AMERICAN SCIENCE SERIES-ADVANCED COURSE THE PRINCIPLES OP PSYCHOLOGY BY WILLIAM JAMES / y PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I NEW YORK HENRY HOL'J' AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1890 BY HENRY HOLT & CO COPYRIGHT, 1918 BY ALICE H. JAMES August, 1931 BF I8. FIG. lO.-Sehematic Transverse Section of Brain showing Motor Strand -After -Ldinger. nizes his mistakes and suffers acutely from them. Now whenever a patient dies in such a condition as this, and an examination of his brain is permitted, it is found that FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 39 the lowest frontal gyrus (see Fig. 11) is the seat of injury. Broca first noticed this fact in 1861, and since then the gyrus has gone by the name of Broca's convolution. The Fio. 11.— Schematic Profile destru jhematic Profile of T,eft Hemisphere, with the parts shaded whose ction causes motor (' Broca ') and sensory (' Weruicke ') Aphasia. injury in right-handed people is found on the left hemi sphere, and in left-handed people on the right hemisphere. Most people, in fact, are left-brained, that is, all then delicate and specialized movements are handed over to the charge of the left hemisphere. The ordinary right- handedness for such movements is only a consequence of that fact, a consequence which shows outwardly on account of that extensive decussation of the fibres whereby most of those from the left hemisphere pass to the right half of the body only. But the left-brainedness might exist in equal measure and not show outwardly. This would happen wherever organs on both sides of the body could be gov erned by the left hemisphere ; and just such a case seems offered by the vocal organs, in that highly delicate and special motor service which we call speech. Either hemi sphere can innervate them bilaterally, just as either seems able to innervate bilaterally the muscles of the trunk, ribs, and diaphragm. Of the special movements of speech, how- 40 PSYCHOLOGY. ever, it would appear (from the facts of aphasia) that the left hemisphere in most persons habitually takes exclusive charge. With that hemisphere thrown out of gear, speech is undone ; even though the opposite hemisphere still be there for the performance of less specialized acts, such as the various movements required in eating. It will be noticed that Broca's region is homologous with the parts ascertained to produce movements of the lips, tongue, and larynx when excited by electric currents in apes (cf. Fig. 6, p. 34). The evidence is therefore as com plete as it well can be that the motor incitations to these organs leave the brain by the lower frontal region. Yictims of motor aphasia generally have other disorders. One which interests us in this connection has been called agraphia: they have lost the power to ivrite. They can read writing and understand it ; but either cannot use the pen at all or make egregious mistakes with it. The seat of the lesion here is less well determined, owing to an in sufficient number of good cases to conclude from.* There is no doubt, however, that it is (in right-handed people) on the left side, and little doubt that it consists of elements of the hand-and-arm region specialized for that service. The symptom may exist when there is little or no disability in the hand for other uses. If it does not get well, the patient usually educates his right hemisphere, i.e. learns to write with his left hand. In other cases of which we shall say more a few pages later on, the patient can write both spontaneously and at dictation, but cannot read even what he has himself written ! All these phenomena are now quite clearly explained by separate brain-centres for the various feelings and movements and tracts for associate ing these together. But their minute discussion belongs to medicine rather than to general psychology, and I can only use them here to illustrate the principles of motor locali zation, f Under the heads of sight and hearing I shall have a little more to say. * Nothuagel und Naunyn ; Die Localization in den Geliirnkrankheiten (Wiesbaden, 1887), p. 34. f An accessible account of the history of our knowledge of motor aphasia is in W. A. Hammond's ' Treatise on the Diseases .of the Nervous System,' chapter vn. FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 41 The different lines of proof which I have taken up establish conclusively the proposition that all the motor impulses which leave the cortex pass out, in healthy animals, from the convolutions about the fissure of Rolando. When, however, it comes to denning precisely what is involved in a motor impulse leaving the cortex, things grow more obscure. Does the impulse start independently from the convolutions in question, or does it start elsewhere and merely flow through ? And to what particular phase of psychic activity does the activity of these centres corre spond '? Opinions and authorities here divide ; but it will be better, before entering into these deeper aspects of the problem, to cast a glance at the facts which have been made out concerning the relations of the cortex to sight, hearing, and smell. Sight. Ferrier was the first in the field here. He found, when the angular convolution (that lying between the ' intra parietal ' and * external occipital ' fissures, and bending round the top of the fissure of Sylvius, in Fig. 6) was ex cited in the monkey, that movements of the eyes and head as if for vision occurred ; and that when it was extirpated, what he supposed to be total and permanent blindness of the opposite eye followed. Munk almost immediately declared total and permanent blindness to follow from de struction of the occipital lobe in monkeys as well as dogs, and said that the angular gyrus had nothing to do with sight, but was only the centre for tactile sensibility of the eyeball. Munk's absolute tone about his observations and his theo retic arrogance have led to his ruin as an authority. But he did two things of permanent value. He was the first to distinguish in these vivisections between sensorial and psychic blindness, and to describe the phenomenon of resti tution of the visual function after its first impairment by an operation ; and the first to notice the hemiopic character of the visual disturbances which result when only one hemisphere is injured. Sensorial blindness is absolute insensibility to light ; psychic blindness is inability to rec ognize the meaning of the optical impressions, as when we 42 PSYCHOLOGY. see a page of Chinese print but it suggests nothing to us. A hemiopic disturbance of vision is one in which neither retina is affected in its totality, but in which, for example, the left portion of each retina is blind, so that the animal sees nothing situated in space towards its right. Later observations have corroborated this hemiopic character of all the disturbances of sight from injury to a single hemi sphere in the higher animals ; and the question whether an animal's apparent blindness is sensorial or only psychic has, since Munk's first publications, been the most urgent one to answer, in all observations relative to the function of sight. Goltz almost simultaneously with Ferrier and Munk reported experiments which led him to deny that the visual function was essentially bound up with any one localized portion of the hemispheres. Other divergent results soon came in from many quarters, so that, without going into the history of the matter any more, I may report the existing state of the case as follows : * In fishes, frogs, and lizards vision persists when the hemispheres are entirely removed. This is admitted for frogs and fishes even by Munk, who denies it for birds. All of Munk's birds seemed totally blind (blind senso- rially) after removal of the hemispheres by his operation. The following of a candle by the head and winking at a threatened blow, which are ordinarily held to prove the retention of crude optical sensations by the lower centres in supposed hemisphereless pigeons, are by Munk ascribed to vestiges of the visual sphere of the cortex left behind by the imperfection of the operation. But Schrader, who operated after Munk and with every apparent guarantee of completeness, found that all his pigeons saw after two or three weeks had elapsed, and the inhibitions resulting from the wound had passed away. They invariably avoided even the slightest obstacles, flew very regularly towards certain perches, etc., differing toto ccelo in these respects with certain simply blinded pigeons who were kept with * The history up to 1885 may be found in A. Christian! : Zur Physi ologie des Gehirnes 'Berlin. 18sT>\. FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 43 them for comparison. They did not pick up food strewn on the ground, however. Schrader found that they would do this if even a small part of the frontal region of the hemispheres was left, and ascribes their non-self-feeding when deprived of their occipital cerebrum not to a visual, but to a motor, defect, a sort of alimentary aphasia.* In presence of such discord as that between Munk and his opponents one must carefully note how differently sig nificant is loss, from preservation, of a function after an opera tion on the brain. The loss of the function does not neces sarily show that it is dependent on the part cut out ; but its preservation does show that it is not dependent : and this is true though the loss should be observed ninety-nine times and the preservation only once in a hundred similar excisions. That birds and mammals can be blinded by cortical abla tion is undoubted ; the only question is, must they be so ? Only then can the cortex be certainly called the * seat of sight.' The blindness may always be due to one of those remote effects of the wound on distant parts, inhibitions, extensions of inflammation, — interferences, in a word, — upon which Brown-Sequard and Goltz have rightly insisted, and the importance of which becomes more manifest every day. Such effects are transient ; whereas the symptoms of deprivation (Ausfallserscheinungen, as Goltz calls them) which come from the actual loss of the cut-out region must from the nature of the case be permanent. Blindness in the pigeons, so far as it passes away, cannot possibly be charged to their seat of vision being lost, but only to some influence which temporarily depresses the activity of that seat. The same is true mutatis mutandis of all the other effects of operations, and as we pass to mammals we shall see still more the importance of the remark. In rabbits loss of the entire cortex seems compatible with the preservation of enough sight to guide the poor animals' movements, and enable them to avoid obstacles. Christian!' s observations and discussions seem conclusively * Pfl tiger's Archiv, vol. 44, p. 176. Munk (Berlin Academy Sitzsungs- berichte, 1889, xxxi) returns to the charge, denying the extirpations of Schrader to be complete : ' ' Microscopic portions of the SelispMre must 44 PSYCHOLOGY. to have established this, although Munk found that all his animals were made totally blind.* In dogs also Munk found absolute stone-blindness after ablation of the occipital lobes. He went farther and mapped out determinate portions of the cortex thereupon, which he considered correlated with definite segments of the two retinae, so that destruction of given portions of the cor tex produces blindness of the retinal centre, top, bottom, or right or left side, of the same or opposite eye. There seems little doubt that this definite correlation is mythologi cal. Other observers, Hitzig, Goltz, Luciani, Loeb, Exner, etc., find, whatever part of the cortex may be ablated on one side, that there usually results a hemiopic disturbance of loth eyes, slight and transient when the anterior lobes are the parts attacked, grave when an occipital lobe is the seat of injury, and lasting in proportion to the latter's extent. According to Loeb, the defect is a dimness of vis ion (' hemiamblyopia') in which (however severe) the centres remain the best seeing portions of the retina, just as they are in normal dogs. The lateral or temporal part of each retina seems to be in exclusive connection with the cortex of its own side. The centre and nasal part of each seems, on the contrary, to be connected with the cortex of the opposite hemispheres. Loeb, who takes broader views than any one, conceives the hemiamblyopia as he con ceives the motor disturbances, namely, as the expression of an increased inertia in the whole optical machinery, of which the result is to make the animal respond with greater effort to impressions coming from the half of space opposed to the side of the lesion. If a dog has right hemiamblyopia, say, and two pieces of meat are hung before him at once, he invariably turns first to the one on his left. But if the lesion be a slight one, shaking slightly the piece of meat on his right (this makes of it a stronger stimulus) makes him seize upon it first. If only one piece of meat be offered, he takes it, on whichever side it be. When both occipital lobes are extensively destroyed total blindness may result. Munk maps out his ' Seh- * A. Christian!: Zur Physiol. d. Gehirnes (Berlin, 1885), chaps, n, in, iv. H. Munk : Berlin Akad. Stzgsb. 1884, xxiv. FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 45 sphare ' definitely, and says that blindness must result when the entire shaded part, marked A, A, in Figs. 12 and 13, is involved in the lesion. Discrepant reports of other observations he explains as due to incomplete FIG. 12. FIG. 13. The Dog's visual centre according to Munk, the entire striated region, A, A, being the exclusive seat of vision, and the dark central circle, A', being correlated with the retinal centre of the opposite eye. ablation. Luciani, Goltz, and Lannegrace, however, con tend that they have made complete bilateral extirpations of Munk's Sehsphare more than once, and found a sort of crude indiscriminating sight of objects to return in a few Aveeks.* The question whether a dog is blind or not is harder to solve than would at first appear ; for simply blinded dogs, in places to which they are accustomed, show little of their loss and avoid all obstacles; whilst dogs whose occipital lobes are gone may run against things fre quently and yet see notwithstanding. The best proof that they may see is that which Goltz's dogs furnished : they carefully avoided, as it seemed, strips of sunshine or paper on the floor, as if they were solid obstacles. This no really blind dog would do. Luciani tested his dogs when hungry (a condition which sharpens their attention) by strewing * Luciani und Scppili : Die Functions-Localization auf dev Grosshirn- rinde (Deutsch von Fraeukel), Leipzig, 1886, Dogs M, N, and S. Goltz in Pfluger's Archiv, vol. 84, pp. 490-6; vol. 42, p. 454. Cf. also Munk: Berlin Akad. Stzgsb. 1886, vii, vm, pp. 113-121, and Loeb: Pfluger's Archiv, vol. 39, p. 337. 46 PSYCHOLOGY. pieces of meat and pieces of cork before them. If they went straight at them, they saw; and if they chose the meat and left the cork, they saw discriminatingly. The quarrel is very acrimonious ; indeed the subject of localization of functions in the brain seems to have a peculiar effect on the temper of those who cultivate it experimentally. The amount of preserved vision which Goltz and Luciani report seems hardly to be worth considering, on the one hand; and on the other, Munk admits in his penultimate paper that out of 85 dogs he only ' succeeded ' 4 times in his opera tion of producing complete blindness by complete extirpa tion of his '-Sehsphare.' * The safe conclusion for us is that Luciani's diagram, Fig. 14, represents something like the FIG. 14.— Distribution of the Visual Function in the Cortex, according to Luciani. truth. The occipital lobes are far more important for vision than any other part of the cortex, so that their com plete destruction makes the animal almost blind. As for the crude sensibility to light which may then remain, noth ing exact is known either about its nature or its seat. In the monkey, doctors also disagree. The truth seems, however, to be that the occipital lobes in this animal also are the part connected most intimately with the visual function. The function would seem to go on when very small portions of them are left, for Ferrier found no ' appreciable impair ment ' of it after almost complete destruction of them on both sides. On the other hand, he found complete and perma nent blindness to ensue when they and the angular gyri in addition were destroyed on both sides. Munk, as well as * Berlin Akad. Sitzungsberichte, 1886, vii, vm, p. 124. FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 47 Brown and Schaefer, found no disturbance of sight from destroying the angular gyri alone, although Ferrier found blindness to ensue. This blindness was probably due to inhibitions exerted in distans, or to cutting of the white optical fibres passing under the angular gyri on their way to the occipital lobes. Brown and Schaefer got complete and permanent blindness in one monkey from total destruc tion of both occipital lobes. Luciani and Seppili, perform ing this operation on two monkeys, found that the animals were only mentally, not sensorially, blind. After some weeks they saw their food, but could not distinguish by sight between figs and pieces of cork. Luciani and Seppili seem, however, not to have extirpated the entire lobes. When one lobe only is injured the affection of sight is hemiopic in monkeys: in this all observers agree. On the whole, then, Munk's original location of vision ID the occipital lobes is confirmed by the later evidence.* In man we have more exact results, since we are not driven to interpret the vision from the outward conduct. On the other hand, however, we cannot vivisect, but must wait for pathological lesions to turn up. The pathologists who have discussed these (the literature is tedious ad libi tum) conclude that the occipital lobes are the indispensable part for vision in man. Hemiopic disturbance in both eyes comes from lesion of either one of them, and total blindness, sensorial as well as psychic, from destruction of both. Hemiopia may also result from lesion in other parts, especially the neighboring angular and supra-marginal gyri, and it may accompany extensive injury in the motor region of the cortex. In these cases it seems probable that it is due to an actio in distans, probably to the interruption oi * H. Munk: Functionen der Grosshirnrinde (Berlin, 1881), pp. 36-40 Ferrier : Functions, etc.,2ded., chap, ix, pt. i. Brown and Schaefer. Philos. Transactions, vol. 179, p. 321. Luciani u. Seppili, op. cit. pp. 131-138. Lannegrace found traces of sight with both occipital lobes de stroyed, and in one monkey even when angular gyri and occipital lobes were destroyed altogether. His paper is in the Archives de Medeciue Experimentale for January and March, 1889. I only know it from the abstract in the Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1889, pp. 108-420. The reporter doubts the evidence of vision in the monkey. It appears to have consisted in avoiding obstacles and in emotional disturbance in the presence of men. 48 PSYCHOLOGY. fibres proceeding from the occipital lobe. There seem to be a few cases on record where there was injury to the occipital lobes without visual defect. Ferrier has collected as many as possible to prove his localization in the angular gyrus.* A strict application of logical principles would make one of these cases outweigh one hundred contrary ones. And yet, remembering how imperfect observations may be, and how individual brains may vary, it would certainly be rash for their sake to throw away the enormous amount of positive evidence for the occipital lobes. Individual variability is always a possible explanation of an anomalous case. There is no more prominent anatomical fact than that of the ' de- cussation of the pyramids,' nor any more usual pathologi cal fact than its consequence, that left-handed hemorrhages into the motor region produce right-handed paralyses. And yet the decussation is variable in amount, and seems sometimes to be absent altogether, f If, in such a case as this last, the left brain were to become the seat of apoplexy, the left and not the right half of the body would be the one to suffer paralysis. The schema on the opposite page, copied from Dr. Seguin, expresses, on the whole, the probable truth about the regions concerned in vision. Not the entire occipital lobes, but the so-called cunei, and the first convolutions, are the cortical parts most intimately concerned. Nothnagel agrees with Seguin in this limitation of the essential tracts. :[ A most interesting effect of cortical disorder is mental blindness. This consists not so much in insensibility to optical impressions, as in inability to understand them. Psychologically it is interpretable as loss of associations be tween optical sensations and what they signify ; and any interruption of the paths between the optic centres and the centres for other ideas ought to bring it about. Thus, * Localization of Cerebral Disease (1878), pp. 117-8. t For cases see Flecbsig : Die Leitungsbahnen iu Gehiru u. Riickenmark (Leipzig, 1876), pp. 112, 272; Exner'sUntersuchungen, etc., p. 83 ; Ferrier s Localization, etc., p. 11; Francois-Franck's Cerveau Moteur, p. 63, note. | E. C. Seguin : Hemianopsia of Cerebral Origin, in Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, vol. xnr. p. 30. Notbuagel und Naunyn : Ueber die Localization der Gehirnkrankbeiten (Wiesbaden, 1887), p. 10. FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 49 printed letters of the alphabet, or words, signify certain sounds and certain articulatory movements. If the con nection between the articulating or auditory centres, on the one hand, and the visual centres on the other, be ruptured L T. r. R.N. L.O.S L 0.0 FIQ. 15.— Scheme of the mechanism of vision, after Seguin. The cuneus convolution (0u) of the right occipital lobe is supposed to be injured, and all the parts which lead to it are darkly shaded to show that they fail to exert their function. F O are the intra-hemispheric optical fibres. P. O. C. is the region of the lower optic cen tres (corpora geuiculata and quadrigemina). T. O. D. is the right optic tract- C the chiasma; F. L. D. are the fibres going to the lateral or temporal half 2' of the rteht retina; and F. C. 8 are those going to the central or nasal half of the left retina O. D. is the right, and O. S. the left eyeball. The rightward half of each is there fore blind: in other words, the right nasal field, R. N. F., and the left temporal field L. T. F., have become invisible to the subject with the lesion at Cu. we ought a priori to expect that the sight of words would fail to awaken the idea of their sound, or the movement for pronouncing them. We ought, in short, to have alexia, or inability to read : and this is just what we do have in many 50 PSYCHOLOGY. cases of extensive injury about the fronto-teinporal regions, as a complication of aphasic disease. Nothnagel suggests that whilst the cuneus is the seat of optical sensations, the other parts of the occipital lobe may be the field of optical memories and ideas, from the loss of which mental blind ness should ensue. In fact, all the medical authors speak of mental blindness as if it must consist in the loss of visual images from the memory. It seems to me, however, that this is a psychological misapprehension. A man whose power of visual imagination has decayed (no unusual phe nomenon in its lighter grades) is not mentally blind in the least, for he recognizes perfectly all that he sees. On the other hand, he may be mentally blind, with his optical imagination well preserved ; as in the interesting case pub lished by Wilbrand in 1887.* In the still more interest ing case of mental blindness recently published by Lissauer,t though the patient made the most ludicrous mistakes, call ing for instance a clothes-brush a pair of spectacles, an um brella a plant with flowers, an apple a portrait of a lady, etc. etc., he seemed, according to the reporter, to have his men tal images fairly well preserved. It is in fact the momen tary loss of our wow-optical images which makes us mentally blind, just as it is that of our wow-auditory images which makes us mentally deaf. I am mentally deaf if, hearing a bell, I can't recall how it looks; and mentally blind if, see ing it, I can't recall its sound or its name. As a matter of fact, I should have to be not merely mentally blind, but stone-blind, if all my visual images were lost. For although I am blind to the right half of the field of view if my left occipital region is injured, and to the left half if my right region is injured, such hemianopsia does not deprive me of visual images, experience seeming to show that the unaffected hemisphere is always sufficient for pro duction of these. To abolish them entirely I should have to be deprived of both occipital lobes, and that would de prive me not only of my inward images of sight, but of my ^ * Die Seelenblindheit, etc., p. 51 ff. The mental blindness was in this woman's case moderate in degree. t Archiv f. Psychiatric, vol. 21, p. 222. FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 51 sight altogether.* Kecent pathological annals seem to offer a few such cases. t Meanwhile there are a number of cases of mental blindness, especially for written language, coupled with hemianopsia, usually of the rightward field of view. These are all explicable by the breaking down, through disease, of the connecting tracts between the occipital lobes and other parts of the brain, especially those which go to the centres for speech in the frontal and temporal regions of the left hemisphere. They are to be classed among distur bances of conduction or of association ; and nowhere can I find any fact which should force us to believe that optical images needj be lost in mental blindness, or that the cerebral centres for such images are locally distinct from those for direct sensations from the eyes. § Where an object fails to be recognized by sight, it often happens that the patient will recognize and name it as soon as he touches it with his hand. This shows in an interest- * Nothnagel (loc. cit. p. 22) says : " Dies trifft aber niclitzu." He gives, however, no case in support of his opinion that double-sided cortical lesion may make one stone-blind and yet not destroy one's visual images ; so that I do not know whether it is an observation of fact or an a priori as sumption. f In a case published by C. S. Freund : Archiv f. Psychiatric, vol. xx, the occipital lobes were injured, but their cortex was not destroyed, on both sides. There was still vision. Of. pp. 291-5. \ I say ' need, ' for I do not of course deny the possible coexistence of the two symptoms. Many a brain-lesion might block optical associations and at the same time impair optical imagination, without entirely stopping vision. Such a case seems to have been the remarkable one from Charcot which I shall give rather fully in the chapter on Imagination. § Freund (in the article cited above ' Ueber optZsche Aphasie und Seelenblindheit ') and Bruns (' Ein Fall von Alexie,' etc., in the Neuro- logisches Centralblatt for 1888, pp. 581, 509) explain their cases by broken- down conduction. Wilbraud, whose painstaking monograph on mental blindness was referred to a moment ago, gives none but a priori reasons for his belief that the optical 'Erinnerungsfeld ' must be locally distinct from the Wahrnehmungsfeld (cf. pp. 84, 93). The a priori reasons are really the other way. Mauthner (' Gehirn u. Auge ' (1881), p. 487 ff.) tries to show that the ' mental blindness' of Muuk's dogs and apes after occipital mutila tion was not such, but real dimness of sight. The best case of mental blindness yet reported is that by Lissauer, as above. The reader will also do well to read Bernard : De 1'Aphasie (1885) chap, v; Ballet : Le Laugage Interieur (1886), chap, vin ; and Jas. Koss's little book on Aphasia (1887). p. 74 52 PSYCHOLOGY. ing way how numerous the associative paths are which all end by running out of the brain through the channel of speech. The hand-path is open, though the eye-path be closed. When mental blindness is most complete, neither sight, touch, nor sound avails to steer the patient, and a sort of dementia which has been called asymbolia or apraxia is the result. The commonest articles are not understood. The patient will put his breeches on one shoulder and his hat upon the other, will bite into the soap and lay his shoes on the table, or take his food into his hand and throw it down again, not knowing what to do with it, etc. Such dis order can only come from extensive brain-injury.* The method of degeneration corroborates the other evi dence localizing the tracts of vision. In young animals one gets secondary degeneration of the occipital regions from destroying an eyeball, and, vice versa, degeneration of the optic nerves from destroying the occipital regions. The corpora geniculata, thalami, and subcortical fibres leading to the occipital lobes are also found atrophied in these cases. The phenomena are not uniform, but are indispu table ; f so that, taking all lines of evidence together, the special connection of vision with the occipital lobes is per fectly made out. It should be added that the occipital lobes have frequently been found shrunken in cases of in veterate blindness in man. Hearing. Hearing is hardly as definitely localized as sight. In the dog, Luciani's diagram will show the regions which directly or indirectly affect it for the worse when injured. As with sight, one-sided lesions produce symptoms on both sides. The mixture of black dots and gray dots in the diagram is meant to represent this mixture of ' crossed ' and ' uncrossed ' con nections, though of course no topographical exactitude is aimed at. Of all the region, the temporal lobe is the most important part ; yet permanent absolute deafness did not * For a case see Wernicke's Lelirb. d. Gehirnkrankhciten vol n p 554 (1881). f The latest account of them is the paper ' Uber die optischen Cenlren Bahnen' by von Monakow in the Archiv fur Psychiatric, vol. xx. p. 714. FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 53 result in a dog of Luciani's, even from bilateral destruction of both temporal lobes in their entirety. * In the monkey, Ferrier and Yeo once found permanent deafness to follow destruction of the upper temporal con volution (the one just below the fissure of Sylvius in Fig. FIG. 16.— Luciani's Hearing Region. 6) on both sides. Brown and Schaefer found, on the con trary, that in several monkeys this operation failed to notice ably affect the hearing. In one animal, indeed, both entire temporal lobes were destroyed. After a week or two of depression of the mental faculties this beast recovered and became one of the brightest monkeys possible, domineering over all his mates, and admitted by all who saw him to have all his senses, including hearing, 'perfectly acute.' f Terrible recriminations have, as usual, ensued between the investigators, Ferrier denying that Brown and Schaefer's ablations were complete, J Schaefer that Ferrier's monkey was really deaf.§ In this unsatisfactory condition the sub ject must be left, although there seems no reason to doubt that Brown and Schaefer's observation is the more important of the two. In man the temporal lobe is unquestionably the seat of the hearing function, and the superior convolution adjacent to the sylvian fissure is its most important part. The phe nomena of aphasia show this. We studied motor aphasia a few pages back ; we must now consider sensory aphasia. * Die Functions-Localization, etc., Dog X; see also p. 161. f Philos. Trans., vol. 179, p. 312. $ Brain, vol. xi. p. 10. § Ibid. p. 147 54 PSYCHOLOGY. Our knowledge of this disease has had three stages : we may talk of the period of Broca, the period of Wernicke, and the period of Charcot. What Broca's discovery was we have seen. Wernicke was the first to discriminate those cases in which the patient can not even understand speech from those in which he can understand, only not talk ; and to ascribe the former condition to lesion of the temporal lobe.* The condition in question is word-deafness, and the disease is auditory aphasia. The latest statistical survey of the subject is that by Dr. Allen Starr, f In the seven cases oipure word-deafness which he has collected, cases in which the patient could read, talk, and write, but not understand what was said to him, the lesion was limited to the first and second temporal convolutions in their posterior two thirds. The lesion (in right-handed, i.e. left-brained, persons) is always on the left side, like the lesion in motor aphasia. Crude hearing would not be abolished, even were the left centre for it utterly destroyed ; the right centre would still provide for that. But the linguistic use of hearing appears bound up with the integrity of the left centre more or less exclusively. Here it must be that words heard enter into association with the things which they represent, on the one hand, and with the movements necessary for pronouncing them, on the other. In a large majority of Dr. Starr's fifty cases, the power either to name objects or to talk coherently was impaired. This shows that in most of us (as Wernicke said) speech must go on from auditory cues ; that is, it must be that our ideas do not innervate our motor centres directly, but only after first arousing the mental sound of the words. This is the immediate stimulus to articulation ; and where the possibility of this is abolished by the de struction of its usual channel in the left temporal lobe, the articulation must suffer. In the few cases in which the channel is abolished with no bad effect on speech we must suppose an idiosyncrasy. The patient must innervate his speech-organs either from the corresponding portion of the other hemisphere or directly from the centres of ideation, * Der aphasische Symptomencomplex (1874). See in Fig. 11 the con volution marked WERNICKE. f 'The Pathology of Sensory Aphasia,' 'Brain/ July, 1889. FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 55 those, namely, of vision, touch, etc., without leaning on the auditory region. It is the minuter analysis of the facts in the light of such individual differences as these which con stitutes Charcot's contribution towards clearing up the subject. Every namable thing, act, or relation has numerous properties, qualities, or aspects. In our minds the proper ties of each thing, together with its name, form an associated group. If different parts of the brain are severally con cerned with the several properties, and a farther part with the hearing, and still another with the uttering, of the name, there must inevitably be brought about (through the law of association which we shall later study) such a dynamic connec tion amongst all these brain-parts that the activity of any one of them wiJl be likely to awaken the activity of all the rest. When we are talking as we think, the ultimate process is that of utterance. If the brain-part for that be injured, speech is impossible or disorderly, even though all the other brain- parts be intact : and this is just the condition of things which, on page 37, we found to be brought about by limited lesion of the left inferior frontal convolution. But back of that last act various orders of succession are possible in the associations of a talking man's ideas. The more usual order seems to be from the tactile, visual, or other properties of the things thought-about to the sound of their names, and then to the latter's utterance. But if in a certain individual the thought of the look of an object or of the look of its printed name be the process which habitually precedes articulation, then the loss of the hearing centre will pro tanto not affect that individual's speech. He will be mentally deaf, i.e. his understanding of speech will suffer, but he will not be aphasic. In this way it is possible to explain the seven cases of pure word-deaf ness which figure in Dr. Starr's table. If this order of association be ingrained and habitual in that individual, injury to his visucd centres will make him not only word- blind, but aphasic as well. His speech will become confused in consequence of an occipital lesion. Naunyn, consequently, plotting out on a diagram of the hemisphere the 71 irreproachably reported cases of 56 PSYCHOLOGY. aphasia which he was able to collect, finds that the lesions concentrate themselves in three places : first, on Broca's centre ; second, on Wernicke's ; third, on the supra-marginal and angular gyri under which those fibres pass which con nect the visual centres with the rest of the brain* (see Fig. 17). With this result Dr. Starr's analysis of purely sensory cases agrees. Pio. li. In a later chapter we shall again return to these differences in the effectiveness of the sensory spheres in different individuals. Meanwhile few things show more beautifully than the history of our knowledge of aphasia how the sagacity and patience of many banded workers are in time certain to analyze the darkest confusion into an orderly display. f There is no ' centre of Speech' in the brain any more than there is a faculty of Speech in the mind. The entire brain, more or less, is at work in a man who uses language. The subjoined diagram, from Koss, shows the four parts most critically concerned, and, in the light of our text, needs no farther explanation (see Fig. 18). *Nothnagel und Naunyn : op. eit., plates. f Ballet's and Bernard's works cited on p. 51 are the most accessible documents of Charcot's school. Bastian's book on the Brain as an Organ of Mind (last three chapters) is also good. FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. Smell. Everything conspires to point to the median descending part of the temporal lobes as being the organs of smell. Even Terrier and Munk agree on the hippocampal gyrus, Fia. 18. though Ferrier restricts olfaction, as Munk does not, to the lobule or uncinate process of the convolution, reserving the rest of it for touch. Anatomy and pathology also point to the hippocampal gyrus ; but as the matter is less interest ing from the point of view of human psychology than were sight and hearing, I will say no more, but simply add LucianiandSeppili's diagram of the dog's smell-centre.* Of *For details, see Ferrier's 'Functions,' chap, ix. pt. m, and Chas. K. Mills : Transactions of Congress of American Physicians and Sur geons, 1888, vol. i. p. 278. 58 PSYCHOLOGY. Taste we know little that is definite. What little there is points to the lower temporal regions again. Consult Terrier as below. Touch. Interesting problems arise with regard to the seat of tactile and muscular sensibility. Hitzig, whose experiments on dogs' brains fifteen years ago opened the entire subject Fia. 19. — Luciani's Olfactory Region in the Dog. which we are discussing, ascribed the disorders of motility observed after ablations of the motor region to a loss of what he called muscular consciousness. The animals do not notice eccentric positions of their limbs, will stand with their legs crossed, with the affected paw resting on its back or hanging over a table's edge, etc.; and do not resist our bending and stretching of it as they resist with the un affected paw. Goltz, Munk, Schiff, Herzen, and others promptly ascertained an equal defect of cutaneous sensi bility to pain, touch, and cold. The paw is not withdrawn when pinched, remains standing in cold water, etc. Fer- rier meanwhile denied that there was any true anaesthesia produced by ablations in the motor zone, and explains the appearance of it as an effect of the sluggish motor responses of the affected side.* Munkf and Schiff J, on the * Functions of the Brain, chap. x. § 14. tUeber die Functionen d. Grosshirnrinde (1881), p. 50 JLezioni di Fisiologia sperirnentale sul sistema nervoso encefalico (1 73), p. 527 ff. Also 'Brain/ vol. ix. p. 298. FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 69 contrary, conceive of the ' motor zone ' as essentially sen sory, and in different ways explain the motor disorders as secondary results of the anaesthesia which is always there, Munk calls the motor zone the Fiihlsphare of the animal's limbs, etc., and makes it coordinate with the Sehsphiire, the Horsphiire, etc., the entire cortex being, according to him, nothing but a projection-surface for sensations, with no exclusively or essentially motor part. Such a view would be important if true, through its bearings on the psychology of volition. What is the truth? As regards the fact of cutaneous anaesthesia from motor-zone ablationsv all other observers are against Ferrier, so that he is proba bly wrong in denying it. On the other hand, Munk and Schiff are wrong in making the motor symptoms depend on the anaesthesia, for in certain rare cases they have been observed to exist not only without insensibility, but with actual hypersesthesia of the parts.* The motor and sensory symptoms seem, therefore, to be independent variables. In monkeys the latest experiments are those of Horsley and Schaefer,f whose results Ferrier accepts. They find that excision of the hippocampal convolution produces tran sient insensibility of the opposite side of the body, and that permanent insensibility is produced by destruction of its continuation upwards above the corpus callosum, the so- called gyrus fornicatus (the part just below the ' calloso- marginal fissure ' in Fig. 7). The insensibility is at its maxi mum when the entire tract comprising both convolutions is destroyed. Ferrier says that the sensibility of monkeys is 'entirely unaffected' by ablations of the motor zone,J and Horsley and Schaefer consider it by no means necessarily *Bechterew (Pfluger's Archiv., vol. 35, p. 137) found no anaesthesia in a cat with motor symptoms from ablation of sigmoid gyrus. Luciani got hypersesthesia coexistent with cortical motor defect in a dog, by simulta neously hemisecting the spinal cord (Luciani u. Seppili, op. cit. p. 234). Goltz frequently found hyperaesthesia of the whole body to accompany motor defect after ablation of both frontal lobes, and he once found it after ablating the motor zone (Pfliiger's Archiv, vol. 34, p. 471). f Philos. Transactions, vol. 179, p. 20 ff. | Functions, p. 375, 60 PSYCHOLOGY. abolished.* Luciani found it diminished in his three ex periments on apes.f In man we have the fact that one-sided paralysis from disease of the opposite motor zone may or may not be accompanied with anaesthesia of the parts. Luciani, who FIG. 20.— Luciani's Tactile Region in the Dog. believes that the motor zone is also sensory, tries to minim ize the value of this evidence by pointing to the insufficiency with which patients are examined. He himself believes that in dogs the tactile sphere extends backwards and forwards of the directly excitable region, into the frontal and parietal lobes (see Fig. 20). Nothnagel considers that pathological evidence points in the same direction ; ;£ and Dr. Mills, care fully reviewing the evidence, adds the gyri fornicatus and hippocampi to the cutaneo-muscular region in man.§ If one compare Luciani's diagrams together (Figs. 14, 16, 19, 20) one will see that the entire parietal region of the dog's skull is common to the four senses of sight, hearing, smell, and touch, including muscular feeling. The corresponding re gion in the human brain (upper parietal and supra-marginal gyri — see Fig. 17, p. 56) seems to be a somewhat similar place of conflux. Optical aphasias and motor and tactile disturbances all result from its injury, especially when that is on the left side.ll The lower we go in the animal scale the * Pp. 15-17. f Luciani u. Seppili, op. cit. pp. 275-288. t Op. cit. p. 18. § Trans, of Congress, etc., p. 272. j See Exner's Unters. lib. Localization, plate xxv. FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 61 less differentiated the functions of the several brain-parts seem to be.* It may be that the region in question still represents in ourselves something like this primitive condi tion, and that the surrounding parts, in adapting themselves more and more to specialized and narrow functions, have left it as a sort of carrefour through which they send cur rents and converse. That it should be connected with musculo-cutaneous feeling is, however, no reason why the motor zone proper should not be so connected too. And the cases of paralysis from the motor zone with no accom panying anaesthesia may be explicable without denying all sensory function to that region. For, as my colleague Dr. James Putnam informs me, sensibility is always harder to kill than motility, even where we know for a certainty that the lesion affects tracts that are both sensory and motor. Persons whose hand is paralyzed in its movements from compression of arm-nerves during sleep, still feel with their fingers ; and they may still feel in their feet when their legs are paralyzed by bruising of the spinal cord. In a simi lar way, the motor cortex might be sensitive as well as motor, and yet by this greater subtlety (or whatever the peculiarity may be) in the sensory currents, the sensibility might survive an amount of injury there by which the motility was destroyed. Nothnagel considers that there are grounds for supposing the muscular sense to be exclusively connected with the parietal lobe and not with the motor zone. " Disease of this lobe gives pure ataxy without palsy, and of the motor zone pure palsy without loss of muscular sense." f He fails, however, to convince more competent critics than the present writer,:]: so I conclude with them that as yet we have no decisive grounds for locating muscular and cutaneous feeling apart. Much still remains to be learned about the relations between musculo-cutaneous sensibility and the cortex, but one thing is certain: that neither the occipital, the forward frontal, nor the temporal lobes seem to have anything essential to do with it in man. * Cf. Ferrier's Functions, etc., chap, iv and chap, x, §§ 6 to 9. f Op. cit. p. 17. \ E.g. Starr, loc. cit. p 272; Leyden, Beitrilge zur Lehre v. d. Localiza tion im Gehirn (1888), p. 72. 62 PSYCHOLOGY. It is knit up with the performances of the motor zone and of the convolutions backwards and midtvards of them. The reader must remember this conclusion when we come tc the chapter on the Will. I must add a word about the connection of aphasia with the tactile sense. On p. 40 I spoke of those cases in which the patient can write but not read his own writ ing. He cannot read by his eyes ; but he can read by the feeling in his fingers, if he retrace the letters in the air. It is convenient for such a patient to have a pen in hand whilst reading in this way, in order to make the usual feel ing of writing more complete.* In such a case we must suppose that the path between the optical and the graphic centres remains open, whilst that between the optical and the auditory and articulatory centres is closed. Only thus can we understand how the look of the writing should fail to suggest the sound of the words to the patient's mind, whilst it still suggests the proper movements of graphic imitation. These movements in their turn must of course be felt, and the feeling of them must be associated with the centres for hearing and pronouncing the words. The injury in cases like this where very special combinations fail, whilst others go on as usual, must always be supposed to be of the nature of increased resistance to the passage of certain currents of association. If any of the elements of mental function were destroyed the incapacity would necessarily be much more formidable. A patient who can both read and write with his fingers most likely uses an identical ' graphic ' centre, at once sensory and motor, for both operations. I have now given, as far as the nature of this book will allow, a complete account of the present state of the locali zation-question. In its main outlines it stands firm, though much has still to be discovered. The anterior frontal lobes, for example, so far as is yet known, have no definite functions. G-oltz finds that dogs bereft of them both are incessantly in motion, and excitable by every small stimulus. They are * Bernard, op. cit. p. 84. FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 63 kascible and amative in an extraordinary degree, and their sides grow bare with perpetual reflex scratching ; but they show no local troubles of either motion or sensibility. In monkeys not even this lack of inhibitory ability is shown, and neither stimulation nor excision of the prefrontal lobes produces any symptoms whatever. One monkey of Horsley and Schaefer's was as tame, and did certain tricks as well after as before the operation.* It is probable that we have about reached the limits of what can be learned about brain- functions from vivisecting inferior animals, and that we must hereafter look more exclusively to human pathology for light. The existence of separate speech and writing centres in the left hemisphere in man ; the fact that palsy from cortical injury is so much more complete and endur ing in man and the monkey than in dogs ; and the farther fact that it seems more difficult to get complete sensorial blindness from cortical ablations in the lower animals than in man, all show that functions get more specially local ized as evolution goes on. In birds localization seems hardly to exist, and in rodents it is much less conspicuous than in carnivora. Even for man, however, Munk's way of mapping out the cortex into absolute areas within which only one movement or sensation is represented is surely false. The truth seems to be rather that, although there is a correspondence of certain regions of the brain to certain regions of the body, yet the several parts within each bodily region are represented throughout the whole of the corre sponding brain-region like pepper and salt sprinkled from the same caster. This, however, does not prevent each ' part ' from having its focus at one spot within the brain- region. The various brain-regions merge into each other in the same mixed way. As Mr. Horsley says : " There are border centres, and the area of representation of the face merges into that for the representation of the upper limb. If there was a focal lesion at that point, you would have the movements of these two parts starting together." f * Philos. Trans., vol. 179, p. 3. f Trans, of Congress of Am. Phys. and Surg. 1888, vol. i. p. 343. Beevor and Horsley's paper on electric stimulation of the monkey's bruin is the most beautiful work yet done for precision. See Phil. Trans., vol. 179, p. 205, especially the plates. 64 PSYCHOLOGY. The accompanying figure from Paneth shows just how the matter stands in the dog.* I am speaking now of localiza tions breadthwise over the brain- surface. It is conceivable that there might be also localizations depthwise through the cortex. The more superficial cells are smaller, the deepest layer of them is large ; and it has been suggested that the superficial cells are sensorial, the deeper ones motor ;f or that the superficial ones in the motor region are correlated with the extremities of the organs to be moved (fingers, etc.), the deeper ones with the more central segments (wrist, elbow, etc.). J It need hardly be said that all such theories are as yet but guesses. We thus see that the postulate of Meynert and Jackson which we started with en p. 30 is on the whole most satisfactorily corroborated by subsequent objective research. The highest centres do probably FIG. 21. -Dog's motor centres, right contain nothing but arrangements hemisphere, according to Paneth. y —The points of the motor region for representing impressions and are correlated as follows with-' " " * mnscies: the loops with the orbi- movements, and other arrangements culans palpebrarum; the plain . * crosses twith the flexor, the crosses for coupling the activity O/ these inscribed in circles with the ex- J Jf "V ^ tensor, digitorum communis of arrangements together. § Currents the fore-paw; the plain circles ° with the abductor poiiicis pouring in from the sense-organs longus; the doutle crosses with r 3 the extensor communis of the first excite some arrangements, hind-limb. * Pfltiger's Archiv, vol. 37, p. 523 (1885). f By Lays in his generally preposterous book ' The Brain' ; also by Horsley. \ C. Mercier : The Nervous System and the Mind, p. 124. § The frontal lobes as yet remain a puzzle. Wundt tries to explain them as an organ of 'apperception' (Grundzuge d. Pbysiologischen Psychologic, 3d ed.. vol. i. p. 233 If.), but 1 confess myself unable to appre hend clearly the Wundtian philosophy so far as this word enters into it. se must be contented with this bare reference.— Until quite recently it wae FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 65 which in turn excite others, until at last a motor discharge downwards of some sort occurs. When this is once clearly grasped there remains little ground for keeping up that old controversy about the motor zone, as to whether it is in reality motor or sensitive. The whole cortex, inasmuch as currents run through it, is both. All the currents probably have feelings going with them, and sooner or later bring movements about. In one aspect, then, every centre is afferent, in another efferent, even the motor cells of the spinal cord having these two aspects insepara bly conjoined. Marique,* and Exner and Panethf have shown that by cutting round a ' motor ' centre and so sepa rating it from the influence of the rest of the cortex, the same disorders are produced as by cutting it out, so that really it is only the mouth of the funnel, as it were, through which the stream of innervation, starting from else where, pours ; J consciousness accompanying the stream, and being mainly of things seen if the stream is strongest occipitally, of things heard if it is strongest temporally, of things felt, etc., if the stream occupies most intensely the 'motor zone.' It seems to me that some broad and vague formulation like this is as much as we can safely venture on in the present state of science ; and in subsequent chapters I expect to give confirmatory reasons for my view. MAN'S CONSCIOUSNESS LIMITED TO THE HEMISPHEBES. But is the consciousness which accompanies the activity of the cortex the only consciousness that man has ? or are his lower centres conscious as well ? This, is a difficult question to decide, how difficult one only learns when one discovers that the cortex-conscious ness itself of certain objects can be seemingly annihilated in any good hypnotic subject by a bare wave of his opera- common to talk of an ' ideational centre ' as of something distinct from the aggregate of other centres. Fortunately this custom is already on the wane. * Rech. Exp. sur le Fonctionnement des Centres Psycho-moteurs (Brus sels, 1885). f Ptiiiger's Archiv, vol. 44, p. 544. \ I ought to add, however, that Fra^ois-Franck (Fonctious Motrices, p. 370) got, in two dogs and a cat, a different result from this sort of ' cir fjumvallation."' 66 PSYCHOLOGY. tor's hand, and yet be proved by circumstantial evidence to exist all the while in a split-off condition, quite as ' ejective ' * to the rest of the subject's mind as that mind is to the mind of the bystanders, f The lower centres themselves may conceivably all the while have a split-off consciousness of their own, similarly ejective to the cortex-consciousness; but whether they have it or not can never be known from merely introspective evidence. Meanwhile the fact that occipital destruction in man may cause a blindness which is apparently absolute (no feeling remaining either of light or dark over one half of the field of view), would lead us to suppose that if our lower optical centres, the corpora quadrigemina, and thalami, do have any consciousness, it is at all events a consciousness which does not mix with that which accompanies the cortical activities, and which has nothing to do with our personal Self. In lower animals this may not be so much the case. The traces of sight found (supra, p. 46) in dogs and monkeys whose occip ital lobes were entirely destroyed, may possibly have been due to the fact that the lower centres of these animals saw, and that what they saw was not ejective but objective to the remaining cortex, i.e. it formed part of one and the same inner world with the things which that cortex per ceived. It may be, however, that the phenomena were due to the fact that in these animals the cortical ' centres ' for vision reach outside of the occipital zone, and that destruc tion of the latter fails to remove them as completely as in man. This, as we know, is the opinion of the experiment ers themselves. For practical purposes, nevertheless, and limiting the meaning of the word consciousness to the per sonal self of the individual, we can pretty confidently answer the question prefixed to this paragraph by saying that the cortex is the sole organ of consciousness in man.$ If there * For this word, see T. K. Clifford's Lectures and Essays (1879), vol. n. p. 72. f See below, Chapter VIII. \ Cf. Ferrier's Functions, pp. 120, 147, 414. See also Vulpian: Le9ons sur la Physiol. du Syst. Nerveux, p. 548; Luciani u. Seppili, op. cit. pp. 404-5; H. Maudsley: Physiology of Mind (1876), pp. 138 ff., 197 ff., and 241 ff. In G. H. Lewes's Physical Basis of Mind, Problem IV: ' The Reflex Theory/ a very full history of the question is given. FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 67 be any consciousness pertaining to the lower centres, it is a consciousness of which the self knows nothing. THE RESTITUTION OF FUNCTION". Another problem, not so metaphysical, remains. The most general and striking fact connected with cortical in jury is that of the restoration of function. Functions lost at first are after a few days or weeks restored. How are ive to understand this restitution ? Two theories are in the field : 1) Restitution is due to the vicarious action either of the rest of the cortex or of centres lower down, acquiring func tions which until then they had not performed ; 2) It is due to the remaining centres (whether cortical or 'lower') resuming functions which they had always had, but of which the wound had temporarily inhibited the exercise. This is the view of which Goltz and Brown- Sequard are the most distinguished defenders. Inhibition is a vera causa, of that there can be no doubt. The pneumogastric nerve inhibits the heart, the splanch nic inhibits the intestinal movements, and the superior laryngeal those of inspiration. The nerve-irritations which may inhibit the contraction of arterioles are innumerable, and reflex actions are often repressed by the simultaneous excitement of other sensory nerves. For all such facts the reader must consult the treatises on physiology. "What concerns us here is the inhibition exerted by different parts of ^ne nerve-centres, when irritated, on the activity of dis tant parts. The naccidity of a frog from ' shock,' for a, minute or so after his medulla oblongata is cut, is an in hibition from the seat of injury which quickly passes away. What is known as ' surgical shock ' (unconsciousness, pallor, dilatation of splanchnic blood-vessels, and general syncope and collapse) in the human subject is an inhibition which lasts a longer time. Goltz, Freusberg, and others, cutting the spinal cord in dogs, proved that there were functions inhibited still longer by the wound, but which re established themselves ultimately if the animal was kept alive. The lumbar region of the cord was thus found to contain independent vase-motor centres, centres for erec- 68 PSYCHOLOGY. tion, for control of the sphincters, etc., which could be excited to activity by tactile stimuli and as readily reinhib- ited by others simultaneously applied.* "We may therefore plausibly suppose that the rapid reappearance of motility, vision, etc., after their first disappearance in consequence of a cortical mutilation, is due to the passing off of inhibitions exerted by the irritated surface of the wound. The only question is whether all restorations of function must be explained in this one simple way, or whether some part of them may not be owing to the formation of entirely uew paths in the remaining centres, by which they become ' educated ' to duties which they did not originally possess. In favor of an indefinite extension of the inhibition theory facts may be cited such as the following : In dogs whose dis turbances due to cortical lesion have disappeared, they may in consequence of some inner or outer accident reappear in all their intensity for 24 hours or so and then disappear again, f In a dog made half blind by an operation, and then shut up in the dark, vision comes back just as quickly as in other similar dogs whose sight is exercised systematically every day4 A dog which has learned to beg before the operation recommences this practice quite spontaneously a week after a double-sided ablation of the motor zone.§ Occasionally, in a pigeon (or even, it is said, in a dog) we see the disturbances less marked immediately after the operation than they are half an hour later. | This would be impossible were they due to the subtraction of the organs which normally carried them on. Moreover the entire drift of recent physiological and pathological specu lation is towards enthroning inhibition as an ever-present and indispensable condition of orderly activity. We shall see how great is its importance, in the chapter on the "Will. Mr. Charles Mercier considers that no muscular contraction, once begun, would ever stop without it, short of exhaustion * Goltz : Pfltiger's Archiv, vol. 8, p. 460; Freusberg: ibid. vol. 10, p. 174 f Goltz : Verrichtungen des Grosshirns, p. 78. $ Loeb : Pfltiger's Archiv, vol. 89, p. 276. § Ibid. p. 289. || Schrader : ibid. vol. 44, p. 21& FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 69 of the system ; * and Brown-Sequard has for years been accumulating examples to show how far its influence ex tends, f Under these circumstances it seems as if error might more probably lie in curtailing its sphere too much than in stretching it too far as an explanation of the phenomena following cortical lesion. J On the other hand, if we admit no re-education of cen tres, we not only fly in the face of an a priori probability, but we find ourselves compelled by facts to suppose an almost incredible number of functions natively lodged in the centres below the thalami or even in those below the corpora quadrigemina. I will consider the a priori objection after first taking a look at the facts which I have in mind. They confront us the moment we ask ourselves just which are the parts ivhich perform the functions abolished by an operation after sufficient time has elapsed for restoration to occur ? The first observers thought that they must be the cor responding parts of the opposite or intact hemisphere. But as long ago as 1875 Carville and Duret tested this by cutting out the fore-leg-centre on one side, in a dog, and then, after waiting till restitution had occurred, cutting it out on the opposite side as well. Goltz and others have done the same thing. § If the opposite side were really the seat of the restored function, the original palsy should have appeared again and been permanent. But it did not appear at all ; there appeared only a palsy of the hitherto unaffected side. The next supposition is that the parts surrounding the cut-out region learn vicariously to perform its duties. But here, again, experiment seems to upset the hypothesis, so far as the motor zone goes at least ; for we may wait till motility has returned in the affected limb, and then both irritate the * The Nervous System and the Mind (1888), chaps, in, vi; also in Brain, vol. xi. p. 361. f Brown-Sequard has given a resume of his opinions in the Archives de Physiologic for Oct. 1889, 5rne. Serie, vol. I. p 751. \ Goltz first applied the inhibition theory to the brain in his ' Verrich- tungen des Grosshirns,' p. 39 ff. On the general philosophy of Inhibition the reader may consult Brunton's ' Pharmakology and Therapeutics,1 p. 154 ff., and also ' Nature/ vol. 27, p. 419 ff. § E.g. Herzen, Herman u. Schwalbe's Jahres-bericht for 1886, PhysioL AJbth. p. 38. (Experiments on new-born puppies.? 70 PSYCHOLOGY. cortex surrounding the wound without exciting the limb to movement, and ablate it, without bringing back the vanished palsy.* It would accordingly seem that the cere bral centres below the cortex must be the seat of the regained activities. But Goltz destroyed a dog's entire left hemi sphere, together with the corpus striatum and the thalamus on that side, and kept him alive until a surprisingly small amount of motor and tactile disturbance remained.t These centres cannot here have accounted for the restitution. He has even, as it would appear, J ablated both the hemispheres of a dog, and kept him alive 51 days, able to walk and stand. The corpora striata and thalami in this dog were also prac tically gone. In view of such results we seem driven, with M. Francois-Franck,§ to fall back on the ganglia lower still, or even on the spinal cord as the ' vicarious ' organ of which we are in quest. If the abeyance of function between the operation and the restoration was due exclusively to inhibi tion, then we must suppose these lowest centres to be in reality extremely accomplished organs. They must always have done what we now find them doing after function is restored, even when the hemispheres were intact. Of course this is conceivably the case ; yet it does not seem very plausible. And the a priori considerations which a moment since I said I should urge, make it less plausible still. For, in the first place, the brain is essentially a place of currents, which run in organized paths. Loss of function can only mean one of two things, either that a current can no longer run in, or that if it runs in, it can no longer run out, by its old path. Either of these inabilities may come from a local ablation; and ' restitution ' can then only mean that, in spite of a temporary block, an inrunning current has at last become enabled to flow out by its old path again — e.g., the sound of ' give your paw ' discharges after some * Fran9ois-Franck : op. cit. p. 382. Results are somewhat contradictory. t Pfluger's Archiv, vol. 42, p. 419. j Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1889, p. 372. § Op. cit. p. 387. See pp. 378 to 388 for a discussion of the whole question. Compare also Wundt's Physiol. Psych., 3d ed., i. 225 ff., and Luciani u. Seppili, pp. 243, 293. FUNCTIONS OP THE BRAIN. 71 weeks into the same canine muscles into which it used to discharge before the operation. As far as the cortex itself goes, since one of the purposes for which it actually exists is the production of new paths/ the only question before us is : Is the formation of these particular ' vicarious ' paths too much to expect of its plastic powers ? It would cer tainly be too much to expect that a hemisphere should receive currents from optic fibres whose arriving -place with in it is destroyed, or that it should discharge into fibres of the pyramidal strand if their place of exit is broken down. Such lesions as these must be irreparable ivithin that hemisphere. Yet even then, through the other hemisphere, the corpus callosum, and the bilateral connections in the spinal cord, one can imagine some road by which the old muscles might eventually be innervated by the same in coming currents which innervated them before the block. And for all minor interruptions, not involving the arriving- place of the 'cortico-petal' or the place of exit of the 'cortico- fugal ' fibres, roundabout paths of some sort through the affected hemisphere itself must exist, for every point of it is, remotely at least, in potential communication with every other point. The normal paths are only paths of least resistance. If they get blocked or cut, paths formerly more resistant become the least resistant paths under the changed conditions. It must never be forgotten that a current that runs in has got to run out somewhere ; and if it only once succeeds by accident in striking into its old place of exit again, the thrill of satisfaction which the consciousness connected with the whole residual brain then receives wil] reinforce and fix the paths of that moment and make them more likely to be struck into again. The resultant feeling that the old habitual act is at last successfully back again, becomes itself a new stimulus which stamps all the exist ing currents in. It is matter of experience that such feel ings of successful achievement do tend to fix in our memory whatever processes have led to them ; and we shall have * The Chapters on Habit, Association, Memory, and Perception will change our present preliminary conjecture that that is one of its essential uses, into an unshakable conviction. 72 PSYCHOLOGY. a good deal more to say upon the subject when we come to the Chapter on the Will. My conclusion then is this : that some of the restitution of function (especially where the cortical lesion is not too great) is probably due to genuinely vicarious function on the p'irt of the centres that remain ; whilst some of it is due to the passing off of inhibitions. In other words, both the vicarious theory and the inhibition theory are true in their measure. But as for determining that measure, or saying which centres are vicarious, and to what extent they can learn new tricks, that is impossible at present. FINAL CORRECTION OP THE MEYNERT SCHEME. And now, after learning all these facts, what are we to think of the child and the candle-flame, and of that scheme which provisionally imposed itself on our acceptance after surveying the actions of the frog ? (Cf. pp. 25-6, supra.) It will be remembered that we then considered the lower cen tres en masse as machines for responding to present sense- impressions exclusively, and the hemispheres as equally exclusive organs oi action from inward considerations or ideas ; and that, following Meynert, we supposed the hemi spheres to have no native tendencies to determinate activity, but to be merely superadded organs for breaking up the various reflexes performed by the lower centres, and com bining their motor and sensory elements in novel ways. It will also be remembered that I prophesied that we should be obliged to soften down the sharpness of this distinction after we had completed our survey of the farther facts. The time has now come for that correction to be made. Wider and completer observations show us both that the lower centres are more spontaneous, and that the hemi spheres are more automatic, than the Meynert scheme allows. Schrader's observations in Goltz's Laboratory on hemisphereless frogs* and pigeons f give an idea quite different from the picture of these creatures which is classically current. Steiner's J observations on frogs * Pfltiger's Archiv, vol. 41, p. 75 (1887). \lbid., vol. 44, p. 175 (1889) % Untersuchuugeii liber die Physiologic des Froschhirns. 1885. FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 73 already went a good way in the same direction, showing, for example, that locomotion is a well-developed function of the medulla oblongata. But Schrader, by great care in the operation, and by keeping the frogs a long time alive, found that at least in some of them the spinal cord would produce movements of locomotion when the frog was smartly roused by a poke, and that swimming and croaking could sometimes be performed when nothing above the medulla oblongata remained.* Schrader's hemisphereless frogs moved spontaneously, ate flies, buried themselves in the ground, and in short did many things which before his observations were supposed to be impossible unless the hemispheres remained. Steinerf and Yulpian have re marked an even greater vivacity in fishes deprived of their hemispheres. Vulpian says of his brainless carps:): that three days after the operation one of them darted at food and at a knot tied on the end of a string, holding the latter so tight between his jaws that his head was drawn out of water. Later, "they see morsels of white of egg; the moment these sink through the water in front of them, they follow and seize them, sometimes after they are on the bottom, sometimes before they have reached it. In captur ing and swallowing this food they execute just the same movements as the intact carps which are in the same aqua rium. The only difference is that they seem to see them at less distance, seek them with less impetuosity and less per severance in all the points of the bottom of the aquarium, but they struggle (so to speak) sometimes with the sound carps to grasp the morsels. It is certain that they do not confound these bits of white of egg with other white bodies, small pebbles for example, which are at the bottom of the water. The same carp which, three days after operation, seized the knot on a piece of string, no longer snaps at it now, but if one brings it near her, she draws away from it by swimming backwards before it comes into contact with * LOG. cit. pp. 80, 82-3. Schrader also found a biting-rettex developed when the medulla oblongata is cut through just behind the cerebellum, f Berlin Akad. Sitzungsberichte for 1886. j Comptes Rendus, vol. 102, p. 90. 74 PSYCHOLOGY. her mouth."* Already on pp. 9-10, as the reader may re* member, we instanced those adaptations of conduct to ne^ conditions, on the part of the frog's spinal cord and thalami, which led Pfliiger and Lewes on the one hand and Goltz on the other to locate in these organs an intelligence akin to that of which the hemispheres are the seat. When it comes to birds deprived of their hemispheres, the evidence that some of their acts have conscious purpose behind them is quite as persuasive. In pigeons Schrader found that the state of somnolence lasted only three or four days, after which time the birds began indefatigably to walk about the room. They climbed out of boxes in which they were put, jumped over or flew up upon obstacles, and their sight was so perfect that neither in walking nor flying did they ever strike any object in the room. They had also definite ends or purposes, flying straight for more convenient perching places when made uncomfortable by movements imparted to those on which they stood ; and of several possible perches they always chose the most con venient. "If we give the dove the choice of a horizontal bar (Recti) or an equally distant table to fly to, she always gives decided preference to the table. Indeed she chooses the table even if it is several meters farther off than the bar or the chair." Placed on the back of a chair, she flies first to the seat and then to the floor, and in general " will for sake a high position, although it give her sufficiently firm support, and in order to reach the ground will make use of the environing objects as intermediate goals of flight, show ing a perfectly correct judgment of their distance. Although able to fly directly to the ground, she prefers to make the journey in successive stages. . . . Once on the ground, she hardly ever rises spontaneously into the air." f Young rabbits deprived of their hemispheres will stand, run, start at noises, avoid obstacles in their path, and give responsive cries of suffering when hurt. Eats will do the same, and throw themselves moreover into an attitude of defence. Dogs never survive such an operation if per formed at once. But Goltz's latest dog, mentioned on p. * Comptes Rendus de 1'Acad. d. Sciences, vol. 102, p. 1530. f Loc. cit. p. 216. FUNCTIONS Of THE BRAIN. 75 70, which is said to have been kept alive for fifty-one days after both hemispheres had been removed by a series of ablations and the corpora striata and thalami had softened away, shows how much the mid-brain centres and the cord can do even in the canine species. Taken together, the number of reactions shown to exist in the lower centres by these observations make out a pretty good case for the Mey- nert scheme, as applied to these lower animals. That scheme demands hemispheres which shall be mere supple ments or organs of repetition, and in the light of these observations they obviously are so to a great extent. But the Meynert scheme also demands that the reactions of the lower centres shall all be native, and we are not absolutely sure that some of those which we have been considering may not have been acquired after the injury ; and it further more demands that they should be machine-like, whereas the expression of some of them makes us doubt whether they may not be guided by an intelligence of low degree. Even in the lower animals, then, there is reason to soften down that opposition between the hemispheres and the lower centres which the scheme demands. The hemi spheres may, it is true, only supplement the lower centres, but the latter resemble the former in nature and have some small amount at least of ' spontaneity ' and choice. But when we come to monkeys and man the scheme well-nigh breaks down altogether; for we find that the hemispheres do not simply repeat voluntarily actions which the lower centres perform as machines. There are many functions which the lower centres cannot by themselves perform at all. When the motor cortex is injured in a man or a monkey genuine paralysis ensues, which in man is incurable, and almost or quite equally so in the ape. Dr. Seguin knew a man with hemi-blindness, from cortical injury, which had persisted unaltered for twenty-three years. 'Traumatic inhibition' cannot possibly account for this. The blindness must have been an ' Ausfallser- scheinung,' due to the loss of vision's essential organ. It would seem, then, that in these higher creatures the lower centres must be less adequate than they are farther down in the zoological scale ; and that even for certain elementary 76 PSYCHOLOGY. combinations of movement and impression the co-operation of the hemispheres is necessary from the start. Even in birds and dogs the power of eating properly is lost when the frontal lobes are cut off.* The plain truth is that neither in man nor beast are the hemispheres the virgin organs which our scheme called them. So far from being unorganized at birth, they must have native tendencies to reaction of a determinate sort.f These are the tendencies which we know as emotions and instincts, and which we must study with some detail in later chapters of this book. Both instincts and emotions are reac tions upon special sorts of objects of perception; they de pend on the hemispheres ; and they are in the first instance reflex, that is, they take place the first time the exciting ob ject is met, are accompanied by no forethought or delibera tion, and are irresistible. But they are modifiable to a certain extent by experience, and on later occasions of meeting the exciting object, the instincts especially have less of the blind impulsive character which they had at first. All this will be explained at some length in Chapter XXIV. Meanwhile we can say that the multiplicity of emo tional and instinctive reactions in man, together with his extensive associative power, permit of extensive recouplings of the original sensory and motor partners. The conse quences of one instinctive reaction often prove to be the inciters of an opposite reaction, and being suggested on later occasions by the original object, may then suppress the first reaction altogether, just as in the case of the child and the flame. For this education the hemispheres do not need * Goltz: Ptiflger's Archiv, vol. 42, p. 447 ; Schrader: ibid. vol. 44, p. 219 ff . It is possible that this symptom may be an effect of traumatic inhibition, however. f A few years ago one of the strongest arguments for the theory that the hemispheres are purely supernumerary was Soltmann's often-quoted observation that in new-born puppies the motor zone of the cortex is not excitable by electricity and only becomes so in the course of a fortnight, presumably after the experiences of the lower centres have educated it to motor duties. Paneth's later observations, however, seem to show that Soltmann may have been misled through overnarcotizing his victims (Pfltiger's Archiv, vol. 37, p. 202). In the Neurologisches Centralblatt for 1889, p. 513, Bechterew returns to the subject on Soltmann's side with out, however, noticing Paneth's work. FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 77 to be tabulae rasce at first, as the Meynert scheme would have them ; and so far from their being educated by the lower centres exclusively, they educate themselves.* We have already noticed the absence of reactions from fear and hunger in the ordinary brainless frog. Schrader gives a striking account of the instinctless condition of his brainless pigeons, active as they were in the way of loco motion and voice. " The hemisphereless animal moves in a world of bodies which . . . are all of equal, value for him. . . . He is, to use Goltz's apt expression, impersonal . . . Every object is for him only a space-occupying mass, he turns out of his path for an ordinary pigeon no otherwise than for a stone. He may try to climb over both. All authors agree that they never found any difference, whether it was an in animate body, a cat, a dog, or a bird of prey which came in their pigeon's way. The creature knows neither friends nor enemies, in the thickest company it lives like a hermit. The languishing cooing of the male awakens no more im pression than the rattling of the peas, or the call-whistle which in the days before the injury used to make the birds hasten to be fed. Quite as little as the earlier observers have I seen hemisphereless she-birds answer the courting of the male. A hemisphereless male will coo all day long and show distinct signs of sexual excitement, but his activ ity is without any object, it is entirely indifferent to him whether the she-bird be there or not. If one is placed near him, he leaves her unnoticed. ... As the male pays no at tention to the female, so she pays none to her young. The brood may follow the mother ceaselessly calling for food, but they might as well ask it from a stone. . . . The hemi- * Milnsterberg (Die Willenshaudlung, 1888, p. 134) challenges Meynert's scheme in toto, saying that whilst we have in our personal experience plenty of examples of acts which were at first voluntary becoming second arily automatic and reflex, we have no conscious record of a single origi nally reflex act growing voluntary. — As far as conscious record is concerned, we could not possibly have it even if the Meynert scheme were wholly true, for the education of the hemispheres which that schesra postulates must in the nature of things antedate recollection. Bit it s^oa to me that Munsterberg's rejection of the scheme may pcsaibl/ be correct as regards reflexes from the lower centres. Everywhere in this department 0* P«v chogenesis we are made to feel how ignorant wt, really an,. 78 PSYCHOLOGY. Bphereless pigeon is in the highest degree tame, and fears man as little as cat or bird of prey." * Putting together now all the facts and reflections which we have been through, it seems to me that we can no longer hold strictly to the Meynert scheme. If anywhere, it will apply to the lowest animals ; but in them especially the lower centres seem to have a degree of spontaneity and choice. On the whole, I think that we are driven to sub stitute for it some such general conception as the following, which allows for zoological differences as we know them, and is vague and elastic enough to receive any number of future discoveries of detail. CONCLUSION. All the centres, in all animals, whilst they are in one aspect mechanisms, probably are, or at least once were, organs of consciousness in another, although the conscious ness is doubtless much more developed in the hemispheres than it is anywhere else. The consciousness must every where prefer some of the sensations which it gets to others ; and if it can remember these in their absence, however dimly, they must be its ends of desire. If, moreover, it can identify in memory any motor discharges which may have led to such ends, and associate the latter with them, then these motor discharges themselves may in turn become desired as means. This is the development of will ; and its realization must of course be proportional to the possible complication of the consciousness. Even the spinal cord may possibly have some little power of will in this sense, and of effort towards modified behavior in consequence of new experiences of sensibility, f * Pfltiger's Archiv, vol. 44, p. 230-1. f Naturally, as Schiff long ago pointed out (Lehrb. d. Muskel-u. Ner« venphysiologie, 1859, p. 213 ff.),the 'Riickenmarksseele,' if it now exist, can have no higher sense-consciousness, for its incoming currents are solely from the skin. But it may, in its dim way, both feel, prefer, and desire. See, for the view favorable to the text: G. H. Lewes, The Physiol ogy of Common Life (1860), chap. ix. Goltz (Nervencentren des Frosches 1869, pp. 102-130) thinks that the frog's cord has no adaptative power. This may be the case in such experiments as his, because the beheaded frog'a FUNCTIONS OF THE BRAIN. 79 All nervous centres have then in the first instance one essential function, that of 'intelligent' action. They feel, prefer one thing to another, and have 'ends.' Like all other organs, however, they evolve from ancestor to descend ant, and their evolution takes two directions, the lower centres passing downwards into more unhesitating autom atism, and the higher ones upwards into larger intellectu ality.* Thus it may happen that those functions which can safely grow uniform and fatal become least accompanied by mind, and that their organ, the spinal cord, becomes a more and more soulless machine; whilst on the contrary those functions which it benefits the animal to have adapted to delicate environing variations pass more and more to the hemispheres, whose anatomical structure and attendant consciousness grow more and more elaborate as zoological evolution proceeds. In this way it might come about that in man and the monkeys the basal ganglia should do fewer things by themselves than they can do in dogs, fewer in dogs than in rabbits, fewer in rabbits than in hawks, f fewer in hawks than in pigeons, fewer in pigeons than in frogs, fewer in frogs than in fishes, and that the hemispheres should correspondingly do more. This passage of functions for ward to the ever-enlarging hemispheres would be itself one of the evolutive changes, to be explained like the develop ment of the hemispheres themselves, either by fortunate variation or by inherited effects of use. The reflexes, on this view, upon which the education of our human hemi spheres depends, would not be due to the basal ganglia short span of life does not give it time to learn the new tricks asked for. But Rosenthal (Biologisches Centralblatt, vol. iv. p. 247) and Mendelssohn (Berlin Akad. Sitzuugsberichte, 1885, p. 107) in their investigations on the simple reflexes of the frog's cord, show that there is some adaptation to new conditions, inasmuch as when usual paths of conduction are interrupted by a cut, new paths are taken. According to Rosenthal, these grow more pervious (i.e. require a smaller stimulus) in proportion as they are more often traversed. * Whether this evolution takes place through the inheritance of habits acquired, or through the preservation of lucky variations, is an alternative which we need not discuss here. We shall consider it in the last chapter in the book. For our present purpose the modus operandi of the evolution makes no difference, provided it be admitted to occur. f See Schrader's Observations, loc. cit. 80 PSYCHOLOGY. alone. They would be tendencies in the hemispheres them* selves, modifiable by education, unlike the reflexes of the medulla oblongata, pons, optic lobes and spinal cord. Such cerebral reflexes, if they exist, form a basis quite as good as that which the Meynert scheme offers, for the acquisition of memories and associations which may later result in all sorts of ' changes of partners ' in the psychic world. The diagram of the baby and the candle (see page 25) can be re-edited, if need be, as an entirely cortical transaction. The original tendency to touch will be a cortical instinct ; the burn will leave an image in another part of the cortex, which, being recalled by association, will inhibit the touch ing tendency the next time the candle is perceived, and excite the tendency to withdraw — so that the retinal picture will, upon that next time, be coupled with the original motor partner of the pain. We thus get whatever psycho logical truth the Meynert scheme possesses without en tangling ourselves on a dubious anatomy and physiology. Some such shadowy view of the evolution of the centres, of the relation of consciousness to them, and of the hemi spheres to the other lobes, is, it seems to me, that in which it is safest to indulge. If it has no other advantage, it at any rate makes us realize how enormous are the gaps in our knowledge, the moment we try to cover the facts by any one formula of a general kind. CHAPTER III. ON SOME GENERAL CONDITIONS OF BRAIN-ACTIVITY. THE elementary properties of nerve-tissue on which the brain-functions depend are far from being satisfactorily made out. The scheme that suggests itself in the first instance to the mind, because it is so obvious, is certainly false: I mean the notion that each cell stands for an idea or part of an idea, and that the ideas are associated or 'bound into bundles' (to use a phrase of Locke's) by the fibres. If we make a symbolic diagram on a blackboard, of the laws of association between ideas, we are inevitably led to draw circles, or closed figures of some kind, and to connect them by lines. When we hear that the nerve-cen tres contain cells which send off fibres, we say that Nature has realized our diagram for us, and that the mechanical substratum of thought is plain. In some way, it is true, oui diagram must be realized in the brain ; but surely in no such visible and palpable way as we at first suppose.* An enormous number of the cellular bodies in the hemispheres are fibreless. Where fibres are sent off they soon divide into untraceable ramifications ; and nowhere do we see a simple coarse anatomical connection, like a line on the black board, between two cells. Too much anatomy has been found to order for theoretic purposes, even by the anat omists ; and the popular-science notions of cells and fibres are almost wholly wide of the truth. Let us therefore rele gate the subject of the intimate workings of the brain to * I shall myself in later places indulge in much of this schematization. The reader will understand once for all that it is symbolic; and that the use of it is hardly more than to show what a deep congruity there is between mental processes and mechanical processes of some kind, not necessarily p* the exact kind portrayed. 81 82 PSYCHOLOGY. the physiology of the future, save in respect to a few points of which a word must now be said. And first of THE SUMMATION OF STIMULI in the same nerve-tract. This is a property extremely im portant for the understanding of a great many phenomena of the neural, and consequently of the mental, life ; and it behooves us to gain a clear conception of what it means be fore we proceed any farther. The law is this, that a stimuli^ which itiould be inadequate by itself to excite a nerve-centre to effective discharge may, by acting ivith one or more other stimuli (equally ineffectual by themselves alone) bring the discharge about. The natural way to con sider this is as a summation of tensions which at last over come a resistance. The first of them produce a 'latent excitement ' or a ' heightened irritability ' — the phrase is immaterial so far as practical consequences go ; the last is the straw which breaks the camel's back. Where the neural process is one that has consciousness for its accom paniment, the final explosion would in all cases seem to involve a vivid state of feeling of a more or less substantive kind. But there is no ground for supposing that the ten sions whilst yet submaximal or outwardly ineffective, may not also have a share in determining the total conscious ness present in the individual at the time. In later chapters we shall see abundant reason to suppose that they do have such a share, and that without their contribution the fringe of relations which is at every moment a vital in gredient of the mind's object, would not come to conscious ness at all. The subject belongs too much to physiology for the evidence to be cited in detail in these pages. I will throw into a note a few references for such readers as may be in> terested in following it out,* and simply say that the direct * Valentin: Archiv f. d. gesanimt. Physiol., 1873, p. 458. Stirling: Leipzig Acad. Berichte, 1875, p. 372 (Journal of Physiol., 1875). J Ward : Archiv f. (Anut. u.) Physiol., 1880, p. 72. H. Sewall : Johns Hopkins Studies, 1880, p. 30. Kronecker u. Nicolaides : Archiv f. (Anat. u.) Physiol., 1880, p. 437. Exner : Archiv f. die ges. Physiol., Bd. 28, p. 487 (1882). Eckhard : in Hermann's Hdbch. d. Physiol., Bd. i/Thl.' u. p. 31. Frangors-Franck : Lecons sur les Fonctions tuotrices du Cer- GENERAL CONDITIONS OF BRAIN-ACTIVITY. 83 electrical irritation of the cortical centres sufficiently proves the point. For it was found by the earliest experimenters here that whereas it takes an exceedingly strong current to produce any movement when a single induction-shock is used, a rapid succession of induction-shocks (' faradiza tion ') will produce movements when the current is com paratively weak. A single quotation from an excellent investigation will exhibit this law under further aspects : " If wo continue to stimulate the cortex at short intervals with the strength of current which produces the minimal muscular contrac tion [of the dog's digital extensor muscle], the amount of contraction gradually increases till it reaches the maximum. Each earlier stimula tion leaves thus an effect behind it, which increases the efficacy of the following one. In this summation of the stimuli .... the following points may be noted : 1) Single stimuli entirely inefficacious when alone may become efficacious by sufficiently rapid reiteration. If the current used is very much less than that which provokes the first begin ning of contraction, a very large number of successive shocks may be needed before the movement appears — 20, 50, once 106 shocks were needed. 2) The summation takes place easily in proportion to the shortness of the interval between the stimuli. A current too weak to give effective summation when its shocks are 3 seconds apart will be capable of so doing when the interval is shortened to 1 second. 3) Not only electrical irritation leaves a modification which goes to swell the following stimulus, but every sort of irritant which can produce a contraction does so. If in any way a reflex contraction of the muscle experimented on has been produced, or if it is contracted spontaneously by the animal (as not unfrequently happens 'by sympathy,' during a deep inspiration), it is found that an electrical stimulus, until then inoperative, operates energetically if immediately applied." * Furthermore : "In a certain stage of the morphia-narcosis an ineffectively weak shock will become powerfully effective, if, immediately before its appli- veau, p. 51 ft'., 339.— For the process of summation in nerves and muscles, cf. Hermann: ibid. Thl. i. p. 109, and vol. i. p. 40. Also Wundt: Physiol. Psych. , i. 243 ff . ; Ricliet : Travaux du Laboratoire de Marey, 1877, p. 97 ; L'Homme et 1'Intelligence, pp. 24 ff., 468 ; Revue Philosophique, t. xxi. p. 564. Kronecker u. Hall: Archiv f. (Anat. u.) Physiol., 1879; Schoulein : ibid. 1882, p. 357. Sertoli (Hofinann and Schwalbe's Jahres- bericht, 1882. p. 25. De Watteville : Neurologisches Ceutralblatt, 1883, No. 7. Grilnhagen : Arch. f. d. ges. Physiol., Bd. 34, p. 301 (1884). *Bubnoff und Heidenhain : UeberErreguugs- uncl Hemmmigsvorgauge innerhalb der motorisclieii Hirucentren. Archiv f. d. ges. Physiol., Bd. 26, p. 156(1881). 84 PSYCHOLOGY. cation to the motor centre, the skin of certain parts of the body is exposed to gentle tactile stimulation. ... If, having ascertained the subminimal strength of current and convinced one's self repeatedly of its inefficacy, we draw our hand a single time lightly over the skin of the paw whose cortical centre is the object of stimulation, we find the cur rent at once strongly effective. The increase of irritability lasts some seconds before it disappears. Sometimes th 3 effect of a single light stroking of the paw is only sufficient to make the previously ineffectual current produce a very weak contraction. Repeating the tactile stimu lation will then, as a rule, increase the contraction's extent." * We constantly use the summation of stimuli in our practical appeals. If a car-horse balks, the final way of starting him is by applying a number of customary incite ments at once. If the driver uses reins and voice, if one bystander pulls at his head, another lashes his hind quarters, and the conductor rings the bell, and the dis mounted passengers shove the car, all at the same moment, his obstinacy generally yields, and he goes on his way re joicing. If we are striving to remember a lost name or fact, we think of as many ' cues ' as possible, so that by their joint action they may recall what no one of them can recall alone. The sight of a dead prey will often not stimulate a beast to pursuit, but if the sight of movement be added to that of form, pursuit occurs. " Briicke noted that his brain less hen, which made no attempt to peck at the grain under her very eyes, began pecking if the grain were thrown on the ground with force, so as to produce a rattling sound." t "Dr. Allen Thomson hatched out some chickens on a carpet, where he kept them for several days. They showed no in clination to scrape, . . . but when Dr. Thomson sprinkled a little gravel on the carpet, . . . the chickens immediately began their scraping movements." J A strange person, and darkness, are both of them stimuli to fear and mistrust in dogs (and for the matter of that, in men). Neither circum- * Archiv f. d. ges. Physiol., Bd. 26, p. 176 (1881). Exner thinks (ibid. Bd. 28, p. 497 (1882) ) that the summation here occurs in the spinal cord. It makes no difference where this particular summation occurs, so far as the general philosophy of summation ?oes. f G H. Lewes : Physical Basis of Mind, p. 479, where many similar examples are given, 487-9. t Romanes : Mental Evolution In Animals, p. 168. GENERAL CONDITIONS OF BRAIN- ACTIVITY. 