similarity by F. H.\nBradley, Principles of Logic, pp. 294 ff.; E. Rabier, Psychologie,\n187 ff.; Paulhan, Critique Philosophique, 2me S\u00e9rie, i, 458; Rabier,\n_ibid._ 460; Pillon, _ibid._ ii, 55; B. P. Bowne, Introduction to\nPsych. Theory, 92; Ward, Encyclop. Britt. art. Psychology, p. 60;\nWahle, Vierteljahrsch. f. wiss. Philos., ix, 426-431.\n\n[491] Dr. McCosh is accordingly only logical when he sinks similarity\nin what he calls the _Law of Correlation_, according to which, when\nwe have discovered _a relation between things_, the idea of one tends\nto bring up the others, (Psychology, the Cognitive Powers, p. 130).\nThe relations mentioned by this author are Identity, Whole and Parts,\nResemblance, Space, Time, Quantity, Active Property, and Cause and\nEffect. If perceived relations among objects are to be treated as\ngrounds for their appearance before the mind, similarity has of course\nno right to an exclusive, or even to a predominant, place.\n\n[492] Cf. Bain, Senses and Intellect, 504 ff.; J. S. Mill, Note 39 to\nJ. Mill's Analysis; Lipps, Grundtatsachen, 97.\n\n[493] See, for farther details, Hamilton's Reid, Appendices D** and\nD***; and L. Ferri, La Psychologie de l'Association (Paris, 1883). Also\nRobertson, art. Association in Encyclop. Britannica.\n\n[494] Treatise of Human nature, part i,. \u00a7 iv.\n\n[495] Observations on Man (London, 1749).\n\n[496] Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829).\n\n[497] Hartley's Theory, 2d ed. (1790) p. xxvii.\n\n[498] [Current, that is, in France.--W. J.]\n\n[499] La Psychologie Angloise, p. 242.\n\n[500] Priestley, _op. cit._ p. xxx.\n\n[501] Review of Bains's Psychology, by J.S. Mill, in Edinb. Review,\nOct. 1, 1859, p. 293.\n\n[502] Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, J.S. Mill's edition,\nvol. i, p. 111.\n\n[503] On the Associability of Relations between Feelings, in Principles\nof Psychology, vol. i, p. 259. It is impossible to regard the \"cohering\nof each feeling with previously-experienced feelings of the same class,\norder, genus, species, and, so far as may be, the same variety,\" which\nSpencer calls (p. 257) 'the sole process of association of feelings,'\nas any equivalent for what is commonly known as Association by\nsimilarity.\n\n[504] The Senses and the Intellect, pp. 491-3.\n\n[505] See his Time and Space, chapter v, and his Theory of Practice, \u00a7\u00a7\n53 to 57.\n\n[506] Psychologie als Wissenschaft (1824), 2.\n\n[507] Prof. Ribot, in chapter i of his 'Contemporary German\nPsychology,' has given a good account of Herbart and his school, and\nof Beneke, his rival and partial analogue. See also two articles on\nthe Herbartian Psychology, by G. F. Stout, in Mind for 1888. J. D.\nMorrell's Outlines of Mental Philosophy (2d ed., London, 1862) largely\nfollows Herbart and Beneke. I know of no other English book which does\nso.\n\n[508] See his Grundtatsachen des Bewusstseins (1883), chap. vi _et\npassim_, especially pp. 106 ff., 364.\n\n[509] The most burdensome and utterly gratuitous of them are perhaps\nSteinthal's, in his Einleitung in die Psychologie, 2te Aufl. (1881).\nCf. also G. Glogau: Steinthal's Psychologische Formeln (1886).\n\n[510] Le\u00e7ons de Philosophie, i. Psychologie, chap. xvi (1884).\n\n[511] Mr. F. H. Bradley seems to me to have been guilty of something\nvery like this _ignoratio elenchi_ in the, of course, subtle and\nwitty but decidedly long-winded critique of the association of ideas,\ncontained in book ii, part ii, chap. i, of his Principles of Logic.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV.[512]\n\nTHE PERCEPTION OF TIME.\n\n\nIn the next two chapters I shall deal with what is sometimes called\ninternal perception, or the perception of _time_, and of events as\noccupying a date therein, especially when the date is a past one, in\nwhich case the perception in question goes by the name of _memory_. To\nremember a thing as past, it is necessary that the notion of 'past'\nshould be one of our 'ideas.' We shall see in the chapter on Memory\nthat many things come to be thought by us as past, not because of any\nintrinsic quality of their own, but rather because they are associated\nwith other things which for us signify pastness. But how do these\nthings get _their_ pastness? What is the _original_ of our experience\nof pastness, from whence we get the meaning of the term? It is this\nquestion which the reader is invited to consider in the present\nchapter. We shall see that we have a constant feeling _sui generis_ of\npastness, to which every one of our experiences in turn falls a prey.\nTo think a thing as past is to think it amongst the objects or in the\ndirection of the objects which at the present moment appear affected\nby this quality. This is the original of our notion of past time, upon\nwhich memory and history build their systems. And in this chapter we\nshall consider this immediate sense of time alone.\n\nIf the constitution of consciousness were that of a string of bead-like\nsensations and images, all separate,\n\n \"we never could have any knowledge except that of the present\n instant. The moment each of our sensations ceased it would be gone\n for ever; and we should be as if we had never been.... We should be\n wholly incapable of acquiring experience.... Even if our ideas were\n associated in trains, but only as they are in imagination, we should\n still be without the capacity of acquiring knowledge. One idea, upon\n this supposition, would follow another. But that would be all. Each of\n our successive states of consciousness, the moment it ceased, would\n be gone forever. Each of those momentary states would be our whole\n being.\"[513]\n\nWe might, nevertheless, under these circumstances, _act_ in a rational\nway, provided the mechanism which produced our trains of images\nproduced them in a rational order. We should make appropriate speeches,\nthough unaware of any word except the one just on our lips; we should\ndecide upon the right policy without ever a glimpse of the total\ngrounds of our choice. Our consciousness would be like a glow-worm\nspark, illuminating the point it immediately covered, but leaving all\nbeyond in total darkness. Whether a very highly developed practical\nlife be possible under such conditions as these is more than doubtful;\nit is, however, conceivable.\n\nI make the fanciful hypothesis merely to set off our real nature by the\ncontrast. Our feelings are not thus contracted, and our consciousness\nnever shrinks to the dimensions of a glow-worm spark. _The knowledge\nof some other part of the stream, past or future, near or remote, is\nalways mixed in with our knowledge of the present thing._\n\nA simple sensation, as we shall hereafter see, is an abstraction, and\nall our concrete states of mind are representations of objects with\nsome amount of complexity. Part of the complexity is the echo of the\nobjects just past, and, in a less degree, perhaps, the foretaste of\nthose just to arrive. Objects fade out of consciousness slowly. If the\npresent thought is of ABCDEFG, the next one will be of BCDEFGH, and\nthe one after that of CDEFGHI--the lingerings of the past dropping\nsuccessively away, and the incomings of the future making up the loss.\nThese lingerings of old objects, these incomings of new, are the germs\nof memory and expectation, the retrospective and the prospective sense\nof time. They give that continuity to consciousness without which it\ncould not be called a stream.[514]\n\n\nTHE SENSIBLE PRESENT HAS DURATION.\n\n\nLet any one try, I will not say to arrest, but to notice or attend to,\nthe _present_ moment of time. One of the most baffling experiences\noccurs. Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere\nwe could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming. As a poet, quoted\nby Mr. Hodgson, says,\n\n    \"Le moment o\u00f9 je parle est d\u00e9j\u00e0 loin de moi,\"\n\nand it is only as entering into the living and moving organization of\na much wider tract of time that the strict present is apprehended at\nall. It is, in fact, an altogether ideal abstraction, not only never\nrealized in sense, but probably never even conceived of by those\nunaccustomed to philosophic meditation. Reflection leads us to the\nconclusion that it _must_ exist, but that it _does_ exist can never\nbe a fact of our immediate experience. The only fact of our immediate\nexperience is what Mr. E. R. Clay has well called 'the _specious_\npresent.' His words deserve to be quoted in full:[515]\n\n \"The relation of experience to time has not been profoundly studied.\n Its objects are given as being of the present, but the part of\n time referred to by the datum is a very different thing from the\n conterminous of the past and future which philosophy denotes by the\n name Present. The present to which the datum refers is really a part\n of the past--a recent past--delusively given as being a time that\n intervenes between the past and the future. Let it be named the\n specious present, and let the past, that is given as being the past,\n be known as the obvious past. All the notes of a bar of a song seem to\n the listener to be contained in the present. All the changes of place\n of a meteor seem to the beholder to be contained in the present. At\n the instant of the termination of such series, no part of the time\n measured by them seems to be a past. Time, then, considered relatively\n to human apprehension, consists of four parts, viz., the obvious past,\n the specious present, the real present, and the future. Omitting the\n specious present, it consists of three ... nonentities--the past,\n which does not exist, the future, which does not exist, and their\n conterminous, the present; the faculty from which it proceeds lies to\n us in the fiction of the specious present.\"\n\nIn short, the practically cognized present is no knife-edge, but\na saddle-back, with a certain breadth of its own on which we sit\nperched, and from which we look in two directions into time. The unit\nof composition of our perception of time is a _duration_, with a bow\nand a stern, as it were--a rearward- and a forward-looking end.[516]\nIt is only as parts of this _duration-block_ that the relation of\n_succession_ of one end to the other is perceived. We do not first feel\none end and then feel the other after it, and from the perception of\nthe succession infer an interval of time between, but we seem to feel\nthe interval of time as a whole, with its two ends embedded in it. The\nexperience is from the outset a synthetic datum, not a simple one; and\nto sensible perception its elements are inseparable, although attention\nlooking back may easily decompose the experience, and distinguish its\nbeginning from its end.\n\nWhen we come to study the perception of Space, we shall find it\nquite analogous to time in this regard. Date in time corresponds\nto position in space; and although we now mentally construct large\nspaces by mentally imagining remoter and remoter positions, just as\nwe now construct great durations by mentally prolonging a series of\nsuccessive dates, yet the original experience of both space and time is\nalways of something already given as a unit, inside of which attention\nafterward discriminates parts in relation to each other. Without\nthe parts already given as _in_ a time and _in_ a space, subsequent\ndiscrimination of them could hardly do more than perceive them as\n_different_ from each other; it would have no motive for calling the\ndifference temporal order in this instance and spatial position in that.\n\nAnd just as in certain experiences we may be conscious of an extensive\nspace full of objects, without locating each of them distinctly\ntherein; so, when many impressions follow in excessively rapid\nsuccession in time, although we may be distinctly aware that they\noccupy some duration, and are not simultaneous, we may be quite at\na loss to tell which comes first and which last; or we may even\ninvert their real order in our judgment. In complicated reaction-time\nexperiments, where signals and motions, and clicks of the apparatus\ncome in exceedingly rapid order, one is at first much perplexed in\ndeciding what the order is, yet of the fact of its occupancy of time we\nare never in doubt.\n\n\nACCURACY OF OUR ESTIMATE OF SHORT DURATIONS.\n\n\nWe must now proceed to an account of the _facts_ of time-perception in\ndetail as preliminary to our speculative conclusion. Many of the facts\nare matters of patient experimentation, others of common experience.\n\nFirst of all, we note a marked _difference between the elementary\nsensations of duration and those of space_. The former have a much\nnarrower range; the time-sense may be called a myopic organ, in\ncomparison with the eye, for example. The eye sees rods, acres, even\nmiles, at a single glance, and these totals it can afterward subdivide\ninto an almost infinite number of distinctly identified parts. The\nunits of duration, on the other hand, which the time-sense is able to\ntake in at a single stroke, are groups of a few seconds, and within\nthese units very few subdivisions--perhaps forty at most, as we\nshall presently see--can be clearly discerned. The durations we have\npractically most to deal with--minutes, hours, and days--have to be\nsymbolically conceived, and constructed by mental addition, after the\nfashion of those extents of hundreds of miles and upward, which in the\nfield of space are beyond the range of most men's practical interests\naltogether. To 'realize' a quarter of a mile we need only look out of\nthe window and _feel_ its length by an act which, though it may in part\nresult from organized associations, yet seems immediately performed. To\nrealize an hour, we must count 'now!--now!--now!--now!--' indefinitely.\nEach 'now' is the feeling of a separate _bit_ of time, and the exact\nsum of the bits never makes a very clear impression on our mind.\n\nHow many bits can we clearly apprehend at once? Very few if they are\nlong bits, more if they are extremely short, most if they come to us in\ncompound groups, each including smaller bits of its own.\n\nHearing is the sense by which the subdivision of durations is most\nsharply made. Almost all the experimental work on the time-sense has\nbeen done by means of strokes of sound. How long a series of sounds,\nthen, can we group in the mind so as not to confound it with a longer\nor a shorter series?\n\nOur spontaneous tendency is to break up any monotonously given series\nof sounds into some sort of a rhythm. We involuntarily accentuate every\nsecond, or third, or fourth beat, or we break the series in still more\nintricate ways. Whenever we thus grasp the impressions in rhythmic\nform, we can identify a longer string of them without confusion.\n\nEach variety of verse, for example, has its 'law'; and the recurrent\nstresses and sinkings make us feel with peculiar readiness the lack of\na syllable or the presence of one too much. Divers verses may again be\nbound together in the form of a stanza, and we may then say of another\nstanza, \"Its second verse differs by so much from that of the first\nstanza,\" when but for the felt stanza-form the two differing verses\nwould have come to us too separately to be compared at all. But these\nsuperposed systems of rhythm soon reach their limit. In music, as\nWundt[517] says, \"while the measure may easily contain 12 changes of\nintensity of sound (as in 12/8 time), the rhythmical group may embrace\n6 measures, and the period consist of 4, exceptionally of 5 [8?]\ngroups.\"\n\nWundt and his pupil Dietze have both tried to determine experimentally\nthe _maximal extent of our immediate distinct consciousness for\nsuccessive impressions._\n\nWundt found[518] that twelve impressions could be distinguished clearly\nas a united cluster, provided they were caught in a certain rhythm\nby the mind, and succeeded each other at intervals not smaller than\n0.3 and not larger than 0.5 of a second. This makes the total time\ndistinctly apprehended to be equal to from 3.6 to 6 seconds.\n\nDietze[519] gives larger figures. The most favorable intervals for\nclearly catching the strokes were when they came at from 0.3 second\nto 0.18 second apart. _Forty_ strokes might then be remembered as a\nwhole, and identified without error when repeated, provided the mind\ngrasped them in five sub-groups of eight, or in eight sub-groups of\nfive strokes each. When no grouping of the strokes beyond making\n_couples_ of them by the attention was allowed--and practically it was\nfound impossible not to group them in at least this simplest of all\nways--16 was the largest number that could be clearly apprehended as a\nwhole.[520] This would make 40 times 0.8 second, or 12 seconds, to be\nthe _maximum filled duration_ of which we can be both _distinctly and\nimmediately_ aware.\n\nThe maximum unfilled, or _vacant duration_, seems to lie within the\nsame objective range. Estel and Mehner, also working in Wundt's\nlaboratory, found it to vary from 5 or 6 to 12 seconds, and perhaps\nmore. The differences seemed due to practice rather than to\nidiosyncrasy.[521]\n\nThese figures may be roughly taken to stand for the most important part\nof what, with Mr. Clay, we called, a few pages back, the _specious\npresent_. The specious present has, in addition, a vaguely vanishing\nbackward and forward fringe; but its nucleus is probably the dozen\nseconds or less that have just elapsed.\n\nIf these are the maximum, what, then, is the _minimum_ amount of\nduration which we can distinctly feel?\n\nThe smallest figure experimentally ascertained was by Exner, who\ndistinctly heard the doubleness of two successive clicks of a Savart's\nwheel, and of two successive snaps of an electric spark, when their\ninterval was made as small as about 1/500 of a second.[522]\n\nWith the eye, perception is less delicate. Two sparks, made to fall\nbeside each other in rapid succession on the centre of the retina,\nceased to be recognized as successive by Exner when their interval fell\nbelow 0.044''.[523]\n\nWhere, as here, the succeeding impressions are only two in number,\nwe can easiest perceive the interval between them. President Hall,\nwho experimented with a modified Savart's wheel, which gave clicks in\nvarying number and at varying intervals, says:[524]\n\n \"In order that their discontinuity may be clearly perceived, four or\n even three clicks or beats must be farther apart than two need to be.\n When two are easily distinguished, three or four separated by the\n same interval ... are often confidently pronounced to be two or three\n respectively. It would be well if observations were so directed as to\n ascertain, at least up to ten or twenty, the increase [of interval]\n required by each additional click in a series for the sense of\n discontinuity to remain constant throughout.\"[525]\n\nWhere the first impression falls on one sense, and the second on\nanother, the perception of the intervening time tends to be less\ncertain and delicate, and it makes a difference which impression comes\nfirst. Thus, Exner found[526] the smallest perceptible interval to be,\nin seconds:\n\n   From sight to touch      0.071\n\n   From touch to sight      0.053\n\n   From sight to hearing    0.16\n\n   From hearing to sight    0.06\n\n   From one ear to another  0.064\n\n\n_To be conscious of a time interval at all is one thing; to tell\nwhether it be shorter or longer than another interval is a different\nthing._ A number of experimental data are on hand which give us a\nmeasure of the delicacy of this latter perception. The problem is that\nof the _smallest difference between two times_ which we can perceive.\n\nThe difference is at its minimum when the times themselves are very\nshort. Exner,[527] reacting as rapidly as possible with his foot,\nupon a signal seen by the eye (spark), noted all the reactions which\nseemed to him either slow or fast in the making. He thought thus that\ndeviations of about 1/100 of a second either way from the average were\ncorrectly noticed by him at the time. The average was here 0.1840''.\nHall and Jastrow listened to the intervals between the clicks of\ntheir apparatus. Between two such equal intervals of 4.27'' each, a\nmiddle interval was included, which might be made either shorter or\nlonger than the extremes. \"After the series had been heard two or\neven three times, no impression of the relative length of the middle\ninterval would often exist, and only after hearing the fourth and last\n[repetition of the series] would the judgment incline to the _plus_ or\n_minus_ side. Inserting the variable between two invariable and like\nintervals greatly facilitated judgment, which between two unlike terms\nis far less accurate.\"[528] Three observers in these experiments made\nno error when the middle interval varied 1/60 from the extremes. When\nit varied 1/120, errors occurred, but were few. This would make the\nminimum _absolute_ difference perceived as large as 0.355''.\n\nThis minimum absolute difference, of course, increases as the times\ncompared grow long. Attempts have been made to ascertain what _ratio_\nit bears to the times themselves. According to Fechner's 'Psychophysic\nLaw' it ought always to bear the same ratio. Various observers,\nhowever, have found this not to be the case.[529] On the contrary,\nvery interesting _oscillations_ in the accuracy of judgment and in the\ndirection of the error--oscillations dependent upon the absolute amount\nof the times compared--have been noticed by all who have experimented\nwith the question. Of these a brief account may be given.\n\nIn the first place, _in every list of intervals experimented with there\nwill be found what Vierordt calls an_ 'INDIFFERENCE-POINT;' that is to\nsay, an interval which we judge with maximum accuracy, a time which we\ntend to estimate as neither longer or shorter than it really is, and\naway from which, in both directions, errors increase their size.[530]\nThis time varies from one observer to another, but its average is\nremarkably constant, as the following table shows.[531]\n\nThe times, noted by the ear, and the average indifference-points (given\nin seconds) were, for--\n\n   Wundt[532]            0.72\n\n   Kollert[533]          0.75\n\n   Estel (probably)      0.75\n\n   Mehner                0.71\n\n   Stevens[534]          0.71\n\n   Mach[535]             0.35\n\n   Buccola (about)[536]  0.40\n\n\nThe odd thing about these figures is the recurrence they show in so\nmany men of about three fourths of a second, as the interval of time\nmost easy to catch and reproduce, Odder still, both Estel and Mehner\nfound that _multiples_ of this time were more accurately reproduced\nthan the time-intervals of intermediary length;[537] and Glass found a\ncertain periodicity, with the constant increment of 1.25 sec., in his\nobservations. There would seem thus to exist something like a periodic\nor rhythmic sharpening of our time-sense, of which the period differs\nsomewhat from one observer to the next.\n\n_Our sense of time_, like other senses, _seems subject to the law of\ncontrast_. It appeared pretty plainly in Estel's observations that an\ninterval sounded shorter if a long one had immediately preceded it, and\nlonger when the opposite was the case.\n\nLike other senses, too, _our sense of time is sharpened by practice_.\nMehner ascribes almost all the discrepancies between other observers\nand himself to this cause alone.[538]\n\n_Tracts of time filled_ (with clicks of sound) _seem longer than vacant\nones_ of the same duration, when the latter does not exceed a second or\ntwo.[539] This, which reminds one of what happens with spaces seen by\nthe eye, becomes reversed when longer times are taken. It is, perhaps,\nin accordance with this law that a _loud_ sound, limiting a short\ninterval of time, makes it appear longer, a _slight_ sound shorter. In\ncomparing intervals marked out by sounds, we must take care to keep the\nsounds uniform.[540]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere is a certain emotional _feeling_ accompanying the intervals\nof time, as is well known in music. _The sense of haste goes with\none measure of rapidity, that of delay with another;_ and these two\nfeelings harmonize with different mental moods. Vierordt listened\nto series of strokes performed by a metronome at rates varying from\n40 to 200 a minute, and found that they very naturally fell into\nseven categories, from 'very slow' to 'very fast.'[541] Each category\nof feeling included the intervals following each other within a\ncertain range of speed, and no others. This is a qualitative, not\na quantitative judgment--an \u00e6sthetic judgment, in fact. The middle\ncategory, of speed that was neutral, or, as he calls it, 'adequate,'\ncontained intervals that were grouped about 0.62 second, and Vierordt\nsays that this made what one might almost call an _agreeable_ time.[542]\n\nThe feeling of time and accent in music, of rhythm, is quite\nindependent of that of melody. Tunes with marked rhythm can be readily\nrecognized when simply drummed on the table with the finger-tips.\n\n\nWE HAVE NO SENSE FOR EMPTY TIME.\n\n\nAlthough subdividing the time by beats of sensation aids our accurate\nknowledge of the amount of it that elapses, such subdivision does not\nseem at the first glance essential to our perception of its flow.\nLet one sit with closed eyes and, abstracting entirely from the\nouter world, attend exclusively to the passage of time, like one who\nwakes, as the poet says, \"to hear time flowing in the middle of the\nnight, and all things moving to a day of doom.\" There seems under\nsuch circumstances as these no variety in the material content of our\nthought, and what we notice appears, if anything, to be the pure series\nof durations budding, as it were, and growing beneath our indrawn\ngaze. Is this really so or not? The question is important, for, if the\nexperience be what it roughly seems, we have a sort of special sense\nfor pure time--a sense to which empty duration is an adequate stimulus;\nwhile if it be an illusion, it must be that our perception of time's\nflight, in the experiences quoted, is due to the _filling_ of the time,\nand to our _memory_ of a content which it had a moment previous, and\nwhich we feel to agree or disagree with its content now.\n\nIt takes but a small exertion of introspection to show that the\nlatter alternative is the true one, and that _we can no more intuit\na duration than we can intuit an extension, devoid of all sensible\ncontent_. Just as with closed eyes we perceive a dark visual field\nin which a curdling play of obscurest luminosity is always going on;\nso, be we never so abstracted from distinct outward impressions, we\nare always inwardly immersed in what Wundt has somewhere called the\ntwilight of our general consciousness. Our heart-beats, our breathing,\nthe pulses of our attention, fragments of words or sentences that pass\nthrough our imagination, are what people this dim habitat. Now, all\nthese processes are rhythmical, and are apprehended by us, as they\noccur, in their totality; the breathing and pulses of attention, as\ncoherent successions, each with its rise and fall; the heart-beats\nsimilarly, only relatively far more brief; the words not separately,\nbut in connected groups. In short, empty our minds as we may, some\nform of _changing process_ remains for us to feel, and cannot be\nexpelled. And along with the sense of the process and its rhythm goes\nthe sense of the length of time it lasts. Awareness of _change_ is\nthus the condition on which our perception of time's flow depends; but\nthere exists no reason to suppose that empty time's own changes are\nsufficient for the awareness of change to be aroused. The change must\nbe of some concrete sort--an outward or inward sensible series, or a\nprocess of attention or volition.[543]\n\nAnd here again we have an analogy with space. The earliest form of\ndistinct space-perception is undoubtedly that of a movement over\nsome one of our sensitive surfaces, and this movement is originally\ngiven as a simple whole of feeling, and is only decomposed into its\nelements--successive positions successively occupied by the moving\nbody--when our education in discrimination is much advanced. But a\nmovement is a change, a process; so we see that in the time-world\nand the space-world alike the first known things are not elements,\nbut combinations, not separate units, but wholes already formed.\nThe condition of _being_ of the wholes may be the elements; but the\ncondition of our _knowing_ the elements is our having already felt the\nwholes as wholes.\n\nIn the experience of watching empty time flow--'empty' to be taken\nhereafter in the relative sense just set forth--we tell it off in\npulses. We say 'now! now! now!' or we count 'more! more! more!' as we\nfeel it bud. This composition out of units of duration is called the\nlaw of time's _discrete flow_. The discreteness is, however, merely due\nto the fact that our successive acts of _recognition_ or _apperception_\nof _what_ it is are discrete. The sensation is as continuous as any\nsensation can be. All continuous sensations are _named_ in beats. We\nnotice that a certain finite 'more' of them is passing or already past.\nTo adopt Hodgson's image, the sensation is the measuring-tape, the\nperception the dividing-engine which stamps its length. As we listen\nto a steady sound, we _take it in_ in discrete pulses of recognition,\ncalling it successively 'the same! the same! the same!' The case stands\nno otherwise with time.\n\nAfter a small number of beats our impression of the amount we have\ntold off becomes quite vague. Our only way of knowing it accurately\nis by counting, or noticing the clock, or through some other symbolic\nconception.[544] When the times exceed hours or days, the conception\nis absolutely symbolic. We think of the amount we mean either solely\nas a _name_, or by running over a few salient _dates_ therein, with\nno pretence of imagining the full durations that lie between them.\nNo one has anything like a _perception_ of the greater length of the\ntime between now and the first century than of that between now and\nthe tenth. To an historian, it is true, the longer interval will\nsuggest a host of additional dates and events, and so appear a more\n_multitudinous_ thing. And for the same reason most people will think\nthey directly perceive the length of the past fortnight to exceed that\nof the past week. But there is properly no comparative time _intuition_\nin these cases at all. It is but dates and events. _representing_ time;\ntheir abundance _symbolizing_ its length. I am sure that this is so,\neven where the times compared are no more than an hour or so in length.\nIt is the same with Spaces of many miles, which we always compare with\neach other by the numbers which measure them.[545]\n\nFrom this we pass naturally to speak of certain familial variations\nin our estimation of lengths of time. _In general, a time filled with\nvaried and interesting experiences seems short in passing, but long as\nwe look back. On the other hand, a tract of time empty of experiences\nseems long in passing, but in retrospect short._ A week of travel and\nsight-seeing may subtend an angle more like three weeks in the memory;\nand a month of sickness hardly yields more memories than a day. The\nlength in retrospect depends obviously on the multitudinousness of the\nmemories which the time affords. Many objects, events, changes, many\nsubdivisions, immediately widen the view as we look back. Emptiness,\nmonotony, familiarity, make it shrivel up. In Von Holtei's 'Vagabonds'\none Anton is described as revisiting his native village.\n\n \"Seven years,\" he exclaims, \"seven years since I ran away! More like\n seventy it seems, so much has happened. I cannot think of it all\n without becoming dizzy--at any rate not now. And yet again, when I\n look at the village, at the church-tower, it seems as if I could\n hardly have been seven days away.\"\n\nProf. Lazarus[546] (from whom I borrow this quotation), thus explains\nboth of these contrasted illusions by our principle of the awakened\nmemories being multitudinous or few:\n\n \"The circle of experiences, widely extended, rich in variety, which\n he had in view on the day of his leaving the village rises now in his\n mind as its image lies before him. And with it--in rapid succession\n and violent motion, not in chronologic order, or from chronologic\n motives, but suggesting each other by all sorts of connections--arise\n massive images of all his rich vagabondage and roving life. They roll\n and wave confusedly together, first perhaps one from the first year,\n then from the sixth, soon from the second, again from the fifth, the\n first, etc., until it seems as if seventy years must have been there,\n and he reels with the fulness of his vision.... Then the inner eye\n turns away from all this past. The outer one turns to the village,\n especially to the church-tower. The sight of it calls back the old\n sight of it, so that the consciousness is filled with that alone, or\n almost alone. The one vision compares itself with the other, and looks\n so near, so unchanged, that it seems as if only a week of time could\n have come between.\"\n\n_The same space of time seems shorter as we grow older_--that is, the\ndays, the months, and the years do so; whether the hours do so is\ndoubtful, and the minutes and seconds to all appearance remain about\nthe same.\n\n \"Whoever counts many lustra in his memory need only question himself\n to find that the last of these, the past five years, have sped much\n more quickly than the preceding periods of equal amount. Let any one\n remember his last eight or ten school years: it is the space of a\n century. Compare with them the last eight or ten years of life: it is\n the space of an hour.\"\n\nSo writes Prof. Paul Janet,[547] and gives a solution which can hardly\nbe said to diminish the mystery. There is a law, he says, by which\nthe apparent length of an interval at a given epoch of a man's life\nis proportional to the total length of the life itself. A child of 10\nfeels a year as 1/10 of his whole life--a man of 50 as 1/50, the whole\nlife meanwhile apparently preserving a constant length. This formula\nroughly expresses the phenomena, it is true, but cannot possibly be\nan elementary psychic law; and it is certain that, in great part at\nleast, the foreshortening of the years as we grow older is due to\nthe monotony of memory's content, and the consequent simplification\nof the backward-glancing view. In youth we may have an absolutely\nnew experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day.\nApprehension is vivid, retentiveness strong, and our recollections of\nthat time, like those of a time spent in rapid and interesting travel,\nare of something intricate, multitudinous, and long-drawn-out. But\nas each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic\nroutine which we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth\nthemselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow\nhollow and collapse.\n\nSo much for the apparent shortening of tracts of time in _retrospect_.\nThey shorten _in passing_ whenever we are so fully occupied with\ntheir content as not to note the actual time itself. A day full of\nexcitement, with no pause, is said to pass 'ere we know it.' On the\ncontrary, a day full of waiting, of unsatisfied desire for change, will\nseem a small eternity. _T\u00e6dium, ennui, Langweile, boredom,_ are words\nfor which, probably, every language known to man has its equivalent.\nIt comes about whenever, from the relative emptiness of content\nof a tract of time, we grow attentive to the passage of the time\nitself. Expecting, and being ready for, a new impression to succeed;\nwhen it fails to come, we get an empty time instead of it; and such\nexperiences, ceaselessly renewed, make us most formidably aware of the\nextent of the mere time itself.[548] Close your eyes and simply wait\nto hear somebody tell you that a minute has elapsed. The full length\nof your leisure with it seems incredible. You engulf yourself into\nits bowels as into those of that interminable first week of an ocean\nvoyage, and find yourself wondering that history can have overcome\nmany such periods in its course. All because you attend so closely\nto the mere feeling of the time _per se_, and because your attention\nto that is susceptible of such fine-grained successive subdivision.\nThe _odiousness_ of the whole experience comes from its insipidity;\nfor _stimulation_ is the indispensable requisite for pleasure in an\nexperience, and the feeling of bare time is the least stimulating\nexperience we can have.[549] The sensation of t\u00e6edium is a _protest_,\nsays Volkmann, against the entire present.\n\nExactly parallel variations occur in our consciousness of space. A\nroad we walk back over, hoping to find at each step an object we have\ndropped, seems to us longer than when we walked over it the other way.\nA space we measure by pacing appears longer than one we traverse with\nno thought of its length. And in general an amount of space attended to\nin itself leaves with us more impression of spaciousness than one of\nwhich we only note the content.[550]\n\nI do not say that _everything_ in these fluctuations of estimate can be\naccounted for by the time's content being crowded and interesting, or\nsimple and tame. Both in the shortening of time by old age and in its\nlengthening by _ennui_ some deeper cause _may_ be at work. This cause\ncan only be ascertained, if it exist, by finding out _why we perceive\ntime at all_. To this inquiry let us, though without much hope, proceed.\n\n\nTHE FEELING OF PAST TIME IS A PRESENT FEELING.\n\n\nIf asked why we perceive the light of the sun, or the sound of an\nexplosion, we reply, \"Because certain outer forces, ether-waves or\nair-waves, smite upon the brain, awakening therein changes, to which\nthe conscious perceptions, light and sound, respond.\" But we hasten\nto add that neither light nor sound _copy_ or _mirror_ the ether- or\nair-waves; they represent them only symbolically. The _only_ case, says\nHelmholtz, in which such copying occurs, and in which\n\n \"our perceptions can truly correspond with outer reality, is that of\n the _tune-succession_ of phenomena. Simultaneity, succession, and\n the regular return of simultaneity or succession, can obtain as well\n in sensations as in outer events. Events, like our perceptions of\n them, take place in time, so that the time-relations of the latter\n can furnish a true copy of those of the former. The sensation of the\n thunder follows the sensation of the lightning just as the sonorous\n convulsing of the air by the electric discharge reaches the observer's\n place later than that of the luminiferous ether.\"[551]\n\nOne experiences an almost instinctive impulse, in pursuing such\nreflections as these, to follow them to a sort of crude speculative\nconclusion, and to think that he has at last got the mystery of\ncognition where, to use a vulgar phrase, 'the wool is short.' What\nmore natural, we say, than that the sequences and durations of things\n_should_ become known? The succession of the outer forces stamps\nitself as a like succession upon the brain. The brain's successive\nchanges are copied exactly by correspondingly successive pulses of\nthe mental stream. The mental stream, feeling itself, must feel the\ntime-relations of its own states. But as these are copies of the\noutward time-relations, so must it know them too. That is to say, these\nlatter time-relations arouse their own cognition; or, in other words,\nthe mere existence of time in those changes out of the mind which\naffect the mind is a sufficient cause why time is perceived by the mind.\n\nThis philosophy is unfortunately too crude. Even though we _were_\nto conceive the outer successions as forces stamping their image\non the brain, and the brain's successions as forces stamping their\nimage on the mind,[552] still, between the mind's own changes _being_\nsuccessive, and _knowing their own succession_, lies as broad a chasm\nas between the object and subject of any case of cognition in the\nworld. _A succession of feelings, in and of itself, is not a feeling\nof succession. And since, to our successive feelings, a feeling of\ntheir own succession is added, that must be treated as an additional\nfact requiring its own special elucidation,_ which this talk about\nouter time-relations stamping copies of themselves within, leaves all\nuntouched.\n\nI have shown, at the outset of the article, that what is past, to be\nknown as past, must be known _with_ what is present, and _during_ the\n'present' spot of time. As the clear understanding of this point has\nsome importance, let me, at the risk of repetition, recur to it again.\nVolkmann has expressed the matter admirably, as follows:\n\n \"One might be tempted to answer the question of the origin of the\n time-idea by simply pointing to the train of ideas, whose various\n members, starting from the first, successively attain to full\n clearness. But against this it must be objected that the successive\n ideas are not yet the idea of succession, because succession _in_\n thought is not the thought _of_ succession. If idea A follows idea B,\n consciousness simply exchanges one for another. That B _comes after_\n A is for our consciousness a non-existent fact; for this _after_ is\n given neither in B nor in A; and no third idea has been supposed.\n The thinking of the sequence of B upon A is another kind of thinking\n from that which brought forth A and then brought forth B; and this\n first kind of thinking is absent so long as merely the thinking of A\n and the thinking of B are there. In short, when we look at the matter\n sharply, we come to this antithesis, that if _A_ and B are to be\n represented _as occurring in succession_ they must be _simultaneously\n represented_; if we are to think _of_ them as one after the other, we\n must _think_ them both at once.\"[553]\n\nIf we represent the actual time-stream of our thinking by an horizontal\nline, the thought _of_ the stream or of any segment of its length,\npast, present, or to come, might be figured in a perpendicular\nraised upon the horizontal at a certain point. The length of this\nperpendicular stands for a certain object or content, which in this\ncase is the time thought of, and all of which is thought of together at\nthe actual moment of the stream upon which the perpendicular is raised.\nMr. James Ward puts the matter very well in his masterly article\n'Psychology' in the ninth edition of the Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica, page\n64. He says:\n\n \"We may, if we represent succession as a line, represent simultaneity\n as a second line at right angles to the first; empty time--or\n time-length without time-breadth, we may say--is a mere abstraction.\n Now, it is with the former line that we have to do in treating of\n time as it is, and with the latter in treating of our intuition of\n time, where, just as in a perspective representation of distance, we\n are confined to lines in a plane at right angles to the actual line\n of depth. In a succession of events, say of sense-impressions, A B\n C D E..., the presence of B means the absence of A and C, but the\n presentation of this succession involves the simultaneous presence\n in some mode or other of two or more of the presentations A B C D.\n In reality, past, present, and future are differences in time, but\n in presentation all that corresponds to these differences is in\n consciousness simultaneously.\"\n\nThere is thus a sort of _perspective projection_ of past objects upon\npresent consciousness, similar to that of wide landscapes upon a\ncamera-screen.\n\nAnd since we saw a while ago that our maximum distinct _intuition_ of\nduration hardly covers more than a dozen seconds (while our maximum\nvague intuition is probably not more than that of a minute or so), we\nmust suppose that _this amount of duration is pictured fairly steadily\nin each passing instant of consciousness_ by virtue of some fairly\nconstant feature in the brain-process to which the consciousness is\ntied. _This feature of the brain-process, whatever it be, must be the\ncause of our perceiving the fact of time at all._[554] The duration\nthus steadily perceived is hardly more than the 'specious present,'\nas it was called a few pages back. Its _content_ is in a constant\nflux, events dawning into its forward end as fast as they fade out\nof its rearward one, and each of them changing its time-coefficient\nfrom 'not yet,' or 'not quite yet,' to 'just gone' or 'gone,' as it\npasses by. Meanwhile, the specious present, the intuited duration,\nstands permanent, like the rainbow on the waterfall, with its own\nquality unchanged by the events that stream through it. Each of these,\nas it slips out, retains the power of being reproduced; and when\nreproduced, is reproduced with the duration and neighbors which it\noriginally had. Please observe, however, that the reproduction of an\nevent, _after_ it has once completely dropped out of the rearward end\nof the specious present, is an entirely different psychic fact from\nits direct perception in the specious present as a thing immediately\npast. A creature might be entirely devoid of _reproductive_ memory,\nand yet have the time-sense; but the latter would be limited, in his\ncase, to the few seconds immediately passing by. Time older than that\nhe would never recall. I assume reproduction in the text, because I am\nspeaking of human beings who notoriously possess it. Thus memory gets\nstrewn with _dated_ things--dated in the sense of being before or after\neach other.[555] The date of a thing is a mere relation of _before_ or\n_after_ the present thing or some past or future thing. Some things\nwe date simply by mentally tossing them into the past or future\n_direction_. So in space we think of England as simply to the eastward,\nof Charleston as lying south. But, again, we may date an event exactly,\nby fitting it between two terms of a past or future series explicitly\nconceived, just as we may accurately think of England or Charleston\nbeing just so many miles away.[556]\n\nThe things and events thus vaguely or exactly dated become\nthenceforward those signs and symbols of longer time-spaces, of which\nwe previously spoke. According as we think of a multitude of them, or\nof few, so we imagine the time they represent to be long or short.\nBut _the original paragon and prototype of all conceived times is the\nspecious present, the short duration of which we are immediately and\nincessantly sensible._\n\n\nTO WHAT CEREBRAL PROCESS IS THE SENSE OF TIME DUE?\n\n\n_Now, to what element in the brain-process may this sensibility be\ndue?_ It cannot, as we have seen, be due to the mere duration itself of\nthe process; it must be due to an element present at every moment of\nthe process, and this element must bear the same inscrutable _sort_ of\nrelation to its correlative feeling which all other elements of neural\nactivity bear to their psychic products, be the latter what they may.\nSeveral suggestions have been made as to what the element is in the\ncase of time. Treating of them in a note,[557] I will try to express\nbriefly the only conclusion which seems to emerge from a study of them\nand of the facts--unripe though that conclusion be.\n\nThe phenomena of 'summation of stimuli' in the nervous system prove\nthat each stimulus leaves some latent activity behind it which only\ngradually passes away. (See above, pp. 82-85.) Psychological proof of\nthe same fact is afforded by those 'after-images' which we perceive\nwhen a sensorial stimulus is gone. We may read off peculiarities in an\nafter-image, left by an object on the eye, which we failed to note in\nthe original. We may 'hark back' and take in the meaning of a sound\nseveral seconds after it has ceased. Delay for a minute, however,\nand the echo itself of the clock or the question is mute; present\nsensations have banished it beyond recall. With the feeling of the\npresent thing there must at all times mingle the fading echo of all\nthose other things which the previous few seconds have supplied. Or,\nto state it in neural terms, _there is at every moment a cumulation of\nbrain-processes overlapping each other, of which the fainter ones are\nthe dying phases of processes which but shortly previous were active\nin a maximal degree. The_ AMOUNT OF THE OVERLAPPING _determines the\nfeeling of the_ DURATION OCCUPIED. WHAT EVENTS _shall appear to occupy\nthe duration depends on just_ WHAT PROCESSES _the overlapping processes\nare._ We know so little of the intimate nature of the brain's activity\nthat even where a sensation monotonously endures, we cannot say that\nthe earlier moments of it do not leave fading processes behind which\ncoexist with those of the present moment. _Duration and events together\nform our intuition of the specious present with its content._[558]\n_Why_ such an intuition should result from such a combination of\nbrain-processes I do not pretend to say. All I aim at is to state the\nmost _elemental_ form of the psycho-physical conjunction.\n\nI have assumed that the brain-processes are sensational ones. Processes\nof active attention (see Mr. Ward's account in Footnote 556) will leave\nsimilar fading brain-processes behind. If the mental processes are\nconceptual, a complication is introduced of which I will in a moment\nspeak. Meanwhile, still speaking of sensational processes, a remark\nof Wundt's will throw additional light on the account I give. As is\nknown, Wundt and others have proved that every act of perception of\na sensorial stimulus takes an appreciable time. When two different\nstimuli--e.g. a sight and a sound--are given at once or nearly at\nonce, we have difficulty in attending to both, and may wrongly judge\ntheir interval, or even invert their order. Now, as the result of his\nexperiments on such stimuli. Wundt lays down this law:[559] that of the\nthree possible determinations we may make of their order--\n\n \"namely, simultaneity, continuous transition, and discontinuous\n transition--only the first and last are realized, _never the second_.\n Invariably, when we fail to perceive the impressions as simultaneous,\n we notice a shorter or longer empty time between them, _which seems\n to correspond to the sinking of one of the ideas and to the rise of\n the other_.... For our attention may share itself equally between\n the two impressions, which will then compose one total percept [and\n be simultaneously felt]; or it may be so adapted to one event as to\n cause it to be perceived immediately, and then the second event can\n be perceived only after a certain time of latency, during which the\n attention reaches its effective maximum for it and diminishes for\n the first event. In this case the events are perceived as _two_, and\n in successive order--that is, as separated by a time-interval in\n which attention is not sufficiently accommodated to either to bring a\n distinct perception about.... While we are hurrying from one to the\n other, everything between them vanishes in the twilight of general\n consciousness.\"[560]\n\nOne might call this the _law of discontinuous succession in time, of\npercepts to which we cannot easily attend at once._ Each percept then\nrequires a separate brain-process; and when one brain-process is at its\nmaximum, the other would appear perforce to be in either a waning or\na waxing phase. If our theory of the time-feeling be true, empty time\n_must_ then subjectively appear to separate the two percepts, no matter\nhow close together they may objectively be; for, according to that\ntheory, the feeling of a time-duration is the immediate effect of such\nan overlapping of brain-processes of different phase--wherever and\nfrom whatever cause it may occur.\n\nTo pass, now, to conceptual processes: Suppose I think of the Creation,\nthen of the Christian era, then of the battle of Waterloo, all within\na few seconds. These matters have their dates far outside the specious\npresent. The processes by which I think them, however, all overlap.\nWhat events, then, does the specious present seem to contain? Simply\nmy successive _acts of thinking_ these long-past things, not the\nlong-past things themselves. As the instantly-present thought may be of\na long-past thing, so the just-past thought may be of another long-past\nthing. When a long-past event is reproduced in memory and conceived\nwith its date, the reproduction and conceiving traverse the specious\npresent. The immediate content of the latter is thus all my _direct\nexperiences_, whether subjective or objective. Some of these meanwhile\nmay be _representative_ of other experiences indefinitely remote.\n\nThe number of these direct experiences which the specious present\nand immediately-intuited past may embrace measures the extent of\nour 'primary,' as Exner calls it, or, as Richet calls it, of our\n'elementary' memory.[561] The sensation resultant from the overlapping\nis that of the duration which the experiences seem to fill. As is the\nnumber of any larger set of events to that of these experiences, so we\nsuppose is the length of that duration to this duration. But of the\nlonger duration we have no direct 'realizing sense.' The variations\nin our appreciation of the same amount of real time may possibly be\nexplained by alterations in the rate of fading in the images, producing\nchanges in the complication of superposed processes, to which changes\nchanged states of consciousness may correspond. But however _long we\nmay conceive_ a space of time to be, the objective amount of it which\nis _directly perceived_ at any one moment by us can never exceed the\nscope of our 'primary memory' at the moment in question.[562]\n\nWe have every reason to think that creatures may possibly differ\nenormously in the amounts of duration which they intuitively feel,\nand in the fineness of the events that may fill it. Von B\u00e6r has\nindulged[563] in some interesting computations of the effect of such\ndifferences in changing the aspect of Nature. Suppose we were able,\nwithin the length of a second, to note 10,000 events distinctly,\ninstead of barely 10, as now; if our life were then destined to hold\nthe same number of impressions, it might be 1000 times as short. We\nshould live less than a month, and personally know nothing of the\nchange of seasons. If born in winter, we should believe in summer as\nwe now believe in the heats of the Carboniferous era. The motions of\norganic beings would be so slow to our senses as to be inferred, not\nseen. The sun would stand still in the sky, the moon be almost free\nfrom change, and so on. But now reverse the hypothesis and suppose a\nbeing to get only one 1000th part of the sensations that we get in\na given time, and consequently to live 1000 times as long. Winters\nand summers will be to him like quarters of an hour. Mushrooms and\nthe swifter-growing plants will shoot into being so rapidly as to\nappear instantaneous creations; annual shrubs will rise and fall\nfrom the earth like restlessly boiling-water springs; the motions of\nanimals will be as invisible as are to us the movements of bullets and\ncannon-balls; the sun will scour through the sky like a meteor, leaving\na fiery trail behind him, etc. That such imaginary cases (barring the\nsuperhuman longevity) may be realized somewhere in the animal kingdom,\nit would be rash to deny.\n\n \"A gnat's wings,\" says Mr Spencer,[564] \"make ten or fifteen thousand\n strokes a second. Each stroke implies a separate nervous action.\n Each such nervous action or change in a nervous centre is probably\n as appreciable by the gnat as is a quick movement of his arm by a\n man. And if this, or anything like this, is the fact, then the time\n occupied by a given external change, measured by many movements in the\n one case, must seem much longer than in the other case, when measured\n by one movement.