85 stance alone may awaken outward manifestations, but to gether, i.e. when the strange man is met in the dark, the dog will be excited to violent defiance. * Street-hawkers well know the efficacy of summation, for they arrange themselves in a line upon the sidewalk, and the passer often buys from the last one of them, through the effect of the reiterated so licitation, what he refused to buy from the first in tne row. Aphasia shows many examples of summation. A patient who cannot name an object simply shown him, will name it if he touches as well as sees it, etc. Instances of summation might be multiplied indefinitely, but it is hardly worth while to forestall subsequent chapters. Those on Instinct, the Stream of Thought, Attention, Dis crimination, Association, Memory, ^Esthetics, and Will, will contain numerous exemplifications of the reach of the prin ciple in the purely psychological field. REACTION-TIME. One of the lines of experimental investigation most diligently followed of late years is that of the ascertain ment of the time occupied by nervous events. Helmholtz led off by discovering the rapidity of the current in the sciatic nerve of the frog. But the methods he used were soon applied to the sensory nerves and the centres, and the results caused much popular scientific admiration when described as measurements of the ' velocity of thought.' The phrase ' quick as thought ' had from time immemorial signified all that was wonderful and elusive of determina tion in the line of speed ; and the way in which Science laid her doomful hand upon this mystery reminded people of the day when Franklin first ' eripuit ccelo fulmen,' fore- * See a similar instance in Mach : Beitrage zur Analyse der Empfin- dungen, p. 36, a sparrow being the animal. My young children are afraid of their own pug-dog, if he enters their room after they are in bed and the lights are out. Compare this statement also : " The first question to a peasant seldom proves more than a flapper to rouse the torpid adjustments of his ears. The invariable answer of a Scottish peasant is, 'What's your wull? ' — that of the English, a vacant stare. A second and even a third question may be required to elicit an answer." (R. Fowler: Some Obser vations on the Mental State of the Blind, and Deaf, and Dumb (Salisbury, 1843), p. 14.) 86 PSYCHOLOGY. shadowing the reign of a newer and colder race of gods, We shall take up the various operations measured, each in the chapter to which it more naturally pertains. I may say, however, immediately, that the phrase ' velocity of thought ' is misleading, for it is by no means clear in any of the cases what particular act of thought occurs during the time which is measured. ' Velocity of nerve-action ' is liable to the same criticism, for in most cases we do not know what particular nerve-processes occur. What the times in question really represent is the total duration of certain reactions upon stimuli. Certain of the conditions of the reac tion are prepared beforehand ; they consist in the assump tion of those motor and sensory tensions which we name the expectant state. Just what happens during the actual time occupied by the reaction (in other words, just what is added to the pre-existent tensions to produce the actual discharge) is not made out at present, either from the neural or from the mental point of view. The method is essentially the same in all these investiga tions. A signal of some sort is communicated to the subject, and at the same instant records itself on a time-register ing apparatus. The subject then makes a muscular move ment of some sort, which is the * reaction,' and which also records itself automatically. The time found to have elapsed between the two records is the total time of that observation. The time-registering instruments are of various types. Signal. Reaction. J I Reaction- line Time-line. FIG. 21. One type is that of the revolving drum covered with smoLed paper, on which one electric pen traces a line which the signal breaks and the ( reaction ' draws again ; whilst another electric pen (connected with a pendulum or a rod of metal vibrating at a known rate) traces alongside of the former GENERAL CONDITIONS OF BRAIN- ACTIVITY. 87 line a ' time-line ' of which each undulation or link stands for a certain fraction of a second, and against which the break in the reaction-line can be measured. Compare Fig. 21, where the line is broken by the signal at the first arrow, and continued again by the reaction at the second. Ludwig's Kymograph, Marey's Chronograph are good ex amples of this type of instrument. Another type of instrument is represented by the stop watch, of which the most perfect form is Hipp's Chrono- scope. The hand on the dial measures intervals as short as j-fas of a second. The signal (by an appropriate electric FIG. 2-2.— Bowditeh's Reaction-timer. F, tuning-fork carrying a little plate which holds the paper on which the electric pen M makes the tracing, and sliding in grooves on the base-board. P, a plug which spreads the prongs of the fork apart when it is pushed forward to its extreme limit, and releases them when it is drawn back to a certain point. The fork then vibrates, and, its backward movement con tinuing, an undulating line is drawn on the smoked paper by the pen. At T is a tongue fixed to the carriage of the fork, and at K an electric key which the tongue opens and with which the electric pen is connected. At the instant of opening, the t>en changes its place and the undulating line is drawn at a different level on the paper. The opening can be made to serve as a signal to the reacter in a variety of ways, and his reaction can be made to close the pen again, when the line re turns to its first level. The reaction time = the number of undulations traced at the second level. connection) starts it ; the reaction stops it ; and by reading off its initial and terminal positions we have immediately and with no farther trouble the time we seek. A still simpler instrument, though one not very satisfactory in its working, is the ' psychodometer ' of Exner & Obersteiner, of which I picture a modification devised by my colleague Professor H. P. Bowditch, which works very well. The manner in which the signal and reaction are con nected with the chronographic apparatus varies indefinitely 88 PSYCHOLOGY. in different experiments. Every new problem requires some new electric or mechanical disposition of apparatus.* The least complicated time-measurement is that known as simple reaction-time, in which there is but one possible signal and one possible movement, and both are known in advance. The movement is generally the closing of an elec tric key with the hand. The foot, the jaw, the lips, even the eyelid, have been in turn made organs of reaction, and the apparatus has been modified accordingly, f The time usually elapsing between stimulus and movement lies be tween one and three tenths of a second, varying according to circumstances which will be mentioned anon. The subject of experiment, whenever the reactions are short and regular, is in a state of extreme tension, and feels, when the signal comes, as if it started the reaction, by a sort of fatality, and as if no psychic process of perception or volition had a chance to intervene. The whole succession is so rapid that perception seems to be retrospective, and the time-order of events to be read off in memory rather than known at the moment. This at least is my own per sonal experience in the matter, and with it I find others to agree. The question is, What happens inside of us, either in brain or mind ? and to answer that we must analyze just what processes the reaction involves. It is evident that some time is lost in each of the following stages : 1. The stimulus excites the peripheral sense-organ adequately for a current to pass into the sensory nerve ; 2. The sensory nerve is traversed ; 3. The transformation (or reflection) of the sensory into a motor current occurs in the centres ; 4. The spinal cord and motor nerve are traversed ; 5. The motor current excites the muscle to the contract ing point. * The reader will find a great deal about chronographic apparatus in J. Marey : La Methode Grapbique, pt. n. chap. n. One can make pretty fair measurements with no other instrument than a watch, by making a large number of reactions, each serving as a signal for the following one, and dividing the total time they take by their number. Dr. O. W. Holmes first suggested this method, which has been ingeniously elaborated and applied by Professor Jastrow. See Science ' for September 10. 1886. I See, for a few modifications, Cattell, Mind, xi. 220 ff. GENERAL CONDITIONS OF BRAIN-ACTIVITY. 89 Time is also lost, of course, outside the muscle, in the joints, skin, etc., and between the parts of the apparatus ; and when the stimulus which serves as signal is applied to the skin of the trunk or limbs, time is lost in the sensorial conduction through the spinal cord. The stage marked 3 is the only one that interests us here. The other stages answer to purely physiological processes, but stage 3 is psycho-physical ; that is, it is a higher-central process, and has probably some sort of con sciousness accompanying it. What sort? Wundt has little difficulty in deciding that it is con sciousness of a quite elaborate kind. He distinguishes between two stages in the conscious reception of an im pression, calling one perception, and the other apperception, and likening the one to the mere entrance of an object into the periphery of the field of vision, and the other to its coming to occupy the focus or point of view. Inattentive aivareness of an object, and attention to it, are, it seems to me, equivalents for perception and apperception, as Wundt uses the words. To these two forms of awareness of the impression Wundt adds the conscious volition to react, gives to the trio the name of ' psycho-physical ' processes, and assumes that they actually follow upon each other in the succession in which they have been named. * So at least I understand him. The simplest way to determine the time taken up by this psycho-physical stage No. 3 would be to determine separately the duration of the sev eral purely physical processes, 1, 2, 4, and 5, and to sub tract them from the total reaction-time. Such attempts have been made, t But the data for calculation are too * Physiol. Psych., n. 221-2. Cf. also the first edition, 728-9. I must confess to finding all Wundt's utterances about 'apperception ' both vacil lating and obscure. I see no use whatever for the word, as he employs it, in Psychology. Attention, perception, conception, volition, are its ample equivalents. Why we should need a single word to denote all these things by turns, Wundt fails to make clear. Consult, however, his pupil Staude's article, ' Ueber den Begriff der Apperception,' etc., in Wundt's periodical Philosophische Studien, i. 149, which may be supposed official. For a minute criticism of Wundt's 'apperception,' see Marty. Vierteljahrschrift f. wiss. Philos. , x. 346. f By Exner, for example, Pfluger's Archiv, vn. 628 ff. 90 PSYCHOLOGY. inaccurate for use, and, as Wundt himself admits, * the pre cise duration of stage 3 must at present be left enveloped with that of the other processes, in the total reaction-time. My own belief is that no such succession of conscious feelings as Wundt describes takes place during stage 3. It is a process of central excitement and discharge, with which doubtless some feeling coexists, but ivhat feeling we cannot tell, because it is so fugitive and so immediately eclipsed by the more substantive and enduring memory of the impression as it came in, and of the executed move ment of response. Feeling of the impression, attention to it, thought of the reaction, volition to react, ivould, undoubt edly, all be links of the process under other conditions, f and would lead to the same reaction — after an indefinitely longer time. But these other conditions are not those of the experiments we are discussing ; and it is mythological psy chology (of which we shall see many later examples) to con clude that because two mental processes lead to the same result they must be similar in their inward subjective con stitution. The feeling of stage 3 is certainly no articulate perception. It can be nothing but the mere sense of a reflex discharge. The reaction ivhose time is measured is, in short, a reflex action pure and simple, and not a psychic act. A foregoing psychic condition is, it is true, a pre requisite for this reflex action. The preparation of the attention and volition ; the expectation of the signal and the readiness of the hand to move, the instant it shall come ; the nervous tension in which the subject waits, are all con ditions of the formation in him for the time being of a new path or arc of reflex discharge. The tract from the sense- organ which receives the stimulus, into the motor centre which discharges the reaction, is already tingling with pre monitory innervation, is raised to such a pitch of heightened irritability by the expectant attention, that the signal is instantaneously sufficient to cause the overflow.^ No other * P. 222. Cf. also Riohet, Rev. Philos., vi. 395-6. ~ t For instance, if, on the previous day, one had resolved to act on a signal when it should come, and it now came whilst we were engaged in other things, and reminded us of the resolve. £ " I need hardly mention that success in these experiments depends in a high degree on our concentration of attention. If inattentive, one gets GENEEAL CONDITIONS OF BRAIN-ACTIVITY. 91 tract of the nervous system is, at the moment, in this hair- trigger condition. The consequence is that one sometimes responds to a ivrong signal, especially if it be an impression of the same kind with the signal we expect.* But if by chance we are tired, or the signal is unexpectedly weak, and we do not react instantly, but only after an express perception that the signal has come, and an express voli tion, the time becomes quite disproportionately long (a second or more, according to Exner t), and we feel that the process is in nature altogether different. In fact, the reaction-time experiments are a case to which we can immediately apply what we have just learned about the summation of stimuli. ' Expectant attention ' is but the subjective name for what objectively is a partial stimulation of a certain pathway, the pathway from the 4 centre ' for the signal to that for the discharge. In Chapter XI we shall see that all attention involves excitement from within of the tract concerned in feeling the objects to which attention is given. The tract here is the excito-motor arc about to be traversed. The signal is but the spark from without which touches off a train already laid. The per formance, under these conditions, exactly resembles any reflex action. The only difference is that whilst, in the ordinarily so-called reflex acts, the reflex arc is a permanent result of organic growth, it is here a transient result of previous cerebral conditions. ;£ very discrepant figures. . . . This concentration of the attention is in the highest degree exhausting. After some experiments in which I was con cerned to get results as uniform as possible, I was covered witli perspiration and excessively fatigued although I had sat quietly in my chair all the while." (Exner, loc. cit. vn. 618.) * Wundt, Physiol. Psych., n. 226. f Pfliiger's Archiv, vn. 616. \ In short, what M. Delboeuf calls an 'organe adventice.' The reaction- time, moreover, is quite compatible with the reaction itself being of a reflex order. Some reflexes (sneezing, e.g.) are very slow. The only time- measurement of a reflex act in the human subject with which I am acquainted is Exner's measurement of winking (in Pfliiger's Archiv f. d. gesammt. Physiol., Bd. vui. p. 526, 1874). He found that when the stimulus was a flash of light it took the wink 0.2168 sec. to occur. A strong electric shock to the cornea shortened the time to 0.0578 sec. The ordinary ' reaction-time ' is midway between these values. Exuer ' reduces ' his times by eliminating the physiological process of conduction. His 'reduced 92 PSYCHOLOGY. I am happy to say that since the preceding paragraphs (and the notes thereto appertaining) were written, Wundt has himself become converted to the view which I defend. He now admits that in the shortest reactions "there is neither apperception nor will, but that they are merely brain-reflexes due to practice." * The means of his conver. sion are certain experiments performed in his laboratory by Herr L. Lange, t who was led to distinguish between two ways of setting the attention in reacting on a signal, and who found that they gave very different time-results. In the ' extreme sensorial ' way, as Lange calls it, of reacting, minimum winking-time' is then 0.0471 (ibid. 531), whilst his reduced reac tion-time is 0.0828 (itrid. vn. 637). These figures have really no scientific value beyond that of showing, according to Exner's own belief (vn. 531), that reaction-time and reflex-time measure processes of essentially the same order. His description, moreover, of the process is an excellent description of a reflex act. ' ' Every one," says he, " who makes reaction-time experi ments for the first time is surprised to find how little he is master of his own movements, so soon as it becomes a question of executing them with a maximum of speed. Not only does their energy lie, as it were, outside the field of choice, but even the time in which the movement occurs depends only partly upon ourselves. We jerk our arm, and we can afterwards tell with astonishing precision whether we have jerked it quicker or slower than another time, although we have no power to jerk it exactly at the wished-for moment." — Wundt himself admits that when we await a strong signal with tense preparation there is no consciousness of any duality of ' appercep tion ' and motor response; the two are continuous (Physiol. Psych., II. 226).— Mr. Cattell's view is identical with the one I defend. "I think," he says, "that if the processes of perception and willing are present at all they are very rudimentary. . . . The subject, by a voluntary effort [before the signal comes], puts the lines of communication between the centre for" the stimulus " and the centre for the co-ordination of motions . .. in a state of unstable equilibrium. When, therefore, a nervous impulse reaches the" former centre, " it causes brain-changes in two directions; an impulse moves along to the cortex and calls forth there a perception corresponding to the stimulus, while at the same time an impulse follows a line of small resist ance to the centre for the co-ordination of motions, and the proper nervous impulse, already prepared and waiting for the signal, is sent from the centre to the muscle of the hand. When the reaction has often been made the entire cerebral process becomes automatic, the impulse of itself takes the well-travelled way to the motor centre, and releases the motor impulse." (Mind, xi. 232-3.)— Finally, Prof. Lipps has, in his elaborate way (Grundtatsachen, 179-188), made mince-meat of the view that stage 3 involves either conscious perception 01 conscious will. * Physiol. Psych., 3d edition (1887), vol. n. p. 266. f Philosophische Studien, vol. iv. p. 479 (1888). GENERAL CONDITIONS OF BRAIN- ACTIVITY. 93 one keeps one's mind as intent as possible upon the ex pected signal, and ' purposely avoids ' * thinking of the move ment to be executed ; in the t extreme muscular ' way one 1 does not think at all ' t of the signal, but stands as ready as possible for the movement. The muscular reactions are much shorter than the sensorial ones, the average differ ence being in the neighborhood of a tenth of a second. Wuudt accordingly calls them ' shortened reactions ' and, with Lange, admits them to be mere reflexes ; whilst the sensorial reactions he calls '• complete,' and holds to his original conception as far as they are concerned. The facts, however, do not seem to me to warrant even this amount of fidelity to the original Wundtia.n position. When we begin to react in the ' extreme sensorial ' way, Lange says that we get times so very long that they must be rejected from the count as non-typical. " Only after the reactor has succeeded by repeated and conscientious practice in bringing about an extremely precise co-ordina tion of his voluntary impulse with his sense-impression do we get times which can be regarded as typical sensorial reaction-times/' J Now it seems to me that these excessive and ' untypical ' times are probably the real ' complete times/ the only ones in which distinct processes of actual percep tion and volition occur (see above, pp. 88-9). The typical sensorial time which is attained by practice is probably another sort of reflex, less perfect than the reflexes pre pared by straining one's attention towards the movement. § The times are much more variable in the sensorial way than in the muscular. The several muscular reactions differ little from each other. Only in them does the phe nomenon occur of reacting on a false signal, or of reacting before the signal. Times intermediate between these two types occur according as the attention fails to turn itself exclusively to one of the extremes. It is obvious that Herr Lange's distinction between the two types of reaction is a highly important one, and that the 'extreme muscular *Loc. cit. p. 488. f Loc- cit. p. 487. \Loc. cit. p. 489. § Lange has an interesting hypothesis as to the brain-process concerned in the latter, for which I can only refer to his essay- 94 PSYCHOLOGY. method,' giving both the shortest times and the most con stant ones, ought to be aimed at in all comparative investi gations. Herr Lange's own muscular time averaged (T.123 ; his sensorial time, 0".230. These reaction-time experiments are then in no sense measurements of the swiftness of thought. Only when we complicate them is there a chance for anything like an intellectual operation to occur. They may be complicated in various ways. The reaction may be withheld until the signal has consciously awakened a distinct idea (Wundt's discrimination-time, association-time) and then performed. Or there may be a variety of possible signals, each with a different reaction assigned to it, and the reacter may be uncertain which one he is about to receive. The reaction would then hardly seem to occur without a pre liminary recognition and choice. "We shall see, however, in the appropriate chapters, that the discrimination and choice involved in such a reaction are widely different from the intellectual operations of which we are ordinarily con scious under those names. Meanwhile the simple reaction- time remains as the starting point of all these superinduced complications. It is the fundamental physiological con stant in ail time-measurements. As such, its own variations have an interest, and must be briefly passed in review.* The reaction-time varies with the individual and his age. An individual may have it particularly long in respect of signals of one sense (Buccola, p. 147), but not of others. Old and uncultivated people have it long (nearly a second, in an old pauper observed by Exner, Pfliiger's Archiv, VII. 612-4). Children have it long (half a second, Herzen in Buccola, p. 152). Practice shortens it to a quantity which is for each indi vidual a minimum beyond which no farther reduction can be made. The aforesaid old pauper's time was, after much practice, reduced to 0.1866 sec. (loc. cit. p. 626). * The reader who wishes to know more about the matter will find a most faithful compilation of all that has been done, together with much original matter, in G. Buccola's 'Legge del Tempo,' etc. See also chap ter xvi of Wundt's Physiol. Psychology; Exner in Hermann's Hdbch., Bd. 2, Thl. ii. pp. 252-280; aJso Ribot's Contemp. Germ. Psych chap. vm. GENERAL CONDITIONS OF BRAIN-ACTIVITY. 95 Fatigue lengthens it. Concentration of attention shortens it. Details will be given in the chapter on Attention. The nature of the signal makes it vary.* Wundt writes : u I found that the reaction-time for impressions on the skin with electric stimulus is less than for true touch-sensations, as the following averages show: Average. vtriSSS. Sound 0.167 sec. 0.0221 sec. Light 0.222 u 0.0219 " Electric skin-sensation 0.201 " 0.0115 " Touch-sensations 0.213 " 0.0134 " "I here bring together the averages which have been obtained by some other observers : Hirsch. Hankel. Exner. Sound 0.149 0.1505 0.1360 Light 0.200 0.2246 0.1506 Skin-sensation 0.182 0. 1546 0. 1337 " t Thermic reactions have been lately measured by A. Goldscheider and by Vintschgau (1887), who find them slower than reactions from touch. That from heat espe cially is very slow, more so than from cold, the differences (according to Goldscheider) depending on the nerve-ter minations in the skin. Gustatory reactions were measured by Vintschgau. They differed according to the substances used, running up to half a second as a maximum when identification took place. The mere perception of the presence of the substance on the tongue varied from 0".159 to 0".219 (Pfliiger's Archiv, xiv. 529). Olfactory reactions have been studied by Vintsehgau, *The nature of the movement also seems to make it vary. Mr. B. I. Oilman and I reacted to the same signal by simply raising our hand, and again by carrying our hand towards oiir back. The moment registered was always that at which the hand broke an electric contact in starting to move. But it started one or two hundredths of a second later when the more extensive movement was the one to be made. Orchansky, on the other hand, experimenting on contractions of the masseter muscle, found (Archiv f. (Anat. u.) Physiol., 1889, p. 187) that the greater the amplitude of contraction intended, the shorter grew the time of reaction. He explains this by the fact that a more ample contraction makes a greater appeal to the attention, and that this shortens the times. | Physiol. Psych., u. 223. 96 PSYCHOLOGY. Buccola, and Beaunis. They are slow, averaging about half a second (cf. Beaunis, Recherches exp. sur 1'Activite Cerebrale, 1884, p. 49 ff.). It will be observed that sound is more promptly reacted on than either sight or touch. Taste and smell are slower than either. One individual, who reacted to touch upon the tip of the tongue in Ox/.125, took 0^.993 to react upon the taste of quinine applied to the same spot. In another, upon the base of the tongue, the reaction to touch being 0//.141, that to sugar was 0".552 (Vintschgau, quoted by Buccola, p. 103). Buccola found the reaction to odors to vary from 0".334 to 0".681, according to the perfume used and the individual. The intensity of the signal makes a difference. The in- tenser the stimulus the shorter the time. Herzen (Grund- linien einer allgem. Psychophysiologie, p. 101) compared the reaction from a corn on the toe with that from the skin of the hand of the same subject. The two places were stimulated simultaneously, and the subject tried to react simultaneously with both hand and foot, but the foot always went quickest. When the sound skin of the foot was touched instead of the corn, it was the hand which always reacted first. "Wundt tries to show that when the signal is made barely perceptible, the time is probably the same in all the senses, namely, about 0.332" (Physiol. Psych., 2d ed., n. 224). Where the signal is of touch, the place to which it is applied makes a difference in the resultant reaction-time. G. S. Hall and V. Kries found (Archiv f. Anat. u. Physiol., 1879) that when the finger-tip was the place the reaction was shorter than when the middle of the upper arm was used, in spite of the greater length of nerve-trunk to be traversed in the latter case. This discovery invalidates the measurements of the rapidity of transmission of the current in human nerves, for they are all based on the method of comparing reaction-times from places near the root and near the extremity of a limb. The same observers found that signals seen by the periphery of the retina gave longer times than the same signals seen by direct vision. The season makes a difference, the time being some hun- GENERAL CONDITIONS OF BRAIN- ACTIVITY. 97 dredths of a second shorter on cold winter days (Vintschgau apud Exner, Hermann's Hdbli., p. 270). Intoxicants alter the time. Coffee and tea appear to shorten it. Small doses of ivine and alcohol first shorten and then lengthen it ; but the shortening stage tends to disap pear if a large dose be given immediately. This, at least, is the report of two German observers. Dr. J. W. Warren, whose observations are more thorough than any previous ones, could find no very decided effects from ordinary doses (Journal of Physiology, vm. 311). Morphia lengthens the time. Amyl-nitrite lengthens it, but after the inhalation it may fall to less than the normal. Ether and chloroform lengthen it (for authorities, etc., see Buccola, p. 189). Certain diseased states naturally lengthen the time. The hypnotic trance has no constant effect, sometimes shortening and sometimes lengthening it (Hall, Mind, vm. 170 ; James, Proc. Am. Soc. for Psych. Kesearch, 246). The time taken to inhibit a movement (e.g. to cease con traction of jaw-muscles) seems to be about the same as to produce one (Gad, Archiv f. (Anat. u.) Physiol., 1887, 468 ; Orchansky, ibid., 1889, 1885). An immense amount of work has been done on reaction- time, of which I have cited but a small part. It is a sort of work which appeals particularly to patient and exact minds, and they have not failed to profit by the opportunity. CEREBRAL BLOOD-SUPPLY. The next point to occupy our attention is the changes of circulation which accompany cerebral activity. All parts of the cortex, when electrically excited, produce alterations both of respiration and circulation. The blood- pressure rises, as a rule, all over the body, no matter where the cortical irritation is applied, though the motor zone is the most sensitive region for the purpose. Elsewhere the current must be strong enough for an epileptic attack to be produced.* Slowing and quickening of the heart are also observed, and are independent of the vaso-constrictive phenomenon. Mosso, using his ingenious 'plethysmo- * Francois- Franck, Fonctions Motrices, Le^on xxn. 98 PSYCHOLOGY. graph' as an indicator, discovered that the blood-supply to the arms diminished during intellectual activity, and found furthermore that the arterial tension (as shown by the sphygmograph) was increased in these members (see FIG. 23.— Sphymographic pulse-tracing. A, during intellectual repose ; B, during in tellectual activity. (Mosso.) Fig. 23). So slight an emotion as that produced by the entrance of Professor Ludwig into the laboratory was in stantly followed by a shrinkage of the arms.* The brain itself is an excessively vascular organ, a sponge full of blood, in fact ; and another of Mosso's inventions showed that when less blood went to the arms, more went to the head. The subject to be observed lay on a delicately bal anced table which could tip downward either at the head or at the foot if the weight of either end were increased. The moment emotional or intellectual activity began in the subject, down went the balance at the head-end, in conse quence of the redistribution of blood in his system. But the best proof of the immediate afflux of blood to the brain during mental activity is due to Mosso's observations on three persons whose brain had been laid bare by lesion of the skull. By means of apparatus described in his book, f this physiologist was enabled to let the brain-pulse record itself diroctly by a tracing. The intra-cranial blood-pressure rose immediately whenever the subject was spoken to, or when he began to think actively, as in solving a problem in mental arithmetic. Mosso gives in his work a large num ber of reproductions of tracings which show the instanta- neity of the change of blood-supply, whenever the mental activity was quickened by any cause whatever, intellectual * La Paura(1884), p. 117. t Ueber den Kreislauf des Blutes im menschlicheii Gehirn (1881). chap. ii. The Introduction gives the history of our previous knowledge :>f the subject. GENERAL CONDITIONS OF BRAIN-ACTIVITY. or emotional. He relates of his female subject that one day whilst tracing her brain-pulse he observed a sudden rise with no apparent outer or inner cause. She however confessed to him afterwards that at that moment she had caught sight of a skull on top of a piece of furniture in the voom3 and that this had given her a slight emotion. The fluctuations of the blood supply to the brain were independent of respiratory changes,* and followed the quickening of mental activity almost immediately. We must suppose a very delicate adjustment whereby the cir culation follows the needs of the cerebral activity. Blood very likely may rush to each region of the cortex accord ing as it is most active, but of this we know nothing. I need hardly say that the activity of the nervous matter is the primary phenomenon, and the afflux of blood its secondary consequence. Many popular writers talk as if it were the other way about, and as if mental activity were due to the afflux of blood. But, as Professor H. N. Martin has well said, "that belief has no physiological foundation whatever; it is even directly opposed to all that we know of cell life."f A chronic pathological congestion may, it is true, have secondary consequences, but the primary congestions which we have been considering follow the activity of the brain-cells by an adaptive reflex vaso-motor mechanism doubtless as elaborate as that which harmonizes blood- supply with cell-action in any muscle or gland. Of the changes in the cerebral circulation during sleep I will speak in the chapter which treats of that subject. CEREBRAL THERMOMETRY. Brain-activity seems accompanied by a local disengagement of heat. The earliest careful work in this direction was by Dr. J. S. Lombard in 1867. Dr. Lombard's latest results in clude the records of over 60,000 observations.^: He noted the * In this conclusion M. Gley (Archives de Pbysiologie, 1881, p. 742) agrees with Professor Mosso. Gley found his pulse rise 1-3 beats, his carotid dilate, and his radial artery contract during hard mental work. f Address before Med. and Chirurg. Society of Maryland, 1879 ^ See his book. "Experimental Researches on the Regional Tempera lure of the Head" (London. 1879). 100 PSYCHOLOGY. changes in delicate thermometers and electric piles placed against the scalp in human beings, and found that any intel lectual effort, such as computing, composing, reciting poetry silently or aloud, and especially that emotional excitement such as an anger fit, caused a general rise of temperature, which rarely exceeded a degree Fahrenheit. The rise was in most cases more marked in the middle region of the head than elsewhere. Strange to say, it was greater in reciting poetry silently than in reciting it aloud. Dr. Lombard's explanation is that " in internal recitation an additional portion of energy, which in recitation aloud was con verted into nervous and muscular force, now appears as heat." * I should suggest rather, if we must have a theory, that the surplus of heat in recitation to one's self is due to inhibitory processes which are absent when we recite aloud. In the chapter on the Will we shall see that the simple cen tral process is to speak when we think ; to think silently involves a check in addition. In 1870 the indefatigable Schiff took up the subject, experimenting on live dogs and chickens, plunging thermo-electric needles into the sub stance of their brain, to eliminate possible errors from vascular changes in the skin when the thermometers were placed upon the scalp. After habituation was established, he tested the animals with various sensations, tactile, optic, olfactory, and auditory. He found very regularly an im mediate deflection of the galvanometer, indicating an abrupt alteration of the intra-cerebral temperature. When, for in stance, he presented an empty roll of paper to the nose of his dog as it lay motionless, there was a small deflection, but when a piece of meat was in the paper the deflection was much greater. Schiff concluded from these and other experiments that sensorial activity heats the brain-tissue, but he did not try to localize the increment of heat beyond finding that it was in both hemispheres, whatever might be the sensation applied, t Dr. E. W. Amidon in 1880 made a farther step forward, in localizing the heat produced by voluntary muscular contractions. Applying a number of * Loc. cit. p. 195. f The most convenient account of Schiff's experiments is by Prof, fierzen, in the Revue Philosophique, vol. in. p. 36. GENERAL CONDITIONS OF BRAIN- ACTIVITY. 101 delicate surface-thermometers simultaneously against the scalp, he found that when different muscles of the body were made to contract vigorously for ten minutes or more, different regions of the scalp rose in temperature, that the regions were well focalized, and that the rise of temperature was often considerably over a Fahrenheit degree. As a re sult of his investigations he gives a diagram in which num bered regions represent the centres of highest temperature for the various special movements which were investigated. To a large extent they correspond to the centres for the same movements assigned by Ferrier and others on other grounds ; only they cover more of the skull.* Phosphorus and Thought. Chemical action must of course accompany brain-activity. But little definite is known of its exact nature. Cholesterin and creatin are both excrementitious products, and are both found in the brain. The subject belongs to chemistry rather than to psychology, and I only mention it here for the sake of saying a word about a wide-spread popu lar error about brain-activity and phosphorus. ' Ohm Phosphor, kein Gedanke,' was a noted war-cry of the ' materialists ' during the excitement on that subject which filled Germany in the '60s. The brain, like every other organ of the body, contains phosphorus, and a score of other chemicals besides. Why the phosphorus should be picked out as its essence, no one knows. It would be equally true to say ' Ohne Wasser kein Gedanke,' or ' Ohne Kochsalz kein Gedanke ' ; for thought would stop as quickly if the brain should dry up or lose its NaCl as if it lost its phosphorus. In America the phosphorus-delusion has twined itself round a saying quoted (rightly or wrongly) from Professor L. Agassiz, to the effect that fishermen are more intelligent than farmers because they eat so much fish, which contains so much phosphorus. All the facts may be doubted. The only straight way to ascertain the importance of * A New Study of Cerebral Cortical Localization (N. Y., Putnam, 1880), pp. 48-53. 1TJ2 PSYCHOLOGY. phosphorus to thought would be to find whether more is excreted by the brain during mental activity than during rest. Unfortunately we cannot do this directly, but can only gauge the amount of PO6 in the urine, which repre sents other organs as well as the brain, and this procedure, as Dr. Edes says, is like measuring the rise of water at the mouth of the Mississippi to tell where there has been a thunder-storm in Minnesota.* It has been adopted, how ever, by a variety of observers, some of whom found the phosphates in the urine diminished, whilst others found them increased, by intellectual work. On the whole, it is impossible to trace any constant relation. In maniacal excitement less phosphorus than usual seems to be excreted. More is excreted during sleep. There are differences be tween the alkaline and earthy phosphates into which I will not enter, as my only aim is to show that the popular way of looking at the matter has no exact foundation, f The fact that phosphorus-preparations may do good in nervous exhaustion proves nothing as to the part played by phos phorus in mental activity. Like iron, arsenic, and other remedies it is a stimulant or tonic, of whose intimate work ings in the system we know absolutely nothing, and which moreover does good in an extremely small number of the cases in which it is prescribed. The phosphorus-philosophers have often compared thought to a secretion. " The brain secretes thought, as the kidneys secrete urine, or as the liver secretes bile," are phrases which one sometimes hears. The lame analogy need hardly be pointed out. The materials which the brain pours into the blood (cholesterin, creatin, xanthin, or what ever they may be) are the analogues of the urine and the bile, being in fact real material excreta. As far as these matters go, the brain is a ductless gland. But we know of nothing connected with liver- and kidney-activity which can * Archives of Medicine, vol. x, No. 1 (1883). f Without multiplying references, I will simply cite Mendel (Archiv f . Psychiatric, vol. in, 1871), Mairet (Archives de Neurologic, vol. ix, 1885), and Beaunis (Rech. Experimentales sur 1'Activite Cerebrale, 1887). Richet gives a partial bibliography in the Revue Scientifique, vol. 38, p. 788 (1886). GENERAL CONDITIONS OF BRAIN-ACTIVITY. 103 be in the remotest degree compared with the stream of thought that accompanies the brain's material secretions. There remains another feature of general brain-physi ology, and indeed for psychological purposes the most important feature of all. I refer to the aptitude of the brain for acquiring habits. But I will treat of that in a chapter by itself. OHAPTEK IV.* HABIT. WHEN we look at living creatures from an outward point of view, one of the first things that strike us is that they are bundles of habits. In wild animals, the usual round of daily behavior seems a necessity implanted at birth; in animals domesticated, and especially in man, it seems, to a great extent, to be the result of education. The habits to which there is an innate tendency are called instincts ; some of those due to education would by most persons be called acts of reason. It thus appears that habit covers a very large part of life, and that one engaged in studying the objective manifestations of mind is bound at the very out set to define clearly just what its limits are. The moment one tries to define what habit is, one is led to the fundamental properties of matter. The laws of Nature are nothing but the immutable habits which the different elementary sorts of matter follow in their actions and reactions upon each other. In the organic world, how ever, the habits are more variable than this. Even instincts vary from one individual to another of a kind; and are modified in the same individual, as we shall later see, to suit the exigencies of the case. The habits of an elemen tary particle of matter cannot change (on the principles of the atomistic philosophy), because the particle is itself an unchangeable thing ; but those of a compound mass of matter can change, because they are in the last instance due to the structure of the compound, and either outward forces or inward tensions can, from one hour to another, turn that structure into something different from what it was. That is, they can do so if the body be plastic enough to maintain * This chapter has already appeared in the Popular Science Monthly for February 1887. 104 HABIT. 105 its integrity, and be not disrupted when its structure yields. The change of structure here spoken of need not involve the outward shape ; it may be invisible and molecular, as when a bar of iron becomes magnetic or crystalline through the action of certain outward causes, or India-rubber becomes friable, or plaster ' sets.' All these changes are rather slow ; the material in question opposes a certain resistance to the modifying cause, which it takes time to overcome, but the gradual yielding whereof often saves the material from being disintegrated altogether. When the structure has yielded, the same inertia becomes a condition of its comparative permanence in the new form, and of the new habits the body then manifests. Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a struc ture weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase of equilibrium in such a structure is marked by what we may call a new set of habits. Organic matter, especially nervous tissue, seems endowed with a very ex traordinary degree of plasticity of this sort; so that we may without hesitation lay down as our first proposition the following, that the phenomena of habit in living beings are due to the plasticity* of the organic materials of wliich their bodies are composed. But the philosophy of habit is thus, in the first instance, a chapter in physics rather than in physiology or psychol ogy. That it is at bottom a physical principle is admitted by all good recent writers on the subject. They call atten tion to analogues of acquired habits exhibited by dead mat ter. Thus, M. Leon Dumont, whose essay on habit is per haps the most philosophical account yet published, writes : " Every one knows how a garment, after having been worn a certain time, clings to the shape of the body better than when it was new; there has been a change in the tissue, and this change is a new habit of cohesion. A lock works better after being used some time; at the out set more force was required to overcome certain roughnesses in the mechanism. The overcoming of their resistance is a phenomenon of habituation. It costs less trouble to fold a paper when it has been * In the sense above explained, which applies to inner structure as well as to outer form. 106 PSYCHOLOGY. folded already. This saving of trouble is due to the essential nature ot habit, which brings it about that, to reproduce the effect, a less amount of the outward cause is required. The sounds of a violin improve by use in the hands of an able artist, because the fibres of the wood at last contract habits of vibration conformed to harmonic relations. This is what gives such inestimable value to instruments that have belonged to great masters. Water, in flowing, hollows out for itself a channel, which grows broader and deeper; and, after having ceased to flow, it resumes, when it flows again, the path traced by itself before. Just so, the im pressions of outer objects fashion for themselves in the nervous system more and more appropriate paths, and these vital phenomena recur under similar excitements from without, when they have been inter rupted a certain time." * Not in the nervous system alone. A scar anywhere is a locus minoris resistentice, more liable to be abraded, inflamed, to suffer pain and cold, than are the neighboring parts. A sprained ankle, a dislocated arm, are in danger of being sprained or dislocated again ; joints that have once been attacked by rheumatism or gout, mucous membranes that have been the seat of catarrh, are with each fresh re currence more prone to a relapse, until often the morbid state chronically substitutes itself for the sound one. And if we ascend to the nervous system, we find how many so- called functional diseases seem to keep themselves going simply because they happen to have once begun; and how the forcible cutting short by medicine of a few attacks is often sufficient to enable the physiological forces to get pos session of the field again, and to bring the organs back to functions of health. Epilepsies, neuralgias, convulsive affec tions of various sorts, insomnias, are so many cases in point. And, to take what are more obviously habits, the success with which a 'weaning' treatment can often be applied to the victims of unhealthy indulgence of passion, or of mere complaining or irascible disposition, shows us how much the morbid manifestations themselves were due to the mere inertia of the nervous organs, when once launched on a false career. Can we now form a notion of what the inward physical changes may be like, in organs whose habits have thus * Revne Philosophique, i, 324. HABIT. 107 struck into new paths ? In other words, can we say just what mechanical facts the expression ' change of habit1 covers when it is applied to a nervous system ? Certainly we cannot in anything like a minute or definite way. But our usual scientific custom of interpreting hidden molecular events after the analogy of visible massive ones enables us to frame easily an abstract and general scheme of processes which the physical changes in question may be like. And when once the possibility of some kind of mechanical inter pretation is established, Mechanical Science, in her present mood, will not hesitate to set her brand of ownership upon the matter, feeling sure that it is only a question of time when the exact mechanical explanation of the case shall be found out. If habits are due to the plasticity of materials to out ward agents, we can immediately see to what outward influences, if to any, the brain-matter is plastic. Not to mechanical pressures, not to thermal changes, not to any of the forces to which all the other organs of our body are exposed ; for nature has carefully shut up our brain and spinal cord in bony boxes, where no influences of this sort can get at them. She has floated them in fluid so that only the severest shocks can give them a concussion, and blanketed and wrapped them about in an altogether excep tional way. The only impressions that can be made upon them are through the blood, on the one hand, and through the sensory nerve-roots, on the other ; and it is to the infi nitely attenuated currents that pour in through these latter channels that the hemispherical cortex shows itself to be so peculiarly susceptible. The currents, once in, must find a way out. In getting out they leave their traces in the paths which they take. The only thing they can do, in short, is to deepen old paths or to make new ones ; and the whole plasticity of the brain sums itself up in two words when we call it an organ in which currents pouring in from the sense-organs make with extreme facility paths which do not easily disappear. For, of course, a simple habit, like every other nervous event — the habit of snuffling, for example, or of putting one's hands into one's pockets, or of biting one's nails — is, mechanically, nothing but a reflex 108 PSYCHOLOGY. discharge ; and its anatomical substratum must be a path in the system. The most complex habits, as we shall presently see more fully, are, from the same point of view, 1 nothing but concatenated discharges in the nerve-centres, lue to the presence there of systems of reflex paths, so >rganized as to wake each other up successively — the im pression produced by one muscular contraction serving as a stimulus to provoke the next, until a final impression inhibits the process and closes the chain. The only diffi cult mechanical problem is to explain the formation de novo of a simple reflex or path in a pre-existing nervous system. Here, as in so many other cases, it is only the premier pas qui coute. For the entire nervous system is nothing but a system of paths between a sensory terminus a quo and a mus cular, glandular, or other terminus ad quern. A path once traversed by a nerve-current might be expected to follow the law of most of the paths we know, and to be scooped out and made more permeable than before ; * and this ought to be repeated with each new passage of the current. Whatever obstructions may have kept it at first from being a path should then, little by little, and more and more, be swept out of the way, until at last it might become a natural drainage-channel. This is what happens where either solids or liquids pass over a path ; there seems no reason why it should not happen where the thing that passes is a mere wave of rearrangement in matter that does not dis place itself, but merely changes chemically or turns itself round in place, or vibrates across the line. The most plausible views of the nerve-current make it out to be the passage of some such wave of rearrangement as this. If only a part of the matter of the path were to ' rearrange ' itself, the neighboring parts remaining inert, it is easy to see how their inertness might oppose a friction which it would take many waves of rearrangement to break down and overcome. If we call the path itself the ' organ,' and the wave of rearrangement the ' function,' then it is obvi- * Some paths, to be sure, are banked up by bodies moving through them under too great pressure, and made impervious. These special cases we disregard. HABIT. 109 ously a case for repeating the celebrated French formula of ' La f (motion fait V organs.' So nothing is easier than to imagine how, when a cur rent once has traversed a path, it should traverse it more readily still a second time. But what made it ever traverse it the first time ? * In answering this question we can only fall back on our general conception of a nervous system as a mass of matter whose parts, constantly kept in states of different tension, are as constantly tending to equalize their states. The equalization between any two points occurs through whatever path may at the moment be most per-j vious. But, as a given point of the system may belong,' actually or potentially, to many different paths, and, as the i play of nutrition is subject to accidental changes, blockf may from time to time occur, and make currents shoot through unwonted lines. Such an unwonted line would be a new-created path, which if traversed repeatedly, would become the beginning of a new reflex arc. All this is vague to the last degree, and amounts to little more than saying that a new path may be formed by the sort of chances that } in nervous material are likely to occur. But, vague as it is, it is really the last word of our wisdom in the matter, f It must be noticed that the growth of structural modi fication in living matter may be more rapid than in any lifeless mass, because the incessant nutritive renovation of which the living matter is the seat tends often to corroborate * We cannot say the will, for, though many, perhaps most, human habits were once voluntary actions, no action, as we shall see in a later chapter, can be primarily such. While an habitual action may once have been voluntary, the voluntary action must before that, at least ouce, have been impulsive or reflex. It is this very first occurrence of all that we consider in the text. f Those who desire a more definite formulation may consult J. Fiske's 'Cosmic Philosophy,' vol. n. pp. 142-146 and Spencer's 'Principles of Biology,' sections 302 and 803, and the part entitled ' Physical Synthesis' of his ' Principles of Psychology.' Mr. Spencer there tries, not only to show how new actions may arise in nervous systems and form new reflex arcs therein, but even how nervous tissue may actually be born by the pas sage of new waves of isometric transformation through an originally indif ferent mass. I cannot help thinking that Mr. Spencer's data, under a great show of precision, conceal vagueness and improbability, and even self contradiction. 110 PSYCHOLOGY. fix the impressed modification, rather than to counter- jact it by renewing the original constitution of the tissue / that has been impressed. Thus, we notice after exercising our muscles or our brain in a new way, that we can do so no longer at that time ; but after a day or two of rest, when ! we resume the discipline, our increase in skill not seldom surprises us. I have often noticed this in learning a tune ; and it has led a German author to say that we learn to swim during the winter and to skate during the summer. Dr. Carpenter writes :* " It is a matter of universal experience that every kind of training for special aptitudes is both far more effective, and leaves a more per manent impress, when exerted on the growing organism than when brought to bear on the adult. The effect of such training is shown in the tendency of the organ to ' grow to ' the mode in which it is habitually exercised ; as is evidenced by the increased size and power of particular sets of muscles, and the extraordinary flexibility of joints, which are acquired by such as have been early exercised in gymnastic perfor- mances. . . . There is no part of the organism of man in which the reconstructive activity is so great, during the whole period of life, as it ; is in the ganglionic substance of the brain. This is indicated by the enormous supply of blood which it receives. ... It is, moreover, a fact of great significance that the nerve-substance is specially dis tinguished by its reparative power. For while injuries of other tissues (such as the muscular) which are distinguished by the speciality of their structure and endowments, are repaired by substance of a lower or less specialized type, those of nerve-substance are repaired by a complete reproduction of the normal tissue ; as is evidenced in the sensibility of the newly forming skin which is closing over an open wound, or in the recovery of the sensibility of a piece of ' transplanted ' skin, which has for a time been rendered insensible by the complete interruption of the continuity of its nerves. The most remarkable example of this repro duction, however, is afforded by the results of M. Brown-Sequard'st \experiments upon the gradual restoration of the functional activity of }the spinal cord after its complete division ; which takes place in a way that indicates rather a reproduction of the whole, or the lower part of the cord and of the nerves proceeding from it, than a mere reunion of divided surfaces. This reproduction is but a special manifestation of the reconstructive change which is always taking place in the nervous system ; it being not less obvious to the eye of reason that the ' waste ' occasioned by its functional activity must be constantly repaired by the f • Mental Physiology ' (1874.) pp. 339-345. t [See, later, Masius in Van Benedens' and Van Bambeke's 'Archives de Biologie,' vol. I (Liege, 1880).— W. J.] HABIT. Ill production of new tissue, than it is to the eye of sense that such repa ration supplies an actual loss of substance by disease or injury. "Now, in this constant and active reconstruction of the nervous system, we recognize a most marked conformity to the general plan ' manifested in the nutrition of the organism as a whole. For, in the I / first place, it is obvious that there is a tendency to the production of a / ! determinate type of structure ; which type is often not merely that of <. the species, but some special modification of it which characterized one or both of the progenitors. But this type is peculiarly liable to modi fication during the early period of life ; in which the functional activity of the nervous system (and particularly of the brain) is extraordinarily great, and the reconstructive process proportionally active. And this modifiability expresses itself in the formation of the mechanism by which those secondarily automatic modes of movement come to be established, which, in man, take the place of those that are congenital in most of the animals beneath him ; and those modes of sense-percep tion come to be acquired, which are elsewhere clearly instinctive. For there can be no reasonable doubt that, in both cases, a nervous mechanism is developed in the course of this self-education, correspond ing with that which the lower animals inherit from their parents. The plan of that rebuilding process, which is necessary to maintain the integrity of the organism generally, and which goes on with peculiar activity in this portion of it. is thus being incessantly modified ; and in this manner all that portion of it which ministers to the external life of sense and motion that is shared by man with the animal kingdom at large, becomes at adult age the expression of the habits which the individual has acquired during the period of growth and development. Of these habits, some are common to the race generally, while others . are peculiar to the individual ; those of the former kind (such as walk ing erect) being universally acquired, save where physical inability prevents ; while for the latter a special training is needed, which is usually the more effective the earlier it is begun — as is remarkably seen in the case of such feats of dexterity as require a conjoint edu cation of the perceptive and of the motor powers. And when thus developed during the period of growth, so as to have become a part of the constitution of the adult, the acquired mechanism is thenceforth K maintained in the ordinary course of the nutritive operations, so as to j /< be ready for use when called upon, even after long inaction. "What is so clearly true of the nervous apparatus of animal life can scarcely be otherwise than true of that which ministers to the automatic , activity of the mind. For, as already shown, the study of psychology has evolved no more certain result than that there are uniformities of mental action which aro so entirely conformable to those of bodily action as to indicate their intimate relation to a ' mechanism of thought and ' feeling,' acting under the like conditions with that of sense and motion. The psychical principles of association, indeed, and the physiological principles of nutrition, simply express — the former in terms of mind, PSYCHOLOGY. the latter in terms of brain — the universally admitted fact that any sequence of mental action which has been frequently repeated tends to perpetuate itself ; so that we find ourselves automatically prompted to think, feel, or do what we have been before accustomed to think, feel, or do, under like circumstances, without any consciously formed pur pose, or anticipation of results. For there is no reason to regard the cerebrum as an exception to the general principle that, while each part of the organism tends to form itself in accordance with the mode in which it is habitually exercised, this tendency will be especially strong in the nervous apparatus, in virtue of that incessant regeneration which is the very condition of its functional activity. It scarcely, indeed, admits of doubt that every state of ideational consciousness which is either very strong or is habitually repeated leaves an organic impres sion on the cerebrum ; in virtue of which that same state may be re produced at any future time, in respondence to a suggestion fitted to excite it. ... The 'strength of early association' is a fact so universally recognized that the expression of it has become proverbial ; and this precisely accords with the physiological principle that, during the period of growth and development, the formative activity of the brain will be most amenable to directing influences. It is in this way that what is early ' learned by heart ' becomes branded in (as it were) upon the cerebrum ; so that its ' traces ' are never lost, even though the conscious memory of it may have completely faded out. For, when the organic modification has been once fixed in the growing brain, it becomes a part of the normal fabric, and is regularly maintained by nutritive substitution ; so that it may endure to the end of life, like the scar of a wound." Dr. Carpenter's phrase that our nervous system groivs to the modes in which it has been exercised expresses the philos ophy of habit in a nutshell. We may now trace some of the practical applications of the principle to human life. The first result of it is that habit simplifies the movements required to achieve a given result, makes them more accurate and diminishes fatigue. 1 ' The beginner at the piano not only moves his finger up and down in order to depress the key, he moves the whole hand, the forearm and even the entire body, especially moving its least rigid part, the head, as if he would press down the key with that organ too. Often a con traction of the abdominal muscles occurs as well. Principally, however, the impulse is determined to the motion of the hand and of the single finger. This is, in the first place, because the movement of the finger is the movement thought of, and, in the second place, because its move ment and that of the key are the movements we try to perceive, along with the results of the latter on the ear. The more often the process HABIT. 113 is repeated, the more easily the movement follows, on account of the increase in permeability of the nerves engaged. "But the more easily the movement occurs, the slighter is the stimulus required to set it up ; and the slighter the stimulus is, the more its effect is confined to the fingers alone. " Thus, an impulse which originally spread its effects over the whole body, or at least over many of its movable parts, is gradually deter mined to a single definite organ, in which it effects the contraction of a few limited muscles. In this change the thoughts and perceptions which start the impulse acquire more and more intimate causal relations with a particular group of motor nerves. " To recur to a simile, at least partially apt, imagine the nervous system to represent a drainage-system, inclining, on the whole, toward certain muscles, but with the escape thither somewhat clogged. Then streams of water will, on the whole, tend most to fill the drains that go towards these muscles and to wash out the escape. In case of a sudden ' flushing,' however, the whole system of channels will fill itself, and the water overflow everywhere before it escapes. But a moderate quantity of water invading the system will flow through the proper escape alone. " Just so with the piano-player. As soon as his impulse, which has gradually learned to confine itself to single muscles, grows extreme, it overflows into larger muscular regions. He usually plays with his fingers, his body being at rest. But no sooner does he get excited than his whole body becomes 'animated,' and he moves his head and trunk, in particular, as if these also were organs with which he meant to belabor the keys."* Man is born with a tendency to do more things than he has ready-made arrangements for in his nerve-centres. Most of the performances of other animals are automatic. But in him the number of them is so ^normous, that most of them must be the fruit of painful study. If practice did not make perfect, nor habit economize the expense of ner vous and muscular energy, he would therefore be in a sorry plight. As Dr. Maudsley says : f "If an act became no easier after being done several times, if the careful direction of consciousness were necessary to its accomplishment on each occasion, it is evident that the whole activity of a lifetime might be confined to one or two deeds — that no progress could take place in development. A man might be occupied all day in dressing and un- * G. H. Schneider : ' Der menschliche Wille ' (1882), pp. 417-419 (freely translated). For the drain-simile, see also Spencer's 'Psychology,' part v, chap. vm. f Physiology of Mind, p. 155. 114 PSYCHOLOGY. dressing himself ; the attitude of his body would absorb all his atten- tion and energy ; the washing of his hands or the fastening of a button would be as difficult to him on each occasion as to the child on its first trial ; and he would, furthermore, be completely exhausted by his ex ertions. Think of the pains necessary to teach a child to stand, of the many efforts which it must make, and of the ease with which it at last stands, unconscious of any effort. For while secondarily auto matic acts are accomplished with comparatively little weariness — in this regard approaching the organic movements, or the original reflex movements — the conscious effort of the will soon produces exhaus tion. A spinal cord without . . „ memory would simply be an idiotic spinal cord. ... It is impossible for an individual to realize how much he owes to its automatic agency until disease has impaired its functions." The next result is that habit diminishes the conscious atten tion loith which our acts are performed. One may state this abstractly thus : If an act require for its execution a chain, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc., of successive nervous events, then in the first performances of the action the conscious will must choose each of these events from a number of wrong alternatives that tend to present them selves ; but habit soon brings it about that each event calls up its own appropriate successor without any alternative offering itself, and without any reference to the conscious will, until at last the whole chain, A, B, C, J}, E, F, G, rattles itself off as soon as A occurs, just as if A and the rest of the chain were fused into a continuous stream. When we are learning to walk, to ride, to swim, skate, fence, write, play, or sing, we interrupt ourselves at every step by un necessary movements and false notes. When we are pro ficients, on the contrary, the results not only follow with the very minimum of muscular action requisite to bring them forth, they also follow from a single instantaneous < cue.' The marksman sees the bird, and, before he knows it, he has aimed and shot. A gleam in his adversary's eye, a momentary pressure from his rapier, and the fencer finds that he has instantly made the right parry and return. A glance at the musical hieroglyphics, and the pianist's fingers have rippled through a cataract of notes. And not only is it the right thing at the right time that we thus involun tarily do, but the wrong thing also, if it be an habitual HABIT. 115 thing. Who is there that has never wound up his watch on taking oft* his waistcoat in the daytime, or taken his latch key out on arriving at the door-step of a friend ? Very absent-minded persons in going to their bedroom to dress for dinner have been known to take off one garment after another and finally to get into bed, merely because that was the habitual issue of the first few movements when per formed at a later hour. The writer well remembers how, on revisiting Paris after ten years' absence, and, finding himself in the street in which for one winter he had attended school, he lost himself in a brown study, from which he was awakened by finding himself upon the stairs which led to the apartment in a house many streets away in which he had lived during that earlier time, and to which his steps from the school had then habitually led. We all of us have a definite routine manner of performing certain daily offices connected with the toilet, with the opening and shutting of familiar cupboards, and the like. Our lower centres know the order of these movements, and show their knowledge by their ' surprise ' if the objects are altered so as to oblige the movement to be made in a different way. But our higher thought-centres know hardly anything about the matter. Few men can tell off-hand which sock, shoe, or trousers-leg they put on first. They must first mentally rehearse the act ; and even that is often insufficient — the act must be performed. So of the questions, Which valve of my double door opens first ? Which way does my door swing ? etc. I cannot tell the answer ; yet my hand never makes a mistake. iSo one can describe the order in which he brushes his hair or teeth ; yet it is likely that the order is a pretty fixed one in all of us. These results may be expressed as follows : In action grown habitual, what instigates each new muscular contraction to take place in its appointed order is not a thought or a perception, but the sensation occa sioned by the muscular contraction just finished. A strictly voluntary act has to be guided by idea, perception, and volition, throughout its whole course. In an habitual ac tion, mere sensation is a sufficient guide, and the upper 116 PSYCHOLOGY. regions of brain and mind are set comparatively free, i diagram will make the matter clear : G* FIG. 24. Let A, B, C, D, E, F, G represent an habitual chain of muscular contractions, and let a, b, c, d, e, f stand for the respective sensations which these contractions excite in us when they are successively performed. Such sensations will usually be of the muscles, skin, or joints of the parts moved, but they may also be effects of the movement upon the eye or the ear. Through them, and through them alone, we are made aware whether the contraction has or has not occurred. When the series, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, is being learned, each of these sensations becomes the object of a separate perception by the mind. By it we test each movement, to see if it be right before advancing to the next. We hesitate, compare, choose, revoke, reject, etc., by intel' lectual means ; and the order by which the next movement is discharged is an express order from the ideational centres after this deliberation has been gone through. In habitual action, on the contrary, the only impulse which the centres of idea or perception need send down is the initial impulse, the command to start. This is repre sented in the diagram by V\ it may be a thought of the first movement or of the last result, or a mere perception of some of the habitual conditions of the chain, the presence, e.g., of the keyboard near the hand. In the present case, no sooner has the conscious thought or volition instigated movement A, than A, through the sensation a of its own occurrence, awakens B reflexly ; B then excites C through by and so on till the chain is ended, when the intellect gen erally takes cognizance of the final result. The process, in fact, resembles the passage of a wave of ' peristaltic ' motion HABIT. 117 down the bowels. The intellectual perception at the end is indicated in the diagram by the effect of G being repre sented, at G', in the ideational centres above the merely sensational line. The sensational impressions, a, 6, c, d, e,f, are all supposed to have their seat below the ideational lines. That our ideational centres, if involved at all by a, I, c, d, e,f, are involved in a minimal degree, is shown by the fact that the attention may be wholly absorbed else where. "We may say our prayers, or repeat the alphabet, with our attention far away. " A musical performer will play a piece which has become familiar by repetition while carrying on an animated conversation, or while con tinuously engrossed by some train of deeply interesting thought; the accustomed sequence of movements being directly prompted by the sight of the notes, or by the remembered succession of the sounds (if the piece is played from memory), aided in both cases by the guiding sensations derived from the muscles themselves. But, further, a higher degree of the same ' training ' (acting on an organism specially fitted to profit by it) enables an accomplished pianist to play a difficult piece of music at sight; the movements of the hands and fingers following so immediately upon the sight of the notes that it seems impossible to believe that any but the very shortest and most direct track can be the channel of the nervous communication through which they are called forth. The following curious example of the same class of acquired aptitudes, which differ from instincts only in being prompted to action by the will, is furnished by Robert Houdin : " ' With a view of cultivating the rapidity of visual and tactile per ception, and the precision of respondent movements, which are neces sary for success in every kind of prestidigitation, Houdin early practised the art of juggling with balls in the air; and having, after a month's practice, become thorough master of the art of keeping up four balls at once, he placed a book before him, and, while the balls were in the air, accustomed himself to read without hesitation. ' This,' he says, ' will probably seem to my readers very extraordinary; but I shall surprise them still more when I say that I have just amused myself with repeat ing this curious experiment. Though thirty years have elapsed since the time I was writing, and though I have scarcely once touched the balls during that period, I can still manage to read with ease while keeping three balls up.' " (Autobiography, p. 26.)* We have called a, 1), c, d, e, /, the antecedents of the suc cessive muscular attractions, by the name of sensations. Some authors seem to deny that they are even this. If not * Carpenter's ' Mental Physiology ' (1874), pp. 217, 218. 118 PSYCHOLOGY. even this, they can only be centripetal nerve-currents, not sufficient to arouse feeling, but sufficient to arouse motor response.* It may be at once admitted that they are not distinct volitions. The will, if any will be present, limits itself to a permission that they exert their motor effects. Dr. Carpenter writes : "There may still be metaphysicians who maintain that actions which were originally prompted by the will with a distinct intention, and which are still entirely under its control, can never cease to be volitional; and that either an infinitesimally small amount of will is required to sustain them when they have been once set going, or that the will is in a sort of pendulum-like oscillation between the two actions — the maintenance of the train of thought, and the maintenance of the train of movement. But if only an infinitesimally small amount of will is necessary to sustain them, is not this tantamount to saying that they go on by a force of their own ? And does not the experience of the perfect continuity of our train of thought during the performance of movements that have become habitual, entirely negative the hypothesis of oscillation ? Besides, if such an oscillation existed, there must be intervals in which each action goes on of itself; so that its essentially automatic character is virtually admitted. The physiological explana tion, that the mechanism of locomotion, as of other habitual move ments, grows to the mode in which it is early exercised, and that it then works automatically under the general control and direction of the will, can scarcely be put down by any assumption of an hypothetical neces sity, which rests only on the basis of ignorance of one side of our com posite nature."! But if not distinct acts of will, these immediate ante cedents of each movement of the chain are at any rate accompanied by consciousness of some kind. They are sensations to which we are usually inattentive, but which im mediately call our attention if they go ivrong. Schneider's account of these sensations deserves to be quoted. In the act of walking, he says, even when our attention is entirely off, "we are continuously aware of certain muscular feelings; and we have, moreover, a feeling of certain impulses to keep our equilibrium and to set down one leg after another. It is doubtful whether we could preserve equilibrium if no sensation of our body's attitude were there, * Von Hartraann devotes a chapter of his ' Philosophy of the Uncon scious ' (English translation, vol. i. p. 72) to proving that they must be both ideas and unconscious. f ' Mental Physiology,' p. 20. HABIT. 119 and doubtful whether we should advance our leg if we had no sensation of its movement as executed, and not even a minimal feeling of impulse to set it down. Knitting appears altogether mechanical, and the knitter keeps up her knitting even while she reads or is engaged in lively talk. But if we ask her how this be possible, she will hardly reply that the knitting goes on of itself. She will rather say that she has a feeling of it, that she feels in her hands that she knits and how she must knit, and that therefore the movements of knitting are called forth and regulated by the sensations associated therewithal, even when the attention is called away. "So of everyone who practises, apparently automatically, along- familiar handicraft. The smith turning his tongs as he smites the iron, the carpenter wielding his plane, the lace-maker with her bobbin, the weaver at his loom, all will answer the same question in the same way by saying that they have a feeling of the proper management of the implement in their hands. " In these cases, the feelings which are conditions of the appropriate acts are very faint. But none the less are they necessary. Imagine your hands not feeling; your movements could then only be provoked by ideas, and if your ideas were then diverted away, the movements ought to come to a standstill, which is a consequence that seldom occurs." * Again : " An idea makes you take, for example, a violin into your left hand. But it is not necessary that your idea remain fixed on the contrac tion of the muscles of the left hand and fingers in order that the violin may continue to be held fast and not let fall. The sensations themselves which the holding of the instrument awakens in the hand, since they are associated with the motor impulse of grasping, are suf ficient to cause this impulse, which then lasts as long as the feeling itself lasts, or until the impulse is inhibited by the idea of some antag onistic motion." And the same may be said of the manner in which the right hand holds the bow : " It sometimes happens, in beginning these simultaneous combina tions, that one movement or impulse will cease if the consciousness turn particularly toward another, because at the outset the guiding sensations must all be strongly felt. The bow will perhaps slip from the fingers, because some of the muscles have relaxed. But the slipping is a cause of new sensations starting up in the hand, so that the attention is in a moment brought back to the grasping of the bow. ' ' The following experiment shows this well : When one begins to play on the violin, to keep him from raising his right elbow in playing * ' Der menschliche Wille,' pp. 447, 44& 120 PSYCHOLOGY. a book is placed under his right armpit, which he is ordered to hold fast by keeping the upper arm tight against his body. The muscular feelings, and feelings of contact connected with the book, provoke an impulse to press it tight. But often it happens that the beginner, whose attention gets absorbed in the production of the notes, lets drop the book. Later, however, this never happens; the faintest sensations of contact suffice to awaken the impulse to keep it in its place, and the attention may be wholly absorbed by the notes and the fingering with the left hand. The simultaneous combination of movements is thus in the first instance conditioned by the facility with which in us, along side of intellectual processes, processes of inattentive feeling may still This brings us by a very natural transition to the ethical implications of the law of habit. They are numerous and momentous. Dr. Carpenter, from whose ' Mental Physiol ogy ' we have quoted, has so prominently enforced the principle that our organs grow to the way in which they have been exercised, and dwelt upon its consequences, that his book almost deserves to be called a work of edification, on this account alone. We need make no apology, then, for tracing a few of these consequences ourselves : " Habit a second nature ! Habit is ten times nature," the Duke of Wellington is said to have exclaimed ; and the degree to which this is true no one can probably appreciate as well as one who is a veteran soldier himself. The daily drill and the years of discipline end by fashioning a man completely over again, as to most of the possibilities of his conduct. " There is a story, which is credible enough, though it may not be true, of a practical joker, who, seeing a discharged veteran carrying home his dinner, suddenly called out, * Attention ! ' where upon the man instantly brought his hands down, and lost his mutton and potatoes in the gutter. The drill had been thorough, and its effects had become embodied in the man's nervous structure." t Kiderless cavalry-horses, at many a battle, have been seen to come together and go through their customary I evolutions at the sound of the bugle-call. Most trained domestic animals, dogs and oxen, and omnibus- and car- * 'Der menschliche Wille,' p. 439. The last sentence is rather freely translated — the sense is uualtered. f Huxley's 'Elementary Lessons in Physiology,' lesson xn. HABIT. 121 horses, seem to be machines almost pure and simple, un- doubtingly, unhesitatingly doing from minute to minute the duties they have been taught, and giving no sign that the possibility of an alternative ever suggests itself to their mind. Men grown old in prison have asked to be read mitted after being once set free. In a railroad accident to a travelling menagerie in the United States some time in 1884, a tiger, whose cage had broken open, is said to have emerged, but presently crept back again, as if too much bewildered by his new responsibilities, so that he was with out difficulty secured. Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein. It keeps the fisherman and the deck-hand at sea through the winter ; it holds the miner in his darkness, and nails the countryman to his log-cabin and his lonely farm through all the months of snow ; it protects us from invasion by the natives of the desert and the frozen zone. It dooms us all to fight out the battle of life upon the lines of our nurture or our early choice, and to make the best of a pursuit that disagrees, because there is no other for which we are fitted, and it is too late to begin again. It keeps different social strata from mixing. Already at the age of twenty-five you see the professional mannerism settling down on the young commercial traveller, on the young doctor, on the young minister, on the young counsellor-at-law. You see the little lines of cleavage running through the character, the tricks of thought, the prejudices, the ways of the ' shop,' in a word, from which the man can by-and-by no more escape than his coat-sleeve can suddenly fall into a new set of folds. On the whole, it is best he should not escape. It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again. If the period between twenty and thirty is the critical one in the formation of intellectual and professional habits, 122 PSYCHOLOGY. the period below twenty is more important still for the fix ing of personal habits, properly so called, such as vocaliza tion and pronunciation, gesture, motion, and address. Hardly ever is a language learned after twenty spoken without a foreign accent ; hardly ever can a youth trans ferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can he even learn to dress like a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest ' swell,' but he simply cannot buy the right things. An invisible law, as strong as gravitation, keeps him within his orbit, arrayed this year as he was the last; and how his better-bred acquaintances contrive to get the things they wear will be for him a mystery till his dying day. The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our j nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund * and capitalize our acquisitions, aiid live at ease upon the interest of the fund. For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we cant and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the '• plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every , cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express ' volitional deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. If there be such daily duties not yet ingrained in any one of my readers, let him begin this very hour to set the matter right. In Professor Bain's chapter on 'The Moral Habits' there are some admirable practical remarks laid down. Two great maxims emerge from his treatment. The first HABIT. 123 is tliat in the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as A strong and decided an initiative as possible. Accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall re-enforce the right motives ; put yourself assiduously in conditions that en courage the new way ; make engagements incompatible with the old ; take a public pledge, if the case allows ; in short, envelop your resolution with every aid you know. This will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise might ; and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all. The second maxim is : Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is care fully winding up ; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again. Continuity of training is the great means of making the nervous system act infallibly right. As Professor Bain says : "The peculiarity of the moral habits, contradistinguishing them from the intellectual acquisitions, is the presence of two hostile powers, one to be gradually raised into the ascendant over the other. It is necessary, above all things, in such a situation, never to lose a battle. Every gain on the wrong side undoes the effect of many conquests on the right. The essential precaution, therefore, is so to regulate the ' two opposing powers that the one may have a series of uninterrupted successes, until repetition has fortified it to such a degree as to enable it to cope with the opposition, under any circumstances. This is the theoretically best career of mental progress." The need of securing success at the outset is imperative. Failure at first is apt to dampen the energy of all future attempts, whereas past experience of success nerves one to future vigor. Goethe says to a man who consulted him about an enterprise but mistrusted his own powers : "Ach ! you need only blow on your hands ! " And the remark illustrates the effect on Goethe's spirits of his own habitu ally successful career. Prof. Baumann, from whom I bor row the anecdote,* says that the collapse of barbarian * See the admirable passage about success at the outset, in his Handbuch der Moral (1878), pp. 38-43. 124 PSYCHOLOGY. nations when Europeans come among them is due to their despair of ever succeeding as the new-comers do in the larger tasks of life. Old ways are broken and new ones not formed. The question of 'tapering-off,' in abandoning such habits as drink and opium-indulgence, comes in here, and is a question about which experts differ within certain limits, and in regard to what may be best for an individual case. In the main, however, all expert opinion would agree that abrupt acquisition of the new habit is the best way, 'if there be a real possibility of carrying it out. We must be careful not to give the will so stiff a task as to in sure its defeat at the very outset; but, provided one can stand it, a sharp period of suffering, and then a free time, is the best thing to aim at, whether in giving up a habit like that of opium, or in simply changing one's hours of rising or of work. It is surprising how soon a desire will die of inanition if it be never fed. " One must first learn, unmoved, looking neither to the right nor left, to walk firmly on the straight and narrow path, before one oan begin 'to make one's self over again.' He who every day makes a fresh resolve is like one who, arriving at the edge of the ditch he is to leap, forever stops and returns for a fresh run. Without unbroken .advance there is no such thing as accumulation of the ethical forces possible, and to make this possible, and to exercise us and habituate us in it, is the sovereign blessing of regular work." * A third maxim may be added to the preceding pair: Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolu tion you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain. It is not in the moment of their forming, but in the moment of their producing motor effects, that resolves and aspira tions communicate the new 'set' to the brain. As the author last quoted remarks : "The actual presence of the practical opportunity alone furnishes the fulcrum upon which the lever can rest, by means of which the moral will may multiply its strength, and raise itself aloft. He who has no solid ground to press against will never get beyond the stage of empty gesture-making." * J. Bahnsen : 'Beitrage zu Charakterologie ' (1867), vol. i. p. 209. HABIT. 125 No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may pos sess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one have not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to ^act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With mere good intentions, hell is proverbially paved. And this is an obvious consequence of the prin ciples we have laid down. A ' character,' as J. S. Mill says, lis a completely fashioned will' ; and a will, in the sense in which he means it, is an aggregate of tendencies to act in a firm and prompt and definite way upon all the principal emergencies of life. A tendency to act only becomes effec tively ingrained in us in proportion to the uninterrupted frequency with which the actions actually occur, and the brain ' grows ' to their use. Every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost; it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge. There is no more contemptible type of human character than that of the nerveless senti mentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering - sea of sensibility and emotion, but who never does a manly concrete deed. Rousseau, inflaming all the mothers oft France, by his eloquence, to follow Nature and nurse their babies themselves, while he sends his own children to the foundling hospital, is the classical example of what I mean. But every one of us in his measure, whenever, after glow ing for an abstractly formulated Good, he practically ignores some actual case, among the squalid ' other partic ulars ' of which that same Good lurks disguised, treads straight on Rousseau's path. All Goods are disguised by the vulgarity of their concomitants, in this work-a-day world ; but woe to him who can only recognize them when he thinks them in their pure and abstract form ! The habit of excessive novel-reading and theatre-going will produce true monsters in this line. The weeping of a Russian lady over the fictitious personages in the play, while her coach man is freezing to death on his seat outside, is the sort of • thing that everywhere happens on a less glaring scale. Even the habit of excessive indulgence in music, for those who are neither performers themselves nor musically gifted 126 P8YGHOLOQ7. enough to take it in a purely intellectual way, has probably a relaxing effect upon the character. One becomes filled with emotions which habitually pass without prompting to any deed, and so the inertly sentimental condition is kept up. The remedy would be, never to suffer one's self to have an emotion at a concert, without expressing it after ward in some active way.* Let the expression be the least thing in the world — speaking genially to one's aunt, or giving up one's seat in a horse-car, if nothing more heroic ' offers — but let it not fail to take place. These latter cases make us aware that it is not simply particular lines of discharge, but also general forms of dis charge, that seem to be grooved out by habit in the brain. Just as, if we let our emotions evaporate, they get into a way of evaporating ; so there is reason to suppose that if we often flinch from making an effort, before we know it the effort-making capacity will be gone ; and that, if we suffer the wandering of our attention, presently it will wander all the time. Attention and effort are, as we shall see later, *** /but two names for the same psychic fact. To what brain- processes they correspond we do not know. The strongest reason for believing that they do depend on brain-processes at all, and are not pure acts of the spirit, is just this fact, that they seem in some degree subject to the law of habit, which is a material law. As a final practical maxim, rela tive to these habits of the will, we may, then, offer some- I I thing like this : Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematic ally ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do ' every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained Ho stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insur ance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has * See for remarks on this subject a readable article by Miss V. Scudde* on 'Musical Devotees aiid Morals/ in the Andover Keview for January 1887. HABIT. 127 daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, j ^ j^ energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. ) He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast. The physiological study of mental conditions is thus the most powerful ally of hortatory ethics. The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually \/) X) fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could the / young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their con duct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. The drunken Kip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, 'I won't count ( / this time ! ' Well ! he may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it ; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibres the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing v\re ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. Of course, this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become permanent drunkards by so many separate drinks, so wre become saints in the moral, and authorities and experts in the practical and scientific spheres, by so many separate f acts and hours of work. Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working- ^/ day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morn ing, to find himself one of the competent ones of his gen eration, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out. Silently, between all the details of his business, the poiver oj ^ judging in all that class of matter will have built itself up within him as a possession that will never pass away. ' Young people should know this truth in advance. The ignorance of it has probably engendered more discourage ment and faint-lieartedness in youths embarking on arduous careers than all other causes put together. CHAPTER V. THE AUTOMATON-THEORY. IN describing the functions of the hemispheres a short way back, we used language derived from both the bodily and the mental life, saying now that the animal made inde terminate and unforeseeable reactions, and anon that he was swayed by considerations of future good and evil ; treating his hemispheres sometimes as the seat of mem ory and ideas in the psychic sense, and sometimes talk ing of them as simply a complicated addition to his reflex machinery. This sort of vacillation in the point of view is a fatal incident of all ordinary talk about these questions ; but I must now settle my scores with those readers to whom I already dropped a word in passing (see page 24, note) and who have probably been dissatisfied with my conduct ever since. Suppose we restrict our view to facts of one and the same plane, and let that be the bodily plane : cannot all the out ward phenomena of intelligence still be exhaustively de scribed ? Those mental images, those ' considerations,' whereof we spoke, — presumably they do not arise without neural processes arising simultaneously with them, and presumably each consideration corresponds to a process sui generis, and unlike all the rest. In other words, however numerous and delicately differentiated the train of ideas may be, the train of brain-events that runs alongside of it must in both respects be exactly its match, and we must postulate a neural machinery that offers a living counterpart for every shading, however fine, of the history of its owner's mind. Whatever degree of complication the latter may reach, the complication of the machinery must be quite as extreme, otherwise we should have to admit that there may be mental events to which no brain-events correspond, 138 THE AUTOMATON- THEORY, 129 But such an admission as this the physiologist is reluctant to make. It would violate all his beliefs. ' No psychosis \ without neurosis,' is one form which the principle of con- [ tinuity takes in his mind. But this principle forces the physiologist to make still another step. If neural action is as complicated as mind ; and if in the sympathetic system and lower spinal cord we see what, so far as we know, is unconscious neural action executing deeds that to all outward intent may be called intelligent ; what is there to hinder us from supposing that even where we know consciousness to be there, the still more complicated neural action which we believe to be its inseparable companion is alone and of itself the real agent / ^ of whatever intelligent deeds may appear ? " As actions of a certain degree of complexity are brought about by mere mechanism, why may not actions of a still greater degree of complexity be the result of a more refined mechanism ?" The conception of reflex action is surely one of the best conquests of physiological theory ; why not be radical with it ? Why not say that just as the spinal cord is a machine with few reflexes, so the hemispheres are a machine with many, and that that is all the difference ? The principle of continuity would press us to accept this view. But what on this view could be the function of the con sciousness itself ? Mechanical function it would have none. The sense-organs would awaken the brain-cells ; these would awaken each other in rational and orderly sequence, until the time for action came ; and then the last brain« • vibration would discharge downward into the motor tracts. ( But this would be a quite autonomous chain of occur rences, and whatever mind went with it would be there only as an ' epiphenomenon,' an inert spectator, a sort of * foam, aura, or melody ' as Mr. Hodgson says, whose oppo sition or whose furtherance would be alike powerless over the occurrences themselves. When talking, some time ago, < we ought not, accordingly, as physiologists, to have said any thing about ' considerations ' as guiding the animal. We j ought to have said ' paths left in the hemispherical cortex ' by former currents,' and nothing more. Now so simple and attractive is this conception from the 130 PSYCHOLOGY, consistently physiological point of view, that it is quite wonderful to see how late it was stumbled on in philosophy, and how few people, even when it has been explained to them, fully and easily realize its import. Much of the polemic writing against it is by men who have as }^et failed ' k> take it into their imaginations. Since this has been the case, it seems worth while to devote a few more words to making it plausible, before criticising it ourselves. To Descartes belongs the credit of having first been bold enough to conceive of a completely self-sufficing nervous mechanism which should be able to perform complicated and apparently intelligent acts. By a singularly arbitrary \ jj restriction, however, Descartes stopped short at man, and while contending that in beasts the nervous machinery was all, he held that the higher acts of man were the result of the agency of his rational soul. The opinion that beasts have no consciousness at all was of course too para doxical to maintain itself long as anything more than a curious item in the history of philosophy. And with its i, abandonment the very notion that the nervous system per se might work the work of intelligence, which was an integral, though detachable part of the whole theory, seemed also to slip out of men's conception, until, in this century, the elaboration of the doctrine of reflex action made it possible and natural that it should again arise. But it was not till 1870, I believe, that Mr. Hodgson made the decisive step, by saying that feelings, no matter how intensely they may be present, can have no causal efficacy whatever, and com paring them to the colors laid on the surface of a mosaic, of which the events in the nervous system are represented by the stones.* Obviously the stones are held in place by each other and not by the several colors which they support. About the same time Mr. Spalding, and a little later Messrs. Huxley and Clifford, gave great publicity to an identical doctrine, though in their case it was backed by less refined metaphysical considerations. t * The Theory of Practice, vol. i, p. 416 ff. f The present writer recalls how in 1869, when still a medical student, he began to write an essay showing how almost every one who speculated about brain-processes illicitly interpolated into his account of them links A UTOMA TON- THEOR Y. 131 A few sentences from Huxley and Clifford may be sub joined to make the matter entirely clear. Professor Huxley says: ' ' The consciousness of brutes would appear to be related to the mechanism of their body simply as a collateral product of its working, and to be as completely without any power of modifying that working as the steam-whistle which accompanies the work of a locomotive engine is without influence on its machinery. Their volition, if they have any, is an emotion indicative of physical changes, not a cause of such changes. . . . The soul stands related to the body as the bell of a clock to the works, and consciousness answers to the sound which the bell gives out when it is struck. . . . Thus far I have strictly confined myself to the j automatism of brutes. ... It is quite true that, to the best of my I judgment, the argumentation which applies to brutes holds equally good of men ; and, therefore, that all states of consciousness in us, as in them, are immediately caused by molecular changes of the brain-sub- . stance. It seems to me that in men, as in brutes, there is no proof that any state of consciousness is the cause of change in the motion of the matter of the organism. If these positions are well based, it follows that our mental conditions are simply the symbols in consciousness of the changes which take place automatically in the organism ; and that, to take an extreme illustration, the feeling we call volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but the symbol of that state of the brain which is the immediate cause of that act. We are conscious automata." Professor Clifford writes : ' ' All the evidence that we have goes to show that the physical world gets along entirely by itself, according to practically universal rules. . . . The train of physical facts between the stimulus sent into the eye, or to any one of our senses, and the exertion which follows it, and the train of physical facts which goes on in the brain, even when there is no stimulus and no exertion, — these are perfectly complete physical trams, and every step is fully accounted for by mechanical conditions. • . . . The two things are on utterly different platforms — the physical facts go along by themselves, and the mental facts go along by them- / *'• selves. There is a parallelism between them, but there is no interfer ence of one with the other. Again, if anybody says that the will influences matter, the statement is not untrue, but it is nonsense. Such an assertion belongs to the crude materialism of the savage. The only derived from the entirely heterogeneous universe of Feeling. Spencer, Hodgson (in his Time and Space), Maudsley, Lockhart Clarke, Bain, Dr. Carpenter, and other authors were cited as having been guilty of the con fusion. The writing was soon stopped because he perceived that the view which he was upholding against these authors was a pure conception, with no proofs to be adduced of its reality. Later it seemed to him that what ever proofs existed really told in favor of their view. 132 PSYCHOLOGY. thing which influences matter is the position of surrounding matter o? the motion of surrounding matter. ... The assertion that another man's volition, a feeling in his consciousness that I cannot perceive, is part of the train of physical facts which I may perceive,— this is neither true nor untrue, but nonsense ; it is a combination of words whose cor responding ideas will not go together. . . . Sometimes one series is known better, and sometimes the other ; so that in telling a story we speak sometimes of mental and sometimes of material facts. A feeling of chill made a man run ; strictly speaking, the nervous disturbance which coexisted with that feeling of chill made him run, if we want to talk about material facts ; or the feeling of chill produced the form of sub-consciousness which coexists with the motion of legs, if we want to talk about mental facts. . . . When, therefore, we ask : « What is the physical link between the ingoing message from chilled skin and the outgoing message which moves the leg ? ' and the answer is, ' A man's will,' we have as much right to be amused as if we had asked our friend with the picture what pigment was used in painting the cannon in the foreground, and received the answer, ' Wrought iron.' It will be found excellent practice in the mental operations required by this doctrine to imagine a train, the fore part of which is an engine and three carriages linked with iron couplings, and the hind part three other carriages linked with iron couplings ; the bond between the two parts being made up out of the sentiments of amity subsisting between the stoker and the guard." To comprehend completely the consequences of the dogma so confidently enunciated, one should unflinchingly apply it to the most complicated examples. The move ments of our tongues and pens, the flashings of our eyes in conversation, are of course events of a material order, and as such their causal antecedents must be exclusively material. Jf we knew thoroughly the nervous system of Shake speare, and as thoroughly all his environing conditions, we should be able to show why at a certain period of his life his hand came to trace on certain sheets of paper those crabbed little black marks which we for shortness' sake call the manuscript of Hamlet. We should under stand the rationale of every erasure and alteration therein, and we should understand all this without in the slightest / degree acknowledging the existence of the thoughts in Shake speare's mind. The words and sentences would be taken, not as signs of anything beyond themselves, but as little outward facts, pure and simple. In like manner we might exhaustively write the biography of those two hundred A UTOMA TON- THEOR T. 1 33 pounds, more or less, of warmish albuminoid matter called Martin Luther, without ever implying that it felt. But, on the other hand, nothing in all this could pre vent us from giving an equally complete account of either Luther's or Shakespeare's spiritual history, an account in which every gleam of thought and emotion should find its place. The mind-history would run alongside of the body- history of each man, and each point in the one would cor respond to, but not react upon, a point in the other. So the melody floats from the harp-string, but neither checks nor quickens its vibrations ; so the shadow runs alongside the pedestrian, but in no way influences his steps. Another inference, apparently more paradoxical still, needs to be made, though, as far as I am aware, Dr. Hodg son is the only writer who has explicitly drawn it. That inference is that feelings, not causing nerve-actions, cannot even cause each other. To ordinary common sense, felt pain is, as such, not only the cause of outward tears and cries, but also the cause of such inward events as sorrow, compunction, desire, or inventive thought. So the con sciousness of good news is the direct producer of the feel ing of joy, the awareness of premises that of the belief in conclusions. But according to the automaton-theory, each of the feelings mentioned is only the correlate of some nerve- 1 1 . movement whose cause lay wholly in a previous nerve-move ment. The first nerve-movement called up the second ; whatever feeling was attached to the second consequently found itself following upon the feeling that was attached to the first. If, for example, good news was the conscious ness correlated with the first movement, then joy turned out to be the correlate in consciousness of the second. But all the while the items of the nerve series were the only ones in causal continuity ; the items of the conscious series, however inwardly rational their sequence, were simply juxtaposed. REASON'S FOR THE THEORY. The ' conscious automaton-theory,' as this conception is generally called, is thus a radical and simple conception of the manner in which certain facts may possibly occur. But 134 PSYCHOLOGY. between conception and belief, proof ought to lie. And when we ask, ' What proves that all this is more than a mere conception of the possible ? ' it is not easy to get a sufficient reply. If we start from the frog's spinal cord and reason by continuity, saying, as that acts so intelli gently, though unconscious, so the higher centres, though conscious, may have the intelligence they show quite as mechanically based ; we are immediately met by the exact counter-argument from continuity, an Argument actually urged by such writers as Pfliiger and Lewes, which starts from the acts of the hemispheres, and says : " As these owe their intelligence to the consciousness which we know to be there, so the intelligence of the spinal cord's acts must really be due to the invisible presence of a consciousness lower in degree." All arguments from continuity work in two ways : you can either level up or level down by their means. And it is clear that such arguments as these can eat each other up to all eternity. There remains a sort of philosophic faith, bred like most faiths from an aesthetic demand. Mental and physical events are, on all hands, admitted to present the strongest contrast in the entire field of being. The chasm which yawns between them is less easily bridged over by the mind than any interval we know. Why, then, not call it an absolute chasm, and say not only that the two worlds are different, but that they are independent ? This gives us the comfort of all simple and absolute formulas, and it makes each chain homogeneous to our consideration. Yfhen talking of nervous tremors and bodily actions, we may feel secure against intrusion from an irrelevant mental world. When, on the other hand, we speak of feelings, we may with equal consistency use terms always of one de nomination, and never be annoyed by what Aristotle calls ' slipping into another kind.' The desire on the part of men educated in laboratories not to have their physical reason ings mixed up with such incommensurable factors as feelings is certainly very strong. I have heard a most intelligent biologist say : *• It is high time for scientific men to protest against the recognition of any such thing as consciousness in a scientific investigation." In a word, feeling constitutes A UTOMA TON-THEOR Y. 135 the ' unscientific ' half of existence, and any one who enjoys calling himself a ' scientist ' will be too happy to purchase an untrammelled homogeneity of terms in the studies of his predilection, at the slight cost of admitting a dualism ' which, in the same breath that it allows to mind an inde pendent status of being, banishes it to a limbo of causal inertness, from whence no intrusion or interruption on its part need ever be feared. Over and above this great postulate that matters must be kept simple, there is, it must be confessed, still another highly abstract reason for denying causal efficacity to our feelings. We can form no positive image of the modus operandi of a volition or other thought affecting the cere bral molecules. " Let us try to imagine an idea, say of food, producing a movement, say of carrying food to the mouth. . . . What is the method of its action? Does it assist the decomposition of the molecules of the gray matter, or does it retard the process, or does it alter the direction in which the shocks are distributed ? Let us imagine the molecules of the gray matter combined in such a way that they will fall into simpler combinations on the impact of an incident force. Now suppose the in cident force, in the shape of a shock from some other centre, to impinge upon these molecules. By hypothesis it will decompose them, and they will fall into the simpler combination. How is the idea of food to pre vent this decomposition ? Manifestly it can do so only by increasing , the force which binds the molecules together. Good ! Try to imagine the idea of a beefsteak binding two molecules together. It is impossi ble. Equally impossible is it to imagine a similar idea loosening the attractive force between two molecules." * This passage from an exceedingly clever writer expresses ] admirably the difficulty to which I allude. Combined with a strong sense of the ' chasm ' between the two worlds, and with a lively faith in reflex machinery, the sense of this difficulty can hardly fail to make one turn consciousness out of the door as a superfluity so far as one's explanations i go. One may bow her out politely, allow her to remain as an ' epiphenomenon' (invaluable word !), but one insists that matter shall hold all the power. "Having thoroughly recognized the fathomless abyss that separates mind from matter, and having so blended the very notion into his very * Chas. Mercier : The Nervous Svstem aud the Mind (1888), p. 9. 136 PSYCHOLOGY. nature that there is no chance of his ever forgetting it or failing to saturate with it all his meditations, the student of psychology has next to appreciate the association between these two orders of phenomena. . . . They are associated in a manner so intimate that some of the greatest thinkers consider them different aspects of the same process. . . . When the rearrangement of molecules takes place in the higher regions of the brain, a change of consciousness simultaneously occurs. . . . The change of consciousness never takes place without the change in the brain ; the change in the brain never . . . without the change in consciousness. But why the two occur together, or what the link is which connects them, we do not know, and most authorities believe that we never shall and never can know. Having firmly and tena ciously grasped these two notions, of the absolute separateness of mind and matter, and of the invariable concomitance of a mental change with a bodily change, the student will enter on the study of psychology with half his difficulties surmounted." * Half his difficulties ignored, I should prefer to say. For this ' concomitance ' in the midst of ' absolute separateness ' is an utterly irrational notion. It is to my mind quite in, conceivable that consciousness should have nothing to do with a business which it so faithfully attends. And the question, ' What has it to do ? ' is one which psychology has no right to ' surmount,' for it is her plain duty to con sider it. The fact is that the whole question of interaction and influence between things is a metaphysical question, and cannot be discussed at all by those who are unwilling to go into matters thoroughly. It is truly enough hard to imagine the 'idea of a beefsteak binding two molecules together ; ' but since Hume's time it has been equally hard Vv-to imagine anything binding them together. The whole notion of ' binding ' is a mystery, the first step towards the solution of which is to clear scholastic rubbish out of the way. Popular science talks of ' forces,' ' attractions ' or ' affinities ' as binding the molecules ; but clear science, though she may use such words to abbreviate discourse, has no use for the conceptions, and is satisfied when she can express in simple ' laws ' the bare space-relations of the molecules as functions of each other and of time. To the more curiously inquiring mind, however, this simplified expression of the bare facts is not enough ; there must * On. <&. v ? t. AUTOMATON-THEORY. 137 be a ' reason ' for them, and something must ' determine ' the laws. And when one seriously sits down to con- ^ider what sort of a thing one means when one asks i for a ' reason,' one is led so far afield, so far away from popular science and its scholasticism, as to see that even such a fact as the existence or non-existence in the universe of ' the idea of a beefsteak ' may not be wholly indifferent to other facts in the same universe, and in particular may have something to do with determining the distance at which two molecules in that universe shall lie apart. If ihis is so, then common-sense, though the intimate nature of causality and of the connection of things in the universe i lies beyond her pitifully bounded horizon, has the root and gist of the truth in her hands when she obstinately holds i to it that feelings and ideas are causes. However inade quate our ideas of causal efficacy may be, we are less wide , of the mark when we say that our ideas and feelings have it, than the Automatists are when they say they haven't it. ; As in the night all cats are gray, so in the darkness of meta physical criticism all causes are obscure. But one has no right to pull the pall over the psychic half of the subject only, as the automatists do, and to say that that causation is unintelligible, whilst in the same breath one dogmatizes : about material causation as if Hume, Kant, and Lotze had never been born. One cannot thus blow hot and cold. One must be impartially naif or impartially critical. If the latter, the reconstruction must be thorough-going or ' meta physical,' and will probably preserve the common-sense view that ideas are forces, in some translated form. But Psychology is a mere natural science, accepting certain terms uncritically as her data, and stopping short of metaphysical reconstruction. Like physics, she must be naive ; and if she finds that in her very peculiar field of study ideas seem to be causes, she had better continue to talk of them as such. She gains absolutely nothing by a breach with common-sense in this matter, and she loses, to say the least, all naturalness of speech. If feelings are causes, of course their effects must be furtherances and checkings of internal cerebral motions, of which in them selves we are entirely without knowledge. It is probable 138 PSYCHOLOGY. that for years to come we shall have to infer what happens / in the brain either from our feelings or from motor effects which we observe. The organ will be for us a sort of vat ' in which feelings and motions somehow go on stewing together, and in which innumerable things happen of which we catch but the statistical result. Why, under these cir- \ cumstances, we should be asked to forswear the language of our childhood I cannot well imagine, especially as it is perfectly compatible with the language of physiology. The feelings can produce nothing absolutely new, they can only reinforce and inhibit reflex currents which already exist, and the original organization of these by physiological forces must always be the ground-work of the psycho logical scheme. My conclusion is that to urge the automaton-theory upon us, as it is now urged, on purely a priori and quasi. metaphysical grounds, is an unwarrantable impertinence in the present state of psychology. REASONS AGAINST THE THEORY. But there are much more positive reasons than this why we ought to continue to talk in psychology as if conscious ness had causal efficacy. The particulars of the distribu tion of consciousness, so far as we know them, point to its being efficacious. Let us trace some of them. It is very generally admitted, though the point would , be hard to prove, that consciousness grows the more com plex and intense the higher we rise in the animal kingdom. That of a man must exceed that of an oyster. From this point of view it seems an organ, superadded to the other organs which maintain the animal in the struggle for exist ence ; and the presumption of course is that it helps him in some way in the struggle, just as they do. But it cannot help him without being in some way efficacious and influencing the course of his bodily history. If now it could be shown in what way consciousness might help him, and if, moreover, the defects of his other organs (where consciousness is most developed) are such as to make them need just the kind of help that consciousness would bring provided it id. p. 153 ; J. Dewey, ibid. vol. ix. p. 1. THE METHODS AND SNARES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 185 reporter of subjective as well as of objective facts, we must presently speak. But not until we have considered the methods he uses for ascertaining what the facts in question are. THE METHODS OF INVESTIGATION. Introspective Observation is what we have to rely on first and foremost and always. The word introspection need hardly be defined — it means, of course, the looking into our own minds and reporting what we there discover. Every one, agrees that we there discover states of consciousness. So far as I know, the existence of such states has never been' doubted by any critic, however sceptical in other respects he may have been. That we have cogitations of some sort is the inconcussum in a world most of whose other facts have at some time tottered in the breath of philosophic doubt. All people unhesitatingly believe that they feel themselves thinking, and that they distinguish the mental state as an inward activity or passion, from all the objects with which it may cognitively deal. / regard this belief as the most }.; fundamental of all the postulates of Psychology, and shall dis card all curious inquiries about its certainty as too meta physical for the scope of this book. A Question of Nomenclature. We ought to have some general term by which to designate all states of con sciousness merely as such, and apart from their par ticular quality or cognitive function. Unfortunately most of the terms in use have grave objections. ' Mental state,' ' state of consciousness,' ' conscious modification,' are cumbrous and have no kindred verbs. The same is true of 'subjective condition.' 'Feeling' has the verb 'to feel,' both active and neuter, and such derivatives as ' feelingly,' 'felt,' 4'eltness,' etc., which make it extremely convenient. But on the other hand it has specific meanings as well as its generic one, sometimes standing for pleasure and pain, and being sometimes a synonym of ' sensation ' as opposed to thought ; whereas we wish a term to cover sensation and 186 PSYCHOLOGY. thought indifferently. Moreover, ' feeling ' has acquired in the hearts of platonizing thinkers a very opprobrious set of implications ; and since one of the great obstacles to mutual understanding in philosophy is the use of words eulogisti- cally and disparagingly, impartial terms ought always, if possible, to be preferred. The word psychosis has been proposed by Mr. Huxley. It has the advantage of being correlative to neurosis (the name applied by the same author to the corresponding nerve-process), and is moreover tech nical and devoid of partial implications. But it has no )/ verb or other grammatical form allied to it. The expres sions ' affection of the soul,' * modification of the ego,' are clumsy, like 'state of consciousness,' and they implicitly assert theories which it is not well to embody in terminol ogy before they have been openly discussed and approved. ' ' Idea ' is a good vague neutral word, and was by Locke employed in the broadest generic way ; but notwithstanding his authority it has not domesticated itself in the language so as to cover bodily sensations, and it moreover has no verb. ' Thought ' would be by far the best word to use if it could be made to cover sensations. It has no opprobri ous connotation such as ' feeling ' has, and it immediately suggests the omnipresence of cognition (or reference to an ' object other than the mental state itself), which we shall ^soon see to be of the mental life's essence. But can the 'expression 'thought of a toothache' ever suggest to the reader the actual present pain itself ? It is hardly possi ble ; and we thus seem about to be forced back on some pair of terms like Hume's ' impression and idea,' or Ham ilton's 'presentation and representation,' or the ordinary ' feeling and thought,' if we wish to cover the whole ground. In this quandary we can make no definitive choice, but must, according to the convenience of the context, use sometimes one, sometimes another of the synonyms that have been mentioned. My oivn partiality is for either FEELING or THOUGHT. I shall probably often use both words in a wider sense than usual, and alternately startle two classes of readers by their unusual sound ; but if the con nection makes it clear that mental states at large, irrespec- THE METHODS AND SNARES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 187 tive of their kind, are meant, this will do no harm, and may even do some good.* The inaccuracy of introspective observation has been made a subject of debate. It is important to gain some fixed ideas on this point before we proceed. The commonest spiritualistic opinion is that the Soul or Subject of the mental life is a metaphysical entity, inac cessible to direct knowledge, and that the various mental states and operations of which we reflectively become aware are objects of an inner sense which does not lay hold of the real agent in itself, any more than sight or hear-' ing gives us direct knowledge of matter in itself. From, this point of view introspection is, of course, incompetent to lay hold of anything more than the Soul's phenomena. But even then the question remains, How well can it know the phenomena themselves ? Some authors take high ground here and claim for it a sort of infallibility. Thus Ueberweg : " When a mental image, as such, is the object of my apprehension, there is no meaning in seeking to distinguish its existence in my con sciousness (in me) from its existence out of my consciousness (in itself) ; for the object apprehended is, in this case, one which does not even exist, as the objects of external perception do, in itself outside of my consciousness. It exists only within me." t And Brentano : " The phenomena inwardly apprehended are true in themselves, As they appear — of this the evidence with which they are apprehended is a warrant — so they are in reality. Who, then, can deny that in this a great superiority of Psychology over the physical sciences comes to light ?" And again : " No one can doubt whether the psychic condition he apprehends in himself \e, and be so, as he apprehends it. Whoever should doubt this would have reached that finished doubt which destroys itself in de stroying every fixed point from which to make an attack upon knowl edge, "t Others have gone to the opposite extreme, and main- . tained that we can have no introspective cognition of our / ) * Compare some remarks in Mill's Logic, bk. i. chap, in §§ 2, 3. f Logic, § 40. J Psychologic, bk. n. chap. in. §§ 1, 2. 188 PSYCHOLOGY. own minds at all. A deliverance of Auguste Comte to thia effect has been so often quoted as to be almost classical ; and some reference to it seems therefore indispensable here. Philosophers, says Comte,* have " in these latter days imagined themselves able to distinguish, by a very singular subtlety, two sorts of observation of equal importance, one external, the other internal, the latter being solely destined for the study of intellectual phenomena. ... I limit myself to pointing out / the principal consideration which proves clearly that this pretended ; direct contemplation of the mind by itself is a pure illusion. . . . It is in fact evident that, by an invincible neccessity, the human mind can observe directly all phenomena except its own proper states. For by whom shall the observation of these be made ? It is conceivable that a man might observe himself with respect to the passions that animate him, for the anatomical organs of passion are distinct from those whose function is observation. Though we have all made such observations on ourselves, they can never have much scientific value, and the best mode of knowing the passions will always be that of ob serving them from without ; for every strong state of passion ... is necessarily incompatible with the state of observation. But, as for observing in the same way intellectual phenomena at the time of their actual presence, that is a manifest impossibility. The thinker cannot divide himself into two, of whom one reasons whilst the other observes him reason. The organ observed and the organ observing being, in this case, identical, how could observation take place ? This pretended psychological method is then radically null and void. On the one hand, they advise you to isolate yourself, as far as possible, from every external sensation, especially every intellectual work, — for if you were to busy yourself even with the simplest calculation, what would become of internal observation ?— on the other hand, after having with the utmost care attained this state of intellectual slumber, you must begin to contemplate the operations going on in your mind, when nothing there takes place ! Our descendants will doubtless see such pretensions some day ridiculed upon the stage. The results of so strange a proced ure harmonize entirely with its principle. For all the two thousand years during which metaphysicians have thus cultivated psychology, they are not agreed about one intelligible and established proposition. * Internal observation ' gives almost as many divergent results as there are individuals who think they practise it." Comte hardly could have known anything of the English, and nothing of the German, empirical psychology. The * results ' which he had in mind when writing were probably * Cours de Philosophic Positive, i. 34-8. THE METHODS AND SNARES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 189 scholastic ones, such as principles of internal activity, the faculties, the ego, the liberum arbitrium indiffer entice, etc. John Mill, in replying to him,* says : " It might have occurred to M. Comte that a fact may be studied through the medium of memory, not at the very moment of our per ceiving it, but the moment" after: and this is really the mode in which our best knowledge of our intellectual acts is generally acquired. We reflect on what we have been doing when the act is past, but when its impression in the memory is still fresh. Unless in one of these ways, we could not have acquired the knowledge which nobody denies us to have, of what passes in our minds. M. Comte would scarcely have affirmed that we are not aware of our own intellectual operations. We know of our observings and our reasonings, either at the very time, or by memory the moment after; in either case, by direct knowledge, and not (like things done by us in a state of somnambulism) merely by their results. This simple fact destroys the whole of M. Comte's argu ment. Whatever we are directly aware of, we can directly observe." Where now does the truth lie? Our quotation from Mill is obviously the one which expresses the most of practical truth about the matter. Even the writers who insist upon the absolute veracity of our immediate inner apprehension of a conscious state have to contrast with this the fallibility of our memory or observation of it, a moment later. No one has emphasized more sharply than Brentano himself the difference between the immediate feltness of a feeling, and its perception by a subsequent re flective act. But which mode of consciousness of it is that which the psychologist must depend on ? If to have feel ings or thoughts in their immediacy were enough, babies in the cradle would be psychologists, and infallible ones. But the psychologist must not only have his mental states in their absolute veritableness, he must report them and write about them, name them, classify and compare them and trace their relations to other things. Whilst alive they are their own property ; it is only post-mortem that they be come his prey.f And as in the naming, classing, and know- * Auguste Comte and Positivism, 3d edition (1882), p. 64. f Wundt says: " The first rule for utilizing inward observation con- gists in taking, as far as possible, experiences that are accidental, unex pected, and not intentionally brought about. . . . First it is best as far as possible to rely on Memory and not on immediate Apprehension. . . 190 PSYCHOLOGY. ing of things in general we are notoriously fallible, why noi also here? Comte is quite right in laying stress on the , fact that a feeling, to be named, judged, or perceived, must \ be already past. No subjective state, whilst present, is its own object; its object is always something else. There are, it is true, cases in which we appear to be naming our present feeling, and so to be experiencing and observing the same inner fact at a single stroke, as when we say ' I feel tired,' ' I am angry,' etc. But these are illusory, and a little attention unmasks the illusion. The present con scious state, when I say ' I feel tired,' is not the direct state of tire ; when I say ' I feel angry,' it is not the direct state of anger. It is the state of say ing -I-f eel-tired, of saying-I-f eel-angry, — entirely different matters, so different that the fatigue and anger apparently included in them are considerable modifications of the fatigue and anger directly felt the previous instant. The act of naming them has momentarily detracted from their force.* The only sound grounds on which the infallible veracity of the introspective judgment might be maintained are empirical. If we had reason to think it has never yet deceived us, we might continue to trust it. This is the ground actually maintained by Herr Mohr. *' The illusions of our senses,1' says this author, " have undermined our belief in the reality of the outer world; but in the sphere of inner observation our confidence is intact, for we have never found ourselves •• «J to be in error about the reality of an act of thought or feeling. We Second, internal observation is better fitted to grasp clearly conscious states, especially voluntary mental acts: such inner processes as are ob scurely conscious and involuntary will almost entirely elude it, because the effort to observe interferes with them, and because they seldom abide in memory." (Logik, n. 432.) * In cases like this, where the state outlasts the act of naming it, exists before it, and recurs when it is past, we probably run little practical risk of error when we talk as if the state knew itself. The state of feeling and the state of naming the feeling are continuous, and the infallibility of such prompt introspective judgments is probably great. But even here the certainty of our knowledge ought not to be argued on the a priori ground ; that percipi and esse are in psychology the same. The states are really ' two; the naming state and the named state are apart; 'percipi is esse' is not the principle tnat applies. THE METHODS AND SNARES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 191 have never been misled into thinking we were not in doubt or in anger when these conditions were really states of our consciousness." * But sound as the reasoning here would be, were the premises correct, I fear the latter cannot pass. However it may be with such strong feelings as doubt or anger, ( i / about weaker feelings, and about the relations to each other !/f of all feelings, we find ourselves in continual error and uncertainty so soon as we are called on to name and class, and not merely to feel. Who can be sure of the exact order of his feelings when they are excessively rapid ? Who can be sure, in his sensible perception of a chair, how much comes from the eye and how much is supplied out of the previous knowledge of the mind ? Who can compare with precision the quantities of disparate feelings even where the feelings are very much alike ? For instance, where an object is felt now against the back and now against the cheek, which feeling is most extensive? Who can be sure that two given feelings are or are not exactly the same ? Who can tell which is briefer or longer than the other when both occupy but an instant of time ? Who knows, of many | actions, for what motive they were done, or if for any motive at all ? Who can enumerate all the distinct ingredients of such a complicated feeling as anger ? and who can tell off hand whether or no a perception of distance be a compound or a simple state of mind? The whole mind-stuff contro versy would stop if we could decide conclusively by intro- / spection that what seem to us elementary feelings are ' really elementary and not compound. Mr. Sully, in his work on Illusions, has a chapter on those of Introspection from which we might now quote. But, since the rest of this volume will be little more than a collection of illustrations of the difficulty of discovering by direct introspection exactly what our feelings and their relations are, we need not anticipate our own future details, but just state our general conclusion that introspection is difficult and fallible; and that the difficulty is simply that of all observation of whatever kind. Something is before * J. Mohr: Grundlage der Empirischen Psychologic (Leipzig, 1882), p- 47. 192 PSYCHOLOGY. us ; we do our best to tell what it is, but in spite of oui good will we may go astray, and give a description more applicable to some other sort of thing. The only safeguard is in the final consensus of our farther knowledge about the thing in question, later views correcting earlier ones, until at last the harmony of a consistent system is reached. Such a system, gradually worked out, is the best guarantee the psychologist can give for the soundness of any partic ular psychologic observation which he may report. Such a system we ourselves must strive, as far as may be, to attain. The English writers on psychology, and the school of Herbart in Germany, have in the main contented them selves with such results as the immediate introspection of single individuals gave, and shown what a body of doctrine they may make. The works of Locke, Hume, Reid, Hart ley, Stewart, Brown, the Mills, will always be classics in this line ; and in Professor Bain's Treatises we have prob ably the last word of what this method taken mainly by itself can do — the last monument of the youth of our science, still unteclmical and generally intelligible, like the Chem istry of Lavoisier, or Anatomy before the microscope was used. The Experimental Method. But psychology is passing into a less simple phase. Within a few years what one may call a microscopic psychologj^ has arisen in Germany, car ried on by experimental methods, asking of course every moment for introspective data, but eliminating their uncer tainty by operating on a large scale and taking statistical means. This method taxes patience to the utmost, and could hardly have arisen in a country whose natives could be bored. Such Germans as Weber, Fechner, Vierordt, and Wundt obviously cannot ; and their success has brought into the field an array of younger experi mental psychologists, bent on studying the elements of the mental life, dissecting them out from the gross results in which they are embedded, and as far as possible reducing them to quantitative scales. The simple and open method of attack having done what it can, the method of patience, starving out, and harassing to death is tried; the Mind THE METHODS AND SNARES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 103 must submit to a regular siege, in which minute advantages gained night and day by the forces that hem her in must sum themselves up at last into her overthrow. There is little of the grand style about these new prism, pendulum, and chronograph-philosophers. They mean business, not chivalry. What generous divination, and that superiority in virtue which was thought by Cicero to give a man the best insight into nature, have failed to do, their spying and scraping, their deadly tenacity and almost diabolic cunning, will doubtless some day bring about, No general description of the methods of experimental psychology would be instructive to one unfamiliar with the instances of their application, so we will waste no words upon the attempt. The principal fields of experimentation BO far have been : 1) the connection of conscious states with their physical conditions, including the whole of brain- physiology, and the recent minutely cultivated physiology of the sense-organs, together with what is technically known as 'psycho-physics,' or the laws of ^correlation between sensations aijd the outward stimuli by which they are aroused ; 2) the analysis of space-perceptionlnto its sensa tional elements ; 3) the measurement of the duration of the simplest mental processes ; 4) that of the accuracy of re production in the memory of sensible experiences and of intervals of space and time; 5) that of the manner in which simple mental states influence each other, call each other up, or inhibit each other's reproduction ; 6) that of the number of facts which consciousness can simultaneously discern ; finally, 7) that of the elementary laws of obli- vescence and retention. It must be said that in some of these fields the results have as yet borne little theoretic fruit commensurate with the great labor expended in their acquisition. But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them they are sure to combine. New ground will from year to year be broken, and theoretic results will grow. Meanwhile the experimental method has quite changed the face of the science so far as the latter is a record of mere work done. The comparative method, finally, supplements the intro 194 PSYCHOLOGY. spective and experimental methods. This method pre supposes a normal psychology of introspection to be estab lished in its main features. But where the origin of these features, or their dependence upon one another, is in ques tion, it is of the utmost importance to trace the phenom enon considered through all its possible variations of type and combination. So it has come to pass that instincts of ; animals are ransacked to throw light on our own ; and that ^ the reasoning faculties of bees and ants, the minds of savages, infants, madmen, idiots, the deaf and blind, criminals, and eccentrics, are all invoked in support of this or that special theory about some part of our own mental life. The history of sciences, moral and political institutions, and languages, as types of mental product, are pressed into the same ser vice. Messrs. Darwin and Galton have set the example of circulars of questions sent out by the hundred to those supposed able to reply. The custom has spread, and it will be well for us in the next generation if such cir culars be not ranked among the common pests of life. Meanwhile information grows, and results emerge. There are great sources of error in the comparative method-^ The interpretation of the ' psychoses ' of animals, savages, and infants is necessarily wild work, in which the per sonal equation of the investigator has things very much its own way. A savage will be reported to have no moral or religious feeling if his actions shock the ob server unduly. A child will be assumed without self-con sciousness because he talks of himself in the third person, etc., etc. No rules can be laid down in advance. Com parative observations, to be definite, must usually be made to test some pre-existing hypothesis ; and the only thing / j\ then is to use as much sagacity as you possess, and to be 7 as candid as you can. THE SOURCES OF ERROR IN PSYCHOLOGY. The first of them arises from the Misleading Influence 0} Speech. Language was originally made by men who were fSlf^psychologists, and most men to-day employ almost exclusively the vocabulary of outward things. The car dinal passions of our life, anger, love, fear, hate, hope, THE METHODS AND SNARES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 195 and the most comprehensive divisions of our intellectual activity, to remember, expect, think, know, dream, with the broadest genera of aesthetic feeling, joy, sorrow, pleasure, pain, are the only facts of a subjective order which this vocabulary deigns to note by special words. The elementary qualities of sensation, bright, loud, red, blue, hot, cold, are, it is true, susceptible of being used in both an objective and a subjective sense. They stand for outer qualities and for the feelings which these arouse. But the objective sense is the original sense ; and still to-day we have to describe a large number of sensations by the name of the object from which they have most frequently been got. An orange color, an odor of violets, a cheesy taste, a thunderous sound, a fiery smart, etc., will recall what I mean. This absence of a special vocabulary for sub jective facts hinders the study of all but the very coarsest of them. Empiricist writers are very fond of emphasizing one great set of delusions which language inflicts on the mind. Whenever we have made a word, they say, to denote a certain group of phenomena, we are prone to suppose a substantive entity existing beyond the phenomena, of which the word shall be the name. But the lack of a word quite as often leads to the directly opposite error. We are then prone to suppose that no entity can be there ; and so we come to overlook phenomena whose existence would be patent to us all, had we only grown up to hear it familiarly recognized in speech.* It is hard to focus OUT attention on \ J;he nameless, and so there results a certain vacuousness in ) the descriptive parts of most psychologies. But a worse defect than vacuousness comes from the dependence of psychology on common speech. Naming our thought by its own objects, we almost all of us assume that as the objects are, so the thought must be. The thought of several distinct things can only consist of several distinct bits of thought, or ' ideas ; ' that of an abstract or universal object can only be an abstract or universal, idea * In English we have not even the generic distinction between the- thiug-thought-of and the-thought-thinking-it, which in German is expressed by the opposition between (jedachtes and Gedanke, in Latiu by that between WQitfitum and cooitatda 196 PSYCHOLOGY. As each object may come and go, be forgotten and then thought of again, it is held that the thought of it has a pre cisely similar independence, self-identity, and mobility. The thought of the object's recurrent identity is regarded as the identity of its recurrent thought ; and the perceptions of multiplicity, of coexistence, of succession, are severally conceived to be brought about only through a multiplic ity, a coexistence, a succession, of perceptions. The con tinuous flow of the mental stream is sacrificed, and in its place an atomism, a brickbat plan of construction, is preached, for the existence of which no good introspective grounds can be brought forward, and out of which pres ently grow all sorts of paradoxes and contradictions, the heritage of woe of students of the mind. These words are meant to impeach the entire English psychology derived from Locke and Hume, and the entire German psychology derived from Herbart, so far as they both treat 'ideas' as separate subjective entities that come and go. Examples will soon make the matter clearer. Meanwhile our psychologic insight is vitiated by still other snares. 'The Psychologist's Fallacy.' The great snare of the psy chologist is the confusion of his own standpoint with that of the •mental fact about which he is making his report. I shall hereafter call this the 'psychologist's fallacy' par excellence. For some of the mischief, here too, language is to blame. The psychologist, as we remarked above (p. 183), stands out side of the mental state he speaks of. Both itself and it» object are objects for him. Now when it is a cognitive state (percept, thought, concept, etc.), he ordinarily has no other way of naming it than as the thought, percept, etc., of that object. He himself, meanwhile, knowing the self-same object in his way, gets easily led to suppose that the thought, which is of it, knows it in the same way in wrhich he knows it, although this is often very far from being the case.* The most fictitious puzzles have been introduced into our science by this means. The so-called question of presentative or representative perception, of whether an * Compare B. P. Bowne's Metaphysics (1882), p. 408, THE METHODS AND SNARES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 197 object is present to the thought that thinks it by a coun terfeit image of itself, or directly and without any interven* ing image at all ; the question of nominalism and concep- tualism, of the shape in which things are present when only a general notion of them is before the mind ; are compara tively easy questions when once the psychologist's fallacy is eliminated from their treatment, — as we shall ere long see (in Chapter XII). Another variety of the psychologist's fallacy is the as sumption that the mental state studied must be conscious of it self as the psychologist is conscious of it. The mental state is aware of itself only from within ; it grasps what we call its own content, and nothing more. The psychologist, on the contrary, is aware of it from without, and knows its relations with all sorts of other things. What the thought sees is ' only its own object; what the psychologist sees is the j thought's object, plus the thought itself, plus possibly all the rest of the world. We must be very careful therefore, in discussing a state of mind from the psychologist's point of view, to avoid foisting into its own ken matters that are only there for ours. We must avoid substituting what we know the consciousness is, for what it is a consciousness of, and counting its outward, and so to speak physical, relations with other facts of the world, in among the objects of which we set it down as aware. Crude as such a confusion of standpoints seems to be when abstractly stated, it is never theless a snare into which no psychologist has kept himself at all times from falling, and which forms almost the entire stock-in-trade of certain schools. We cannot be too watch ful against its subtly corrupting influence. Summary. To sum up the chapter, Psychology assumes that thoughts successively occur, and that they know objects in a world which the psychologist also knows. These thoughts are the subjective data of which he treats, and their relations to their objects, to the brain, and to the rest of the ivorld constitute the subject-matter of psychologic science. Its methods are introspection, experimentation, and comparison. But intro spection is no sure guide to truths about our mental states ; and in particular the poverty of the psychological vocabu. 198 PSYCHOLOGY. lary leads us to drop out certain states from our consid eration, and to treat others as if they knew themselves and their objects as the psychologist knows both, which is a disastrous fallacy in the science. CHAPTER VIII. THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS. SINCE, for psychology, a mind is an object in a world of other objects, its relation to those other objects must next be surveyed. First of all, to its TIME-RELATIONS. Minds, as we know them, are temporary existences. Whether my mind had a being prior to the birth of my body, whether it shall have one after the latter's decease, are questions to be decided by my general philosophy or the ology rather than by what we call ' scientific facts ' — I leave out the facts of so-called spiritualism, as being still in dis pute. Psychology, as a natural science, confines itself to the present life, in which every mind appears yoked to a body through which its manifestations appear. In the present world, then, minds precede, succeed, and coexist with each other in the common receptacle of time, and of their collective relations to the latter nothing more can be said. The life of the individual consciousness in time seems, however, to be an interrupted one, so that the question : Are we ever wholly unconscious ? becomes one which must be discussed. Sleep, fainting, coma, epilepsy, and other ' unconscious ' conditions are apt to break in upon and occupy large durations of what we nevertheless consider the mental history of a single man. And, the fact of interruption being admitted, is it not possible that it may exist where we do not suspect it, and even perhaps in an incessant and fine-grained form ? This might happen, and yet the subject himself never know it. We often take ether and have operations per formed without a suspicion that our consciousness has suf 199 200 PSYCHOLOGY. fered a breach. The two ends join each other smoothly over the gap ; and only the sight of our wound assures us that we must have been living through a time which for our immediate consciousness was non-existent. Even in sleep this sometimes happens : We think we have had no nap, and it takes the clock to assure us that we are wrong.* We thus may live through a real outward time, a time known by the psychologist who studies us, and yet not feel the time, or infer it from any inward sign. The ques tion is, how often does this happen ? Is consciousness really discontinuous, incessantly interrupted and recom mencing (from the psychologist's point of view) ? and does it only seem continuous to itself by an illusion analogous to that of the zoetrope ? Or is it at most times as continu ous outwardly as it inwardly seems ? It must be confessed that we can give no rigorous answer to this question. Cartesians, who hold that the essence of the soul is to think, can of course solve it a priori, and explain the appearance of thoughtless inter vals either by lapses in our ordinary memory, or by the sinking of consciousness to a minimal state, in which per haps all that it feels is a bare existence which leaves no particulars behind to be recalled. If, however, one have no doctrine about the soul or its essence, one is free to take the appearances for what they seem to be, and to admit that the mind, as well as the body, may go to sleep. Locke was the first prominent champion of this latter view, and the pages in which he attacks the Cartesian belief are as spirited as any in his Essay. " Every drowsy nod shakes their doctrine who teach that their soul is always thinking." He will not believe that men so easily forget. M. Jouffroy and Sir W. Hamilton, attacking the question in the same empirical way, are led to an opposite conclusion. Their reasons, briefly stated, are these : * Messrs. Payton Spence (Journal of Spec. Phil., x. 338, xiv. 286) and M. M. Garver (Amer. Jour, of Science, 3d series, xx. 189) argue, the one from speculative, the other from experimental grounds, that, the physi cal condition of consciousness being neural vibration, the consciousness must itself be incessantly interrupted by unconsciousness— about fifty times a second, according to Garver. THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS. 201 Iii somnambulism, natural or induced, there is often a great display of intellectual activity, followed by complete oblivion of all that has passed.* On being suddenly awakened from a sleep, however pro found, we always catch ourselves in the middle of a dream. Common dreams are often remembered for a few minutes after waking, and then irretrievably lost. Frequently, when awake and absent-minded, we are visited by thoughts and images which the next instant we cannot recall. Our insensibility to habitual noises, etc., whilst awake, proves that we can neglect to attend to that which we never theless feel. Similarly in sleep, we grow inured, and sleep soundly in presence of sensations of sound, cold, contact, etc., which at first prevented our complete repose. We have learned to neglect them whilst asleep as we should whilst awake. The mere sense-impressions are the same when the sleep is deep as when it is light ; the difference must lie in a judgment on the part of the apparently slumbering mind that they are not worth noticing. This discrimination is equally shown by nurses of the sick and mothers of infants, who will sleep through much noise of an irrelevant sort, but waken at the slightest stir ring of the patient or the babe. This last fact shows the sense-organ to be pervious for sounds. Many people have a remarkable faculty of registering when asleep the flight of time. They will habitually wake up at the same minute day after day, or will wake punctu ally at an unusual hour determined upon overnight. How can this knowledge of the hour (more accurate often than anything the waking consciousness shows) be possible without mental activity during the interval ? Such are what we may call the classical reasons for ad mitting that the mind is active even when the person after wards ignores the fact.f Of late years, or rather, one may * That the appearance of meutal activity here is real can be proved by suggesting to the ' hypnotized ' somnambulist that he shall remember when he awakes. He will then often do so. f For more details, cf. Malebranche, Rech. de la Verite, bk. in. chap, i; J. Locke, Essay cone. H. U., book 11. ch. i; C. Wolf, Psychol. 202 PSYCHOLOGY. say, of late months, they have been reinforced by a lot of curious observations made on hysterical and hypnotic subjects, which prove the existence of a highly developed consciousness in places where it has hitherto not been sus pected at all. These observations throw such a novel light upon human nature that I must give them in some detail. That at least four different and in a certain sense rival ob servers should agree in the same conclusion justifies us in accepting the conclusion as true. ' Unconsciousness ' in Hysterics. One of the most constant symptoms in persons suffer ing from hysteric disease in its extreme forms consists in alterations of the natural sensibility of various parts and organs of the body. Usually the alteration is in the direc tion of defect, or anaesthesia. One or both eyes are blind, or color-blind, or there is hemianopsia (blindness to one half the field of view), or the field is contracted. Hearing, taste, smell may similarly disappear, in part or in totality. Still more striking are the cutaneous anaesthesias. The old witch-finders looking for the ' devil's seals ' learned well the existence of those insensible patches on the skin of their victims, to which the minute physical examinations of recent medicine have but recently attracted attention again. They may be scattered anywhere, but are very apt to affect one side of the body. Not infrequently they affect an entire lateral half, from head to foot; and the insensible skin of, say, the left side will then be found separated from the naturally sensitive skin of the right by a perfectly sharp line of demarcation down the middle of the front and back. Sometimes, most remarkable of all, the entire skin, hands, feet, face, everything, and the mucous membranes, muscles and joints so far as they can be ex- rationalis, § 59; Sir W. Hamilton, Lectures on Metaph., lecture xvn; J. Bascom, Science of Mind, § 12; Th. Jouffroy, Melanges Philos., 'du Sommeil'; H. Holland, Chapters on Mental Physiol., p. 80; B. Brodie, Psychol, Researches, p. 147; E. M. Chesley, Journ. of Spec. Phil., vol. xi' p. 72; Th. Ribot, Maladies de la Personnalite, pp. 8-10; H. Lotze, Meta physics, § 533. THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS. 203 plored, become completely insensible without the other vital functions becoming gravely disturbed. These hysterical anaesthesias can be made to disappear more or less completely by various odd processes. It has been recently found that magnets, plates of metal, or the electrodes of a battery, placed against the skin, have this peculiar power. And when one side is relieved in this way. the anaesthesia is often found to have transferred itself to the opposite side, which until then was well. Whether these strange effects of magnets and metals be due to their direct physiological action, or to a prior effect on the patient's mind (' expectant attention' or * suggestion') is still a mooted question. A still better awakener of sensibility is the hypnotic trance, into which many of these patients can be very easily placed, and in which their lost sensibility not infrequently becomes entirely restored. Such returns of sensibility succeed the times of insensibility and alternate with them. But Messrs. Pierre Janet* and A. Biuet t have shown that during the times of anaesthesia, and coexisting with it, sensibility to the anesthetic parts is also there, in the form of a secondary consciousness entirely cut off from the primary or normal one, but susceptible of being tapped and made to testify to its existence in various odd ways. Chief amongst these is what M. Janet calls ' the method of distraction.' These hysterics are apt to possess a very narrow field of attention, and to be unable to think of more than one thing at a time. When talking with any person they forget everything else. " When Lucie talked directly with any one," saysM. Janet, "she ceased to be able to hear any other person. You may stand behind her, call her by name, shout abuse into her ears, without making her turn round ; or place yourself before her, show her objects, touch her, etc., without attracting her notice. When finally she becomes aware of you, she thinks you have just come into the room again, and greets you accordingly. This singular forgetfulness makes her liable to tell all her secrete aloud, unrestrained by the presence of unsuitable auditors." * L'Automatisme Psychologique, Paris, 1889, passim. f See his articles in the Chicago Open Court, for July, August and November, 1889. Also in the Revue Philosophique for 1889 and '90. 204 PSYCHOLOGY. Now M. Janet found in several subjects like this that if he came up behind them whilst they were plunged in conversa tion with a third party, and addressed them in a whisper, tell ing them to raise their hand or perform other simple acts, they would obey the order given, although their talk ing intelligence was quite unconscious of receiving it. Lead ing them from one thing to another, he made them reply by signs to his whispered questions, and finally made them answer in writing, if a pencil were placed in their hand. The primary consciousness meanwhile went on with the conversation, entirely unaware of these performances on the hand's part. The consciousness which presided over these latter appeared in its turn to be quite as little disturbed by the upper consciousness's concerns. This proof by 'auto matic ' ivriting, of a secondary consciousness's existence, is the most cogent and striking one ; but a crowd of other facts prove the same thing. If I run through them rapidly, the reader will probably be convinced. The apparently anaesthetic hand of these subjects, for one thing, will often adapt itself discriminatingly to what ever object may be put into it. With a pencil it will make writing movements ; into a pair of scissors it will put its fin gers and will open and shut them, etc., etc. The primary con sciousness, so to call it, is meanwhile unable to say whether or no anything is in the hand, if the latter be hidden from sight. " I put a pair of eyeglasses into Leonie's anaesthetic hand, this hand opens it and raises it towards the nose, but half way thither it enters the field of vision of Leonie, who sees it and stops stupefied : ' Why,' says she, ' I have an eye glass in my left hand !'" M. Binet found a very curious sort of connection between the apparently anaesthetic skin and the mind in some Salpetriere-subjects. Things placed in the hand were not felt, but thought of (apparently in visual terms) and in no wise referred by the subject to their start ing point in the hand's sensation. A key, a knife, placed in the hand occasioned ideas of a key or a knife, but the hand felt nothing. Similarly the subject thought of the number 3, 6, etc., if the hand or finger was bent three or six times by the operator, or if he stroked it three, six, etc., times. In certain individuals there was found a still odder THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS, 205 phenomenon, which reminds one of that curious idiosyncrasy of ' colored hearing ' of which a few cases have been lately described with great care by foreign writers. These indi viduals, namely, saw the impression received by the hand, but could not feel it ; and the thing seen appeared by no means associated with the hand, but more like an indepen dent vision, which usually interested and surprised the patient. Her hand being hidden by a screen, she was ordered to look at another screen and to tell of any visual image which might project itself thereon. Numbers would then come, corresponding to the number of times the in sensible member was raised, touched, etc. Colored lines and figures would come, corresponding to similar ones traced on the palm ; the hand itself or its fingers would come when manipulated ; and finally objects placed in it would come ; but on the hand itself nothing would ever be felt. Of course simulation would not be hard here; but M. Binet disbelieves this (usually very shallow) explanation to be a probable one in cases in question.* The usual way in which doctors measure the delicacy of our touch is by the compass-points. Two points are normally felt as one whenever they are too close together for discrimination ; but what is ' too close ' on one part of the skin may seem very far apart on another. In the middle of the back or on the thigh, less than 3 inches may be too close ; on the finger-tip a tenth of an inch is far enough apart. Now, as tested in this way, with the appeal made to the primary consciousness, which talks through the mouth and seems to hold the field alone, a certain per son's skin may be entirely anaesthetic and not feel the com pass-points at all ; and yet this same skin will prove to have a perfectly normal sensibility if the appeal be made to that other secondary or sub-consciousness, which expresses itself automatically by writing or by movements of the hand. M. Binet, M. Pierre Janet, and M. Jules Janet have all found this. The subject, whenever touched, wonld signify 'one * This whole phenomenon shows how an idea which remains itself below the threshold of a certain conscious self may occasion associative effects therein. The skin-seusations uufelt by the patient's primary consciousness awaken nevertheless their usual visual associates therein. 206 PSYCHOLOGY. point ' or ' two points/ as accurately as if she were a nor< mal person. She would signify it only by these movements ; and of the movements themselves her primary self would be as unconscious as of the facts they signified, for what the submerged consciousness makes the hand do automatically is unknown to the consciousness which uses the mouth. Messrs. Bernheim and Pitres have also proved, by ob servations too complicated to be given in this spot, that the hysterical blindness is no real blindness at all. The eye of an hysteric which is totally blind when the other or seeing eye is shut, will do its share of vision per fectly well when both eyes are open together. But even where both eyes are semi-blind from hysterical disease, the method of automatic writing proves that their percep tions exist, only cut off from communication with the upper consciousness. M. Binet has found the hand of his patients unconsciously writing down words which their eyes were vainly endeavoring to ' see,' i.e., to bring to the upper con sciousness. Their submerged consciousness was of course seeing them, or the hand could not have written as it did. Colors are similarly perceived by the sub-conscious self, which the hysterically color-blind eyes cannot bring to the normal consciousness. Pricks, burns, and pinches on the anaesthetic skin, all unnoticed by the upper self, are recol lected to have been suffered, and complained of, as soon as the under self gets a chance to express itself by the passage of the subject into hypnotic trance. It must be admitted, therefore, that in certain persons, at least, the total possible consciousness may be split into parts which coexist but mutually ignore each other, and share the objects of knowledge between them. More re markable still, they are complementary. Give an object to one of the consciousnesses, and by that fact you remove it from the other or others. Barring a certain common fund of information, like the command of language, etc., what the upper self knows the under self is ignorant of, and vice versa. M. Janet has proved this beautifully in his subject Lucie. The following experiment will serve as the type of the rest : In her trance he covered her lap with cards, each bearing a number. He then told her that OD THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS. 207 waking she should not see any card whose number was a multiple of three. This is the ordinary so-called ' post- hypnotic suggestion/ now well known, and for which Lucie was a well-adapted subject. Accordingly, when she was awakened and asked about the papers on her lap, she counted and said she saw those only whose number was not a multiple of 3. To the 12, 18, 9, etc., she was blind. But the hand, when the sub-conscious self was interrogated by the usual method of engrossing the upper self in another conversation, wrote that the only cards in Lucie's lap were those numbered 12, 18, 9, etc., and on being asked to pick up all the cards which were there, picked up these and let the others lie. Similarly when the sight of certain things was suggested to the sub-conscious Lucie, the normal Lucie suddenly became partially or totally blind. " What is the matter? I can't see!" the normal personage sud denly cried out in the midst of her conversation, when M. Janet whispered to the secondary personage to make use of her eyes. The anaesthesias, paralyses, contractions and other irregularities from which hysterics suffer seem then to be clue to the fact that their secondary personage has enriched itself by robbing the primary one of a func tion which the latter ought to have retained. The curative indication is evident : get at the secondary personage, by Jiypnotization or in whatever other way, and make her give up the eye, the skin, the arm, or whatever the affected part may be. The normal self thereupon regains possession, sees, feels, or is able to move again. In this way M. Jules Janet easily cured the well-known subject of the Salpetriere, Wit., of all sorts of afflictions which, until he discovered the secret of her deeper trance, it had been difficult to subdue. " Cessez cette mauvaise plaisanterie," he said to the sec ondary self — and the latter obeyed. The way in which the various personages share the stock of possible sensations between them seems to be amusingly illustrated in this young woman. When awake, her skin is insensible every where except on a zone about the arm where she habitually wears a gold bracelet. This zone has feeling ; but in the deepest trance, when all the rest of her body feels, this par ticular zone becomes absolutely anaesthetic. 208 PSYCHOLOGY. Sometimes the mutual ignorance of the selves leads to incidents which are strange enough. The acts and move ments performed by the sub- conscious self are withdrawn from the conscious one, and the subject will do all sorts of incongruous things of which he remains quite unaware. " I order Lucie [by the method of distraction] to make a pied de nez, and her hands go forthwith to the end of her nose. Asked what she is doing, she replies that she is doing nothing, and continues for a long time talking, with no apparent suspicion that her fingers are moving in front of her nose. I make her walk about the room ; she con tinues to speak and believes herself sitting down." M. Janet observed similar acts in a man in alcoholic delirium. Whilst the doctor was questioning him, M. J. made him by whispered suggestion walk, sit, kneel, and even lie down on his face on the floor, he all the while believing himself to be standing beside his bed. Such bizarreries sound incredible, until one has seen their like. Long ago, without understanding it, I myself saw a small example of the way in which a person's knowledge may be shared by the two selves. A young woman who had been writing automatically was sitting with a pencil in her hand, trying to recall at my request the name of a gentleman whom she had once seen. She could only recollect the first syllable. Her hand meanwhile, without her knowledge, wrote down the last two syllables. In a perfectly healthy young man who can write with the planchette, I lately found the hand to be entirely anaesthetic during the writing act ; I could prick it severely without the Subject knowing the fact. The writ ing on the planchette, however, accused me in strong terms of hurting the hand. Pricks on the other (non-writing) hand, meanwhile, which awakened strong protest from the young man's vocal organs, were denied to exist by the self which made the planchette go."x" We get exactly similar results in the so-called post-hyp notic suggestion. It is a familiar fact that certain sub jects, when told during a trance to perform an act or to * See Proceedings of American Soc. for Psych. Research, vol. I. p. 54S, THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS. 209 experience an hallucination after waking, will when the time comes, obey the command. How is the command regis tered? How is its performance so accurately timed? These problems were long a mystery, for the primary per sonality remembers nothing of the trance or the suggestion, and will often trump up an improvised pretext for yielding to the unaccountable impulse which possesses the man so suddenly and which he cannot resist. Edmund Gurney was the first to discover, by means of automatic writing, that the secondary self is awake, keeping its attention con stantly fixed on the command and watching for the signal of its execution. Certain trance-subjects who were also automatic writers, when roused from trance and put to the planchette, — not knowing then what they wrote, and having their upper attention fully engrossed by reading aloud, talk ing, or solving problems in mental arithmetic, — would in scribe the orders which they had received, together with notes relative to the time elapsed and the time yet to run before the execution. * It is therefore to no ' automatism ' in the mechanical sense that such acts are due : a self pre sides over them, a split-off, limited and buried, but yet a fully conscious, self. More than this, the buried self often comes to the surface and drives out the other self whilst the acts are performing. In other words, the subject lapses into trance again when the moment arrives for exe cution, and has no subsequent recollection of the act which he has done. Gurney and Beaunis established this fact, which has since been verified on a large scale ; and Gurney also showed that the patient became suggestible again during the brief time of the performance. M. Janet's observa tions, in their turn, well illustrate the phenomenon. " I tell I/ucie to keep her arms raised after she shall have awakened. Hardly is she in the normal state, when up go her arms above her head, but she pays no attention to them. She goes, comes, converses, holding her arms high in the air. If asked what her arms are doing, she is surprised at such a question, and says very sincerely : 'My hands are doing nothing; they are just like yours.' ... I com- * Proceedings of the (London) Soc. for Psych. Research, Hay, 1887, p. 268 ff. 210 PSYCHOLOGY. mand her to weep, and when awake she really sobs, but continues ir the rnidst of her tears to talk of very gay matters. The sobbing over, there remained no trace of this grief, which seemed to have been quite sub-conscious." The primary self often has to invent an hallucination by which to mask and hide from its own view the deeds which the other self is enacting. Leonie 3 * writes real letters whilst Leonie 1 believes that she is knitting ; or Lucie really comes to the doctor's office, whilst Lucie 1 believes herself to be at home. This is a sort of delirium. The alphabet, or the series of numbers, when handed over to the attention of the secondary personage may for the time be lost to the normal self. Whilst the hand writes the alphabet, obediently to command, the ' subject/ to her great stupefaction, finds herself unable to recall it, etc. Few things are more curious than these relations of mutual exclusion, of which all gradations exist between the several partial consciousnesses. How far this splitting up of the mind into separate con sciousnesses may exist in each one of us is a problem. M. Janet holds that it is only possible where there is abnormal weakness, and consequently a defect of unifying or co-or dinating power. An hysterical woman abandons part of her consciousness because she is too weak nervously to hold it together. The abandoned part, meanwhile may solidify into a secondary or sub-conscious self. In a perfectly sound subject, on the other hand, what is dropped out of mind at one moment keeps coming back at the next. The whole fund of experiences and knowledges remains integrated, and no split-off portions of it can get organized stably enough to form subordinate selves. The stability, monotony, and stupidity of these latter is often very striking. The post- hypnotic sub-consciousness seems to think of nothing but the order which it last received; the cataleptic sub-con sciousness, of nothing but the last position imprinted on the limb. M. Janet could cause definitely circumscribed red dening and tumefaction of the skin on two of his subjects, * M, Janet designates by numbers the different personalities which the subject may display. THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS. 211 by suggesting to them in hypnotism the hallucination of a mustard-poultice of any special shape. "J'ai tout le temps pense a votre sinapisme," says the subject, when put back into trance after the suggestion has taken effect. A man N., . . . whom M. Janet operated on at long in tervals, was betweenwhiles tampered with by another operator, and when put to sleep again by M. Janet, said he was ' too far away to receive orders, being in Algiers.' The other operator, having suggested that hallucination, had forgotten to remove it before waking the subject from his trance, and the poor passive trance-personality had stuck for weeks in the stagnant dream. Leonie's sub-con scious performances having been illustrated to a caller, by a ' pied de nez ' executed with her left hand in the course of conversation, when, a year later, she meets him again, up goes the same hand to her nose again, without Leonie's normal self suspecting the fact. All these facts, taken together, form unquestionably the beginning of an inquiry which is destined to throw a new light into the very abysses of our nature. It is for that reason that I have cited them at such length in this early chapter of the book. They prove one thing conclusively, namely, that we must never take a person's testimony, hoiv- ever sincere, that he has felt nothing, as proof positive that no feeling has been there. It may have been there as part of the consciousness of a ' secondary personage,' of whose ex periences the primary one whom we are consulting can naturally give no account. In hypnotic subjects (as we shall see in a later chapter) just as it is the easiest thing in the world to paralyze a movement or member by simple suggestion, so it is easy to produce what is called a system atized anaesthesia by word of command. A systematized anaesthesia means an insensibility, not to any one element of things, but to some one concrete thing or class of things. The subject is made blind or deaf to a certain person in the room and to no one else, and thereupon denies that that per son is present, or has spoken, etc. M. P. Janet's Lucie, blind Co some of the numbered cards in her lap (p. 207 above), is a case in point. Now when the object is simple, like a red 212 PSYCHOLOGY. wafer or a black cross, the subject, although he denies that he sees it when he looks straight at it, nevertheless gets a ' negative after-image ' of it when he looks away again, showing that the optical, impression of it has been received. Moreover reflection shows that such a subject must dis tinguish the object from others like it in order to be blind to it. Make him blind to one person in the room, set all the persons in a row, and tell him to count them. He will count all but that one. But how can he tell which one not to count without recognizing who he is ? In like manner, make a stroke on paper or blackboard, and tell him it is not there, and he will see nothing but the clean paper or board. Next (he not looking) surround the original stroke with other strokes exactly like it, and ask him what he sees. He will point out one by one all the new strokes, and omit the original one every time, no matter how numerous the new strokes may be, or in what order they are arranged. Similarly, if the original single stroke to which he is blind be doubled by a prism of some sixteen degrees placed before one of his eyes (both being kept open), he will say that he now sees one stroke, and point in the direc tion in which the image seen through the prism lies, ignor ing still the original stroke. Obviously, then, he is not blind to the kind of stroke in the least. He is blind only to one individual stroke of that kind in a particular position on the board or paper — that is to a particular complex object ; and, paradoxical as it may seem to say so, he must distinguish it with great ac curacy from others like it, in order to remain blind to it when the others are brought near. He discriminates it, as a preliminary to not seeing it at all. Again, when by a prism before one eye a previously in visible line has been made visible to that eye, and the other eye is thereupon closed or screened, its closure makes no difference ; the line still remains visible. But if then the prism be removed, the line will disappear even to the eye which a moment ago saw it, and both eyes will revert to their original blind state. We have, then, to deal in these cases neither with a blind ness of the eye itself, nor with a mere failure to notice, but THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS 213 with something much more complex ; namely, an active counting out and positive exclusion of certain objects. It is as when one * cuts ' an acquaintance, ' ignores ' a claim, or * refuses to be influenced ' by a consideration. But the perceptive activity which works to this result is discon nected from the consciousness which is personal, so to speak, to the subject, and makes of the object concerning which the suggestion is made, its own private possession and prey.* The mother who is asleep to every sound but the stir rings of her babe, evidently has the babe-portion of her au ditory sensibility systematically awake. ^Relatively to that, the rest of her mind is in a state of systematized anaesthesia. That department, split off and disconnected from the sleep ing part, can none the less wake the latter up in case of need. So that on the whole the quarrel between Des cartes and Locke as to whether the mind ever sleeps is less near to solution than ever. On a priori speculative grounds Locke's view that thought and feeling may at times wholly disappear seems the more plausible. As glands cease to secrete and muscles to contract, so the brain should some times cease to carry currents, and with this minimum of its activity might well coexist a minimum of consciousness. On the other hand, we see how deceptive are appearances, and are forced to admit that a part of consciousness may sever its connections with other parts and yet continue to be. On the whole it is best to abstain from a conclusion. The science of the near future will doubtless answer this ques tion more wisely than we can now. * How to conceive of this state of mind is not easy. It would be much simpler to understand the process, if adding new strokes made the first one visible. There would then be two different objects apperceived as totals, — paper with one stroke, paper with many strokes ; and, blind to the for mer, he would see all that was in the latter, because he would have apper ceived it as a different total in the first instance. A process of this sort occurs sometimes (not always) when the new strokes, instead of being mere repetitions of the original one, are lines which combine with it into a total object, say a human face. The sub ject of the trance then may regain his sight of the line to which he had previously been blind, by seeing it as part of the face. 214 PSYCHOLOGY. Let us turn now to consider the EOLATIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS TO SPACE. This is the problem known in the history of philoso phy as the question of the seat of the soul. It has given rise to much literature, but we must ourselves treat it very briefly. Everything depends on what we conceive the soul to be, an extended or an inextended entity. If the former, it may occupy a seat. If the latter, it may not ; though it has been thought that even then it might still have a posi tion. Much hair-splitting has arisen about the possibility of an inextended thing nevertheless being present through out a certain amount of extension. We must distinguish the kinds of presence. In some manner our consciousness is ' present ' to everything with which it is in relation. I am cognitively present to Orion whenever I perceive that con stellation, but I am not dynamically present there, I work no effects. To my brain, however, I am dynamically present, inasmuch as my thoughts and feelings seem to react upon the processes thereof. If, then, by the seat of the mind is meant nothing more than the locality with which it stands in immediate dynamic relations, we are certain to be right in saying that its seat is somewhere in the cortex of the brain. Descartes, as is well known, thought that the inextended soul was immediately present to the pineal gland. Others, as Lotze in his earlier days, and W. Volk- mann, think its position must be at some point of the struc tureless matrix of the anatomical brain-elements, at which point they suppose that all nerve-currents may cross and combine. The scholastic doctrine is that the soul is to tally present, both in the whole and in each and every part of the body. This mode of presence is said to be due to the soul's inextended nature and to its simplicity. Two ex tended entities could only correspond in space with one another, part to part, — but not so does the soul, which has no parts, correspond with the body. Sir Wm. Hamilton and Professor Bowen defend something like this view. I. H. Fichte, Ulrici, and, among American philosophers, Mr, J. E. Walter,* maintain the soul to be a space -filling prin- * Perception of Space and Matter, 1879, part n. chap. 3 THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS. 215 ciple. Ficlite calls it the inner body, Ulrici likens it to a fluid of non-molecular composition. These theories remind us of the ' theosophic ' doctrines of the present day, and carry us back to times when the soul as vehicle of con sciousness was not discriminated, as it now is, from the vital principle presiding over the formation of the body. Plato gave head, breast, and abdomen to the immortal rea son, the courage, and the appetites, as their seats respec tively. Aristotle argues that the heart is the sole seat. Elsewhere we find the blood, the brain, the lungs, the liver the kidneys even, in turn assigned as seat of the whole or part of the soul.* The truth is that if the thinking principle is extended we neither know its form nor its seat ; whilst if unextended, it is absurd to speak of its having any space-relations at all. Space-relations we shall see hereafter to be sensible things. The only objects that can have mutual relations of position are objects that are perceived coexisting in the same felt space. A thing not perceived at all, such as the inextended soul must be, cannot coexist with any perceived objects in this way. No lines can be felt stretching from it to the other objects. It can form no terminus to any space-inter val. It can therefore in no intelligible sense enjoy position. Its relations cannot be spatial, but must be exclusively cognitive or dynamic, as we have seen. So far as they are dynamic, to talk of the soul being ' present ' is only a figure of speech. Hamilton's doctrine that the soul is present to the whole body is at any rate false : for cognitively its pres ence extends far beyond the body, and dynamically it does not extend beyond the brain, t * For a very good condensed history of the various opinions, see W. Volkmann von Volkmar, Lehrbuch d. Psychologic, § 16, Anm. Complete references to Sir W. Hamilton are given in J. E. Walter, Perception of Space and Matter, pp. 65-6. f Most contemporary writers ignore the question of the soul's seat. Lotze is the only one who seems to have been much concerned about it, and his views have varied. Cf. Medicinische Psychol., § 10. Microcos- mus, bk. in. ch. 2. Metaphysic, bk. in. ch. 5. Outlines of Psychol., part n. ch. 3. See also ft- T. Fechner, Psychophysik, chap, xxxvn. 216 PSYCHOLOGY. THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER OBJECTS are either relations to other minds, or to material things. The material things are either the mind's own brain, on the one hand, or anything else, on the other. The relations of a mind to its own brain are of a unique and utterly mysteri ous sort ; we discussed them in the last two chapters, and can add nothing to that account. The mind's relations to other objects than the brain are cognitive and emotional relations exclusively, so far as we know. It knows them, and it inwardly welcomes or rejects them, but it has no other dealings with them. When it seems to act upon them, it only does so through the intermediary of its own body, so that not it but the body is what acts on them, and the brain must first act upon the body. The same is true when other things seem to act on it — they only act on the body, and through that on its brain.* All that it can do directly is to know other things, misknow or ignore them, and to find that they interest it, in this fashion or in that. Now the relation of knowing is the most mysterious thing in the world. If we ask how one thing can know another we are led into the heart of Erkenntnisstheorie and metaphys ics. The psychologist, for his part, does not consider the matter so curiously as this. Finding a world before him which he cannot but believe that he knows, and setting himself to study his own past thoughts, or someone else's thoughts, of what he believes to be that same world ; he cannot but conclude that those other thoughts know it after their fashion even as he knows it after his. Knowledge be comes for him an ultimate relation that must be admitted, whether it be explained or not, just like difference or re semblance, which no one seeks to explain. Were our topic Absolute Mind instead of being the con crete minds of individuals dwelling in the natural world, we could not tell whether that Mind had the function of knowing or not, as knowing is commonly understood. We * I purposely ignore 'clairvoyance' and action upon distant things b? 'mediums,' as not yet matters of common consent. THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS. 217 might learn the complexion of its thoughts ; but, as we should have no realities outside of it to compare them with, — for if we had, the Mind would not be Absolute, — we could not criticise them, and find them either right or wrong ; and we should have to call them simply the thoughts, and not the knowledge, of the Absolute Mind. Finite minds, how ever, can be judged in a different way, because the psychol ogist himself can go bail for the independent reality of the objects of which they think. He knows these to exist out side as well as inside the minds in question ; he thus knows whether the minds think and knoiv, or only think ; and though his knowledge is of course that of a fallible mortal, uhere is nothing in the conditions that should make it more likely to be wrong in this case than in any other. Now by what tests does the psychologist decide whether the state of mind he is studying is a bit of knowledge, or only a subjective fact not referring to anything outside itself? He uses the tests we all practically use. If the state of mind resembles his own idea of a certain reality ; or if without resembling his idea of it, it seems to imply that reality and refer to it by operating upon it through the bodily organs ; or even if it resembles and operates on some other reality that implies, and leads up to, and terminates in, the first one, — in either or all of these cases the psychologist admits that the state of mind takes cognizance, directly or remotely, distinctly or vaguely, truly or falsely, of the reality's nature and position in the world. If, on the other hand, the mental state under examination neither resembles nor oper ates on any of the realities known to the psychologist, he calls it a subjective state pure and simple, possessed of no cog nitive worth. If, again, it resemble a reality or a set of realities as he knows them, but altogether fail to operate on them or modify their course by producing bodily motions which the psychologist sees, then the psychologist, like all of us, may be in doubt. Let the mental state, for example, occur during the sleep of its subject. Let the latter dream of the death of a certain man, and let the man simulta neously die. Is the dream a mere coincidence, or a veri table cognition of the death ? Such puzzling cases are 218 PSYCHOLOGY. what the Societies for ' Psychical Research ' are collect- ing and trying to interpret in the most reasonable way. If the dream were the only one of the kind the subject ever had in his life, if the context of the death in the dream differed in many particulars from the real death's context, and if the dream led to no action about the death, unques tionably we should all call it a strange coincidence, and naught besides. But if the death in the dream had a long context, agreeing point for point with every feature that attended the real death ; if the subject were constantly having such dreams, all equally perfect, and if on awaking he had a habit of acting immediately as if they were true and so getting 'the start' of his more tardily informed neighbors, — we should probably all have to admit that he had some mysterious kind of clairvoyant power, that his dreams in an inscrutable way knew just those realities which they figured, and that the word * coincidence ' failed to touch the root of the matter. And whatever doubts any one preserved would completely vanish if it should appear that from the midst of his dream he had the power of inter fering with the course of the reality, and making the events in it turn this way or that, according as he dreamed they should. Then at least it would be certain that he and the psychologist were dealing with the same. It is by such tests as these that we are convinced that the waking minds of our fellows and our own minds know the same external world. The psychologist's attitude toivards cognition will be so important in the sequel that we must not leave it until it is made perfectly clear. It is a thoroughgoing dualism. It supposes two elements, mind knowing and thing known, and treats them as irreducible. Neither gets out of itself or into the other, neither in any way is the other, neither makes the other. They just stand face to face in a common woild, and one simply knows, or is known unto, its counter part. This singular relation is not to be expressed in any lower terms, or translated into any more intelligible name. Some sort of signal must be given by the thing to the mind's brain, or the knowing will not occur — we find as a matter THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS. 219 of fact that the mere existence of a thing outside the brain is not a sufficient cause for our knowing it : it must strike the brain in some way, as well as be there, to be known. But the brain being struck, the knowledge is constituted by a new construction that occurs altogether in the mind. The thing remains the same whether known or not.