\"\n\nIn hashish-intoxication there is a curious increase in the apparent\ntime-perspective. We utter a sentence, and ere the end is reached\nthe beginning seems already to date from indefinitely long ago. We\nenter a short street, and it is as if we should never get to the end\nof it. This alteration might conceivably result from an approach to\nthe condition of Von B\u00e6r's and Spencer's short-lived beings. If our\ndiscrimination of successions became finer-grained, so that we noted\nten stages in a process where previously we only noted one; and if at\nthe same time the processes faded ten times as fast as before; we might\nhave a specious present of the same subjective length as now, giving us\nthe same time-feeling and containing as many distinguishable successive\nevents, but out from the earlier end of it would have dropped nine\ntenths of the real events it now contains. They would have fallen into\nthe general reservoir of merely dated memories, reproducible at will.\nThe beginning of our sentences would have to be expressly recalled;\neach word would appear to pass through consciousness at a tenth of its\nusual speed. The condition would, in short, be exactly analogous to\nthe enlargement of space by a microscope; fewer real things at once in\nthe immediate field of view, but each of them taking up more than its\nnormal room, and making the excluded ones seem unnaturally far away.\n\nUnder other conditions, processes seem to fade rapidly without the\ncompensating increase in the subdivisibility of successions. Here\nthe apparent length of the specious present contracts. Consciousness\ndwindles to a point, and loses all intuitive sense of the whence and\nwhither of its path. Express acts of memory replace rapid bird's-eye\nviews. In my own case, something like this occurs in extreme fatigue.\nLong illnesses produce it. Occasionally, it appears to accompany\naphasia.[565] It would be vain to seek to imagine the exact\nbrain-change in any of these cases But we must admit the possibility\nthat to some extent the variations of time-estimate between youth and\nage, and excitement and _ennui_, are due to such causes, more immediate\nthan to the one we assigned some time ago.\n\n_But whether our feeling of the time which immediately-past_[566]\nevents have filled be of something long or of something short, it is\nnot what it is because those events are past,_ but _because they have\nleft behind them processes which are present. To those processes,\nhowever caused, the mind would still respond by feeling a specious\npresent, with one part of it just vanishing or vanished into the past._\nAs the Creator is supposed to have made Adam with a navel--sign of a\nbirth which never occurred--so He might instantaneously make a man\nwith a brain in which were processes just like the 'fading' ones of an\nordinary brain. The first real stimulus after creation would set up\na process additional to these. The processes would overlap; and the\nnew-created man would unquestionably have the feeling, at the very\nprimal instant of his life, of having been in existence already some\nlittle space of time.\n\nLet me sum up, now, by saying that we are constantly conscious of a\ncertain duration--the specious present--varying in length from a few\nseconds to probably not more than a minute, and that this duration\n(with its content perceived as having one part earlier and the other\npart later) is the original intuition of time. Longer times are\nconceived by adding, shorter ones by dividing, portions of this vaguely\nbounded unit, and are habitually thought by us symbolically. Kant's\nnotion of an _intuition_ of objective time as an infinite necessary\ncontinuum has nothing to support it. The _cause_ of the intuition which\nwe really have cannot be the _duration_ of our brain-processes or our\nmental changes. That duration is rather the _object_ of the intuition\nwhich, being realized at every moment of such duration, must be due\nto a permanently present cause. This cause--probably the simultaneous\npresence of brain-processes of different phase--fluctuates; and hence a\ncertain range of variation in the amount of the intuition, and in its\nsubdivisibility, accrues.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[512] This chapter is reprinted almost verbatim from the Journal of\nSpeculative Philosophy, vol. xx, p. 374.\n\n[513] James Mill, Analysis, vol. x, p. 319 (J. S. Mill's edition).\n\n[514] \"What I find, when I look at consciousness at all, is, that\nwhat I cannot divest myself of, or not have in consciousness, if I\nhave consciousness at all, is a sequence of different feelings....\nThe simultaneous perception of both sub-feelings, whether as parts\nof a coexistence or of a sequence, is the total feeling--the minimum\nof consciousness--and this minimum has duration.... Time-duration,\nhowever, is inseparable from the minimum, notwithstanding that, in\nan isolated moment, we could not tell which part of it came first,\nwhich last.... We do not require to know that the sub-feelings come\nin sequence, first one, then the other; nor to know what coming in\nsequence means. But we have, in any artificially isolated minimum of\nconsciousness, the _rudiments_ of the perception of former and latter\nin time, in the sub-feeling that grows fainter, and the sub-feeling\nthat grows stronger, and the change between them....\n\n\"In the next place, I remark that the rudiments of memory are involved\nin the minimum of consciousness. The first beginnings of it appear in\nthat minimum, just as the first beginnings of perception do. As each\nmember of the change or difference which goes to compose that minimum\nis the rudiment of a single perception, so the priority of one member\nto the other, although both are given to consciousness in one empirical\npresent moment, is the rudiment of memory. The fact that the minimum\nof consciousness is difference or change in feelings, is the ultimate\nexplanation of memory as well as of single perceptions. A former and a\nlatter are included in the minimum of consciousness; and this is what\nis meant by saying that all consciousness is in the form of _time_, or\nthat time is the form of feeling, the form of sensibility. Crudely and\npopularly we divide the course of time into past, present, and future;\nbut, strictly speaking, there is no present; it is composed of past\nand future divided by an indivisible point or instant. That instant,\nor time-point, is the strict _present_. What we call, loosely, the\npresent, is an empirical portion of the course of time, containing at\nleast a minimum of consciousness, in which the instant of change is the\npresent time-point.... If we take this as the present time-point, it is\nclear that the minimum of feeling contains two portions--a sub-feeling\nthat goes and a sub-feeling that comes. One is remembered, the other\nimagined. The limits of both are indefinite at beginning and end of the\nminimum, and ready to melt into other minima, proceeding from other\nstimuli.\n\n\"Time and consciousness do not come to us ready marked out into minima;\nwe have to do that by reflection, asking ourselves, What is the least\nempirical moment of consciousness? That least empirical moment is what\nwe usually call the present moment; and even this is too minute for\nordinary use; the present moment is often extended practically to a few\nseconds, or even minutes, beyond which we specify what length of time\nwe mean, as the present hour, or day, or year, or century.\n\n\"But this popular way of thinking imposes itself on great numbers even\nof philosophically-minded people, and they talk about the _present_ as\nif it was a _datum_--as if time came to us marked into present periods\nlike a measuring-tape.\" (S. H. Hodgson: Philosophy of Reflection, vol.\ni, pp. 248-254.)\n\n\"The representation of time agrees with that of space in that a certain\namount of it must be presented together--included between its initial\nand terminal limit. A continuous ideation, flowing from one point\nto another, would indeed _occupy_ time, but not _represent_ it, for\nit would exchange one element of succession for another instead of\ngrasping the whole succession at once. Both points--the beginning and\nthe end--are equally essential to the conception of time, and must be\npresent with equal clearness together.\" (Herbart: Psychol. als W., \u00a7\n115.)\n\n\"Assume that ... similar pendulum-strokes follow each other at regular\nintervals in a consciousness otherwise void. When the first one is\nover, an image of it remains in the fancy until the second succeeds.\nThis, then, reproduces the first by virtue of the law of association by\nsimilarity, but at the same time meets with the aforesaid persisting\nimage.... Thus does the simple repetition of the sound provide all\nthe elements of time-perception. The first sound [as it is recalled\nby association] gives the beginning, the second the end, and the\npersistent image in the fancy represents the length of the interval.\nAt the moment of the second impression, the entire time-perception\nexists at once, for then all its elements are presented together, the\nsecond sound and the image in the fancy immediately, and the first\nimpression by reproduction. But, in the same act, we are aware of a\nstate in which only the first sound existed, and of another in which\nonly its image existed in the fancy. Such a consciousness as this _is_\nthat of time.... _In it no succession of ideas takes place._\" (Wundt:\nPhysiol. Psych., 1st ed. pp. 681-2.) Note here the assumption that the\n_persistence_ and the _reproduction_ of an impression are two processes\nwhich may go on simultaneously. Also that Wundt's description is merely\nan _attempt to analyze the 'deliverance'_ of a time-perception, and no\n_explanation of the manner in which it comes about_.\n\n[515] The Alternative, p. 167.\n\n[516] Locke, in his dim way, derived the sense of duration from\nreflection on the succession of our ideas (Essay, book ii, chap. xiv,\n\u00a7 3; chap. xv, \u00a7 12). Reid justly remarks that if ten successive\nelements are to make duration, \"then one must make duration, otherwise\nduration must be made up of parts that have no duration, which is\nimpossible.... I conclude, therefore, that there must be duration in\nevery single interval or element of which the whole duration is made\nup. Nothing, indeed, is more certain than that every elementary part of\nextension must have extension. Now, it must be observed that in these\nelements of duration, or single intervals of successive ideas, there\nis no succession of ideas, yet we must conceive them to have duration;\nwhence we may conclude with certainty that _there is a conception\nof duration where there is no succession of ideas in the mind._\"\n(Intellectual Powers, essay iii, chap. v.) \"Qu'on ne cherche point,\"\nsays Royer-Collard in the Fragments added to Jouffroy's Translation of\nReid, \"la dur\u00e9e dans la succession; on ne l'y trouvera jamais; la dur\u00e9e\na pr\u00e9c\u00e9d\u00e9 la succession; la notion de la dur\u00e9e a pr\u00e9c\u00e9d\u00e9 la notion de\nla succession. Elle en est donc tout-\u00e0-fait ind\u00e9pendante, dira-t-on?\nOui, elle en est tout-\u00e0-fait ind\u00e9pendante.\"\n\n[517] Physiol. Psych., ii, 54, 55.\n\n[518] _Ibid._ ii, 213.\n\n[519] Philosophische Studien, ii, 362.\n\n[520] _Counting_ was of course not permitted. It would have given\na symbolic concept and no intuitive or immediate perception of the\ntotality of the series. With counting we may of course compare together\nseries of any length--series whose beginnings have faded from our mind,\nand of whose totality we retain no sensible impression at all. To\ncount a series of clicks is an altogether different thing from merely\nperceiving them as discontinuous. In the latter case we need only be\nconscious of the bits of empty duration between them; in the former we\nmust perform rapid acts of association between them and as many names\nof numbers.\n\n[521] Estel in Wundt's Philosophische Studien, ii, 50. Mehner, _ibid._\nii, 571. In Dietze's experiments even numbers of strokes were better\ncaught than odd ones, by the ear. The _rapidity of their sequence_\nhad a great influence on the result. At more than 4 seconds apart\nit was impossible to perceive series of them as units in all (cf.\nWundt, Physiol. Psych., ii, 214). They were simply counted as so\nmany individual strokes. Below 0.21 to 0.11 second, according to the\nobserver, judgment again became confused. It was found that the rate of\nsuccession most favorable for grasping long series was when the strokes\nwere sounded at intervals of from 0.3'' to 0.18' apart. Series of 4, 6,\n8, 16 were more easily identified than series of 10, 12, 14, 18. The\nlatter could hardly be clearly grasped at all. Among odd numbers 3, 5,\n7 were the series easiest caught; next, 9, 15; hardest of all, 11 and\n13; and 17 was impossible to apprehend.\n\n[522] The exact interval of the sparks was 0.00205''. The doubleness\nof their snap was usually replaced by a single-seeming sound when it\nfell to 0.00198'', the sound becoming _louder_ when the sparks seemed\nsimultaneous. The _difference_ between these two intervals is only\n7/100000 of a second; and, as Exner remarks, our ear and brain must be\nwonderfully efficient organs to get distinct feelings from so slight an\nobjective difference as this. See Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, Bd. xi.\n\n[523] _Ibid._ p. 407. When the sparks fell so close together that their\nirradiation-circles overlapped, they appeared like _one spark moving_\nfrom the position of the first to that of the second; and they might\nthen follow each other as close as 0.015'' without the _direction\nof the movement_ ceasing to be clear. When one spark fell on the\ncentre, the other on the margin, of the retina, the time-interval for\nsuccessive apprehension had to be raised to 0.076''.\n\n[524] Hall and Jastrow: Studies of Rhythm. Mind, xi, 58.\n\n[525] Nevertheless, multitudinous impressions may be felt as\ndiscontinuous, though separated by excessively minute intervals of\ntime. Gr\u00fcnhagen says (Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, vi, 175) that 10,000 electric\nshocks a second are felt as interrupted, by the tongue (!). Von Wittich\n(_ibid._ ii, 329), that between 1000 and 2000 strokes a second are\nfelt as discrete by the finger. W. Preyer, on the other hand (Die\nGrenzen des Empfindungsverm\u00f6gens, etc., 1868, p. 15), makes contacts\nappear continuous to the finger when 36.8 of them follow in a second.\nSimilarly, Mach (Wiener Sitzgsb., li, 2, 142) gives about 26. Lalanne\n(Comptes Rendus, i/xxxii, p. 1314) found summation of finger contacts\nafter 22 repetitions in a second. Such discrepant figures are of\ndoubtful worth. On the retina 20 to 30 impressions a second at the\nvery utmost can be felt as discrete when they fail on the same spot.\nThe ear, which begins to fuse stimuli together into a musical tone\nwhen they follow at the rate of a little over 30 a second, can still\nfeel 132 of them a second as discontinuous when they take the shape of\n'beats' (Helmholtz, Tonempfindungen, 3d ed. p. 270).\n\n[526] Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, xi, 428. Also in Herrmann's Hdbh. d. Physiol.,\n2 Bd. i, Thl. pp. 260-2.\n\n[527] Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, vii, 639. Tigerstedt (Bihang till Kongl.\nSvenska Vetenskaps Akad, Handl., Bd. 8, H\u00e4fte 2, Stockholm, 1884)\nrevises Exner's figures, and shows that his conclusions are\nexaggerated. According to Tigerstedt, two observers almost always\nrightly appreciated 0.05 or 0.06'' of reaction-time difference. Half\nthe time they did it rightly when the difference sank to 0.03'', though\nfrom 0.03'' and 0.06'' differences were often not noticed at all.\nBuccola found (La Legge del Tempo nei Fenomeni dei Pensiero, Milano,\n1883, p. 371) that, after much practice in making rapid reactions upon\na signal, he estimated directly, in figures, his own reaction-time, in\n10 experiments, with an error of from 0.016'' to 0.018''; in 6, with\none of 0.005'' to 0.069''; in one, with one of 0.002''; and in 3, with\none of 0.003''.\n\n[528] Mind, xi, 61 (1886).\n\n[529] Mach, Wiener Sitzungsb., li, 2. 133 (1865); Estel, _loc. cit._\np. 65; Mehner, _loc. cit._ p. 586; Buccola, _op. cit._ p. 378. Fechner\nlabors to prove that his law is only overlaid by other interfering laws\nin the figures recorded by these experimenters; but his case seems\nto me to be one of desperate infatuation with a hobby. (See Wundt's\nPhilosphische Studien iii, 1.)\n\n[530] Curious discrepancies exist between the German and the American\nobservers with respect to the _direction_ of the error below and above\nthe point of indifference--differences perhaps due the _fatigue_\ninvolved in the American method. The Germans lengthened intervals below\nit and shortened those above. With seven Americans experimented on by\nStevens this was exactly reversed. The German method was to passively\nlisten to the intervals, then judge; the American was to reproduce\nthem actively by movements of the hand. In Mehner's experiments there\nwas found a second indifference point at about 5 seconds, beyond which\ntimes were judged again too long. Glass, whose work on the subject is\nthe latest (Philos. Studien, iv, 423) found (when corrections were\nallowed for) that all times except 0.8 sec. were estimated too short.\nHe found a series of points of greatest relative accuracy, viz. at\n1.5, 2.5, 3.75, 5, 6.25, etc., seconds respectively, and thought that\nhis observations roughly corroborated Weber's law. As 'maximum' and\n'minimum' are printed interchangeably in Glass's article it is hard to\nfollow.\n\n[531] With Vierordt and his pupils the indifference point lay as\nhigh as from 1.5 sec to 4.9 sec, according to the observer (cf. Der\nZeitsinn, 1868, p. 112). In most of these experiments the time heard\nwas actively reproduced, after a short pause, by movements of the hand,\nwhich were recorded. Wundt gives good reasons (Physiol. Psych., ii,\n289, 290) for rejecting Vierordt's figures as erroneous. Vierordt's\nbook, it should be said, is full of important matter, nevertheless.\n\n[532] Physiol. Psych., ii, 286, 290.\n\n[533] Philosophische Studien, i, 86.\n\n[534] Mind, xi, 400.\n\n[535] _Loc cit._ p. 144.\n\n[536] _Op. cit._ p. 376. Mach's and Buccola's figures, it will be\nobserved, are about _one half_ of the rest--sub-multiples, therefore.\nIt ought to be observed, however, that Buccola's figure has little\nvalue, his observations not being well fitted to show this particular\npoint.\n\n[537] Estel's figures led him to think that _all_ the multiples\nenjoyed this privilege; with Mehner, on the other hand, only the _odd_\nmultiples showed diminution of the average error; thus, 0.71, 2.15,\n3.55, 5, 6.4, 7.8, 9.3, and 10.65 second were respectively registered\nwith the least error. Cf. Phil. Studien, ii, pp. 57, 562-5.\n\n[538] Cf. especially pp. 558-561.\n\n[539] Wundt: Physiol. Psych., ii, 287. Hall and Jastrow: Mind, xi, 62.\n\n[540] Mehner: _loc. cit._ p. 553.\n\n[541] The number of distinguishable _differences_ of speed between\nthese limits is, as he takes care to remark, very much larger that 7.\n(Der Zeitsinn, p. 137).\n\n[542] P. 19, \u00a7 18, p. 112.\n\n[543] I leave the text just as it was printed in the Journal of\nSpeculative Philosophy (for 'Oct. 1886') in 1887. Since then\nM\u00fcnsterberg in his masterly Beitr\u00e4ge zur experimentellen Psychologie\n(Heft 2, 1889) seems to have made it clear what the sensible changes\nare by which we measure the lapse of time. When the time which\nseparates two sensible impressions is less than one third of a second,\nhe thinks it is almost entirely the amount to which the memory-image\nof the first impression has faded when the second one overtakes\nit, which makes us feel how wide they are apart (p. 29). When the\ntime is longer than this, we rely, he thinks, exclusively upon the\nfeelings of muscular tension and relaxation, which we are constantly\nreceiving although we give to them so little of our direct attention.\nThese feelings are primarily in the muscles by which we adopt our\nsense-organs in attending to the signals used, some of the muscles\nbeing in the eye and ear themselves, some of them in the head, neck,\netc. We here judge two time-intervals to be equal when between the\nbeginning and end of each we feel exactly similar relaxations and\nsubsequent expectant tensions of these muscles to have occurred. In\nreproducing intervals ourselves we try to make our feelings of this\nsort just what they were when we passively heard the interval. These\nfeelings by themselves, however, can only be used when the intervals\nare very short, for the tension anticipatory of the terminal stimulus\nnaturally reaches its maximum very soon. With longer intervals we _take\nthe feeling of our inspirations and expirations into account_. With\nour expirations all the other muscular tensions in our body undergo a\nrhythmical decrease; with our inspirations the reverse takes place.\nWhen, therefore, we note a time-interval of several seconds with\nintent to reproduce it, what we seek is to make the earlier and later\ninterval agree in the number and amount of these respiratory changes\ncombined with sense-organ adjustments with which they are filled.\nM\u00fcnsterberg has studied carefully in his own ease the variations of\nthe respiratory factor. They are many; but he sums up his experience\nby saying that whether he measured by inspirations that were divided\nby momentary pauses into six parts, or by inspirations that were\ncontinuous; whether with sensory tension during inspiration and\nrelaxation during expiration, or by tension during both inspiration\nand expiration, separated by a sudden interpolated relaxation; whether\nwith special notice taken of the cephalic tensions, or of those in\nthe trunk and shoulders, in all cases alike and without exception he\ninvoluntarily endeavored, whenever he compared two times or tried to\nmake one the same as the other, to get exactly the same respiratory\nconditions and conditions of tension, _all_ the subjective conditions,\nin short, _exactly_ the same during the second interval as they were\nduring the first. M\u00fcnsterberg corroborated his subjective observations\nby experiments. The observer of the time had to reproduce as exactly\nas possible an interval between two sharp sounds given him by an\nassistant. The only condition imposed upon him was that he should not\nmodify his breathing for the purposes of measurement. It was then\nfound that when the assistant broke in at random with his signals,\nthe judgment of the observer was vastly less accurate than when the\nassistant carefully watched the observer's breathing and made both\nthe beginning of the time given him and that of the time which he was\nto give coincide with identical phases thereof.--Finally, M\u00fcnsterberg\nwith great plausibility tries to explain the discrepancies between the\nresults of Vierordt, Estel, Mehner, Glass, etc., as due to the fact\nthat they _did not all use the same measure_. Some breathe a little\nfaster, some a little slower. Some break their inspirations into\ntwo parts, some do not, etc. The coincidence of the objective times\nmeasured with definite natural phases of breathing would very easily\ngive periodical maxima of facility in measuring accurately.\n\n[544] \"Any one wishing yet further examples of this mental substitution\nwill find one on observing how habitually he thinks of the spaces\non the clock-face instead of the periods they stand for; how, on\ndiscovering it to be half an hour later than be supposed, he does not\nrepresent the half hour in its duration, but scarcely passes beyond the\nsign of it marked by the finger.\" (H. Spencer: Psychology, \u00a7 336.)\n\n[545] The only objections to this which I can think of are: (1)\nThe accuracy with which some men judge of the hour of day or night\nwithout looking at the clock; (2) the faculty some have of waking at\na preappointed hour; (3) the accuracy of time-perception reported to\nexist in certain trance-subjects. It might seem that in these persons\nsome sort of a sub-conscious record was kept of the lapse of time\n_per se_. But this cannot be admitted until it is proved that there\nare no physiological processes, the feeling of whose course may serve\nas a _sign_ of how much time has sped, and so lead us to infer the\nhour. That there are such processes it is hardly possible to doubt. An\ningenious friend of mine was long puzzled to know why each day of the\nweek had such a characteristic physiognomy to him. That of Sunday was\nsoon noticed to be due to the cessation of the city's rumbling, and\nthe sound of people's feet shuffling on the sidewalk; of Monday, to\ncome from the clothes drying in the yard and casting a white reflection\non the ceiling; of Tuesday, to a cause which I forget; and I think my\nfriend did not get beyond Wednesday. Probably each hour in the day has\nfor most of us some outer or inner sign associated with it as closely\nas these signs with the days of the week. It must be admitted, after\nall, however, that the great improvement of the time-perception during\nsleep and trance is a mystery not as yet cleared up. All my life I have\nbeen struck by the accuracy with which I will wake at the same exact\nminute night after night and morning after morning, if only the habit\nfortuitously begins. The organic registration in me is independent of\nsleep. After lying in bed a long time awake I suddenly rise without\nknowing the time, and for days and weeks together will do so at an\nidentical minute by the clock, as if some inward physiological process\ncaused the act by punctually running down.-\u2014Idiots are said sometimes\nto possess the time-measuring faculty in a marked degree. I have an\ninteresting manuscript account of an idiot girl which says: \"She was\npunctual almost to a minute in her demand for food and other regular\nattentions. Her dinner was generally furnished her at 12.30 p. m., and\nat that hour she would begin to scream if it were not forthcoming. If\non Fast-day or Thanksgiving it were delayed, in accordance with the\nNew England custom, she screamed from her usual dinner-hour until the\nfood was carried to her. On the next day, however, she again made known\nher wants promptly at 12.30. Any slight attention shown her on one\nday was demanded on the next at the corresponding hour. If an orange\nwere given her at 4 p. m. on Wednesday, at the same hour on Thursday\nshe made known her expectation, and if the fruit were not given her\nshe continued to call for it at intervals for two or three hours. At\nfour on Friday the process would be repeated but would last less long;\nand so on for two or three days. If one of her sisters visited her\naccidentally at a certain hour, the sharp piercing scream was sure\nto summon her at the same hour the next day,\" etc., etc.--For these\nobscure matters consult C. Du Prel: The Philosophy of Mysticism, chap.\niii, \u00a7 1.\n\n[546] Ideale Fragen (1878). p. 219 (Essay, 'Zeit und Weile').\n\n[547] Revue Philosophique, vol. iii, p. 496.\n\n[548] \"Empty time is most strongly perceived when it comes as a _pause_\nin music or in speech. Suppose a preacher in the pulpit, a professor\nat his desk, to stick still in the midst of his discourse; or let a\ncomposer (as is sometimes purposely done) make all his instruments stop\nat once; we await every instant the resumption of the performance,\nand, in this awaiting, perceive, more than in any other possible way,\nthe empty time. To change the example, let, in a piece of polyphonic\nmusic--a figure, for instance, in which a tangle of melodies are\nunder way--suddenly a single voice be heard, which sustains a long\nnote, while all else is hushed.... This one note will appear very\nprotracted--why? Because we _expect_ to hear accompanying it the notes\nof the other instruments, but they fail to come.\" (Herbart: Psychol.\nals W., \u00a7 115.)--Compare also M\u00fcnsterberg, Beitr\u00e4ge, Heft 2, p. 41.\n\n[549] A night of pain will seem terribly long: we keep looking forward\nto a moment which never comes--the moment when it shall cease. But the\nodiousness of this experience is not named _ennui_ or _Langweile_, like\nthe odiousness of time that seems long from its emptiness. The more\npositive odiousness of the pain, rather, is what tinges our memory of\nthe night. What we feel, as Prof. Lazarus says (_op. cit._ p. 202), is\nthe long time of the suffering, not the suffering of the long time _per\nse_.\n\n[550] On these variations of time-estimate, cf. Romanes, Consciousness\nof Time, in Mind, vol. iii, p. 297; J. Sully, Illusions, pp. 245-261,\n302-305; W. Wundt. Physiol. Psych., ii, 287, 288; besides the essays\nquoted from Lazarus and Janet. In German, the successors of Herbart\nhave treated of this subject: compare Volkmann's Lehrbuch d. Psych.,\n\u00a7 89, and for references to other authors his note 3 to this section.\nLindner (Lbh. d. empir. Psych.), as a parallel effect, instances\nAlexander the Great's life (thirty-three years), which seems to us as\nif it must be long, because it was so eventful. Similarly the English\nCommonwealth, etc.\n\n[551] Physiol. Optik, p. 445.\n\n[552] Succession, time _per se_, is no force. Our talk about its\ndevouring tooth, etc., is all elliptical. Its contents are what devour.\nThe law of inertia is incompatible with time's being assumed as an\nefficient cause of anything.\n\n[553] Lehrbuch d. Psych., \u00a7 87. Compare also H. Lotze, Metaphysik, \u00a7\n154.\n\n[554] The cause of the perceiving, not the object perceived!\n\n[555] \"'No more' and 'not yet' are the proper time-feelings, and we\nare aware of time in no other way than through these feelings,\" says\nVolkmann (Psychol., \u00a7 87). This, which is not strictly true of our\nfeeling of _time per se_, as an elementary bit of duration, is true of\nour feeling of _date_ in its events.\n\n[556] We construct the miles just as we construct the years. Travelling\nin the cars makes a succession of different fields of view pass before\nour eyes. When those that have passed from present sight revive in\nmemory, they maintain their mutual order because their contents\noverlap. We think them as having been before or behind each other;\nand, from the multitude of the views we can recall behind the one now\npresented, we compute the total space we have passed through.\n\nIt is often said that the perception of time develops later than\nthat of space, because children have so vague an idea of all dates\nbefore yesterday and after to-morrow. But no vaguer than they have\nof extensions that exceed as greatly their unit of space-intuition.\nRecently I heard my child of four tell a visitor that he had been 'as\nmuch as one week' in the country. As he had been there three months,\nthe visitor expressed surprise; whereupon the child corrected himself\nby saying he had been there 'twelve years.' But the child made exactly\nthe same kind of mistake when he asked if Boston was not one hundred\nmiles from Cambridge, the distance being three miles.\n\n[557] Most of these explanations simply give the _signs_ which,\nadhering to impressions, lead us to date them within a duration, or,\nin other words, to assign to them their order. Why it should be a\n_time_-order, however, is not explained. Herbart's would-be explanation\nis a simple description of time-perception. He says it comes when,\nwith the last member of a series present to our consciousness, we also\nthink of the first; and then the whole series revives in our thought\nat once, but with strength diminishing in the backward direction\n(Psychol. als Wiss., \u00a7 115; Lehrb. zur Psychol., \u00a7\u00a7 171, 172, 175).\nSimilarly Drobisch, who adds that the series must appear as one already\n_elapsed_ (_durchlaufene_), a word which shows even more clearly\nthe question-begging nature of this sort of account (Empirische\nPsychol., \u00a7 59). Th. Waitz is guilty of similar question-begging\nwhen he explains our time-consciousness to be engendered by a\nset of unsuccessful attempts to make our percepts agree with our\n_expectations_ (Lehrb. d. Psychol., \u00a7 52). Volkmann's mythological\naccount of past representations striving to drive present ones out\nof the seat of consciousness, being driven _back_ by them, etc.,\nsuffers from the same fallacy (Psychol., \u00a7 87). But all such accounts\nagree in implying one fact\u2014-viz., that the brain-processes of various\nevents must be active simultaneously, and in varying strength, for\na time-perception to be possible. Later authors have made this idea\nmore precise. Thus, Lipps: \"Sensations arise, occupy consciousness,\nfade into images, and vanish. According as two of them, _a_ and _b_,\ngo through this process simultaneously, or as one precedes or follows\nthe other, the _phases of their fading_ will agree or differ; and the\ndifference will be proportional to the time-difference between their\nseveral moments of beginning. Thus there are differences of _quality_\nin the images, which the mind may _translate_ into corresponding\ndifferences of their temporal order. There is no other possible middle\nterm between the objective time-relations and those in the mind than\nthese differences of phase.\" (Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens, p. 588.)\nLipps accordingly calls them 'temporal signs,' and hastens explicitly\nto add that the soul's translation of their order of strength into a\ntime-order is entirely inexplicable (p. 591). M. Guyau's account (Revue\nPhilosophique, xix, 353) hardly differs from that of his predecessors,\nexcept in picturesqueness of style. Every change leaves a series of\n_train\u00e9es lumineuses_ in the mind like the passage of shooting stars.\nEach image is in a more fading phase, according as its original was\nmore remote. This group of images gives duration, the mere time-form,\nthe 'bed' of time. The distinction of past, present, and future within\nthe bed comes from our active nature. The future (as with Waitz) is\nwhat I want, but have not yet got, and must wait for. All this is\ndoubtless true, but is no _explanation_.\n\nMr. Ward gives, in his Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica article (Psychology,\np. 65, col. 1), a still more refined attempt to specify the 'temporal\nsign.' The problem being, among a number of other things thought as\nsuccessive, but simultaneously thought, to determine which is first and\nwhich last, he says: \"After each distinct representation, _a b c d,_\nthere may intervene the representation of that _movement of attention_\nof which we are aware in passing from one object to another. In our\npresent reminiscence we have, it must be allowed, little direct proof\nof this intervention; though there is, I think, indirect evidence of\nit in the tendency of the flow of ideas to follow the order in which\nthe presentations were at first attended to. With the movement itself\nwhen the direction of attention changes, we are familiar enough, though\nthe residua of such movements are not ordinarily conspicuous. These\nresidua, then, are our temporal signs.... But temporal signs alone\nwill not furnish all the pictorial exactness of the time-perspective.\nThese give us only a fixed series; but the law of obliviscence, by\ninsuring a progressive variation in intensity as we pass from one\nmember of the series to the other, yields the effect which we call\ntime-distance. By themselves such variations in intensity would leave\nus liable to confound more vivid representations in the distance with\nfainter ones nearer the present, but from this mistake the temporal\nsigns save us; where the memory-continuum is imperfect such mistakes\ncontinually occur. On the other hand, where these variations are\nslight and imperceptible, though the memory-continuum preserves the\norder of events intact, we have still no such distinct appreciation of\ncomparative distance in time as we have nearer to the present, where\nthese perceptive effects are considerable.... Locke speaks of our ideas\nsucceeding each other 'at certain distances not much unlike the images\nin the inside of a lantern turned round by the heat of a candle,' and\n'guesses' that 'this appearance of theirs in train varies not very\nmuch in a waking man.' _Now what is this 'distance' that separates a\nfrom b, b from c, and so on;_ and what means have we of knowing that\nit is tolerably constant in waking life? _It is, probably, that, the\nresiduum of which I have called a temporal sign; or, in other words,\nit is the movement of attention from a to b._\" Nevertheless, Mr. Ward\ndoes not call our feeling of this movement of attention the _original_\nof our feeling of time, or its brain-process the brain-process which\ndirectly causes us to perceive time. He says, a moment later, that\n\"though the fixation of attention does of course really occupy time,\nit is probably not in the first instance perceived as time--i.e. as\ncontinuous 'protensity,' to use a term of Hamilton's--but as intensity.\nThus, if this supposition be true, there is an element in our concrete\ntime perceptions which has no place in our abstract conception of\nTime. In Time physically conceived there is no trace of intensity;\nin time psychically experienced, duration is primarily an intensive\nmagnitude, and so far literally a perception.\" Its 'original' is, then,\nif I understand Mr Ward, something like a _feeling_ which accompanies,\nas pleasure and pain may accompany, the movements of attention. Its\nbrain-process must, it would seem, be assimilated in general type to\nthe brain-processes of pleasure and pain. Such would seem more or\nless consciously to be Mr. Ward's own view, for he says: \"Everybody\nknows what it is to be distracted by a rapid succession of varied\nimpressions, and equally what it is to be wearied by the slow and\nmonotonous recurrence of the same impressions. Now these 'feelings'\nof distraction and tedium owe their characteristic qualities to\nmovements of attention. In the first, attention is kept incessantly\non the move; before it is accommodated to _a_, it is disturbed by\nthe suddenness, intensity, and novelty of _b_; in the second, it is\nkept all but stationary by the repeated presentation of the same\nimpression. Such excess and defect of surprises make one realize a fact\nwhich in ordinary life is so obscure as to escape notice. But recent\nexperiments have set this fact in a more striking light, and made clear\nwhat Locke had dimly before his mind in talking of a certain distance\nbetween the presentations of a waking man. In estimating very short\nperiods of time of a second or less, indicated, say, by the beats of\na metronome, it is found that there is a certain period for which the\nmean of a number of estimates is correct, while shorter periods are on\nthe whole over-, and longer periods under-estimated. I take this to be\nevidence of the time occupied in accommodating or fixing attention.\"\nAlluding to the fact that a series of experiences, _a b c d e,_ may\nseem short in retrospect, which seemed everlasting in passing, he\nsays: \"What tells in retrospect is the series _a b c d e_, etc.; what\ntells in the present is the intervening _t_{1} t_{2} t_{3},_ etc., or\nrather the original accommodation of which these temporal signs are\nthe residuum.\" And he concludes thus: \"We seem to have proof that our\nperception of duration rests ultimately upon quasi-motor objects of\nvarying intensity, the duration of which we do not directly experience\nas duration at all.\"\n\nWundt also thinks that the interval of about three-fourths of a second,\nwhich is estimated with the minimum of error, points to a connection\nbetween the time-feeling and the succession of distinctly 'apperceived'\nobjects before the mind. The 'association-time' is also equal to about\nthree fourths of a second. This association-time he regards as a sort\nof internal standard of duration to which we involuntarily assimilate\nall intervals which we try to reproduce, bringing shorter ones up to\nit and longer ones down. [In the Stevens result we should have to say\n_contrast_ instead of assimilate, for the longer intervals there seem\nlonger, and the shorter ones shorter still.] \"Singularly enough,\" he\nadds (Physiol. Psych., ii, 286), \"this time is about that in which in\nrapid walking, according to the Webers, our legs perform their swing.\nIt seems thus not unlikely that both psychical constants, that of the\naverage speed of reproduction and that of the surest estimation of\ntime, have formed themselves under the influence of those most habitual\nmovements of the body which we also use when we try to subdivide\nrhythmically longer tracts of time.\"\n\nFinally, Prof. Mach makes a suggestion more specific still. After\nsaying very rightly that we have a real _sensation_ of time--how\notherwise should we identify two entirely different airs as being\nplayed in the same 'time'? how distinguish in memory the first stroke\nof the clock from the second, unless to each there clove its special\ntime-sensation, which revived with it?--he says \"it is probable that\nthis feeling is connected with that organic _consumption_ which is\nnecessarily linked with the production of consciousness, and that the\ntime which we feel is probably due to the [mechanical?] _work of_\n[the process of?] _attention_. When attention is strained, time seems\nlong; during easy occupation, short, etc.... The fatigue of the organ\nof consciousness, as long as we wake, continually increases, and the\nwork of attention augments as continually. Those impressions which\nare conjoined with a _greater amount_ of work of attention appear to\nus as the _later_.\" The apparent relative displacement of certain\nsimultaneous events and certain anachronisms of dreams are held by Mach\nto be easily explicable as effects of a splitting of the attention\nbetween two objects, one of which consumes most of it (Beitr\u00e4ge zur\nAnalyse der Empfindungen, p. 103 foll.). Mach's theory seems worthy of\nbeing better worked out. It is hard to say now whether he, Ward, and\nWundt mean at bottom the same thing or not. The theory advanced in my\nown text, it will be remarked, does not pretend to be an _explanation_,\nbut only an elementary statement of the 'law' which makes us aware of\ntime. The Herbartian mythology purports to _explain_.\n\n[558] It would be rash to say definitely just how many seconds\nlong this specious present must needs be, for processes fade\n'asymptotically,' and the distinctly intuited present merges into a\npenumbra of mere dim _recency_ before it turns into the past which\nis simply reproduced and conceived. Many a thing which we do not\ndistinctly date by intercalating it in a place between two other things\nwill, nevertheless, come to us with this feeling of belonging to a\n_near_ past. This sense of recency is a feeling _sui generis_, and\nmay affect things that happened hours ago. It would seem to show that\ntheir brain-processes are still in a state modified by the foregoing\nexcitement, still in a 'fading' phase, in spite of the long interval.\n\n[559] Physiol. Psych, ii, 263.\n\n[560] I leave my text as it was printed before M\u00fcnsterberg's essay\nappeared (see Footnote 542, above). He denies that we measure any but\nminimal durations by the amount of fading in the ideational processes,\nand talks almost exclusively of our feelings of muscular tension in\nhis account, whereas I have made no mention of such things in mine. I\ncannot, however, see that there is any conflict between what he and\nI suggest. I am mainly concerned with the consciousness of duration\nregarded as a specific sort of object, he is concerned with this\nobject's measurement exclusively. Feelings of tension might be the\nmeans of the measurement, whilst overlapping processes of any and every\nkind gave the object to be measured. The accommodative and respiratory\nmovements from which the feelings of tension come form regularly\nrecurring sensations divided by their 'phases' into intervals as\ndefinite as those by which a yardstick is divided by the marks upon its\nlength.\n\nLet _a^1, a^2, a^3, a^4,_ be homologous phases in four successive\nmovements of this kind. If four outer stimuli 1, 2, 3, 4, coincide\neach with one of these successive phases, then their 'distances apart'\nare felt as _equal_, otherwise not. But there is no reason whatever\nto suppose that the mere overlapping of the brain-process of 2 by the\nfading process of 1, or that of 3 by that of 2, etc., does not give\nthe _characteristic quality of content_ which we call 'distance apart'\nin this experience, and which by aid of the muscular feelings gets\njudged to be equal. Doubtless the muscular feelings can give us the\nobject 'time' as well as its measure, because their earlier phases\nleave fading sensations which constantly overlap the vivid sensation of\nthe present phase. But it would be contrary to analogy to suppose that\nthey should be the only experiences which give this object. I do not\nunderstand Herr M\u00fcnsterberg to claim this for them. He takes our sense\nof time for granted, and only discusses its measurement.\n\n[561] Exner in Hermann's Hdbch. d. Physiol., Bd. ii, Thl. ii, p. 281.\nRichet in Revue Philosophique, xxi, 568 (juin, 1886). See the next\nchapter, pp. 642-646.\n\n[562] I have spoken of _fading_ brain-processes alone, but only for\nsimplicity's sake. _Dawning_ processes probably play as important a\npart in giving the feeling of duration to the specious present.\n\n[563] Reden (St. Petersburg, 1864), vol. i, pp. 255-268.\n\n[564] Psychology, \u00a7 91.\n\n[565] \"The patient cannot retain the image of an object more than\na moment. His memory is as short for sounds, letters, figures, and\nprinted words. If we cover a written or printed word with a sheet of\npaper in which a little window has been cut, so that only the first\nletter is visible through the window, he pronounces this letter. If,\nthen, the sheet is moved so as to cover the first letter and make the\nsecond one visible, he pronounces the second, but forgets the first,\nand cannot pronounce the first and second together.\" And so forth to\nthe end. \"If he closes his eyes and draws his finger exploringly over a\nwell-known object like a knife or key, he cannot combine the separate\nimpressions and recognize the object. But if it is put into his hand\nso that he can simultaneously touch it with several fingers, he names\nit without difficulty. This patient has thus lost the capacity for\ngrouping successive ... impressions ... into a whole and perceiving\nthem as a whole.\" (Grashey, in Archiv f\u00fcr Psychiatrie, Bd. xvi, pp.\n672-673.) It is hard to believe that in such a patient the time\nintuited was not clipped off like the impressions it held, though\nperhaps not so much of it.\n\nI have myself often noted a curious exaggeration of time-perspective\nat the moment of a falling asleep. A person will be moving or doing\nsomething in the room, and a certain stage of his act (whatever it may\nbe) will be my last waking perception. Then a subsequent stage will\nwake me to a new perception. The two stages of the act will not be more\nthan a few seconds apart; and yet it always seems to me as if, between\nthe earlier and the later one, a long interval has passed away. I\nconjecturally account for the phenomenon thus, calling the two stages\nof the act _a_ and _b_ respectively: Were I awake, _a_ would leave a\nfading process in my sensorium which would overlap the process of _b_\nwhen the latter came, and both would then appear in the same specious\npresent, _a_ belonging to its earlier end. But the sudden advent of the\nbrain-change called sleep extinguishes _a_'s fading process abruptly.\nWhen _b_ then comes and wakes me, _a_ comes back, it is true, but not\nas belonging to the specious present. It has to be specially _revoked_\nin memory. This mode of revocation usually characterizes long-past\nthings--whence the illusion.\n\n[566] Again I omit the future, merely for simplicity's sake.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVI.\n\nMEMORY.\n\n\nIn the last chapter what concerned us was the direct _intuition_ of\ntime. We found it limited to intervals of considerably less than a\nminute. Beyond its borders extends the immense region of _conceived_\ntime, past and future, into one direction or another of which we\nmentally project all the events which we think of as real, and form\na systematic order of them by giving to each a date. The relation of\nconceived to intuited time is just like that of the fictitious space\npictured on the flat back-scene of a theatre to the actual space of the\nstage. The objects painted on the former (trees, columns, houses in a\nreceding street, etc.) carry back the series of similar objects solidly\nplaced upon the latter, and we think we see things in a continuous\nperspective, when we really see thus only a few of them and imagine\nthat we see the rest. The chapter which lies before us deals with the\nway in which we paint the remote past, as it were, upon a canvas in our\nmemory, and yet often imagine that we have direct vision of its depths.\n\nThe stream of thought flows on; but most of its segments fall into the\nbottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory survives the instant\nof their passage. Of others, it is confined to a few moments, hours,\nor days. Others, again, leave vestiges which are indestructible, and\nby means of which they may be recalled as long as life endures. Can we\nexplain these differences?\n\n\nPRIMARY MEMORY.\n\n\nThe first point to be noticed is that _for a state of mind to survive\nin memory it must have endured, for a certain length of time_. In\nother words, it must be what I call a substantive state. Prepositional\nand conjunctival states of mind are not remembered as independent\nfacts--we cannot recall just how we felt when we said 'how' or\n'notwithstanding.' Our consciousness of these transitive states is\nshut up to their own moment--hence one difficulty in introspective\npsychologizing.\n\nAny state of mind which is shut up to its own moment and fails to\nbecome an object for succeeding states of mind, is as if it belonged to\nanother stream of thought. Or rather, it belongs only physically, not\nintellectually, to its own stream, forming a bridge from one segment of\nit to another, but not being appropriated inwardly by former segments\nor appearing as part of the empirical self, in the manner explained in\nChapter X. All the intellectual value for us of a state of mind depends\non our after-memory of it. Only then is it combined in a system and\nknowingly made to contribute to a result. Only then does it _count_ for\nus. So that _the_ EFFECTIVE _consciousness we have of our states is the\nafter-consciousness_; and the more of this there is, the more influence\ndoes the original state have, and the more permanent a factor is it\nof our world. An indelibly-imprinted pain may color a life; but, as\nProfessor Richet says:\n\n \"To suffer for only a hundredth of a second is not to suffer at all;\n and for my part I would readily agree to undergo a pain, however acute\n and intense it might be, provided it should last only a hundredth of a\n second, and leave after it neither reverberation nor recall.\"[567]\n\nNot that a momentary state of consciousness need be practically\nresultless. Far from it: such a state, though absolutely unremembered,\nmight at its own moment determine the transition of our thinking in a\nvital way, and decide our action irrevocably.[568] But the _idea_ of it\ncould not _afterwards_ determine transition and action, its content\ncould not be conceived as one of the mind's permanent meanings: that is\nall I mean by saying that its intellectual value lies in after-memory.\n\nAs a rule sensations outlast for some little time the objective\nstimulus which occasioned them. This phenomenon is the ground of\nthose 'after-images' which are familiar in the physiology of the\nsense-organs. If we open our eyes instantaneously upon a scene, and\nthen shroud them in complete darkness, it will be as if we saw the\nscene in ghostly light through the dark screen. We can read off details\nin it which were unnoticed whilst the eyes were open.[569]\n\nIn every sphere of sense, an intermittent stimulus, often enough\nrepeated, produces a continuous sensation. This is because the\nafter-image of the impression just gone by blends with the new\nimpression coming in. The effects of stimuli may thus be superposed\nupon each other many stages deep, the total result in consciousness\nbeing an increase in the feeling's intensity, and in all probability,\nas we saw in the last chapter, an elementary sense of the lapse of time\n(see p. 635).\n\nExner writes:\n\n \"Impressions to which we are inattentive leave so brief an image\n in the memory that it is usually overlooked. When deeply absorbed,\n we do not hear the clock strike. But our attention may awake after\n the striking has ceased, and we may then count off the strokes.\n Such examples are often found in daily life. We can also prove the\n existence of this _primary memory-image_, as it may be called, in\n another person, even when his attention is completely absorbed\n elsewhere. Ask someone, e.g., to count the lines of a printed page\n as fast as he can, and whilst this is going on walk a few steps\n about the room. Then, when the person has done counting, ask him\n where you stood. He will always reply quite definitely that you have\n walked. Analogous experiments may be made with vision. This primary\n memory-image is, whether attention have been turned to the impression\n or not, an extremely lively one, but is subjectively quite distinct\n from every sort of after-image or hallucination.... It vanishes, if\n not caught by attention, in the course of a few seconds. Even when the\n original impression is attended to, the liveliness of its image in\n memory fades fast.\"[570]\n\nThe physical condition in the nerve-tissue of this primary memory is\ncalled by Richet 'elementary memory.'[571] I much prefer to reserve\nthe word memory for the conscious phenomenon. What happens in the\nnerve-tissue is but an example of that plasticity or of semi-inertness,\nyielding to change, but not yielding instantly or wholly, and never\nquite recovering the original form, which, in Chapter V, we saw to\nbe the groundwork of habit. Elementary _habit_ would be the better\nname for what Professor Richet means. Well, the first manifestation\nof elementary habit is the slow dying away of an impressed movement\non the neural matter, and its first effect in consciousness is this\nso-called elementary memory. But what elementary memory makes us aware\nof is the _just_ past. The objects we feel in this directly intuited\npast differ from properly recollected objects. An object which is\nrecollected, in the proper sense of that term, is one which has been\nabsent from consciousness altogether, and now revives anew. It is\nbrought back, recalled, fished up, so to speak, from a reservoir in\nwhich, with countless other objects, it lay buried and lost from view.\nBut an object of primary memory is not thus brought back; it never\nwas lost; its date was never cut off in consciousness from that of\nthe immediately present moment. In fact it comes to us as belonging\nto the rearward portion of the present space of time, and not to the\ngenuine past. In the last chapter we saw that the portion of time which\nwe directly intuit has a breadth of several seconds, a rearward and a\nforward end, and may be called the specious present. All stimuli whose\nfirst nerve-vibrations have not yet ceased seem to be conditions of our\ngetting this feeling of the specious present. They give rise to objects\nwhich appear to the mind as events just past.[572]\n\nWhen we have been exposed to an unusual stimulus for many minutes or\nhours, a nervous process is set up which results in the haunting of\nconsciousness by the impression for a long time afterwards. The tactile\nand muscular feelings of a day of skating or riding, after long disuse\nof the exercise, will come back to us all through the night. Images\nof the field of view of the microscope will annoy the observer for\nhours after an unusually long sitting at the instrument. A thread tied\naround the finger, an unusual constriction in the clothing, will feel\nas if still there, long after they have been removed. These revivals\n(called phenomena of _Sinnesged\u00e4chtniss_ by the Germans) have something\nperiodical in their nature.