* And when once there, the knowledge may remain there, what ever becomes of the thing. By the ancients, and by unreflecting people perhaps to day, knowledge is explained as the passage of something from without into the mind — the latter, so far, at least, as its sensible affections go, being passive and receptive. But even in mere sense-impression the duplication of the object by an inner construction must take place. Consider, with Professor Bowne, what happens when two people con verse together and know each other's mind. " No thoughts leave the mind of one and cross into the mind of the other. When we speak of an exchange of thought, even the crudest mind knows that this is a mere figure of speech. ... To perceive another's thought, we must construct his thought within ourselves; . . . this thought is our own and is strictly original with us. At the same time we owe it to the other ; and if it had not originated with him, it would probably not have originated with us. But what has the other done ? . . . This : by an entirely mysterious world-order, the speaker is enabled to produce a series of signs which are totally unlike [the] thought, but which, by virtue of the same mysterious order, act as a series of incitements upon the hearer, so that he constructs within himself the corresponding mental state. The act of the speaker consists in availing himself of the proper incitements. The act of the hearer is immediately only the reaction of the soul against the incitement. . . . All communion between finite minds is of this sort. . . . Probably no reflecting person would deny this conclusion, but when we say that what is thus true of perception of another's thought is equally true of the perception of the outer world in general, many minds will be disposed to question, and not a few will deny it outright. Yet there is no alternative but to affirm that to perceive the universe we must construct it in thought, and that our knowledge of the universe is but the unfolding of the mind's inner nature. . . . By describing the mind as a waxen tablet, and things as impressing themselves upon it, we seem to get great insight until we think to ask where this extended tablet is, and how things stamp themselves on it, and how the percep- * I disregard consequences which may later come to the thing from the f*M*t that it is known. The knowing per se in no wise affects the thing. 220 PSYCHOLOGY. tive act would be explained even if they did. . . . The immediate antecedents of sensation and perception are a series of nervous changes in the brain. Whatever we know of the outer world is revealed only in and through these nervous changes. But these are totally unlike the objects assumed to exist as their causes. If we might conceive the mind as in the light, and in direct contact with its objects, the imagination at least would be comforted ; but when we conceive the mind as coming in contact with the outer world only in the dark chamber of the skull, and then not in contact with the objects per ceived, but only with a series of nerve -changes of which, moreover, it knows nothing, it is plain that the object is a long way off. All talk of pictures, impressions, etc., ceases because of the lack of all the conditions to give such figures any meaning. It is not even clear that we shall ever find our way out of the darkness into the world of light and reality again. We begin with complete trust in physics and the senses, and are forthwith led away from the object into a nervous labyrinth, where the object is entirely displaced by a set of nervous changes which are totally unlike anything but themselves. Finally, we land in the dark chamber of the skull. The object has gone com pletely, and knowledge has not yet appeared. Nervous signs are the raw material of all knowledge of the outer world according to the most decided realism. But in order to pass beyond these signs into a knowledge of the outer world, we must posit an interpreter who shall read back these signs into their objective meaning. But that inter preter, again, must implicitly contain the meaning of the universe within itself; and these signs are really but excitations which cause the soul to unfold what is within itself. Inasmuch as by common consent the soul communicates with the outer world only through these signs, and never comes nearer to the object than such signs can bring it, it follows that the principles of interpretation must be in the mind itself, and that the resulting construction is primarily only an expression of the mind's own nature. All reaction is of this sort; it expresses the nature of the reacting agent, and knowledge comes under the same head, this fact makes it necessary for us either to admit a pre-established harmony between the laws and nature of thought and the laws and nature of things, or else to allow that the objects of perception, the universe as it appears, are purely phenomenal, being but the way in which the mind reacts against the ground of its sensations." * The dualism of Object and Subject and their pre-estab lished harmony are what the psychologist as such must assume, whatever ulterior monistic philosophy he may, as an individual who has the right also to be a metaphysician, have in reserve. I hope that this general point is now * B. P. Bowne: Metaphysics, pp. 407-10. Of. also Lotze: Logik, §§ 308, 326-7. THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS. 221 made clear, so that we may leave it, and descend to some distinctions of detail. There are two kinds of knowledge broadly and practically distinguishable : we may call them respectively knowledge of acquaintance and knowledge-dbout. Most languages ex press the distinction; thus, yrtiorai, eidevai\ noscere, scire; kennen, ivissen; connaitre, savoir.* I am acquainted with many people and things, which I know very little about, except their presence in the places where I have met them. I know the color blue when I see it, and the flavor of a pear when I taste it ; I know an inch when I move my finger through it ; a second of time, when I feel it pass ; an effort of attention when I make it ; a difference between two things when I notice it ; but about the inner nature of these facts or what makes them what they are, I can say nothing at all. I cannot impart acquaintance with them to any one who has not already made it himself. I cannot describe them, make a blind man guess what blue is like, define to a child a syllogism, or tell a philosopher in just what respect distance is just what it is, and differs from other forms of relation. At most, I can say to my friends, Go to certain places and act in certain ways, and these objects will probably come. All the elementary natures of the world, its highest genera, the simple qualities of matter and mind, together with the kinds of relation that subsist between them, must either not be known at all, or known in this dumb way of acquaintance without knowledge-about. In minds able to speak at all there is, it is true, some knowl edge about everything. Things can at least be classed, and the times of their appearance told. But in general, the less we analyze a thing, and the fewer of its relations we per ceive, the less we know about it and the more our famili arity with it is of the acquaintance-type. The two kinds of knowledge are, therefore, as the human mind practi cally exerts them, relative terms. That is, the same thought of a thing may be called knowledge-about it in comparison with a simpler thought, or acquaintance with it in compari- * Of. John Grote : Explorutio Philosophica, p. 60 ; H. Helmholtz, Popular Scientific Lectures, London, p. 308-9. 222 PSYCHOLOGY. son with a thought of it that is more articulate and explicit still. The grammatical sentence expresses this. Its ' subject* stands for an object of acquaintance which, by the addition of the predicate, is to get something known about it. We may already know a good deal, when we hear the subject named — its name may have rich connotations. But, know we much or little then, we know more still when the sen tence is done. We can relapse at will into a mere condi tion of acquaintance with an object by scattering our attention and staring at it in a vacuous trance-like way. We can ascend to knowledge about it by rallying our wits and proceeding to notice and analyze and think. What we are only acquainted with is only present to our minds ; we have it, or the idea of it. But when we know about it, we do more than merely have it ; we seem, as we think over its relations, to subject it to a sort of treatment and to operate upon it with our thought. The words feeling and thought give voice to the antithesis. Through feelings we become acquainted with things, but only by our thoughts do we know about them. Feelings are the germ and starting point of cognition, thoughts the developed tree. The mini mum of grammatical subject, of objective presence, of reality known about, the mere beginning of knowledge, must be named by the word that says the least. Such a word is the interjection, as lo ! there! eccoj voild ! or the article or demonstrative pronoun introducing the sentence, as the, it, that. In Chapter XII we shall see a little deeper into what this distinction, between the mere mental having or feeling of an object and the thinking of it, portends. The mental states usually distinguished as feelings are the emotions, and the sensations we get from skin, muscle, viscus, eye, ear, nose, and palate. The 'thoughts,' as recognized in popular parlance, are the conceptions and judgments. When we treat of these mental states in par ticular we shall have to say a word about the cognitive function and value of each. It may perhaps be well to notice now that our senses only give us acquaintance with facts of body, and that of the mental states of other persons THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS. 223 we only have conceptual knowledge. Of our own past states of mind we take cognizance in a peculiar way. They are ' objects of memory,' and appear to us endowed with a sort of warmth and intimacy that makes the perception of them seem more like a process of sensation than like a thought. CHAPTER IX.* THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. WE now begin our study of the mind from within. Most books start with sensations, as the simplest mental facts, and proceed synthetically, constructing each higher stage from those below it. But this is abandoning the empirical method of investigation. No one ever had a simple sensa tion by itself. Consciousness, from our natal day, is of a teeming multiplicity of objects and relations, and what we call simple sensations are results of discriminative atten tion, pushed often to a very high degree. It is astonishing what havoc is wrought in psychology by admitting at the outset apparently innocent suppositions, that nevertheless contain a flaw. The bad consequences develop themselves later on, and are irremediable, being woven through the whole texture of the work. The notion that sensations, being the simplest things, are the first things to take up in psychology is one of these suppositions. The only thing which psychology has a right to postulate at the outset is the fact of thinking itself, and that must first be taken up and analyzed. If sensations then prove to be amongst the elements of the thinking, we shall be no worse off as re spects them than if we had taken them for granted at the start. The first fact for us, then, as psychologists, is that thinking of some sort goes on. I use the word thinking, in accordance with what was said on p. 186, for every form of conscious ness indiscriminately. If we could say in English 'it thinks,' as we say ' it rains ' or 'it blows,' we should be * A good deal of this chapter is reprinted from an article 'On some Omissions of Introspective Psychology ' which appeared in ' Mind ' foi January 1884. 324 THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 225 stating tlio fact most simply and with the minimum of as sumption. As we cannot, we must simply say that thought goes on. FIVE CHAKACTEES IN THOUGHT. How does it go on ? We notice immediately five impor tant characters in the process, of which it shall be the dutj of the present chapter to treat in a general way : 1) Every thought tends to be part of a personal con sciousness. 2) Within each personal consciousness thought is always changing. 3) Within each personal consciousness thought is sen sibly continuous. 4) It always appears to deal with objects independent of itself. 5) It is interested in some parts of these objects to the* exclusion of others, and welcomes or rejects — chooses from among them, in a word — all the while. In considering these five points successively, we shall have to plunge in medias res as regards our vocabulary, and use psychological terms which can only be adequately de fined in later chapters of the book. But every one knows what the terms mean in a rough way ; and it is only in a rough way that we are now to take them. This chapter is like a painter's first charcoal sketch upon his canvas, in which no niceties appear. 1) Thought tends to Personal Form. When I say every thought is part of a personal con sciousness, l personal consciousness ' is one of the terms in question. Its meaning we know so long as no one asks us to define it, but to give an accurate account of it is the most difficult of philosophic tasks. This task we must confront in the next chapter ; here a preliminary word will suffice. In this room — this lecture-room, say — there are a mul titude of thoughts, yours and mine, some of which cohere mutually, and some not. They are as little each-for-itself and reciprocally independent as they are all-belonging- together. They are neither : no one of them is separate, 226 PSYCHOLOGY. but each belongs with certain others and with none beside. My thought belongs with my other thoughts, and your thought with your other thoughts. Whether anywhere in the room there be a mere thought, which is nobody's thought, we have no means of ascertaining, for we have no experience of its like. The only states of consciousness that we naturally deal with are found in personal con sciousnesses, minds, selves, concrete particular I's and you's. Each of these minds keeps its own thoughts to itself. There is no giving or bartering between them. No thought even comes into direct sight of a thought in another per sonal consciousness than its own. Absolute insulation, irreducible pluralism, is the law. It seems as if the ele mentary psychic fact were not thought or this thought or that thought, but my thought, every thought being oivned. Neither contemporaneity, nor proximity in space, nor similarity of quality and content are able to fuse thoughts together which are sundered by this barrier of belonging to differ ent personal minds. The breaches between such thoughts are the most absolute breaches in nature. Everyone wil? recognize this to be true, so long as the existence of some thing corresponding to the term ' personal mind ' is all that is insisted on, without any particular view of its nature being implied. On these terms the personal self rather than the thought might be treated as the immediate datum in psychology. The universal conscious fact is not ' feel ings and thoughts exist,' but 'I think' and 'I feel.' * No psychology, at any rate, can question the existence of per sonal selves. The worst a psychology can do is so to interpret the nature of these selves as to rob them of their worth. A French writer, speaking of our ideas, says some where in a fit of anti-spiritualistic excitement that, mislej by certain peculiaritities which they display, we ' end by personifying' the procession which they make, — such per sonification being regarded by him as a great philosophic blunder on our part. It could only be a blunder if the notion of personality meant something essentially different * B. P. Bowne : Metaphysics, p. 362. THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 227 from anything to be found in the mental procession. But if that procession be itself the very ' original ' of the notion of personality, to personify it cannot possibly be wrong. It is already personified. There are no marks of personality to be gathered aliunde, and then found lacking in the train of thought. It has them all already ; so that to whatever farther analysis we may subject that form of personal self hood under which thoughts appear, it is, and must remain, true that the thoughts which psychology studies do contin ually tend to appear as parts of personal selves. I say ' tend to appear' rather than 'appear,' on account of those facts of sub- conscious personality, automatic writ ing, etc., of which we studied a few in the last chapter. The buried feelings and thoughts proved now to exist in hysterical anaesthetics, in recipients of post-hypnotic sug gestion, ttc., themselves are parts of secondary personal selves. These selves are for the most part very stupid and contracted, and are cut off at ordinary times from commu nication with the regular and normal self of the individual ; but still they form conscious unities, have continuous mem ories, speak, write, invent distinct names for themselves, or adopt names that are suggested ; and, in short, are entirely worthy of that title of secondary personalities which is now commonly given them. According to M. Janet these second ary personalities are always abnormal, and result from the splitting of what ought to be a single complete self into two parts, of which one lurks in the background whilst the other appears on the surface as the only self the man or woman has. For our present purpose it is unimportant whether this account of the origin of secondary selves is applicable to all possible cases of them or not, for it certainly is true of a large number of them. Now although the size of a secondary self thus formed will depend on the number of thoughts that are thus split-off from the main conscious ness, the form of it tends to personality, and the later thoughts pertaining to it remember the earlier ones and adopt them as their own. M. Janet caught the actual mo ment of inspissation (so to speak) of one of these secondary personalities in his anaesthetic somnambulist Lucie. He found that when this young woman's attention was absorbed 228 PSYCHOLOGY, in conversation with a third party, her anaesthetic hand would write simple answers to questions whispered to her by himself. " Do you hear ?" he asked. " No" was the uncon sciously written reply. "But to answer you must hear." " Yes, quite so." "Then how do you manage?" " I don't knoiu" " There must be some one who hears me." " Yes." " Who ?" " Someone other them Lucie." " Ah ! another per son. Shall we give her a name?" "No." "Yes, it will be more convenient." " Well, Adrienne, then." " Once bap< tized, the subconscious personage," M. Janet continues* " grows more definitely outlined and displays better her psychological characters. In particular she shows us that she is conscious of the feelings excluded from the conscious ness of the primary or normal personage. She it is who tells us that I am pinching the arm or touching the little linger in which Lucie for so long has had no tactile sensa tions." * In other cases the adoption of the name by the second ary self is more spontaneous. I have seen a number of incipient automatic writers and mediums as yet imperfectly * developed,' who immediately and of their own accord write and speak in the name of departed spirits. These may be public characters, as Mozart, Faraday, or real per sons formerly known to the subject, or altogether imagi nary beings. Without prejudicing the question of real 1 spirit- control ' in the more developed sorts of trance- utterance, I incline to think that these (often deplorably unintelligent) rudimentary utterances are the work of an inferior fraction of the subject's own natural mind, set free from control by the rest, and working after a set pattern fixed by the prejudices of the social environment. In a spiritualistic community we get optimistic messages, whilst in an ignorant Catholic village the secondary personage calls itself by the name of a demon, and proffers blas phemies and obscenities, instead of telling us how happy it is in the summer-land. f * L' Automatisme Psychologique, p. 318. f Cf. A. Constaus : Relation sur uue Epidemic d'hyslero-demonopathie en 1861. 2rne ed. Paris, 1863.— Chiap e Franzolini: L'Epidemia d'istero- demonopatie in Verzegnis. Reggio, 1879. — See also J. Kernel's little work : Nachricht von dem Vorkornmen des Besessenseins. 1836. THE STREAM OF THOUGHT, 229 Beneath these tracts of thought, which, however rudi mentary, are still organized selves with a memory, habits, and sense of their own identity, M. Janet thinks that the tacts of catalepsy in hysteric patients drive us to suppose that there are thoughts quite unorganized and impersonal A patient in cataleptic trance (which can be produced arti ficially in certain hypnotized subjects) is without memory on waking, and seems insensible and unconscious as long as the cataleptic condition lasts. If, however, one raises the arm of such a subject it stays in that position, and the whole body can thus be moulded like wax under the hands of the operator, retaining for a considerable time whatever attitude he communicates to it. In hysterics whose arm, for example, is anaesthetic, the same thing may happen. The anaesthetic arm may remain passively in positions which it is made to assume ; or if the hand be taken and made to hold a pencil and trace a certain letter, it will continue tracing that letter indefinitely on the paper. These acts, until recently, were supposed to be accompanied by no consciousness at all : they were physiological reflexes. M. Janet considers with much more plausibility that feeling escorts them. The feeling is probably merely that of the position or movement of the limb, and it produces no more than its natural effects when it discharges into the motor centres which keep the position maintained, or the movement incessantly renewed.* Such thoughts as these, says M. Janet, " are known by no one, for disaggregated sensations reduced to a state of mental dust are not synthetized in any personality." f He admits, however, that these very same unutterably stupid thoughts tend to develop memory, — the cataleptic ere long moves her arm at a bare hint ; so that they form no important exception to the law that all thought tends to assume the form of personal conscious ness. 2) Thought is in Constant Change. I do not mean necessarily that no one state of mind has any duration — even if true, that would be hard to establish, *For the Physiology of this compare the chapter oil the Will * Loc. cit. p. 316. 230 PSYCHOLOGY. The change which I have more particularly in view is thai which takes place in sensible intervals of time ; and the result on which I wish to lay stress is this, that no state once gone can recur and be identical witli ivhat it ivas before. Let us begin with Mr. Shadworth Hodgson's description : " I go straight to the facts, without saying I go to perception, or sensation, or thought, or any special mode at all. What I find when 1 look at my consciousness at all is that what I cannot divest myself of, or not have in consciousness, if I have any consciousness at all, is a sequence of different feelings. I may shut my eyes and keep perfectly still, and try not to contribute anything of my own will ; but whether I think or do not think, whether I perceive external things or not, I always have a succession of different feelings. Anything else that I may have also, of a more special character, comes in as parts of this suc cession. Not to have the succession of different feelings is not to be conscious at all. . . . The chain of consciousness is a sequence of diff Brents." * Such a description as this can awaken no possible pro test from any one. We all recognize as different great classes of our conscious states. Now we are seeing, now hearing ; now reasoning, now willing ; now recollecting, now expecting ; now loving, now hating ; and in a hundred other ways we know our minds to be alternately engaged. But all these are complex states. The aim of science is always to reduce complexity to simplicity ; and in psychological science we have the celebrated 'theory of ideas9 which, admitting the great difference among each other of what may be called concrete conditions of mind, seeks to show how this is all the resultant effect of variations in the cora- bination of certain simple elements of consciousness that always remain the same. These mental atoms or molecules are what Locke called 'simple ideas.' Some of Locke's successors made out that the only simple ideas were the sensations strictly so called. Which ideas the simple ones may be does not, however, now concern us. It is enough that certain philosophers have thought they could see under the dissolving-view-appearance of the mind elemen tary facts of any sort that remained unchanged amid the flow. *The Philosophy of Reflection, i. 248, 290. THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 231 And the view of these philosophers has been called little into question, for our common experience seems at first sight to corroborate it entirely. Are not the sensations we get from the same object, for example, always the same ? Does not the same piano-key, struck with the same force, make us hear in the same way ? Does not the same grass give us the same feeling of green, the same sky the same feeling of blue, and do we not get the same olfactory sen sation no matter how many times we put our nose to the same flask of cologne ? It seems a piece of metaphysical sophistry to suggest that we do not; and yet a close at tention to the matter shows that there is no proof that the same bodily sensation is ever got by us twice. What is got tioice is the same OBJECT. We hear the same note over and over again ; we see the same quality of green, or smell the same objective perfume, or experience the same species of pain. The realities, concrete and abstract, physi cal and ideal, whose permanent existence we believe in, seem to be constantly coming up again before our thought, and lead us, in our carelessness, to suppose that our 'ideas ' of them are the same ideas. When we come, some time later, to the chapter on Perception, we shall see how invet erate is our habit of not attending to sensations as subjec tive facts, but of simply using them as stepping-stones to pass over to the recognition of the realities whose presence they reveal. The grass out of the window now looks to me of the same green in the sun as in the shade, and yet a painter would have to paint one part of it dark brown, arother part bright yellow, to give its realj Sensational effect. We take no heed, as a rule, of the different way in which the same things look and sound arid smell at different dis tances and under different circumstances. The sameness of the things is what we are concerned to ascertain ; and any sensations that assure us of that will probably be con sidered in a rough way to be the same with each other. This is what makes off-hand testimony about the subjective identity of different sensations well-nigh worthless as a proof of the fact. The entire history of Sensation is a com mentary on our inability to tell whether two sensations received apart are exactly alike. What appeals to our 232 PSYCHOLOGY. attention far more than the absolute quality or quantity oi a given sensation is its ratio to whatever other sensations we may have at the same time. When everything is dark a somewhat less dark sensation makes us see an object white. Helmholtz calculates that the white marble painted in a picture representing an architectural view by moon light is, when seen by daylight, from ten to twenty thousand times brighter than the real moonlit marble would be.* Such a difference as this could never have been sensibly learned ; it had to be inferred from a series of indirect con siderations. There are facts which make us believe that our sensibility is altering all the time, so that the same object cannot easily give us the same sensation over again. The eye's sensibility to light is at its maximum when the eye is first exposed, and blunts itself with surprising rapid ity. A long night's sleep will make it see things twice as brightly on wakening, as simple rest by closure will make it see them later in the day.f We feel things differently ; according as we are sleepy or awake, hungry or full, fresh ; or tired ; differently at night and in the morning, differently in summer and in winter, and above all things differently in childhood, manhood, and old age. Yet we never doubt that our feelings reveal the same world, with the same sensible qualities and the same sensible things occupying it. The difference of the sensibility is shown best by the difference of our emotion about the things from one age to another, or when we are in different organic moods. What was bright and exciting becomes weary, flat, and unprofitable. The bird's song is tedious, the breeze is mournful, the sky is sad. To these indirect presumptions that our sensations, fol lowing the mutations of our capacity for feeling, are always undergoing an essential change, must be added another presumption, based on what must happen in the brain. \ Every sensation corresponds to some cerebral action. Foi an identical sensation to recur it would have to occur the /second time in an unmodified brain. But as this, strictly * Populare Wissenschaftliche Vortrage, Drittes Heft (1876). p. 72. t Fick, in L. Hermann's Handb. d. Pbysiol. , Bd. in. Th. i. D. 225. THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 233 speaking, is a physiological impossibility, so is an un modified feeling an impossibility ; for to every brain-modi^ fication, however small, must correspond a change of equal amount in the feeling which the brain subserves. All this would be true if even sensations came to us pure and single and not combined into ' things.' Even then we should have to confess that, however we might in ordinary conversation speak of getting the same sensation again, we never in strict theoretic accuracy could do so ; and that whatever was true of the river of life, of the river of elemen tary feeling, it would certainly be true to say, like Heraclitus, that we never descend twice into the same stream. But if the assumption of ' simple ideas of sensation ' recurring in immutable shape is so easily shown to be baseless, how much more baseless is the assumption of immutability in the larger masses of our thought ! For there it is obvious and palpable that our state of mind is never precisely the same. Every thought we have of a given fact is, strictly speaking, unique, and only bears a resemblance of kind with our other thoughts of the same fact. When the identical fact recurs, we must think of it in a fresh manner, see it under a somewhat different angle, apprehend it in different relations from those in which it last appeared. And the thought by which we cognize it is the thought of it-in-those-relations, a thought suffused with the consciousness of all that dim context. Often we are ourselves struck at the strange differences in our suc cessive views of the same thing. We wonder how we ever could have opined as we did last month about a certain matter. We have outgrown the possibility of that state of mind, we know not how. From one year to another we see things in new lights. What was unreal has grown real, and what was exciting is insipid. The friends we used to care the world for are shrunken to shadows ; the women, once so divine, the stars, the woods, and the waters, how now so dull and common ! the young girls that brought an aura of infinity, at present hardly distinguishable exist ences ; the pictures so empty ; and as for the books, what was there to find so mysteriously significant in Goethe, or in John Mill so full of weight? Instead of all this, more 234 PSYCHOLOGY. zestful than ever is the work, the work ,- and fuller and deeper the import of common duties and of common goods. But what here strikes us so forcibly on the flagrant scale exists on every scale, down to the imperceptible transition from one hour's outlook to that of the next. Ex perience is remoulding us every moment, and our mental reaction on every given thing is really a resultant of our experience of the whole world up to that date. The analo gies of brain-physiology must again be appealed to to corroborate our view. Our earlier chapters have taught us to believe that, whilst we think, our brain changes, and that, like the auro ra borealis, its whole internal equilibrium shifts with every pulse of change. The precise nature of the shifting at a given moment is a product of many factors. The acciden tal state of local nutrition or blood-supply may be among them. But just as one of them certainly is the influence of outward objects on the sense-organs during the moment, so is another certainly the very special susceptibility in which the organ has been left at that moment by all it has gone through in the past. Every brain-state is partly determined by the nature of this entire past succession. Alter the latter in any part, and the brain-state must be \ somewhat different. Each present brain-state is a record in which the eye of Omniscience might read all the fore gone history of its owner. It is out of the question, then, that any total brain-state should identically recur. Some thing like it may recur ; but to suppose it to recur would be equivalent to the absurd admission that all the states that had intervened between its two appearances had been pure nonentities, and that the organ after their passage was exactly as it was before. And (to consider shorter periods) just as, in the senses, an impression feels very dif ferently according to what has preceded it ; as one color succeeding another is modified by the contrast, silence sounds delicious after noise, and a note, when the scale is sung up, sounds unlike itself when the scale is sung down ; as the presence of certain lines in a figure changes the ap parent form of the other lines, and as in music the whole aesthetic effect comes from the manner in which one set of THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 235 sounds alters our feeling of another ; so, in thought, we must admit that those portions of the brain that have just been maximally excited retain a kind of soreness which is a condition of our present consciousness, a codetenninant of how and what we now shall feel.* Ever some tracts are waning in tension, some waxing, whilst others actively discharge. The states of tension have as positive an influence as any in determining the total condition, and in deciding what the psychosis shall be. All we know of submaximal nerve-irritations, and of the summation of apparently ineffective stimuli, tends to show that TIO changes in the brain are physiologically ineffective, and that presumably none are bare of psychological result. But as the brain-tension shifts from one relative state of equilibrium to another, like the gyrations of a kaleido- I scope, now rapid and now slow, is it likely that its faithful psychic concomitant is heavier-footed than itself, and that it cannot match each one of the organ's irradiations by a shifting inward iridescence of its own ? But if it can do this, its inward iridescences must be infinite, for the brain- redistributions are in infinite variety. If so coarse a thing as a telephone-plate can be made to thrill for years and never reduplicate its inward condition, how much more must this be the case with the infinitely delicate brain ? I am sure that this concrete and total manner of regard ing the mind's changes is the only true manner, difficult as it may be to carry it out in detail. If anything seems ob scure about it, it will grow clearer as we advance. Mean while, if it be true, it is certainly also true that no two ' ideas ' are ever exactly the same, which is the proposition we started to prove. The proposition is more important theoretically than it at first sight seems. For it makes it *It need of course not follow, because a total brain-state does not re cur, that no point of the brain can ever be twice in the same condition. That would be as improbable a consequence as that in the sea a wave-crest should never come twice at the same point of space. What can hardly come twice is an identical combination of wave-forms all with their crests/ 1. and hollows reoccupying identical places. For such a total combina-' tionasthis is the analogue of the brain-state to which our actual conscious ness at any moment is due. 236 PSYCHOLOGY. already impossible for us to follow obediently in the foot prints of eitlier the Lockian or the Herbartian school, schools which have had almost unlimited influence in Ger many and among ourselves. No doubt it is often con venient to formulate the mental facts in an atomistic sort of way, and to treat the higher states of consciousness as if they were all built out of unchanging simple ideas. It is convenient often to treat curves as if they were composed of small straight lines, and electricity and nerve-force as if they were fluids. But in the one case as in the other we must never forget that we are talking symbolically, and that there is nothing in nature to answer to our words. A permanently existing ' idea ' or * Vorstellung ' which makes its i appearance before the footlights of consciousness at periodical ' intervals, is as mythological an entity as the Jack of Spades. What makes it convenient to use the mythological for mulas is the whole organization of speech, which, as was remarked a while ago, was not made by psychologists, but by men who were as a rule only interested in the facts their mental states revealed. They only spoke of their states as ideas of this or of that thing. "What wonder, then, that the thought is most easily conceived under the law of the thing whose name it bears ! If the thing is composed of parts, then we suppose that the thought of the thing must be composed of the thoughts of the parts. If one part of the thing have appeared in the same thing or in other things on former occasions, why then we must be having even now the very same ' idea ' of that part which was there on those occa sion s. If the thing is simple, its thought is simple. If it is multitudinous, it must require a multitude of thoughts to think it. If a succession, only a succession of thoughts can know it. If permanent, its thought is permanent. And so on ad libitum. What after all is so natural as to assume that one object, called by one name, should be known by one affection of the mind ? But, if language must thus in fluence us, the agglutinative languages, and even Greek and Latin with their declensions, would be the better guides. Names did not appear in them inalterable, but changed their shape to suit the context in which they lay. It must have been easier then than now to conceive of the same THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 237 object as being thought of at different times in non-identical conscious states. This, too, will grow clearer as we proceed. Meanwhile a necessary consequence of the belief in permanent self- identical psychic facts that absent themselves and recur periodically is the Humian doctrine that our thought is composed of separate independent parts and is not a sen sibly continuous stream. That this doctrine entirely mis represents the natural appearances is what I next shall try to show. 3) Within each personal consciousness, thought is sensibly con tinuous. I can only define ' continuous ' as that which is with out breach, crack, or division. I have already said that the breach from one mind to another is perhaps the greats est breach in nature. The only breaches that can well be conceived to occur within the limits of a single mind would either be interruptions, time-gaps during which the con sciousness went out altogether to come into existence again at a later moment ; or they would be breaks in the quality^ or content, of the thought, so abrupt that the segment that followed had no connection whatever with the one that went before. The proposition that within each personal consciousness thought feels continuous, means two things: 1. That even where there is a time-gap the conscious ness after it feels as if it belonged together with the con sciousness before it, as another part of the same self; 2. That the changes from one moment to another in the quality of the consciousness are never absolutely abrupt. The case of the time-gaps, as the simplest, shall be taken first. And first of all a word about time-gaps of which the consciousness may not be itself aware. On page 200 we saw that such time-gaps existed, and that they might be more numerous than is usually supposed. If the consciousness is not aware of them, it cannot feel them as interruptions. In the unconsciousness produced by nitrous oxide and other anaesthetics, in that of epilepsy and fainting, the broken edges of the sentient life may 238 PSYCHOLOGY. meet and merge over the gap, much as the feelings of space of the opposite margins of the ' blind spot ' meet and merge over that objective interruption to the sensitiveness of the eye. Such consciousness as this, whatever it be for the onlooking psyche logist, is for itself unbroken» It feds unbroken ; a waking day of it is sensibly a unit as long as that day lasts, in the sense in which the hours themselves are units, as having all their parts next each other, with no intrusive alien substance between. To expect the con sciousness to feel the interruptions of its objective con tinuity as gaps, would be like expecting the eye to feel a gap of silence because it does not hear, or the ear to feel a gap of darkness because it does not see. So much for the gaps that are unfelt. With the felt gaps the case is different. On waking from sleep, we usually know that we have been unconscious, and we often have an accurate judgment of how long. The judgment here is certainly an inference from sensible signs, and its ease is due to long practice in the particular field.* The result of it, however, is that the consciousness is, for itself, not what it was in the former case, but interrupted and discontinuous, in the mere sense of the words. But in the other sense of continuity, the sense of the parts being inwardly connected and belonging together because they are parts of a common whole, the consciousness remains sensibly continuous and one. What now is the common whole ? The natural name for it is myself, I, or me. When Paul and Peter wake up in the same bed, and recognize that they have been asleep, each one of them mentally reaches back and makes connection with but one of the two streams of thought which were broken by the sleeping hours. As the current of an electrode buried in the ground unerringly finds its way to its own similarly buried mate, across no matter how much intervening earth ; so Peter's present instantly finds out Peter's past, and never by mistake knits itself on to that of Paul. Paul's thought in turn is as little liable to go astray. The past thought of Peter is appropriated by the present Peter alone. He may * The accurate registration of the ' how \ona- ' is still a little mysterious' THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 239 have a knowledge, and a correct one too, of what Paul's last drowsy states of mind were as he sank into sleep, but it is an entirely different sort of knowledge from that which he has ot his own last states. He remembers his own states, whilst he only conceives Paul's. Remembrance is like direct feeling ; its object is suffused with a warmth and intimacy to which no object of mere conception ever attains. This quality of warmth and intimacy and immediacy is what Peter's present thought also possesses for itself. So sure as this present is me, is mine, it says, so sure is anything else that comes with the same warmth and intimacy and immediacy, me and mine. What the qualities called warmth and intimacy may in themselves be will have to be matter for future consideration. But whatever past feel- ino-s appear with those qualities must be admitted to re ceive the greeting of the present mental state, to be owned by it, and accepted as belonging together with it in a com mon self. This community of self is what the time-gap cannot break in twain, and is why a present thought, al though not ignorant of the time-gap, can still regard itself as continuous with certain chosen portions of the past. Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as * chain ' or c train ' do not de scribe it fitly ar; it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life. But now there appears, even within the limits of the same self, and between thoughts all of which alike have this same sense of belonging together, a kind of jointing and separateness among the parts, of which this statement seems to take no account. I refer to the breaks that are produced by sudden contrasts in the. quality of the successive segments of the stream of thought If the words < chain ' and ' train ' had no natural fitness in them, how came such words to be used at all ? Does not a loud explosion rend the consciousness upon which it abruptly breaks, in twain ? Does not every sudden shock, appearance of a new object, 240 PSYCHOLOGY. or change in a sensation, create a real interruption, sensibly felt as such, which cuts the conscious stream across at the moment at which it appears ? Do not such interruptions smite us every hour of our lives, and have we the right, in their presence, still to call our consciousness a continuous stream ? This objection is based partly on a confusion and partly on a superficial introspective view. The confusion is between the thoughts themselves, taken as subjective facts, and the things of which they are aware. It is natural to make this confusion, but easy to avoid it when once put on one's guard. The things are discrete and discontinuous ; they do pass before us in a train or chain, making often explosive appearances and rending each other in twain. But their comings and goings and contrasts no more break the flow of the thought that thinks them than they break the time and the space in which they lie. A silence may be broken by a thunder-clap, and we may be so stunned and confused for a moment by the shock as to give no instant account to ourselves of what has hap pened. But that very confusion is a mental state, and a state that passes us straight over from the silence to the sound. The transition between the thought of one object and the thought of another is no more a break in the thought than a joint in a bamboo is a break in the wood. It is a part of the consciousness as much as the joint is a part of the bamboo. The superficial introspective view is the overlooking, even when the things are contrasted with each other moet violently, of the large amount of affinity that may still re main between the thoughts by whose means they are cognized. Into the awareness of the thunder itself the awareness of the previous silence creeps and continues ; for what we hear when the thunder crashes is not thunder pure, but thunder-breaking-upon-silence-and-contrasting- with-it.* Our feeling of the same objective thunder, com ing in this way, is quite different from what it would be * Of. Brentano; Psychologic, vol. i. pp. 219-20. Altogether this chapter of Brentano's on the Unity of Consciousness is as good as anything with which I am acquainted. THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 241 were the thunder a continuation of previous thunder. The thunder itself we believe to abolish and exclude the silence ; but i\\s feeling of the thunder is also a feeling of the silence as just gone ; and it would be difficult to find in the actual concrete consciousness of man a feeling so limited to the present as not to have an inkling of anything that went be fore. Here, again, language works against our perception of the truth. We name our thoughts simply, each after its thing, as if each knew its own thing and nothing else. What each really knows is clearly the thing it is named for, with dimly perhaps a thousand other things. It ought to be named after all of them, but it never is. Some of them are always things known a moment ago more clearly ; others are things to be known more clearly a moment hence. * Our own bodily position, attitude, condition, is one of the things of which some awareness, however inattentive, invariably accompanies the knowledge of whatever else we know. We * Honor to whom honor is due ! The most explicit acknowledgment I have anywhere found of all this is in a buried and forgotten paper by the Rev. Jas. Wills, on 'Accidental Association/ in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol xxr. part i (1846). Mr. Wills writes : "At every instant of conscious thought there is a certain sum of per ceptions, or reflections, or both together, present, and together constituting one whole state of apprehension. Of this some definite portion may be far more distinct than all the rest ; and the rest be iu consequence propor- tionably vague, even to the limit of obliteration. But still, within this limit, the most dim shade of perception enters into, and in some infinites imal degree modifies, the whole existing slate. This state will thus be in some way modified by any sensation or emotion, or act of distinct attention, that may give prominence to any part of it ; so that the actual result is capable of the utmost variation, according to the person or the occasion. ... To any portion of the entire scope here described there may be a special direction of the attention, and this special direction is recognized as strictly what is recognized as the idea present to the mind. This idea is evidently not commensurate with the entire state of apprehension, and much perplexity has arisen from not observing this fact. However deeply we may suppose the attention to be engaged by any thought, any consider able alteration of the surrounding phenomena would still be perceived; the most abstruse demonstration iu this room would not prevent a listener, however absorbed, from noticing the sudden extinction of the lights. Our mental states have always an essential unity, such that each state of appre hension, however variously compounded, is a single whole, of which every component is, therefore, strictly apprehended (so far as it is apprehended) as a part. Such is the elementary basis from which all our intellectual operations commence." 242 PSYCHOLOGY. think ; and as we think we feel our bodily selves as the seat of the thinking. If the thinking be our thinking, it must be suffused through all its parts with that peculiar warmth and intimacy that make it come as ours. Whether the warmth and intimacy be anything more than the feeling of the same old body always there, is a matter for the next chapter to decide. Whatever the content of the ego may be, it is habitually felt with everything else by us humans, and must form a liaison between all the things of which we become successively aware. * On this gradualness in the changes of our mental con tent the principles of nerve-action can throw some more light. When studying, in Chapter III, the summation of nervous activities, we saw that no state of the brain can be supposed instantly to die away. If a new state comes, the inertia of the old state will still be there and modify the result accordingly. Of course we cannot tell, in our igno rance, what in each instance the modifications ought to be. The commonest modifications in sense-perception are known as the phenomena of contrast. In aesthetics they are the feelings of delight or displeasure which certain particular orders in a series of impressions give. In thought, strictly and narrowly so called, they are unques tionably that consciousness of the whence and the luhither that always accompanies its flows. If recently the brain- tract a was vividly excited, and then b, and now vividly c, the total present consciousness is not produced simply by c's excitement, but also by the dying vibrations of a and b as well. If we want to represent the brain-process we must write it thus : ^c — three different processes coexist- a ing, and correlated with them a thought which is no one of the three thoughts which they would have produced had each of them occurred alone. But whatever this fourth thought may exactly be, it seems impossible that it should not be something like each of the three other thoughts whose tracts are concerned in its production, though in a fast-waning phase. * Compare the charming passage in Taine on Intelligence (N. Y. ed.), i. 83-4. THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 24B It all goes back to what we said in another connection only a few pages ago (p. 233). As the total neurosis changes, so does the total psychosis change. But as the changes of neurosis are never absolutely discontinuous, so must the successive psychoses shade gradually into each other, although their rate of change may be much faster at one moment than at the next. This difference in the rate of change lies at the basis of a difference of subjective states of which we ought immedi ately to speak. When the rate is slow we are aware of the object of our thought in a comparatively restful and stable way. When rapid, we are aware of a passage, a relation, a transition from it, or 'between it and something else. As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stveam of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different pace of its parts. Like a bird's life, it seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings. The rhythm of language expresses this, where every thought is expressed in a sentence, and every sentence closed by a period. The resting-places are usually occupied by sensorial imagina tions of some sort, whose peculiarity is that they can be held before the mind for an indefinite time, and contem plated without changing ; the places of flight are filled with thoughts of relations, static or dynamic, that for the most part obtain between the matters contemplated in the periods of comparative rest. Let us call the resting-places the l substantive parts,' and the places of flight the ' transitive parts,' of the stream of thought. It then appears that the main end of our thinking is at all times the attainment of some other sub stantive part than the one from which we have just been dislodged. And we may say that the main use of the transitive parts is to lead us from one substantive conclu sion to another. Now it is very difficult, introspectively, to see the tran sitive parts for what they really are. If they are but flights to a conclusion, stopping them to look at them before the conclusion is reached is really annihilating them. Whilst if we wait till the conclusion le reached, it so exceeds them 244 PSYCHOLOGY In vigor and stability fihat it quite eclipses and swallows them up in its glare. Leo anyone try to cut a thought across in the middle and get a look at its section, and he will see how difficult the introspective observation of the transitive tracts is. The rush of the thought is so headlong that it almost always brings us up at the conclusion before we can arrest it. Or if our purpose is nimble enough and we do arrest it, it ceases forthwith to be itself. As a snow- flake crystal caught in the warm hand is no longer a crystal but a drop, so, instead of catching tho feeling of relation moving to its term, we find we have caught some substantive thing, usually the last word we were pronouncing, statically taken, and with Its function, tendency, and particular meaning in the sentence quite evaporated. Tho attempt at introspective analysis in these cases is in fact like seiz ing a spinning top to catch its motion, or trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness looks. And the challenge to produce these psychoses, which is sure to be thrown by doubting psychologists at anyone who contends for their existence, is as unfair as Zeno's treatment of the advocates of motion, when, asking them to point out in what place an arrow is when it moves, he argues the falsity of their thesis from their inability to make to so preposterous a question an immediate reply. The results of this introspective difficulty are baleful. If to hold fast and observe the transitive parts of thought's stream be so hard, then the great blunder to which all schools are liable must be the failure to register them, and the undue emphasizing of the more substantive parts of the stream. Were we not ourselves a moment since in danger of ignoring any feeling transitive between the silence and the thunder, and of treating their boundary as a sort of break in the mind ? Now such ignoring as this has histor ically worked in two ways. One set of thinkers have been led by it to Sensationalism. Unable to lay their hands on any coarse feelings corresponding to the innumerable relations and forms of connection between the facts of the world, finding no named subjective modifications mirroring such relations, they have for the most part denied that feelings of relation exist, and many of them, like Hume, have gone THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 245 so far as to deny the reality of most relations out of the mind as well as in it. Substantive psychoses, sensations and their copies and derivatives, juxtaposed like dominoes in a game, but really separate, everything else verbal illu sion, — such is the upshot of this view.* The Intellectual ists, on the other hand, unable to give up the reality of relations extra mentem, but equally unable to point to any distinct substantive feelings in which they were known, have made the same admission that the feelings do not exist. But they have drawn an opposite conclusion. The rela tions must be known, they say, in something that is no feeling, no mental modification continuous and consub- stantial with the subjective tissue out of which sensations and other substantive states are made. They are known, these relations, by something that lies on an entirely different plane, by an actus purus of Thought, Intellect, or Reason, all written with capitals and considered to mean something unutterably superior to any fact of sensibility whatever. But from our point of view both Intellectualists and Sen sationalists are wrong. If there be such things as feelings at all, then so surely as relations between objects exist in rerum naturd, so surely, and more surely, do feelings exist to which these relations are known. There is not a conjunction or a preposition, and hardly an adverbial phrase, syntactic form, or inflection of voice, in human speech, that does not express some shading or other of relation which we at some mo ment actually feel to exist between the larger objects of our thought. If we speak objectively, it is the real relations that appear revealed ; if we speak subjectively, it is the stream of consciousness that matches each of them by an inward coloring of its own. In either case the relations are numberless, and no existing language is capable of do ing justice to all their shades. We ought to say a feeling of and, a feeling of if, a feeling of but, and a feeling of by, quite as readily as we say a feel- *E.g. : "The stream of thought is not a continuous current, but a series of distinct ideas, more or less rapid in their succession ; the rapidity being measurable by the number that pass through the mind in a given time." (Bain : E. and W., p. 29.) 246 PSYCHOLOGY. ing of Uue or a feeling of cold. Yet we do not : so invetei\ ate lias our habit become of recognizing the existence of the substantive parts alone, that language almost refuses to lend itself to any other use. The Empiricists have al ways dwelt on its influence in making us suppose that where we have a separate name, a separate thing must needs be there to correspond with it ; and they have right ly denied the existence of the mob of abstract entities, principles, and forces, in whose favor no other evidence than this could be brought up. But they have said noth ing of that obverse error, of which we said a word in Chap ter VII, (see p. 195), of supposing that where there is no name no entity can exist. All dumb or anonymous psychic states have, owing to this error, been coolly suppressed; or, if recognized at all, have been named after the substantive perception they led to, as thoughts ' about ' this object or * about ' that, the stolid word about engulfing all their del icate idiosyncrasies in its monotonous sound. Thus the greater and greater accentuation and isolation of the sub stantive parts have continually gone on. Once more take a look at the brain. We believe the brain to be an organ whose internal equilibrium is always in a state of change, — the change affecting every part. The pulses of change are doubtless more violent in one place than in another, their rhythm more rapid at this time than at that. As in a kaleidoscope revolving at a uniform rate, al though the figures are always rearranging themselves, there are instants during which the transformation seems minute and interstitial and almost absent, followed by others when it shoots with magical rapidity, relatively stable forms thus alternating with forms we should not distinguish if seen again ; so in the brain the perpetual rearrangement must result in some forms of tension lingering relatively long, ivhilst others simply come and pass. But if consciousness corresponds to the fact of rearrangement itself, why, if the rearrangement stop not, should the consciousness ever cease ? And if a lingering rearrangement brings with it one kind of consciousness, why should not a swift rearrange ment bring another kind of consciousness as peculiar as the rearrangement itself? The lingering consciousnesses, THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 247 if of simple objects, we call 'sensations' or 'images,' ac cording as they are vivid or faint ; if of complex objects, we call them ' percepts ' when vivid, ' concepts ' or ' thoughts ' when faint. For the swift consciousnesses we have only those names of ' transitive states,' or ' feelings of relation,' which we have used.* As the brain-changes * Few writers have admitted that we cognize relations through feeling. The intellectualists have explicitly denied the possibility of such a thing— e.g., Prof. T. H. Green ('Mind,' vol. vn. p. 28): "No feeling, as such or as felt, is [of ?] a relation. . . . Even a relation between feelings is not itself a feeling or felt." On the other hand, the sensatiouists have either smuggled in the cognition without giving any account of it, or have denied the relations to be cognized, or even to exist, at all. A few honorable ex ceptions, however, deserve to be named among the sensatiouists. Dcstutt de Tracy, Laromiguiere, Cardaillac, Brown, and finally Spencer, have ex plicitly contended for feelings of relation, COD substantial with our feelings or thoughts of the terms ' between ' which they obtain. Thus Destutt de Tracy says (Elements dTdeologie, T. ler, chap, iv); " The faculty of judgment is itself a sort of sensibility, for it is the faculty of feeling the relations among our ideas; and to feel relations is to feel." Laromiguiere writes (Le9ons de Philosophic, lime Partie, 3me Le9ou): " There is no one whose intelligence does not embrace simultaneously many ideas, more or less distinct, more or less confused. Now, when we have many ideas at once, a peculiar feeling arises in us : we feel, among these ideas, resemblances, differences, relations. Let us call this mode of feeling, common to us all, the feeling of relation, or relation-feeling (sentiment-rapport). One sees immediately that these relation-feelings, re sulting from the propinquity of ideas, must be infinitely more numerous than the sensation-feelings (sentiments-sensations] or the feelings we have of the action of our faculties. The slightest knowledge of the mathemat ical theory of combinations will prove this. . . . Ideas of relation origi nate in feelings of relation. They are the effect of our comparing them and reasoning about them." Similarly, de Cardaillac (Etudes Eleineutaires de Philosophic, Section I. chap, vn ): " By a natural consequence, we are led to suppose that at the same time that we have several sensations or several ideas in the mind, we feel the rela tions which exist between these sensations, and the relations which exist be tween these ideas. ... If the feeling of relations exists in us, ... it is necessarily the most varied and the most fertile of all human feelings: 1° the most varied, because, relations being more numerous than beings, the feelings of relation must be in the same proportion more numerous than the sensations whose presence gives rise to their formation; 2°, the most fertile, for the relative ideas of which the feeling-of-relation is the source . . . are more important than absolute ideas, if such exist. ... If we interrogate common speech, we find the feeling of relation expressed there in a thousand different ways. If it is easy to seize a relation, we saj; 248 PSYCHOLOGY. are continuous, so do all these consciousnesses melt into each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but one protracted consciousness, one unbroken stream. that it is sensible, to distinguish it from one which, because its terms are too remote, cannot be as quickly perceived. A sensible difference, or re semblance. . . . What is taste in the arts, in intellectual productions r What but the feeling of those relations among the parts which constitutes their merit ? . . . Did we not feel relations we should never attain to true knowledge, . . . for almost all our knowledge is of relations. . . . We never have an isolated sensation ; ... we are therefore never without the feeling of relation. ... An object strikes our senses ; we see in it only a sensation. . . . The relative is so near the absolute, the relation-feeling so near the sensation- feeling, the two are so intimately fused in the composi tion of the object, that the relation appears to us as part of the sensation itself. It is doubtless to this sort of fusion between sensations and feelings of relation that the silence of metaphysicians as to the latter is due; and it is for the same reason that they have obstinately persisted in asking from sensation alone those ideas of relation which it was powerless to give." Dr. Thomas Brown writes (Lectures, XLV. init.): " There is an exten sive order of our feelings which involve this notion of relation, and which consist indeed in the mere perception of a relation of some sort. . . . Whether the relation be of two or of many external objects, or of two or many affections of the mind, the feeling of this relation ... is what I term a relative suggestion; that phrase being the simplest which it is possible to employ, for expressing, without any theory, the mere fact of the rise of certain feelings of relation, after certain other feelings which precede them; and therefore, as involving no particular theory, and simply ex pressive of an undoubted fact That the feelings of relation are states of the mind essentially different from our simple perceptions, or concep tions of the objects, . . . that they are not what Condillac terms trans formed sensations, I proved in a former lecture, when I combated the ex cessive simplification of that ingenious but not very accurate philosopher. There is an original tendency or susceptibility of the mind, by which, on perceiving together different objects, we are instantly, without the inter vention of any other mental process, sensible of their relation in certain respects, as truly as there is an original tendency or susceptibility by which, when external objects are present and have produced a certain affection of our sensorial organ, we are instantly affected with the primary elementary feelings of perception; and, I may add, that as our sensations or percep tions are of various species, so are there various species of relations;— the number of relations, indeed, even of external things, being almost infinite, while the number of perceptions is, necessarily, limited by that of the ob jects which have the power of producing some affection of our organs of sensation. . . . Without that susceptibility of the mind by which it has the feeling of relation, our consciousness would be as truly limited to a single point, as our body would become, were it possible to fetter it to a single atom." Mr. Spencer is even more explicit. His philosophy is crude in that he THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 249 Feelings of Tendency. So much for the transitive states. But there are other unnamed states or qualities of states that are just as ini- seems to suppose that it is only in transitive states that outward relations are known ; whereas in truth space-relations, relations of contrast, etc. , are felt along with their terms, in substantive states as well as in transitive states, as we shall abundantly see. Nevertheless Mr. Spencer's passage is so clear that it also deserves to be quoted in full (Principles of Psychology, § 65): " The proximate components of Mind are of two broadly-contrasted kinds— Feelings and the relations between feelings. Among the members of each group there exist multitudinous unlikeuesses, many of which are extremely strong; but such unliken esses are small compared with those which distinguish members of the one group from members of the other. Let us, in the first place, consider what are the characters which all Feel ings have in common, and what are the characters which all Relations between feelings have in common. "Each feeling, as we here define it, is any portion of consciousness which occupies a place sufficiently large to give it a perceivable individ uality; which has its individuality marked off from adjacent portions of consciousness by qualitative contrasts; and which, when introspectively contemplated, appears to be homogeneous. These are the essentials. Obviously if, under introspection, a state of consciousness is decomposable into unlike parts that exist either simultaneously or successively, it is not one feeling but two or more. Obviously if it is indistinguishable from an adjacent portion of consciousness, it forms one with that portion — is not an individual feeling, but part of one. And obviously if it does not occupy in consciousness an appreciable area, or an appreciable duration, it cannot be known as a feeling. "A Relation between feelings is, on the contrary, characterized by occupying no appreciable part of consciousness. Take away the terms it unites, and it disappears along with them; having no independent place, no individuality of its own. It is true that, under an ultimate analysis, what we call a relation proves to be itself a kind of feeling— the momen tary feeling accompanying the transition from one conspicuous feeling to an adjacent conspicuous feeling. And it is true that, notwithstanding its extreme brevity, its qualitative character is appreciable; for relations are (as we shall hereafter see) distinguishable from one another only by the unlikenesses of the feelings which accompany the momentary transitions. Each relational feeling may, in fact, be regarded as one of those nervous shocks which we suspect to be the units of composition of feelings; and, though instantaneous, it is known as of greater or less strength, and as taking place with greater or less facility. But the contrast between these relational feelings and what we ordinarily call feelings is so strong that we must class them apart. Their extreme brevity, their small variety, and their dependence on the terms they unite, differentiate them in an unmis takable way. " Perhaps it will be well to recognize more fully the truth that this dis 250 PSYCHOLOGY. portant and just as cognitive as they, and just as much unrecognized by the traditional sensationalist and intellect- ualist philosophies of mind. The first fails to find them at all, the second finds their cognitive function, but denies that anything in the way of feeling has a share in bringing it about. Examples will make clear what these inarticu late psychoses, due to waxing and waning excitements of the brain, are like.* Suppose three successive persons say to us: 'Wait!' ' Hark ! ' ' Look ! ' Our consciousness is thrown into tiuction cannot be absolute. Besides admitting that, as an element of consciousness, a relation is a momentary feeling, we must also admit that just as a relation can have no existence apart from the feelings which form its terms, so a feeling can exist only by relations to other feelings which limit it in space or time or both. Strictly speaking, neither a feeling nor a relation is an independent element of consciousness : there is throughout a dependence such that the appreciable areas of consciousness occupied by feelings can no more possess individualities apart from the relations which link them, than these relations can possess individualities apart from the feelings they link. The essential distinction between the two, then, appears to be that whereas a relational feeling is a portion of consciousness inseparable into parts, a feeling, ordinarily so called, is a portion of con sciousness that admits imaginary division into like parts which are related to one another in sequence or coexistence. A feeling proper is either made up of like parts that occupy time, or it is made up of like parts that occupy space, or both. In any case, a feeling proper is an aggregate of related like parts, while a relational feeling is undecomposable. And this is exactly the contrast between the two which must result if, as we have inferred, feelings are composed of units of feelings, or shocks'." * M. Paulhan (Revue Philosophique, xx. 455-6), after speaking of the faint mental images of objects and emotions, says: " We find other vaguer states still, upon which attention seldom rests, except in persons who by nature or profession are addicted to internal observation. It is even diffi cult to name them precisely, for they are little known and not classed ; but we may cite as an example of them that peculiar impression which we feel when, strongly preoccupied by a certain subject, we nevertheless are engaged with, and have our attention almost completely absorbed by, mat ters quite disconnected therewithal. We do not then exactly think of the object of our preoccupation; we do not represent it in a clear manner; and yet our mind is not as it would be without this preoccupation. Its object, absent from consciousness, is nevertheless represented there by a peculiar unmistakable impression, which often persists long and is a strong feeling, although so obscure for our intelligence." " A mental sign of the kind is the unfavorable disposition left in our mind towards an individual by pain- ul incidents erewhile experienced and now perhaps forgotten. The sign emains, but is not understood; its definite meaning is lost." (P. 458.) THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 251 three quite different attitudes of expectancy, although no definite object is before it in any one of the three cases. Leaving out different actual bodily attitudes, and leav ing out the reverberating images of the three words, which are of course diverse, probably no one will deny the exist ence of a residual conscious affection, a sense of the direc tion from which an impression is about to come, although no positive impression is yet there. Meanwhile we have no names for the psychoses in question but the names hark, look, and wait. Suppose we try to recall a forgotten name. The state of our consciousness is peculiar. There is a gap therein ; but no mere gap. It is a gap that is intensely active. A sort of wraith of the name is in it, beckoning us in a given direction, making us at moments tingle with the sense of our closeness, and then letting us sink back without the longed-for term. If wrong names are proposed to us, this singularly definite gap acts immediately so as to negate them. They do not fit into its mould. And the gap of one word does not feel like the gap of another, all empty of content as both might seem necessarily to be when described as gaps. When I vainly try to recall the name of Spalding, my consciousness is far removed from what it is when 1 vainly try to recall the name of Bowles. Here some ingen ious persons will say : " How can the two consciousnesses be different when the terms which might make them differ ent are not there ? All that is there, so long as the effort to recall is vain, is the bare effort itself. How should that differ in the two cases ? You are making it seem to differ by prematurely filling it out with the different names, although these, by the hypothesis, have not yet come. Stick to the two efforts as they are, without naming them after facts not yet existent, and you'll be quite unable to designate any point in which they differ." Designate, truly enough. We can only designate the difference by borrow ing the names of objects not yet in the mind. Which is to say that our psychological vocabulary is wholly inadequate to name the differences that exist, even such strong differ ences as these. But namelessness is compatible with existence. There are innumerable consciousnesses of 252 PSYCHOLOGY. emptiness, no one of which taken in itself has a name, but all different from each other. The ordinary way is to assume that they are all emptinesses of consciousness, and so the same state. But the feeling of an absence is toto coelo other than the absence of a feeling. It is an intense feel ing. The rhythm of a lost word may be there without a sound to clothe it ; or the evanescent sense of something which is the initial vowel or consonant may mock us fit fully, without growing more distinct. Every one must know the tantalizing effect of the blank rhythm of some forgotten verse, restlessly dancing in one's mind, striving to be filled out with words. Again, what is the strange difference between an expe rience tasted for the first time and the same experience recognized as familiar, as having been enjoyed before, though we cannot name it or say where or when ? A tune, an odor, a flavor sometimes carry this inarticulate feeling of their familiarity so deep into our consciousness that we are fairly shaken by its mysterious emotional power. But strong and characteristic as this psychosis is — it probably is due to the submaximal excitement of wide- spreading associational brain-tracts — the only name we have for all its shadings is ' sense of familiarity.' When we read such phrases as ' naught but,' ' either one or the other,' 'a is b, but,' 'although it is, neverthe less,' ' it is an excluded middle, there is no tertium quid,' and a host of other verbal skeletons of logical relation, is it true that there is nothing more in our minds than the words themselves as they pass ? What then is the mean ing of the words which we think we understand as we read ? What makes that meaning different in one phrase from what it is in the other? 'Who?' 'When?' 'Where?' Is the difference of felt meaning in these interrogatives nothing more than their difference of sound? And is it not (just like the difference of sound itself) known and understood in an affection of consciousness correlative to it, though so impalpable to direct examination ? Is not the same true of such negatives as ' no,' ' never ' ' not yet'? The truth is that large tracts of human speech are noth- THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 253 ing but signs of direction in thought, of which direction we nevertheless have an acutelj discriminative sense, though no definite sensorial image plays any part in it whatsoever. Sensorial images are stable psychic facts; we can hold them still and look at them as long as we like. These bare images of logical movement, on the contrary, are psychic transitions, always on the wing, so to speak, and not to be glimpsed except in flight. Their function is to lead from one set of images to another. As they pass, we feel both the waxing and the waning images in a way altogether peculiar and a way quite different from the way of their full presence. If we try to hold fast the feeling of direc tion, the full presence comes and the feeling of direction is lost. The blank verbal scheme of the logical movement gives us the fleeting sense of the movement as we read it, quite as well as does a rational sentence awakening defi nite imaginations by its words. What is that first instantaneous glimpse of some one's meaning which we have, when in vulgar phrase we say we ' twig ' it ? Surely an altogether specific affection of our mind. And has the reader never asked himself what kind of a mental fact is his intention of saying a thing before he has said it ? It is an entirely definite intention, distinct from all other intentions, an absolutely distinct state of consciousness, therefore ; and yet how much of it consists of definite sensorial images, either of words or of things? Hardly anything ! Linger, and the words and things come into the mind ; the anticipatory intention, the divination is there no more. But as the words that replace it arrive, it welcomes them successively and calls them right if they agree with it, it rejects them and calls them wrong if they do not. It has therefore a nature of its own of the most positive sort, and yet what can we say about it without using words that belong to the later mental facts that replace it ? The intention to-say -so-and-so is the only name it can receive. One may admit that a good third of our psychic life consists in these rapid premonitory perspective views of schemes of thought not yet articulate. How comes it about that a man reading something aloud for the first time is able immediately to emphasize all his words 254 PSYCHOLOGY. aright, unless from the very first he have a sense of at least the form of the sentence yet to come, which sense is fused with his consciousness of the present word, and modi fies its emphasis in his mind so as to make him give it the proper accent as he utters it ? Emphasis of this kind is almost altogether a matter of grammatical construction. If we read ( no more ' we expect presently to come upon a 1 than'; if we read ' however ' at the outset of a sentence it is a ' yet,' a ' still,' or a ' nevertheless,' that we expect. A noun in a certain position demands a verb in a certain mood and number, in another position it expects a relative pronoun. Adjectives call for nouns, verbs for adverbs, etc., etc. And this foreboding of the coming grammatical scheme combined with each successive uttered word is so practically accurate that a reader incapable of understanding four ideas of the book he is reading aloud, can nevertheless read it with the most delicately modulated expression of intelligence. Some will interpret these facts by calling them all cases in which certain images, by laws of association, awaken others so very rapidly that we think afterwards we felt the very tendencies of the nascent images to arise, before they were actually there. For this school the only possible materials of consciousness are images of a perfectly definite nature. Tendencies exist, but they are facts for the outside psychol ogist rather than for the subject of the observation. The tendency is thus a psychical zero ; only its results are felt Now what I contend for, and accumulate examples to show, is that ' tendencies ' are not only descriptions from without, but that they are among the objects of the stream, which is thus aware of them from within, and must be described as in very large measure constituted of. feelings of tendency, often so vague that we are unable to name them at all. It is, in short, the re-instatement of the vague to its proper place in our mental life which I am so anxious to press on the attention. Mr. Galton and Prof. Huxley have, as we shall see in Chapter XVIII, made one step in advance in exploding the ridiculous theory of Hume and Berkeley that we can have no images but of perfectly definite things. Another is made in the overthrow of the equally ridiculous THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 255 notion that, whilst simple objective qualities are revealed to our knowledge in subjective feelings, relations are not. But these reforms are not half sweeping and radical enough. What must be admitted is that the definite images of tra ditional psychology form but the very smallest part of our minds as they actually live. The traditional psychology, talks like one who should say a river consists of nothing but pailsful, spoonsful, quartpotsful, barrelsful, and other moulded forms of water. Even were the pails and the pots all actually standing in the stream, still between them the free water would continue to flow. It is just this free water of consciousness that psychologists resolutely overlook, Every definite image in the mind is steeped and dyed in the free water that flows round it. With it goes the sense of its relations, near and remote, the dying echo of whence it came to us, the dawning sense of whither it is to lead. The significance, the value, of the image is all in this halo or penumbra that surrounds and escorts it, — or rather that is fused into one with it and has become bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh ; leaving it, it is true, an image of the same thing it was before, but making it an image of that thing newly taken and freshly understood. What is that shadowy scheme of the ' form ' of an opera, play, or book, which remains in our mind and on which we pass judgment when the actual thing is done V What is our notion of a scientific or philosophical system ? Great thinkers have vast premonitory glimpses of schemes of relation between terms, which hardly even as verbal images enter the mind, so rapid is the whole process.* We all of us have this permanent consciousness of whither our thought is going. It is a feeling like any other, a feeling * Mozart describes thus his manner of composing : First bits and crumbs of the piece come and gradually join together in his mind ; then the soul getting warmed to the work, the thing grows more and more, " and I spread it out broader and clearer, and at last it gets almost finished in my head, even when it is a long piece, so that I can see the whole of it at a single glance in my mind, as if it were a beautiful painting or a handsome human being ; in which way I do not hear it in my imagination at all as a succession — the way it must come later — but all at once, as it were. ]( is a rare feast ! All the inventing and making goes on in me as in a beau tiful strong dream. But the best of all is the hearing of it all at once,'' 256 PSYCHOLOGY of what thoughts are next to arise, before they have arisen. This field of view of consciousness varies very much in extent, depending largely on the degree of mental freshness or fatigue. When very fresh, our minds carry an immense horizon with them. The present image shoots its perspec tive far before it, irradiating in advance the regions in which lie the thoughts as yet unborn. Under ordinary conditions the halo of felt relations is much more circumscribed. And in states of extreme brain-fag the horizon is narrowed almost to the passing word, — the associative machinery, however, providing for the next word turning up in orderly sequence, until at last the tired thinker is led to some kind of a conclusion. At certain moments he may find himself doubting whether his thoughts have not come to a full stop ; but the vague sense of a plus ultra makes him ever struggle on towards a more definite expression of what it may be ; whilst the slowness of his utterance shows how difficult, under such conditions, the labor of thinking must be. The awareness that our definite thought has come to a stop is an entirely different thing from the awareness that our thought is definitively completed. The expression of the latter state of mind is the falling inflection which be tokens that the sentence is ended, and silence. The ex pression of the former state is ' hemming and hawing,' or else such phrases as ' et cetera,' or 'and so forth.' But notice that every part of the sentence to be left incomplete feels differently as it passes, by reason of the premonition we have that we shall be unable to end it. The ' and so forth ' casts its shadow back, and is as integral a part of the object of the thought as the distinctest of images would be. Again, when we use a common noun, such as man, in a universal sense, as signifying all possible men, we are fully aware of this intention on our part, and distinguish it care fully from our intention when we mean a certain group of men, or a solitary individual before us. In the chapter on Conception we shall see how important this difference of intention is. It casts its influence over the whole of the sentence, both before and after the spot in which the word man is used. THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 257 Nothing is easier than to symbolize all these facts in terms of brain-action. Just as the echo of the whence-, the sense of the starting point of our thought, is probably due to the dying excitement of processes but a moment since vividly aroused ; so the sense of the whither, the fore taste of the terminus, must be due to the waxing excite ment of tracts or processes which, a moment hence, will be the cerebral correlatives of some thing which a moment hence will be vividly present to the thought. Represented by a curve, the neurosis underlying consciousness must at any moment be like this : FIG 27. Each point of the horizontal line stands for some brain-tract or process. The height of the curve above the line stands for the intensity of the process. All the processes are present, in the intensities shown by the curve. But those before the latter's apex ivere more in tense a moment ago ; those after it iviU be more intense a moment hence. If I recite a, b, c, d, e,f, g, at the moment of uttering c?, neither a, b, c, nor e, /, g, are out of my consciousness altogether, but both, after their respective fashions, ' mix their dim lights ' with the stronger one of the d, because their neuroses are both awake in some degree. There is a common class of mistakes which shows how brain-processes begin to be excited before the thoughts attached to them are due — due, that is, in substantive and vivid form. I mean those mistakes of speech or writing by which, in Dr. Carpenter's words, " we mispronounce or misspell a word, by introducing into it a letter or syllable of some other, whose turn is shortly to come ; or, it may be, the whole of the anticipated word is substituted for the one 258 PSYCHOLOGY which ought to have been expressed."* In these cases one of two things must have happened: either some local accident of nutrition blocks the process that is due, so that other processes discharge that ought as yet to be but nas- cently aroused; or some opposite local accident furthers the latter processes and makes them explode before their time. In the chapter on Association of Ideas, numerous instances will come before us of the actual effect on con sciousness of neuroses not yet maximally aroused. It is just like the ' overtones ' in music. Different in. struments give the ' same note,' but each in a different voice, because each gives more than that note, namely, vari ous upper harmonics of it which differ from one instrument to another. They are not separately heard by the ear ; they blend with the fundamental note, and suffuse it, and alter it ; and even so do the waxing and waning brain- processes at every moment blend with and suffuse and alter the psychic effect of the processes which are at their cul minating point. Let us use the words psychic overtone, suffusion, or fringe, to designate the influence of a faint brain-process upon our thought, as it makes it aware of relations and objects but dimly perceived. f If we then consider the cognitive function of different * Mental Physiology, § 236. Dr. Carpenter's explanation differs materi ally from that given in the text. f Cf. also S. Strieker : Vorlesungen tlber allg. u. exp. Pathologic (1879), pp. 462-3, 501, 547; Romanes: Origin of Human Faculty, p. 82. It is so hard to make one's self clear that I may advert to a misunderstanding of my views by the late Prof. Thos. Maguire of Dublin (Lectures on Philoso phy, 1885). This author considers that by the ' fringe ' I mean some sort -»f psychic material by which sensations in themselves separate are made to cohere together, and wittily says that I ought to " see that uniting sensa tions by their ' fringes ' is more vague than to construct the universe out of oysters by platting their beards " (p. 211). But the fringe, as I use the word, means nothing like this ; it is part of the object cognized,— substantive Dualities and things appearing to the mind in & fringe of relations. Some parts —the transitive parts— of our stream of thought cognize the relations rather than the things ; but both the transitive and the substantive parts form one continuous stream, with no discrete ' sensations ' in it such as Prof. MK guire supposes, and supposes ip,e to suppose, to be their THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 259 states of mind, we may feel assured that the difference be tween those that are mere * acquaintance,' and those that are ' knowledges-a&ow£ ' (see p. 221) is reducible almost entirely to the absence or presence of psychic fringes or overtones. Knowledge about a thing is knowledge of its relations. Acquaintance with it is limitation to the bare impression which it makes. Of most of its relations we are only aware in the penumbral nascent way of a ' fringe ' of unarticulated affinities about it. And, before passing to the next topic in order, I must say a little of this sense of affinity, as itself one of the most interesting features of the subjective stream. In all our voluntary thinking there is some topic or subject about which all the members of the thought revolve. Half the time this topic is a problem, a gap we cannot yet fill with a definite picture, word, or phrase, but which, in the manner described some time back, influences us in an intensely active and determinate psychic way. Whatever may be the images and phrases that pass before us, we feel their relation to this aching gap. To fill it up is our thoughts' destiny. Some bring us nearer to that consum mation. Some the gap negates as quite irrelevant. Each swims in a felt fringe of relations of which the aforesaid gap is the term. Or instead of a definite gap we may merely carry a mood of interest about with us. Then, however vague the mood, it will still act in the same way, throwing a mantle of felt affinity over such representa tions, entering the mind, as suit it, and tingeing with the feeling of tediousness or discord all those with which it has no concern. Relation, then, to our topic or interest is constantly felt in the fringe, and particularly the relation of harmony and discord, of furtherance or hindrance of the topic. When the sense of furtherance is there, we are ' all right ; ' with the sense of hindrance we are dissatisfied and perplexed, and cast about us for other thoughts. Now any thought the quality of whose fringe lets us feel ourselves 'all right,' is an acceptable member of our thinking, whatever kind of thought it may otherwise be. Provided we only feel it to have a place in the scheme of relations in which the in- 260 PSYCHOLOGY. teresting topic also lies, that is quite sufficient to make of it a relevant and appropriate portion of our train of ideas. For the important thing about a train of thought is its conclusion. That is the meaning, or, as we say, the topic of the thought. That is what abides when all its other mem bers have faded from memory. Usually this conclusion is a word or phrase or particular image, or practical attitude or resolve, whether rising to answer a problem or fill a pre-existing gap that worried us, or whether accidentally stumbled on in revery. In either case it stands out from the other segments of the stream by reason of the peculiar interest attaching to it. This interest arrests it, makes a sort of crisis of it when it comes, induces attention upon it and makes us treat it in a substantive way. The parts of the stream that precede these substantive conclusions are but the means of the latter's attainment. And, provided the same conclusion be reached, the means may be as mutable as we like, for the ' meaning ' of the stream of thought will be the same. What difference does it make what the means are ? " Qu'importe le flacon, pourvu qu'on ait I'ivresse?" The relative unimportance of the means appears from the fact that when the conclusion is there, we have always forgotten most of the steps preceding its attain ment. When we have uttered a proposition, we are rarely able a moment afterwards to recall our exact words, though we can express it in different words easily enough. The practical upshot of a book we read remains with us, though we may not recall one of its sentences. The only paradox would seem to lie in supposing that the fringe of felt affinity and discord can be the same in two heterogeneous sets of images. Take a train of words passing through the mind and leading to a certain conclu sion on the one hand, and on the other hand an almost wordless set of tactile, visual and other fancies leading to the same conclusion. Can the halo, fringe, or scheme in which we feel the words to lie be the same as that in which we feel the images to lie ? Does not the discrepancy of terms involve a discrepancy of felt relations among them ? If the terms be taken qua mere sensations, it assur edly does. For instance, the words may rhyme with each THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 261 other, — the visual images can have no such affinity as that. But qua thoughts, qua sensations understood, the words have contracted by long association fringes of mutual repugnance or affinity with each other and with the conclusion, which run exactly parallel with like fringes in the visual, tactile and other ideas. The most important element of these fringes is, I repeat, the mere feeling of harmony or discord, of a right or wrong direction in the thought. Dr. Camp bell has, so far as I know, made the best analysis of this fact, and his words, often quoted, deserve to be quoted again. The chapter is entitled "What is the cause that nonsense so often escapes being detected, both by the writer and by the reader ?" The author, in answering this question, makes (inter alia) the following remarks : * "That connection [he says] or relation which comes gradually to sub sist among the different words of a language, in the minds of those who speak it, ... is merely consequent on this, that those words are employed as signs of connected or related things. It is an axiom in geometry that things equal to the same thing are equal to one another. It may, in like manner, be admitted as an axiom in psychology that ideas associated by the same idea will associate one another. Hence it will happen that if, from experiencing the connection of two things, there results, as infallibly there will result, an association between the ideas or notions annexed to them, as each idea will moreover be asso ciated by its sign, there will likewise be an association between the ideas of the signs. Hence the sounds considered as signs will be conceived to have a connection analogous to that which subsisteth among the things signified; I say, the sounds considered as signs; for this way of consid ering them constantly attends us in speaking, writing, hearing, and reading. When we purposely abstract from it, and regard them merely as sounds, we are instantly sensible that they are quite unconnected, and have no other relation than what ariseth from similitude of tone or accent. But to consider them in this manner commonly results from previous design, and requires a kind of effort which is not exerted in the ordinary use of speech. In ordinary use they are regarded solely as signs, or, rather, they are confounded with the things they signify; the consequence of which is that, in the manner just now explained, we come insensibly to conceive a connection among them of a very different sort from that of which sounds are naturally susceptible. "Now this conception, habit, or tendency of the mind, call it which you please, is considerably strengthened by the frequent use of language and by the structure of it. Language is the sole channel through which * George Campbell: Philosophy of Rhetoric, book n. chap. vii. 262 PSYCHOLOGY. we communicate our knowledge and discoveries to others, and through which the knowledge and discoveries of others are communicated to us. By reiterated recourse to this medium, it necessarily happens that when things are related to each other, the words signifying those things are more commonly brought together in discourse. Hence the words and names by themselves, by customary vicinity, contract in the fancy a relation additional to that which they derive purely from being the symbols of related things. Farther, this tendency is strengthened by the structure of language. All languages whatever, even the most barbarous, as far as hath yet appeared, are of a regular and analogical make. The consequence is that similar relations in things will be ex pressed similarly ; that is, by similar inflections, derivations, composi tions, arrangement of words, or juxtaposition of particles, according to the genius or grammatical form of the particular tongue. Now as, by the habitual use of a language (even though it were quite irregular), the signs would insensibly become connected in the imagination wher ever the things signified are connected in nature, so, by the regular structure of a language, this connection among the signs is conceived as analogous to that which subsisteth among their archetypes." If we know English and French and begin a sentence in French, all the later words that come are French ; we hardly ever drop into English. And this affinity of the French words for each other is not something merely operating me chanically as a brain-law, it is something we feel at the time. Our understanding of a French sentence heard never falls to so low an ebb that we are not aware that the words lin guistically belong together. Our attention can hardly so wander that if an English word be suddenly introduced we shall not start at the change. Such a vague sense as this of the words belonging together is the very minimum of fringe that can accompany them, if 'thought' at all. Usually the vague perception that all the words we hear belong to the same language and to the same special vocab ulary in that language, and that the grammatical sequence is familiar, is practically equivalent to an admission that what we hear is sense. But if an unusual foreign word be introduced, if the grammar trip, or if a term from an incongruous vocabulary suddenly appear, such as ' rat- trap ' or * plumber's bill ' in a philosophical discourse, the sentence detonates, as it were, we receive a shock from the incongruity, and the drowsy assent is gone. The feeling of Tationality in these cases seems rather a negative than a THE STREAM QF THOUGHT. 