[573] They show that profound rearrangements\nand slow settlings into a new equilibrium are going on in the neural\nsubstance, and they form the transition to that more peculiar and\nproper phenomenon of memory, of which the rest of this chapter must\ntreat. The first condition which makes a thing susceptible of recall\nafter it has been forgotten is that the original impression of it\nshould have been prolonged enough to give rise to a _recurrent_ image\nof it, as distinguished from one of those primary after-images which\nvery fleeting impressions may leave behind, and which contain in\nthemselves no guarantee that they will ever come back after having\nonce faded away.[574] A certain length of stimulation seems demanded\nby the inertia of the nerve-substance. Exposed to a shorter influence,\nits modification fails to 'set,' and it retains no effective tendency\nto fall again into the same form of vibration at which the original\nfeeling was due. This, as I said at the outset, may be the reason why\nonly 'substantive' and not 'transitive' states of mind are as a rule\nrecollected, at least as independent things. The transitive states pass\nby too quickly.\n\n\nANALYSIS OF THE PHENOMENON OF MEMORY.\n\n\nMemory proper, or secondary memory as it might be styled, is the\nknowledge of a former state of mind after it has already once dropped\nfrom consciousness; or rather _it is the knowledge of an event,\nor fact,_ of which meantime we have not been thinking, _with the\nadditional consciousness that we have thought or experienced it\nbefore._\n\nThe first element which such a knowledge involves would seem to be the\nrevival in the mind of an image or copy of the original event.[575] And\nit is an assumption made by many writers[576] that the revival of an\nimage is all that is needed to constitute the memory of the original\noccurrence. But such a revival is obviously not a _memory_, whatever\nelse it may be; it is simply a duplicate, a second event, having\nabsolutely no connection with the first event except that it happens\nto resemble it. The clock strikes to-day; it struck yesterday; and\nmay strike a million times ere it wears out. The rain pours through\nthe gutter this week; it did so last week; and will do so _in s\u00e6cula\ns\u00e6culorum_. But does the present clock-stroke become aware of the\npast ones, or the present stream recollect the past stream, because\nthey repeat and resemble them? Assuredly not. And let it not be said\nthat this is because clock-strokes and gutters are physical and not\npsychical objects; for psychical objects (sensations for example)\nsimply recurring in successive editions will remember each other _on\nthat account_ no more than clock-strokes do. No memory is involved in\nthe mere fact of recurrence. The successive editions of a feeling are\nso many independent events, each snug in its own skin. Yesterday's\nfeeling is dead and buried; and the presence of to-day's is no reason\nwhy it should resuscitate. A farther condition is required before the\npresent image can be held to stand for a _past original_.\n\nThat condition is that the fact imaged be _expressly referred to the\npast_, thought as _in the past_. But how can we think a thing as in\nthe past, except by thinking of the past together with the thing,\nand of the relation of the two? And how can we think of the past? In\nthe chapter on Time-perception we have seen that our intuitive or\nimmediate consciousness of pastness hardly carries us more than a\nfew seconds backward of the present instant of time. Remoter dates\nare conceived, not perceived; known symbolically by names, such as\n'last week,' '1850;' or thought of by events which happened in them,\nas the year in which we attended such a school, or met with such a\nloss.--So that if we wish to think of a particular past epoch, we must\nthink of a name or other symbol, or else of certain concrete events,\nassociated therewithal. Both must be thought of, to think the past\nepoch adequately. And to 'refer' any special fact to the past epoch is\nto think that fact _with_ the names and events which characterize its\ndate, to think it, in short, with a lot of contiguous associates.\n\nBut even this would not be memory. Memory requires more than mere\ndating of a fact in the past. It must be dated in _my_ past. In other\nwords, I must think that I directly experienced its occurrence. It must\nhave that 'warmth and intimacy' which were so often spoken of in the\nchapter on the Self, as characterizing all experiences 'appropriated'\nby the thinker as his own.\n\nA general feeling of the past direction in time, then, a particular\ndate conceived as lying along that direction, and I defined by its name\nor phenomenal contents, an event imagined as located therein, and owned\nas part of my experience,--such are the elements of every act of memory.\n\nIt follows that what we began by calling the 'image,' or 'copy,' of\nthe fact in the mind, is really not there at all in that simple shape,\nas a separate 'idea.' Or at least, if it be there as a separate idea,\nno memory will go with it. What memory goes with is, on the contrary,\na very complex representation, that of the fact to be recalled _plus_\nits associates, the whole forming one 'object' (as explained on page\n275, Chapter IX), known in one integral pulse of consciousness (as set\nforth on pp. 276 ff.) and demanding probably a vastly more intricate\nbrain-process than that on which any simple sensorial image depends.\n\nMost psychologists have given a perfectly clear analysis of the\nphenomenon we describe. Christian Wolff, for example, writes:\n\n \"Suppose you have seen Mevius in the temple, but now afresh in Titus'\n house. I say you _recognize_ Mevius, that is, are conscious of having\n seen him before because, although now you perceive him with your\n senses along with Titus' house, your imagination produces an image of\n him along with one of the temple, and of the acts of your own mind\n reflecting on Mevius in the temple. Hence the idea of Mevius which is\n reproduced in sense is contained in another series of perceptions than\n that which formerly contained it, and this difference is the reason\n why we are conscious of having had it before.... For whilst now you\n see Mevius in the house of Titus, your imagination places him in the\n temple, and renders you conscious of the state of mind which you found\n in yourself when you beheld him there. By this you know that you have\n seen him before, that is, you recognize him. But you recognize him\n because his idea is now contained in another series of perceptions\n from that in which you first saw him.\"[577]\n\nSimilarly James Mill writes:\n\n \"In my remembrance of George III., addressing the two houses of\n parliament, there is, first of all, the mere idea, or simple\n apprehension, the conception, as it is sometimes called, of the\n objects. There is combined with this, to make it memory, my idea of my\n having seen and heard those objects. And this combination is so close\n that it is not in my power to separate them. I cannot have the idea of\n George III.: his person and attitude, the paper he held in his hand,\n the sound of his voice while reading from it; without having the other\n idea along with it, that of my having been a witness of the scene....\n If this explanation of the case in which we remember sensations is\n understood, the explanation of the case in which we remember ideas\n cannot occasion much of difficulty. I have a lively recollection of\n Polyphemus's cave, and the actions of Ulysses and the Cyclops, as\n described by Homer. In this recollection there is, first of all, the\n ideas, or simple conceptions of the objects and acts; and along with\n these ideas, and so closely combined as not to be separable, the idea\n of my having formerly had those same ideas. And this idea of my having\n formerly had those ideas is a very complicated idea; including the\n idea of myself of the present moment remembering, and that of myself\n of the past moment conceiving; and the whole series of the states of\n consciousness, which intervened between myself remembering, and myself\n conceiving.\"[578]\n\nMemory is then the feeling of belief in a peculiar complex object;\nbut all the elements of this object may be known to other states\nof belief; nor is there in the particular combination of them as\nthey appear in memory anything so peculiar as to lead us to oppose\nthe latter to other sorts of thought as something altogether _sui\ngeneris_, needing a special faculty to account for it. When later\nwe come to our chapter on Belief we shall see that any represented\nobject which is connected either mediately or immediately with our\npresent sensations or emotional activities tends to be believed in as\na reality. The sense of a peculiar active relation in it to ourselves\nis what gives to an object the characteristic quality of reality, and a\nmerely imagined past event differs from a recollected one only in the\nabsence of this peculiar-feeling relation. The electric current, so to\nspeak, between it and our present self does not close. But in their\nother determinations the re-recollected past and the imaginary past\nmay be much the same. In other words, there is nothing unique in the\n_object_ of memory, and no special faculty is needed to account for its\nformation. It is a synthesis of parts thought of as related together,\nperception, imagination, comparison and reasoning being analogous\nsyntheses of parts into complex objects. The objects of any of these\nfaculties may awaken belief or fail to awaken it; _the object of memory\nis only an object imagined in the past_ (usually very completely\nimagined there) _to which the emotion of belief adheres._\n\n\nMEMORY'S CAUSES.\n\n\nSuch being the _phenomenon_ of memory, or the analysis of its object,\ncan we see how it comes to pass? can we lay bare its causes?\n\nIts complete exercise presupposes two things:\n\n1) The _retention_ of the remembered fact;\n\n2) Its _reminiscence, recollection, reproduction,_ or _recall_.\n\nNow _the cause both of retention and of recollection is the law of\nhabit in the nervous system, working as it does in the 'association of\nideas.'_\n\nAssociationists have long explained _recollection_ by association.\nJames Mill gives an account of it which I am unable to improve upon,\nunless it might be by translating his word 'idea' into 'thing thought\nof,' or 'object,' as explained so often before.\n\n \"There is,\" he says, \"a state of mind familiar to all men, in which\n we are said to remember. In this state it is certain we have not in\n the mind the idea which we are trying to have in it.[579] How is\n it, then, that we proceed in the course of our endeavor, to procure\n its introduction into the mind? If we have not the idea itself, we\n have certain ideas connected with it. We run over those ideas, one\n after another, in hopes that some one of them will suggest the idea\n we are in quest of; and if any one of them does, it is always one\n so connected with it as to call it up in the way of association. I\n meet an old acquaintance, whose name I do not remember, and wish to\n recollect. I run over a number of names, in hopes that some of them\n may be associated with the idea of the individual. I think of all\n the circumstances in which I have seen him engaged; the time when I\n knew him, the persons along with whom I knew him, the things he did,\n or the things he suffered; and, if I chance upon any idea with which\n the name is associated, then immediately I have the recollection; if\n not, my pursuit of it is vain.[580] There is another set of cases,\n very familiar, but affording very important evidence on the subject.\n It frequently happens that there are matters which we desire not\n to forget. What is the contrivance to which we have recourse for\n preserving the memory--that is, for making sure that it will be called\n into existence, when it is our wish that it should? All men invariably\n employ the same expedient. They endeavor to form an association\n between the idea of the thing to be remembered, and some sensation,\n or some idea, which they know beforehand will occur at or near the\n time when they wish the remembrance to be in their minds. If this\n association is formed, and the association or idea with which it has\n been formed occurs; the sensation, or idea, calls up the remembrance;\n and the object of him who formed the association is attained. To use\n a vulgar instance: a man receives a commission from his friend, and,\n that he may not forget it, ties a knot in his handkerchief. How is\n this fact to be explained? First of all, the idea of the commission\n is associated with the making of the knot. Next, the handkerchief is\n a thing which it is known beforehand will be frequently seen, and of\n course at no great distance of time from the occasion on which the\n memory is desired. The handkerchief being seen, the knot is seen, and\n this sensation recalls the idea of the commission, between which and\n itself the association had been purposely formed.\"[581]\n\nIn short, we make search in our memory for a forgotten idea, just as\nwe rummage our house for a lost object. In both cases we visit what\nseems to us the probable _neighborhood_ of that which we miss. We turn\nover the things under which, or within which, or alongside of which,\nit may possibly be; and if it lies near them, it soon comes to view.\nBut these matters, in the case of a mental object sought, are nothing\nbut its _associates_. The machinery of recall is thus the same as the\nmachinery of association, and the machinery of association, as we know,\nis nothing but the elementary law of habit in the nerve-centres.\n\nAnd this same law of habit is the machinery of retention also.\nRetention means _liability_ to recall, and it means nothing more than\nsuch liability. The only proof of there being retention is that recall\nactually takes place. The retention of an experience is, in short,\nbut another name for the _possibility_ of thinking it again, or the\n_tendency_ to think it again, with its past surroundings. Whatever\naccidental cue may turn this tendency into an actuality, the permanent\n_ground_ of the tendency itself lies in the organized neural paths by\nwhich the cue calls up the experience on the proper occasion, together\nwith its past associates, the sense that the self was there, the belief\nthat it really happened, etc., etc., just as previously described.\nWhen the recollection is of the 'ready' sort, the resuscitation takes\nplace the instant the occasion arises; when it is slow, resuscitation\ncomes after delay. But be the recall prompt or slow, the condition\nwhich makes it possible at all (or in other words, the 'retention' of\nthe experience) is neither more nor less than the brain-paths which\n_associate_ the experience with the occasion and cue of the recall.\n_When slumbering, these paths are the condition of retention; when\nactive, they are the condition of recall._\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 45.]\n\nA simple scheme will now make the whole cause of memory plain. Let _n_\nbe a past event; _o_ its 'setting' (concomitants, date, self present,\nwarmth and intimacy, etc., etc., as already set forth); and _m_ some\npresent thought or fact which may appropriately become the occasion of\nits recall. Let the nerve-centres, active in the thought of _m, n,_ and\n_o,_ be represented by M, N, and O, respectively; then the _existence_\nof the paths M--N and N--O will be the fact indicated by the phrase\n'retention of the event _n_ in the memory,' and the _excitement_ of\nthe brain along these paths will be the condition of the event _n_'s\nactual recall. The _retention_ of _n_, it will be observed, is no\nmysterious storing up of an 'idea' in an unconscious state. It is not\na fact of the mental order at all. It is a purely physical phenomenon,\na morphological feature, the presence of these 'paths,' namely, in the\nfinest recesses of the brain's tissue. The recall or recollection, on\nthe other hand, is a _psycho-physical_ phenomenon, with both a bodily\nand a mental side. The bodily side is the functional excitement of the\ntracts and paths in question; the mental side is the conscious vision\nof the past occurrence, and the belief that we experienced it before.\n\nThese habit-worn paths of association are a clear rendering of what\nauthors mean by 'predispositions,' 'vestiges,' 'traces,' etc., left in\nthe brain by past experience. Most writers leave the nature of these\nvestiges vague; few think of explicitly assimilating them to channels\nof association. Dr. Maudsley, for example, writes:\n\n \"When an idea which we have once had is excited again, there is\n a reproduction of the same nervous current, with the conscious\n addition that it is a reproduction--it is the same idea _plus_ the\n consciousness that it is the same. The question then suggests itself,\n What is the physical condition of this consciousness? What is the\n modification of the anatomical substrata of fibres and cells, or of\n their physiological activity, which is the occasion of this _plus_\n element in the reproduced idea? It may be supposed that the first\n activity did leave behind it, when it subsided, some after-effect,\n some modification of the nerve-element, whereby the nerve-circuit was\n disposed to fall again readily into the same action; such disposition\n appearing in consciousness as recognition or memory. Memory is, in\n fact, the conscious phase of this physiological disposition when it\n becomes active or discharges its functions on the recurrence of the\n particular mental experience. To assist our conception of what may\n happen, let us suppose the individual nerve-elements to be endowed\n with their own consciousness, and let us assume them to be, as I have\n supposed, modified in a certain way by the first experience; it is\n hard to conceive that when they fall into the same action on another\n occasion they should not recognize or remember it; for the second\n action is a reproduction of the first, with the addition of what it\n contains from the after-effects of the first. As we have assumed the\n process to be conscious, this reproduction with its addition would be\n a memory or remembrance.\"[582]\n\nIn this passage Dr. Maudsley seems to mean by the 'nerve-element,' or\n'anatomical substratum of fibres and cells,' something that corresponds\nto the N of our diagram. And the 'modification' he speaks of seems\nintended to be understood as an internal modification of this same\nparticular group of elements. Now the slightest reflection will\nconvince anyone that there is no conceivable ground for supposing that\nwith the mere re-excitation of N there should arise the 'conscious\naddition' that it is a re-excitation. The two excitations are simply\ntwo excitations, their consciousnesses are two consciousnesses, they\nhave nothing to do with each other. And a vague 'modification,'\nsupposed to be left behind by the first excitation, helps us not a\nwhit. For, according to all analogy, such a modification can only\nresult in making the next excitation more smooth and rapid. This might\nmake it less _conscious_, perhaps, but could not endow it with any\nreference to the past. The gutter is worn deeper by each successive\nshower, but not for that reason brought into contact with previous\nshowers. Psychology (which Dr. Maudsley in his next sentence says\n\"affords us not the least help in this matter\") puts us on the track of\nan at least possible brain-explanation. As it is the _setting o_ of the\nidea, when it recurs, which makes us conscious of it as past, so it can\nbe no _intrinsic_ modification of the 'nerve-element' N which is the\norganic condition of memory, but something extrinsic to it altogether,\nnamely, its connections with those other nerve-elements which we called\nO--that letter standing in the scheme for the cerebral substratum of\na great plexus of things other than the principal event remembered,\ndates, names, concrete surroundings, realized intervals, and what not.\nThe 'modification' is the formation in the plastic nerve-substance of\nthe system of associative paths between N and O.\n\nThe only hypothesis, in short, to which the facts of inward experience\ngive countenance is that _the brain-tracts excited by the event proper,\nand those excited in its recall, are in part different from each\nother_. If we could revive the past event without any associates we\nshould exclude the possibility of memory, and simply dream that we were\nundergoing the experience as if for the first time.[583] Wherever, in\nfact, the recalled event does appear without a definite setting, it is\nhard to distinguish it from a mere creation of fancy. But in proportion\nas its image lingers and recalls associates which gradually become more\ndefinite, it grows more and more distinctly into a remembered thing.\nFor example, I enter a friend's room and see on the wall a painting.\nAt first I have the strange, wondering consciousness, 'surely I have\nseen that before,' but when or how does not become clear. There only\nclings to the picture a sort of penumbra of familiarity,--when suddenly\nI exclaim: \"I have it, it is a copy of part of one of the Fra Angelicos\nin the Florentine Academy--I recollect it there!\" But the motive to\nthe recall does _not_ lie in the fact that the brain-tract now excited\nby the painting was once before excited in a similar way; it lies\nsimply and solely in the fact that with that brain-tract other tracts\nalso are excited: those which sustain my friend's room with all its\npeculiarities, on the one hand; those which sustain the mental image of\nthe Florence Academy, on the other hand, with the circumstances of my\nvisit there; and finally those which make me (more dimly) think of the\nyears I have lived through between these two times. The result of this\ntotal brain-disturbance is a thought with a peculiar object, namely,\nthat I who now stand here with this picture before me, stood so many\nyears ago in the Florentine Academy looking at its original.\n\nM. Taine has described the gradual way in which a mental image develops\ninto an object of memory, in his usual vivid fashion. He says:\n\n \"I meet casually in the street a person whose appearance I am\n acquainted with, and say to myself at once that I have seen him\n before. Instantly the figure recedes into the past, and wavers about\n there vaguely, without at once fixing itself in any spot. It persists\n in me for some time, and surrounds itself with new details. 'When\n I saw him he was bare-headed, with a working-jacket on, painting in\n a studio; he is so-and-so, of such-and-such a street. But when was\n it? It was not yesterday, nor this week, nor recently. I have it: he\n told me that he was waiting for the first leaves to come out to go\n into the country. It was before the spring. But at what exact date?\n I saw, the same day, people carrying branches in the streets and\n omnibuses: it was Palm Sunday!' Observe the travels of the internal\n figure, its various shiftings to front and rear along the line of the\n past; each of these mental sentences has been a swing of the balance.\n When confronted with the present sensation and with the latent swarm\n of indistinct images which repeat our recent life, the figure first\n recoiled suddenly to an indeterminate distance. Then, completed by\n precise details, and confronted with all the shortened images by\n which we sum up the proceedings of a day or a week, it again receded\n beyond the present day, beyond yesterday, the day before, the week,\n still farther, beyond the ill-defined mass constituted by our recent\n recollections. Then something said by the painter was recalled, and it\n at once receded again beyond an almost precise limit, which is marked\n by the image of the green leaves and denoted by the word spring. A\n moment afterwards, thanks to a new detail, the recollection of the\n branches, it has shifted again, but forward this time, not backward;\n and, by a reference to the calendar, is situated at a precise point,\n a week further back than Easter, and five weeks nearer than the\n carnival, by the double effect of the contrary impulsions, pushing it,\n one forward and the other backward, and which are, at a particular\n moment, annulled by one another.\"[584]\n\n\nTHE CONDITIONS OF GOODNESS IN MEMORY.\n\n\nThe remembered fact being _n_, then, the path N--O is what arouses\nfor _n_ its setting when it _is_ recalled, and makes it other than a\nmere imagination. The path M--N, on the other hand, gives the cue or\noccasion of its being recalled at all. _Memory being this altogether\nconditioned on brain-paths, its excellence in a given individual will\ndepend partly on the number and partly on the persistence of these\npaths._\n\nThe persistence or permanence of the paths is a physiological\nproperty of the brain-tissue of the individual, whilst their number\nis altogether due to the facts of his mental experience. Let the\nquality of permanence in the paths be called the native tenacity, or\nphysiological retentiveness. This tenacity differs enormously from\ninfancy to old age, and from one person to another. Some minds are like\nwax under a seal--no impression, however disconnected with others,\nis wiped out. Others, like a jelly, vibrate to every touch, but under\nusual conditions retain no permanent mark. These latter minds, before\nthey can recollect a fact, must weave it into their permanent stores\nof knowledge. They have no _desultory_ memory. Those persons, on the\ncontrary, who retain names, dates and addresses, anecdotes, gossip,\npoetry, quotations, and all sorts of miscellaneous facts, without an\neffort, have desultory memory in a high degree, and certainly owe it\nto the unusual tenacity of their brain-substance for any path once\nformed therein. No one probably was ever effective on a voluminous\nscale without a high degree of this physiological retentiveness. In the\npractical as in the theoretic life, the man whose acquisitions _stick_\nis the man who is always achieving and advancing, whilst his neighbors,\nspending most of their time in relearning what they once knew but have\nforgotten, simply hold their own. A Charlemagne, a Luther, a Leibnitz,\na Walter Scott, any example, in short, of your quarto or folio editions\nof mankind, must needs have amazing retentiveness of the purely\nphysiological sort. Men without this retentiveness may excel in the\n_quality_ of their work at this point or at that, but will never do\nsuch mighty sums of it, or be influential contemporaneously on such a\nscale.[585]\n\nBut there comes a time of life for all of us when we can do no more\nthan hold our own in the way of acquisitions, when the old paths fade\nas fast as the new ones form in our brain, and when we forget in a\nweek quite as much as we can learn in the same space of time. This\nequilibrium may last many, many years. In extreme old age it is upset\nin the reverse direction, and forgetting prevails over acquisition or\nrather there is no acquisition. Brain-paths are so transient that in\nthe course of a few minutes of conversation the same question is asked\nand its answer forgotten half a dozen times. Then the superior tenacity\nof the paths formed in childhood becomes manifest: the dotard will\nretrace the facts of his earlier years after he has lost all those of\nlater date.\n\nSo much for the permanence of the paths. Now for their number.\n\nIt is obvious that the more there are of such paths as M--N in the\nbrain, and the more of such possible cues or occasions for the recall\nof _n_ in the mind, the prompter and surer, on the whole, the memory\nof _n_ will be, the more frequently one will be reminded of it, the\nmore avenues of approach to it one will possess. In mental terms, _the\nmore other facts a fact is associated with in the mind, the better\npossession of it our memory retains._ Each of its associates becomes\na hook to which it hangs, a means to fish it up by when sunk beneath\nthe surface. Together, they form a network of attachments by which it\nis woven into the entire tissue of our thought. The 'secret of a good\nmemory' is thus the secret of forming diverse and multiple associations\nwith every fact we care to retain. But this forming of associations\nwith a fact, what is it but _thinking about_ the fact as much as\npossible? Briefly, then, of two men with the same outward experiences\nand the same amount of mere native tenacity, _the one who_ THINKS _over\nhis experiences most,_ and weaves them into systematic relations with\neach other, _will be the one with the best memory_. We see examples of\nthis on every hand. Most men have a good memory for facts connected\nwith their own pursuits. The college athlete who remains a dunce at\nhis books will astonish you by his knowledge of men's 'records' in\nvarious feats and games, and will be a walking dictionary of sporting\nstatistics. The reason is that he is constantly going over these things\nin his mind, and comparing and making series of them. They form for\nhim not so many odd facts, but a concept-system--so they stick. So the\nmerchant remembers prices, the politician other politicians' speeches\nand votes, with a copiousness which amazes outsiders, but which the\namount of thinking they bestow on these subjects easily explains. The\ngreat memory for facts which a Darwin and a Spencer reveal in their\nbooks is not incompatible with the possession on their part of a brain\nwith only a middling degree of physiological retentiveness. Let a\nman early in life set himself the task of verifying such a theory as\nthat of evolution, and facts will soon cluster and cling to him like\ngrapes to their stem. Their relations to the theory will hold them\nfast; and the more of these the mind is able to discern, the greater\nthe erudition will become. Meanwhile the theorist may have little, if\nany, desultory memory. Unutilizable facts may be unnoted by him and\nforgotten as soon as heard. An ignorance almost as encyclop\u00e6dic as his\nerudition may coexist with the latter, and hide, as it were, in the\ninterstices of its web. Those who have had much to do with scholars and\n_savants_ will readily think of examples of the class of mind I mean.\n\nIn a system, every fact is connected with every other by some\nthought-relation. The consequence is that every fact is retained by the\ncombined suggestive power of all the other facts in the system, and\nforgetfulness is well-nigh impossible.\n\nThe reason why _cramming_ is such a bad mode of study is now made\nclear. I mean by cramming that way of preparing for examinations by\ncommitting 'points' to memory during a few hours or days of intense\napplication immediately preceding the final ordeal, little or no work\nhaving been performed during the previous course of the term. Things\nlearned thus in a few hours, on one occasion, for one purpose, cannot\npossibly have formed many associations with other things in the mind.\nTheir brain-processes are led into by few paths, and are relatively\nlittle liable to be awakened again. Speedy oblivion is the almost\ninevitable fate of all that is committed to memory in this simple\nway. Whereas, on the contrary, the same materials taken in gradually,\nday after day, recurring in different contexts, considered in various\nrelations, associated with other external incidents, and repeatedly\nreflected on, grow into such a system, form such connections with the\nrest of the mind's fabric, lie open to so many paths of approach, that\nthey remain permanent possessions. This is the _intellectual_ reason\nwhy habits of continuous application should be enforced in educational\nestablishments. Of course there is no moral turpitude in cramming. If\nit led to the desired end of secure learning it would be infinitely the\nbest method of study. But it does not; and students themselves should\nunderstand the reason why.\n\n\nONE'S NATIVE RETENTIVENESS IS UNCHANGEABLE.\n\n\nIt will now appear clear that _all improvement of the memory lies in\nthe line of_ ELABORATING THE ASSOCIATES of each of the several things\nto be remembered. _No amount of culture would seem capable of modifying\na man's_ GENERAL _retentiveness_. This is a physiological quality,\ngiven once for all with his organization, and which he can never hope\nto change. It differs no doubt in disease and health; and it is a fact\nof observation that it is better in fresh and vigorous hours than when\nwe are fagged or ill. We may say, then, that a man's native tenacity\nwill fluctuate somewhat with his hygiene, and that whatever is good\nfor his tone of health will also be good for his memory. We may even\nsay that whatever amount of intellectual exercise is bracing to the\ngeneral tone and nutrition of the brain will also be profitable to the\ngeneral retentiveness. But more than this we cannot say; and this, it\nis obvious, is far less than most people believe.\n\nIt is, in fact, commonly thought that certain exercises, systematically\nrepeated, will strengthen, not only a man's remembrance of the\nparticular facts used in the exercises, but his faculty for remembering\nfacts at large. And a plausible case is always made out by saying\nthat practice in learning words by heart makes it easier to learn new\nwords in the same way.[586] If this be true, then what I have just\nsaid is false, and the whole doctrine of memory as due to 'paths'\nmust be revised. But I am disposed to think the alleged fact untrue.\nI have carefully questioned several mature actors on the point, and\nall have denied that the practice of learning parts has made any such\ndifference as is alleged. What it has done for them is to improve their\npower of _studying_ a part systematically. Their mind is now full of\nprecedents in the way of intonation, emphasis, gesticulation; the new\nwords awaken distinct suggestions and decisions; are caught up, in\nfact, into a pre-existing net-work, like the merchant's prices, or the\nathlete's store of 'records,' and are recollected easier, although\nthe mere native tenacity is not a whit improved, and is usually, in\nfact, impaired by age. It is a case of better remembering by better\n_thinking_. Similarly when schoolboys improve by practice in ease of\nlearning by heart, the improvement will, I am sure, be always found\nto reside in the _mode of study of the particular piece_ (due to the\ngreater interest, the greater suggestiveness, the generic similarity\nwith other pieces, the more sustained attention, etc., etc.), and not\nat all to any enhancement of the brute retentive power.\n\nThe error I speak of pervades an otherwise useful and judicious book,\n'How to Strengthen the Memory,' by Dr. Holbrook of New York.[587]\nThe author fails to distinguish between the general physiological\nretentiveness and the retention of particular things, and talks as if\nboth must be benefited by the same means.\n\n \"I am now treating,\" he says, \"a case of loss of memory in a person\n advanced in years, who did not know that his memory had failed most\n remarkably till I told him of it. He is making vigorous efforts to\n bring it back again, and with partial success. The method pursued is\n to spend two hours daily, one in the morning and one in the evening,\n in exercising this faculty. The patient is instructed to give the\n closest attention to all that he learns, so that it shall be impressed\n on his mind clearly. He is asked to recall every evening all the\n facts and experiences of the day, and again the next morning. Every\n name heard is written down and impressed on his mind clearly, and an\n effort made to recall it at intervals. Ten names from among public men\n are ordered to be committed to memory every week. A verse of poetry\n is to be learned, also a verse from the Bible, daily. He is asked to\n remember the number of the page in any book where any interesting\n fact is recorded. These and other methods are slowly resuscitating a\n failing memory.\"[588]\n\nI find it very hard to believe that the memory of the poor old\ngentleman is a bit the better for all this torture except in respect of\nthe particular facts thus wrought into it, the occurrences attended to\nand repeated on those days, the names of those politicians, those Bible\nverses, etc., etc. In another place Dr. Holbrook quotes the account\ngiven by the late Thurlow Weed, journalist and politician, of his\nmethod of strengthening his memory.\n\n \"My memory was a sieve. I could remember nothing. Dates, names,\n appointments, faces--everything escaped me. I said to my wife,\n 'Catherine, I shall never make a successful politician, for I cannot\n remember, and that is a prime necessity of politicians.' My wife\n told me I must train my memory. So when I came home that night, I\n sat down alone and spent fifteen minutes trying silently to recall\n with accuracy the principal events of the day. I could remember but\n little at first; now I remember that I could not then recall what I\n had for breakfast. After a few days' practice I found I could recall\n more. Events came back to me more minutely, more accurately, and more\n vividly than at first. After a fortnight or so of this, Catherine\n said, 'Why don't you relate to me the events of the day, instead of\n recalling them to yourself? It would be interesting, and my interest\n in it would be a stimulus to you.' Having great respect for my wife's\n opinion, I began a habit of oral confession, as it were, which was\n continued for almost fifty years. Every night, the last thing before\n retiring, I told her everything I could remember that had happened to\n me or about me during the day. I generally recalled the dishes I had\n had for breakfast, dinner, and tea; the people I had seen and what\n they had said; the editorials I had written for my paper, giving her\n a brief abstract of them. I mentioned all the letters I had sent and\n received, and the very language used, as nearly as possible; when\n I had walked or ridden--I told her everything that had come within\n my observation. I found I could say my lessons better and better\n every year, and instead of the practice growing irksome, it became a\n pleasure to go over again the events of the day. I am indebted to this\n discipline for a memory of somewhat unusual tenacity, and I recommend\n the practice to all who wish to store up facts, or expect to have much\n to do with influencing men.\"[589]\n\nI do not doubt that Mr. Weed's practical command of his past\nexperiences was much greater after fifty years of this heroic drill\nthan it would have been without it. Expecting to give his account in\nthe evening, he attended better to each incident of the day, named and\nconceived it differently, set his mind upon it, and in the evening went\nover it again. He did _more thinking_ about it, and it stayed with him\nin consequence. But I venture to affirm pretty confidently (although\nI know how foolish it often is to deny a fact on the strength of a\ntheory) that the same matter, _casually attended to and not thought\nabout,_ would have stuck in his memory no better at the end than at\nthe beginning of his years of heroic self-discipline. He had acquired\na better method of noting and recording his experiences, but his\nphysiological retentiveness was probably not a bit improved.[590]\n\n_All improvement of memory consists, then, in the improvement of one's\nhabitual methods of recording facts._ In the traditional terminology\nmethods are divided into the mechanical, the ingenious, and the\njudicious.\n\nThe _mechanical methods_ consist in the intensification, prolongation,\nand _repetition_ of the impression to be remembered. The modern method\nof teaching children to read by blackboard work, in which each word is\nimpressed by the four-fold channel of eye, ear, voice, and hand, is an\nexample of an improved mechanical method of memorizing.\n\n_Judicious methods_ of remembering things are nothing but logical ways\nof conceiving them and working them into rational systems, classifying\nthem, analyzing them into parts, etc., etc. All the sciences are such\nmethods.\n\nOf _ingenious methods_, many have been invented, under the name of\ntechnical memories. By means of these systems it is often possible to\nretain entirely disconnected facts, lists of names, numbers, and so\nforth, so multitudinous as to be entirely unrememberable in a natural\nway. The method consists usually in a framework learned mechanically,\nof which the mind is supposed to remain in secure and permanent\npossession. Then, whatever is to be remembered is deliberately\nassociated by some fanciful analogy or connection with some part of\nthis framework, and this connection thenceforward helps its recall.\nThe best known and most used of these devices is the figure-alphabet.\nTo remember numbers, e.g., a figure-alphabet is first formed, in which\neach numerical digit is represented by one or more letters. The number\nis then translated into such letters as will best make a word, if\npossible a word suggestive of the object to which the number belongs.\nThe word will then be remembered when the numbers alone might be\nforgotten.\n\n \"The most common figure-alphabet is this:\n\n    1,   2,   3,   4,   5,   6,    7,   8,   9,   0.\n    t,   n,   m,   r,   l,   sh,   g,   f,   b,   s,\n    d,                       j,    k,   v,   p,   c,\n                             ch,   c,             z,\n                             g,    qu.\n\n \"To briefly show its use, suppose it is desired to fix 1142 feet in a\n second as the velocity of sound: t, t, r, n, are the letters and order\n required. Fill up with vowels forming a phrase, like 'tight run' and\n connect it by some such flight of the imagination as that if a man\n tried to keep up with the velocity of sound, he would have a tight\n run. When you recall this a few days later great care must be taken\n not to get confused with the velocity of light, nor to think he had a\n _hard_ run which would be 3000 feet too fast.\"[591]\n\nDr. Pick and others use a system which consists in linking together any\ntwo ideas to be remembered by means of an intermediate idea which will\nbe suggested by the first and suggest the second, and so on through the\nlist. Thus,\n\n \"Let us suppose that we are to retain the following series of ideas:\n garden, hair, watchman, philosophy, copper, etc.... We can combine the\n ideas in this manner: _garden,_ plant, hair of plant--_hair; hair,_\n bonnet, _watchman;--watchman,_ wake, study, _philosophy; philosophy,_\n chemistry, _copper_; etc. etc.\" (Pick.)[592]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is matter of popular knowledge that an impression is remembered the\nbetter in proportion as it is\n\n1) More recent;\n\n2) More attended to; and\n\n3) More often repeated.\n\nThe effect of recency is all but absolutely constant. Of two events\nof equal significance the remoter one will be the one more likely\nto be forgotten. The memories of childhood which persist in old age\ncan hardly be compared with the events of the day or hour which are\nforgotten, for these latter are trivial once-repeated things, whilst\nthe childish reminiscences have been wrought into us during the\nretrospective hours of our entire intervening life. _Other things\nequal_, at all times of life recency promotes memory. The only\nexception I can think of is the unaccountable memory of certain moments\nof our childhood, apparently not fitted by their intrinsic interest to\nsurvive, but which are perhaps the only incidents we can remember out\nof the year in which they occurred. Everybody probably has isolated\nglimpses of certain hours of his nursery life, the position in which he\nstood or sat, the light of the room, what his father or mother said,\netc. These moments so oddly selected for immunity from the tooth of\ntime probably owe their good fortune to historical peculiarities which\nit is now impossible to trace. Very likely we were reminded of them\nagain soon after they occurred; that became a reason why we should\nagain recollect them, etc., so that at last they became ingrained.\n\nThe _attention_ which we lend to an experience is proportional to its\nvivid or interesting character; and it is a notorious fact that what\ninterests us most vividly at the time is, other things equal, what we\nremember best. An impression may be so exciting emotionally as almost\nto leave a _scar_ upon the cerebral tissues; and thus originates a\npathological delusion. \"A woman attacked by robbers takes all the\nmen whom she sees, even her own son, for brigands bent on killing\nher. Another woman sees her child run over by a horse; no amount of\nreasoning, not even the sight of the living child, will persuade her\nthat he is not killed. A woman called 'thief' in a dispute remains\nconvinced that every one accuses her of stealing (Esquirol). Another,\nattacked with mania at the sight of the fires in her street during the\nCommune, still after six months sees in her delirium flames on every\nside about her (Luys), etc., etc.\"[593]\n\nOn the general effectiveness of both attention and repetition I cannot\ndo better than copy what M. Taine has written:\n\n \"If we compare different sensations, images, or ideas, we find that\n their aptitudes for revival are not equal. A large number of them\n are obliterated, and never reappear through life; for instance, I\n drove through Paris a day or two ago, and though I saw plainly some\n sixty or eighty new faces, I cannot now recall any one of them; some\n extraordinary circumstance, a fit of delirium, or the excitement of\n haschish would be necessary to give them a chance of revival. On the\n other hand, there are sensations with a force of revival which nothing\n destroys or decreases. Though, as a rule, time weakens and impairs\n our strongest sensations, these reappear entire and intense, without\n having lost a particle of their detail, or any degree of their force.\n M. Brierre de Boismont, having suffered when a child from a disease\n of the scalp, asserts that 'after fifty-five years have elapsed\n he can still feel his hair pulled out under the treatment of the\n _skull-cap_.'--For my own part, after thirty years, I remember feature\n for feature the appearance of the theatre to which I was taken for\n the first time. From the third row of boxes, the body of the theatre\n appeared to me an immense well, red and flaming, swarming with heads;\n below, on the right, on a narrow floor, two men and a woman entered,\n went out, and re-entered, made gestures, and seemed to me like lively\n dwarfs: to my great surprise, one of these dwarfs fell on his knees,\n kissed the lady's hand, then hid behind a screen; the other, who was\n coming in, seemed angry, and raised his arm. I was then seven, I could\n understand nothing of what was going on; but the well of crimson\n velvet was so crowded, gilded, and bright, that after a quarter of an\n hour I was, as it were, intoxicated, and fell asleep.\n\n \"Every one of us may find similar recollections in his memory, and\n may distinguish in them a common character. The primitive impression\n has been accompanied _by an extraordinary degree of attention_,\n either as being horrible or delightful, or as being new, surprising,\n and out of proportion to the ordinary run of our life; this it is we\n express by saying that we have been strongly impressed; that we were\n absorbed, that we could not think of anything else; that our other\n sensations were effaced; that we were pursued all the next day by the\n resulting image; that it beset us, that we could not drive it away;\n that all distractions were feeble beside it. It is by force of this\n disproportion that impressions of childhood are so persistent; the\n mind being quite fresh, ordinary objects and events are surprising.\n At present, after seeing so many large halls and full theatres, it is\n impossible for me, when I enter one, to feel swallowed up, engulfed,\n and, as it were, lost in a huge dazzling well. The medical man of\n sixty, who has experienced much suffering, both personally and in\n imagination, would be less upset now by a surgical operation than when\n he was a child.\n\n \"Whatever may be the kind of attention, voluntary or involuntary,\n it always acts alike; the image of an object or event is capable of\n revival, and of complete revival, in proportion to the degree of\n attention with which we have considered the object or event. We put\n this rule in practice at every moment in ordinary life. If we are\n applying ourselves to a book or are in lively conversation, while an\n air is being sung in the adjoining room, we do not retain it; we know\n vaguely that there is singing going on, and that is all. We then stop\n our reading or conversation, we lay aside all internal preoccupations\n and external sensations which our mind or the outer world can throw\n in our way; we close our eyes, we cause a silence within and about\n us, and, if the air is repeated, we listen. We say then that we have\n listened with all our ears, that we have applied our whole minds. If\n the air is a fine one, and has touched us deeply, we add that we have\n been transported, uplifted, ravished, that we have forgotten the world\n and ourselves; that for some minutes our soul was dead to all but\n sounds....\n\n \"This exclusive momentary ascendency of one of our states of mind\n explains the greater durability of its aptitude for revival and for\n more complete revival. As the sensation revives in the image, the\n image reappears with a force proportioned to that of the sensation.\n What we meet with in the first state is also to be met with in the\n second, since the second is but a revival of the first. So, in the\n struggle for life, in which all our images are constantly engaged, the\n one furnished at the outset with most force retains in each conflict,\n by the very law of repetition which gives it being, the capacity of\n treading down its adversaries; this is why it revives, incessantly\n at first, then frequently, until at last the laws of progressive\n decay, and the continual accession of new impressions take away its\n preponderance, and its competitors, finding a clear field, are able to\n develop in their turn.\n\n \"A second cause of prolonged revivals is repetition itself. Every one\n knows that to learn a thing we must not only consider it attentively,\n but consider it repeatedly. We say as to this in ordinary language,\n that an impression many times renewed is imprinted more deeply and\n exactly on the memory. This is how we contrive to retain a language,\n airs of music, passages of verse or prose, the technical terms and\n propositions of a science, and still more so the ordinary facts by\n which our conduct is regulated. When, from the form and color of a\n currant-jelly, we think of its taste, or, when tasting it with our\n eyes shut, we imagine its red tint and the brilliancy of a quivering\n slice, the images in our mind are brightened by repetition. Whenever\n we eat, or drink, or walk, or avail ourselves of any of our senses,\n or commence or continue any action whatever, the same thing happens.\n Every man and every animal thus possesses at every moment of life a\n certain stock of clear and easily reviving images, which had their\n source in the past in a confluence of numerous experiences, and are\n now fed by a flow of renewed experiences. When I want to go from the\n Tuileries to the Panth\u00e9on, or from my study to the dining-room, I\n foresee at every turn the colored forms which will present themselves\n to my sight; it is otherwise in the case of a house where I have spent\n two hours, or of a town where I have stayed three days; after ten\n years have elapsed the images will be vague, full of blanks, sometimes\n they will not exist, and I shall have to seek my way or shall lose\n myself.--This new property of images is also derived from the first.\n As every sensation tends to revive in its image, the sensation twice\n repeated will leave after it a double tendency, that is, provided\n the attention be as great the second time as the first; usually\n this is not the case, for, the novelty diminishing, the interest\n diminishes; but if other circumstances renew the interest, or if the\n will renovates the attention, the incessantly increasing tendency will\n incessantly increase the chances of the resurrection and integrity of\n the image.\"[594]\n\nIf a phenomenon is met with, however, too often, and with too great\na variety of contexts, although its image is retained and reproduced\nwith correspondingly great facility, it fails to come up with any one\nparticular setting, and the projection of it backwards to a particular\npast date consequently does not come about. We _recognize_ but do not\n_remember_ it--its associates form too confused a cloud. No one is said\nto remember, says Mr. Spencer,\n\n \"that the object at which he looks has an opposite side; or that\n a certain modification of the visual impression implies a certain\n distance; or that the thing he sees moving about is a live animal. To\n ask a man whether he remembers that the sun shines, that fire burns,\n that iron is hard, would be a misuse of language. Even the almost\n fortuitous connections among our experiences cease to be classed as\n memories when they have become thoroughly familiar. Though, on hearing\n the voice cf some unseen person slightly known to us, we say we\n recollect to whom the voice belongs, we do not use the same expression\n respecting the voices of those with whom we live. The meanings of\n words which in childhood have to be consciously recalled seem in adult\n life to be immediately present.\"[595]\n\nThese are cases where too many paths, leading to too diverse\nassociates, block each other's way, and all that the mind gets along\nwith its object is a fringe of felt familiarity or sense that there\n_are_ associates. A similar result comes about when a definite\nsetting is only nascently aroused. We then feel that we have seen the\nobject already, but when or where we cannot say, though we may seem\nto ourselves to be on the brink of saying it. That nascent cerebral\nexcitations can effect consciousness with a sort of sense of the\nimminence of that which stronger excitations would make us definitely\nfeel, is obvious from what happens when we seek to remember a name.\nIt tingles, it trembles on the verge, but does not come. Just such a\ntingling and trembling of unrecovered associates is the penumbra of\nrecognition that may surround any experience and make it seem familiar,\nthough we know not why.[596]\n\nThere is a curious experience which everyone seems to have had--the\nfeeling that the present moment in its completeness has been\nexperienced before--we were saying just this thing, in just this\nplace, to just these people, etc. This 'sense of pre-existence' has\nbeen treated as a great mystery and occasioned much speculation. Dr.\nWigan considered it due to a dissociation of the action of the two\nhemispheres, one of them becoming conscious a little later than the\nother, but both of the same fact.[597] I must confess that the quality\nof mystery seems to me a little strained. I have over and over again\nin my own case succeeded in resolving the phenomenon into a case of\nmemory, so indistinct that whilst some past circumstances are presented\nagain, the others are not. The dissimilar portions of the past do not\narise completely enough at first for the date to be identified, All we\nget is the present scene with a general suggestion of pastness about\nit. That faithful observer, Prof. Lazarus, interprets the phenomenon in\nthe same way;[598] and it is noteworthy that just as soon as the past\ncontext grows complete and distinct the emotion of weirdness fades from\nthe experience.\n\n\nEXACT MEASUREMENTS OF MEMORY\n\n\nhave recently been made in Germany. Professor Ebbinghaus, in a really\nheroic series of daily observations of more than two years' duration,\nexamined the powers of retention and reproduction. He learned lists of\nmeaningless syllables by heart, and tested his recollection of them\nfrom day to day. He could not remember more than 7 after a single\nreading. It took, however, 16 readings to remember 12, 44 readings to\nremember 24, and 55 readings to remember 26 syllables, the moment of\n'remembering' being here reckoned as the first moment when the list\ncould be recited without a fault.