263 positive thing, being the mere absence of shock, or sense of discord, between the terms of thought. So delicate and incessant is this recognition by the mind of the mere fitness of words to be mentioned together that the slightest misreading, such as ' casualty ' for 'causality,' or 'perpetual' for * perceptual,' will be cor rected by a listener whose attention is so relaxed that he gets no idea of the meaning of the sentence at all. Conversely, if words do belong to the same vocabulary, and if the grammatical structure is correct, sentences with absolutely no meaning may be uttered in good faith and pass unchallenged. Discourses at prayer-meetings, re shuffling the same collection of cant phrases, and the whole genus of penny-a-line-isms and newspaper-reporter's flourishes give illustrations of this. "The birds filled the tree-tops with their morning song, making the air moist, cool, and pleasant," is a sentence I remember reading once in a report of some athletic exercises in Jerome Park. It was probably written unconsciously by the hurried re porter, and read uncritically by many readers. An entire volume of 784 pages lately published in Boston* is com posed of stuff like this passage picked out at random : " The flow of the efferent fluids of all these vessels from their out lets at the terminal loop of each culminate link on the surface of the nuclear organism is continuous as their respective atmospheric fruitage up to the altitudinal limit of their expansibility, whence, when atmos- phered by like but coalescing essences from higher altitudes,— those sensibly expressed as the essential qualities of external forms, — they descend, and become assimilated by the afferents of the nuclear organ ism, "t * Substantialism or Philosophy of Knowledge, by ' Jean Story' (1879). fM. G. Tarde, quoting (in Delbnmf, Le Sommeil et les Revcs (1885), p. ur will, attains predominance. In proportion as the apperception of all our mental objects appears to us as an inward exercise of will, does our self -consciousness begin both to widen itself and to narrow itself at the same time. It widens itself in that every mental act whatever comes to stand in relation to our will; and it narrows itself in that it concentrates Itself more and more upon the inner activity of apperception, over against which our own body and all the representations connected with it appear as external objects, different from our proper self. This consciousness, contracted down to the process of apperception, we call our Ego ; and the apperception of mental objects in general, may thus, after Leibnitz, be designated as the raising of them into our self-consciousness. Thus the natural development of self-consciousness implicitly involves the most abstract forms in which this faculty has been described in philosophy; only philosophy is fond of placing the abstract ego at the outset, and so revers ing the process of development. Nor should we overlook the fact that the completely abstract ego [as pure activity], although suggested by the natural development of our consciousness, is never actually found therein. The most speculative of philosophers is incapable of disjoining his ego from those bodily feelings and images which form the incessant back ground of his awareness of himself. The notion of his ego as such is, like every notion, derived from sensibility, for the process of apperception itself comes to our knowledge chiefly through those feelings of tension [what I have above called inward adjustments] which accompany it." (Physiolo- gische Psychologic, 2te Autl. Bd. n. pp. 217-19.) 304 PSYCHOLOGY. If they really were the innermost sanctuary, the mate one of all the selves whose being we can ever directly experience, it would follow that all that is experienced is, strictly considered, objective; that this Objective falls asun der into two contrasted parts, one realized as ' Self,' the other as ' not-Self ;' and that over and above these parts there is nothing save the fact that they are known, the fact of the stream of thought being there as the indispensable subjective condition of their being experienced at all. But this condition of the experience is not one of the things ex perienced at the moment ; this knowing is not immediately knoivn. It is only known in subsequent reflection. Instead, then, of the stream of thought being one of ccw-sciousness, " thinking its own existence along with whatever else it thinks," (as Ferrier says) it might be better called a stream of Sciousness pure and simple, thinking objects of some of which it makes what it calls a ' Me,' and only aware of its 1 pure ' Self in an abstract, hypothetic or conceptual way. Each ' section ' of the stream would then be a bit of scious- ness or knowledge of this sort, including and contemplat ing its * me ' and its ' not-me ' as objects which work out their drama together, but not yet including or contemplating its own subjective being. The sciousness in question would be the Thinker, and the existence of this thinker would be given to us rather as a logical postulate than as that direct inner perception of spiritual activity which we naturally believe ourselves to have. ' Matter,' as something behind physical phenomena, is a postulate of this sort. Between the postu lated Matter and the postulated Thinker, the sheet of phe nomena would then swing, some of them (the ' realities ') pertaining more to the matter, others (the fictions, opinions, and errors) pertaining more to the Thinker. But wlio the Thinker would be, or how many distinct Thinkers we ought to suppose in the universe, would all be subjects for an ulterior metaphysical inquiry. Speculations like this traverse common-sense; and not only do they traverse common sense (which in philosophy is no insuperable objection) but they contradict the funda mental assumption of every philosophic school. Spiri tualists, transcendentalists, and empiricists alike admit in THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 305 us a continual direct perception of the thinking activity in the concrete. However they may otherwise disagree, they vie with each other in the cordiality of their recognition of our thoughts as the one sort of existent which skepticism cannot touch. * I will therefore treat the last few pages as a parenthetical digression, and from now to the end of the volume revert to the path of common-sense again. I mean by this that I will continue to assume (as I have assumed all along, especially in the last chapter) a direct awareness of the process of our thinking as such, simply insisting on the fact that it is an even more inward and subtle phenome non than most of us suppose. At the conclusion of the volume, however, I may permit myself to revert again to the doubts here provisionally mooted, and will indulge in some metaphysical reflections suggested by them. At present, then, the only conclusion I come to is the following : That (in some persons at least) the part of the innermost Self which is most vividly felt turns out to con sist for the most part of a collection of cephalic move ments of ' adjustments ' which, for want of attention and reflection, usually fail to be perceived and classed as what they are ; that over and above these there is an obscurer feeling of something more ; but whether it be of fainte" physiological processes, or of nothing objective at all, but rather of subjectivity as such, of thought become ' its own object/ must at present remain an open question, — like the question whether it be an indivisible active soul-substance, or the question whether it be a personification of the pronoun I, or any other of the guesses as to what its nature may be. Farther than this we cannot as yet go clearly in our analysis of the Self's constituents. So let us proceed to the emotions of Self which they arouse. 2. SELF-FEELINO. These are primarily self-complacency and self-aissatis- f action. Of what is called ' self-love,' I will treat a little *The only exception I know of is M. J. Souriau, in his important article in the Revue Philosophique, vol. xxn. p. 449. M. Souriau's con clusion is ' que la conscience u'existe pas ' 'p. 472). 306 PSYCHOLOGY. farther on. Language has synonyms enough for both pri mary feelings. Thus pride, conceit, vanity, self-esteem, arrogance, vainglory, on the one hand; and on the other modesty, humility, confusion, diffidence, shame, mortifica tion, contrition, the sense of obloquy and personal despair. These two opposite classes of affection seem to be direct and elementary endowments of our nature. Associationists would have it that they are, on the other hand, secondary phenomena arising from a rapid computation of the sensi ble pleasures or pains to which our prosperous or debased personal predicament is likely to lead, the sum of the repre sented pleasures forming the self-satisfaction, and the sum of the represented pains forming the opposite feeling of shame. No doubt, when we are self-satisfied, we do fondly rehearse all possible rewards for our desert, and when in a fit of self-despair we forebode evil. But the mere expecta tion of reward is not the self-satisfaction, and the mere apprehension of the evil is not the self-despair, for there is a certain average tone of self-feeling which each one of us carries about with him, and which is independent of the objective reasons we may have for satisfaction or discontent. That is, a very meanly-conditioned man may abound in unfaltering conceit, and one whose success in life is secure and who is esteemed by all may remain diffident of his powers to the end. One may say, however, that the normal provocative of self-feeling is one's actual success or failure, and the good or bad actual position one holds in the world. " He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum, and said what a good boy am I." A Eian with a broadly extended empirical Ego, with powers that have uniformly brought him success, with place and wealth and friends and fame, is not likely to be visited by the morbid diffidences and doubts about himself which he had when he was a boy. " Is not this great Babylon, which I have planted ?" * Whereas he who has made one blunder after another, and still lies in middle life among the failures at the foot of the hill, is liable to grow * See the excellent remarks by Prof. Bain on the 'Emotion of Power' in his ' Emotions and the Will. ' THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 307 all sicklied o'er with self-distrust, and to shrink from trials with which his powers can really cope. The emotions themselves of self-satisfaction and abase ment are of a unique sort, each as worthy to be classed as a primitive emotional species as are, for example, rage or pain. Each has its own peculiar physiognomical expres sion. In self-satisfaction the extensor muscles are inner vated, the eye is strong and glorious, the gait rolling and elastic, the nostril dilated, and a peculiar smile plays upon the lips. This whole complex of symptoms is seen in an exquisite way in lunatic asylums, which always contain some patients who are literally mad with conceit, and whose fatuous expression and absurdly strutting or swag gering gait is in tragic contrast with their lack of any valuable personal quality. It is in these same castles of despair that we find the strongest examples of the opposite physiognomy, in good people who think they have com mitted ' the unpardonable sin ' and are lost forever, who crouch and cringe and slink from notice, and are unable to speak aloud or look us in the eye. Like fear and like anger, in similar morbid conditions, these opposite feelings of Self may be aroused with no adequate exciting cause. And in fact we ourselves know how the barometer of our self-esteem and confidence rises and falls from one day to another through causes that seem to be visceral and organic rather than rational, and which certainly answer to no cor responding variations in the esteem in which we are held by our friends. Of the origin of these emotions in the race, we can speak better when we have treated of — 3. SELF-SEEKING AKD SELP-PBESEBVATION. These words cover a large number of our fundamental instinctive impulses. We have those of bodily self-seeldng, those of social self-seeking, and those of spiritual self-seeking. All the ordinary useful reflex actions and movements of alimentation and defence are acts of bodily self-preser vation. Fear and anger prompt to acts that are useful in the same way. Whilst if by self-seeking we mean the providing for the future as distinguished from main taining the present, we must class both anger and fear J08 PSYCHOLOGY, with the hunting, the acquisitive, the home-constructing and the tool-constructing instincts, as impulses to self- seeking of the bodily kind. Keally, however, these latter instincts, with amativeness, parental fondness, curiosity and emulation, seek not only the development of the bodily Self, but that of the material Self in the widest pos sible sense of the word. Our social self-seeking, in turn, is carried on directly through our amativeness and friendliness, our desire to please and attract notice and admiration, our emulation and jealousy, our love of glory, influence, and power, and indirectly through whichever of the material self- seeking impulses prove serviceable as means to social ends. That the direct social self-seeking impulses are probably pure instincts is easily seen. The noteworthy thing about the desire to be ' recognized ' by others is that its strength has so little to do with the worth of the recog nition computed in sensational or rational terms. We are crazy to get a visiting-list which shall be large, to be able to say when any one is mentioned, " Oh ! I know him well," and to be bowed to in the street by half the people we meet. Of course distinguished friends and admiring recognition are the most desirable — Thackeray somewhere asks his readers to confess whether it would not give each of them an exquisite pleasure to be met walking down Pall Mall with a duke on either arm. But in default of dukes and envious salutations almost anything will do for some of us ; and there is a whole race of beings to-day whose passion is to keep their names in the newspapers, no matter under what heading, ' arrivals and departures,' ' personal paragraphs,' ' interviews,' — gossip, even scandal, will suit them if nothing better is to be had. Guiteau, Garfield's assassin, is an example of the extremity to which this sort of craving for the notoriety of print may go in a pathological case. The newspapers bounded his mental horizon ; and in the poor wretch's prayer on the scaffold, one of the most heartfelt expressions was : " The newspaper press of this land has a big bill to settle with thee, O Lord !'* Not only the people but the places and things 1 know enlarge my Self in a sort of metaphoric social way. *£7a THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 309 me connait,' as the French workman says of tlie implement he can use well. So that it comes about that persons for whose opinion we care nothing are nevertheless persons whose notice we woo ; and that many a man truly great, many a woman truly fastidious in most respects, will take a deal of trouble to dazzle some insignificant cad whose whole personality they heartily despise. Under the head of spiritual self-seeking ought to be included every impulse towards psychic progress, whether intellectual, moral, or spiritual in the narrow sense of the term. It must be admitted, however, that much that com monly passes for spiritual self-seeking in this narrow sense is only material and social self-seeking beyond the grave. In the Mohammedan desire for paradise and the Christian aspiration not to be damned in hell, the materiality of the goods sought is undisguised. In the more positive and refined view of heaven many of its goods, the fellowship of the saints and of our dead ones, and the presence of God, are but social goods of the most exalted kind. It is only the search of the redeemed inward nature, the spotlessness from sin, whether here or hereafter, that can count as spiritual self-seeking pure and undefiled. But this broad external review of the facts of the life 01 the Self will be incomplete without some account of the RIVALRY AND CONFLICT OF THE DIFFERENT SELVES. With most objects of desire, physical nature restricts our choice to but one of many represented goods, and even so it is here. I am often confronted by the necessity of stand ing by one of my empirical selves and relinquishing the rest. Not that I would not, if I could, be both handsome and fat and well dressed, and a great athlete, and make a million a year, be a wit, a bon-vivant, and a lady-killer, as well as a philosopher ; a philanthropist, statesman, warrior, and African explorer, as well as a ' tone-poet ' and saint. But the thing is simply impossible. The millionaire's work would run counter to the saint's ; the bon-vivant and the philanthropist would trip each other up ; the philosopher and the lady-killer could not well keep house in the same , 310 PSYCHOLOGY. tenement of clay. Such different characters may conceiv ably at the outset of life be alike possible to a man. But to make any one of them actual, the rest must more or less be suppressed. So the seeker of his truest, strongest, deepest self must review the list carefully, and pick out the one on which to stake his salvation. All other selves thereupon become unreal, but the fortunes of this self are real. Its failures are real failures, its triumphs real tri umphs, carrying shame and gladness with them. This is as strong an example as there is of that selective industry of the mind on which I insisted some pages back (p. 284 if.). Our thought, incessantly deciding, among many things of a kind, which ones for it shall be realities, here chooses one of many possible selves or characters, and forthwith reckons it no shame to fail in any of those not adopted expressly as its own. II, who for the time have staked my all on being a psychologist, am mortified if others know much more / psychology than I. But I am contented to wallow in the grossest ignorance of Greek. My deficiencies there give me no sense of personal humiliation at all. Had I ' pretensions' to be a linguist, it would have been just the reverse. So we have the paradox of a man shamed to death because he is only the second pugilist or the second oarsman in the world. That he is able to beat the whole population of the globe minus one is nothing ; he has ' pitted ' himself to beat that one ; and as long as he doesn't do that nothing else counts. He is to his own regard as if he were not, in deed he is not. Yonder puny fellow, however, whom every one can beat, suffers no chagrin about it, for he has long ago abandoned the attempt to ' carry that line,' as the merchants say, of self at all. With no attempt there can be no failure ; with no failure no humiliation. So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do. It is determined by the ratio of our actualities to our sup posed potentialities ; a fraction of which our pretensions are the denominator and the numerator our success : thus, rSTi ("» /"» O G Q Self-esteem — p^ensions ' SucJl a fracti°n ma7 be increased THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 311 as well by diminishing the denominator as by increasing the numerator.* To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief a^ to get them gratified ; and where disappointment is incessant , and the struggle unending, this is what men will always do. The history of evangelical theology, with its conviction of sin, its self-despair, and its abandonment of salvation by works, is the deepest of possible examples, but we meet others in every walk of life. There is the strangest light ness about the heart when one's nothingness in a particular line is once accepted in good faith. All is not bitterness in the lot of the lover sent away by the final inexorable ' No.' Many Bostonians, crede experto (and inhabitants of other cities, too, I fear), would be happier women and men to-day, if they could once for all abandon the notion of keeping up a Musical Self, and without shame let people hear them call a symphony a nuisance. How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young, — or slender ! Thank God ! we say, those illusions are gone. Everything added to the Self is a burden as well as a pride. A certain man who lost every penny during our civil war went and actually rolled in the dust, saying he had not felt so free and happy since he was born. Once more, then, our self-feeling is in our power. As Carlyle says : " Make thy claim of wages a zero, then hast j thou the world under thy feet. Well did the wisest of our time write, it is only with renunciation that life, properly speaking, can be said to begin." Neither threats nor pleadings can move a man unless they touch some one of his potential or actual selves. Only thus can we, as a rule, get a * purchase ' on another's will. The first care of diplomatists and mouarchs and all who wish to rule or influence is, accordingly, to find out their victim's strongest principle of self-regard, so as to make that the * Cf. Carlyle: Sartor Resartus, 'The Everlasting Yea.' "Itelltbee, blockhead, it all comes of thy vanity ; of what thou fanciest those same deserts of thine to be. Fancy that thou deservest to be hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot : fancy that thou deserv est to be hanged in a hair halter, it will be a luxury to die in hemp. . . . What act of legislature was there that thou shouldst be happy ? A little while ajro thou hadst no right to be&t all." etc.. etc. 312 PSYCHOLOGY. fulcrum of all appeals. But if a man lias given up those things which are subject to foreign fate, and ceased to regard them as parts of himself at all, we are well-nigh powerless over him. The Stoic receipt for contentment was to dispossess yourself in advance of all that was out of your own power, — then fortune's shocks might rain down unfelt. Epictetus exhorts us, by thus narrowing and at the same time solidifying our Self to make it invulnerable : " I must die ; well, but must I die groaning too ? I will speak what appears to be right, and if the despot says, then I will put you to death, I will reply, ' When did I ever tell you that I was immortal ? You will do your part and I mine ; it is yours to kill and mine to die intrepid ; yours to banish, mine to depart untroubled.' How do we act in a voyage ? We choose the pilot, the sailors, the hour. After wards comes a storm. What have I to care for ? My part is performed. This matter belongs to the pilot. But the ship is sinking ; what then have I to do ? That which alone I can do — submit to being drowned without fear, without clamor or accusing of God, but as one who knows that what is born must likewise die." * This Stoic fashion, though efficacious and heroic enough in its place and time, is, it must be confessed, only possible as an habitual mood of the soul to narrow and unsympa thetic characters. It proceeds altogether by exclusion. If I am a Stoic, the goods I cannot appropriate cease to be my goods, and the temptation lies very near to deny that they are goods at all. We find this mode of protecting the Self by exclusion and denial very common among people who are in other respects not Stoics. All narrow people intrench their Me, they retract it, — from the region of what they can not securely possess. People who don't resemble them, or who treat them with indifference, people over whom they gain no influence, are people on whose existence, however meritorious it may intrinsically be, they look with chill negation, if not with positive hate. Who will not be mine I will exclude from existence altogether ; that is, as far as *T. W. Higginson's translation Q866), p. 105. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 313 I can make it so, such people shall be as if they were not.* Thus may a certain absoluteness and definiteness in the outline of my Me console me for the smallness of its con tent. Sympathetic people, on the contrary, proceed by the entirely opposite way of expansion and inclusion. The out line of their self often gets uncertain enough, but for this the spread of its content more than atones. Nil humani a me alienum. Let them despise this little person of mine, and treat me like a dog, / shall not negate them so long as |w I have a soul in my body. They are realities as much as I am. What positive good is in them shall be mine too, etc., etc. The magnanimity of these expansive natures is often touching indeed. Such persons can feel a sort of delicate rapture in thinking that, however sick, ill-favored, mean- conditioned, and generally forsaken they may be, they yet are integral parts of the whole of this brave world, have a fellow's share in the strength of the dray-horses, the happi ness of the young people, the wisdom of the wise ones, and are not altogether without part or lot in the good for tunes of the Yanderbilts and the Hohenzollerns themselves. Thus either by negating or by embracing, the Ego may j V ' seek to establish itself in reality. He who, with Marcus •' Aurelius, can truly say, " O Universe, I wish all that thou wishest," has a self from which every trace of negativeuess and obstructiveness has been removed — no wind can blow except to fill its sails. A tolerably unanimous opinion ranges the different selves of which a man may be ' seized and possessed,' and the consequent different orders of his self-regard, in an hierarchical scale, with the, bodily Self at the bottom, the spiritual Self at top, and the extracorporeal material selves and the various social selves betiveen. Our merely natural self-seeking would lead us to aggrandize all these selves ; we give up deliberately only those among them which we * " The usual mode of lessening the shock of disappointment or dises- i teem is to contract, if possible, a low estimate of the persons that inllict it. ' Thr's is our remedy for the unjust censures of party spirit, as well as of personal malignity." (Bain : Emotion and Will, p. 209.) 314 PSYCHOLOGY. find we caimot keep. Our unselfishness is thus apt to be a ' virtue of necessity ' ; and it is not without all show of rea son that cynics quote the fable of the fox and the grapes in describing our progress therein. But this is the moral education of the race ; and if we agree in the result that on the whole the selves we can keep are the intrinsically best, we need not complain of being led to the knowledge of their superior worth in such a tortuous way. Of course this is not the only way in which we learn to subordinate our lower selves to our higher. A direct ethical judgment unquestionably also plays its part, and last, not least, we apply to our own persons judgments originally called forth by the acts of others. It is one of the strangest laws of our nature that many things which we are well sat isfied with in ourselves disgust us when seen in others. , With another man's bodily ' hoggishness ' hardly anyone I has any sympathy ; — almost as little with his cupidity, his social vanity and eagerness, his jealousy, his despotism, and his pride. Left absolutely to myself I should probably allow all these spontaneous tendencies to luxuriate in me unchecked, and it would be long before I formed a distinct notion of the order of their subordination. But having constantly to pass judgment on my associates, I come ere long to see, as Herr Horwicz says, my own lusts in the mirror of the lusts of others, and to think about them in a very different way from that in which I simply feel. Of course, the moral generalities which from childhood have been instilled into me accelerate enormously the advent of this reflective judgment on myself. So it comes to pass that, as aforesaid, men have arranged the various selves which they may seek in an hierarchical scale according to their worth. A certain amount of bodily selfishness is required as a basis for all the other selves. But too much sensuality is despised, or at best condoned on account of the other qualities of the individual. The wider material selves are regarded as higher than the immediate body. He is esteemed a poor creature who is i unable to forego a little meat and drink and warmth and sleep for the sake of getting on in the world. The social self as a whole, again, ranks higher than the materiallself THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 315 as a whole. We must care more for our honor, our friends, our human ties, than for a sound skin or wealth. And the spiritual self is so supremely precious that, rather than lose it, a man ought to be willing to give up friends and good fame, and property, and life itself. In each kind of self, material, social, and spiritual, men distinguish between the immediate and actual, and the re mote and potential, between the narrower and the wider view, to the detriment of the former and advantage of the latter. One must forego a present bodily enjoyment for the sake of one's general health ; one must abandon the dollar in the hand for the sake of the hundred dollars to come ; one must make an enemy of his present interlocutor if thereby one makes friends of a more valued circle ; one must go without learning and grace, and wit, the better to compass one's soul's salvation. Of all these wider, more potential selves, the potential ^ social self is the most interesting, by reason of certain apparent paradoxes to which it leads in conduct, and by reason of its connection with our moral and religious life. When for motives of honor and conscience I brave the con demnation of my own family, club, and ' set ' ; when, as a protestant, I turn catholic ; as a catholic, freethinker ; as a ' regular practitioner,' homoeopath, or what not, I am always inwardly strengthened in my course and steeled against the loss of my actual social self by the thought of other and better possible social judges than those whose verdict goes against me now. The ideal social self which I thus seek in appealing to their decision may be very remote : it may be represented as barely possible. I may not hope for its realization during my lifetime ; I may even expect the future generations, which would approve me if they knew me, to know nothing about me when I am dead and gone. jYet still the emotion that beckons me on is indubitably j the pursuit of an ideal social self, of a self that is at least / I ivorthy of approving recognition by the highest possible judging companion, if such companion there be.* This * It must be observed that the qualities of the Self thus ideally consti- tuted are all qualities approved by my actual fellows in the first instance ; and that my reason for now appealing from their verdict to that of the 316 PSYCHOLOGY. \ self is the true, the intimate, the ultimate, the perma- 1 nent Me which I seek. This judge is God, the Absolute Mind, the 'Great Companion.' We hear, in these days of scientific enlightenment, a great deal of discussion about the efficacy of prayer ; and many reasons are given us why we should not pray, whilst others are given us why we should. But in all this very little is said of the reason why we do pray, which is simply that we cannot help praying. It seems probable that, in spite of all that ' science ' may do to the contrary, men will continue to pray to the end of time, unless their mental nature changes in a manner which nothing we know should lead us to expect. The impulse ito pray is a necessary consequence of the fact that whilst the innermost of the empirical selves of a man is a Self of the social sort, it yet can find its only adequate Socius in an ideal world. All progress in the social Self is the substitution of higher tribunals for lower ; this ideal tribunal is the high est; and most men, either continually or occasionally, carry a reference to it in their breast. The humblest out cast on this earth can feel himself to be real and valid by means of this higher recognition. And, on the other hand, for most of us, a world with no such inner refuge when the outer social self failed and dropped from us would be the abyss of horror. I say 'for most of us,' because it is probable that individuals differ a good deal in the degree \in which they are haunted by this sense of an ideal specta- itor. It is a much more essential part of the consciousness of some men than of others. Those who have the most of it are possibly the most religious men. But I am sure that even those who say they are altogether without it deceive , themselves, and really have it in some degree. Only a (non-gregarious animal could be completely without it. Probably no one can make sacrifices for ' right,' without ideal judge lies in some outward peculiarity of the immediate case. What once was admired in me as courage has now become in the eyes of men 'impertinence'; what was fortitude is obstinacy; what was fidelity is now fanaticism. The ideal judge alone, I now believe, can read my qualities, my willingnesses, my powers, for what they truly are. My fellows, misled by interest and prejudice, have gone astray. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 317 to some degree personifying the principle of right for which the sacrifice is made, and expecting thanks from it. Complete social unselfishness, in other words, can hardly exist ; complete social suicide hardly occur to a man's mind. Even such texts as Job's, " Though He slay me yet will I trust Him," or Marcus Aurelius's, "If gods hate me and my children, there is a reason for it," can least of all be cited to prove the contrary. For beyond all doubt Job revelled in the thought of Jehovah's recognition of the wor ship after the slaying should have been done ; and the Eoman emperor felt sure the Absolute Eeason would not be all indifferent to his acquiescence in the gods' dislike. The old test of piety, "Are you willing to be damned for the';j glory of God?" was probably never answered in the affir- ' mative except by those who felt sure in their heart of hearts that God would ' credit ' them with their willingness, and set more store by them thus than if in His unfathomable scheme He had not damned them at all. All this about the impossibility of suicide is said on the supposition of positive motives. When possessed by the emotion of /ear, however, we are in a negative state of mind ; that is, our desire is limited to the mere banishing of some thing, without regard to what shall take its place. In this state of mind there can unquestionably be genuine thoughts, and genuine acts, of suicide, spiritual and social, as well as bodily. Anything, anything, at such times, so as to escape ! and not to be ! But such conditions of suicidal frenzy are pathological in their nature and run dead against every thing that is regular in the life of the Self in man. "WHAT SELF IS LOVED IN ' SELF-LOVE 'P We must now try to interpret the facts of self-love and self-seeking a little more delicately from within. A man in whom self-seeking of any sort is largely developed is said to be selfish.* He is on the other hand * The kind of selfishness varies with the self that is sought. If it be the mere bodily self; if a man grabs the best food, the warm corner, the vacant seat; if he makes room for no one, spits about, and belches in our faces,— we call it hoggishness. If it be the social self, in the form of popu larity or influence, for which he is greedy, he may in material ways subor- 318 PSYCHOLOGY. called unselfish if he shows consideration for the interests of other selves than his own. Now what is the intimate nature of the selfish emotion in him? and what is the primary object of its regard ? We have described him pursuing and fostering as his self first one set of things and then another ; we have seen the same set of facts gain or lose interest in his eyes, leave him indifferent, or fill him either with triumph or despair according as he made pretensions to appropriate them, treated them as if they were potentially or actually parts of himself, or not. We know how little it matters to us whether some man, a man taken at large and in the abstract, prove a failure or succeed in life, — he may be hanged for aught we care, — but we know the utter momen- tousness and terribleness of the alternative when the man is the one whose name we ourselves bear, /must not be a failure, is the very loudest of the voices that clamor in each of our breasts : let fail who may, I at least must suc ceed. Now the first conclusion which these facts suggest is that each of us is animated by a direct feeling of regard for his oivn pure principle of individual existence, whatever that may be, taken merely as such. It appears as if all our concrete manifestations of selfishness might be the conclu sions of as many syllogisms, each with this principle as the subject of its major premiss, thus: Whatever is me is precious ; this is me ; therefore this is precious ; whatever is mine must not fail ; this is mine ; therefore this must not fail, etc. It appears, I say, as if this principle inocu lated all it touched with its own intimate quality of worth ; as if, previous to the touching, everything might be matter of indifference, and nothing interesting in its own right ; as if my regard for my own body even were an interest not simply in this body, but in this body only so far as it is mine. But what is this abstract numerical principle of identity, dinate himself to others as the best means to his end; and in this case he is very apt to pass for a disinterested man. If it be the 'other-worldly ' self which he seeks, and if he seeks it ascetically, — even though he would rather see all mankind damned eternally than lose his individual soul.— ' saintliness ' will probably be the name by which his selfishness will be called. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 319 this ' Nnmber One ' within me, for which, according to pro verbial philosophy, I am supposed to keep so constant a ' lookout ' ? Is it the inner nucleus of my spiritual self, that collection of obscurely felt ' adjustments,' plus perhaps that still more obscurely perceived subjectivity as such, of which we recently spoke? Or is it perhaps the concrete stream of my thought in its entirety, or some one section of the same? Or may it be the indivisible Soul-Substance, in which, according to the orthodox tradition, my faculties inhere ? Or, finally, can it be the mere pronoun I ? Surely it is none of these things, that self for which I feel such hot regard. Though all of them together were put within me, I should still be cold, and fail to exhibit anything worthy of the name of selfishness or of devotion to 'Number One.' To have a self that I can care for, nature must first present me with some object interesting enough to make me instinc tively wish to appropriate it for its own sake, and out of it to manufacture one of those material, social, or spiritual selves, which we have already passed in review. We shall find that all the facts of rivalry and substitution that have so struck us, all the shiftings and expansions and contrac tions of the sphere of what shall be considered me and mine, are but results of the fact that certain things appeal to primitive and instinctive impulses of our nature, and that we follow their destinies with an excitement that owes n6thing to a reflective source. These objects our con sciousness treats as the primordial constituents of its Me. Whatever other objects, whether by association with the fate of these, or in any other way, come to be followed with the same sort of interest, form our remoter and more sec ondary self. The words ME, then, and SELF, so far as they arouse feeling and connote emotional worth, are OBJECTIVE designations, meaning ALL THE THINGS which have the power to produce in a stream of consciousness excitement of a certain peculiar sort. Let us try to justify this proposition in detail. The most palpable selfishness of a man is his bodily selfishness ; and his most palpable self is the body to which that selfishness relates. Now I say that he identifies him self with this body because he loves it, and that he does 820 PSYCHOLOGY. not love it because lie finds it to be identified with himselt Keverting to natural history-psychology will help us to see the truth of this. In the chapter on Instincts we shall learn that every creature has a certain selective interest in certain portions of the world, and that this interest is as often connate as acquired. Our interest in things means the attention and emotion which the thought of them will excite, and the actions which their presence will evoke. Thus every species is particularly interested in its own prey or food, its own enemies, its own sexual mates, and its own young. These things fascinate by their intrinsic power to do so ; they are cared for for their own sakes. Well, it stands not in the least otherwise with our bod ies. They too are percepts in our objective field — they are simply the most interesting percepts there. What happens to them excites in us emotions and tendencies to action more energetic and habitual than any which are excited by other portions of the ' field.' What my comrades call my bodily selfishness or self-love, is nothing but the sum of all the outer acts which this interest in my b xly spontane ously draws from me. My ' selfishness ' is here but a de scriptive name for grouping together the outward symp toms which I show. When I am led by self-love to keep my seat whilst ladies stand, or to grab something first and cut out my neighbor, what I really love is the comfortable seat, is the thing itself which I grab. I love them prima rily, as the mother loves her babe, or a generous man an heroic deed. Wherever, as here, self-seeking is the out come of simple instinctive propensity, it is but a name for certain reflex acts. Something rivets my attention fatally, and fatally provokes the ' selfish ' response. Could an au tomaton be so skilfully constructed as to ape these acts, it would be called selfish as properly as I. It is true that I am no automaton, but a thinker. But my thoughts, like my acts, are here concerned only with the outward things. They need neither know nor care for any pure principle within. In fact the more utterly ' selfish ' I am in this primitive way, the more blindly absorbed my thought will be in the objects and impulses of my lusts, and the more devoid of any inward looking glance. A baby, whose con- THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 321 sciousness of the pure Ego, of himself as a thinker, is not usually supposed developed, is, in this way, as some Ger man has said, ' der vollendeteste Egoist.' His corporeal per son, and what ministers to its needs, are the only self he can possibly be said to love. His so-called self-love is but a name for his insensibility to all but this one set of things, It may be that he needs a pure principle of subjectivity, a soul or pure Ego (he certainly needs a stream of thought) to make him sensible at all to anything, to make him dis criminate and love uberhaupt, — how that may be, we shall see ere long ; but this pure Ego, which would then be the condition of his loving, need no more be the object of his love than it need be the object of his thought. If his in terests lay altogether in other bodies than his own, if all his instincts were altruistic and all his acts suicidal, still he would need a principle of consciousness just as he does now. Such a principle cannot then be the principle of his bodily selfishness any more than it is the principle of any other ten dency he may show. So much for the bodily self-love. But my social self- love, my interest in the images other men have framed of me, is also an interest in a set of objects external to my thought. These thoughts in other men's minds are out of my mind and ' ejective ' to me. They come and go, and grow and dwindle, and I am puffed up with pride, or blush with shame, at the result, just as at my success or failure in the pursuit of a material thing. So that here again, just as in the former case, the pure principle seems out of the game as an object of regard, and present only as the general form or condition under which the regard and the thinking go on in me at all. But, it will immediately be objected, this is giving a mutilated account of the facts. Those images of me in the minds of other men are, it is true, things outside of me, whose changes I perceive just as I perceive any other out ward change. But the pride and shame which I feel are not concerned merely with those changes. I feel as if some thing else had changed too, when I perceive my image in your mind to have changed for the worse, something in me to which that image belongs, and which a moment ago I felt 322 PSYCHOLOGY. inside of me, big and strong and lusty, but now weak, con tracted, and collapsed. Is not this latter change the change I feel the shame about ? Is not the condition of this thing inside of me the proper object of my egoistic concern, of my self-regard ? And is it not, after all, my pure Ego, my bare numerical principle of distinction from other men, and no empirical part of me at all ? No, it is no such pure principle, it is simply my total empirical selfhood again, my historic Me, a collection ol objective facts, to which the depreciated image in your mind ' belongs.' In what capacity is it that I claim and demand a respectful greeting from you instead of this expression of disdain ? It is not as being a bare I that I claim it ; it is as being an I who has always been treated with respect, who belongs to a certain family and ' set,' who has certain powers, possessions, and public functions, sensibilities, duties, and purposes, and merits and deserts. All this is what your disdain negates and contradicts ; this is ' the thing inside of me ' whose changed treatment I feel the shame about ; this is what was lusty, and now, in conse quence of your conduct, is collapsed ; and this certainly is an empirical objective thing. Indeed, the thing that is felt modified and changed for the worse during my feeling of shame is often more concrete even than this, — it is simply my bodily person, in which your conduct immediately and without any reflection at all on my part works those muscular, glandular, and vascular changes which together make up the ' expression ' of shame. In this instinctive, reflex sort of shame, the body is just as much the entire vehicle cf the self-feeling as, in the coarser cases which we first took up, it was the vehicle of the self-seeking. As, in simple ' hoggishness,' a succulent morsel gives rise, by the reflex mechanism, to behavior which the bystanders find ' greedy,' and consider to flow from a certain sort of * self- regard ; ' so here your disdain gives rise, by a mechanism quite as reflex and immediate, to another sort of behavior, which the bystanders call ' shame-faced ' and which they consider due to another kind of self-regard. But in both cases there may be no particular self regarded at all by the mind : and the name self-regard may be only a descriptive THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 323 title imposed from without the reflex acts themselves, and the feelings that immediately result from their discharge. After the bodily and social selves come the spiritual. But which of my spiritual selves do I really care for ? My Soul-substance? my 'transcendental Ego, or Thinker'? my pronoun I? my subjectivity as such? my nucleus of cephalic adjustments ? or my more phenomenal and perish able powers, my loves and hates, willingnesses and sensibil ities, and the like ? Surely the latter. But they, relatively to the central principle, whatever it may be, are external and objective. They come and go, and it remains — "so shakes the magnet, and so stands the pole." It may indeed have to be there for them to be loved, but being there is not identical with being loved itself. To sum up, then, we see no reason to suppose that self-love ' is primarily, or secondarily, or ever, love for one's mere princi ple of consents identity. It is always love for something which, as compared with that principle, is superficial, tran sient, liable to be taken up or dropped at will. And zoological psychology again comes to the aid of our understanding and shows us that this must needs be so. In fact, in answering the question what things it is that a man loves in his self-love, we have implicitly answered the farther question, of why he loves them. Unless his consciousness were something more than cognitive, unless it experienced a partiality for certain of the objects, which, in succession, occupy its ken, it could not long maintain itself in existence ; for, by an inscrutable necessity, each human mind's appearance on this earth is conditioned upon the integrity of the body with which it belongs, upon the treatment which that body gets from others, and upon the spiritual dispositions which use it as their tool, and lead it either towards longevity or to destruc tion. Its own body, then, first of all, its friends ne.rt, and finally if s spiritual dispositions, MUST be the supremely in- 'eresting OBJECTS for each human mind,. Each mind, to begin with, must have a certain minimum of selfishness in the shape of instincts of bodily self-seeking in order to exist. This minimum must be there as a basis for all farther con scious acts, whether of self-negation or of a selfishness 824 PSYCHOLOGY. more subtle still. All minds must have come, by the way of the survival of the fittest, if by no directer path, to take an intense interest in the bodies to which they are yoked, altogether apart from any interest in the pure Ego which they also possess. And similarly with the images of their person in the minds of others. I should not be extant now had I not be come sensitive to looks of approval or disapproval on the faces among which my life is cast. Looks of contempt cast on other persons need affect me in no such peculiar way. Were my mental life dependent exclusively on some other person's welfare, either directly or in an indirect way, then natural selection would unquestionably have brought it about that I should be as sensitive to the social vicissitudes of that other person as I now am to my own. Instead of being egoistic I should be spontaneously altruistic, then. But in this case, only partially realized in actual human conditions, though the self I empirically love would have changed, my pure Ego or Thinker would have to remain just what it is now. My spiritual powers, again, must interest me more than those of other people, and for the same reason. I should not be here at all unless I had cultivated them and kept them from decay. And the same law which made me once care for them makes me care for them still. My own body and what ministers to its needs are thus the primitive object, instinctively deter mined, of my egoistic interests. Other objects may become interesting derivatively through association with any of these things, either as means or as habitual concomitants ; and so in a thousand ways the primi tive sphere of the egoistic emotions may enlarge and change its boundaries. This sort of interest is really the meaning of tJie tvord 'my.' Whatever has it is eo ipso a part of me. My child, my friend dies, and where he goes I feel that part of my* self now is and evermore shall be : " For this losing is true dying ; This is lordly man's down-lying ; This his slow but sure reclining, Star by star his world resigning." THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 325 The fact remains, however, that certain special sorts of thing tend primordially to possess this interest, and form the natural me. But all these things are objects, properly so called, to the subject which does the thinking.* And this latter fact upsets at once the dictum of the old-fash ioned sensationalist psychology, that altruistic passions and interests are contradictory to the nature of things, and that if they appear anywhere to exist, it must be as second ary products, resolvable at bottom into cases of selfishness, taught by experience a hypocritical disguise. If the zoolog ical and evolutionary point of view is the true one, there is uo reason why any object whatever might not arouse passion and interest as primitively and instinctively as any other, whether connected or not with the interests of the me. The phenomenon of passion is in origin and essence the same, whatever be the target upon which it is discharged ; and what the target actually happens to be is solely a ques tion of fact. I might conceivably be as much fascinated, and as primitively so, by the care of my neighbor's body as by the care of my own. The only check to such exuber ant altruistic interests is natural selection, which would weed out such as Avere very harmful to the individual or to his tribe. Many such interests, however, remain unweeded out — the interest in the opposite sex, for example, which seems in mankind stronger than is called for by its utili tarian need ; and alongside of them remain interests, like that in alcoholic intoxication, or in musical sounds, which, for aught we can see, are without any utility whatever. The sympathetic instincts and the egoistic ones are thus co-ordinate. They arise, so far as we can tell, on the same psychologic level. The only difference between them is, that the instincts called egoistic form much the larger mass. The only author whom I know to have discussed the question whether the ' pure Ego,' per se, can be an object of regard, is Herr Horwicz, in his extremely able and acute Psychologische Analysen. He too says that all self-regard is regard for certain objective things. He disposes so well * Lotze, Med. Psych. 498-501 ; Microcosmos, bk. n. chap. v. §§ 3, 4 326 PSYCHOLOGY. of one kind of objection that I must conclude by quoting a part of his own words : First, the objection : " The fact is indubitable that one's own children always pass for the prettiest and brightest, the wine from one's own cellar for the best — at least for its price, — one's own house and horses for the finest. With what tender admiration do we con over our own little deed of Denevolence ! our own frailties and misdemeanors, how ready we are to acquit ourselves for them, when we notice them at all, on the ground of * extenuating circumstances ' ! How much more really comic are our own jokes than those of others, which, unlike ours, will not bear being repeated ten or twelve times over ! How eloquent, striking, powerful, our own speeches are ! How appropriate our own address ! In short, how much more intelligent, soulful, better, is everything about us than in anyone else. The sad chapter of artists' and authors' conceit and vanity belongs here. ''The prevalence of this obvious preference which we feel for every thing of our own is indeed striking. Does it not look as if our dear Ego must first lend its color and flavor to anything in order to make it please us ? ... Is it not the simplest explanation for all these phenomena, so consistent among themselves, to suppose that the Ego, the self, which forms the origin and centre of our thinking life, is at the same time the original and central object of our life of feeling, and the ground both of whatever special ideas and of whatever special feelings ensue ?" Herr Horwicz goes on to refer to what we have already noticed, that various things which disgust us in others do not disgust us at all in ourselves. " To most of us even the bodily warmth of another, for example the chair warm from another's sitting, is felt unpleasantly, whereas there is nothing disagreeable in the warmth of the chair in which we have been sitting ourselves." After some further remarks, he replies to these facts and reasonings as follows : "We may with confidence affirm that our own possessions in most cases please us better [not because they are ours], but simply because we know them better, 'realize' them more intimately, feel them more deeply. We learn to appreciate what is ours in all its details and shad- ings, whilst the goods of others appear to us in coarse outlines and rude averages. Here are some examples: A piece of music which one plays one's self is heard and understood better than when it is played by an other. We get more exactly all the details, penetrate more deeply into the musical thought. We may meanwhile perceive perfectly well that the other person is the better performer, and yet nevertheless — at times —get more enjoyment from our own playing because it brings the THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 327 melody and harmony so much nearer home to us. This case may almost be taken as typical for the other cases of self-love. On close examina tion, we shall almost always find that a great part of our feeling about what is ours is due to the fact that we live closer to our own things, and so feel them more thoroughly and deeply. As a friend of mine was about to marry, he often bored me by the repeated and minute way in which he would discuss the details of his new household arrangements. I wondered that so intellectual a man should be so deeply interested in things of so external a nature. But as I entered, a few years later, the same condition myself, these matters acquired for me an entirely differ ent interest, and it became my turn to turn them over and talk of them unceasingly. . . . The reason was simply this, that in the first instance I understood nothing of these things and their importance for domestic comfort, whilst in the latter case they came home to me with irresistible urgency, and vividly took possession of my fancy. So it is with many a one who mocks at decorations and titles, until he gains one himself. And this is also surely the reason why one's own portrait or reflection in the mirror is so peculiarly interesting a thing to contemplate . . . not on account of any absolute ' c'est moi,"1 but just as with the music played by ourselves. What greets our eyes is what we know best, most deeply understand; because we ourselves have felt it and lived through it. We know what has ploughed these furrows, deepened these shadows, blanched this hair ; and other faces may be handsomer, but none can speak to us or interest us like this." * Moreover, this author goes on to show that our own things are fuller for us than those of others because of the memories they aAvaken and the practical hopes and expecta tions they arouse. This alone would emphasize them, apart from any value derived from their belonging to ourselves. We may conclude with him, then, that an original central self -feeling can never explain the passionate warmth of our self- regarding emotions, ivhich must, on the contrary, be addressed directly to special things less abstract and empty of content. To these things the name of ' self ' may be given, or to our conduct towards them the, name, of ' selfishness,' Imt neither in the self nor the selfishness does the pure Thinker play the 'title-role.' Only one more point connected with our self-regard need be mentioned. We have spoken of it so far as active in~ stinct or emotion. It remains to speak of it as cold intel lectual self-estimation. We may weigh our own Me in the» * Psychologische Analysen auf Physiologischer Grundlage. Theil n. lite Hillfte, § 11. The whole section ought to be read. 328 PSYCHOLOGY. balance of praise and blame as easily as we weigh other people, — though with difficulty quite as fairly. The just man is the one who can weigh himself impartially. Impar- tial weighing presupposes a rare faculty of abstraction from the vividness with which, as Herr Horwicz has pointed out, things known as intimately as our own possessions and performances appeal to our imagination ; and an equally rare power of vividly representing the affairs of others. But> granting these rare powers, there is no reason why a man should not pass judgment on himself quite as objectively and well as on anyone else. No matter how he feels about himself, unduly elated or unduly depressed, he may still truly know his own worth by measuring it by the outward standard he applies to other men, and counteract the injus tice of the feeling he cannot wholly escape. This self- measuring process has nothing to do with the instinctive self-regard we have hitherto been dealing with. Being merely ono application of intellectual comparison, it need no longer detain us here. Please note again, however, how the pure Ego appears merely as the vehicle in which the estimation is carried on, the objects estimated being all of them facts of an empirical sort, * one's body, one's credit, * Professor Bain, in his chapter on 'Emotions of Self,' does scant jus tice to the primitive nature of a large part of our self-feeling, and seems to reduce it to reflective self-estimation of this sober intellectual sort, which certainly most of it is not. He says that when the attention is turned inward upon self as a Personality, " we are putting forth to wards ourselves the kind of exercise that properly accompanies our contemplation of other persons. We are accustomed to scrutinize the actions and conduct of those about us, to set a higher value upon one man than upon another, by com paring the two; to pity ono in distress; to feel complacency towards a par ticular individual; to congratulate a man on some good fortune that it pleases us to see him gain; to admire greatness or excellence as displayed *>y any of our fellows. All these exercises are intrinsically social, like Love and Resentment; an isolated individual could never attain to them, nor exercise then. By what means, then, through what fiction [!] can we turn round r.nd play them off upon self? Or how comes it that we obtain any satisfaction Ly putting self in the place of the other party? Perhaps the simplest form of the reflected act is that expressed by Self -worth and Self-estimation, based and begun upon observation of the ways and con duct of our fellow-beings. We soon make comparisons among the indi viduals about us; we see that one is stronger and does more work than another, and, in consequence perhaps, receives more pay. We see one putting forth perhaps more kindness than another, and in consequence THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 329 one's fame, one's intellectual ability, one's goodness, or whatever the case may be. The empirical Life of Self is divided, as below, into MATERIAL. SOCIAL. SPIRITUAL. SELF- SEEKING. Bodily Appetites and Instincts Love of Adorn ment, Foppery, Acquisitiveness, Constructiveness, Love of Home, etc. Desire to please, be noticed, admired, etc. Sociability, Emula tion, Envy, Love, Pursuit of Honor, Ambition, etc. Intellectual, Moral and Religious Aspiration, Con scientiousness SELF- ESTIMATION. Personal Vanity, Modesty, etc. Pride of Wealth, Fear of Poverty Social and Family Pride, Vainglory, Snobbery, Humil ity, Shame, etc. Sense of Moral or Mental Superior ity, Purity, etc. Sense of Inferiority or of Guilt THE PURE EGO. Having summed up in the above table the principal results of the chapter thus far, I have said all that need receiving more love. We see some individuals surpassing the rest in aston ishing feats, and drawing after them the gaze and admiration of a crowd. We acquire a series of fixed associations towards persons so situated; favor able in the case of the superior, and unfavorable to the inferior. To the strong and laborious man we attach an estimate of greater reward, and feel that to be in his place would be a hap pier lot than falls to others. Desiring, as we do, from the primary motives of our being, to possess good things, and observing these to come by a man's superior exertions, we feel a respect for such exertion and a wish that it might be ours. We know that we also put forth exertions for our share uf good things; and on witnessing others, we are apt to be reminded of ourselves and to make comparisons with our selves, which comparisons derive their interest from the substantial conse quences. Having thus once learned to look at other persons as per- iOrming labors, greater or less, and as realizing fruits to accord; being, moreover, in all respects like our fellows, — we find it an exercise neither difficult nor unmeaning to contemplate self as doing work and receiving the reward. ... As we decide between one man and another, — which is worthier, ... so we decide between self and all other men; being, how ever, in this decision under the bias of our own desires." A couple of pages farther on we read: "By the terms Self-complacency. Self-gratulation, is indicated a positive enjoyment in dwelling upon our own merits and belongings. As in other modes, so here, the starting point is the contem plation of excellence or pleasing qualities in another person, accompanied more or less with fondness or love." Self-pity is also regarded by Professor 330 PSYCHOLOGY. be said of the constituents of the phenomenal self, and of the nature of self-regard. Our decks are consequently sleared for the struggle with that pure principle of personal identity which has met us all along our preliminary expo sition, but which we have always shied from and treated as a difficulty to be postponed. Ever since Hume's time, it has been justly regarded as the most puzzling puzzle with which psychology has to deal ; and whatever view one may espouse, one has to hold his position against heavy odds. If, with the Spiritualists, one contend for a substantial soul, or transcendental principle of unity, one can give no positive account of what that may be. And if, with the Humians, one deny such a principle and say that the stream of pass- ing thoughts is all, one runs against the entire common- sense of mankind, of which the belief in a distinct principle of selfhood seems an integral part. Whatever solution be adopted in the pages to come, we may as well make up our minds in advance that it will fail to satisfy the majority of those to whom it is addressed. The best way of approach- ing the matter will be to take up first — The Sense of Personal Identity. In the last chapter it was stated in as radical a way as possible that the thoughts which we actually know to exist do not fly about loose, but seem each to belong to some one Bain, in this place, as an emotion diverted to ourselves from a more im mediate object, "in a manner that we may term fictitious and unreal. Still, as we can view self in the light of another person, we can feel towards it the emotion of pity called forth by others in our situation." This account of Prof essor Bain's is, it will be observed, a good specimen of the old-fashioned mode of explaining the several emotions as rapid cal culations of results, and the transfer of feeling from one object to another, associated by contiguity or similarity with the first. Zoological evolu tionism, which came up since Prof essor Bain first wrote, has made us see, on the contrary, that many emotions must be primitively aroused by special objects. None are more worthy of being ranked primitive than the self- gratulation and humiliation attendant on our own successes and failures in the main functions of life. We need no borrowed reflection for these feel ings. Professor Bain's account applies to but that small fraction of our self-feeling which reflective criticism can add to, or subtract from, the total mass.— Lotze has some pages on the modifications of our self-regard by universal judgments, in Microcosmus, book v. chap, v § 5. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 331 thinker and not to another. Each thought, out of a multi tude of other thoughts of -which it may think, is able to distinguish those which belong to its own Ego from those which do not. The former have a warmth and intimacy about them of which the latter are completely devoid, being merely conceived, in a cold and foreign fashion, and not appearing as blood-relatives, bringing their greetings to us from out of the past. Now this consciousness of personal sameness may be treated either as a subjective phenomenon or as an objec tive deliverance, as a feeling, or as a truth. We may ex plain how one bit of thought can come to judge other bits to belong to the same Ego with itself ; or we may criticise its judgment and decide how far it may tally with the nature of things. As a mere subjective phenomenon the judgment presents no difficulty or mystery peculiar to itself. It belongs to the great class of judgments of sameness; and there is nothing more remarkable in making a judgment of same ness in the first person than in the second or the third. The intellectual operations seem essentially alike, whether I say "I am the same,' or whether I say 'the pen is the same, as yesterday.' It is as easy to think this as to think the opposite and say 'neither I nor the pen is the same.' This sort of bringing of tldngs together into the object of a single judgment is of course essential to all thinking. The things are conjoined in the thought, whatever may be the relation in which they appear to the thought. The thinking them is thinking them together, even if only with the result of judging that they do not belong together. This sort of subjective synthesis,, essential to knowledge as siich (when ever it has a complex object), must not be confounded with objective synthesis or union instead of difference or discon nection, known among the things.* The subjective syn- * "Also nur dadurch, dass ich em Maunigfaltiges gegebeuer Vorstel- lungeu iu einem Bewusstsein verbinden kann, ist es moglich dass ich die Identittit des Bewusstseins in diesen Vorstellungen selbst vorstelle, d. h. die analytische Einheit der Apperception ist nur unter der Voraussetzung irgend eiuer synthetischen m5glich." In this passage (Kritik der reineu Ver- uunft, 2te Anil. § 16) Kant calls by the names of analytic and synthetic 332 PSYCHOLOGY. thesis is involved in thought's mere existence. Even a really disconnected world could only be known to be such by having its parts temporarily united in the Object of some pulse of consciousness.* The sense of personal identity is not, then, this mere synthetic form essential to all thought. It is the sense of a sameness perceived by thought and predicated of things thought-about. These things are a present self and a self of yesterday. The thought not only thinks them both, but thinks that they are identical. The psychologist, looking on and playing the critic, might prove the thought wrong, and show there was no real identity, — there might have been no yesterday, or, at any rate, no self of yesterday ; or, if there were, the sameness predicated might not obtain, or might be predicated on insufficient grounds. In either case the personal identity would not exist as a fact; but it would exist as a feeling all the same ; the consciousness of it by the thought would be there, and the psychologist would still have to analyze that, and show where its illusoriness lay. Let us now be the psychologist and see whether it be right or wrong when it says, / am the same self that I was yesterday. We may immediately call it right and intelligible so fai as it posits a past time with past thoughts or selves con tained therein — these were data which we assumed at the outset of the book. Right also and intelligible so far as it thinks of a present self — that present self we have just studied in its various forms. The only question for us is as to what the consciousness may mean when it calls the apperception what we here mean by objective and subjective synthesis respectively. It were much to be desired that some one might invent a good pair of terms in which to record the distinction — those used in the text are certainly very bad, but Kant's seem to me still worse. ' Categorical unity' and 'transcendental synthesis' would also be good Kantian, but hardly good human, speech. * So that we might say, by a sort of bad pun, "only a connected world can be known as disconnected." I say bad pun, because the point of view shifts between the connectedness and the disconnectedness. The discon nectedness is of the realities known ; the connectedness is of the knowl edge of them ; and reality and knowledge of it are, from the psychological point of view held fast to in these pages, two different facts. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 333 present self the same with one of the past selves which it has in mind. We spoke a moment since of warmth and intimacy. This leads us to the answer sought. For, whatever the thought we are criticising may think about its present self, that self comes to its acquaintance, or is actually felt, with warmth and intimacy. Of course this is the case with the bodily part of it ; we feel the whole cubic mass of our body all the while, it gives us an unceasing sense of personal existence. Equally do we feel the inner ' nucleus of the spiritual self,' either in the shape of yon faint physiological adjustments, or (adopting the universal psychological be lief), in that of the pure activity of our thought taking place as such. Our remoter spiritual, material, and social selves, so far as they are realized, come also with a glow and a warmth ; for the thought of them infallibly brings some degree of organic emotion in the shape of quickened heart-beats, oppressed breathing, or some other alteration, even though it be a slight one, in the general bodily tone. The character of ' warmth,' then, in the present self, re duces itself to either of two things, — something in the feel ing which we have of the thought itself, as thinking, or else the feeling of the body's actual existence at the moment, — or finally to both. "We cannot realize our present self with out simultaneously feeling one or other of these two things. Any other fact which brings these two things with it into consciousness will be thought with a warmth and an inti macy like those which cling to the present self. Any distant self which fulfils this condition will be thought with such warmth and intimacy. But which distant selves do fulfil the condition, when represented? Obviously those, and only those, which fulfilled it when they were alive. Them we shall imagine with the animal warmth upon them, to them may possibly cling the aroma, the echo of the thinking taken in the act. And by a natural consequence, we shall assimilate them to each other and to the warm and intimate self we now feel within us as we think, and separate them as a collection from whatever selves have not this mark, much as out of a herd of cattle let loose for the winter on some wide western prairie the 334 PSYCHOLOGY. owner picks out and sorts together when the time for the round-up comes in the spring, all the beasts on which he finds his own particular brand. The various members of the collection thus set apart are felt to belong with each other whenever they are thought at all. The animal warmth, etc., is their herd-mark, the brand from which they can never more escape. It runs through them all like a thread through a chaplet and makes them into a whole, which we treat as a unit, no matter how much in other ways the parts may differ inter se. Add to this character the farther one that the distant selves appear to our thought as having for hours of time been continuous with each other, and the most recent ones of them continuous with the Self of the present moment, melting into it by slow degrees ; and we get a still stronger bond of union. As we think we see an identical bodily thing when, in spite of changes of structure, it exists con tinuously before our eyes, or when, however interrupted its presence, its quality returns unchanged ; so here we think we experience an identical Self when it appears to us in an analogous way. Continuity makes us unite what dissimi larity might otherwise separate ; similarity makes us unite what discontinuity might hold apart. And thus it is, finally, that Peter, awakening in the same bed with Paul, and recalling what both had in mind before they went to sleep, reidentifies and appropriates the ' warm ' ideas as his, and is never tempted to confuse them with those cold and pale-appearing ones which he ascribes to Paul. As well might he confound Paul's body, which he only sees, with his own body, which he sees but also feels. Each of us when he awakens says, Here's the same old self again, just as he says, Here's the same old bed, the same old room, the came old world. The sense of our own personal identity, then, is exactly like- any one of our other perceptions of sameness among phenomena. It is a conclusion grounded either on the resemblance in a funda mental respect, or on the continuity before the mind, of the phe nomena compared. And it must not be taken to mean more than these grounds warrant, or treated as a sort of metaphysical or THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 335 absolute Unity in which all differences are overwhelmed. The past aiid present selves compared are the same just so far as they are the same, and no farther. A uniform feeling of * warmth,' of bodily existence (or an equally uniform feel ing of pure psychic energy?) pervades them all ; and this is what gives them a generic unity, and makes them the same in kind. But this generic unity coexists with generic differ ences just as real as the unity. And if from the one point of view they are one self, from others they are as truly not one but many selves. And similarly of the attribute of continuity ; it gives its own kind of unity to the self — that of mere connectedness, or unbrokenness, a perfectly definite phenomenal thing — but it gives not a jot or tittle more. And this unbrokenness in the stream of selves, like the uubrokeuness in an exhibition of ' dissolving views,' in no wise implies any farther unity or contradicts any amount of plurality in other respects. And accordingly we find that, where the resemblance and the continuity are no longer felt, the sense of personal iden tity goes too. We hear from our parents various anecdotes about our infant years, but we do not appropriate them as W3 do our own memories. Those breaches of decorum awaken no blush, those bright sayings no self-complacency. That child is a foreign creature with which our present self is no more identified in feeling than it is with some stranger's living child to-day. Why ? Partly because great time-gaps break up all these early years — we cannot ascend to them by continuous memories ; and partly be cause no representation of how the child felt comes up with the stories. We know what he said and did ; but no senti ment of his little body, of his emotions, of his psychic striv ings as they felt to him., comes up to contribute an element of warmth and intimacy to the narrative we hear, and the main bond of union with our present self thus disappears. ft is the same with certain of our dimly-recollected experi ences. We hardly know whether to appropriate them or to disown them as fancies, or things read or heard and not lived through. Their animal heat has evaporated ; the feel ings that accompanied them are so lacking in the recall, or 336 PSYCHOLOGY. so different from those we now enjoy, that no judgment of identity can be decisively cast. Resemblance among tike parts of a continuum of feelings (especially bodily feelings) experienced along with things widely different in all other regards, thus constitutes the real and verifiable 'personal identity ' ivhich ice feel. There is no other identity than this in the ' stream ' of subjective consciousness which we described in the last chapter. Its parts differ, but under all their differences they are knit in these two ways ; and if either way of knitting disappears, the sense of unity departs. If a man wakes up some fine day unable to recall any of his past experiences, so that he has to learn his biography afresh, or if he only recalls the facts of it in a cold abstract way as things that he is sure once happened ; or if, without this loss of memory, his bodily and spiritual habits all change during the night, each organ giving a different tone, and the act of thought becom ing aware of itself in a different way ; lie feels, and he says, that he is a changed person. He disowns his former me, gives himself a new name, identifies his present life with nothing from out of the older time. Such cases are not rare in mental pathology ; but, as we still have some rea soning to do, we had better give no concrete account of them until the end of the chapter. This description of personal identity will be recognized by the instructed reader as the ordinary doctrine professed by the empirical school. Associationists in England and France, Herbartians in Germany, all describe the Self as an aggregate of which each part, as to its being, is a separate fact. So far so good, then ; thus much is true whatevei farther things may be true ; and it is to the imperishable glory of Hume and Herbart and their successors to have taken so much of the meaning of personal identity out of the clouds and made of the Self an empirical and verifia ble thing. But in leaving the matter here, and saying that this sum of passing things is all, these writers have neglected certain more subtle aspects of the Unity of Consciousness, to which we next must turn. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 33T Our recent simile of the herd of cattle will help us. It will be remembered that the beasts were brought together into one herd because their owner found on each of them his brand. The ' owner ' symbolizes here that ' section ' of consciousness, or pulse of thought, which we have all along represented as the vehicle of the judgment of identity ; and the ( brand ' symbolizes the characters of warmth and con tinuity, by reason of which the judgment is made. There is found a seZ/'-brand, just as there is found a herd-brand. Each brand, so far, is the mark, or cause of our know ing, that certain things belong-together. But if the brand is the ratio cognoscendi of the belonging, the belonging, in the case of the herd, is in turn the ratio existendi oi the brand. No beast would be so branded unless he be longed to the owner of the herd. They are not his because they are branded ; they are branded because they are his. So that it seems as if our description of the belonging- together of the various selves, as a belonging-together which is merely represented, in a later pulse of thought, had knocked the bottom out of the matter, and omitted the most characteristic one of all the features found in the herd — a feature which common-sense finds in the phenomenon of personal identity as well, and for our omission of which she will hold us to a strict account. For common-sense insists that the unity of all the selves is not a mere ap pearance of similarity or continuity, ascertained after the fact. She is sure that it involves a real belonging to a real Owner, to a pure spiritual entity of some kind. Eolation to this entity is what makes the self's constituents stick to gether as they do for thought. The individual beasts do not stick together, for all that they wear the same brand, Each wanders with whatever accidental mates it finds. The herd's unity is only potential, its centre ideal, like the * centre of gravity ' in physics, until the herdsman or owner comes. He furnishes a real centre of accretion to which the beasts are driven and by which they are held. The beasts stick together by sticking severally to him. Just so, common-sense insists, there must be a real proprietor in the case of the selves, or else their actual accretion into a ' personal consciousness ' would never have taken place. 388 PSYCHOLOGY. To the usual empiricist explanation of personal conscious. ness this is a formidable reproof, because all the individual thoughts and feelings which have succeeded each other ' up to date ' are represented by ordinary Associationism as in some inscrutable way ' integrating ' or gumming themselves together on their own account, and thus fusing into a stream. A.11 the incomprehensibilities which in Chapter VI we saw to attach to the idea of things fusing without a medium apply to the empiricist description of personal identity. But in our own account the medium is fully assigned, the herdsman is there, in the shape of something not among the things collected, but superior to them all, namely, the real, present onlooking, remembering, 'judging thought' or identifying ' section ' of the stream. This is what col lects, — ' owns ' some of the past facts which it surveys, and disowns the rest, — and so makes a unity that is actualized and anchored and does not merely float in the blue air of possibility. And the reality of such pulses of thought, with their function of knowing, it will be remembered that we did not seek to deduce or explain, but simply assumed them as the ultimate kind of fact that the psychologist must ad mit to exist. But this assumption, though it yields much, still does not yield all that common-sense demands. The unity into which the Thought — as I shall for a time proceed to call, with a capital T, the present mental state — binds the indi vidual past facts with each other and with itself, does not exist until the Thought is there. It is as if wild cattle were lassoed by a newly-created settler and then owned for the first time. But the essence of the matter to common-sense is that the past thoughts never were wild cattle, they were always owned. The Thought does not capture them, but as soon as it comes into existence it finds them already its own. How is this possible unless the Thought have a substantial identity with a former owner, — not a mere con tinuity or a resemblance, as in our account, but a real unity ? Common-sense in fact would drive us to admit what we may for the moment call an Arch-Ego, dominating the en tire stream of thought and all the selves that may be represented in it. as the ever self- same and changeless THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 339 principle implied in their union. The 'Soul' of Meta physics and the * Transcendental Ego' of the Kantian Philosophy, are, as we shall soon see, but attempts to sat isfy this urgent demand of common-sense. But, for a time at least, we can still express without any such hypotheses that appearance of never-lapsing ownership for which com mon-sense contends. For how would it be if the Thought, the present judg ing Thought, instead of being in any way substantially or transcendentally identical with the former owner of the past self, merely inherited his ' title,' and thus stood as his legal representative now? It would then, if its birth coincided exactly with the death of another owner, find the past self already its own as soon as it found it at all, and the past self would thus never be wild, but always owned, by a title that never lapsed. We can imagine a long succession of herdsmen coming rapidly into possession of the same cattle by transmission of an original title by bequest. May not the 'title' of a collective self be passed from one Thought to another in some analogous way? It is a patent fact of consciousness that a transmission like this actually occurs. Each pulse of cognitive conscious ness, each Thought, dies away and is replaced by another. The other, among the things it knows, knows its own prede cessor, and finding it 'warm,' in the way we have de scribed, greets it, saying : " Thou art mine, and part of the same self with me." Each later Thought, knowing and in cluding thus the Thoughts which went before, is the final receptacle — and appropriating them is the final owner — of all that they contain and own. Each Thought is thus born an owner, and dies owned, transmitting whatever it realized as its Self to its own later proprietor. As Kant says, it is as if elastic balls were to have not only motion but knowledge of it, and a first ball were to transmit both its motion and its consciousness to a second, which took both up into its consciousness and passed them to a third, until the last ball held all that the other balls had held, and realized it as its own. It is this trick which the nas cent thought has of immediately taking up the expiring thought and 'adopting' it, which is the foundation of the 340 PSYCHOLOGY. appropriation of most of the remoter constituents of the self. Who owns the last self owns the self before the last, for what possesses the possessor possesses the possessed. It is impossible to discover any verifiable features in personal identity, which this sketch does not contain, im possible to imagine how any transcendent non-phenomenal sort of an Arch-Ego, were he there, could shape matters to any other result, or be known in time by any other fruit, than just this production of a stream of consciousness each ' section ' of which should "know, and knowing, hug to itself and adopt, all those that went before, — thus standing as the representative of the entire past stream ; and which should similarly adopt the objects already adopted by any portion of this spiritual stream. Such standing-as- representative, and such adopting, are perfectly clear phe nomenal relations. The Thought which, whilst it knows another Thought and the Object of that Other, appro priates the Other and the Object which the Other appro priated, is still a perfectly distinct phenomenon from that Other ; it may hardly resemble it ; it may be far removed from it in space and time. The only point that is obscure is the act of appropria tion itself. Already in enumerating the constituents of the self and their rivalry, I had to use the word appropriate. And the quick-witted reader probably noticed at the time, in hearing how one constituent was let drop and disowned and another one held fast to and espoused, that the phrase was meaningless unless the constituents were objects in the hands of something else. A thing cannot appropriate itself ; it is itself ; and still less can it disown itself. There must be an agent of the appropriating and disowning ; but that agent we have already named. It is the Thought to whom the various ' constituents ' are known. That Thought is a vehicle of choice as well as of cognition ; and among the choices it makes are these appropriations, or repudiations, of its ' own.' But the Thought never is an object in its own hands, it never appropriates or disowns itself. It appro priates to itself, it is the actual focus of accretion, the hook from which the chain of r>ast selves dangles, planted firmlv THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 341 in the Present, which alone passes for real, and thus keep ing the chain from being a purely ideal thing. Anon the hook itself will drop into the past with all it carries, and then be treated as an object and appropriated by a new Thought in the new present which will serve as living hook in turn. The present moment of consciousness is thus, as Mr. Hodgson says, the darkest in the whole series. It may feel its own immediate existence — we have all along admitted the possibility of this, hard as it is by direct in trospection to ascertain the fact — but nothing can be known about it till it be dead and gone. Its appropriations are therefore less to itself than to the most intimately felt part of its present Object, the body, and the central adjustments, which accompany the act of thinking, in the head. These are the real nucleus of our personal identity, and it is their actual existence, realized as a solid present fact, which makes us say 'as sure as I exist, those past facts were part of myself.' They are the kernel to which the represented parts of the Self are assimilated, accreted, and knit on ; and even were Thought entirely unconscious of itself in the act of thinking, these ' warm ' parts of its present object would be a firm basis on which the consciousness of personal identity would rest.