[599] When a 16-syllable list was read\nover a certain number of times on one day, and then studied on the day\nfollowing until remembered, it was found that the number of seconds\nsaved in the study on the second day was proportional to the number of\nreadings on the first--proportional, that is, within certain rather\nnarrow limits, for which see the text.[600] No amount of repetition\nspent on nonsense-verses over a certain length enabled Dr. Ebbinghaus\nto retain them without error for 24 hours. In forgetting such things\nas these lists of syllables, the loss goos on very much more rapidly\nat first than later on. He measured the loss by the number of seconds\nrequired to _relearn_ the list after it had been once learned. Roughly\nspeaking, if it took a thousand seconds to learn the list, and five\nhundred to relearn it, the loss between the two learnings would have\nbeen one half. Measured in this way, full half of the forgetting\nseems to occur within the first half-hour, whilst only four fifths is\nforgotten at the end of a month. The nature of this result might have\nbeen anticipated, but hardly its numerical proportions. Dr. Ebbinghaus\nsays:\n\n \"The initial rapidity, as well as the final slowness, as these were\n ascertained under certain experimental conditions and for a particular\n individual,... may well surprise us. An hour after the work of\n learning had ceased, forgetting was so far advanced that more than\n half of the original work had to be applied again before the series\n of syllables could once more be reproduced. Eight hours later two\n thirds of the original labor had to be applied. Gradually, however,\n the process of oblivion grew slower, so that even for considerable\n stretches of time the losses were but barely ascertainable. After 24\n hours a third, after 6 days a fourth, and after a whole month a good\n fifth of the original labor remain in the shape of its after-effects,\n and made the relearning by so much the more speedy.\"[601]\n\nBut the most interesting result of all those reached by this author\nrelates to the question whether ideas are recalled only by those\nthat previously came immediately before them, or whether an idea can\npossibly recall another idea with which it was never in _immediate_\ncontact, without passing through the intermediate mental links. The\nquestion is of theoretic importance with regard to the way in which\nthe process of 'association of ideas' must be conceived; and Dr.\nEbbinghaus's attempt is as successful as it is original, in bringing\ntwo views, which seem at first sight inaccessible to proof, to a direct\npractical test, and giving the victory to one of them. His experiments\nconclusively show that an idea is not only 'associated' directly with\nthe one that follows it, and with the rest _through that_, but that it\nis _directly_ associated with _all_ that are near it, though in unequal\ndegrees. He first measured the time needed to impress on the memory\ncertain lists of syllables, and then the time needed to impress lists\nof the same syllables with gaps between them. Thus, representing the\nsyllables by numbers, if the first list were 1, 2, 3, 4,... 13, 14, 15,\n16, the second would be 1, 3, 5,... 15, 2, 4, 6,... 16, and so forth,\nwith many variations.\n\nNow, if 1 and 3 in the first list were learned in that order merely\nby 1 calling up 2, and by 2 calling up 3, leaving out the 2 ought\nto leave 1 and 3 with no tie in the mind; and the second list ought\nto take as much time in the learning as if the first list had never\nbeen heard of. If, on the other hand, 1 has a _direct_ influence on\n3 as well as on 2, that influence should be exerted even when 2 is\ndropped out; and a person familiar with the first list ought to learn\nthe second one more rapidly than otherwise he could. This latter case\nis what actually occurs; and Dr. Ebbinghaus has found that syllables\noriginally separated by as many as seven intermediaries still reveal,\nby the increased rapidity with which they are learned in order, the\nstrength of the tie that the original learning established between\nthem, over the heads, so to speak, of all the rest. These last results\nought to make us careful, when we speak of nervous 'paths,' to use the\nword in no restricted sense. They add one more fact to the set of facts\nwhich prove that association is subtler than consciousness, and that a\nnerve-process may, without producing consciousness, be effective in the\nsame way in which consciousness would have seemed to be effective if it\nhad been there.[602] Evidently the path from 1 to 3 (omitting 2 from\nconsciousness) is facilitated, broadened perhaps, by the old path from\n1 to 3 through 2--only the component which shoots round through this\nlatter way is too feeble to let 2 be thought as a distinct object.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nMr. Wolfe, in his experiments on recognition, used vibrating metal\ntongues.\n\n \"These tongues gave tones differing by 2 vibrations only in the two\n lower octaves, and by 4 vibrations in the three higher octaves. In the\n first series of experiments a tone was selected, and, after sounding\n it for one second, a second tone was sounded, which was either the\n same as the first, or different from it by 4, 8, or 12 vibrations in\n different series. The person experimented upon was to answer whether\n the second tone was the same as the first, thus showing that he\n recognized it, or whether it was different, and, if so, whether it\n was higher or lower. Of course, the interval of time between the two\n tones was an important factor. The proportionate number of correct\n judgments, and the smallness of the difference of the vibration-rates\n of the two tones, would measure the accuracy of the tone-memory. It\n appeared that one could tell more readily when the two tones were\n alike than when they were different, although in both cases the\n accuracy of the memory was remarkably good.... The main point is the\n effect of the time-interval between the tone and its reproduction.\n This was varied from 1 second to 30 seconds, or even to 60 seconds\n or 120 seconds in some experiments. The general result is, that the\n longer the interval, the smaller are the chances that the tone will be\n recognized; and this process of forgetting takes place at first very\n rapidly, and then more slowly.... This law is subject to considerable\n variations, one of which seems to be constant and is peculiar; namely,\n there seems to be a rhythm in the memory itself, which, after falling,\n recovers slightly, and then fades out again.\"[603]\n\nThis periodical renewal of acoustic memory would seem to be an\nimportant element in the production of the agreeableness of certain\nrates of recurrence in sound.\n\n\nFORGETTING.\n\n\nIn the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important a\nfunction as recollecting.\n\nLocke says, in a memorable page of his dear old book:\n\n \"The memory of some men, it is true, is very tenacious, even to\n a miracle; but yet there seems to be a constant decay of all our\n ideas, even of those which are struck deepest, and in minds the\n most retentive: so that if they be not sometimes renewed by repeated\n exercise of the senses, or reflection on those kinds of objects which\n at first occasioned them, the print wears out, and at last there\n remains nothing to be seen. Thus the ideas, as well as children, of\n our youth, often die before us; and our minds represent to us those\n tombs to which we are fast approaching; where, though the brass and\n marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the\n imagery moulders away. The pictures drawn in our minds are laid in\n fading colors; and, if not sometimes refreshed, vanish and disappear.\n How much the constitution of our bodies, and the make of our animal\n spirits, are concerned in this; and whether the temper of the brain\n makes this difference, that in some it retains the characters drawn on\n it like marble, in others like freestone, and in others little better\n than sand, I shall not here inquire, though it may seem probable that\n the constitution of the body does sometimes influence the memory;\n since we oftentimes find a disease quite strip the mind of all its\n ideas, and the flames of a fever in a few days calcine all those\n images to dust and confusion, which seemed to be as lasting as if\n graven in marble.\"[604]\n\nThis peculiar mixture of forgetting with our remembering is but one\ninstance of our mind's selective activity. Selection is the very keel\non which our mental ship is built. And in this case of memory its\nutility is obvious. If we remembered everything, we should on most\noccasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take\nas long for us to recall a space of time as it took the original\ntime to elapse, and we should never get ahead with our thinking.\nAll recollected times undergo, accordingly, what M. Ribot calls\nforeshortening; and this foreshortening is due to the omission of an\nenormous number of the facts which filled them.\n\n \"As fast as the present enters into the past, our states of\n consciousness disappear and are obliterated. Passed in review at a\n few days' distance, nothing or little of them remains: most of them\n have made shipwreck in that great nonentity from which they never\n more will emerge, and they have carried with them the quantity of\n duration which was inherent in their being. This deficit of surviving\n conscious states is thus a deficit in the amount of represented\n time. The process of abridgment, of foreshortening, of which we have\n spoken, presupposes this deficit. If, in order to reach a distant\n reminiscence, we had to go through the entire series of terms which\n separate it from our present selves, memory would become impossible\n on account of the length of the operation. We thus reach the\n paradoxical result that one condition of remembering is that we should\n forget. Without totally forgetting a prodigious number of states of\n consciousness, and momentarily forgetting a large number, we could not\n remember at all. Oblivion, except in certain cases, is thus no malady\n of memory, but a condition of its health and its life.\"[605]\n\nThere are many irregularities in the process of forgetting which are as\nyet unaccounted for. A thing forgotten on one day will be remembered on\nthe next. Something we have made the most strenuous efforts to recall,\nbut all in vain, will, soon after we have given up the attempt, saunter\ninto the mind, as Emerson somewhere says, as innocently as if it had\nnever been sent for. Experiences of bygone date will revive after years\nof absolute oblivion, often as the result of some cerebral disease or\naccident which seems to develop latent paths of association, as the\nphotographer's fluid develops the picture sleeping in the collodion\nfilm. The oftenest quoted of these cases is Coleridge's:\n\n \"In a Roman Catholic town in Germany, a young woman, who could neither\n read nor write, was seized with a fever, and was said by the priests\n to be possessed of a devil, because she was heard talking Latin,\n Greek, and Hebrew. Whole sheets of her ravings were written out, and\n found to consist of sentences intelligible in themselves, but having\n slight connection with each other. Of her Hebrew sayings, only a few\n could be traced to the Bible, and most seemed to be in the Rabbinical\n dialect. All trick was out of the question; the woman was a simple\n creature; there was no doubt as to the fever. It was long before any\n explanation, save that of demoniacal possession, could be obtained.\n At last the mystery was unveiled by a physician, who determined to\n trace back the girl's history, and who, after much trouble, discovered\n that at the age of nine she had been charitably taken by an old\n Protestant pastor, a great Hebrew scholar, in whose house she lived\n till his death. On further inquiry it appeared to have been the old\n man's custom for years to walk up and down a passage of his house into\n which the kitchen opened, and to read to himself with a loud voice\n out of his books. The books were ransacked, and among them were found\n several of the Greek and Latin Fathers, together with a collection of\n Rabbinical writings. In these works so many of the passages taken down\n at the young woman's bedside were identified that there could be no\n reasonable doubt as to their source.\"[606]\n\nHypnotic subjects as a rule forget all that has happened in their\ntrance. But in a succeeding trance they will often remember the events\nof a past one. This is like what happens in those cases of 'double\npersonality' in which no recollection of one of the lives is to be\nfound in the other. We have already seen in an earlier chapter that the\nsensibility often differs from one of the alternate personalities to\nanother, and we have heard M. Pierre Janet's theory that an\u00e6sthesias\ncarry amnesias with them (see above, pp. 385 ff.). In certain cases\nthis is evidently so; the throwing of certain functional brain-tracts\nout of gear with others, so as to dissociate their consciousness from\nthat of the remaining brain, throws them out for both sensorial and\nideational service. M. Janet proved in various ways that what his\npatients forgot when an\u00e6sthetic they remembered when the sensibility\nreturned. For instance, he restored their tactile sense temporarily\nby means of electric currents, passes, etc., and then made them\nhandle various objects, such as keys and pencils, or make particular\nmovements, like the sign of the cross. The moment the an\u00e6sthesia\nreturned they found it impossible to recollect the objects or the acts.\n'They had had nothing in their hands, they had done nothing,' etc.\nThe next day, however, sensibility being again restored by similar\nprocesses, they remembered perfectly the circumstance, and told what\nthey had handled or had done.\n\nAll these pathological facts are showing us that the sphere of possible\nrecollection may be wider than we think, and that in certain matters\napparent oblivion is no proof against possible recall under other\nconditions. They give no countenance, however, to the extravagant\nopinion that nothing we experience can be absolutely forgotten. In\nreal life, in spite of occasional surprises, most of what happens\nactually is forgotten. The only reasons for supposing that if\nthe conditions were forthcoming everything would revive are of a\ntranscendental sort. Sir Wm. Hamilton quotes and adopts them from the\nGerman writer Schmid. Knowledge being a 'spontaneous self-energy' on\nthe part of the mind,\n\n \"this energy being once determined, it is natural that it should\n persist, until again annihilated by other causes. This [annihilation]\n would be the case, were the mind merely passive.... But the mental\n activity, the act of knowledge, of which I now speak, is more than\n this; it is an energy of the self-active power of a subject one and\n indivisible: consequently a part of the ego must be detached or\n annihilated, if a cognition once existent be again extinguished. Hence\n it is that the problem most difficult of solution is not, how a mental\n activity endures, but how it ever vanishes.\"[607]\n\nThose whom such an argument persuades may be left happy with their\nbelief. Other positive argument there is none, none certainly of a\nphysiological sort.[608]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen memory begins to decay, proper names are what go first, and at\nall times proper names are harder to recollect than those of general\nproperties and classes of things.\n\nThis seems due to the fact that common qualities and names have\ncontracted an infinitely greater number of associations in our mind\nthan the names of most of the persons whom we know. Their memory is\nbetter organized. Proper names as well organized as those of our family\nand friends are recollected as well as those of any other objects.[609]\n'Organization' means numerous associations; and the more numerous the\nassociations, the greater the number of paths of recall. For the same\nreason adjectives, conjunctions, prepositions, and the cardinal verbs,\nthose words, in short, which form the grammatical framework of all our\nspeech, are the very last to decay. Kussmaul[610] makes the following\nacute remark on this subject:\n\n \"The concreter a conception is, the sooner is its name forgotten. This\n is because our ideas of persons and things are less strongly bound\n up with their names than with such abstractions as their business,\n their circumstances, their qualities. We easily can imagine persons\n and things without their names, the sensorial image of them being\n more important than that other symbolic image, their name. Abstract\n conceptions, on the other hand, are only acquired by means of the\n words which alone serve to confer stability upon them. This is why\n verbs, adjectives, pronouns, and still more adverbs, prepositions, and\n conjunctions are more intimately connected with our thinking than are\n substantives.\"\n\nThe disease called Aphasia, of which a little was said in Chapter\nII, has let in a flood of light on the phenomenon of Memory, by\nshowing the number of ways in which the use of a given object, like a\nword, may be lost by the mind. We may lose our acoustic idea or our\narticulatory idea of it; neither without the other will give us proper\ncommand of the word. And if we have both, but have lost the paths of\nassociation between the brain-centres which support the two, we are\nin as bad a plight. 'Ataxic' and 'amnesic' aphasia, 'word-deafness,'\nand 'associative aphasia' are all practical losses of word-memory. We\nhave thus, as M. Ribot says, not memory so much as memories.[611] The\nvisual, the tactile, the muscular, the auditory memory may all vary\nindependently of each other in the same individual; and different\nindividuals may have them developed in different degrees. As a rule,\na man's memory is good in the departments in which his interest\nis strong; but those departments are apt to be those in which his\ndiscriminative sensibility is high. A man with a bad ear is not likely\nto have practically a good musical memory, or a purblind person to\nremember visual appearances well. In a later chapter we shall see\nillustrations of the differences in men's imagining power.[612] It\nis obvious that the machinery of memory must be largely determined\nthereby.\n\nMr. Galton, in his work on English Men of Science,[613] has given a\nvery interesting collation of cases showing individual variations in\nthe type of memory, where it is strong. Some have it verbal. Others\nhave it good for facts and figures, others for form. Most say that\nwhat is to be remembered must first be rationally conceived and\nassimilated.[614]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere is an interesting fact connected with remembering, which, so\nfar as I know, Mr. R. Verdon was the first writer expressly to call\nattention to. We can _set_ our memory as it were to retain things for a\ncertain time, and then let them depart.\n\n \"Individuals often remember clearly and well up to the time when\n they have to use their knowledge, and then, when it is no longer\n required, there follows a rapid and extensive decay of the traces.\n Many schoolboys forget their lessons after they have said them, many\n barristers forget details got up for a particular case. Thus a boy\n learns thirty lines of Homer, says them perfectly, and then forgets\n them so that he could not say five consecutive lines the next morning,\n and a barrister may be one week learned in the mysteries of making\n cog-wheels, but in the next he may be well acquainted with the anatomy\n of the ribs instead.\"[615]\n\nThe rationale of this fact is obscure; and the existence of it ought to\nmake us feel how truly subtle are the nervous processes which memory\ninvolves. Mr. Verdon adds that\n\n \"When the use of a record is withdrawn, and attention withdrawn from\n it, and we think no more about it, we know that we experience a\n feeling of relief, and we may thus conclude that energy is in some\n way liberated. If the ... attention is not withdrawn, so that we keep\n the record in mind, we know that this feeling of relief does not take\n place.... Also we are well aware, not only that after this feeling\n of relief takes place, the record does not seem so well conserved as\n before, but that we have real difficulty in attempting to remember it.\"\n\nThis shows that we are not as entirely unconscious of a topic as we\nthink, during the time in which we seem to be merely retaining it\nsubject to recall.\n\n \"Practically,\" says Mr. Verdon, \"we sometimes keep a matter in hand\n not exactly by attending to it, but by keeping our attention referred\n to something connected with it from time to time. Translating this\n into the language of physiology, we mean that by referring attention\n to a part within, or closely connected with, the system of traces\n [paths] required to be remembered, we keep it well fed, so that the\n traces are preserved with the utmost delicacy.\"\n\nThis is perhaps as near as we can get to an explanation. Setting the\nmind to remember a thing involves a continual minimal irradiation\nof excitement into paths which lead thereto, involves the continued\npresence of the thing in the 'fringe' of our consciousness. Letting the\nthing go involves withdrawal of the irradiation, unconsciousness of the\nthing, and, after a time, obliteration of the paths.\n\n[Illustration: FIG. 46.]\n\nA curious peculiarity of our memory is that things are impressed better\nby active than by passive repetition. I mean that in learning by heart\n(for example), when we almost know the piece, it pays better to wait\nand recollect by an effort from within, than to look at the book again.\nIf we recover the words in the former way, we shall probably know them\nthe next time; if in the latter way, we shall very likely need the book\nonce more. The learning by heart means the formation of paths from a\nformer set to a later set of cerebral word-processes: call 1 and 2 in\nthe diagram the processes in question; then when we remember by inward\neffort, the path is formed by discharge from 1 to 2, just as it will\nafterwards be used. But when we excite 2 by the eye, although the path\n1--2 doubtless is then shot through also, the phenomenon which we are\ndiscussing shows that the direct discharge from 1 into 2, unaided by\nthe eyes, ploughs the deeper and more permanent groove. There is,\nmoreover, a greater amount of tension accumulated in the brain before\nthe discharge from 1 to 2, when the latter takes place unaided by the\neye. This is proved by the general feeling of strain in the effort to\nremember 2; and this also ought to make the discharge more violent\nand the path more deep. A similar reason doubtless accounts for the\nfamiliar fact that we remember our own theories, our own discoveries,\ncombinations, inventions, in short whatever 'ideas' originate in our\nown brain, a thousand times better than exactly similar things which\nare communicated to us from without.\n\nA word, in closing, about the metaphysics involved in remembering.\nAccording to the assumptions of this book, thoughts accompany the\nbrain's workings, and those thoughts are cognitive of realities.\nThe whole relation is one which we can only write down empirically,\nconfessing that no glimmer of explanation of it is yet in sight. That\nbrains should give rise to a knowing consciousness at all, this is the\none mystery which returns, no matter of what sort the consciousness\nand of what sort the knowledge may be. Sensations, aware of mere\nqualities, involve the mystery as much as thoughts, aware of complex\nsystems, involve it. To the platonizing tradition in philosophy,\nhowever, this is not so. Sensational consciousness is something\n_quasi-material_, hardly cognitive, which one need not much wonder\nat. _Relating_ consciousness is quite the reverse, and the mystery\nof it is unspeakable. Professor Ladd, for example, in his usually\nexcellent book,[616] after well showing the matter-of-fact dependence\nof retention and reproduction on brain-paths, says:\n\n \"In the study of perception psycho-physics _can_ do much towards a\n scientific explanation. It can tell what qualities of stimuli produce\n certain qualities of sensations, it can suggest a principle relating\n the quantity of the stimuli to the intensity of the sensation; it\n can investigate the laws under which, by combined action of various\n excitations, the _sensations are combined_ [?] into presentations\n of sense; it can show how the time-relations of the sensations and\n percepts in consciousness correspond to the objective relations in\n time of the stimulations. But for that spiritual activity which\n actually _puts together_ in consciousness the sensations, it cannot\n even suggest the beginning of a physical explanation. Moreover, no\n cerebral process can be conceived of, which--in case it were known\n to exist--could possibly be regarded as a fitting basis for this\n unifying _actus_ of mind. Thus also, and even more emphatically, must\n we insist upon the complete inability of physiology to suggest an\n explanation for conscious memory, in so far as it is _memory_--that\n is, in so far as it most imperatively calls for explanation.... The\n very essence of the act of memory consists in the ability to say:\n This after-image is the image of a percept I had a moment since;\n or this image of memory is the image of the percept I had at a\n certain time--I do not remember precisely how long since. It would,\n then, be quite contrary to the facts to hold that, when an image of\n memory appears in consciousness, it is recognized as belonging to a\n particular original percept on account of its perceived resemblance\n to this percept. The original percept does not exist and will never\n be _reproduced_. Even more palpably false and absurd would it be to\n hold that any similarity of the impressions or processes in end organs\n or central organs explains the act of conscious memory. Consciousness\n knows nothing of such similarity; knows nothing even of the existence\n of nervous impressions and processes. Moreover, we could never _know_\n two impressions or processes that are separated in time to be similar,\n without involving the same inexplicable act of memory. It is a fact\n of consciousness on which all possibility of connected experience and\n of recorded and cumulative human knowledge is dependent that certain\n phases or products of consciousness appear with a claim to stand for\n (to represent)[617] past experiences to which they are regarded as in\n some respect similar. It is this peculiar claim in consciousness which\n constitutes the essence of an act of memory; it is this which makes\n the memory wholly inexplicable as a mere persistence or recurrence\n of similar impressions. It is this which makes conscious memory a\n spiritual phenomenon, the explanation of which, as arising out of\n nervous processes and conditions, is not simply undiscovered in fact,\n but utterly incapable of approach by the imagination. When, then, we\n speak of a physical basis of memory, recognition must be made of the\n complete inability of science to suggest any physical process which\n can be conceived of as correlated with that peculiar and mysterious\n _actus_ of the mind, _connecting_ its present and its past, which\n constitutes the essence of memory.\"\n\nThis passage seems to me characteristic of the reigning half-way\nmodes of thought. It puts the difficulties in the wrong places. At\none moment it seems to admit with the cruder sensationalists that the\nmaterial of our thoughts is independent sensations reproduced, and\nthat the 'putting together' of these sensations would be knowledge, if\nit could only be brought about, the only mystery being as to the what\n'_actus_' can bring it about. At another moment it seems to contend\nthat even this sort of 'combining' would not be knowledge, because\ncertain of the elements connected must 'claim to represent or stand\nfor' past originals, which is incompatible with their being mere images\nrevived. The result is various confused and scattered mysteries and\nunsatisfied intellectual desires. But why not 'pool' our mysteries\ninto one great mystery, the mystery that brain-processes occasion\nknowledge at all? It is surely no different mystery to _feel_ myself by\nmeans of one brain-process writing at this table now, and by means of\na different brain-process a year hence to _remember_ myself writing.