* Such consciousness, then, * Some subtle rentier will object that the Thought cannot call any part of its Object 'I ' and knit other parts on to it, without first knitting that part on to Itself; and that it cannot knit it on to Itself without knowing Itself ; — so that our supposition (above, p. 304) that the Thought may con- ceivably have no immediate knowledge of Itself is thus overthrown. To which the reply is that we must take care not to be duped by words. The words /and me signify nothing mysterious and unexampled— they are at bottom only names of empJiasis ; and Thought is always emphasizing something. Within a tract of space which it cognizes, it contrasts a here with a there ; within a tract of time a now with a then : of a pair of things it calls one this, the other that. I and thou, I and it, are distinctions exactly on a par with these, — distinctions possible in an exclusively objective field of knowledge, the ' I ' meaning for the Thought nothing but the bodily life which it momentarily feels. The sense of my bodily existence, however obscurely recognized as such, may then be the absolute original of my con scious selfhood, the fundamental perception Hint lam. All appropriations may be made to it, by a Thought not at the moment immediately cognized by itself. Whether these are not only logical possibilities but actual facts is something not yet dogmatically decided in the text. 342 PSYCHOLOGY. as a psychologic fact, can be fully described without sup« posiiig any other agent than a succession of perishing thoughts, endowed with the functions of appropriation and rejection, and of which some can know and appropriate or reject objects already known, appropriated, or rejected by the rest. To illustrate by diagram, let A, B, and C stand for three successive thoughts, each with its object inside of it. If B's object be A, and C's object be B ; then A, B, and C would stand for three pulses in a consciousness of personal iden tity. Each pulse would le something different from the others ; but B would know and adopt A, and C would know and adopt A and B. Three successive states of the same brain, on which each experience in passing leaves its mark, might very well engender thoughts differing from each other in just such a way as this. The passing Thought then seems to be the Thinker; and though there may be another non-phenomenal Thinker behind that, so far we do not seem to need him to express the facts. But we cannot definitively make up our mind about him until we have heard the reasons that have his torically been used to prove his reality. THE PURE SELF OR INNER PRINCIPLE OF PERSONAL UNITS , To a brief survey of the theories of the Ego let us then next proceed. They are three in number, as follows : 1) The Spiritualist theory ; 2) The Associationist theory ; H) The Transcendentalist theory. The Theory of the Soul. In Chapter YI we were led ourselves to the spiritualist theory of the ' Soul,' as a means of escape from the unin- telligibilities of inind-stutf ' integrating ' with itself, and from THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 343 the physiological improbability of a material monad, with thought attached to it, in the brain. But at the end of the chapter we said we should examine the ' Soul ' critically in a later place, to see whether it had any other advantages as a theory over the simple phenomenal notion of a stream of thought accompanying a stream of cerebral activity, by a law jdt unexplained. The theory of the Soul is the theory of popular philoso phy and of scholasticism, which is only popular philosophy made systematic. It declares that the principle of individ uality within us must be substantial, for psychic phenomena are activities, and there can be no activity without a con crete agent. This substantial agent cannot be the brain but must be something immaterial ; for its activity, thought, is both immaterial, and takes cognizance of immaterial things, and of material things in general and intelligible, as well as in particular and sensible ways, — all which powers are in compatible with the nature of matter, of which the brain is composed. Thought moreover is simple, whilst the ac tivities of the brain are compounded of the elementary ac tivities of each of its parts. Furthermore, thought is spon taneous or free, whilst all material activity is determined ab extra ; and the will can turn itself against all corporeal goods and appetites, which would be impossible were it a corporeal function. For these objective reasons the prin ciple of psychic life must be both immaterial and simple as well as substantial, must be what is called a Soul. The same consequence follows from subjective reasons. Our consciousness of personal identity assures us of our essen tial simplicity : the owner of the various constituents of the self, as we have seen them, the hypothetical Arch-Ego whom we provisionally conceived as possible, is a real en tity of whose existence self-consciousness makes us directly aware. No material agent could thus turn round and grasp itsdf — material activities always grasp something else than the agent. And if a brain could grasp itself and be self- conscious, it would be conscious of itself as a brain and not as something of an altogether different kind. The Soul then exists as a simple spiritual substance in which the various psychic faculties, operations, and affections inhere, 844 PSYCHOLOGY. If we ask what a Substance is, the only answer is that it is a self-existent being, or one which needs no other sub ject in which to inhere. At bottom its only positive deter mination is Being, and this is something whose meaning we all realize even though we find it hard to explain. The Soul is moreover an individual being, and if we ask what that is, we are told to look in upon our Self, and we shall learn by direct intuition better than through any abstract reply. Our direct perception of our own inward being is in fact by many deemed to be the original prototype out of which our notion of simple active substance in general is fashioned. The consequences of the simplicity and substan tiality of the Soul are its incorruptibility and natural im mortality — nothing but God's direct fiat can annihilate it — and its responsibility at all times for whatever it may have ever done. This substantialist view of the soul was essentially the view of Plato and of Aristotle. It received its completely formal elaboration in the middle ages. It was believed in by Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, Leibnitz, Wolf, Berkeley, and is now defended by the entire modern dualistic or spirit ualistic or common-sense school. Kant held to it while denying its fruitfulness as a premise for deducing conse quences verifiable here below. Kant's successors, the abso lute idealists, profess to have discarded it, — how that may be we shall inquire ere long. Let us make up our minds what to think of it ourselves. It is at all events needless for expressing the actual sub jective phenomena of consciousness as they appear. We have formulated them all without its aid, by the supposi tion of a stream of thoughts, each substantially different from the rest, but cognitive of the rest and ' appropriate ' of each other's content. At least, if I have not already succeeded in. making this plausible to the reader, I am hopeless of convincing him by anything I could add row. The unity, the identity, the individuality, and the immateri ality that appear in the psychic life are thus accounted tol as phenomenal and temporal facts exclusively, and with no need of reference to any more simple or substantial agent than the present Thought or ' section ' of the stream. We TEE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 848 have seen it to be single and unique in the sense of having no separable parts (above, p. 239 ff.) — perhaps that is the only kind of simplicity meant to be predicated of the soul. The present Thought also has being, — at least all believers in the Soul believe so — and if there be no other Being in which it 'inheres,' it ought itself to be a 'substance.' If this kind of simplicity and substantiality were all that ia predicated of the Soul, then it might appear that we had been talking of the soul all along, without knowing it, when we treated the present Thought as an agent, an owner, and the like. But the Thought is a perishing and not an im mortal or incorruptible thing. Its successors may contin uously succeed to it, resemble it, and appropriate it, but they are not it, whereas the Soul-Substance is supposed to be a fixed unchanging thing. By the Soul is always meant something behind the present Thought, another kind of substance, existing on a non-phenomenal plane. When we brought in the Soul at the end of Chapter VI, as an entity which the various brain-processes were sup posed to affect simultaneously, and which responded to their combined influence by single pulses of its thought, it was to escape integrated mind-stuff on the one hand, and an improbable cerebral monad on the other. But when (as now, after all we have been through since that earlier passage) we take the two formulations, first of a brain to whose processes pulses of thought simply correspond, and second, of one to whose processes pulses of thought in a Soul correspond, and compare them together, we see that at bottom the second formulation is only a more roundabout way than the first, of expressing the same bald fact. That bald fact is that ivhen the brain acts, a thought occurs. The spiritualistic formulation says that the brain-processes knock the thought, so to speak, out of a Soul which stands there to receive their influence. The simpler formulation says that the thought simply comes. But what positive meaning has the Soul, when scrutinized, but the ground of possibility of the thought ? And what is the ' knocking ' but the determining of the possibility to actuality ? And what is this after all but giving a sort of concreted form to one's belief that the corning of the thought, when the brain-processes 846 PSYCHOLOGY. occur, has some sort of ground in the nature of things ? U the world Soul be understood merely to express that claim, it is a good word to use. But if it be held to do more, to gratify the claim, — for instance, to connect rationally the thought which comes, with the processes which occur, and to mediate intelligibly between their two disparate natures, — then it is an illusory term. It is, in fact, with the word Soul as with the word Substance in general. To say that phenomena inhere in a Substance is at bottom only to record one's protest against the notion that the bare exist ence of the phenomena is the total truth. A phenomenon would not itself be, we insist, unless there were something more than the phenomenon. To the more we give the pro visional name of Substance. So, in the present instance, we ought certainly to admit that there is more than the bare fact of coexistence of a passing thought with a passing brain-state. But we do not answer the question 'What is that more?' when we say that it is a 'Soul' which the brain-state affects. This kind of more explains nothing ; and when we are once trying metaphysical ex planations we are foolish not to go as far as we can. For my own part I confess that the moment I become metaphysical and try to define the more, I find the notion of some sort of an anima mundi thinking in all of us to be a more promis ing hypothesis, in spite of all its difficulties, than that of a lot of absolutely individual souls. Meanwhile, as psycholo gists, we need not be metaphysical at all. The phenomena are enough, the passing Thought itself is the only verifiable thinker, and its empirical connection with the brain-process is the ultimate known law. To the other arguments which would prove the need of a soul, we may also turn a deaf ear. The argument from free-will can convince only those who believe in free-will; and even they will have to admit that spontaneity is just as possible, to say the least, in a temporary spiritual agent like our ' Thought ' as in a permanent one like the supposed Soul. The same is true of the argument from the kinds of things cognized. Even if the brain could not cognize uni- versals, immate rials, or its ' Self,' still the ' Thought ' which we have relied upon in our account is not the brain, closely THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 347 as it seems connected with it ; and after all, if the brain could cognize at all, one does not well see why it might not cog nize one sort of thing as well as another. The great diffi culty is in seeing how a thing can cognize anything. This difficulty is not in the least removed by giving to the thing that cognizes the name of Soul. The Spiritualists do not deduce any of the properties of the mental life from otherwise known properties of the soul. They simply find various characters ready-made in the mental life, and these they clap into the Soul, saying, " Lo ! behold the source from whence they flow !" The merely verbal charac ter of this ' explanation ' is obvious. The Soul invoked, far from making the phenomena more intelligible, can only be made intelligible itself by borrowing their form,— it must be represented, if at all, as a transcendent stream of con sciousness duplicating the one we know. Altogether, the Soul is an outbirth of that sort of phi losophizing whose great maxim, according to Dr. Hodgson, is : " Whatever you are totally ignorant of, assert to be the explanation of everything else." Locke and Kant, whilst still believing in the soul, began the work of undermining the notion that we know anything about it. Most modern writers of the mitigated spiritual istic, or dualistic philosophy — the Scotch school, as it is often called among us — are forward to proclaim this igno rance, and to attend exclusively to the verifiable phenomena of self-consciousness, as we have laid them down. Dr. Wayland, for example, begins his Elements of Intellectual Philosophy with the phrase " Of the essence of Mind we know nothing," and goes on : " All that we are able to affirm of it is that it is something which perceives, reflects, remem bers, imagines, and wills ; but what that something is which exerts these energies we know not. It is only as we are conscious of the action of these energies that we are conscious of the existence of mind. It is only by the exer tion of its own powers that the mind becomes cognizant of their existence. The cognizance of its powers, however, gives us no knoAvledge of that essence of which they are predicated. In these respects our knowledge of mind is 348 PYSCHOLOGY. precisely analogous to our knowledge of matter." This analogy of our two ignorances is a favorite remark in the Scotch school. It is but a step to lump them together into a single ignorance, that of the ' Unknowable ' to which any one fond of superfluities in philosophy may accord the hospitality of his belief, if it so please him, but which any one else may as freely ignore and reject. The Soul-theory is, then, a complete superfluity, so far as accounting for the actually verified facts of conscious experience goes. So far, no one can be compelled to sub scribe to it for definite scientific reasons. The case would rest here, and the reader be left free to make his choice, were it not for other demands of a more practical kind. The first of these is Immortality, for which the simpli city and substantiality of the Soul seem to offer a solid guarantee. A 'stream' of thought, for aught that we see to be contained in its essence, may come to a full stop at any moment; but a simple substance is incorruptible, and will, by its own inertia, persist in Being so long as the Cre ator does not by a direct miracle snuff it out. Unques tionably this is the stronghold of the spiritualistic belief, — as indeed the popular touchstone for all philosophies is the question, "What is their bearing on a future life?" The Soul, however, when closely scrutinized, guarantees no immortality of a sort we care for. The enjoyment of the atom-like simplicity of their substance in scecula sceculorum would not to most people seem a consummation devoutly to be wished. The substance must give rise to a stream of consciousness continuous with the present stream, in order to arouse our hope, but of this the mere persistence of the substance per se offers no guarantee. Moreover, in the general advance of our moral ideas, there has come to be something rediculous n\ the way our forefathers had of grounding their hopes of immortality on the simplicity of their substance. The demand for immortality is nowadays essentially teleological. We believe ourselves immortal because we believe ourselves fit for immortality. A ' sub stance ' ought surely to perish, we think, if not worthy to survive; and an insubstantial 'stream7 to prolong itself, provided it be worthy, if the nature of Things is organized THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 349 in the rational way in which we trust it is. Substance or no substance, soul or ' stream,' what Lotze says of immor tality is about all that human wisdom can say : " We have no other principle for deciding it than this general ideal istic belief : that every created thing will continue whose continuance belongs to the meaning of the world, and so long as it does so belong ; whilst every one will pass away whose reality is justified only in a tran sitory phase of the world's course. That this principle admits of no further application in human hands need hardly be said. We surely know not the merits which may give to one being a claim on eternity, nor the defects which would cut others off." * A second alleged necessity for a soul-substance is our forensic responsibility before God. Locke caused an up roar when he said that the unity of consciousness made a man the same person, whether supported by the same sub stance or no, and that God would not, in the great day, make a person answer for what he remembered nothing of. It was supposed scandalous that our forgetfulness might thus deprive God of the chance of certain retributions, which otherwise would have enhanced his ' glory.' This is certainly a good speculative ground for retaining the Soul— at least for those who demand a plenitude of retribution. The mere stream of consciousness, with its lapses of mem ory, cannot possibly be as ' responsible ' as a soul which is at the judgment day all that it ever was. To modern read ers, however, who are less insatiate for retribution than their grandfathers, this argument will hardly be as con vincing as it seems once to have been. One great use of the Soul has always been to account for, and at the same time to guarantee, the closed individu ality of each personal consciousness. The thoughts of one soul must unite into one self, it was supposed, and must be eternally insulated from those of every other soul. But we have already begun to see that, although unity is the rule of each man's consciousness, yet in some individuals, at least, thoughts may split away from the others and form sepa- * Metaphysik, §245 fin. This writer, who In his early work, the Medi- ziuisohe Psychologic, was (to my reading) a strong defender of the Soul- Substance theory, has written in §§ 243-5 of Ins Metaphysik the most beau- tifnl criticism of this theory which exists. 350 PSYCHOLOGY. rate selves. As for insulation, it would be rash, in view of the phenomena of thought-transference, mesmeric influence and spirit-control, which are being alleged nowadays on better authority than ever before, to be too sure about that point either. The definitively closed nature of our personal consciousness is probably an average statistical resultant of many conditions, but not an elementary force or fact ; so that, if one wishes to preserve the Soul, the less he draws his arguments from that quarter the better. So long as our self, on the whole, makes itself good and prac tically maintains itself as a closed individual, why, as Lotze says, is not that enough ? And why is the frem^-an-individ- ual in some inaccessible metaphysical way so much prouder an achievement ? * My final conclusion, then, about the substantial Soul is that it explains nothing and guarantees nothing. Its suc cessive thoughts are the only intelligible and verifiable things about it, and definitely to ascertain the correlations of these with brain-processes is as much as psychology can empirically do. From the metaphysical point of view, it is true that one may claim that the correlations have a ra tional ground ; and if the word Soul could be taken to mean merely some such vague problematic ground, it would be unobjectionable. But the trouble is that it professes to give the ground in positive terms of a very dubiously cred ible sort. I therefore feel entirely free to discard the word Soul from the rest of this book. If I ever use it, it will bo in the vaguest and most popular way. The reader who finds any comfort in the idea of the Soul, is, however, per fectly free to continue to believe in it ; for our reasonings have not established the non-existence of the Soul ; they have only proved its superfluity for scientific purposes. The next theory of the pure Self to which we pass is The Associationist Theory. Locke paved the way for it by the hypothesis he sug< gested of the same substance having two successive con- * On the empirical and transcendental conceptions of the self's unity. see Lotzfi- Metaphysic, § 244. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OP SELF. 351 Bciousnesses, or of tlie same consciousness being supported by more than one substance. He made his readers feel that the important unity of the Self was its verifiable and felt unity, and that a metaphysical or absolute unity would be insignificant, so long as a consciousness of diversity might be there. Hume showed how great the consciousness of diversity actually was. In the famous chapter on Personal Identity, in his Treatise on Human Nature, he writes as follows : "There are some philosophers who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our SELF ; that we feel its exist ence and its continuance in existence, and are certain, beyond the evi dence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity. . . . Unluckily all these positive assertions are contrary to that very experience which is pleaded for them, nor have we any idea of Self, after the manner it is here explained. ... It must be some one im pression that gives rise to every real idea. ... If any impression givea rise to the idea of Self, that impression must continue invariably the same through the whole course of our lives, since self is supposed to exist after that manner. But there is no impression constant and invariable. Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions and sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at the same time. . . . For my part, when I enter moat intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and rever can observe anything but the perception. When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep, so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my perceptions removed by death, and could I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate after the dissolution of my body, I should be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is farther requisite to make me a perfect non-entity. If anyone, upon serious and unprejudiced reflection, thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I cap allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continued which he calls himself; though I am certain there is no such principle in me. " But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement. Our eyes cannot turn in their sockets without varying our perceptions. Our thought is still more variable than our sight; and all our other senses and faculties contribute to this change; nor is there any single power of 852 PSYCHOLOGY. the soul which remains unalterably the same, perhaps for one moment The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, repass, glide away and mingle in an infi nite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it atone time, nor identity in different ; whatever natural propension we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive percep tions only, that constitute the mind ; nor have we the most distant notion of the place where these scenes are represented, nor of the ma- terial of which it is composed. " But Hume, after doing this good piece of introspective work, proceeds to pour out the child with the "bath, and to fly to as great an extreme as the substantialist philosophers. As they say the Self is nothing but Unity, unity abstract and absolute, so Hume says it is nothing but Diversity, diversity abstract and absolute ; whereas in truth it is that mixture of unity and diversity which we ourselves have already found so easy to pick apart. We found among the objects of the stream certain feelings that hardly changed, that stood out warm and vivid in the past just as the present feeling does now ; and we found the present feeling to be the centre of accretion to which, de proche en proche, these other feelings are, by the judging Thought, felt to cling. Hume says nothing of the judging Thought ; and he denies this thread of resemblance, this core of sameness running through the ingredients of the Self, to exist even as a phe nomenal thing. To him there is no tertium quid between pure unity and pure separateness. A succession of ideas " connected by a close relation affords to an accurate view as perfect a notion of diversity as if there was no manner of relation" at all. 1 1 All our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and the mind never perceives any real connection among distinct existences. Did our perceptions either inhere in something simple or individual, or did the mind perceive some real connection among them, there would be no difficulty in the case. For my part, I must plead the privilege of a sceptic and. confess that this difficulty is too hard for my understanding. \ pretend not, however, to pronounce it insuperable. Others, perhaps, . . may discover some hypothesis that will reconcile these con tradictions." * * Appendix to hook i of Hume's Treatise on Human Nature. TUB CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 353 Hume is at bottom as much of a metaphysician as Thomas Aquinas. No wonder he can discover no ' hypoth esis.' The unity of the parts of the stream is just as ' real ' a connection as their diversity is a real separation ; both connection and separation are ways in which the past thoughts appear to the present Thought; — unlike each other in respect of date and certain qualities — this is the separation ; alike in other qualities, and continuous in time — this is the connection. In demanding a more ' real ' con nection than this obvious and verifiable likeness and con tinuity, Hume seeks 'the world behind the looking glass,' and gives a striking example of that Absolutism which is the great disease of philosophic Thought. The chain of distinct existences into which Hume thus chopped up our ' stream ' was adopted by all of his succes sors as a complete inventory of the facts. The association- ist Philosophy was founded. Somehow, out of 'ideas,' each separate, each ignorant of its mates, but sticking together and calling each other up according to certain laws, all the higher forms of consciousness were to be explained, and among them the consciousness of our personal identity. The task was a hard one, in which what we called the psychologist's fallacy (p. 196 ff.) bore the brunt of the work. Two ideas, one of ' A,' succeeded by another of ' B,' were transmuted into a third idea of 'B after A.' An idea from last year returning now was taken to be an idea of last year ; two similar ideas stood for an idea of similarity, and the like ; palpable confusions, in which certain facts about the ideas, possible only to an outside knower of them, were put into the place of the ideas' own proper and limited de liverance and content. Out of such recurrences and resem blances in a series of discrete ideas and feelings a knowl edge was somehow supposed to be engendered in each feeling that it was recurrent and resembling, and that it helped to form a series to whose unity the name / came to be joined. In the same way, substantially, Herbavt,* in * Herbart believed in the Soul, too; but for him the ' Self of which we are ' conscious ' is the empirical Self — not the soul. 354 PSYCHOLOGY. Germany, tried to show how a conflict of ideas would fuse into a manner of representing itself for which I was the con secrated name.* The defect of all these attempts is that the conclusion pretended to follow from certain premises is by no means rationally involved in the premises. A feeling of any kind, if it simply returns, ought to be nothing else than what it was at first. If memory of previous existence and all sorts of other cognitive functions are attributed to it when it re turns, it is no longer the same, but a widely different feel ing, and ought to be so described. We have so described it with the greatest explicitness. We have said that feel ings never do return. We have not pretended to explain this ; we have recorded it as an empirically ascertained law, analogous to certain laws of brain-physiology ; and, seeking to define the way in which new feelings do differ from the old, we have found them to be cognizant and ap- propriative of the old, whereas the old were always cogni zant and appropriative of something else. Once more, this account pretended to be nothing more than a complete description of the facts. It explained them no more than the associationist account explains them. But the latter both assumes to explain them and in the same breath falsi fies them, and for each reason stands condemned. It is but just to say that the associationist writers as a rule seem to have a lurking bad conscience about the Self; and that although they are explicit enough about what it isv namely, a train of feelings or thoughts, they are very shy about openly tackling the problem of how it comes to be aware of itself. Neither Bain nor Spencer, for example, directly touch this problem. As a rule, associationist writers keep talking about ' the mind ' and about what ' we ' do ; and so, smuggling in surreptitiously what they ought avowedly to have postulated in the form of a present 'judging Thought,' they either trade upon their reader's lack of discernment or are undiscerning themselves. Mr. D. G. Thompson is the only associationist writer I know who perfectly escapes this confusion, and postulates * Compare again the remarks on pp. 158-162 above. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OP SELF. 355 openly what he needs. " All states of consciousness," he says, "imply and postulate a subject Ego, whose sub stance is unknown and unknowable, to which [why not say by which?] states of consciousness are referred as attri butes, but which in the process of reference becomes ob jectified and becomes itself an attribute of a subject Ego which lies still beyond, and which ever eludes cognition though ever postulated for cognition.' * This is exactly our judging and remembering present ' Thought,' described in less simple terms. After Mr. Thompson, M. Taine and the two Mills deserve credit for seeking to be as clear as they can. Taine tells us in the first volume of his ' Intelligence ' what the Ego is, — a continuous web of conscious events no more really dis tinct from each other f than rhomboids, triangles, and squares marked with chalk on a plank are really distinct, for the plank itself is one. In the second volume he says all these parts have a common character embedded in them, that of being internal [this is our character of ' warmness,' otherwise named]. This character is abstracted and iso lated by a mental fiction, and is what we are conscious of as our self — ' this stable within is what each of us calls / or me.' Obviously M. Taine forgets to tell us what this ' each of us ' is, which suddenly starts up and performs the ab straction and * calls ' its product I or me. The character does not abstract itself. Taine means by 'each of us1 merely the present ' judging Thought ' with its memory and tendency to appropriate, but he does not name it distinctly enough, and lapses into the fiction that the entire series of thoughts, the entire ' plank,' is the reflecting psychologist. James Mill, after defining Memory as a train of associ ated ideas beginning with that of my past self and ending with that of my present self, defines my Self as a train of ideas of which Memory declares the first to be continuously connected with the last. The successive associated ideas * System of Psychology (1884). vol. T. p. 114. f ' Distinct only to observation,' he adds. To whose observation? the outside psychologist's, the Ego's, their own, or the plank's? Darauf kommt es (in ! 356 PSYCHOLOGY. ' run, as it were, into a single point of consciousness.' * John Mill, annotating this account, says : " The phenomenon of Self and that of Memory are merely two sides of the same fact, or two different modes of viewing the same fact. We may, as psychologists, set out from either of them, and refer the other to it. ... But it is hardly allowable to do both. At least it must be said that by doing so we explain neither. We only show that the two things are essentially the same ; that my memory of having as cended Skiddaw on a given day, and my consciousness of being the same person who ascended Skiddaw on that day, are two modes of stat ing the same fact : a fact which psychology has as yet failed to resolve into anything more elementary. In analyzing the complex phenomena of consciousness, v/e must come to something ultimate ; and we seem to have reached two elements which have a good prim a facie claim to that title. There is, first, . . . the difference between a fact and the Thought of that fact : a distinction which we are able to cognize in the past, and which then constitutes Memory, and in the future, wrhen it constitutes Expectation ; but in neither case can we give any account of it except that it exists. . . . Secondly, in addition to this, and setting out from the belief . . . that the idea I now have was de rived from a previous sensation . . . there is the further conviction that this sensation . . . was my own ; that it happened to my self. In other words, I am aware of a long and uninterrupted succession of past feelings, going back as far as memory reaches, and terminating with the sensations I have at the present moment, all of which are con nected by an inexplicable tie, that distinguishes them not only from any succession or combination in mere thought, but also from the parallel successions of feelings which I believe, on satisfactory evidence, to have happened to each of the other beings, shaped like myself, whom I per ceive around me. This succession of feelings, which I call my memory of the past, is that by which I distinguish my Self. Myself is the person who had that series of feelings, and I know nothing of myself, by direct knowledge, except that I had them. But there is a bond of some sort among all the parts of the series, which makes me say that they were feelings of a person who was the same person throughout [according to us this is their ' warmth ' and resemblance to the ' central spiritual self ' now actually felt] and a different person from those who had any of the parallel successions of feelings ; and this bond, to me, constitutes my Ego. Here I think the question must rest, until some psychologist succeeds better than anyone else has done, in showing a mode in which the analysis can be carried further." f * Analysis, etc., J. S. Mill's Edition, vol. i. p. 331. The ' as it were is delightfully characteristic of the school. f J. Mill's Analysis, vol. n. p. 175. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 857 The reader must judge of our own success in carrying the analysis farther. The various distinctions we have made are all parts of an endeavor so to do. John Mill him self, in a later- written passage, so far from advancing in the line of analysis, seems to fall back upon something peril ously near to the Soul. He says : " The fact of recognizing a sensation, , . . remembering that it has been felt before, is the simplest and most elementary fact of mem ory : and the inexplicable tie . . . which connects tha present con sciousness with the past one of which it reminds me, is as near as I think we can get to a positive conception of Self. That there is some thing real in this tie, real as the sensations themselves, and not a mere product of the laws of thought without any i'ac: corresponding to it, I hold to be indubitable. . . . This original element, ... to which we cannot give any name but its own peculiar one, without implying some false or ungrounded theory, is the Ego, or Self. As such I ascribe a reality to the Ego — to my own mind — different from that real existence as a Permanent Possibility, which is the only reality I acknowledge in Matter. ... We are forced to apprehend every part of the series as linked with the other parts by something in common which is not the feelings themselves, any more than the succession of the feelings is the feelings themselves -, and as that which is the same in the first as in the second, in the second as in the third, in the third as in the fourth, and so on, must be the same in the first and in the fiftieth, this com mon element is a permanent element. But beyond this we can affirm nothing of it except the states of consciousness themselves. The feel ings or consciousnesses which belong or have belonged to it, and its possibilities of having more, are the only facts there are to be asserted of Self — the only positive attributes, except permanence, which we can ascribe to it." * Mr. Mill's habitual method of philosophizing was to affirm boldly some general doctrine derived from his father, and then make so many concessions of detail to its enemies as practically to abandon it altogether. f In this place the * Examination of Hamilton, 4th ed. p. 263. f His chapter on the Psychological Theory of Mind is a beautiful case in point, and his concessions there have become so celebrated that they must be quoted for the reader's benefit. He ends the chapter with these words (loc. cit. p. 247): "The theory, therefore, which resolves Mind into a series of feelings, with a background of possibilities of feeling, can effectually withstand the most invidious of the arguments directed against it. But groundless as are the extrinsic objections, the theory has intrinsic difficul- 358 PSYCHOLOGY. concessions amount, so far as they are intelligible, to the admission of something very like the Soul. This 'inex plicable tie ' which connects the feelings, this ' something in common ' by which they are linked and which is not the passing feelings themselves, but something ' permanent,' of which we can ' affirm nothing ' save its attributes and its permanence, what is it but metaphysical Substance come again to life ? Much as one must respect the fairness of Mill's temper, quite as much must one regret his failure of acumen at this point. At bottom he makes the same blunder as Hume : the sensations per se, he thinks, have no 'tie.' The tie of resemblance and continuity which the remembering Thought finds among them is not a ' real tie * but 'a mere product of the laws of thought;' and the fact that the present Thought 'appropriates ' them is also ties which we have not set forth, and which it seems to me beyond the power of metaphysical analysis to remove. . . , " The thread of consciousness which composes the mind's phenomenal life consist not only of present sensations, but likewise, iu part, of mem ories and expectations. Now what are these ? In themselves, they are present feelings, states of present consciousness, and in that respect not dis tinguished from sensations. They all, moreover, resemble some given sen sations or feelings, of which we have previously had experience. But they are attended with the peculiarity that each of them involves a belief in more than its own present existence. A sensation involves only this ; but a remembrance of sensation, even it' not referred to any particular date, in volves the suggestion and belief that a sensation, of which it is a copy or representation, actually existed in the past ; and an expectation involves the belief, more or less positive, that a sensation or other feeling to which it directly refers will exist in the future. Nor can the phenomena in volved in these two states of consciousness be adequately expressed, with out saying that the belief they include is, that I myself formerly had, or that I myself, and no other, shall hereafter have, the sensations remembered or expected. The fact believed is, that the sensations did actually form, or will hereafter form, part of the self-same series of states, or thread of con sciousness, of which the remembrance or expectation of those sensations is the part now present. If, therefore, we speak of the mind as a series of feelings we are obliged to complete the statement by calling it a series of feelings which is aware of itself as past and future ; and we are reduced to the alternative of believing that tho mind, or Ego, is something different from any series of feelings, or possibilities of them, or of accepting the paradox that something which ex hy pothesi is but a series of feelings, can be aware of itself as a series. " The truth is. that we are here face to face with that final inexplicw- THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 359 no real tie. But whereas Hume was contented to say that there might after all be no ' real tie,' Mill, unwilling to ad mit this possibility, is driven, like any scholastic, to place it in a non-phenomenal world. John Mill's concessions may be regarded as the defini tive bankruptcy of the associationist description of the con sciousness of self, starting, as it does, with the best intentions, and dimly conscious of the path, but ' perplexed in the extreme ' at last with the inadequacy of those ' simple feelings,' non-cognitive, non-transcendent of themselves, which were the only baggage it was willing to take along. One muse beg memory, knowledge on the part of the feel ings of something outside themselves. That granted, every other true thing follows naturally, and it is hard to go astray. The knowledge the present feeling has of the past bility, at which, as Sir W. Hamilton observes, we inevitably arrive when we reach ultimate facts ; and in general, one mode of stating it only appears more incomprehensible than another, because the whole of human lan guage is accommodated to the one, and is so incongruous with the other that it cannot be expressed in any terms which do not deny its truth. The real stumbling-block is perhaps not in any theory of the fact, but in the fact itself. The true incomprehensibly perhaps is, that something which has ceased, or is not yet in existence, can still be, in a manner, present; that a series of feelings, the infinitely greater part of which is past or future, can be gathered up, as it were, into a simple present conception, accompanied by a belief of reality. I think by far the wisest thing we can do is to accept the inexplicable fact, without any theory of how it takes place ; and when we are obliged to speak of it in terms which assume a theory, to use them with a reservation as to their meaning." In a later place in the same book (p. 561) Mill, speaking of what may rightly be demanded of a theorist, says: "He is not entitled to frame a theory from one class of phenomena, extend it to another class which it does not fit, and excuse himself by saying that if we cannot make it fit, it is because ultimate facts are inexplicable." The class of phenomena which the associationist school takes to frame its theory of the Ego are feel ings unaware of each other. The class of phenomena the Ego presents are feelings of which the later ones are intensely aware of those that went be fore. The two classes do not 'fit,' and no exercise of ingenuity can ever make them fit. No shuffling of unaware feelings can make them aware. To get the awareness we must openly beg it by postulating a new feel ing which has it. This new feeling is no ' Theory ' of the phenomena, but a simple statement of them ; and as such I postulate in the text the present passing Thought as a psychic integer, with its knowledge of so much that has gone before. 360 PSYCHOLOGY. ones is a real tie between them , so is their resemblance ; so is their continuity ; so is the one's ' appropriation * of the other : all are real ties, realized in the judging Thought of every moment, the only place where disconnec tions could be realized, did they exist. Hume and Mill both imply that a disconnection can be realized there, whilst a tie cannot. But the ties and the disconnections are ex actly on a par, in this matter of self-consciousness. The way in which the present Thought appropriates the past is a real way, so long as no other owner appropriates it in a more real way, and so long as the Thought has no grounds for repudiating it stronger than those which lead to its appropriation. But no other owner ever does in point of fact present himself for my past ; and the grounds which I perceive for appropriating it — viz., continuity and resem blance with the present — outweigh those I perceive for dis owning it — viz., distance in time. My present Thought stands thus in the plenitude of ownership of the train oi my past selves, is owner not only de facto, but de jure, the most real owner there can be, and all without the supposi tion of any 'inexplicable tie,' but in a perfectly verifiable and phenomenal way. Turn we now to what we may call THE TRANSCENDENTALIST THEORY, which owes its origin to Kant. Kant's own statements are too lengthy and obscure for verbatim quotation here, so I must give their substance only. Kant starts, as I understand him, from a view of the Object essentially like our own de scription of it on p. 275 ft, that is, it is a system of things, qualities or facts in relation. "Object is that in the knowl edge (Begriff) of which the Manifold of a given Perception is connected." * But whereas we simply begged the vehi cle of this connected knowledge in the shape of what we call the present Thought, or section of the Stream of Con sciousness (which we declared to be the ultimate fact for psychology), Kant denies this to be an ultimate fact and insists on analyzing it into a large number of distinct, * Kritik d. reinen VernuDft, 2te Aufl. § 17. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 361 though equally essential, elements. The ' Manifoldness ' of the Object is due to Sensibility, which per se is chaotic, and the unity is due to the synthetic handling which this Manifold receives from the higher faculties of Intuition, Apprehension, Imagination, Understanding, and Appercep tion. It is the one essential spontaneity of the Under standing which, under these different names, brings unity into the manifold of sense. "The Understanding is, in fact, nothing more than the faculty of binding together a priori, and of bringing the Manifold of given ideas under the unity of Apperception, which consequently is the supreme principle in all human knowledge" (§ 16). The material connected must be given by lower fac ulties to the Understanding, for the latter is not an intui tive faculty, but by nature ' empty.' And the bringing of this material ' under the unity of Apperception ' is ex plained by Kant to mean the thinking it always so that, whatever its other determinations be, it may be known as thought by me.* Though this consciousness, that / think it, need not be at every moment explicitly realized, it is always capable of being realized. For if an object incapable of being combined with the idea of a thinker were there, how could it be known, how related to other objects, how form part of * experience ' at all ? The awareness that I think is therefore implied in all ex perience. No connected consciousness of anything without that of Self&H its presupposition and ' transcendental ' condi tion ! All things, then, so far as they are intelligible at all, are so through combination with pure consciousness of Self, * It must be noticed, in justice to what was said above on page 274 ff., that neither Kant nor his successors anywhere discriminate between the presence of the apperceiving Ego to the combined object, and the aware ness by that Ego of its own presence and of its distinctness from what it apperceives. That the Object must be known to something which thinks, and that it must be known to something which thinks that it thinks, are treated by them as identical necessities, — by what logic, does not appear. Kant tries to soften the jump in the reasoning by saying the thought of it self on the part of the Ego need only be potential — " the 'I think ' must be capable of accompanying all other knowledge " — but a thought which is only potential is actually no thought at all, which practically gives up the 362 PSYCHOLOGY. and apart from this, at least potential, combination nothing is knowable to us at all. But this self, whose consciousness Kant thus established deductively as a conditio sine qua non of experience, is in the same breath denied by him to have any positive attributes. Although Kant's name for it — the ' original transcendental synthetic Unity of Apperception '—is so long, our con sciousness about it is, according to him, short enough. Self- consciousness of this * transcendental ' sort tells us, * not how we appear, not how we inwardly are, but only that we are' (§25). At the basis of our knowledge of our selves there lies only "the simple and utterly empty idea: /; of which we cannot even say we have a notion, but only a con sciousness which accompanies all notions. In this /, or he or it (the thing) which thinks, nothing more u represented than the bare transcendental Subject of the knowledge —x, which is only recognized by the thoughts which are its pre dicates, and of which, taken by itself, we cannot form the least conception" (ibid. ' Paralogisms '). The pure Ego of all apperception is thus for Kant not the soul, but only that ' Subject ' which is the necessary correlate of the Object in all knowledge. There is a soul, Kant thinks, but this mere ego-form of our consciousness tells us nothing about it, neither whether it be substantial, nor whether it be imma terial, nor whether it be simple, nor whether it be per manent. These declarations on Kant's part of the utter barrenness of the consciousness of the pure Self, and of the consequent impossibility of any deductive or ' rational ' psychology, are what, more than anything else, earned for him the title of the 'all-destroyer.' The only self we know anything positive about, he thinks, is the empirical me, not the pure /; the self which is an object among other objects and the ' constituents ' of which we ourselves have seen, and recognized to be phenomenal things appearing in the form of space as well as time. This, for our purposes, is a sufficient account of the * transcendental ' Ego. Those purposes go no farther than to ascertain whether anything in Kant's conception ought to make us give up our own, of a remembering and appropriating Thought inces- THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 363 santly renewed. In many respects Kant's meaning is ob scure, but it will not be necessary for us to squeeze the texts in order to make sure what it actually and historically was. If we can define clearly two or three things which it may possibly have been, that will help us just as much to clear our own ideas. On the whole, a defensible interpretation of Kant's view would take somewhat the following shape. Like our selves he believes in a Reality outside the mind of which he writes, but the critic who vouches for that reality does so on grounds of faith, for it is not a verifiable phenomenal thing. Neither is it manifold. The ' Manifold ' which the intellectual functions combine is a mental manifold alto gether, which thus stands betiueen the Ego of Appercep tion and the outer Reality, but still stands inside the mind. In the function of knowing there is a multiplicity to be con nected, and Kant brings this multiplicity inside the mind. The Reality becomes a mere empty locus, or unknowable, the so-called Noumenon ; the manifold phenomenon is in the mind. We, on the contrary, put the Multiplicity with the Reality outside, and leave the mind simple. Both of us deal with the same elements — thought and object — the only question is in which of them the multiplicity shall be lodged. Wherever it is lodged it must be * synthetized ' when it comes to be thought. And that particular way of lodging it will be the better, which, in addition to describ ing the facts naturally, makes the ' mystery of synthesis ' least hard to understand. Well, Kant's way of describing the facts is mythological. The notion of our thought being this sort of an elaborate internal machine-shop stands condemned by all we said in favor of its simplicity on pages 276 ff. Our Thought is not composed of parts, however so composed its objects may be. There is no originally chaotic manifold in it to be re duced to order. There is something almost shocking in the notion of so chaste a function carrying this Kantian hurly- burly in her womb. If we are to have a dualism of Thought and Reality at all, the multiplicity should be lodged in the latter and not in the former member of the couple of related terms. The parts and their relations surely belong less to the knower than to what is known. 364 PSYCHOLOGY. But even were all the mythology true, the process ol synthesis would in no whit be explained by calling the inside of the mind its seat. No mystery would be made lighter by such means. It is just as much a puzzle how the * Ego ' can amploy the productive Imagination to make the Understand ing uss the categories to combine the data which Recognition, Association, and Apprehension receive from sensible Intui tion, as how the Thought can combine the objective facts. Phrase it as one may, the difficulty is always the same : the Many known by the One. Or does one seriously think he understands better how the knower ' connects ' its objects, when one calls the former a transcendental Ego and the latter a * Manifold of Intuition' than when one calls them Thought and Things respectively ? Knowing must have a vehicle. Call the vehicle Ego, or call it Thought, Psycho sis, Soul, Intelligence, Consciousness, Mind, Reason, Feel ing, — what you like — it must knoiv. The best grammatical subject for the verb knoiv would, if possible, be one from whose other properties the knowing could be deduced. And if there be no such subject, the best one would be that with the fewest ambiguities and the least pretentious name. By Kant's confession, the transcendental Ego has no properties, and from it nothing can be deduced. Its name is pretentious, and, as we shall presently see, has its mean ing ambiguously mixed up with that of the substantial soul. So on every possible account we are excused from using it instead of our own term of the present passing ' Thought,' as the principle by which the Many is simul taneously known. The ambiguity referred to in the meaning of the tran scendental Ego is as to whether Kant signified by it an Agent, and by the Experience it helps to constitute, an operation; or whether the experience is an event prod need in an unassigned way, and the Ego a mere indwelling ele~ ment therein contained. If an operation be meant, then Ego and Manifold must both be existent prior to that col lision which results in the experience of one by the other. If a mere analysis is meant, there is no such prior exist ence, and the elements only are in so far as they are in union. Now Kant's tone and language are everywhere the very THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 865 words of one who is talking of operations and the agents by which they are performed.* And yet there is reason to think that at bottom he may have had nothing of the sort in mind.f In this uncertainty we need again do no more than decide what to think of his transcendental Ego if it be an agent. Well, if it be so, Transcendentalism is only Substantial- ism grown shame-faced, and the Ego only a ' cheap and nasty ' edition of the soul. All our reasons for preferring the * Thought : to the * Soul ' apply with redoubled force when the Soul is shrunk to this estate. The Soul truly ex plained nothing ; the ' syntheses,' which she performed, were simply taken ready-made and clapped on to her as expressions of her nature taken after the fact ; but at least she had some semblance of nobility and outlook. She was called active ; might select ; was responsible, and per manent in her way. The Ego is simply not 'king : as in effectual and windy an abortion as Philosophy can show. It would indeed be one of Reason's tragedies if the good Kant, with all his honesty and strenuous pains, should have deemed this conception an important outbirth of his thought. But we have seen that Kant deemed if: of next to no im portance at all. It was reserved for his Eiclitean and He gelian successors to call it the first Principle of Philosophy, to spell its name in capitals and pronounce it with adora tion, to act, in short, as if they were going up in a balloon, whenever the notion of it crossed their mind. Here again, however, I am uncertain of the facts of history, and know that I may not read my authors aright. The whole lesson of Kantian and post-Kantian speculation is, it seems to me, the lesson of simplicity. With Kant, complication both of thought and statement was an inborn infirmity, enhanced * "As regards the soul, now, or the ' I,' the ' thinker,' the whole drift of Kant's advance upon Hume and sensational psychology is towards the demonstration that the subject of knowledge is an Agent." (G. B. Morris, Kant's Critique, etc. (Chicago, 1882), p. 224.) f "In Kant's Prolegomena," says II. Cohen,— I do not myself find the passage,— "it is expressly said that the problem is not to show how expe rience arises (ensteht), but of what it consists (beeteM)." (Kant's Theorie d. Erfahrung (1871), p. 138.) §66 PSYCHOLOGY. by the musty academicism of his Konigsberg existence, With Hegel it was a raging fever. Terribly, therefore, do the sour grapes which these fathers of philosophy have eaten set our teeth on edge. We have in England and America, however, a contemporary continuation of Hegel- ism from which, fortunately, somewhat simpler deliverances come ; and, unable to find any definite psychology in what Hegel, Kosenkranz, or Erdmann tells us of the Ego, I turn to Caird and Green. The great difference, practically, between these authors and Kant is their complete abstraction from the onlooking Psychologist and from the Reality he thinks he knows ; or rather it is the absorption of both of these outlying terms into the proper topic of Psychology, viz., the mental ex perience of the mind under observation. The Eeality coalesces with the connected Manifold, the Psychologist with the Ego, knowing becomes 'connecting,' and there results no longer a finite or criticisable, but an ' absolute ' Experience, of which the Object and the Subject are always the same. Our finite ' Thought ' is virtually and potentially this eternal (or rather this ' timeless '), absolute Ego, arid only provisionally and speciously the limited thing which it seems primd facie to be. The later ' sections ' of our * Stream,' which come and appropriate the earlier ones, are those earlier ones, just as in substantialism the Soul is throughout all time the same.* This ' solipsistic ' char- * The contrast between the Monism thus reached and our own psycho logical point of view can be exhibited schematically thus, the terms in squares standing for what, for us, are the ultimate irreducible data of psychological science, and the vincula above it symbolizing the reductions which post-Kantian idealism performs : Absolute Self -consciousness Reason or Experience. Transcendental Ego World <*~~ "^ ••" •"• ~» Psychologist Thought Thought's Object Psychologist's Reality Psychologist's Object. These reductions account for the ubiquitousness of the ' psychologist's fallacy ' (bk. ir. ch. i. D. 32) in the modern monistic writings. For us it is THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 367 acter of an Experience conceived as absolute really annihi lates psychology as a distinct body of science. Psychology is a natural science, an account of particu lar finite streams of thought, coexisting and succeeding in time. It is of course conceivable (though far from clearly so) that in the last metaphysical resort all these streams of thought may be thought by one universal All-thinker. But in this metaphysical notion there is no profit for psy chology ; for grant that one Thinker does think in all of us, still what He thinks in me and what in you can never be de duced from the bare idea of Him. The idea of Him seems even to exert a positively paralyzing effect on the mind. The existence of finite thoughts is suppressed altogether. Thought's characteristics, as Professor Green says, are "not to be sought in the incidents of individual lives which last but for a day. ... No knowledge, nor any mental act involved in knowledge, can properly be called a ' phenomenon of consciousness.' . . . For a phenomenon is a sensible event, related in the way of antecedence or consequence to other sensible events, but the conscious ness which constitutes a knowledge ... is not an event so related nor made up of such events." Again, if "we examine the constituents of any perceived object, ... we shall find alike that it is only for consciousness that they can exist, and that the consciousness for which they thus exist cannot be merely a series of phenomena or a succession of states. . . . It then becomes clear that there is a function of consciousness, as exercised in the most rudi mentary experience [namely, the function of synthesis] which is incom patible with the definition of consciousness as any sort of succession of any sort of phenomena.'" * Were we to follow these remarks, we should have to abandon our notion of the ' Thought ' (perennially renewed in time, but always cognitive thereof), and to espouse instead of an unpardonable logical sin, when talking of a thought's knowledge (eithet of an object or of itself), to change the terms without warning, and, sub stituting the psychologist's knowledge therefor, still make as if we were continuing to talk of the same thing. For monistic idealism, this is the very enfranchisement of philosophy, and of course cannot be too much in dulged in. * T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, ££ 07, 61, 64. 368 PSYCHOLOGY. it an entity copied from thought in all essential respects, t>ut differing from it in being ' out of time.' What psychology can gain by this barter .would be hard to divine. More over this resemblance of the timeless Ego to the Soul is completed by other resemblances still. The monism of the post-Kantian idealists seems always lapsing into a regular old-fashioned spiritualistic dualism. They inces santly talk as if, like the Soul, their All-thinker were an Agent, operating on detached materials of sense. This may come from the accidental fact that the English writings of the school have been more polemic than constructive, and that a reader may often take for a positive profession a statement ad hominem meant as part of a reduction to the absurd, or mistake the analysis of a bit of knowledge into elements for a dramatic myth about its creation. But I think the matter has profounder roots. Professor Green constantly talks of the ' activity ' of Self as a ' condition ' of knowledge taking place. Facts are said to become incor porated with other facts only through the ' action of a com bining self-consciousness upon data of sensation.' "Every object we perceive . . . requires, in order to its presen tation, the action of a principle of consciousness, not itself subject to conditions of time, upon successive appearances, such action as may hold the appearances together, without fusion, in an apprehended fact." * It is needless to repeat that the connection of things in our knowledge is in no whit explained by making it the deed of an agent whose essence is self-identity and who is out of time. The agency of phenomenal thought coming and going in time is just as easy to understand. And when it is furthermore said that the agent that combines is the same ' self-distinguishing subject ' which ' in another mode of its activity ' presents the manifold object to itself, the unintelligibilities become quite paroxysmal, and we are forced to confess that the entire school of thought in ques tion, in spite of occasional glimpses of something more re fined, still dwells habitually in that mythological stage of thought where phenomena are explained as results of * Loc. cit. § 64. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 369 dramas enacted by entities which but reduplicate the char acters of the phenomena themselves. The self must not only know its object, — that is too bald and dead a relation to be written down and left in its static state. The know ing must be painted as a ' famous victory ' in which the object's distinctness is in some way ' overcome.' " The self exists as one self only as it opposes itself, as object, tc itself as subject, and immediately denies and transcends that opposi tion. Only because it is such a concrete unity, which has in itself a resolved contradiction, can the intelligence cope with all the manifold- ness and division of the mighty universe, and hope to master its secrets. As the lightning sleeps in the dew-drop, so in the simple and trans parent unity of self-consciousness there is held in equilibrium that vital antagonism of opposites which . . . seems to rend the world asunder. The intelligence is able to understand the world, or, in other words, to break down the barrier between itself and things and find itself in them, just because its own existence is implicitly the solution of all the division and conflict of things." * This dynamic (I had almost written dynamitic) way of representing knowledge has the merit of not being tame. To turn from it to our own psychological formulation is like turning from the fireworks, trap-doors, and transformations of the pantomime into the insipidity of the midnight, where " ghastly through the drizzling rain, On the bald street breaks the blank day ! "f And yet turn we must, with the confession that our 'Thought' — a cognitive phenomenal event in time — is, if it exist at all, itself the only Thinker which the facts require. The only service that transcendental egoism has done to psychology has been by its protests against Hume's ' bundle '- * E. Caird: Hegel (1883), p. 149. f One is almost tempted to believe that the pantomime-state of mind and that of the Hegelian dialectics are, emotionally considered, one and the same thing. Iii the pantomime all common things are represented to happen in impossible ways, people jump down each other's tnroats, houses turn inside out, old women become young men, everything 'passes into its opposite ' with inconceivable celerity and skill; and this, so far from producing perplexity, brings rapture to the beholder's mind. And so in the Hegelian logic, relations elsewhere recognized under the insipid name of distinctions (such as that between knower and object, many and one) must first be translated into impossibilities and contradictions, then 'tran scended ' and identified by miracle, ere the proper temper is induced for thoroughly enjoying the spectacle they show. 370 PSYCHOLOGY. theory of mind. But this service has been ill-performed ; for the Egoists themselves, let them say what they will, believe in the bundle, and in their own system merely tie it up, with their special transcendental string, invented for that use alone. Besides, they talk as if, with this miraculous tying or 'relating,' the Ego's duties were done. Of its far more important duty of choosing some of the things it ties and appropriating them, to the exclusion of the rest, they tell us never a word. To sum up, then, my own opinion of the transcendentalist school, it is (whatever ulterior meta physical truth it may divine) a school in which psychology at least has naught to learn, and whose deliverances about the Ego in particular in no wise oblige us to revise our own formulation of the Stream of Thought.* With this, all possible rival formulations have been dis cussed. The literature of the Self is large, but all its * The reader will please understand that I arn quite willing to leave the hypothesis of the transcendental Ego as a substitute for the passing Thought open to discussion on general speculative grounds. Only in this booK I prefer to stick by the common sense assumption that we have suc cessive conscious states, because all psychologists make it, and because one does not see how there can be a Psychology written which does not postulate such thoughts as its ultimate data. The data of all natural sciences be come in turn subjects of a critical treatment more refined than that which the sciences themselves accord; and so it may fare in the end with our passing Thought. We have ourselves seen (pp. 299-805) that the sensible certainty of its existence is less strong than is usually assumed. My quarrel with the transcendental Egoists is mainly about their grounds for their belief. Did they consistently propose it as a substitute for the passing Thought, did they consistently deny the latter's existence, I should respect their position more. But so far as I can understand them, they habitually believe in the passing Thought also. They seem even to believe in the Lockian stream of separate ideas, for the chief glory of the Ego in their pages is always its power to 'overcome' this separatcness and unite the naturally disunited, ' synthetizing ,' ' connecting,' or ' relating ' th,e ideas together being used as synonyms, by transcendeutalist writers, for knowing various objects at once. Not the being conscious at all, but the being con* scious of many things together is held to be the difficult thing, in our psychic life, which only the wonder-working Ego can perform. But on what slippery ground does one get the moment one changes the definite notion of knowing an object into the altogether vague one of uniting or synthetizing the ideas of its various parts 1 — In the chapter on Sensation we shall come upon all this again. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 371 authors may be classed as radical or mitigated representa tives of tlie three schools we have named, substantialismv associationism, or transcendentalism. Our own opinion must be classed apart, although it incorporates essential elements from all three schools. There need never have been a quarrel between associationism and its rivals if the former had admitted the indecomposable unity of every pulse of thought, and the latter been ivilling to allow that ' perishing ' pulses oj thought might recollect and know. We m&/y sum up by saying that personality implies the incessant presence of tAvo elements, an objective person, known by a passing subjective Thought and recognized as continuing in time. Hereafter let us use the ivords ME and I for the empirical person and the judging Thought. Certain vicissitudes in the me demand our notice. In the first place, although its changes are gradual, they become in time great. The central part of the me is the feeling of the body and of the adjustments in the head ; and in the feeling of the body should be included that of the general emotional tones and tendencies, for at bottom these are but the habits in which organic activities and sen sibilities run. Well, from infancy to old age, this assem blage of feelings, most constant of all, is yet a prey to slow mutation. Our powers, bodily and mental, change at least as fast.* Our possessions notoriously are perishable facts. *" When we compare the listless inactivity of the infant, slumbering from the moment at which he takes his milky food to the moment at which he wakes to require it again, with the restless energies of that mighty being which he is to become in his maturer years, pouring truth after truth, in rapid and dazzling profusion, upon the world, or grasping in his single hand the destiny of empires, how few are the circumstances of resemblance which we can trace, of all that intelligence which is afterwards to be dis played; how little more is seen than what serves to give feeble motion to the mere machinery of life 1 ... Every age, if we may speak of many ages in the few years of human life, seems to be marked with a distinct character. Each has its peculiar objects which excite lively affections; and in each, exertion is excited by affections, which in other periods terminate without inducing active desire. The boy finds a world in less space than that which bounds his visible horizon; he wanders over his range of field and exhausts his strength in the pursuit of objects which, in the years that 372 PSYCHOLOGY. The identity which the /discovers, as it surveys this long procession, can only be a relative identity, that of a slow shifting in which there is always some common ingredient retained.* The commonest element of all, the most uni form, is the possession of the same memories. However different the man may be from the youth, both look back on the same childhood, and call it their own. Thus the identity found by the / in its me is only a loosely construed thing, an identity ' on the whole,' just like that which any outside observer might find in the same follow, are seen only to be neglected; while to him the objects that are afterwards to absorb his whole soul are as indifferent as the objects of his present passions are destined then to appear. . . . How many opportuni ties must every one have had of witnessing the progress of intellectual decay, and the coldness that steals upon the once benevolent heart! We quit our country, perhaps at an early period of life, and after an absence of many years we return with all the remembrances of past pleasure which grow more tender as they approach their objects. We eagerly seek him to whose paternal voice we have been accustomed to listen with the same rev erence as if its predictions had possessed oracular certainty, — who first led us into knowledge, ^nd whose image has been constantly joined in our miml with all that veneration which does not forbid love. We find him sunk, perhaps, in the imbecility of idiotism, unable to recognize us,— igno rant alike of the past and of the future, and living only in the sensibility of animal gratification. We seek the favorite companion of our childhood, whose tenderness of heart, etc. . . . We find him hardened into a man, meeting us scarcely with the cold hypocrisy of dissembled friendship— in his general relations to the world careless of the misery lie is not to feel. . . . When we observe all this, ... do we use only a metaphor of little meaning when we say of him that he is become a different person, and that his mind and character are changed? In what does the identity consist? . . . The supposed test of identity, when applied to the mind in these cases, completely fails. It neither affects, nor is affected, in the same man ner in the same circumstances. It therefore, if the test be a just one, is not the same identical mind." (T. Brown: Lectures on the Philosophy" of the Human Mind, 'on Mental Identity. '> * " Sir John Cutler had a pair of black worsted stockings, which his maid darned so often with silk that they became at last a pair of silk stockings. Now, supposing these stockings of Sir John's endued with some degree of consciousness at every particular darning, they would have been sensible that they were the same individual pair of stockings both be fore and after the darning; and this sensation would have continued in them through all the succession of darnings; and yet after the last of all there was not perhaps one thread left of the first pair of stockings : but they were grown to be silk stockings, as was said before." (Pope's Mar tiuus Scriblerus. quoted by Brown, ibid.} THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 373 assemblage of facts. We often say of a man ' lie is so changed one would not know him '; and so does a man, less often, speak of himself. These changes in the me, recognized by the I, or by outside observers, may be grave or slight. They deserve some notice here. THE MUTATIONS OF THE SELF may be divided into two main classes : 1. Alterations of memory ; and 2. Alterations in the present bodily and spiritual selves. 1. Alterations of memory are either losses or false recol lections. In either case the me is changed. Should a man be punished for what he did in his childhood and no longer remembers ? Should he be punished for crimes enacted in post-epileptic unconsciousness, somnambulism, or in any involuntarily induced state of which no recollection is re tained ? Law, in accord with common-sense, says : " No ; he is not the same person forensically now which he was then." These losses of memory are a normal incident of extreme old age, and the person's me shrinks in the ratio of the facts that have disappeared. In dreams we forget our waking experiences ; they are as if they were not. And the converse is also true. As a rule, no memory is retained during the waking state of what has happened during mesmeric trance, although when again entranced the person may remember it distinctly, and may then forget facts belonging to the waking state. We thus have, within the bounds of healthy mental life, an approach to an alternation of me's. False ni Nmories are by no means rare occurrences in most of us, and, whenever they occur, they distort the con sciousness of the me. Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them, or they may only have dreamed or imagined thoy did so. The content of a dream will oftentimes insert itself into the stream of real life in a most perplexing way. The most frequent source of false memory is the accounts we give to 9thers of our experiences. Such accounts we almost ai 374 PSYCHOLOGY. ways make both more simple and more interesting than the truth. "We quote what we should have said or done, rather than what we really said or did ; and in the first telling we may be fully aware of the distinction. But ere long the fiction expels the reality from memory and reigns in its stead alone. This is one great source, of the fallibil ity of testimony meant to be quite honest. Especially where the marvellous is concerned, the story takes a tilt that way, and the memory follows the story. Dr. Carpen ter quotes from Miss Cobbe the following, as an instance of a very common sort : " It happened once to the Writer to hear a most scrupulously con scientious friend narrate an incident of table-turning, to which she appended an assurance that the table rapped when nobody was within a yard of it. The writer being confounded by this latter fact, the lady, though fully satisfied of the accuracy of her statement, promised to look at the note she had made ten years previously of the transac tion. The note was examined, and was found to contain the distinct statement that the table rapped when the hands of six persons rested on it ! The lady's memory as to all other points proved to be strictly correct ; and in this point she had erred in entire good faith."* It is next to impossible to get a story of this sort accu rate in all its details, although it is the inessential details that suffer most change. f Dickens and Balzac were said to have constantly mingled their fictions with their real expe riences. Every one must have known some specimen of our mortal dust so intoxicated with the thought of his own person and the sound of his own voice as never to be able even to think the truth when his autobiography was in question. Amiable, harmless, radiant J. V. ! mayst thou ne'er wake to the difference between thy real and thy fondly-imagined self ! J * Hours of Work and Play, p. 100. |For a careful study of the errors in narratives, see E. Gurney: Phan tasms of the Living, vol. i. pp. 126-158. In the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research for May 1887 Mr. Richard Hodgson shows by an extraordinary array of instances how utterly inaccurate everyone's description from memory of a rapid series of events is certain to be. \ See Josiah Royce (Mind, vol. 13, p. 244, and Proceedings of Am. Soc. of Psych. Research, vol. i. p. 366), for evidence that a certain sort of hal lucination of memory which he calls ' pseudo-presentiment ' is no uncom mon phenomenon. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 375 2. When we pass beyond alterations of memory to ab normal alterations in the present self we have still graver disturbances. These alterations are of three main types, from the descriptive point of view. But certain cases unite features of two or more types ; and our knowledge of the elements and causes of these changes of personality is so slight that the division into types must not be regarded as having any profound significance. The types are ; (1) Insane delusions ; (2) Alternating selves ; (3) Mediumships or possessions. 1) In insanity we often have delusions projected into the past, which are melancholic or sanguine according to the character of the disease. But the worst alterations of the self come from present perversions of sensibility and impulse which leave the past undisturbed, but induce the patient to think that the present me is an altogether new personage. Something of this sort happens normally in the rapid expansion of the whole character, intellectual as well as volitional, which takes place after the time of puberty. The pathological cases are curious enough to merit longer notice. The basis of our personality, as M. Bibot says, is that feeling of our vitality which, because it is so perpetually present, remains in the background of our consciousness. "It is the basis because, always present, always acting, without peace or rest, it knows neither sleep nor fainting, and lasts as long as life itself, of which it is one form. It serves as a support to that self- conscious me which memory constitutes, it is the medium of association among its other parts. . . . Suppose now that it were possible at once to change our body and put another into its place : skeleton, vessels, viscera, muscles, skin, everything made new, except the nervous sys tem with its stored-up memory of the past. There can be no doubt that in such a case the afflux of unaccustomed vital sensations would produce the gravest disorders. Between the old sense of existence en graved on the nervous system, and the new one acting with all the intensity of its reality and novelty, there would be irreconcilable con tradiction." * * Maladies de la Memoire, p. 85. The little that would be left of per sonal consciousness if all our senses stopped their work is ingenuously shown in the remark of the extraordinary anaesthetic youth whose case 376 PSYCHOLOGY. "With the beginnings of cerebral disease there often happens something quite comparable to this : "Masses of new sensation, hitherto foreign to the individual, im pulses and ideas of the same inexperienced kind, for example terrors, representations of enacted crime, of enemies pursuing one, etc. At the outset, these stand in contrast with the old familiar me, as a strange, often astonishing and abhorrent thou. * Often their invasion into the former circle of feelings is felt as if the old self were being taken pos session of by a dark overpowering might, and the fact of such 'posses sion' is described in fantastic images. Always this doubleness, this struggle of the old self against the new discordant forms of experience, is accompanied with painful mental conflict, with passion, with violent emotional excitement. This is in great part the reason for the common experience, that the first stage in the immense majority of cases of mental disease is an emotional alteration particularly of a melancholic sort. If now the brain-affection, which is the immediate cause of the new abnormal train of ideas, be not relieved, the latter becomes con firmed. It may gradually contract associations with the trains ot ideas which characterized the old self, or portions of the latter may be ex tinguished and lost in the progress of the cerebral malady, so that little by little the opposition of the two conscious me's abates, and the emo tional storms are calmed. But by that time the old me itself has been falsified and turned into another by those associations, by that recep tion into itself of the abnormal elements of feeling and of will. The patient may again be quiet, and his thought sometimes logically correct, but in it the morbid erroneous ideas are always present, with the adhe sions they have contracted, as uncontrollable premises, and the man is no longer the same, but a really new person, his old self trans formed." f Professor Strttmpell reports (in the Deulsches Archiv f. klin. Med., xxn. 847, 1878). This boy, whom we shall later find instructive in many con nections, was totally anaesthetic without and (so far as could be tested) within, save for the sight of one eye and the hearing of one ear. When his eye was closed, he said : !< Wenn ich nicM sehen kann, da BIN ich gar niclit—\ no longer am." * " One can compare the state of the patient to nothing so well as to that of a caterpillar, which, keeping all its caterpillar's ideas and remem brances, should suddenly become a butterfly with a butterfly's senses and sensations. Between the old and the new state, between the first self, that of the caterpillar, and the second self, that of the butterfly, there is a deep scission, a complete rupture. The new feelings find no anterior series to which they can knit themselves on ; the patient can neither interpret nor use them ; he does not recognize them ; they are unknown. Hence two conclusions, the first which consists in his saying, I no longer am; tbfl second, somewhat later, which consists in his saying, Tarn another person.* (H. Taine: de 1'Intelligence, 3me edition (1878), p. 462. f W. Griesinger : Mental Diseases, § 29. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 377 But the patient himself rarely continues to describe the change in just these terms unless new bodily sensations in him or the loss of old ones play a predominant part. Mere perversions of sight and hearing, or even of impulse, soon cease to be felt as contradictious of the unity of the me. What the particular perversions of the bodily sensibil ity may be, which give rise to these contradictions, is for the most part impossible for a sound-minded person to con ceive. One patient has another self that repeats all his thoughts for him. Others, among whom are some of the first characters in history, have familiar daemons who speak with them, and are replied to. In another someone * makes ' his thoughts for him. Another has two bodies, lying in different beds. Some patients feel as if they had lost parts of their bodies, teeth, brain, stomach, etc. In some it is made of wood, glass, butter, etc. In some it does not exist any longer, or is dead, or is a foreign object quite separate from the speaker's self. Occasionally, parts of the body lose their connection for consciousness with the rest, and are treated as belonging to another person and moved by a hostile will. Thus the right hand may fight with the left as with an enemy.* Or the cries of the patient himself are assigned to another person with whom the patient expresses sympathy. The literature of insan ity is filled with narratives of such illusions as these. M. Taine quotes from a patient of Dr. Krishaber an account of sufferings, from which it will be seen how completely aloof from what is normal a man's experience may suddenly be come : " After the first or second day it was for some weeks impossible to observe or analyze myself. The suffering — angina pectoris — was too overwhelming. It was not till the first days of January that I could give an account to myself of what I experienced. . . . Here is the first tning of which I retain a clear remembrance. I was alone, and already a prey to permanent visual trouble, when I was suddenly seized with a visual trouble infinitely more pronounced. Objects grew small and re ceded to infinite distances — men and things together. I was myself im- * See the interesting case of ' old Stump ' in the Proceedings of the Am. Soc. for Psych. Research, p. 052. 378 PSYCHOLOGY. measurably far away. I looked about me with terror and astonish ment ; the world was escaping from me. ... I remarked at the same time that my voice was extremely far away from me, that it sounded no longer as if mine. I struck the ground with my foot, and perceived its resistance ; but this resistance seemed illusory — not that the soil was soft, but that the weight of my body was reduced to almost nothing. ... I had the feeling of being without weight. . . ." In addition to being so distant, "objects appeared to me flat. When I spoke with anyone, I saw him like an image cut out of paper with no relief. . . . This sensation lasted intermittently for two years. . . . Constantly it seemed as if my legs did not belong to me. It was almost as bad with my arms. As for my head, it seemed no longer to exist. ... I appeared to my self to act automatically, by an impulsion foreign to myself. . . . There was inside of me a new being, and another part of myself, the old be ing, which took no interest in the new-comer. I distinctly remember saying to myself that the sufferings of this new being were to me indifferent. I was never really dupe of these illusions, but my mind grew often tired of incessantly correcting the new impressions, and I let myself go and lived the unhappy life of this new entity. I had an ardent desire to see my old world again, to get back to my old self. This desire kept me from killing myself. ... I was another, and I hated, I despised this other ; he was perfectly odious to me ; it was cer tainly another who had taken my form and assumed my functions." * In cases similar to tliis, it is as certain that the / is un altered as that the me is changed. That is to say, the pres ent Thought of the patient is cognitive of both the old me and the new, so long as its memory holds good. Only, within that objective sphere which formerly lent itself so simply to the judgment of recognition and of egoistic appro priation, strange perplexities have arisen. The present and the past both seen therein will not unite. Where is my old me ? What is this new one ? Are they the same ? Or have I two ? Such questions, answered by whatever theory the patient is able to conjure up as plausible, form the begin ning of his insane life.f * De riutelligence, 3me edition (1878), vol. n, note, p. 461. Kris- haber's book (La Nevropathie Cerebro-cardiaque, 1873) is full of similar observations. f Sudden alterations in outward fortune often produce such a change in the empirical me as almost to amount to a pathological disturbance of self-consciousness. When a poor man draws the big prize in a lottery, or unexpectedly inherits an estate ; when a man high in fame is publicly disgraced, a millionaire becomes a pauper, or a loving husband and fathet sees his family perish at one fell swoop, there is temporarily such a rupture THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 379 A case with which I am acquainted through Dr. C. J. Fisher of Tewksbury has possibly its origin in this way. The woman, Bridget F., 1 ' has been many years insane, and always speaks of her supposed self as 'the rat, 'asking me to 'bury the little rat,' etc. Her real self she speaks of in the third person as ' the good woman,' saying, 'The good Woman knew Dr. F. and used to work for him,' etc. Sometimes she sadly asks: 'Do you think the good woman will ever come back ?' She works at needlework, knitting, laundry, etc. , and shows her work, say ing, ' Isn't that good for only a rat? ' She has, during periods of depres sion, hid herself under buildings, and crawled into holes and under boxes. * She was only a rat, and wants to die,' she would say when we found her." 2. The phenomenon of alternating personality in its sim plest phases seems based on lapses of memory. Any man becomes, as we say, inconsistent with himself if he forgets his engagements, pledges, knowledges, and habits ; and it is merely a question of degree at what point we shall say that his personality is changed. In the pathological cases known as those of double or alternate personality the lapse of memory is abrupt, and is usually preceded by a period of unconsciousness or syncope lasting a variable length of time. In the hypnotic trance we can easily produce an alteration of the personality, either by telling the subject to forget all that has happened to him since such or such a date, in which case he becomes (it may be) a child again, or by telling him he is another altogether imaginary personage, in which case all facts about himself seem for the time being to lapse from out his mind, and he throws himself into the new character with a vivacity proportionate to the amount of histrionic imagination which he possesses.* But in the pathological cases the transformation is spontaneous. The most famous case, perhaps, on record is that of Felida X.> between all past habits, whether of an active or a passive kind, and the exigencies and possibilities of the new situation, that the individual may find no medium of continuity or association to carry him over from the one phase to the other of his life. Under these conditions mental derangement is no uu frequent result. * The number of subjects who can do this with any fertility and exu berance is relatively quite small. 380 PSYCHOLOGY. reported by Dr. Azam of Bordeaux.* At the age of four teen this woman began to pass into a ' secondary ' state characterized by a change in her general disposition and character, as if certain 'inhibitions,' previously existing, were suddenly removed. During the secondary state she remembered the first state, but on emerging from it into the first state she remembered nothing of the second. At the age of forty-four the duration of the secondary state (which was on the whole superior in quality to the original state) had gained upon the latter so much as to occupy most of her time. During it she remembers the events belonging to the original state, but her complete oblivion of the sec ondary state when the original state recurs is often very distressing to her, as, for example, when the transition takes place in a carriage on her way to a funeral, and she hasn't the least idea which one of her friends may be dead. She actually became pregnant during one of her early sec ondary states, and during her first state had no knowledge of how it had come to pass. Her distress at these blanks of memory is sometimes intense and once drove her to attempt suicide. To take another example, Dr. Rieger gives an account t of an epileptic man who for seventeen years had passed his life alternately free, in prisons, or in asylums, his character being orderly enough in the normal state, but alternating with periods, during which he would leave his home for several weeks, leading the life of a thief and vagabond, be ing sent to jail, having epileptic fits and excitement, being accused of malingering, etc., etc., and with never a memory of the abnormal conditions which were to blame for all his wretchedness. u I have never got from anyone," says Dr. Rieger, " so singular an impression as from this man, of whom it could not be said that he had any properly conscious past at all. ... It is really impossible to think one's self into such a state of mind. His last larceny had been per formed in Nurnberg, he knew nothing of it, and saw himself before the * First in the Revue Scientifique for May 26, 1876, then in his hook, Hypnotisme, Double Conscience, et Alterations de la Persoimalite (Paris, 1887). f Der Hypnotismus (1884), pp. 109-15. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 381 court and then in the hospital, but without in the least understand ing the reason why. That he had epileptic attacks, he knew. But it was impossible to convince him that for hours together he raved and acted in an abnormal way." Another remarkable case is that of Mary Keynolds. lately republished again by Dr. Weir Mitchell.* This dull and melancholy young woman, inhabiting the Pennsylvania wilderness in 1811, " was found one morning, long after her habitual time for rising, in a profound sleep from which it was impossible to arouse her. After eighteen or twenty hours of sleeping she awakened, but in a state of unnatural consciousness. Memory had fled. To all intents and pur poses she was as a being for the first time ushered into the world. 'All of the past that remained to her was the faculty of pronouncing a few words, and this seems to have been as purely instinctive as the wailings of an infant ; for at first the words which she uttered were connected with no ideas in her mind.' Until she was taught their significance they were unmeaning sounds. " ' Her eyes were virtually for the first time opened upon the world. Old things had passed away : all things had become new.' Her parents, brothers, sisters, friends, were not recognized or acknowledged as such by her. She had never sesn them before,— never known them, — was not r.waro tha1*: cacii persons had been. Now for the first time she was introduced to their company and acquaintance. To the scenes by which she was surrounded she was a perfect stranger. The house, the fields, the forest, the hills, the vales, the streams, — all were novelties. The beauties o* fee landscape were ail unexplored. " She had no1; the slightest consciousness that she had ever existed previous to tl:e moment in which she awoke from that mysterious slumber. ' 1'n a word, she was an infant, jus*; born, yet born in a state of maturity, with a capacity for relishing the rich, sublime, luxuriant wonders of created nature/ "Tho first lesson in Iier education was to teach her by what ties she was bound to those by v/hom she was surrounded, and the duties de volving upon her accordingly. This she was very slow to learn, and, ' indeed, never did learn, or, at least, never would acknowledge the ties of consanguinity, or scarcely those oi: friendship. She considered those she hud once known as for tho most part strangers and enemies, among wLcm she wa^, by some remarkable and unaccountable means, transplanted, though from what region or state of existence was a prob lem unsolved.' " The next lesson was to re-teach her the arts of reading and writing. She was apt enough, and made such rapid progress in both that in a * Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, April 4, 1888. Also, less complete, in Harper's Magazine, May 1860. 382 PSYCHOLOGY. few weeks she had readily re-learned to read and write. In copying hei name which her brother had written for her as a first lesson, she took her pen in a very awkward manner and began to copy from right to left in the Hebrew mode, as though she had been transplanted from an Eastern soil. . . . " The next thing that is noteworthy is the change which took place in her disposition. Instead of being melancholy she was now cheer ful to extremity. Instead of being reserved she was buoyant and social. Formerly taciturn and retiring, she was now merry and jocose. Her disposition was totally and absolutely changed. While she was, in this second state, extravagantly fond of company, she was much more en amoured of nature's works, as exhibited in the forests, hills, vales, and water-courses. She used to start in the morning, either on foot or horseback, and ramble until nightfall over the whole country ; nor was she at all particular whether she were on a path or in the trackless forest. Her predilection for this manner of life may have been occasioned by the restraint necessarily imposed upon her by her friends, which caused her to consider them her enemies and not companions, and she was glad to keep out of their way. " She knew no fear, and as bears and panthers were numerous in the woods, and rattlesnakes and copperheads abounded everywhere, her friends told her of the danger to which she exposed herself, but it produced no other effect than to draw forth a contemptuous laugh, as she said, 'I know you only want to frighten me and keep me at home, but you miss it, for I often see your bears and I am perfectly convinced that they are nothing more than black hogs.' " One evening, after her return from her daily excursion, she told the following incident : ' As I was riding to-day along a narrow path a great black hog came out of the woods and stopped before me. I never saw such an impudent black hog before. It stood up on its hind feet and grinned and gnashed its teeth at me. I could not make the horse go on. I told him he was a fool to be frightened at a hog, and tried to whip him past, but he would not go and wanted to turn back. I told the hog to get out of the way, but he did not mind me. "Well," said I, " if you won't for words, I'll try blows ; '' so I got off and took a stick, arid walked up toward it. When I got pretty close by, it got down on all fours and walked away slowly and sullenly, stopping every few steps and looking back and grinning and growling. Then I got on my horse and rode on.' . . . " Thus it continued for five weeks, when one morning, after a pro tracted sleep, she awoke and was herself again. She recognized the parental, the brotherly, and sisterly ties as though nothing had hap pened, and immediately went about the performance of duties in cumbent upon her, and which she had planned five weeks previously. Great was her surprise at the change which one night (as she supposed) had produced. Nature bore a different aspect. Not a trace was left in her mind of the giddy scenes through which she had passed. Her ram- THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 383 blings through the forest, her tricks and humor, all were faded from her memory, and not a shadow left behind. Her parents saw their child ; her brothers and sisters saw their sister. She now had all the knowledge that she had possessed in her first state previous to the change, still fresh and in as vigorous exercise as though no change had been. But any new acquisitions she had made, and any new ideas she had obtained, were lost to her now — yet not lost, but laid up out of sight in safe-keep ing for future use. Of course her natural disposition returned ; her melancholy was deepened by the information of what had occurred. All went on in the old-fashioned way, and it was fondly hoped that the mysterious occurrences of those five weeks would never be repeated, but these antieipations were not to be realized. After the lapse of a few weeks she fell into a profound sleep, and awoke in her second state, taking up her new life again precisely where she had left it when she before passed from that state. She was not now a daughter or a sister. All the knowledge she possessed was that acquired during the few weeks of her former period of second consciousness. She knew nothing of the intervening time. Two periods widely separated were brought into contact. She thought it was but one night. " In this state she came to understand perfectly the facts of her case, not from memory, but from information. Yet her buoyancy of spirits was so great that no depression was produced. On the contrary, it added to her cheerfulness, and was made the foundation, as was every thing else, of mirth. "These alternations from one state to another continued at intervals of varying length for fifteen or sixteen years, but finally ceased when she attained the age of thirty-five or thirty-six, leaving her permanently in her second state. In this she remained without change for the last quarter of a century of her life." The emotional opposition of the two states seems, how ever, to have become gradually effaced in Mary Eeynolds : "The change from a gay, hysterical, mischievous woman, fond of jests and subject to absurd beliefs or delusive convictions, to one retain, hig the joyousness and love of society, but sobered down to levels of prac tical usefulness, was gradual. The most of the twenty-five years which followed she was as different from her melancholy, morbid self as from the hilarious condition of the early years of her second state. Some of her family spoke of it as her third state. She is described as becoming rational, industrious, and very cheerful, yet reasonably serious ; pos sessed of a well-balanced temperament, and not having the slightest indication of an injured or disturbed mind. For some years she taught school, and in that capacity was both useful and acceptable, being a general favorite with old and young. " During these last twenty-five years she lived in the same house with the Rev. Dr. John V. Reynolds her nephew, part of that 384 PSYCHOLOGY. time keeping house for him, showing a sound judgment and a thorough acquaintance with the duties of her position. " Dr. Keynolds, who is still living in Meadville," says l>r. Mitchell, " and who has most kindly placed the facts at my disposal, states in his letter to me of January 4, 1888, that at a later period of her life she said she did sometimes seem to have a dim, dreamy idea of a shadowy past, which she could not fully grasp, and could not be certain whether it originated in a partially restored memory or in the statements of the events by others during her abnormal state. " Miss Reynolds died in January, 1854, at the age of sixty-one. On the morning of the day of her death she rose in her usual health, ate her breakfast, and superintended household duties. While thus em ployed she suddenly raised her hands to her head and exclaimed : ' Oh ! I wonder what is the matter with my head ! ' and immediately fell to the floor. When carried to a sofa she gasped once or twice and died." In such cases as the preceding, in which the secondary character is superior to the first, there seems reason to think that the first one is the morbid one. The word inhi bition describes its dulness and melancholy. Felida X.'s original character was dull and melancholy in comparison with that which she later acquired, and the change may be regarded as the removal of inhibitions which had main tained themselves from earlier years. Such inhibitions we all know temporarily, when we can not recollect or in some other way command our mental resources. The systema tized amnesias (losses of memory) of hypnotic subjects or dered to forget all nouns, or all verbs, or a particular letter of the alphabet, or all that is relative to a certain person, are inhibitions of the sort on a more extensive scale. They sometimes occur spontaneously as symptoms of disease.* Now M. Pierre Janet has shown that such inhibitions when they bear on a certain class of sensations (making the sub ject anaesthetic thereto) and also on the memory of such sensations, are the basis of changes of personality. The anaesthetic and ' amnesic ' hysteric is one person ; but when you restore her inhibited sensibilities and memories by plunging her into the hypnotic trance — in other words, when * Of. Ribot's Diseases of Memory for cases. See also a large number of them in Forbes Winslow's Obscure Diseases of the Braiu and Mind, chapters XIII-XYII. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 385 you rescue them from their ' dissociated ' and split-off con dition, and make them rejoin the other sensibilities and memories — she is a different person. As said above (p. 203), the hypnotic trance is one method of restoring sensibility in hysterics. But one day when the hysteric anaesthetic named Lucie was already in the hypnotic trance, M. Janet for a certain reason continued to make passes over her for a full half-hour as if she were not already asleep, The re sult was to throw her into a sort of syncope from which, after half an hour, she revived in a second somnambulic con dition entirely unlike that which had characterized her thitherto — different sensibilities, a different memory, a dif ferent person, in short. In the waking state the poor young woman was anaesthetic all over, nearly deaf, and with a badly contracted field of vision. Bad as it was, however, sight was her best sense, and she used it as a guide in all her movements. With her eyes bandaged she became en tirely helpless, and like other persons of a similar sort whose cases have been recorded, she almost immediately fell asleep in consequence of the withdrawal of her last sensorial stimulus. M. Janet calls this waking or primary (one can hardly in such a connection say 'normal ') state by the name of Lucie 1. In Lucie 2, her first sort of hypnotic trance, the anaesthesias were diminished but not removed. In the deeper trance, ' Lucie 3,' brought about as just de scribed, no trace of them remained. Her sensibility became perfect, and instead of being an extreme example of the ' visual ' type, she was transformed into what in Prof. Charcot's terminology is known as a motor. That is to say, that whereas when awake she had thought in visual terms exclusively, and could imagine things only by remem bering how they looked, now in this deeper trance her thoughts and memories seemed to M. Janet to be largely composed of images of movement and of touch. Having discovered this deeper trance and change of personality in Lucie, M. Janet naturally became eager to find it in his other subjects. He found it in Rose, in Marie, and in Leonie ; and his brother, Dr. Jules Janet, who was interne at the Salpetriere Hospital, found it in the celebrated subject Wit .... whose trances had been studied for years 386 PSYCHOLOGY. by the various doctors of that institution without any of them having happened to awaken this very peculiar indi viduality.* With the return of all the sensibilities in the deeper trance, these subjects turned, as it were, into normal persons. Their memories in particular grew more exten sive, and hereupon M. Janet spins a theoretic generaliza tion. When a certain kind of sensation, he says, is abol ished in an hysteric patient, there is also abolished along with it aU recollection of past sensations of that kind. If, for ex ample, hearing be the anaesthetic sense, the patient becomes unable even to imagine sounds and voices, and has to speak (when speech is still possible) by means of motor or articulatory cues. If the motor sense be abolished, the pa tient must will the movements of his limbs by first defining them to his mind in visual terms, and must innervate his voice by premonitory ideas of the way in which the words are going to sound. The practical consequences of this law would be great, for all experiences belonging to a sphere of sensibility which afterwards became anaesthetic, as, for example, touch, would have been stored away and remembered in tactile terms, and would be incontinently forgotten as soon as the cutaneous and muscular sensibility should come to be cut out in the course of disease. Memory of them would be restored again, on the other hand, so soon as the sense of touch came back. Now, in the hysteric subjects on whom M. Janet experi mented, touch did come back in the state of trance. The result was that all sorts of memories, absent in the ordinary Condition, came back too, and they could then go back and explain the origin of many otherwise inexplicable things in their life. One stage in the great convulsive crisis of hys- toro-epilepsy, for example, is what French writers call the phase des attitudes passionelles, in which the patient, without speaking or giving any account of herself, will go through the outward movements of fear, anger, or some other emo tional state of mind. Usually this phase is, with each * See the interesting account by M. J. Janet in the Revue Scientifique. May 19, 1888. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 381 patient, a thing so stereotyped as to seem automatic, and doubts have even been expressed as to whether any con sciousness exists whilst it lasts. When, however, the patient Lucie's tactile sensibility came back in the deeper trance, she explained the origin of her hysteric crisis in a great fright which she had had when a child, on a day when certain men, hid behind the curtains, had jumped out upon her ; she told how she went through this scene again in all her crises ; she told of her sleep-walking fits through the house when a child, and how for several months she had been shut in a dark room because of a disorder of the eyes. All these were things of which she recollected no thing when awake, because they were records of experiences mainly of motion and of touch. But M. Janet's subject Leonie is interesting, and shows best how with the sensibilities and motor impulses the memories and character will change. " This woman, whose life sounds more like an improbable romance than a genuine history, has had attacks of natural somnambulism since the age of three years. She has been hypnotized constantly by all sorts of persons from the age of sixteen upwards, and she is now forty-five. "Whilst her normal life developed in one way in the midst of her poor country surroundings, her second life was passed in drawing-rooms and doctors' offices, and naturally took an entirely different direction. To day, when in her normal state, this poor peasant woman is a serious and rather sad person, calm and slow, very mild with every one, and extremely timid : to look at her one would never suspect the personage which she contains. But hardly is she put to sleep hypnotically when a metamorphosis occurs. Her face is no longer the same. She keeps her eyes closed, it is true, but the acuteness of her other senses supplies their place. She is gay, noisy, restless, sometimes insupportably so. She remains good-natured, but has acquired a singular tendency to irony and sharp jesting. Nothing is more curious than to hear her after a sitting when she has received a visit from strangers who wished to see her asleep. She gives a word-portrait of them, apes their manners, pretends to know their little ridiculous aspects and passions, and for each invents a romance. To this character must be added the posses sion of an enormous number of recollections, whose existence she doe? not even suspect when awake, for her amnesia is then complete. . . . She refuses the name of Leonie and takes that of Leontine (Leonie 21 to which her first magnetizers had accustomed her. ' That good woman is not myself,' she says, 'she is too stupid!' To herself, Leontine or Leonie 2, she attributes all the sensations and all the actions, in a wor ATTENTION. 405 left to themselves ; asked what they are thinking of, they reply, ' of nothing particular ' ! * The abolition of this condition is what we call the awak ening of the attention. One principal object comes then into the focus of consciousness, others are temporarily sup pressed. The awakening may come about either by reason of a stimulus from without, or in consequence of some unknown inner alteration ; and the change it brings with it amounts to a concentration upon one single object with exclusion of aught besides, or to a condition anywhere be tween this and the completely dispersed state. TO HOW MANY THINGS CAN WE ATTEND AT ONCEP The question of the ' span1 of consciousness has often been asked and answered — sometimes a priori, sometimes by ex periment. This seems the proper place for us to touch upon it ; and our answer, according to the principles laid down in Chapter IX, will not be difficult. The number of things we may attend to is altogether indefinite, depending on the power of the individual intellect, on the form of the apprehension, and on what the things are. When appre hended conceptually as a connected system, their number may be very large. But however numerous the things, they can only be known in a single pulse of consciousness for which they form one complex 'object' (p. 276 ff.), so tha^ properly speaking there is before the mind at no time a plurality of ideas, properly so called. The ' unity of the soul ' has been supposed by many * "The first and most important, but also the most difficult, task at the outset of an education is to overcome gradually the inattentive dispersion of mind which shows itself wherever the organic life preponderates over the intellectual. The training of animals . . . must be in the first in stance based on the awakening of attention (cf . Adrian Leonard, Essai wr I'Education des Animaux, Lille, 1842) , that is to say, we must seek to make them gradually perceive separately things M'hich, if left to themselves, would not be attended to, because they would, fuse with a great sum of other sensorial stimuli to a confused total impression of which each separate item only darkens and interferes with the rest. Similarly at first with the human child. The enormous difficulties of deaf-mute- and especially of idiot-instruction is principally due to the slow and painful manner in which we succeed in bringing out from the general confusion of perception single items with sufficient sharpness." (Waitz, Lehrb. d. Psychol., p. 632.) 406 PSYCHOLOGY. philosophers, who also believed in the distinct atomic na ture of 'ideas,' to preclude the presence to it of more than one objective fact, manifested in one idea, at a time. Even Dugald Stuart opines that every minimum visibile of a pic tured figure " constitutes just as distinct an object of attention to the mind as if it were separated by an interval of empty space from the rest. ... It is impossible for the mind to attend to more than one of these points at once ; and as the perception of the figure implies a knowledge of the relative situation of the different points with respect to each other, we must conclude that the perception of figure by the eye is the result of a number of different acts of attention. These acts of attention, how ever, are performed with such rapidity, that the effect, with respect to us, is the same as if the perception were instantaneous." * Such glaringly artificial views can only come from fan tastic metaphysics or from the ambiguity of the word 'idea,' which, standing sometimes for mental state and sometimes for thing known, leads men to ascribe to the thing, not only the unity which belongs to the mental state, but even the simplicity which is thought to reside in the Soul. When the things are apprehended by the senses, the number of them that can be attended to at once is small, "Pluribus intentus, minor est ad singida sensus." " By Charles Bonnet the Mind is allowed to have a distinct notion of six objects at once ; by Abraham Tucker the number is limited to four ; while Destutt Tracy again amplifies it to six. The opinion of the first and last of these philosophers" [continues Sir Wm. Hamilton] "seems to me correct. You can easily make the experiments for yourselves, but you must beware of grouping the objects into classes. If you throw a handful of marbles on the floor, you will find it difficult to view at once more than six, or seven at most, without confusion ; but if ^you group them into twos, or threes, or fives, you can comprehend as many groups as you can units ; because the mind considers these groups only as units — it views them as wholes, and throws their parts out of consideration." f Professor Jevons, repeating this observation, by count ing instantaneously beans thrown into a box, found that the number 6 was guessed correctly 120 times out of 147, 5 correctly 102 times out of 107, and 4 and 3 always right. J * Elements, part i. chap, n, Jin. f Lectures on Metaphysics, lecture xiv. t Nature, vol. in. p. 281 (1871). ATTENTION. 407 It is obvious that such observations decide nothing at all about our attention, properly so called. They rather meas ure in part the distinctness of our vision — especially of the primary-memory-image* — in part the amount of association in the individual between seen arrangements and the names of numbers, f Each number-name is a way of grasping the beans as one total object. In such a total object, all the parts con verge harmoniously to the one resultant concept ; no sin gle bean has special discrepant associations of its own ; and so, with practice, they may grow quite numerous ere we fail to estimate them aright. But where the ' object ' be- * If a lot of dots or strokes on a piece of paper be exhibited for a mo ment to a person in normal condition, with the request that he say how many are there, he will find that they break into groups in his mind's eye, and that whilst he is analyzing and counting one group in his memory the others dissolve. In short, the impression made by the dots changes rapidly into something else. In the trance-subject, on the contrary, it seems to stick; I find that persons in the hypnotic state easily count the dots in the mind's eye so long as they do not much exceed twenty in number. f Mr. Cattell made Jevons's experiment in a much more precise way (Philosophische Studien, nr 121 if.). Cards were ruled with short lines, varying in number from four to fifteen, and exposed to the eye for a hun dredth of a second. When the number was but four or five, no mistakes as a rule were made. For higher numbers the tendency was to uuder- rather than to over-estimate. Similar experiments were tried with letters and figures, and gave the same result. When the letters formed familiar words, three times as many of them could be named as when their com bination was meaningless. If the words formed a sentence, twice as many of them could be caught as when they had no connection. " The sentence was then apprehended as a whole. If not apprehended thus, almost noth ing is apprehended of the several words; but if the sentence as a whole is apprehended, then the words appear very distinct." — Wundt and his pupil Dietze had tried similar experiments on rapidly repeated strokes of sound. Wundt made them follow each other in groups, and found that groups of twelve strokes at most could be recognized and identified when they suc ceeded each other at the most favorable rate, namely, from three to five tenths of a second (Phys. Psych., ir. 215). Dietze found that by mentally subdividing the groups into sub-groups as one listened, as many as forty strokes could be identified as a whole. They were then grasped as eight sub-groups of five, or as five of eight strokes each. (Philosophische Studien, II. 362.) — Later in Wundt's Laboratory, Bechterew made observations on two simultaneously elapsing series of metronome strokes, of which one con tained one stroke more than the other. The most favorable rate of succes sion was 0.3 sec., and he then discriminated a group of 18 from one of 18 -f- 1, apparently. (Neurologiscb.es Centralblatt, 1889, 272.) 408 PSYCHOLOGY. fore us breaks into parts disconnected with each other, and forming each as it were a separate object or system, not conceivable in union with the rest, it becomes harder to apprehend all these parts at once, and the mind tends to let go of one whilst it attends to another. Still, within limits this can be done. M. Paulhan has experimented carefully on the matter by declaiming one poem aloud whilst he repeated a different one mentally, or by writing one sentence whilst speaking another, or by performing calculations on paper whilst reciting poetry.* He found that "the most favorable condition for the doubling of the mind was its sinultaneous application to two easy and heterogeneous operations. Two operations of the same sort, two multiplications, two recitations, or the reciting one poem and writing another, render the process more uncertain and difficult." The attention often, but not always, oscillates during these performances ; and sometimes a word from one part of the task slips into another. I myself find when I try to simultaneously recite one thing and write another that the beginning of each word or segment of a phrase is what re quires the attention. Once started, my pen runs on for a word or two as if by its own momentum. M. Paulhan compared the time occupied by the same two operations done simultaneously or in succession, and found that there was often a considerable gain of time from doing them simultaneously. For instance : "I write the first four verses of Athalie, whilst reciting eleven of Musset. The whole performance occupies 40 seconds. But reciting alpne takes 22 and writing alone 31, or 53 altogether, so that there is a difference in favor of the simultaneous operations." Or again : "I multiply 421 312 212 by 2; the operation takes 6 seconds; the recitation of 4 verses also takes 6 seconds. But the two operations done at once only take 6 seconds, so that there is no loss of time from combining them." Of course these time-measurements lack precision. With three systems of object (writing with each hand whilst reciting) the operation became much more difficult. * Revue Scientifique, vol. 39, p. 684 (May 28, 1887). ATTENTION. 409 If, then, by the original question, how many ideas or things can we attend to at once, be meant how many entirely disconnected systems or processes of conception can go on simultaneously, the answer is, not easily more than one, unless the processes are very habitual ; but then two, or even three, without very much oscillation of the attention. Where, however, the processes are less automatic, as in the story of Julius Caesar dictating four letters whilst he writes a fifth,* there must be a rapid oscillation of the mind from one to the next, and no consequent gain of time. Within any one of the systems the parts may be numberless, but we attend to them collectively when we conceive the whole which they form. When the things to be attended to are small sensations, and when the effort is to be exact in noting them, it is found that attention to one interferes a good deal with the perception of the other. A good deal of fine work has been done in this field, of which I must give some account. It has long been noticed, when expectant attention is concentrated upon one of two sensations, that the other one is apt to be displaced from consciousness for a moment and to appear subsequent ; although in reality the two may have been contemporaneous events. Thus, to use the stock example of the books, the surgeon would sometimes see the blood flow from the arm of the patient whom he was bleeding, before he saw the instrument penetrate the skin. Similarly the smith may see the sparks fly before he sees the hammer smite the iron, etc. There is thus a certain difficulty in perceiving the exact date of two impressions when they do not interest our attention equally, and when they are of a disparate sort. Professor Exner, whose experiments on the minimal per ceptible succession in time of two sensations we shall have to quote in another chapter, makes some noteworthy remarks about the way in which the attention must be set to catch the interval and the right order of the sensations, when the time is exceeding small. The point was to tell whether * Of. Chr. Wolff: Psychologia Empirica, § 245. Wolff's account of the phenomena of attention is iu general excellent. 410 PSYCHOLOGY. two signals were simultaneous or successive ; and, if succes sive, which one of them came first. The first way of attending which he found himself to fall into, was when the signals did not differ greatly — when, e.g., they were similar sounds heard each by a different ear. Here he lay in wait for the first signal, whichever it might be, and identified it the next moment in memory. The second, which could then always be known by default, was often not clearly distinguished in itself. When the time was too short, the first could not be isolated from the second at all. The second way was to accommodate the attention for a certain sort of signal, and the next moment to become aware in memory of whether it came before or after its mate. "This way brings great uncertainty with it. The impression not prepared for comes to us in the memory more weak than the other, obscure as it were, badly fixed in time. We tend to take the subjec tively stronger stimulus, that which we were intent upon, for the first, just as we are apt to take an objectively stronger stimulus to be the first. Still, it may happen otherwise. In the experiments from touch to sight it often seemed to me as if the impression for which the atten tion was not prepared were there already when the other came." Exner found himself employing this method oftenest when the impressions differed strongly.* In such observations (which must not be confounded with those where the two signals were identical and their successiveness known as mere doubleness, without distinc tion of which came first), it is obvious that each signal must combine stably in our perception with a different instant of time. It is the simplest possible case of two discrepant concepts simultaneously occupying the mind. Now the case of the signals being simultaneous seems of a different sort. We must turn to Wundt for observations fit to cast a nearer light thereon. The reader will remember the reaction-time experiments of which we treated in Chapter III. It happened occasion ally in Wundt's experiments that the reaction-time was reduced to zero or even assumed a negative value, which, being translated into common speech, means that the ob- * Pfluger's Archiv, xi. 429-31, ATTENTION. 411 server was sometimes so intent upon the signal that his reaction actually coincided in time with it, or even preceded it, instead of coming a fraction of a second after it, as in the nature of things it should. More will be said of these re sults anon. Meanwhile Wundt, in explaining them, says this : ' ' In general we have a very exact feeling of the simultaneity of two stimuli, if they do not differ much in strength. And in a series of ex periments in which a warning precedes, at a fixed interval, the stimu lus, we involuntarily try to react, not only as promptly as possible, but also in such wise that our movement may coincide with the stimu lus itself. We seek to make our own feelings of touch and innervation [muscular contraction] objectively contemporaneous with the signal which we hear ; and experience shows that in many cases we approxi mately succeed. In these cases we have a distinct consciousness of hearing the signal, reacting upon it, and feeling our reaction take place, — aii at one and the same moment." * In another place, Wundt adds : " The difficulty of these observations and the comparative infrequency with which the reaction-time can be made thus to disappear shows how hard it is, when our attention is intense, to keep it fixed even on two different ideas at once. Note besides that when this happens, one always tries to bring the ideas into a certain connection, to grasp them as components of a certain complex representation. Thus in the ex periments in question, it has often seemed to me that I produced by my own recording movement the sound which the ball made in drop- ping on the board." f The ' difficulty,' in the cases of which Wundt speaks, is that of forcing two non-simultaneous events into apparent combination with the same instant of time. There is no difficulty, as he admits, in so dividing our attention be tween two really simultaneous impressions as to feel them to be such. The cases he describes are really cases of anachronistic perception, of subjective time-displacement, to use his own term. Still more curious cases of it have been most carefully studied by him. They carry us a step farther in our research, so I will quote them, using as far as possible his exact words : " The conditions become more complicated when we receive a series of impressions separated by distinct intervals, into the midst of which * Physiol. Psych., 3d ed. n. pp. 238-40. f Ib. p. 262. 412 PSYCHOLOGY. a heterogeneous impression is suddenly brought. Then comes the question, with which member of the series do we perceive the additional impression to coincide? with that member with whose presence it really coexists, or is there some aberration? ... If the additional stimulus belongs to a different sense very considerable aberrations may occur. " The best way to experiment is with a number of visual impressions (which one can easily get from a moving oDject) for the series, and with a sound as the disparate impression. Let, e.g., an index-hand move over a circular scale with uniform and sufficiently slow velocity, so that the impressions it gives will not fuse, but permit its position at any instant to be distinctly seen. Let the clockwork which turns it have an arrangement which rings a bell once in every revolution, but at a point which can be varied, so that the observer need never know in advance just when the bell-stroke takes place. In such observations three cases are possible. The bell-stroke can be perceived either ex actly at the moment to which the index points when it sounds — in this case there will be no time-displacement ; or we can combine it with a later position of the index— . . . positive time-displacement, as we shall call it ; or finally we can combine it with a position of the index earlier than that at which the sound occurred— and this we will call a negative displacement. The most natural displacement would appa rently be the positive, since for apperception a certain time is always re quired. . . . But experience shows that the opposite is the case : it happens most frequently that the sound appears earlier than its real date — far less often coincident with it, or later. It should be observed that in all these experiments it takes some time to get a distinctly per ceived combination of the sound with a particular position of the in dex, and that a single revolution of the latter is never enough for the purpose. The motion must go on long enough for the sounds them selves to form a regular series — the outcome being a simultaneous per ception of two distinct series of events, of which either may by changes in its rapidity modify the result. The first thing one remarks is that the sound belongs in a certain region of the scale ; only gradually is it perceived to combine with a particular position of the index. But even a result gained by observation of many revolutions may be deficient in certainty, for accidental combinations of attention have a great influ ence upon it. If we deliberately try to combine the bell-stroke with an arbitrarily chosen position of the index, we succeed without diffi culty, provided this position be not too remote from the true one. If, again, we cover the whole scale, except a single division over which we may see the index pass, we have a strong tendency to combine the bell-stroke with this actually seen position ; and in so doing may easily overlook more than J of a second of time. Eesults, therefore, to be of any value, must be drawn from long-continued and very numerous ob servations, in which such irregular oscillations of the attention neutral ize each other according to the law of great numbers, and allow the ATTENTION. 413 true laws to appear. Although my own experiments extend over many years (with interruptions), they are not even yet numerous enough to ex haust the subject — still, they bring out the principal laws which the attention follows under such conditions." * Wundt accordingly distinguishes the direction from the amount of the apparent displacement in time of the bell- stroke. The direction depends on the rapidity of the movement of the index and (consequently) on that of the succession of the bell-strokes. The moment at which the bell struck was estimated by him with the least tendency to error, when the revolutions took place once in a second. Faster than this, positive errors began to prevail ; slower, negative ones almost always were present. On the othei hand, if the rapidity went quickening, errors became nega tive ; if slowing, positive. The amount of error is, in gen eral, the greater the slower the speed and its alterations. Finally, individual differences prevail, as well as differences in the same individual at different times.f * Physio! . Psych., 2d ed. n. 264-6. f This was the original 'personal equation ' observation of Bessel. An Observer looked through his equatorial telescope to note the moment at •which a star crossed the meridian, the latter being marked in the telescopic field of view by a visible thread, beside which other equidistant threads appear. "Before the star reached the thread he looked at the clock, and then, with eye at telescope, counted the seconds by the beat of the pendu- & a lum. Since the star seldom passed the meridian at the exact moment of a beat, the observer, in order to estimate fractions, had to note its position at the stroke before and at the stroke after the passage, and to divide the time as the meridian-line seemed to divide the space. If, e.g., one had 414 PSYCHOLOGY. Wundt's pupil von Tschisch has carried out these ex periments on a still more elaborate scale,* using, not only the single bell-stroke, but 2, 3, 4, or 5 simultaneous impres sions, so that the attention had to note the place of the index at the moment when a whole group of things was happening. The single bell-stroke was always heard too early by von Tschisch — the displacement was invariably 'negative.' As the other simultaneous impressions were added, the displacement first became zero and finally posi tive, i.e. the impressions were connected with a position of the index that was too late. This retardation was greater when the simultaneous impressions were disparate (electric tactile stimuli on different places, simple touch-stimuli, different sounds) than when they were all of the same sort. The increment of retardation became relatively less with each additional impression, so that it is probable that six impressions would have given almost the same result as five, which was the maximum number used by Herr von T. Wundt explains all these results by his previous obser vation that a reaction sometimes antedates the signal (see above, p< 411). The mind, he supposes, is so intent upon the bell-strokes that its ' apperception ' keeps ripening periodically after each stroke in anticipation of the next. Its most natural rate of ripening may be faster or slower than the rate at which the strokes come. If faster, then it hears the stroke too early ; if slower, it hears it too late. The position of the index on the scale, meanwhile, is noted at the moment, early or late, at which the bell-stroke is subjectively heard. Substituting several impressions for counted 20 seconds, and at the 21st the star seemed removed by ac from the meridian-thread c, whilst at the 22d it was at the distance be ; then, if ac : be :: 1 : 2, the star would have passed at 21£ seconds. The conditions resemble those in our experiment : the star is the index-hand, the threads are the scale ; and a time-displacement is to be expected, which with high rapidities may be positive, and negative with low. The astronomic ob servations do not permit us to measure its absolute amount ; but that it ex ists is made certain by the fact than after all other possible errors are elimi nated, there still remains between different observers a personal difference which is often much larger than that between mere reaction-times, amount ing . . . sometimes to more than a second." (Op. cit. p. 270.) * Philosophische Studien, n. 601. ATTENTION. 415 the single bell-stroke makes the ripening of the perception slower, and the index is seen too late. So, at least, do I understand the explanations which Herren Wundt and v. Tschisch give.* * Physiol. Psych., 2d ed. n. 273-4; 3d ed. n. 339; Philosophische Studieu, n. 621 fit'. — I know that I am stupid, but 1 confess I find these theoretical statements, especially Wuiidt's, a little ha/y. Herr v. Tschisch considers it impossible that- the perception of the index's position should come in too late, and says it demands no particular attention (p. 622). It seems, however, that this can hardly be the case. Both observers speak of the difficulty of seeing the index at the right moment. The case is quite different from that of distributing the attention impartially over simulta neous momentary sensations. The bell or other signal gives a momentary sensation, the index a continuous one, of motion. To note any one position of the latter is to interrupt this sensation of motion and to substitute an entirely different percept — one, namely, of position — for it, during a time however brief. This involves a sudden change in the manner of attending to the revolutions of the index; which change ought to take place neither '•ooner nor later than the momentary impression, and fix the index as it is then and there visible. Now this is not a case of simply getting two sen sations at once and so feeling them— which would be an harmonious act; but of stopping one and changing it into another, whilst we simultaneously get a third. Two of these acts are discrepant, and the whole three rather interfere with each other. It becomes hard to ' fix ' the index at the very instant that we catch the momentary impression; so we fall into a way of fixing it either at the last possible moment before, or at the first possible moment after, the impression comes. This at least seems to me the more probable state of affairs. If we fix the index before the impression really comes, that means that we perceive it too late. But why do we fix it before when the impressions come slow and simple, and after when they come rapid and complex? And why under certain conditions is there no displacement at all? The answer which suggests itself is that when there is just enough leisure between the impressions for the attention to adapt itself comfortably both to them and to the index (one second in W.'s experiments), it carries on the two pro cesses at once; when the leisure is excessive, the attention, following its own laws of ripening, and being ready to note the index before the other impression comes, notes it then, since that is the moment of easiest action, whilst the impression, which comes a moment later, interferes with noting it again ; and finally, that when the leisure is insufficient, the momentary impressions, being the more fixed data, are attended to first, and the index is fixed a little later on. The noting of the index at too early a moment would be the noting of a real fact, with its analogue in many other rhyth mical experiences. In reaction-time experiments, for example, when, in a regularly recurring series, the stimulus is once in a while omitted, the ob server sometimes reacts as if it came. Here, as Wundt somewhere observes, we catch ourselves acting merely because our inward preparation is com plete. The ' fixing' of the index is a sort of action; so that my interpre- 416 PSYCHOLOGY. This is all I have to say about the difficulty of having two discrepant concepts together, and about the number of things to which we can simultaneously attend. THE VARIETIES OF ATTENTION. The things to which we attend are said to interest us, Our interest in them is supposed to be the cause of our at tending. What makes an object interesting we shall see presently ; and later inquire in what sense interest may cause attention. Meanwhile Attention may be divided into kinds in various ways. It is either to a) Objects of sense (sensorial attention) ; or to b) Ideal or represented objects (intellectual attention). It is either c) Immediate ; or d) Derived : immediate, when the topic or stimulus is interesting in itself, without relation to anything else ; de rived, when it owes its interest to association with some other immediately interesting thing. What I call derived attention has been named ' apperceptive ' attention. Fur thermore, Attention may be either e) Passive, reflex, non-voluntary, effortless ; or f) Active and voluntary. Voluntary attention is always derived; we never make an effort to attend to an object except for the sake of some remote interest which the effort will serve. But both sensorial and intellectual attention may be either passive or voluntary. In passive immediate sensorial, attention the stimulus is a sense-impression, either very intense, voluminous, or sud den, — in which case it makes no difference what its nature tation tallies with facts recognized elsewhere ; but Wundt's explanation (if I understand it) of the experiments requires us to believe that an observer like v. Tschisch shall steadily and without exception get an hallucination of a bell-stroke before the latter occurs, and not hear the real bell-stroke after wards. I doubt whether this is possible, and I can think of no analogue to it in the rest of our experience. The whole subject deserves to be gone over again. To Wundt is due the highest credit for his patience in work ing out the facts. His explanation of them in bis earlier work (Vorlesungen lib. Menschen und Thierseele, i. 37-42, 865-371) consisted merely in the appeal to the unity of consciousness, and may be considered quite crude. ATTENTION. 417 may be, whether sight, sound, smell, blow, or inner pain,— or else it is an instinctive stimulus, a perception which, by reason of its nature rather than its mere force, appeals to some one of our normal congenital impulses and has a directly exciting quality. In the chapter on Instinct we shall see how these stimuli differ from one animal to another, and what most of them are in man: strange things, moving things, wild animals, bright things, pretty things, metallic things, words, blows, blood, etc., etc., etc. Sensitiveness to immediately exciting sensorial stimuli characterizes the attention of childhood and youth. In mature age we have generally selected those stimuli which are connected with one or more so-called permanent inter ests, and our attention has grown irresponsive to the rest.* But childhood is characterized by great active energy, and has few organized interests by which to meet new impres sions and decide whether they are worthy of notice or not, and the consequence is that extreme mobility of the atten tion with which we are all familiar in children, and which makes their first lessons such rough affairs. Any strong sensation whatever produces accommodation of the organs which perceive it, and absolute oblivion, for the time being, of the task in hand. This reflex and passive character of the attention which, as a French writer says, makes the child seem to belong less to himself than to every object which happens to catch his notice, is the first thing which the teacher must overcome. It never is overcome in some people, whose work, to the end of life, gets done in the interstices of their mind- wandering. The passive sensorial attention is derived wrhen the impression, without being either strong or of an instinctively exciting nature, is connected by previous experience and education with things that are so. These things may be called the motives of the attention. The impression draAvs an interest from them, or perhaps it even fuses into a single complex object with them ; the result is that it is brought into the focus of the mind. A faint tap per se is not an interesting sound ; it may well escape being discriminated * Note that the permanent interests are themselves grounded in certain objects and relations in which our interest is immediate and instinctive. 418 PSYCHOLOGY. from the general rumor of the world. But when it is a signal, as that of a lover on the window-pane, it will hardly go unperceived. Herbart writes : " How a bit of bad grammar wounds the ear of the purist! How a false note hurts the musician! or an offence against good manners the man of the world ! How rapid is progress in a science when its first principles have been so well impressed upon us that we reproduce them mentally with perfect distinctness and ease! How slow and uncertain, on the other hand, is our learning of the principles themselves, when familiarity with the still more elementary percepts connected with the subject has not given us an adequate predisposition! — Apperceptive attention may be plainly observed in very small children when, hearing the speech of their elders, as yet unintelligible to them, they suddenly catch a single known word here and there, and repeat it to themselves; yes! even in the dog who looks round at us when we speak of him and pronounce his name. Not far removed is the talent which mind- wandering school-boys display during the hours of instruction, of notic ing every moment in which the teacher tells a story. I remember classes in which, instruction being uninteresting, and discipline relaxed, a buz zing murmur was always to be heard, which invariably stopped for as Jong a time as an anecdote lasted. How could the boys, since they seemed to hear nothing, notice when the anecdote began ? Doubtless most of them always heard something of the teacher's talk; but most of it had no connection with their previous knowledge and occupations, and therefore the separate words no sooner entered their consciousness than they fell out of it again; but, on the other hand, no sooner did tbe words awaken old thoughts, forming strongly-connected series with which the new impression easily combined, than out of new and old together a total interest resulted which drove the vagrant ideas below the threshold of consciousness, and brought for a while settled atten- tion into their place.1' * Passive intellectual attention is immediate when we follow ip thought a train of images exciting or interesting per se; derived, when the images are interesting only as means to a remote end, or merely because they are associated with something which makes them dear. Owing to the way in which immense numbers of real things become integrated into single objects of thought for us, there is no clear line to be drawn between immediate and derived attention of an intellectual sort. "When absorbed in intellectual atten tion we may become so inattentive to outer things as to be * Herbart; Psychologic als Wissenschaft, § 128. ATTENTION. 419 'absent-minded,' 'abstracted,' or ' distraits.' All revery or concentrated meditation is apt to throw us into this state. " Archimedes, it is well known, wras so absorbed in geometrical medi tation that he was first aware of the storming of Syracuse by his own death-wound, and his exclamation on the entrance of the Roman sol diers was: Noli turbare drculos nieos! In like manner Joseph Scaliger, the most learned of men, when a Protestant student in Paris, was so engrossed in the study of Homer that he became aware of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and of his own escape, only on the day subsequent to the catastrophe. The philosopher Carneades was habitually liable to fits of meditation so profound that, to prevent him sinking from inanition, his maid found it necessary to feed him like a child. And it is reported of Newton that, while engaged in his mathematical re searches, he sometimes forgot to dine. Cardan, one of the most illus trious of philosophers and mathematicians, was once, upon a journey, so lost in thought that he forgot both his way and the object of his journey. To the questions of his driver whether he should proceed, he made no answer; and when he came to himself at nightfall, he was sur prised to find the carriage at a standstill, and directly under a gallows. The mathematician Vieta was sometimes so buried in meditation that for hours he bore more resemblance to a dead person than to a living, and was then wholly unconscious of everything going on around him. On the day of his marriage the great Budaeus forgot everything in his philological speculations, and he was only awakened to the affairs of the external world by a tardy embassy from the marriage-party, who found him absorbed in the composition of his Commentarii." * The absorption may be so deep as not only to banish ordinary sensations, but even the severest pain. Pascal, Wesley, Robert Hall, are said to have had this capacity. Dr. Carpenter says of himself that " he has frequently begun a lecture whilst suffering nem-algic pain so severe as to make him apprehend that he would find it impossible to proceed ; yet no sooner has he by a determined effort fairly launched himself into the stream of thought, than he has found himself con tinuously borne along without the least distraction, until the end has come, and the attention has been released ; when the pain has re curred with a force that has overmastered all resistance, making him wonder how he could have ever ceased to feel it." f Dr. Carpenter speaks of launching himself by a deter mined effort. This effort characterizes what we called ac- * Sir W. Hamilton. Metaphysics, lecture xiv. f Mental Physiol., § 124. The oft-cited case of soldiers not perceiving that they are wounded is of an analogous sort. PSYCHOLOGY. live or voluntary attention. It is a feeling which every one knows, but which most people would call quite indei- crib- able. We get it in the sensorial sphere whenever we seek to catch an impression of extreme faintness, be it of sight, hearing, taste, smell, or touch ; we get it whenever we seek to discriminate a sensation merged in a mass of others that are similar ; we get it whenever we resist the attractions of more potent stimuli and keep our mind occupied with some object that is naturally unimpressive. We get it in the intellectual sphere under exactly similar conditions : as when we strive to sharpen and make distinct an idea which we but vaguely seem to have ; or painfully discrimi nate a shade of meaning from its similars ; or resolutely hold fast to a thought so discordant with our impulses that, if left unaided, it would quickly yield place to images of an exciting and impassioned kind. All forms of atten tive effort would be exercised at once by one whom we might suppose at a dinner-party resolutely to listen to a neighbor giving him insipid and unwelcome advice in a low voice, whilst all around the guests were loudly laugh ing and talking about exciting and interesting things. There is no such thing as voluntary attention sustained for more than a few seconds at a time. What is called sustained voluntary attention is a repetition of successive efforts which bring back the topic to the mind.* The topic once brought back, if a congenial one, develops ; and if its de velopment is interesting it engages the attention passively for a time. Dr. Carpenter, a moment back, described the stream of thought, once entered, as ' bearing him along.' This passive interest may be short or long. As soon as it flags, the attention is diverted by some irrelevant thing, and then a voluntary effort may bring it back to the topic again ; and so on, under favorable conditions, for hours to gether. During all this time, however, note that it is not * Prof. J. M. Cattell made experiments to which we shall refer further on, on the degree to which reaction-times might be shortened by distract ing or voluntarily concentrating the attention. He says of the latter series that "the averages show that the attention can be kept strained, that is, the centres kept in a state of unstable equilibrium, for one second" (Mind, XL 240). ATTENTION. 421 an identical object in the psychological sense (p. 275), but a succession of mutually related objects forming an identical topic only, upon which the attention is fixed. No one can possibly attend continuously to an object that does not change. Now there are always some objects that for the time being ivill not develop. They simply go out ; and to keep the mind upon anything related to them requires such in cessantly renewed effort that the most resolute Will ere long gives out arid lets its thoughts follow the more stimulating solicitations after it has withstood them for what length of time it can. There are topics known to every man from which he shies like a frightened horse, and which to get a glimpse of is to shun. Such are his ebbing assets to the spendthrift in full career. But why single out the spend thrift when to every man actuated by passion the thought of interests which negate the passion can hardly for more than a fleeting instant stay before the mind ? It is like * memento mori ' in the heyday of the pride of life. Nature rises at such suggestions, and excludes them from the view : — How long, O healthy reader, can you now continue thinking of your tomb ? — In milder instances the difficulty is as great, especially when the brain is fagged. One snatches at any and every passing pretext, no matter how trivial or external, to escape from the odiousness of the matter in hand. I know a person, for example, who will poke the fire, set chairs straight, pick dust-specks from the floor, arrange his table, snatch up the newspaper, take down any book which catches his eye, trim his nails, waste the morning anyhow, in short, and all without premedita tion, — simply because the only thing he ought to attend to is the preparation of a noonday lesson in formal logic which he detests. Anything but that ! Once more, the object must change. When it is one of sight, it will actually become invisible ; when of hearing, inaudible, — if we attend to it too unmoviugly. Helmholtz, who has put his sensorial attention to the severest tests, by using his eyes on objects which in common life are ex pressly overlooked, makes some interesting remarks on this point in his chapter on retinal rivalry.* The phe- * Physiologische Optik, § 32. 422 PSYCHOLOGY. nomenon called by that name is this, that if we look with each eye upon a different picture (as in the annexed stereo scopic slide), sometimes one picture, sometimes the other, FIG. 36. or parts of both, will come to consciousness, but hardly ever both combined. Helmholtz now says : " I find that I am able to attend voluntarily, now to one and now to the other system of lines ; and that then this system remains visi ble alone for a certain time, whilst the other completely vanishes. This happens, for example, whenever I try to count the lines first of one and then of the other system. . . . But it is extremely hard to chain the attention down to one of the systems for long, unless we associate with our looking some distinct purpose which keeps the ac tivity of the attention perpetually renewed. Such a one is counting the lines, comparing their intervals, or the like. An equilibrium of the attention, persistent for any length of time, is under no circumstances attainable. The natural tendency of attention when left to itself is to wander to ever new things ; and so soon as the interest of its object is over, so soon as nothing new is to be noticed there, it passes, in spite of our will, to something else. If we wish to keep it upon one and the same object, we must seek constantly to find out something new about the latter, especially if other powerful impressions are attracting us away.'' And again criticising an author who had treated of at tention as an activity absolutely subject to the conscious will, Helmholtz writes : " This is only restrictedly true. We move our eyes by our will ; but one without training cannot so easily execute the intention of making them converge. At any moment, however, he can execute that of looking at a near object, in which act convergence is involved. N» w ATTENTION. 423 just as little can we carry out our purpose to keep our attention steadily fixed upon a certain object, when our interest in the object is exhausted, and the purpose is inwardly formulated in this abstract way. But we can set ourselves new questions about the object, so that a new interest in it arises, and then the attention will remain riveted. The relation of attention to will is, then, less one of immediate than of mediate control." These words of Helmlioltz are of fundamental impor tance. And if true of sensorial attention, how much more true are they of the intellectual variety ! The conditio sine qua non of sustained attention to a given topic of thought is that we should roll it over and over incessantly and con sider different aspects and relations of it in turn. Only in pathological states will a fixed and ever monotonously re curring idea possess the mind. And now we can see why it is that what is called sus tained attention is the easier, the richer in acquisitions and the fresher and more original the mind. In such minds, subjects bud and sprout and grow. At every moment, they please by a new consequence and rivet the attention afresh. But an intellect unfurnished with materials, stagnant, un original, will hardly be likely to consider any subject long. A glance exhausts its possibilities of interest. Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention.* In most of them, it is to be feared, the so-called ' power ' is of the passive sort. Their ideas coruscate, every subject branches infinitely before their fertile minds, and so for hours they may be rapt. But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them. And, when we come down to the root of the matter, we see that they differ from ordinary men less in the character of their attention than in the nature of the objects upon which it is successively bestowed. In the genius, these form a concatenated series, suggesting * " ' Genius,' says Helvetius, ' is nothing but a continued attention (une attention suime}.' ' Genius/ says Buffon, 'is only a protracted patience (une longue patience).' 'In the exact sciences, at least,' says Cuvier, 'it is the patience of a sound intellect, when invincible, which truly consti tutes genius.' And Chesterfield has also observed that ' the power of ap plying an attention, steady and undissipated, to a single object, is the sure mark of a superior genius." (Hamilton : Lect. on Metaph., lecture xiv.) 424 PSYCHOLOGY. each other mutually by some rational law. Therefore we call the attention ' sustained ' and the topic of meditation for hours ' the same.' In the common man the series is for the most part incoherent, the objects have no rational bond, and we call the attention wandering and unfixed. It is probable that genius tends actually to prevent a man from acquiring habits of voluntary attention, and that moderate intellectual endowments are the soil in which we may best expect, here as elsewhere, the virtues of the will, strictly so called, to thrive. But, whether the attention come by grace of genius or by dint of will, the longer one does attend to a topic the more mastery of it one has. And the faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering at tention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will. No one is compos sui if he have it not. An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence. But it is easier to define this ideal than to give practical directions for bringing it about. The only general pedagogic maxim bearing on attention is that the more interest the child has in advance in the sub ject, the better he will attend. Induct him therefore in such a way as to knit each new thing on to some acquisi tion already there ; and if possible awaken curiosity, so that the new thing shall seem to come as an answer, or part of an answer, to a question pre-existing in his mind. At present having described the varieties, let us turn to THE EFFECTS OF ATTENTION. Its remote effects are too incalculable to be recorded. The practical and theoretical life of whole species, as well as of individual beings, results from the selection which the habitual direction of their attention involves. In Chapters XIY and XV some of these consequences will come to light. Suffice it meanwhile that each of us literally chooses, by his ways of attending to things, what sort of a universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit. The immediate effects of attention are to make us: a) perceive — b) conceive — c) distinguish — d) remember — ATTENTION. 425 better than otherwise we could — both more successive things and each thing more clearly. It also (e) shortens 'reaction- time.' a and b. Most people would say that a sensation at tended to becomes stronger than it otherwise would be. This point is, however, not quite plain, and has occasioned some discussion. * From the strength or intensity of a sensation must be distinguished its clearness ; and to in crease this is, for some psychologists, the utmost that attention can do. When the facts are surveyed, however, it must be admitted that to some extent the relative inten sity of two sensations may be changed when one of them is attended to and the other not. Every artist knows how he can make a scene before his eyes appear warmer or colder in color, according to the way he sets his attention. If for warm, he soon begins to see the red color start out of everything ; if for cold, the blue. Similarly in listening for certain notes in a chord, or overtones in a musical sound, the one we attend to sounds probably a little more loud as well as more emphatic than it did before. When we men tally break a series of monotonous strokes into a rhythm, by accentuating every second or third one, etc., the stroke on which the stress of attention is laid seems to become stronger as well as more emphatic. The increased visi bility of optical after-images and of double images, which close attention brings about, can hardly be interpreted otherwise than as a real strengthening of the retinal sensations themselves. And this view is rendered par ticularly probable by the fact that an imagined visual object may, if attention be concentrated upon it long enough, acquire before the mind's eye almost the brill iancy of reality, and (in the case of certain exceptionally gifted observers) leave a negative after-image of itself when it passes away (see Chapter XVIII). Confident expectation of a certain intensity or quality of impression will often make us sensibly see or hear it in an object which really * See, e.g., Ulrici : Leib u. Seele, n. 28; Lotze: Metaphysik, § 273; Feclmer. Revision d. Psychophysik, xix ; G. E. Muller : Zur Theorie d. sinnl. Aufmerksamkeit, § 1; Stuinpf : Tonpsycbologie I. 71. 426 PSYCHOLOGY. falls far short of it. In face of such facts it is rash to say that attention cannot make a sense-impression more intense. But, on the other hand, the intensification which may be brought about seems never to lead the judgment astray. As we rightly perceive and name the same color under various lights, the same sound at various distances ; so we seem to make an analogous sort of allowance for the vary ing amounts of attention with which objects are viewed ; and whatever changes of feeling the attention may bring we charge, as it were, to the attention's account, and still perceive and conceive the object as the same. "A gray paper appears to us no lighter, the pendulum-beat of a clock no louder, no matter how much we increase the strain of our at tention upon them. No one, by doing this, can make the gray paper look white, or the stroke of the pendulum sound like the blow of a strong hammer, — everyone, on the contrary, feels the increase as that of his own conscious activity turned upon the thing." * Were it otherwise, we should not be able to note inten sities by attending to them. Weak impressions would, as Stumpf says,f become stronger by the very fact of being observed. " I should not be able to observe faint sounds at all, but only such as appeared to me of maximal strength, or at least of a strength that increased with the amount of my observation. In reality, however, I can, with steadily increasing attention, follow a diminuendo perfectly well." The subject is one which would well repay exact experi ment, if methods could be devised. Meanwhile there is no question whatever that attention augments the clearness of all that we perceive or conceive by its aid. But what is meant by clearness here ? c. Clearness, so far as attention produces it, means dis tinction from other things and internal analysis or subdivision. These are essentially products of intellectual discrimination, involving comparison, memory, and perception of various relations. The attention per se does not distinguish and analyze and relate. The most we can say is that it is a * Fechner, op. cit. p. 271. f Tonpsychologie, i. p. 71. ATTENTION. 427 condition of our doing so. And as these processes are to be described later> the clearness they produce had better not be farther discussed here. The important point to no tice here is that it is not attention's immediate fruit* d. Whatever future conclusion we may reach as to this, we cannot deny that an object once attended to ivill re main in the memory, whilst one inattentively allowed to pass will leave no traces behind. Already in Chapter YI (see pp. 163 ff.) we discussed whether certain states of mind were 'unconscious,' or whether they were not rather states to which no attention had been paid, and of whose passage recollection could afterwards find no vestiges. Dugald Stewart says : f "The connection between attention and memory has been remarked by many authors." He quotes Quintilian, Locke, and Helvetius ; and goes on at great length to explain the phenomena of 'secondary automa tism ' (see above, p. 114 ff.) by the presence of a mental action grown so inattentive as to preserve no memory of itself. In our chapter on Memory, later on, the point will come up again. e) Under this head, the shortening of reaction- time, there is a good deal to be said of Attention's effects. Since Wundt has probably worked over the subject more thor oughly than any other investigator and made it peculiarly his own, what follows had better, as far as possible, be in his words. The reader will remember the method and re sults of experimentation on ' reaction-time,' as given in Chapter III. The facts I proceed to quote may also be taken as a supplement to that chapter. Wundt writes : u When we wait with strained attention for a stimulus, it will often happen that instead of registering the stimulus, we react upon some entirely different impression,— and this not through confounding the one with the other. On the contrary, we are perfectly well aware at the moment of making the movement that we respond to the wroi>g stimulus. Sometimes even, though not so often, the latter may be an- * Compare, en clearness as the essential fruit of attention, Lotze's Meta- physic, § 273. f Elements, part i. chap. n. 428 PSYCHOLOGY. other kind of sensation altogether, — one may, for example, in experi menting with sound, register a flash of light, produced either by accident or design. We cannot well explain these results otherwise than by assuming that the strain of the attention towards the impres sion we expect coexists with a preparatory innervation of the motor centre for the reaction, which innervation the slightest shock then suffices to turn into an actual discharge. This shock may be given by any chance impression, even by one to which we never intended to re spond. When the preparatory innervation has once reached this pitch of intensity, the time that intervenes between the stimulus and the contraction of the muscles which react, may become vanishingly small."* " The perception of an impression is facilitated when the impres sion is preceded by a warning which announces beforehand that it is about to occur. This case is realized whenever several stimuli follow each other at equal inteivals, — when, e.g. we note pendulum movements by the eye, or pendulum-strokes by the ear. Each single stroke forms here the signal for the next, which is thus met by a fully prepared at tention. The same thing happens when the stimulus to be perceived is preceded, at a certain interval, by a single warning: the time is always notably shortened. ... I have made comparative observa tions on reaction-time with and without a warning signal. The im pression to be reacted on was the sound made by the dropping of a ball on the board of the ' drop apparatus.' .... In a first series no warning preceded the stroke of the ball; in the second, the noise made by the apparatus in liberating the ball served as a signal. . . . Here are the averages of two series of such experiments : Height of Fall. Average. Mean Error. No. of Expts. ( No warning 0.253 0.051 13 ^5 cm. -j Warning o.076 0.060 17 K ( No warning 0.206 0.036 14 5 cm> ] Warning 0.175 0.035 17 "... In a long series of experiments, (the interval between warn ing and stimulus remaining the same) the reaction-time grows less and Jess, and it is possible occasionally to reduce it to a vanishing quantity (a few thousandths of a second), to zero, or even to a negative value. f .... The only ground that we can assign for this phenomenon is the preparation (vorbereitende Spannung) of the attention. It is easy to understand that the reaction-time should be shortened by this means; but that it should sometimes sink to zero and even assume negative values, may appear surprising. Nevertheless this latter case is also explained by what happens in the simple reaction-time experiments" just referred to, in which, " when the strain of the attention has reached *Physiol. Psych., 2d ed. n. 226. f By a negative value of the reaction-time Wundt means the case of tke reactive movement occurring before the stimulus. ATTENTION. 429 its climax, the movement we stand ready to execute escapes from the control of om will, and we register a wrong signal. In these other ex periments, in wriicn a warning foretells the moment of the stimulus, it is also plain that attention accommodates itself so exactly to the lat- ter's reception that no sooner is it objectively given than it is fully apperceived) and with ihn apperception the motor discharge coin cides."* Usually, when the impression is fully anticipated, atten tion prepares the motor centres so completely for both stimulus and reaction that the only time lost is that of the pl^siological conduction downwards. But even this inter val may disappear, i.e. the stimulus and reaction may be come objectively contemporaneous ; or more remarkable still, the reaction may be discharged before the stimulus has actually occurred. t Wundt, as we saw some pages back (p. 411), explains this by the effort of the mind so to react that we may feel our own movement and the signal which prompts it, both at the same instant. As the execution of the movement must precede our feeling of it, so it must also precede the stimulus, if that and our movement are to be felt at once. The peculiar theoretic interest of these experiments lies in their shoiving expectant attention and sensation to be continuous or identical processes, since they may have identical motor effects. Although other exceptional observations show them likewise to be continuous subjectively, Wundt's experiments do not : he seems never, at the moment of reacting prematurely, to have been misled into the belief that the real stimulus was there. As concentrated attention accelerates perception, so, conversely, perception of a stimulus is retarded by anything which either baffles or distracts the attention with which we await it. "If, e.g., we make reactions on a sound in such a way that weak and strong stimuli irregularly alternate so that the observer can never expect a determinate strength with any certainty, the reaction-time for all the various signals is increased, — and so is the average error, I * Op. cit. ii. 239. f The reader must not suppose this phenomenon to be of frequent occurrence. Experienced observers, like Exner and Cattell, deny having met with it in their personal experience. 430 PSYCHOLOGY. append two examples. ... In Series I a strong and a weak sound alternated regularly, so that the intensity was each time known in ad vance. In II they came irregularly. I. Regular Alternation. Average Time. Average Error. No. of Expta. Strong sound 0.116" 0.010" 18 Weaksound 0.127" 0.012" 9 II. Irregular Alternation. Strong sound 0.189" 0.038" 9 Weaksound 0.298" 0.076" 15 " Still greater is the increase of the time when, unexpectedly into a series of strong impressions, a weak one is interpolated, or vice versa. In this way I have seen the time of reaction upon a sound so weak as to be barely perceived rise to 0.4" or 0.5", and for a strong sound to 0 25". It is also matter of general experience that a stimulus expected in a general way, but for whose intensity attention cannot be adapted in advance, demands a longer reaction-time. In such cases . . . the reason for the difference can only lie in the fact that wherever a prepa ration of the attention is impossible, the time of both perception and volition is prolonged. Perhaps also the conspicuously large reaction- times which are got with stimuli so faint as to be just perceptible may be explained by the attention tending always to adapt itself for some thing more than this minimal amount of stimulus, so that a state ensues similar to that in the case of unexpected stimuli. . . . Still more than by previously unknown stimuli is the reaction-time prolonged by wholly unexpected impressions. This is sometimes acci dentally brought about, when the observer's attention, instead of being concentrated on the coming signal, is dispersed. It can be realized purposely by suddenly thrusting into a long series of equidistant stimuli a much shorter interval which the observer does not expect. The mental effect here is like that of being startled ; — often the startling is outwardly visible. The time of reaction may then easily be length ened to one quarter of a second with strong signals, or with weak ones to a half-second. Slighter, but still very noticeable, is the retardation when the experiment is so arranged that the observer, ignorant whether the stimulus is to be an impression of light, sound, or touch, cannot keep his attention turned to any particular sense-organ in advance. One notices then at the same time a peculiar unrest, as the feeling of strain which accompanies the attention keeps vacillating between the several senses. " Complications of another sort arise when what is registered is an impression anticipated both in point of quality and strength, but ac companied by other stimuli which make the concentration of the atten tion difficult. The reaction-time is here always more or less prolonged. The simplest case of the sort is where a momentary impression is regis tered in the midst of another, and continuous, sensorial-stimulation of considerable strength. The continuous stimulus may belong to the ATTENTION. 431 same sense as the stimulus to be reacted on, or to another. When it is* of the same sense, the retardation it causes may be partly due to the distraction of the attention by it, but partly also to the fact that the stimulus to be reacted on stands out less strongly than if alone, and practically becomes a less intense sensation. But other factors in reality are present ; for we find the reaction-time more prolonged by the con comitant stimulation when the stimulus is weak than when it is strong I made experiments in which the principal impression, or signal for re action, was a bell-stroke whose strength could be graduated by a spring against the hammer with a movable counterpoise. Each set of obser vations comprised two series ; in one of which the bell-stroke was regis tered in the ordinary way, whilst in the other a toothed wheel belong ing to the chronometric apparatus made during the entire experiment a steady noise against a metal spring. In one half of the latter series (A) the bell-stroke was only moderately strong, so that the accompanying noise diminished it considerably, without, however, making it indistin guishable. In the other half (B) the bell-sound was so loud as to be heard with perfect distinctness above the noise. No. of Mean. Maximum. Mininum. Experiments. A ( Without noise 0.189 0.244 0.156 21 (Bell-stroke -s W}th no}ge _ ,.0.313 0.499 0.183 16 moderate) ( B ( Without noise 0.158 0.206 0.133 20 (Bell-stroke ]WithD0.se Q 3Q3 Q 295 Q 140 19 loud) ( "Since, in these experiments, the sound B even with noise made a considerably stronger impression than the sound A without, we must see in the figures a direct influence of the disturbing noise on the pro cess of reaction. This influence is freed from mixture with other factors when the momentary stimulus and the concomitant disturbance appeal to different senses. I chose, to test this, sight and hearing. The mo mentary signal was an induction-spark leaping from one platinum point to another against a dark background. The steady stimulation was the noise above described. Spark. Mean. Maximum. Minimum. No. of Expts. Without noise 0.222 0.284 0.158 20 With noise 0.300 0.390 0.250 18 " When one reflects that in the experiments with one and the same sense the relative intensity of the signal is always depressed [which by itself is a retarding condition] the amount of retardation in these last observations makes it probable that the disturbing influence upon atten tion is greater ivhen the stimuli are disparate than when they belong to the same sense. One does not, in fact, find it particularly hard to register immediately, when the bell rings in the midst of the noise ; but when the spark is the signal one has a feeling of being coerced, as one turns away from the noise towards it. This fact is immediately con- 432 PSYCHOLOGY. nected with other properties of our attention. The effort of the latter is accompanied by various corporeal sensations, according to the sense which is engaged. The innervation which exists during the effort of attention is therefore probably a different one for each sense-organ." * "Wundt then, after some theoretical remarks which we need not quote now, gives a table of retardations, as fol lows: Retardation. 1. Unexpected strength of impression : a) Unexpectedly strong sound , 0.073 b) Unexpectedly weak sound 0.171 2. Interference by like stimulus (sound by sound) 0.045 t 3. Interference by unlike stimulus (light by sound) 0.078 It seems probable, from these results obtained with ele» mentary processes of mind, that all processes, even the higher ones of reminiscence, reasoning, etc., whenever at tention is concentrated upon them instead of being diffused and languid, are thereby more rapidly performed, f Still more interesting reaction-time observations have been made by Miinsterberg. The reader will recollect the fact noted in Chapter III (p. 93) that reaction-time is shorter when one concentrates his attention on the expected movement than when one concentrates it on the expected signal. Herr Miinsterberg found that this is equally the case when the reaction is no simple reflex, but can take place only after an intellectual operation. In a series of experiments the five fingers were used to react with, and * Op. cit. pp. 241-5. f It should be added that Mr. J. M. Cattell (Mind, XT. 33) found, on repeating Wundt's experiments with a disturbing noise upon two practised observers, that the simple reaction-time either for light or sound was hardly perceptibly increased. Making strong voluntary concentration of attention shortened it by about 0.013 seconds on an average (p. 240). Performing mental additions whilst waiting for the stimulus lengthened it more than anything, apparently. For other, less careful, observations, compare Obersteiner, in Brain, i. 439. Cattell's negative results show how far some persons can abstract their attention from stimuli by which oth ers would be disturbed.— A Bartels (Versuche ilber die Ableukung d. Auf- merksamkeit, Dorpat, 1889) found that a stimulus to one eye sometimes prevented, sometimes improved, the perception of a quickly ensuing very faint stimulus to the other. | Of. Wundt, Physiol. Psych., 1st ed. p. 794. ATTENTION. 433 the reacter had to use a different finger according as the signal was of one sort or another. Thus when a word in the nominative case was called out he used the thumb, for the dative he used another finger ; similarly adjectives, substantives, pronouns, numerals, etc., or, again, towns, rivers, beasts, plants, elements ; or poets, musicians, phi losophers, etc., were co-ordinated each with its finger, so that when a word belonging to either of these classes was mentioned, a particular finger and no other had to perform the reaction. In a second series of experiments the reac tion consisted in the utterance of a word in answer to a question, such as " name an edible fish," etc. ; or " name the first drama of Schiller," etc.; or "which is greater, Hume or Kant?" etc. ; or (first naming apples and cherries, and several other fruits) " which do you prefer, apples or cherries ?" etc. ; or " which is Goethe's finest drama ?" etc. ; or " which letter comes the later in the alphabet, the letter L or the first letter of the most beautiful tree ?" etc. ; or "which is less, 15 or 20 minus 8 ?" * etc. etc. etc. Even in this series of reactions the time was much quicker when the reacter turned his attention in advance towards the answer than when he turned it towards the question. The shorter reaction- time was seldom more than one fifth of a second ; the longer, from four to eight times as long. To understand such results, one must bear in inind that in these experiments the reacter always knew in advance in a general way the kind of question which he was to re ceive, and consequently the sphere within lohich his possible answer lay.f In turning his attention, therefore, from the outset towards the answer, those brain-processes in him which were connected with this entire ' sphere ' were kept sub-excited, and the question could then discharge with a minimum amount of lost time that particular answer out of the ' sphere ' which belonged especially to it. When, on the contrary, the attention was kept looking towards the ques tion exclusively and averted from the possible reply, all *Beitrilge zur Experiraentellcn Psychologic, Heft i. pp. 73-106 (1889). f To say the very least, he always brought his articulatory iunervation close to the discharging point. Herr M. describes a tightening of the head- muscles as characteristic of the attitude of attention to the reply. 434 PSYCHOLOGY. this preliminary sub-excitement of motor tracts failed to occur, and the entire process of answering had to be gone through with after the question was heard. No wonder that the time was prolonged. It is a beautiful example of the summation of stimulations, and of the way in which expectant attention, even when not very strongly focalized, will prepare the motor centres, and shorten the work which a stimulus has to perform on them, in order to produce a given effect when it comes. THE INTIMATE NATURE OF THE ATTENTIVE PROCESS. We have now a sufficient number of facts to warrant our considering this more recondite question. And two physi ological processes, of which we have got a glimpse, imme diately suggest themselves as possibly forming in combina tion a complete reply. I mean 1. The accommodation or adjustment of the sensory or gans ; and 2. The anticipatory preparation from loithin of the idea- tional centres concerned with the object to which the attention is paid. 1. The sense-organs and the bodily muscles which favor their exercise are adjusted most energetically in sensorial attention, whether immediate and reflex, or derived. But there are good grounds for believing that even intellectual attention, attention to the idea of a sensible object, is also accompanied with some degree of excitement of the sense- organs to which the object appeals. The preparation of the ideational centres exists, on the other hand, wherever our interest in the object — be it sensible or ideal — is de rived from, or in any way connected with, other interests, or the presence of other objects, in the mind. It exists as well when the attention thus derived is classed as passive as when it is classed as voluntary. So that on the whole we may confidently conclude — since in mature life we never attend to anything without our interest in it being in some degree derived from its connection with other objects — that the two processes of sensorial adjustment and ideational prep aration probably coexist in all our concrete attentive acts. ATTENTION. 435 The two points must now be proved in more detail. First, as respects the sensorial adjustment. That it is present when we attend to sensible things is obvious. When we look or listen we accommodate our eyes and ears involuntarily, and we turn our head and body as well ; when we taste or smell we adjust the tongue, lips, and respiration to the object ; in feeling a surface we move the palpatory organ in a suitable way ; in all these acts, be sides making involuntary muscular contractions of a pos itive sort, we inhibit others which might interfere with the result — we close the eyes in tasting, suspend the respiration in listening, etc. The result is a more or less massive or ganic feeling that attention is going on. This organic feel ing comes, in the way described on page 302, to be con trasted with that of the objects which it accompanies, and regarded as peculiarly ours, whilst the objects form the not- me. We treat it as a sense of our own activity ', although it comes in to us from our organs after they are accommo dated, just as the feeling of any object does. Any object, if immediately exciting, causes a reflex accommodation of the sense-organ, and this has two results — first, the object's increase in clearness ; and second, the feeling of activity in question. Both are sensations of an ' afferent ' sort. But in intellectual attention, as we have already seen, (p. 300), similar feelings of activity occur. Fechner was the first, I believe, to analyze these feelings, and discriminate them from the stronger ones just named. He writes : " When we transfer the attention from objects of one sense to those of another, we have an indescribable feeling (though at the same time one perfectly determinate, and reproducible at pleasure), of altered direction or differently localized tension (Spannung). We feel a strain forward in the eyes, one directed sidewise in the ears, increasing with the degree of our attention, and changing according as we look at an object carefully, or listen to something attentively ; and we speak ac cordingly of straining the attention. The difference is most plainly felt when the attention oscillates rapidly between eye and ear ; and the feeling localizes itself with most decided difference in regard to the various sense-organs, according as we wish to discriminate a thing deli cately by touch, taste, or smell. " But now I have, when I try to vividly recall a picture of memory or fancy, a feeling perfectly analogous to that which I experience when I seek to apprehend a thini? keenly by eye or ear; and this analogous feel 436 PSYCHOLOGY. ing is very differently localized. While in sharpest possible attention to real objects (as well as to after-images) the strain is plainly forwards, and when the attention changes from one sense to another only alters its direction between the several external sense-organs, leaving the rest of the head free from strain, the case is different in memory or fancy, for here the feeling withdraws entirely from the external sense-organs, and seems rather to take refuge in that part of the head which the brain fills ; if I wish, for example, to recall a place or person it will arise be fore me with vividness, not according as I strain my attention forwards, but rather in proportion as I, so to speak, retract it backwards." * In myself the ' backward retraction ' which is felt during attention to ideas of memory, etc., seems to be principally constituted by the feeling of an actual rolling outwards and upwards of the eyeballs, such as occurs in sleep, and is the exact opposite of their behavior when we look at a physical thing. I have already spoken of this feeling on page 300. f * Psychophysik, Bd. n. pp. 475-6. f I must say that I am wholly unconscious of the peculiar feelings in the scalp which Feclmer ^oes on to describe. " The feeling of strained attention in the different sense-organs seems to be only a muscular one pro duced in using these various organs by setting in motion, by a sort of reflex action, the muscles which belong to them. One can ask, then, with what particular muscular contraction the sense of strained attention in the effort to recall something is associated? On this question my own feeling gives me a decided answer; it comes to me distinctly, not as a sensation of ten sion in the inside of the head, but as a feeling of strain and contraction in the scalp with a pressure from without inwards over the whole cranium, undoubtedly caused by a contraction of the muscles of the scalp. This harmonizes very well with the German popular expression den Kopf zu- sammenneJimen, etc., etc. In a former illness, in which I could not endure the slightest effort of continuous thought, and had no theoretical bias on this question, the muscles of the scalp, especially those of the occiput, assumed a fairly morbid degree of sensibility whenever I tried to think." (Ibid, pp. 490-491.) In an early writing by Professor Mach, after speak ing of the way in which by attention we decompose complex musical sounds v ''o their elements, this investigator continues: "It is more than a figure c f qjeech when one says that we 'search ' among the sounds. This hearkening search is very observably a bodily activity, just like attentive looking i \ the case of the eye. If, obeying tbe drift of physiology, we understand by attention nothing mystical, but a bodily disposition, it is most natural to seek it in the variable tension of the muscles of the ear. Just so, what common men call attentive looking reduces itself mainly to accommodating and setting of the optic axes. . . . According to this, it seems to me a very plausible view that quite generally Attention has its seat in the mechanism of the body. If nervous work is being done through certain channels, that by itself is a mechanical ground for other channels being closed." (Wien. Sitzungsberichte, Math. Naturw., XLVIII. 2. 297. 1863.) ATTENTION. 437 The reader who doubts the presence of these organic feel ings is requested to read the whole of that passage again. It has been said, however, that we may attend to an object on the periphery of the visual field and yet not accommodate the eye for it. Teachers thus notice the acts of children in the school-room at whom they appear not to be looking. Women in general train their peripheral visual attention more than men. This would be an objection to the invariable and universal presence of movements of ad justment as ingredients of the attentive process. Usually, as is well known, no object lying in the marginal portions of the field of vision can catch our attention without at the same time ' catching our eye ' — that is, fatally provoking such movements of rotation and accommodation as will focus its image on the fovea, or point of greatest sensibility. Practice, however, enables us, with effort, to attend to a marginal object whilst keeping the eyes immovable. The object under these circumstances never becomes perfectly distinct — the place of its image on the retina makes dis tinctness impossible — but (as anyone can satisfy himself by trying) we become more vividly conscious of it than we were before the effort was made. Helmholtz states the fact so strikingly that I will quote his observation in full. He was trying to combine in a single solid percept pairs of stereo scopic pictures illuminated instantaneously by the electric spark. The pictures were in a dark box which the spark from time to time lighted up ; and, to keep the eyes from wandering betweenwhiles, a pin-hole was pricked through the middle of each picture, through which the light of the room came, so that each eye had presented to it during the dark intervals a single bright point. "With parallel optical axes the points combined into a single image ; and the slightest movement of the eyeballs was betrayed by this image at once becoming double. Helmholtz now found that simple linear figures could, when the eyes were thus kept immovable, be perceived as solids at a single flash of the spark. But when the figures were complicated photo graphs, many successive flashes were required to grasp their totality. 438 PSYCHOLOGY. " Now it is interesting," he says, "to find that, although we keep steadily fixating the pin-holes and never allow their combined image to break into two, we can, nevertheless, before the spark comes, keep our attention voluntarily turned to any particular portion we please of the dark field, so as then, when the spark comes, to receive an impression only from such parts of the picture as lie in this region. In this respect, then, our attention is quite independent of the position and accommo dation of the eyes, and of any known alteration in these organs; and free to direct itself by a conscious and voluntary effort upon any selected portion of a dark and undifferenced field of view. This is one of the most important observations for a future theory of attention." * Hering, however, adds the following detail : " Whilst attending to the marginal object we must always," he says, " attend at the same time to the object directly fixated. If even for a single instant we let the latter slip out of our mind, our eye moves towards the former, as may be easily recognized by the after-images produced, or by the muscular sounds heard. The case is then less properly to be called one of translocation, than one of unusually wide dispersion, of the attention, in which dispersion the largest share still falls upon the thing directly looked at," t and consequently directly accommodated for. Accommoda tion exists here, then, as it does elsewhere, and without it we should lose a part of our sense of attentive activity. In fact, the strain of that activity (which is remarkably great in the experiment) is due in part to unusually strong contrac tions of the muscles needed to keep the eyeballs still, which produce unwonted feelings of pressure in those organs. 2. But if the peripheral part of the picture in this ex periment be not physically accommodated for, what is meant by its sharing our attention ? What happens when we '-distribute ' or ' disperse 5 the latter upon a thing for which we remain unwilling to ' adjust ' ? This leads us to that second feature in the process, the ' ideational preparation ' of which we spoke. The effort to attend to the marginal region of the picture consists in nothing more nor less than the effort to form as clear an idea as is possible of what is there portrayed. The idea is to come to the help of the sensation and make it more distinct. It comes with effort, and such a mode of coming is the remaining part of what we know as * Physiol. Optik, p. 741. f Hermann's Handbuch, in. i. 548. ATTENTION. 