\nAll that psychology can do is to seek to determine _what_ the several\nbrain-processes are; and this, in a wretchedly imperfect way, is what\nsuch writings as the present chapter have begun to do. But of 'images\nreproduced,' and 'claiming to represent,' and 'put together by a\nunifying _actus_,' I have been silent, because such expressions either\nsignify nothing, or they are only roundabout ways of simply saying that\nthe _past is known_ when certain brain-conditions are fulfilled, and it\nseems to me that the straightest and shortest way of saying that is the\nbest.\n\nFor a history of opinion about Memory, and other bibliographic\nreferences, I must refer to the admirable little monograph on the\nsubject by Mr. W. H. Burnham in the American Journal of Psychology,\nvols. i and ii. Useful books are: D. Kay's Memory, What It Is, and How\nto Improve It (1888); and F. Fauth's Das Ged\u00e4chtniss, Studie zu einer\nP\u00e4dagogik, etc., 1888.\n\nEND OF VOL. I.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[567] L'Homme et l'Intelligence, p. 32.\n\n[568] Professor Richet has therefore no right to say, as he does in\nanother place (Revue Philosophique, xxi, 570): \"_Without memory no\nconscious sensation, without memory no consciousness._\" All he is\nentitled to say is: \"Without memory no consciousness known outside\nof itself.\" Of the sort of consciousness that is an object for later\nstates, and becomes as it were permanent, he gives a good example:\n\"Who of us, alas! has not experienced a bitter and profound grief, the\nimmense laceration cause by the death of some cherished fellow-being?\nWell, in these great griefs the present endures neither for a minute,\nfor an hour, nor for a day, but for weeks and months. The memory of the\ncruel moment will not efface itself from consciousness. It disappears\nnot, but remains living, present, coexisting with the multitude of\nother sensations which are juxtaposed in consciousness alongside of\nthis one persistent emotion which is felt always in the present tense.\nA long time is needed ere we can attain to forgetting it, ere we can\nmake it enter into the past. _H\u00e6ret lateri letalis arundo._\" (_Ibid._\n583.)\n\n[569] This is the primary positive after-image. According to Helmholtz,\none third of a second is the most favorable length of exposure to the\nlight for producing it. Longer exposure, complicated by subsequent\nadmission of light to the eye, results in the ordinary negative and\ncomplementary after-images, with their changes, which may (if the\noriginal impression was brilliant and the fixation long) last for many\nminutes. Fechner gives the name of memory-after-images (Psychophysik,\nii, 492) to the instantaneous positive effects, and distinguishes\nthem from ordinary after images by the following characters: 1) Their\noriginals must have been _attended to_, only such parts of a compound\noriginal as have been attended to appearing. This is not the case in\ncommon visual after-images. 2) The strain of attention towards them\nis inward, as in ordinary remembering, not outward, as in observing a\ncommon after-image. 3) A short fixation of the original is better for\nthe memory-after-image, a long one for the ordinary after-image. 4) The\ncolors of the memory-after-image are never complementary of those of\nthe original.\n\n[570] Hermann's Hdbch. ii, 2. 282.\n\n[571] Rev. Philos., 562.\n\n[572] Richet says: \"The present has a certain duration, a variable\nduration, sometimes a rather long one, which comprehends all the time\noccupied by the after-reverberation [_retentissement_, after-image] of\na sensation. For example, if the reverberation of an electric shock\nwithin our nerves lasts ten minutes, for that electric shock there is\na present of ten minutes. On the other hand, a feebler sensation will\nhave a shorter present. But in every case, for a conscious sensation\n[I should say for a _remembered_ sensation] to occur, there must be a\npresent of a certain duration, of a few seconds at least.\" We have seen\nin the last chapter that it is hard to trace the backward limits of\nthis immediately intuited duration, or specious present. The figures\nwhich M. Richet supposes appear to be considerably too large.\n\n[573] Cf. Fechner, Psychophysik, ii, 499.\n\n[574] The primary after-image itself cannot be utilized if the stimulus\nis too brief. Mr. Cattell found (Psychologische Studien, iii, p. 93\nff.) that the color of a light must fall upon the eye for a period\nvarying from 0.00275 to 0.006 of a second, in order to be recognized\nfor what it is. Letters of the alphabet and familiar words require\nfrom 0.00075 to 0.00175 sec.--truly an interval extremely short. Some\nletters, E for example, are harder than others. In 1871 Helmholtz and\nBaxt had ascertained that when an impression was immediately followed\nby another, the latter quenched the former and prevented it from being\nknown to later consciousness. The first stimulus was letters of the\nalphabet, the second a bright white disk. \"With an interval of 0.0048\nsec. between the two excitations [I copy here the abstract in Ladd's\nPhysiological Psychology, p. 480], the disk appeared as scarcely a\ntrace of a weak shimmer; with an interval of 0.0096 sec., letters\nappeared in the shimmer--one or two which could be partially recognized\nwhen the interval increased to 0.0144 sec. When the interval was made\n0.0192 sec. the objects were a little more clearly discerned; at\n0.00336 sec. four letters could be well recognized; at 0.0432 sec.,\nfive letters; and at 0.0528 sec. all the letters could be read.\"\n(Pfl\u00fcger's Archiv, iv, 325 ff.)\n\n[575] When the past is recalled symbolically, or conceptually only,\nit is true that no such copy need be there. In no sort of conceptual\nknowledge is it requisite that definitely resembling images be there\n(cf. pp. 471 ff.). But as all conceptual knowledge stands for intuitive\nknowledge, and terminates therein, I abstract from this complication,\nand confine myself to those memories in which the past is directly\nimaged in the mind, or, as we say, intuitively known.\n\n[576] E.g. Spencer, Psychology, i, p. 448. How do the believers in\nthe sufficiency of the 'image' formulate the cases where we remember\nthat something did _not_ happen\u2014-that we did not wind our watch, did\nnot lock the door, etc.? It is very hard to account for these memories\nof omission. The image of winding the watch is just as present to my\nmind now when I remember that I did not wind it as if I remembered\nthat I did. It must be a difference in the mode of feeling the image\nwhich leads me to such different conclusions in the two cases. When\nI remember that I did wind it, I feel it grown together with its\nassociates of past date and place. When I remember that I did not, it\nkeeps aloof; the associates fuse with each other, but not with it.\nThis sense of fusion, of the belonging together of things, is a most\nsubtle relation; the sense of non-fusion is an equally subtle one. Both\nrelations demand most complex mental processes to know them, processes\nquite different from that mere presence or absence of an image which\ndoes such service in the cruder books.\n\n[577] Psychologia Empirica, \u00a7 174.\n\n[578] Analysis, i, 330-1. Mill believed that the various things\nremembered, the self included, enter consciousness in the form of\nseparate ideas, but so rapidly that they are 'all clustered into one.'\n\"Ideas called up in close conjunction ... assume, even when there is\nthe greatest complexity, the appearance, not of many ideas, but of one\"\n(vol. i, p. 123). This mythology does not impair the accuracy of his\ndescription of memory's _object_.\n\n[579] Compare, however, p. 251, Chapter IX.\n\n[580] Professor Bain adds, in a note to this passage of Mill's: \"This\nprocess seems best expressed by laying down a law of Compound or\nComposite Association, under which a plurality of feeble links of\nconnection may be a substitute for one powerful and self-sufficing\nlink.\"\n\n[581] Analysis, chap. x.\n\n[582] H. Maudsley, The Physiology of Mind (London, 1876), p. 513.\n\n[583] The only fact which might plausibly be alleged against this view\nis the familiar one that we may feel the lapse of time in an experience\nso monotonous that its earlier portions can have no 'associates'\ndifferent from its later ones. Sit with closed eyes, for example,\nand steadily pronounce some vowel-sound, thus, _a-\u2014a\u2014-a-\u2014a-\u2014a\u2014-_ ...\nthinking only of the sound. Nothing changes during the time occupied by\nthe experiment, and yet at the end of it you know that its beginning\nwas far away. I think, however, that a close attention to what happens\nduring this experiment shows that it does not violate in the least the\nconditions of recall laid down in the text; and that if the moment\nto which we mentally hark back lie many seconds behind the present\ninstant, it always has different associates by which we define its\ndate. Thus it was when I had just breathed out, or in; or it was the\n'first moment' of the performance, the one 'preceded by silence;' or\nit was 'one very close to that;' or it was 'one when we were looking\nforward instead of back, as now;' or it is simply represented by a\nnumber and conceived symbolically with no definite image of its date.\nIt seems to me that I have no really intuitive discrimination of the\ndifferent past moments after the experience has gone on some little\ntime, but that back of the 'specious present' they all fuse into a\nsingle conception of the _kind of thing_ that has been going on, with\na more or less clear sense of the total time it has lasted, this\nlatter being based on an automatic counting of the successive pulses\nof thought by which the process is from moment to moment recognized\nas being always the same. Within the few seconds which constitute the\nspecious present there is an intuitive perception of the successive\nmoments. But these moments, of which we have a primary memory-image,\nare not properly _recalled_ from the past, our knowledge of them is in\nno way analogous to a memory properly so called. Cf. _supra_, p. 646.\n\n[584] On Intelligence, i, 258-9.\n\n[585] Not that _mere_ native tenacity will make a man great. It must\nbe coupled with great passions and great intellect besides. Imbeciles\nsometimes have extraordinary desultory memory. Drobisch describes\n(Empirische Psychol., p. 95) the case of a young man whom he examined.\nHe had with difficulty been taught to read and speak. \"But if two or\nthree minutes were allowed him to peruse an octavo page, he then could\nspell the single words out from his memory as well as if the book lay\nopen before him.... That there was no deception I could test by means\nof a new Latin law-dissertation which had just come into my hands,\nwhich he never could have seen, and of which both subject and language\nwere unknown to him. He read off [mentally] many lines, skipping about\ntoo, of the page which had been given him to see, no worse than if the\nexperiment had been made with a child's story.\" Drobisch describes\nthis case as if it were one of unusual persistence in the visual image\n['primary memory,' _vide supra_, p. 643]. But he adds that the youth\n'remembered his pages a long time.' In the Journal of Speculative\nPhilosophy for Jan. 1871 (vi, 6) is an account by Mr. W. D. Henkle\n(together with the stock classic examples of preternatural memory) of\nan almost blind Pennsylvania farmer who could remember the day of the\nweek on which any date had fallen for forty-two years past, and also\nthe kind of weather it was, and what he was doing on each of more than\nfifteen thousand days. Pity that such a magnificent faculty as this\ncould not have found more worthy application!\n\nWhat these cases show is that the mere organic retentiveness of a\nman need bear no definite relation to his other mental powers. Men\nof the highest general powers will often forget nothing, however\ninsignificant. One of the most generally accomplished men I know has a\nmemory of this sort. He never keeps written note of anything, yet is\nnever at a loss for a fact which he has once heard. He remembers the\nold addresses of all his New York friends, living in numbered streets,\naddresses which they themselves have long since moved away from and\nforgotten. He says that he should probably recognize an individual\nfly, if he had seen him thirty years previous--he is, by the way, an\nentomologist. As an instance of his desultory memory, he was introduced\nto a certain colonel at a club. The conversation fell upon the signs of\nage in man. The colonel challenged him to estimate his age. He looked\nat him, and gave the exact day of his birth, to the wonder of all.\nBut the secret of this accuracy was that, having picked up some days\npreviously an army-register, he had idly turned over its list of names,\nwith dates of birth, graduation, promotions, etc., attached, and when\nthe colonel's name was mentioned to him at the club, these figures, on\nwhich he had not bestowed a moment's thought, involuntarily surged up\nin his mind. Such a memory is of course a priceless boon.\n\n[586] Cf. Ebbinghaus: Ueber das Ged\u00e4chtniss (1885), pp. 67, 45. One\nmay hear a person say: \"I have a very poor memory, because I was never\nsystematically made to learn poetry at school.\"\n\n[587] How to Strengthen the Memory; or, The Natural and Scientific\nMethods of Never Forgetting. By M. H. Holbrook, M.D. New York (no date).\n\n[588] Page 39.\n\n[589] Op. cit. p. 100.\n\n[590] In order to test the opinion so confidently expressed in the\ntext, I have tried to see whether a certain amount of daily training\nin learning poetry by heart will shorten the time it takes to learn\nan entirely different kind of poetry. During eight successive days I\nlearned 158 lines of Victor Hugo's 'Satyr.' The total number of minutes\nrequired for this was 131 5/6--it should be said that I had learned\nnothing by heart for many years. I then, working for twenty-odd minutes\ndaily, learned the entire first book of Paradise Lost, occupying 38\ndays in the process. After this training I went back to Victor Hugo's\npoem, and found that 158 additional lines (divided exactly as on the\nformer occasion) took me 151 1/2 minutes. In other words, I committed\nmy Victor Hugo to memory before the training at the rate of a line in\n50 seconds, after the training at the rate of a line in 57 seconds,\njust the opposite result from that which the popular view would lead\none to expect. But as I was perceptibly fagged with other work at the\ntime of the second batch of Victor Hugo, I thought that might explain\nthe retardation; so I persuaded several other persons to repeat the\ntest.\n\nDr. W. H. Burnham learned 16 lines of In Memoriam for 8 days; time,\n14-17 minutes--daily average 14 3/4. He then trained himself on\nSchiller's translation of the second book of the \u00c6neid into German, 16\nlines daily for 26 consecutive days. On returning to the same quantity\nof In Memoriam again, he found his maximum time 20 minutes, minimum\n10, average 14 27/48. As he feared the outer conditions might not have\nbeen as favorable this time as the first, he waited a few days and got\nconditions as near as possible identical. The result was, minimum time\n8 minutes; maximum 19 1/2; average 14 3/48.\n\nMr. E. S. Drown tested himself on Virgil for 16 days, then again for 16\ndays, after training himself on Scott. Average time before training,\n13 minutes 26 seconds; after training, 12 minutes 16 seconds. [Sixteen\ndays is too long for the test, it gives time for training on the\ntest-verse.]\n\nMr. C. H. Baldwin took 10 lines for 15 days as his test, trained\nhimself on 450 lines 'of an entirely different verse,' and then took 15\ndays more of the former verse 10 lines a day. Average result: 3 minutes\n41 seconds before, 3 minutes 2 seconds after, training. [Same criticism\nas before.]\n\nMr. E. A. Pease tested himself on Idyls of the King, and trained\nhimself on Paradise Lost. Average result of 6 days each time: 14\nminutes 34 seconds before, 14 minutes 55 seconds after, training. Mr.\nBurnham having suggested that to eliminate facilitating effect entirely\nfrom the training verses one ought to test one's self _\u00e0 la_ Ebbinghaus\non series of nonsense-syllables, having no analogy whatever with any\nsystem of expressive verses, I induced two of my students to perform\nthat experiment also. The record is unfortunately lost; but the result\nwas a very considerable shortening of the average time of the second\nseries of nonsense-syllables, learned after training. This seems to\nme, however, more to show the effects of rapid habituation to the\nnonsense-verses themselves than those of the poetry used between them.\nBut I mean to prosecute the experiments farther, and will report in\nanother place.\n\nOne of my students having quoted a clergyman of his acquaintance\nwho had marvellously improved by practice his power of learning his\nsermons by heart, I wrote to the gentleman for corroboration. I append\nhis reply, which shows that the increased facility is due rather to\na change in his methods of learning than to his native retentiveness\nhaving grown by exercise: \"As for memory, mine has improved year by\nyear, except when in ill-health, like a gymnast's muscle. Before\ntwenty it took three or four days to commit an hour-long sermon; after\ntwenty, two days, one day, half a day, and now one slow analytic, very\nattentive or adhesive reading does it. But memory seems to me the most\nphysical of intellectual powers. Bodily ease and freshness have much to\ndo with it. Then there is a great difference of facility in method. I\nused to commit sentence by sentence. Now I take the idea of the whole,\nthen its leading divisions, then its subdivisions, then its sentences.\"\n\n[591] E. Pick: Memory and its Doctors (1888), p. 7.\n\n[592] This system is carried out in great detail in a book called\n'Memory Training,' by Wm. L. Evans (1889).\n\n[593] Paulhan, L'Activit\u00e9 mental, et les \u00c9l\u00e9ments de l'Esprit (1889).\np. 70.\n\n[594] On Intelligence, i, 77-82.\n\n[595] Psychology, \u00a7 201.\n\n[596] Professor H\u00f6ffding considers that the absence of contiguous\nassociates distinctly thought-of is a proof that associative processes\nare not concerned in these cases of instantaneous recognition where\nwe get a strong sense of familiarity with the object, but no recall\nof previous time or place. His theory of what happens is that the\nobject before us, A, comes with a sense of familiarity whenever it\nawakens _a slumbering image, a, of its own past self,_ whilst without\nthis image it seems unfamiliar. The _quality of familiarity_ is\ndue to the coalescence of the two similar processes A + _a_ in the\nbrain (Psychologie, p. 188; Vierteljsch. f. wiss. Phil., xiii, 432\n[1889]). This explanation is a very tempting one where the phenomenon\nof recognition is reduced to its simplest terms. Experiments have\nbeen performed in Wundt's laboratory by Messrs. Wolfe, see below, p.\n679, and Lehmann (Philosophische Studien, v, 96), in which a person\nhad to tell out of several closely resembling sensible impressions\n(sounds, tints of color) presented, which of them was the same with\none presented a moment before. And it does seem here as if the fading\nprocess in the just-excited tract must combine with the process of\nthe new impression to give to the latter a peculiar subjective tinge\nwhich should separate it from the impressions which the other objects\ngive. But recognition of this immediate sort is beyond our power after\na very short time has intervened. A couple of minutes' interval is\ngenerally fatal to it; so that it is impossible to conceive that our\nfrequent instantaneous recognition of a face, e.g., as having been met\nbefore, takes place by any such simple process. Where we associate\na _head of classification_ with the object, the time-interval has\nmuch less effect. Dr. Lehmann could identify shades of gray much more\nsuccessfully and permanently after mentally attaching names or numbers\nto them. Here it is the recall of the contiguous associate, the number\nor name, which brings about the recognition. Where an experience is\ncomplex, each element of the total object has had the other elements\nfor its past contiguous associates. Each element thus tends to revive\nthe other elements from within, at the same time that the outward\nobject is making them revive from without. We have thus, whenever we\nmeet a familiar object, that sense of _expectation gratified_ which\nis so large a factor in our \u00e6sthetic emotions; and even were there\nno 'fringe of tendency' toward the arousal of _extrinsic_ associates\n(which there certainly always is), still this _intrinsic_ play of\nmutual association among the parts would give a character of ease\nto familiar percepts which would make of them a distinct subjective\nclass. A process fills its old bed in a different way from that in\nwhich it makes a new bed. One can appeal to introspection for proof.\nWhen, for example, I go into a slaughter-house into which I once went\nyears ago, and the horrid din of the screaming hogs strikes me with\nthe overpowering sense of identification, when the blood-stained face\nof the 'sticker,' whom I had long ceased to think of, is immediately\nrecognized as the face that struck me so before; when the dingy and\nreddened woodwork, the purple-flowing floor, the smell, the emotion\nof disgust, and _all_ the details, in a word, forthwith re-establish\nthemeelves as familiar occupants of my mind; the _extraneous_\nassociates of the past time are anything but prominent. Again, in\ntrying to think of an engraving, say the portrait of Rajah Brooke\nprefixed to his biography, I can do so only partially; but when I\ntake down the book and, looking at the actual face, am smitten with\nthe intimate sense of its sameness with the one I was striving to\nresuscitate,--where in the experience is the element of _extrinsic_\nassociation? In both these cases it surely _feels_ as if the moment\nwhen the sense of recall is most vivid were also the moment when all\n_extraneous_ associates were most suppressed. The butcher's face\nrecalls the former walls of the shambles; their thought recalls the\ngroaning beasts, and they the face again, just as I now experience\nthem, with no different past ingredient. In like manner the peculiar\ndeepening of my consciousness of the Rajah's physiognomy at the moment\nwhen I open the book and say \"Ah! that's the very face!\" is so intense\nas to banish from my mind all collateral circumstances, whether of the\npresent or of former experiences. But here it is the nose preparing\ntracts for the eye, the eye preparing them for the mouth, the mouth\npreparing them for the nose again, all these processes involving paths\nof contiguous association, as defended in the text. I cannot agree,\ntherefore, with Prof. H\u00f6ffding, in spite of my respect for him as a\npsychologist, that the phenomenon of instantaneous recognition is only\nexplicable through the recall and comparison of the thing with its\nown past image. Nor can I see in the facts in question any additional\nground for reinstating the general notion which we have already\nrejected (_supra_, p. 592) that a 'sensation' is ever received into the\nmind by an 'image' of its own past self. It is received by contiguous\nassociates; or if they form too faint a fringe, its neural currents run\ninto a bed which is still 'warm' from just-previous currents, and which\nconsequently feel different from currents whose bed is cold. I agree,\nhowever, with H\u00f6ffding that Dr. Lehmann's experiments (many of them)\ndo not seem to prove the point which he seeks to establish. Lehmann,\nindeed, seems himself to believe that we recognize a sensation A by\ncomparing it with its own past image \u03b1 (_loc. cit._ p. 114), in which\nopinion I altogether fail to concur.\n\n[597] Duality of the Mind, p. 84. The same thesis is defended by the\nlate Mr. R. H. Proctor, who gives some cases rather hard to reconcile\nwith my own proposed explanation, in 'Knowledge' for Nov. 8, 1884. See\nalso Ribot, Maladies de la M\u00e9moire, p. 149 ff.\n\n[598] Zeitschr. f. V\u00f6lkerpsychologie u. s. w., Bd. v, p. 146.\n\n[599] Ueber das Ged\u00e4chtniss, experimentelle Untersuchungen (1885), p.\n64.\n\n[600] _Ibid._ \u00a7 23.\n\n[601] _Op. cit._ p. 103.\n\n[602] All the inferences for which we can give no articulate reasons\nexemplify this law. In the chapter on Perception we shall have\ninnumerable examples of it. A good pathological illustration of it is\ngiven in the curious observations of M. Binet on certain hysterical\nsubjects, with an\u00e6sthetic hands, who saw what was done with their hands\nas an independent vision but did not feel it. The hand being hidden\nby a screen, the patient was ordered to look at another screen and to\ntell of any visual image which might project itself thereon. Numbers\nwould then come, corresponding to the number of times the insensible\nmember was raised, touched, etc. Colored lines and figures would come,\ncorresponding to similar ones traced on the palm; the hand itself, or\nits fingers, would come when manipulated; and, finally, objects placed\nin it would come; but on the hand itself nothing could ever be felt.\nThe whole phenomenon shows how an idea which remains itself below\nthe threshold of a certain conscious self may occasion associative\neffects therein. The skin-sensations, unfelt by the patient's primary\nconsciousness, awaken, nevertheless, their usual visual associates\ntherein.\n\n[603] I copy from the abstract of Wolfe's paper in 'Science' for Nov.\n19, 1886. The original is in Psychologische Studien, iii, 534 ff.\n\n[604] Essay conc. Human Understanding, ii, x, 5.\n\n[605] Th. Ribot, Les Maladies de la M\u00e9moire, p. 46.\n\n[606] Biographia Literaria, ed. 1847, i, 117 (quoted in Carpenter's\nMental Physiology, chapter x, which see for a number of other cases,\nall unfortunately deficient, like this one, in the evidence of exact\nverification which 'psychical research 'demands). Compare also Th.\nRibot, Diseases of Memory, chap. iv. The knowledge of foreign words,\netc., reported in trance mediums, etc., may perhaps often be explained\nby exaltation of memory. An hystero-epileptic girl, whose case I quoted\nin Proc. of Am. Soc. for Psychical Research, automatically writes an\n'Ingoldsby Legend' in several cantos, which her parents say she 'had\nnever read.' Of course she must have read or heard it, but perhaps\nnever _learned_ it. Of some macaronic Latin-English verses about a\nsea-serpent which her hand also wrote unconsciously, I have vainly\nsought the original (see Proc., etc., p. 553).\n\n[607] Lectures on Metaph., ii, 212.\n\n[608] Cf. on this point J. Delb\u0153uf, Le Sommeil et les R\u00eaves (1885), p.\n119 ff.; R. Verdon, Forgetfulness, in Mind, ii, 437.\n\n[609] Cf. A. Maury, Le Sommeil et les R\u00eaves, p. 442.\n\n[610] St\u00f6rungen der Sprache, quoted by Ribot, Les Maladies de la M., p.\n133.\n\n[611] Op. cit. chap. iii.\n\n[612] \"Those who have a good memory for figures are in general those\nwho know best how to handle them, that is, those who are most familiar\nwith their relations to each other and to things.\" (A. Maury, Le\nSommeil et les R\u00eaves, p. 443.)\n\n[613] Pp. 107-121.\n\n[614] For other examples see Hamilton's Lectures, ii, 219, and A.\nHuber: Das Ged\u00e4chtniss, p. 36 ff.\n\n[615] Mind, ii, 449.\n\n[616] Physiological Psychology, pt. ii, chap. x, \u00a7 23.\n\n[617] Why not say 'know'?\u2014-W. J.","title":"The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":278679}