439 our attention's ( strain ' under the circumstances. Let us show how universally present in our acts of attention this reinforcing imagination, this inward reproduction, this an ticipatory thinking of the thing we attend to, is. It must as a matter of course be present when the atten tion is of the intellectual variety, for the thing attended to then is nothing but an idea, an inward reproduction or con ception. If then we prove ideal construction of the object to be present in sensorial attention, it will be present every where. When, however, sensorial attention is at its height, it is impossible to tell how much of the percept comes from without and how much from within ; but if we find that the preparation we make for it always partly consists of the creation of an imaginary duplicate of the object in the mind, which shall stand ready to receive the outward impression as if in a matrix, that will be quite enough to establish the point in dispute. In Wundt's and Exner's experiments quoted above, the lying in wait for the impressions, and the preparation to react, consist of nothing but the anticipatory imagination of what the impressions or the reactions are to be. Where the stimulus is unknown and the reaction undetermined, time is lost, because no stable image can under such cir cumstances be formed in advance. But where both nature and time of signal and reaction are foretold, so completely does the expectant attention consist in premonitory imagina tion that, as we have seen (pp. 341, note, 373, 377), it may mimic the intensity of reality, or at any rate produce reality's motor effects. It is impossible to read Wundt's and Exner's pages of description and not to interpret the 'Apperception ' and ' Spannung ' and other terms as equiva lents of imagination. With Wundt, in particular, the word Apperception (which he sets great store by) is quite inter changeable with both imagination and attention. All three are names for the excitement from within of ideational brain-centres, for which Mr. Lewes's name of preperception seems the best possible designation. Where the impression to be caught is very weak, the way not to miss it is to sharpen our attention for it by pre liminary contact with it in a stronger form. 440 PSYCHOLOGY. "If we wish to begin to observe overtones, it is advisable, just before the sound which is to be analyzed, to sound very softly the note of which we are in search. . . . The piano and harmonium are well fitted for this use, as both give overtones that are strong. Strike upon the piano first the g' [of a certain musical example previously given in the text]; then, when its vibrations have objectively ceased, strike powerfully the note c, in whose sound g' is the third overtone, and keep your attention steadily bent upon the pitch of the just heard g' ; you will now hear this tone sounding in the midst of the c. ... If you place the resonator which corresponds to a certain overtone, for ex ample g' of the sound c, against your ear, and then make the note c sound, you will hear g' much strengthened by the resonator. . . . This strengthening by the resonator can be used to make the naked ear attentive to the sound which it is to catch. For when the resonator is gradually removed, the g' grows weaker ; but the attention, once directed to it, holds it now more easily fast, and the observer hears the tone g' now in the natural unaltered sound of the note with his unaided ear."* Wundt, commenting on experiences of this sort, says that " on carefully observing, one will always find that one tries first to recall the image in memory of the tone to be heard, and that then one hears it in the total sound. The same thing is to be noticed in weak or fugitive visual impressions. Illuminate a drawing by electric sparks separated by considerable intervals, and after the first, and often after the second and third spark, hardly anything will be recognized. But the confused image is held fast in memory ; each successive illumination completes it ; and so at last we attain to a clearer perception. The primary motive to this inward activity proceeds usually from the outer impression itself. We hear a sound in which, from certain associations, we suspect a certain overtone ; the next thing is to recall the overtone in memory ; and finally we catch it in the sound we hear. Or perhaps we see some mineral substance we have met before ; the impression awakens the memory-image, which again more or less completely melts with the impression itself. In this way every idea takes a certain time to penetrate to the focus of consciousness. And during this time we always find in ourselves the peculiar feeling of attention. . . . The phenomena show that an adaptation of attention to the impression takes place. The surprise which unexpected impressious give us is due essen tially to the fact that our attention, at the moment when the impression occurs, is not accommodated for it. The accommodation itself is of the double sort, relating as it does to the intensity as well as to the quality of the stimulus. Different qualities of impression require disparate * Helmholtz: Tonempfindungen, 3d ed. 85-9 (Engl. tr., 2d ed. 50, 51; see also pp. 60-1). ATTENTION. 441 adaptations. And we remark that our feeling of the strain of our inward attentiveness increases with every increase in the strength of the impressions on whose perception we are intent." * The natural way of conceiving all this is under the sym bolic form of a brain-cell played upon from two directions. Whilst the object excites it from without, other brain-cells, or perhaps spiritual forces, arouse it from within. The latter influence is the 'adaptation of the attention.' The plenary energy of the brain-cell demands the co-operation of both fac tors : not when merely present, but when both present and attended to, is the object fully perceived. A few additional experiences will now be perfectly clear. Helmholtz, for instance, adds this observation to the pas sage we quoted a while ago concerning the stereoscopic pictures lit by the electric spark. " These experiments," he says, "are interesting as regards the part which attention plays in the matter of double images. . . . For in pictures so simple that it is relatively difficult for me to see them double, I can succeed in seeing them double, even when the illumination is only instantaneous, the moment I strive to imagine in a lively way how they ought then to look. The influence of attention is here pure ; for all eye movements are shut out. "f In another place J the same writer says : " When I have before my eyes a pair of stereoscopic drawings which are hard to combine, it is difficult to bring the lines and points that correspond, to cover each other, and with every little motion of the eyes they glide apart. But if I chance to gain a lively mental image (An- schauungsbild) of the represented solid form (a thing that often occurs by lucky chance), I then move my two eyes with perfect certainty over the figure without the picture separating again." Again, writing of retinal rivalry, Helmholtz says : " It is not a trial of strength between two sensations, but depends on our fixing or failing to fix the attention. Indeed, there is scarcely any phenomenon so well fitted for the study of the causes which are capable of determining the attention. It is not enough to form the conscious intention of seeing first with one eye and then with the other ; we must form as clear a notion as possible of what we expect to see. Then it will actually appear." § *Physiol. Psych., n. 209. f Physiol. Optik, 741. \ P. 728. § Popular Scieutin'e Lectures, Eng. Trans., p. 295. 442 PSYCHOLOGY. In figures 37 and 38, where the result is ambiguous, we can make the change from one apparent form to the other by imagining strongly in advance the form we wish to see. Similarly in those puzzles where certain lines in a picture form by their combination an object that has no connection with what the picture ostensibly represents ; or indeed in every case where an object is inconspicuous and hard to discern from the background ; we may not be Fio. 37. FIG. 38. able to see it for a long time ; but, having once seen it, we can attend to it again whenever we like, on account of the mental duplicate of it which our imagination now bears. In the meaningless French words ' pas de lieu Rhone que nous,' who can recognize immediately the English ' paddle your own canoe ' ? * But who that has once noticed the identity can fail to have it arrest his attention again ? When watch ing for the distant clock to strike, our mind is so filled with its image that at every moment we think we hear the longed- for or dreaded sound. So of an awaited footstep. Every stir in the wood is for the hunter his game ; for the fugi tive his pursuers. Every bonnet in the street is moment arily taken by the lover to enshroud the head of his idol. The image in the mind is the attention ; the preperception, as Mr. Lewes calls it, is half of the perception of the looked- for thing, f * Similarly in the verses which some one tried to puzzle me with the other day: " Oui n'a beau dit, gm sabot dit, nid a beau dit elle f " f I cannot refrain from referring in a note to an additional set of facts instanced by Lotze in his Medizinische Psychologic, § 431, although I am ATTENTION. 443 It is for this reason that men have no eyes but for those aspects of things which they have already been taught to discern. Any one of us can notice a phenomenon after it has once been pointed out, which not one in ten thousand could ever have discovered for himself. Even in poetry and the arts, some one has to come and tell us what aspects we may single out, and what effects we may admire, before our aesthetic nature can * dilate ' to its full extent and never 'with the wrong emotion.' In kindergarten instruction one of the exercises is to make the children see how many features they can point out in such an object as a flower or not satisfied with the explanation, fatigue of the sense-organ, which lie gives. " Iii quietly lying and contemplating a wall-paper pattern, some times it is the ground, sometimes the design, which is clearer and conse quently comes nearer. . . . Arabesques of monochromic many-convoluted lines now strike us as composed of one, now of another connected lineal- system, and all without any intention on our part. [This is beautifully seen in Moorish patterns ; but a simple diagram like Fig. 39 also shows it well. We see it sometimes as two large triangles superposed, some times as a hexagon with angles spanning its sides, sometimes as six small triangles stuck together at their corners.] . . . Often it hap pens in revery that when we stare at a picture, suddenly some one of its features will be lit up with es pecial clearness, although neither its optical character nor its mean ing discloses any motive for such an arousal of the attention. . . . To one in process of becoming drowsy the surroundings alter nately fade into darkness and abruptly brighten up. The talk of the bystanders seems now to come FlG- 39> from indefinite distances; but at the next moment it startles us by its threatening loud ness at our very ear," etc. These variations, which everyone will have noticed, are, it seems to me, easily explicable by the very unstable equilibrium of our ideational centres, of which constant change is the law. We conceive one set of lines as object, the other as background, and forthwith the first set becomes the set we see. There need be no logical motive for the conceptual change, the irradiations of brain-tracts by each other, according to accidents of nutrition, 'like sparks in burnt-up paper,' suffice. The changes during drowsiness are still more obviously due to this cause. 444 PSYCHOLOGY. a stuffed bird. They readily name the features they already, such as leaves, tail, bill, feet. But they may look for hours without distinguishing nostrils, claws, scales, etc., until their attention is called to these details ; thereafter, however, they see them every time. In short, the only things which we commonly see are those which we preperceive. and the only things which we preperceive are those which have been labelled for us, and the labels stamped into our mind. If we lost our stock of labels we should be intellect ually lost in the midst of the world. Organic adjustment, then, and ideational preparation or preperception are concerned in all attentive acts. An interest ing theory is defended by no less authorities than Professors Bain * and Eibot,t and still more ably advocated by Mr. N. Lange, :|: who will have it that the ideational preparation itself is a consequence of muscular adjustment, so that the latter may be called the essence of the attentive process throughout. This at least is what the theory of these authors practically amounts to, though the former two do not state it in just these terms. The proof consists in the exhibition of cases of intellectual attention which organic adjustment accompanies, or of objects in thinking which we have to execute a movement. Thus Lange says that when he tries to imagine a certain colored circle, he finds himself first making with his eyes the movement to which the circle corresponds, and then imagining the color, etc., as a conse quence of the movement. " Let my reader," he adds, " close his eyes and think of an extended object, for instance a pencil. He will easily notice that he first makes a slight movement [of the eyes] corresponding to the straight line, and that he often gets a weak feeling of innervation of the hand as if touch ing the pencil's surface. So, in thinking of a certain sound, we turn towards its direction or repeat muscularly its rhythm, or articulate an imitation of it. " § * The Emotions and the Will, 3d ed. p. 370. f Psychologie de 1'Attentiou (1889), p. 32 if. t Philosophische Studien, iv. 413 ff. § See Lange, loc. cit. p. 417, for another proof of his view, drawn from the phenomenon of retinal rivalry. ATTENTION. 445 But it is one thing to point out the presence of muscu lar contractions as constant concomitants of our thoughts, and another thing to say, with Herr Lange, that thought is made possible by muscular contraction alone. It may well be that where the object of thought consists of two parts, one perceived by movement and another not, the part per ceived by movement is habitually called up first and fixed in the mind by the movement's execution, whilst the other part comes secondarily as the movement's mere associate. But even were this the rule with all men (which I doubt *), it would only be a practical habit, not an ultimate necessity. In the chapter on the Will we shall learn that movements themselves are results of images coming before the mind, images sometimes of feelings in the moving part, some times of the movement's effects on eye and ear, and some times (if the movement be originally reflex or instinctive), of its natural stimulus or exciting cause. It is, in truth, contrary to all wider and deeper analogies to deny that any quality of feeling whatever can directly rise up in the form of an idea, and to assert that only ideas of movement can call other ideas to the mind. So much for adjustment and preperception. The only third process I can think of as always present is the inhibi tion of irrelevant movements and ideas. This seems, how ever, to be a feature incidental to voluntary attention rather than the essential feature of attention at large, t and need * Many of my students have at my request experimented with imagined letters of the alphabet and syllables, and they tell me that they can see them inwardly as total colored pictures without following their outlines with the eye. I am myself a bad vistializer, and make movements all the while. — M. L. Marillier, in an article of eminent introspective power which appeared after my text was written (Remarques sur le Mecanisme de 1'At- tention, in Revue Philosophique, vol. xxvn. p. 566), has contended against Ribot and others for the non-dependence of sensory upon motor images in their relations to attention. I am glad to cite him as an ally. f Drs. Ferrier (Functions of the Brain, §§ 102-3) and Obersteiner (Brain, i, 439 ff.) treat it as the essential feature. The author whose treatment of the subject is by far the most thorough and satisfactory is Prof. G. E. Muller, whose little work Zur Theorie der siunlichen Aufrnerksamkeit, Inauguraldissertation, Leipzig, Edelmann (1874?), is for learning and acuteness a model of what a monograph should be. I should like to have quoted from it, but the Germanism of its composition makes quotation quite 446 PSYCHOLOGY not concern us particularly now. Noting merely the inti« mate connection which our account so far establishes be tween attention, on the one hand, and imagination, discrim ination, and memory, on the other, let us draw a couple of practical inferences, and then pass to the more speculative problem that remains. The practical inferences are pedagogic. First, to strengthen attention in children who care nothing for the sub ject they are studying and let their wits go wool-gathering. The interest here must be * derived ' from something that the teacher associates with the task, a reward or a punish ment if nothing less external comes to mind. Prof. Kibot says: " A child refuses to read; he is incapable of keeping his mind fixed on the letters, which have no attraction for him; but he looks with avid ity upon the pictures contained in a book. * What do they mean ? ' he asks. The father replies: ' When you can read, the book will tell you.' After several colloquies like this, the child resigns himself and falls to work, first slackly, then the habit grows, and finally he shows an ardor which has to be restrained. This is a case of the genesis of voluntary attention. An artificial and indirect desire has to be grafted on a natu ral and direct one. Reading has no immediate attractiveness, but it has a borrowed one, and that is enough. The child is caught in the wheelwork, the first step is made." I take another example, from M. B. Perez : * "A child of six years, habitually prone to mind^wandering, sat down one day to the piano of his own accord to repeat an air by which his mother had been charmed. His exercises lasted an hour. The same child at the age of seven, seeing his brother busy with tasks in vacation, went and sat at his father's desk. ' What are you doing there ? ' his nurse said, surprised at so finding him. ' I am,' said the child, 'learning a page of German; it isn't very amusing, but it is for an agreeable surprise to mamma.' " Here, again, a birth of voluntary attention, grafted this time on a sympathetic instead of a selfish sentiment like that of the first example. The piano, the German, awaken impossible. See also G. H, Lewes: Problems of Life and Mind, 3d Series, Prob. 2, chap. 10, G. H. Schneider: Der menschliche Wille, 294 ff., 309 ft.; C. Stumpf: Tonpsychologie, i. 67-75; W. B. Carpenter: Mental Physi ology, chap. 3 ; Cappie in ' Brain/ July 1886 (hyperaemia- theory) ; J, Sully in 'Brain,' Oct. 1890. * L'Enfant de trois a sept Anss p. 108. ATTENTION. 447 no spontaneous attention ; but they arouse and maintain it by borrowing a force from elsewhere.* Second, take that mind-wandering which at a later age may trouble us whilst reading or listening to a discourse. If attention be the reproduction of the sensation from within, the habit of reading not merely with the eye, and of listen ing not merely with the ear, but of articulating to one's self the words seen or heard, ought to deepen one's attention to the latter. Experience shows that this is the case. I can keep my wandering mind a great deal more closely upon a conversation or a lecture if I actively re-echo to myself the words than if I simply hear them ; and I find a number of my students who report benefit from voluntarily adopting a similar course, t Second, a teacher wlio wishes to engage the attention of his class must knit his novelties on to things of which they already have preperceptions. The old and familiar is readily at tended to by the mind and helps to hold in turn the new, forming, in Herbartian phraseology, an * Apperceptions- masse ' for it. Of course it is in every case a very delicate problem to know what ' Apperceptionsmasse ' to use. Psychology can only lay down the general rule. IS VOLUNTARY ATTENTION" A RESULTANT OR A FORCE? When, a few pages back, I symbolized the ' ideational preparation' element in attention by a brain-cell played upon from within, I added ' by other brain-cells, or by some spiritual force,' without deciding which. The ques tion ' which ?' is one of those central psychologic mys teries which part the schools. When we reflect that the turnings of our attention form the nucleus of our inner self; when we see (as in the chapter on the Will we shall see) that volition is nothing but attention ; when we believe that our autonomy in the midst of nature depends on our not being pure effect, but a cause, — Principium quoddam quod fati feeder a rumpat, Ex infinite ne causam causa sequatur — * Psychologic de 1'Attention, p. 53. f Repetition of this sort does not confer intelligence of what is said, it only keeps the mind from wandering into other channels. The intelligence sometimes comes in beats, as it were, at the end of sentences, or in the midst of words which were mere words until then. See above, p 281. 448 PSYCHOLOGY. we must admit that the question whether attention involve such a principle of spiritual activity or not is metaphysical as well as psychological, and is well worthy of all the pains we can bestow on its solution. It is in fact the pivotal question of metaphysics, the very hinge on which our picture of the world shall swing from materialism, fatalism, monism, towards spiritualism, freedom, pluralism, — or else the other way. It goes back to the automaton-theory. If feeling is an inert accompaniment, then of course the brain-cell can be played upon only by other brain- cells, and the attention which we give at any time to any subject, whether in the form of sensory adaptation or of ' preperception,' is the fatally predetermined effect of exclusively material laws. If, on the other hand, the feeling which coexists with the brain-cells' activity reacts dynamically upon that activity, furthering or checking it, then the attention is in part, at least, a cause. It does not necessarily follow, of course, that this reactive feeling should be ' free ' in the sense of having its amount and direction undetermined in advance, for it might very well be predetermined in all these par ticulars. If it were so, our attention would not be ma terially determined, nor yet would it be 'free' in the sense of being spontaneous or unpredictable in advance. The question is of course a purely speculative one, for we have no means of objectively ascertaining whether our feel ings react on our nerve-processes or not; and those who answer the question in either way do so in consequence of general analogies and presumptions drawn from other fields. As mere conceptions, the effect-theory and the cause- theory of attention are equally clear ; and whoever affirms either conception to be true must do so on metaphysical or universal rather than on scientific or particular grounds. As regards immediate sensorial attention hardly any one is tempted to regard it as anything but an effect.* We * The reader will please observe that I am saying all that can possibly be said in favor of the effect- theory, since, inclining as I do myself to the cause-theory, 1 do not want to undervalue the enemy. As a matter of fact, one might begin to take one's stand against the effect theory at the outset, with the phenomenon of immediate sensorial attention. One ATTENTION. 449 are ' evolved 'so as to respond to special stimuli by special accommodative acts which produce clear perceptions on the one hand in us, and on the other hand such feelings of inner activity as were above described. The accommoda tion and the resultant feeling are the attention. We don't bestow it, the object draws it from us. The object has the initiative, not the mind. Derived attention, ivhere there is no voluntary effort, seems also most plausibly to be a mere effect. The object again takes the initiative and draws our attention to itself, not by reason of its own intrinsic interest, but because it is connected with some other interesting thing. Its brain- process is connected with another that is either excited, or tending to be excited, and the liability to share the excite ment and become aroused is the liability to 'preperception' in which the attention consists. If I have received an insult, I may not be actively thinking of it all the time, yet the thought of it is in such a state of heightened iirita- bility, that the place where I received it or the man who inflicted it cannot be mentioned in my hearing without my attention bounding, as it were, in that direction, as the im agination of the whole transaction revives. Where such a stirring-up occurs, organic adjustment must exist as well, and the ideas must innervate to some degree the muscles. Thus the whole process of involuntary derived attention is might say that attention causes the movements of adjustment of the eyes, for example, and is not merely their effect. Hering writes most emphati cally to this effect : " The movements from one point of fixation to another are occasioned aud regulated by the changes of place of the attention. When an object, seen at first indirectly, draws our attention to itself, the corresponding movement of the eye follows without further ado, as a con sequence of the attention's migration and of our effort to make the object distinct. The wandering of the attention entails that of the fixation point. Before its movement begins, its goal is already in consciousness and grasped by the attention, and the location of this spot in the total space seen is what determines the direction and amount of the movement of the eye." (Hermann's Handbtich, p. 534.) I do not here insist on this, because it is hard to tell whether the attention or the movement comes lirst (Ber ing's reasons, pp. 535-6, also 544-6, seem to me ambiguous), and because, even if the attention to the object does come first, it may be a mer 2 effect of stimulus and association. Mach's theory that the will to look is the space- feeling itself may be compared with Bering's in this place. See JMach's Beitrilge zur Analyse der Empfindungen (1886), pp. 55 ff. 450 PSYCHOLOGY. accounted for if we grant that there is something interest ing enough to arouse and fix the thought of whatever may be connected with it. This fixing is the attention ; and it carries with it a vague sense of activity going on, and of acquiescence, furtherance, and adoption, which makes us feel the activity to be our own. This reinforcement of ideas and impressions by the pre existing contents of the mind was what Herbart had in mind when he gave the name of apperceptive attention to the variety we describe. We easily see now why the lover's tap should be heard — it finds a nerve-centre half ready in ad vance to explode. We see how we can attend to a com panion's voice in the midst of noises which pass unnoticd though objectively much louder than the words we hear. Each word is doMy awakened ; once from without by the lips of the talker, but already before that from within by the premonitory processes irradiating from the previous words, and by the dim arousal of all processes that are connected with the ' topic ' of the talk. The irrelevant noises, on the other hand, are awakened only once. They form an unconnected train. The boys at school, inatten tive to the teacher except when he begins an anecdote, and then all pricking up their ears, are as easily explained. The words of the anecdote shoot into association with ex citing objects which react and fix them ; the other words do not. Similarly with the grammar heard by the purist and Herbart's other examples quoted on page 418. Even where the attention is voluntary, it is possible to conceive of it as an effect, and not a cause, a product and hot an agent, The things we attend to come to us by their own laws. Attention creates no idea ; an idea must already bo there before we can attend to it. Attention only fixes and retains what the ordinary laws of association bring ' be fore the footlights ' of consciousness. But the moment we admit this we see that the attention per se, the feeling of at tending need no more fix and retain the ideas than it need bring them. The associates which bring them also fix them by the interest which they lend. In short, voluntary and involuntary attention may be essentially the same. It is true that where the ideas are intrinsically very unwelcome ATTENTION. 451 and the effort to attend to them is great, it seems to us as if the frequent renewal of the effort were the very cause by which they are held fast, and we naturally think of the ef fort as an original force. In fact it is only to the effort to attend, not to the mere attending, that we are seriously tempted to ascribe spontaneous power. We think we cart make more of it ifiue will ; and the amount which we make does not seem a fixed function of the ideas themselves, as it would necessarily have to be if our effort were an effect and not a spiritual force. But even here it is possible to conceive the facts mechanically and to regard the effort as a mere effect. Effort is felt only where there is a conflict of interests in the mind. The idea A may be iDtrinsically exciting to us. The idea Z may derive its interest from association with some remoter good. A may be our sweetheart, Z may be some condition of our soul's salvation. Under these circumstances, if we succeed in attending to Z at all it is always with expenditure of effort. The ' ideational prepar- aration,' the ' preperception ' of A keeps going on of its own accord, whilst that of Z needs incessant pulses of voluntary reinforcement — that is, we have the feeling of voluntary re inforcement (or effort) at each successive moment in which the thought of Z flares brightly up in our mind. Dynami cally, however, that may mean only this : that the associa tive processes which make Z triumph are really the stronger, and in A's absence would make us give a * passive ' and unimpeded attention to Z ; but, so long as A is present, some of of their force is used to inhibit the processes con cerned with A. Such inhibition is a partial neutralization of the brain-energy which would otherwise be available for fluent thought. But what is lost for thought is con verted into feeling, in this case into the peculiar feeling of effort, difficulty, or strain. The stream of our thought is like a river. On the whole easy simple flowing predominates in it, the drift of things is with the pull of gravity, and effortless attention is the rule. Biit at intervals an obstruction, a set-back, a log-jam occurs, stops the current, creates an eddy, and makes things temporarily move the other way. If a real 452 PSYCHOLOGY. river could feel, it Avould feel these eddies and set-backs as places of effort. "I am here flowing, "it would say, "in the direction of greatest resistance, instead of flowing, as usual, in the direction of least. My effort is what enables me to per form this feat." Really, the effort would only be a passive in dex that the feat was being performed. The agent would all the while be the total downward drift of the rest of the water, forcing some of it upwards in this spot ; and although, on the average, the direction of least resistance is downwards, that would be no reason for its not being upwards now and then. Just so with our voluntary acts of attention. They are momentary arrests, coupled with a peculiar feel ing, of portions of the stream. But the arresting force, instead of being this peculiar feeling itself, may be nothing but the processes by which the collision is produced. The feeling of effort may be ' an accompaniment,' as Mr. Brad ley says, ' more or less superfluous,' and no more contribute to the result than the pain in a man's finger, when a ham mer falls on it, contributes to the hammer's weight. Thus the notion that our effort in attending is an original faculty, a force additional to the others of which brain and mind are the seat, may be an abject superstition. Attention may have to go, like many a faculty once deemed essential, like many a verbal phantom, like many an idol of the tribe. It may be an excrescence on Psychology. No need of it to drag ideas before consciousness or fix them, when we see how perfectly they drag and fix each other there. I have stated the effect-theory as persuasively as I can.* ' It is a clear, strong, well-equipped conception, and like all such, is fitted to carry conviction, wrhere there is no con trary proof. The feeling of effort certainly may be an inert accompaniment and not the active element which it seems. No measurements are as yet performed (it is safe to say none ever will be performed) which can show that it con tributes energy to the result. We may then regard atten tion as a superfluity, or a 'Luxus,' and dogmatize against * F. H. Bradley, " Is there a Special Activity of Attention ?" in ' Mind,' xi. 305, and Lipps, Gruudtatsachen, chaps, iv and xxix, have stated it similarly. ATTENTION. 453 its causal function with no feeling in our hearts but one of pride that we are applying Occam's razor to an entity that has multiplied itself ' beyond necessity.' But Occam's razor, though a very good rule of method, is certainly no law of nature. The laws of stimulation and of association may well be indispensable actors in all at tention's performances, and may even be a good enough ' stock-company ' to carry on many performances without aid ; and yet they may at times simply form the background for a ' star-performer,' who is no more their ' inert accompa niment ' or their ' incidental product ' than Hamlet is Horatio's and Ophelia's. Such a star-performer would be the voluntary effort to attend, if it were an original psychic force. Nature may, I say, indulge in these complications ; and the conception that she has done so in this case is, I think, just as clear (if not as ' parsimonious ' logically) as the conception that she has not. To justify this assertion, let us ask just what the effort to attend would effect if it ivere an original force. It would deepen and prolong the stay in consciousness of innumerable ideas which else would fade more quickly away. The delay thus gained might not be more than a second in duration — but that second might be critical ; for in the constant rising and falling of considerations in the mind, where two associated systems of them are nearly in equilibrium it is often a matter of but a second more or less of attention at the outset, whether one system shall gain force to occupy the field and develop itself, and exclude the other, or be excluded itself by the other. When devel oped, it may make us act ; and that act may seal our doom. When we come to the chapter on the Will, we shall see that the whole drama of the voluntary life hinges on the amount of attention, slightly more or slightly less, which rival motor ideas may receive. But the whole feeling of reality, the whole sting and excitement of our voluntary life, depends on our sense that in it things are really being decided from one moment to another, and that it is not the dull rattling off of a chain that was forged innumerable ages ago. This appearance, which makes life and history tingle with such a tragic zest, may not be an illusion. As we grant to 454 PSYCHOLOGY. the advocate of the mechanical theory that it may be one, so he must grant to us that it may not. And the result is two conceptions of possibility face to face with no facts definitely enough known to stand as arbiter between them. Under these circumstances, one can leave the question open whilst waiting for light, or one can do what most spec ulative minds do, that is, look to one's general philosophy to incline the beam. The believers in mechanism do so without hesitation, and they ought not to refuse a similar privilege to the believers in a spiritual force. I count my self among the latter, but as my reasons are ethical they are hardly suited for introduction into a psychological work.* The last word of psychology here is ignorance, for the ' forces ' engaged are certainly too delicate and numerous to be followed in detail. Meanwhile, in view of the strange arrogance with which the wildest materialistic speculations persist in calling themselves ' science,' it is well to recall just what the reasoning is, by which the effect-theory of attention is confirmed. It is an argument from analogy, drawn from rivers, reflex actions and other material phe nomena where no consciousness appears to exist at all, and extended to cases where consciousness seems the phenom enon's essential feature. The consciousness doesn't count> these reasoners say ; it doesn't exist for science, it is nil ; you mustn't think about it at all. The intensely reckless character of all this needs no comment. It is making the me chanical theory true per fas aut nefas. For the sake of that theory we make inductions from phenomena to others that are startlingly unlike them ; and we assume that a compli cation which Nature has introduced (the presence of feeling and of effort, namely) is not worthy of scientific recognition at all. Such conduct may conceivably be wise, though I doubt it ; but scientific, as contrasted with metaphysical, it cannot seriously be called, f * More will be said of the matter when we come to the chapter on the Will. f See. for a defence of the notion of inward activity, Mr. J times Ward's searching articles in ' Mind,' xn. 45 ami 564. ATTENTION. 455 INATTENTION. Having spoken fully of attention, let me add a word about inattention. We do not notice the ticking of the clock, the noise of the city streets, or the roaring of the brook near the house; and even the din of a foundry or factory will not mingle with the thoughts of its workers, if they have been there long enough. When we first put on spectacles, especially if they be of certain curvatures, the bright reflec tions they give of the windows, etc., mixing with the field of view, are very disturbing. In a few days we ignore them altogether. Various entoptic images, muscce volitantes, etc., although constantly present, are hardly ever known. The pressure of our clothes and shoes, the beating of our hearts and arteries, our breathing, certain steadfast bodily pains, habitual odors, tastes in the mouth, etc., are examples from other senses, of the same lapse into unconsciousness of any too unchanging content — a lapse which Hobbes has ex pressed in the well-known phrase, "Semper idem sentire ac non sentire ad idem revertunt." The cause of the unconsciousness is certainly not the mere blunting of the sense-organs. Were the sensation important, we should notice it well enough ; and we can at any moment notice it by expressly throwing our attention upon it,* provided it have not become so inveterate that in attention to it is ingrained in our very constitution, as in the case of the muscce, volitantes the double retinal images, etc. But even in these cases artificial conditions of observation and patience soon give us command of the impression which we seek. The inattentiveness must then be a habit grounded on higher conditions than mere sensorial fatigue. * It must be admitted that some little time will often elapse before this effort succeeds. As a child, I slept in a nursery with a very loud-ticking clock, and remember my astonishment more than once, on listening for its tick, to find myself unable to catch it for what seemed a long space of time; then suddenly it would break into my consciousness with an almost startling loudness.— M. Delbceuf somewhere narrates how, sleeping in the country near a mill-dam, he woke in the night and thought the water had ceased to flow, but on looking out of the open window saw it flowing in the moonlight, and then heard it too. 456 PSYCHOLOGY. Helmholtz has formulated a general law of inattention which we shall have to study in the next chapter but one. Helmholtz's law is that we leave all impressions un noticed which are valueless to us as signs by which to dis criminate things. At most such impressions fuse with their consorts into an aggregate effect. The upper partial tones which make human voices differ make them differ as wholes only — we cannot dissociate the tones themselves. The odors which form integral parts of the characteristic taste of certain substances, meat, fish, cheese, butter, wine, do not come as odors to our attention. The various muscular and tactile feelings that make up the perception of the attributes * wet,' ' elastic,' ' doughy,' etc., are not singled out separately for what they are. And all this is due to an in veterate habit we have contracted, of passing from them immediately to their import and letting their substantive nature alone. They have formed connections in the mind which it is now difficult to break ; they are constituents of processes which it is hard to arrest, and which differ alto gether from what the processes of catching the attention would be. In the cases Helmholtz has in mind, not only we but our ancestors have formed these habits. In the cases we started from, however, of the mill-wheel, the spectacles, the factory, din, the tight shoes, etc., the habits of inattention are more recent, and the manner of their genesis seems susceptible, hypothetically at least, of being traced. How can impressions that are not needed by the intel lect be thus shunted off from all relation to the rest of consciousness ? Professor G. E. Miiller has made a plausi ble reply to this question, and most of what follows is borrowed from him.* He begins with the fact that " When we first come out of a mill or factory, in which we have re mained long enough to get wonted to the noise, we feel as if something were lacking. Our total feeling of existence is different from what it was when we were in the mill. ... A friend writes to me : 'I have in my room a little clock which does not run quite twenty-four hours with out winding. In consequence of this, it often stops. So soon as this happens, I notice it, whereas I naturally fail to notice it when going. * Zur Theorie d. sinul. Aufuaerksamkeit, p. 128 foil. ATTENTION. 457 When this first began to happen, there was this modification : I sud denly felt an undefined uneasiness or sort of void, without being able to say what was the matter ; and only after some consideration did I find the cause in the stopping of the clock.' " That the stopping of an unfelt stimulus may itself be felt is a well-known fact : the sleeper in church who wakes when the sermon ends ; the miller who does the same when his wheel stands still, are stock examples. ISow (since every impression falling on the nervous system must propa gate itself somewhither), Miiller suggests that impressions which come to us when the thought-centres are preoccupied with other matters may thereby be blocked or inhibited from invading these centres, and may then overflow into lower paths of discharge. And he farther suggests that if this process recur often enough, the side-track thus created will grow so permeable as to be used, no matter what may be going on in the centres above. In the acquired inat tention mentioned, the constant stimulus always caused disturbance at first ; and consciousness of it was extruded successfully only when the brain was strongly excited about other things. Gradually the extrusion became easier, and at last automatic. The side-tracks which thus learn to draft off the stimu lations that interfere with thought cannot be assigned with any precision. They probably terminate in organic pro cesses, or insignificant muscular contractions which, when stopped by the cessation of their instigating cause, immedi ately give us the feeling that something is gone from our existence (as Miiller says), or (as his friend puts it) tlie feel ing of a void.* Miiller's suggestion awakens another. It is a well- known fact that persons striving to keep their attention on a difficult subject will resort to movements of various un meaning kinds, such as pacing the room, drumming with the fingers, playing with keys or watch-chain, scratching * I have begun to inquire experimentally whether any of the measurable functions of the workmen change after the din of machinery stops at a workshop. So fur I have found no constant results as regards either pulse, breathing, or strength of squeeze by the hand. I hope to prosecute the in quiry farther (May, 1890). 458 PSYCHOLOGY. head, pulling mustache, vibrating foot, or what not, accord ing to the individual. There is an anecdote of Sir W. Scott, when a boy, rising to the head of his class by cutting off from the jacket of the usual head-boy a button which the latter was in the habit of twirling in his fingers during the lesson. The button gone, its owner's power of reciting also departed. — Now much of this activity is unquestionably due to the overflow of emotional excitement during anxious and concentrated thought. It drains away nerve- currents which if pent up within the thought-centres would very likely make the confusion there worse confounded. But may it not also be a means of drafting off all the irrelevant sensations of the moment, and so keeping the attention more exclusively concentrated upon its inner task ? Each individual usually has his own peculiar habitual movement of this sort. A downward nerve-path is thus kept con stantly open during concentrated thought ; and as it seems to be a law of frequent (if not of universal) application, that incidental stimuli tend to discharge through paths that are already discharging rather than through others, the whole arrangement might protect the thought-centres from inter ference from without. Were this the true rationale of these peculiar movements, we should have to suppose that the sensations produced by each phase of the movement itself are also drafted off immediately by the next phase and help to keep the circular process agoing. I offer the suggestion for what it is worth ; the connection of the movements them selves with the continued effort of attention is certainly a genuine and curious fact. CHAPTER XII. CONCEPTION. THE SENSE OF SAMENESS. IN Chapter VIII, p. 221, tlie distinction was drawn be tween two kinds of knowledge of things, bare acquaintance with them and knowledge about them. The possibility of two such knowledges depends on a fundamental psychical peculiarity which may be entitled " the principle of constancy in the mind's meanings" and which may be thus expressed : " The same matters can be thought of in successive portions of the mental stream, and some of these portions can know that they mean the same matters which the other portions meant." One might put it otherwise by saying that " the mind can always intend, and know ivhen it intends, to think of the Same." This sense of sameness is the very keel and backbone of our thinking. We saw in Chapter X how the conscious ness of personal identity reposed on it, the present thought finding in its memories a warmth and intimacy which it recognizes as the same warmth and intimacy it now feels. This sense of identity of the knowing subject is held by some philosophers to be the only vehicle by which the world hangs together. It seems hardly necessary to say that a sense of identity of the known object would perform exactly the same unifying function, even if the sense of subjective identity were lost. And without the intention to think of the same outer things over and over again, and the sense that we were doing so, our sense of our own personal sameness would carry us but a little way towards making a universe of our experience. Note, however, that we are in the first instance speak ing of the sense of sameness from the point of view of the mind's structure alone, and not from the point of view of the universe. We are psychologizing, not philosophizing, 459 460 PSYCHOLOGY. That is, we do not care whether there be any real sameness in things or not, or whether the mind be true or false in its assumptions of it. Our principle only lays it down that the mind makes continual use of the notion of sameness, and if deprived of it, would have a different structure from what it has. In a word, the principle that the mind can mean the Same is true of its meanings, but not necessarily of aught besides.* The mind must conceive as possible that the Same should be before it, for our experience to be the sort of thing it is. Without the psychological sense of identity, sameness might rain down upon us from the outer world for ever and we be none the wiser. With the psy chological sense, on the other hand, the outer world might be an unbroken flux, and yet we should perceive a repeated experience. Even now, the world may be a place in which the same thing never did and never will come twice. The thing we mean to point at may change from top to bottom and we be ignorant of the fact. But in our meaning itself we are not deceived ; our intention is to think of the same. The name which I have given to the principle, in calling it the law of constancy in our meanings, accentuates its sub jective character, and justifies us in laying it down as the most important of all the features of our mental structure. Not all psychic life need be assumed to have the sense of sameness developed in this way. In the consciousness of worms and polyps, though the same realities may fre quently impress it, the feeling of sameness may seldom emerge. We, however, running back and forth, like spiders on the web they weave, feel ourselves to be working over identical materials and thinking them in different ways. And the man who identifies the materials most is held to have the most philosophic human mind. * There are two other ' principles of identity ' in philosophy. The ontological one asserts that every real thing is what it is, that a is a, and b, b. The logical one says that what is once true of the subject of a judgment is always true of that subject. The ontological law is a tautological truism; the logical principle is already more, for it implies subjects unal terable by time. The psychological law also implies facts which might not be realized : there might be no succession of thoughts; or if there were, the later ones might not think of the earlier; or if they did, they might not recall the content thereof; or, recalling the content, they might not take it as ' the same ' with anything else. CONCEPTION. 461 CONCEPTION DEFINED. The function by which we thus identify a numerically dis> tinct and permanent subject of discourse is called CONCEPTION ; and the thoughts which are its vehicles are called concepts. But the word ' coucept ' is often used as if it stood for the object of discourse itself; and this looseness feeds such evasiveness in discussion that I shall avoid the use of the expression concept altogether, and speak of 'conceiving state of mind,' or something similar, instead. The word ' conception ' is unambiguous. It properly denotes neither the mental state nor what the mental state signifies, but the relation between the two, namely, the function of the mental state in signifying just that particular thing. It is plain that one and the same mental state can be the ve hicle of many conceptions, can mean a particular thing, and a great deal more besides. If it has such a multiple conceptual function, it may be called an act of compound conception. We may conceive realities supposed to be extra-mental, as steam-engine ; fictions, as mermaid; or mere entia rati- onis, like difference or nonentity. But whatever we do conceive, our conception is of that and nothing else — noth ing else, that is, instead of that, though it may be of much else in addition to that. Each act of conception results from our attention singling out some one part of the mass of matter for thought which the world presents, and hold ing fast to it, without confusion.* Confusion occurs when * In later chapters we shall see that determinate relations exist between the various data thus fixed upon by the mind. These are called a priori or axiomatic relations. Simple inspection of the data enables us to per ceive them; and one inspection is as effective as a million for engendering in us the conviction that between those data that relation must always hold. To change the relation we should have to make the data different. 'The guarantee for the uniformity and adequacy' of the data can only be the mind's own power to fix upon any objective content, and to mean that content as often as it likes. This right of the mind to ' construct ' perma nent ideal objects for itself out of the data of experience seems, singularly enough, to be a stumbling-block to many. Professor Robertson in his clear and instructive article ' Axioms ' in the Encyclopaedia Britaunica (9th edition) suggests that it may only be where movements enter into the con stitution of the ideal object (as they do in geometrical figures) that we can 462 PSYCHOLOGY. we do not know whether a certain object proposed to us is the same with one of our meanings or not ; so that the conceptual function requires, to be complete, that the thought should not only say ' I mean this,' but also say « I don't mean that.' * Each conception thus eternally remains what it is, and never can become another. The mind may change its states, and its meanings, at different times ; may drop one conception and take up another, but the dropped concep tion can in no intelligible sense be said to change into its successor. The paper, a moment ago white, I may now see to have been scorched black. But my conception ' white ' does not change into my conception 'black.' On the con trary, it stays alongside of the objective blackness, as a different meaning in my mind, and by so doing lets me judge the blackness as the paper's change. Unless it stayed, I should simply say ' blackness ' and know no more. Thus, amid the flux of opinions and of physical things, the world of conceptions, or things intended to be thought about, stands stiff and immutable, like Plato's Realm of Ideas, t Some conceptions are of things, some of events, some of qualities. Any fact, be it thing, event, or quality, may be conceived sufficiently for purposes of identification, if only it be singled out and marked so as to separate it from other things. Simply calling it ' this ' or ' that ' will suffice. "make the ultimate relations to be what for us they must be in all circum stances." He makes, it is true, a concession in favor of conceptions of number abstracted from "subjective occurrences succeeding each other in time" because these also are acts "of construction, dependent on the power we have of voluntarily determining the flow of subjective con sciousness." " The content of passive sensation," on the other hand, ' ' may indefinitely vary beyond any control of ours." What if it do vary, so long as we can continue to think of and mean the qualities it varied from ? We can ' make ' ideal objects for ourselves out of irrecoverable bits of passive experience quite as perfectly as out of easily repeaiable active experiences. And when we have got our objects together and compared them, we do not make, but find, their relations. * Cf. Hodgson, Time and Space, § 46. Lotze, Logic, § 11. f " For though a man in a fever should from sugar have a bitter taste which at another time would produce a sweet one, yet the idea of bitter in that man's mind would be as distinct as if he had tasted only gall." (Locke's Essay bk. n. chap. xi. § 3. Read the whole section !) CONCEPTION. 463 To speak in technical language, a subject may be conceived by its denotation, with no connotation, or a very minimum of connotation, attached. The essential point is that it should be re-identified by us as that which the talk is about ; and no full representation of it is necessary for this, even when it is a fully representable thing. In this sense, creatures extremely low in the intellectual scale may have conception. All that is required is that they should recognize the same experience again. A polyp would be a conceptual thinker if a feeling of * Hollo ! thing umbob again ! ' ever flitted through its mind. Most of the objects of our thought, however, are to some degree represented as well as merely pointed out. Either they are things and events perceived or imagined, or they are qualities apprehended in a positive way. Even where we have no intuitive acquaintance with the nature of a thing, if we know any of the relations of it at all, anything about it, that is enough to individualize and distinguish it from all the other things which we might mean. Many of our topics of discourse are thus problematical, or defined by their relations only. We think of a thing about which cer tain facts must obtain, but we do not yet know how the thing will look when it is realized. Thus we conceive of a perpetual -motion machine. It is a quwsitum of a perfectly definite kind, — we can always tell whether the actual machines offered us do or do not agree with what we mean by it. The natural possibility or impossibility of the thing does not touch the question of its conceivability in this problematic way. ' Eound square,' ' black-white-thiug,' are absolutely definite conceptions ; it is a mere accident, as far as conception goes, that they happen to stand for things which nature never lets us sensibly perceive.* * Black round things, square white things, per contra, Nature gives us freely enough. But the combinations which she refuses to realize may exist as distinctly, in the shape of postulates, as those which she gives may exist in the shape of positive images, in our mind. As u mutter of fact, she may realize a warm cold thing whenever two points of the skin, so near together as not to be locally distinguished, are touched, the one with a warm, the other with a cold, piece of metal. The warmth and the cold are then often felt as if in the same objective place. Under similar conditions two objects, one sharp and the other blunt, may feel like one sharp blunt thing. The 464 PSYCHOLOGY. CONCEPTIONS ABE UNCHANGEABLE. The fact that the same real topic of discourse is at one time conceived as a mere 'that' or 'that which, etc.,' and is at another time conceived with additional specifications, has been treated by many authors as a proof that concep tions themselves are fertile and self -developing. A concep tion, according to the Hegelizers in philosophy, * develops its own significance,' ' makes explicit what it implicitly con tained,' passes, on occasion, ' over into its opposite,' and in short loses altogether the blankly self-identical character we supposed it to maintain. The figure we viewed as a polygon appears to us now as a sum of juxtaposed triangles ; the number hitherto conceived as thirteen is at last noticed to be six plus seven, or prime ; the man thought honest is believed a rogue. Such changes of our opinion are viewed by these thinkers as evolutions of our conception, from within. The facts are unquestionable ; our knowledge does grow and change by rational and inward processes, as well as by empirical discoveries. Where the discoveries are empirical, no one pretends that the propulsive agency, the force that makes the knowledge develop, is mere con ception. All admit it to be our continued exposure to the thing, with its power to impress our senses. Thus strychnin, which tastes bitter, we find will also kill, etc. Now I say that where the new knowledge merely comes from thinking, the facts are essentially the same, and that to talk of self- development on the part of our conceptions is a very bad ivay of stating the case. Not new sensations, as in theem- same space may appear of two colors if, by optical artifice, one of the colors is made to appear as if seen through the other.— Whether any two attributes whatever shall be compatible or not, in the sense of appearing or not to occupy the same place and moment, depends simply on de facto peculiarities of natural bodies and of our sense-organs. Logically, anyone combination of qualities is to the full as conceivable as any other, and has as distinct a meaning for thought. What necessitates this remark is the confusion deliberately kept up by certain authors (e.g. Spencer, Psychol ogy, §§ 42fi-7) between the inconceivable and the not-distinctly-imagin able. How do we know which things we cannot imagine unless by first con ceiving them, meaning iliem and not other things? CONCEPTION. 465 pirical instance, but new conceptions, are the indispensable conditions of advance. For if the alleged cases of self-development be examined it will be found, I believe, that the new truth affirms in every case a relation between the original subject of con ception and some new subject conceived later on. These new subjects of conception arise in various ways. Every one of our conceptions is of something which our attention originally tore out of the continuum ©f felt experience, and provisionally isolated so as to make of it an individual topic of discourse. Every one of them has a way, if the mind is left alone with it, of suggesting other parts of the continuum from which it was torn, for conception to work upon in a similar way. This ' suggestion ' is often no more than what we shall later know as the association of ideas. Often, however, it is a sort of invitation to the mind to play, add lines, break number-groups, etc. Whatever it is, it brings new conceptions into consciousness, which latter thereupon may or may not expressly attend to the relation in which the new stands to the old. Thus I have a conception of equidistant lines. Suddenly, I know not whence, there pops into my head the conception of their meeting. Sud denly again I think of the meeting and the equidistance both together, and perceive them incompatible. " Those lines will never meet," I say. Suddenly again the word ' paral lel' pops into my head. 'They are parallels,' I continue ; and so on. Original conceptions to start with ; adventitious conceptions pushed forward by multifarious psychologic causes ; comparisons and combinations of the two ; result ant conceptions to end with ; which latter may be of either rational or empirical relations. As regards these relations, they are conceptions of the second degree, as one might say, and their birthplace is the mind itself. In Chapter XXVIII I shall at considerable length defend the mind's claim to originality and fertility in bringing them forth. But no single one of the mind's conceptions is fertile of itself, as the opinion which I criti cise pretends. When the several notes of a chord are sounded together, we get a new feeling from their combi nation. This feeling is due to the mind reacting upon that 466 PSYCHOLOGY. group of sounds in that determinate way, and no one would think of saying of any single note of the chord that it ' de veloped ' of itself into the other notes or into the feeling of harmony. So of Conceptions. No one of them develops into any other. But if two of them are thought at once, their relation may come to consciousness, and form matter for a third conception. Take ' thirteen ' for example, which is said to develop into * prime.' What really happens is that we compare the utterly changeless conception of thirteen with various other conceptions, those of the different multiples of two, three, four, five, and six, and ascertain that it differs from them all. Such difference is a freshly ascertained relation. It is only for mere brevity's sake that we call it a property of the original thirteen, the property of being prime. We shall see in the next chapter that (if we count out aesthetic and moral relations between things) the only important relations of which the mere inspection of conceptions makes us aware are relations of comparison, that is, of difference and no-differ ence, between them. The judgment 6 -(- 7 = 13 expresses the relation of equality between two ideal objects, 13 on the one hand and 6 -J- 7 on the other, sucessively conceived and compared. The judgments 6 -f 7 > 12, or 6 + 7 < 14, express in like manner relations of inequality between ideal objects. But if it be unfair to say that the conception of 6 -f- 7 generates that of 12 or of 14, surely it is as un fair to say that it generates that of 13. The conceptions of 12, 13, and 14 are each and all gen erated by individual acts of the mind, playing with its ma terials. When, comparing two ideal objects, we find them equal, the conception of one of them may be that of a whole and of the other that of all its parts. This particular case is, it seems to me, the only case which makes the notion of one conception evolving into another sound plausible. But even in this case the conception, as such, of the whole does not evolve into the conception, as such, of the parts. Let the conception of some object as a whole be given first. To begin with, it points to and identifies for future thought a certain that. The 'whole' in question might be one of those mechanical puzzles of which the difficultv is to un- CONCEPTION. 467 lock the parts. In this case, nobody would pretend that the richer and more elaborate conception which we gain of the puzzle after solving it came directly out of our first crude conception of it, for it is notoriously the outcome of experimenting with our hands. It is true that, as they both mean that same puzzle, our earlier thought and our later thought have one conceptual function, are vehicles of one conception. But in addition to being the vehicle of this bald unchanging conception, ' that same puzzle,' the later thought is the vehicle of all those other conceptions which it took the manual experimentation to acquire. Now, it is just the same where the whole is mathematical instead of being mechanical. Let it be a polygonal space, which we cut into triangles, and of which we then affirm that it is those triangles. Here the experimentation (although usu ally done by a pencil in the hands) may be done by the unaided imagination. We hold the space, first conceived as polygonal simply, in our mind's eye until our atten tion wandering to and fro within it has carved it into the triangles. The triangles are a new conception, the result of this new operation. Having once conceived them, however, and compared them with the old polygon which we origi nally conceived and which we have never ceased conceiving, we judge them to fit exactly into its area. The earlier and later conceptions, we say, are of one and the same space. But this relation between triangles and polygon which the mind cannot help finding if it compares them at all, is very badly expressed by saying that the old conception has de veloped into the new. New conceptions come from new sensations, new movements, new emotions, new associations, new acts of attention, and new comparisons of old concep tions, and not in other ways, Endogenous prolification is not a mode of growth to which conceptions can lay claim. I hope, therefore, that I shall not be accused of hud dling mysteries out of sight, when I insist that the psychol ogy of conception is not the place in which to treat of those of continuity and change. Conceptions form the one class of entities that cannot under any circumstances change. They can cease to be, altogether : or they can stay, as what 468 PSYCHOLOGY. they severally are ; but there is for them no middle They form an essentially discontinuous system, and trans late the process of our perceptual experience, which is nat urally a flux, into a set of stagnant and petrified terms. The very conception of flux itself is an absolutely changeless meaning in the mind : it signifies just that one thing, flux, immovably. — And, with this, the doctrine of the flux of the concept may be dismissed, and need not occupy cur atten tion again.* 'ABSTRACT' IDEAS. We have now to pass to a less excusable mistake. There are philosophers who deny that associated things can be broken asunder at all, even provisionally, by the conceiving mind. The opinion known as Nominalism says that we really never frame any conception of the partial elements of an experience, but are compelled, whenever we think it, to think it in its totality, just as it came. I will be silent of mediaeval Nominalism, and begin with Berkeley, who is supposed to have rediscovered the doc- * Arguments seldom make converts in matters philosophical; and some readers, I know, who find that they conceive a certain matter differently from what they did, will still prefer saying they have two different editions of the same conception, one evolved from the other, to saying they have two different conceptions of the same thing. It depends, after all, on how we define conception. We ourselves defined it as the function by which a state of mind means to think the same whereof it thought on a former occasion. Two states of mind will accordingly be two editions of the same conception just so far as either does mean to think what the other thought; but no farther. If either mean to think what the other did not think, it is a different conception from the other. And if either mean to think all that the other thought, and more, it is a different conception, so far as the more goes. In this last case one state of mind has two conceptual func tions. Each thought decides, by its own authority, which, out of all the con- ceptive functions open to it, it shall now renew; with which other thought it shall identify itself as a conceiver, and just how far. " The same A which I once meant," it says, " I shall now mean again, and mean it with C as its predicate (or what not) instead of B. as before." In all this, therefore, there is absolutely no changing, but only uncoupling and re- coupling of conceptions. Compound conceptions come, as functions of new states of mind. Some of these functions are the same with previous ones, some not. Any changed opinion, then, partly contains new editions (absolutely identical with the old, however) of former conceptions, partly absolutely new conceptions. The division is a perfectly easy one to make in each particular case. CONCEPTION. 469 trine for himself. His asseverations against * abstract ideas ' are among the oftenest quoted passages in philo sophic literature. " It is agreed," he says, " on all hands that the qualities or modes of things do never really exist each of them apart by itself, and sepa rated from all others, but are mixed, as it were, and blended together, several in the same object. But, we are told, the mind being able to consider each quality singly, or abstracted from those other qualities with which it is united, does by that means frame to itself abstract ideas. . . . After this manner, it is said, we come by the abstract idea of man, or, if you please, humanity, or human nature ; wherein it is true there is included color, because there is no man but has some color, but then it can be neither white, nor black, nor any particular color, because there is no one particular color wherein all men partake. So likewise there is included stature, but then it is neither tall stature nor low stature, nor yet middle stature, but something abstracted from all these. And so of the rest. . . . Whether others have this wonder ful faculty of abstracting their ideas, they best can tell : for myself, I find indeed I have a faculty of imagining or representing to myself the ideas of those particular things I have perceived and of variously com pounding and dividing them. ... I can consider the hand, the eye, the nose, each by itself abstracted or separated from the rest of the body. But then, whatever hand or eye I imagine, it must have some particular shape and color. Likewise the idea of man that I frame to myself must be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny, a straight, or a crooked, a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man. I cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstract idea above described. And it is equally impossible for me to form the abstract idea of motion distinct from the body moving, and which is neither swift nor slow, curvilinear nor rectilinear; and the like may be said of all other abstract general ideas whatsoever. . . . And there is ground to think most' men will acknowledge themselves to be in my case. The generality of men which are simple and illiterate never pretend to abstract notions. It is said they are difficult, and not to be attained without pains and study. Now I would fain know at what time it is men are employed in surmounting that difficulty, and furnishing themselves with those nee- essary helps for discourse. It cannot be when they are grown up, fop then it seems they are not conscious of any such painstaking; it re- mains therefore to be the business of their childhood. And surely tha great and multiplied labor of framing abstract notions will be found a hard task for that tender age. Is it not a hard thing to imagine that a couple of children cannot prate together of their sugar-plums and rat tles and the rest of their little trinkets, till they have first tacked to gether numberless inconsistencies, and so framed in their minds ab stract general ideas, and annexed them to every common name they make use of ?'' * * Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction, §§ 10, 14. 470 PSYCHOLOGY. The note, so bravely struck by Berkeley, could not, however, be well sustained in face of the fact patent to every human being that we can mean color without mean ing any particular color, and stature without meaning any particular height. James Mill, to be sure, chimes in heroi cally in the chapter on Classification of his 'Analysis '; but in his son John the nomiualistic voice has grown so weak that, although ' abstract ideas ' are repudiated as a matter of traditional form, the opinions uttered are really nothing but a conceptualism ashamed to call itself by its own legit imate name.* Conceptualism says the mind can conceive any quality or relation it pleases, and mean nothing but it, in isolation from everything else in the world. This is, of course, the doctrine which we have professed. John Mill says : " The formation of a Concept does not consist in separating the at tributes which are said to compose it from all other attributes of the same object, and enabling us to conceive those attributes, disjoined from any others. We neither conceive them, nor think them, nor cog nize them in any way, as a thing apart, but solely as forming, in com bination with numerous other attributes, the idea of an individual ob ject. But, though meaning them only as part of a larger agglomera tion, we have the power of fixing our attention on them, to the neglect of the other attributes with which we think them combined. While the concentration of attention lasts, if it is sufficiently intense, we may be temporarily unconscious of any of the other attributes, and may really, for a brief interval, have nothing present to our mind but the attributes constituent of the concept. . . . General concepts, therefore, we have, properly speaking, none ; we have only complex ideas of ob jects in the concrete : but we are able to attend exclusively to certain parts of the concrete idea : and by that exclusive attention we enable those parts to determine exclusively the course of our thoughts as subsequently called up by association ; and are in a condition to carry on a tram of meditation or reasoning relating to those parts only, ex actly as if we were able to conceive them separately from the rest." f This is a lovely example of Mill's way of holding piously to his general statements, but conceding in detail all that their adversaries ask. If there be a better description ex tant, of a mind in possession of an ' abstract idea,' than is * ' Conceptualisme houteux,' Rabier, Psychologic, 310. f Exam, of Hamilton, p. 393. Cf. also Logic, bk. u. chap. v. § 1, and bk iv. chap n. § 1. CONCEPTION. 471 contained in the words I have italicized, I am unacquainted with it. The Berkeleyan nominalism thus breaks down. It is easy to lay bare the false assumption which under lies the whole discussion of the question as hitherto carried on. That assumption is that ideas, in order to know, must be cast in the exact likeness of whatever things they know, and that the only things that can be known are those which ideas can resemble. The error has not been confined to nominalists. Omnis cognitiojit per assimilationem cognoscen- tis el cogniti has been the maxim, more or less explicitly assumed, of writers of every school. Practically it amounts to saying that an idea must be a duplicate edition of what it knows * — in other words, that it can only know itself — or, more shortly still, that knowledge in any strict sense of the word, as a self- transcendent function, is impossible. Now our own blunt statements about the ultimateuess of the cognitive relation, and the difference between the ' object ' of the thought and its mere ' topic ' or ' subject of discourse ' (cf. pp. 275 ff.), are all at variance with any such theory ; and we shall find more and more occasion, as we advance in this book, to deny its general truth. All that a state of mind need do, in order to take cognizance of a real ity, intend it, or be ' about ' it, is to lead to a remoter state of mind which either acts upon the reality or resembles it. The only class of thoughts which can with any show of plausibility be said to resemble their objects are sensations. The stuff of which all our other thoughts are composed is symbolic, and a thought attests its pertinency to a topic by simply terminating, sooner or later, in a sensation which re sembles the latter. But Mill and the rest believe that a thought must be what it means, and mean what it is, and that if it be a pic ture of an entire individual, it cannot mean any part of him to the exclusion of the rest. I say nothing here of the pre posterously false descriptive psychology involved in the statement that the only things we can mentally picture are * E.g. : "The knowledge of things must mean that the mind finds itself in them, or that, in some way, the difference between them and the mind is dissolved." (E. Caird, Philosophy of Kant, first edition, p. 55:?.) 472 PSYCHOLOGY. individuals completely determinate in all regards. Chap ter XVIII will have something to say on that point, and we can ignore it here. For even if it were true that our images were always of concrete individuals, it would not in the least follow that our meanings were of the same. The sense of our meaning is an entirely peculiar ele ment of the thought. It is one of those evanescent and * transitive ' facts of mind which introspection cannot turn round upon, and isolate and hold up for examination, as an entomologist passes round an insect on a pin. In the (somewhat clumsy) terminology I have used, it pertains to the ' fringe ' of the subjective state, and is a ' feeling of ten dency,' whose neural counterpart is undoubtedly a lot of dawning and dying processes too faint and complex to be traced. The geometer, with his one definite figure before him, knows perfectly that his thoughts apply to countless other figures as well, and that although he sees lines of a certain special bigness, direction, color, etc., he means not one of these details. When I use the word man in two dif ferent sentences, I may have both times exactly the same sound upon my lips and the same picture in my mental eye, but I may mean, and at the very moment of utter ing the word and imagining the picture, know that I mean, two entirely different things. Thus when I say : " What a wonderful man Jones is ! " I am perfectly aware that I mean by man to exclude Napoleon Bonaparte or Smith. But when I say : " What a wonderful thing Man is ! " I am equally well aware that I mean to mclude not only Jones, but Napoleon and Smith as well. This added conscious ness is an absolutely positive sort of feeling, transforming what would otherwise be mere noise or vision into some thing understood; and determining the sequel of my think ing, the later words and images, in a perfectly definite way. We saw in Chapter IX that the image per se, the nucleus, {^functionally the least important part of the thought. Our doctrine, therefore, of the 'fringe ' leads to a perfectly satisfac tory decision of the nominalistic and conceptualistic controversy, so far as it touches psychology. We must decide in favor of tlie conceptualists, and affirm that the power to think things, qualities, relations, or whatever other elements there maj CONCEPTION. 473 be, isolated and abstracted from the total experience in which they appear, is the most indisputable function of our thought. UNIVEBSALS. After abstractions, universals ! The * fringe,' which lets us believe in the one, lets us believe in the other too. An individual conception is of something restricted, in its application, to a single case. A universal or general con ception is of an entire class, or of something belonging to an entire class, of things. The conception of an abstract quality is, taken by itself, neither universal nor particular.* If I abstract white from the rest of the wintry landscape this morning, it is a perfectly definite conception, a self- identical quality which I may mean again ; but, as I have not yet individualized it by expressly meaning to restrict it to this particular snow, nor thought at all of the possibility of other things to which it may be applicable, it is so far nothing but a ' that,' a ' floating adjective,' as Mr. Brad- lev calls it, or a topic broken out from the rest of the world. Properly it is, in this state, a singular — I have ' singled it out ;' and when, later, I universalize or indi vidualize its application, and my thought turns to mean either this white or all possible whites, I am in reality mean ing two new things and forming two new conceptions, f Such an alteration of my meaning has nothing to do with any change in the image I may have in my mental eye, but solely with the vague consciousness that surrounds the image, of the sphere to which it is intended to apply. We can give no more definite account of this vague conscious- * The traditional conceptualist doctrine is that an abstract must eo ipso be a universal. Even modern and independent authors like Prof. Dewey (Psychology, 207) obey the tradition : "The mind seizes upon some one aspect, . . . abstracts or prescinds it. This very seizure of some one element generalizes the one abstracted. . . . Attention, in drawing it forth, makes it a distinct content of consciousness, and thus universalizes it; it is considered no longer in its particular connection with the object, but on its own account; that is, as an idea, or what it signifies to the mind; and significance is always universal." |C. F. Reid's Intellectual Powers, Essay v. chap. m.— Whiteneu ia one thing, the whiteness of Utis sheet of paper another thing. 474 PSYCHOLOGY. ness than lias been given on pp. 249-266. But that is no reason for denying its presence.* But the nominalists and traditional conceptualists find matter for an inveterate quarrel in these simple facts. Full of their notion that an idea, feeling, or state of conscious ness can at bottom only be aware of its own quality ; and agreeing, as they both do, that such an idea or state of con sciousness is a perfectly determinate, singular, and tran sitory thing ; they find it impossible to conceive how it should become the vehicle of a knowledge of anything permanent or universal. " To know a universal, it must be universal ; for like can only be known by like," etc. Unable to reconcile these incompatibles, the knower and the known, each side immolates one of them to save the other. The nominalists ' settle the hash ' of the thing known by denying it to be ever a genuine universal ; the conceptual ists despatch the knower by denying it to be a state of mind, in the sense of being a perishing segment of thoughts' stream, consubstantial with other facts of sensibility. They invent, instead of it, as the vehicle of the knowledge of universals, an actus purus intellect us, or an Ego, whose func tion is treated as quasi-miraculous and nothing if not awe- inspiring, and which it is a sort of blasphemy to approach with the intent to explain and make common, or reduce to lowrer terms. Invoked in the first instance as a vehicle for the knowledge of universals, the higher principle presently is made the indispensable vehicle of all thinking whatever, for, it is contended, " a universal element is present in every thought." The nominalists meanwhile, who dislike *Mr. F. H. Bradley says the conception or the 'meaning' "consists of a part of the content, cut off, fixed by the mind, and considered apart from the existence of the sign. It would not be correct to add, and re ferred away to another real subject ; for where we tnink without judging, and where we deny, that description would not be applicable/' This seems to be the same doctrine as ours; the application to one or to all sub- jectsof the abstract fact conceived (i.e. its individuality or its universality), constituting a new conception. I am, however, not quite sure that Mr. Bradley steadily maintains this ground. Cf. the first chapter of his Principles of Logic. The doctrine I defend is stoutly upheld in Rosmini's Philosophical System, Introduction by Thomas Davidson, p. 48 (London, 1882). 475 actus puros and awe-inspiring principles and despise the reverential mood, content themselves with saying that we are mistaken in supposing we ever get sight of the face of an universal ; and that what deludes us is nothing but the swarm of 'individual ideas' which may at any time be awakened by the hearing of a name. If we open the pages of either school, wre find it im possible to tell, in all the whirl about universal and particular, when the author is talking about universals in the mind, and when about objective universals, so strangely are the two mixed together. James Ferrier, for example, is the most brilliant of anti-nominalist writers. But who is nimble-witted enough to count, in the following sentences from him, the number of times lie steps from the known to the knower, and attributes to both whatever properties he finds in either one! " To think is to pass from the singular or particular to the idea [concept] or universal. . . . Ideas are necessary because no thinking can take place without them. They are universal, inasmuch as they are completely divested of the particularity which characterizes all the phenomena of mere sensation. To grasp the nature of this univer sality is not easy. Perhaps the best means by which this end may be compassed is by contrasting it with the particular. It is not difficult to understand that a sensation, a phenomenon of sense, is never more than the particular which it is. As such, that is, in its strict particu larity, it is absolutely unthinkable. In the very act of being thought, something more than it emerges, and this something more cannot be again the particular. . . . Ten particulars per se cannot be thought of any more than one particular can be thought of ; , . . there always emerges in thought an additional something, which is the possibility of other particulars to an indefinite extent. ... The indefinite additional something which they are instances of is a universal. . . . The idea or universal cannot 'possibly be pictured in the imagination, for this would at once reduce it to the particular. . , . This inability to form any sort of picture or representation of an idea does not proceed from any imperfection or limitation of our faculties, but is a quality inherent in the very nature of intelligence. A contradiction is in volved in the supposition that an idea or a universal can become the object either of sense or of the imagination. An idea is thus diamet rically opposed to an image."* The nominalists, on their side, admit a gwcm-universal, something which we think as if it were universal, though it * Lectures on Greek Philosophy, op. 33-8». 476 PSYCHOLOGY. is not ; and in all that they say about this something, which they explain to be ' an indefinite number of particular ideas,' the same vacillation between the subjective and the objective points of view appears. The reader never can tell whether an ' idea ' spoken of is supposed to be a knower or a known. The authors themselves do not distinguish. They want to get something in the mind which shall resem ble what is out of the mind, however vaguely, and they think that when that fact is accomplished, no farther questions will be asked. James Mill writes : * " The word, man, we shall say, is first applied to an individual ; it is first associated with the idea of that individual, and acquires the power of calling up the idea of him ; it is next applied to another indi vidual and acquires the power of calling up the idea of him ; so of an other and another, till it has become associated with an indefinite num ber, and has acquired the power of calling up an indefinite number of those ideas indifferently. What happens ? It does call up an indefinite number of the ideas of individuals as often as it occurs ; and calling them in close connection, it forms a species of complex idea of them. ... It is also a fact, that when an idea becomes to a certain extent complex, from the multiplicity of the ideas it comprehends, it is of ne cessity indistinct ; . . . and this indistinctness has, doubtless, been a main cause of the mystery which has appeared to belong to it. ... It thus appears that the word man is not a word having a very simple idea, as was the opinion of the realists ; nor a wrord having no idea at all, as was that of the [earlier] nominalists ; but a word calling up an indefinite number of ideas, by the irresistible laws of association, and forming them into one very complex and indistinct, but not therefore unintelligible, idea." Berkeley had already said : f " A word becomes general by being made the sign, not of an ab stract general idea, but of many several particular ideas, any one of which it indifferently suggests to the mind. An idea which, consid ered in itself, is particular, becomes general by being made to represent or stand for all other particular ideas of the same sort." ' Stand for,' not knoiv ; ' becomes general,' not becomes aware of something general ; ' particular ideas,' not par ticular things — everywhere the same timidity about beg ging the fact of knowing, and the pitifully impotent attempt to foist it in the shape of a mode of being of ' ideas.' If * Analysis, chap. vin. f Principles of Human Knowledge, Introduction, §§ 11, 12. CONCEPTION. 477 the fact to be conceived be the indefinitely numerous ac tual and possible members of a class, then it is assumed that if we can only get enough ideas to huddle together for a moment in the rnind, the being of each several one of them there will be an equivalent for the knoiving, or mean ing, of one member of the class in question ; and their num ber will be so large as to confuse our tally and leave it doubtful whether all the possible members of the class have thus been satisfactorily told off or not. Of course this is nonsense. An idea neither is what it knows, nor knows what it is ; nor will swarms of copies of the same ' idea,' recurring in stereotyped form, or ' by the irresistible laws of association formed into one idea,' ever be the same thing as a thought of ' all the possible members ' of a class. We must mean that by an altogether special bit of consciousness ad hoc. But it is easy to translate Berkeley's, Hume's, and Mill's notion of a swarm of ideas into cerebral terms, and so to make them stand for some thing real ; and, in this sense, I think the doctrine of these authors less hollow than the opposite one which makes the vehicle of universal conceptions to be an actus purus of the soul. If each ' idea ' stand for some special nascent nerve-process, then the aggregate of these nascent processes might have for its conscious correlate a psychic * fringe,' which should be just that universal meaning, or intention that the name or mental picture employed should mean all the possible individuals of the class. Every peculiar compli cation of brain-processes must have some peculiar correlate in the soul. To one set of processes will correspond the thought of an indefinite taking of the extent of a word like man ; to another set that of a particular taking ; and to a third set that of a universal taking, of the extent of the same word, The thought corresponding to either set of processes, is always itself a unique and singular event, whose dependence on its peculiar nerve-process I of course am far from professing to explain.* * It may add to the effect of the text to quote a passage from the essay in 'Mind,' referred to en p. 224. " Why may we not side with the conceptualists in saying that the uni versal sense of a word does corresoond to a mental fact of some kind, but 478 PSYCHOLOGY. Truly in comparison with the fact that every conception, whatever it be of, is one of the mind's immutable posses- at the same time, agreeing with the nominalists that all mental facts are modifications of subjective sensibility, why may we not call that fact a 'feeling'? Man meant for mankind is in short a different feeling from man as a mere noise, or from man meant for that man, to wit, John Smith alone. Not that the difference consists simply in the fact that, when taken universally, the word has one of Mr. Gallon's ' blended ' images of man associated with it. Many persons have seemed to think that these blended or, as Prof. Huxley calls them, 'generic ' images are equivalent to concepts. But, in itself, a blurred thing is just as particular as a sharp thng ; and the generic character of either sharp image or blurred image depends on its being felt with its representative function. This function is the mysterious plus, the understood meaning. But it is nothing applied to the image from above, no pure act of reason inhabiting a supersensible and semi-supernatural plane. It can be diagrammatized as continuous with all the other segments of the subjective stream. It is just that staining, fringe, or halo of obscurely felt relation to masses of other imagery about to come, but not yet distinctly in focus, which we have so abundantly set forth [in Chapter IX]. " If the image come unfringed, it reveals but a simple quality, thing, or event ; if it come fringed, it may reveal something expressly taken uni versally or in a scheme of relations. The difference between thought and feeling thus reduces itself, in the last subjective analysis, to the presence or absence of ' fringe.' And this in turn reduces itself, with much proba bility, in the last physiological analysis, to the absence or presence of sub excitements in other convolutions of the brain than those whose discharges underlie the more definite nucleus, the substantive ingredient, of the thought, — in this instance, the word or image it may happen to arouse. "The contrast is not, then, as the Platonists would have it, between certain subjective facts called images and sensations, and others called acts of relating intelligence; the former being blind perishing things, knowing not even their own existence as such, whilst the latter combine the poles in the mysterious synthesis of their cognitive sweep. The con trast is really between two aspects, in which all mental facts without excep tion may be taken ; their structural aspect, as being subjective, and their functional aspect, as being cognitions. In the former aspect, the highest as well as the lowest is a feeling, a peculiarly tinged segment of the stream. Thistingeing is its sensitive body, the wie Him zu Muthe ist, the way it feels whilst passing. In the latter aspect, the lowest mental fact as well as the highest may grasp some bit of truth as its content, even though that truth were as relationless a matter as a bare imlocalized and undated quality of pain. From the cognitive point of view, all mental facts are intellections. From the subjective point of view all are feelings. Once admit that the oassiiig and evanescent are as real parts of the stream as the distinct and comparatively abiding; once allow that fringes and halos, inarticulate perceptions, whereof the objects are as yet unnamed, mere nascencies of cognition, premonitions, awarenesses of direction , arc thoughts sui generis, CONCEPTION. 479 sions, the question whether a single thing, or a whole class of things, or only an unassigned quality, be meant by it, is an insignificant matter of detail. Our meanings are of singulars, particulars, indefinites, and universals, mixed together in every way. A singular individual is as much conceived when he is isolated and identified away from the rest of the world in my mind, as is the most rarefied and universally applicable quality he may possess — being, for example, when treated in the same way.* From every point of view, the overwhelming and portentous character ascribed to universal conceptions is surprising. Why, from Plato and Aristotle downwards, philosophers should have vied with each other in scorn of the knowledge of the par ticular, and in adoration of that of the general, is hard to understand, seeing that the more adorable knowledge ought to be that of the more adorable things, and that the things of worth are all concretes and singulars. The only value of universal characters is that they help us, by reasoning, as much as articulate imaginings and propositions are; once restore, I say, the vague to its psychological rights, and the matter presents no further difficulty. ' And then we see that the current opposition of Feeling to Knowledge is quite a false issue. If every feeling is at the same time a bit of knowl edge, we ought no longer to talk of mental states differing by having more or less of the cognitive quality; they only differ in knowing more or less, in having much fact or little fact for their object. The feeling of a broad scheme of relations is a feeling that knows much ; the feeling of a simple quality is a feeling that knows little. But the knowing itself, whether of much or of little, has the same essence, and is as good knowing in the one case as in the other. Concept and image, thus discriminated through their objects, are consubstantial in their inward nature, as modes of feeling, The one, as particular, will no longer be held to be a relatively base sort of entity, to be taken as a matter of course, whilst the other, as universal, is celebrated as a sort of standing miracle, to be adored but not explained. Both concept and image, qua subjective, are singular and particular. Both are moments of the stream, which come and in an instant are no more. The word universality has no meaning as applied to their psychic body or structure, which is always Unite. It only has a meaning when applied to their use, import, or reference to the kind of object they may reveal. The representation, as such, of the universal object is as particular as that of an object about which we know so little that the interjection ' Ha I' is all it can evoke from us in the way of speech. Both should be weighed in the same scales, and have the same measure meted out to them whether of worship or of contempt." (Mind, ix. pp. 18-19.) * Hodgson, Time and Space, p. 404. 480 PSYCHOLOGY. to know new truths about individual things. The restric tion of one's meaning, moreover, to an individual thing, probably requires even more complicated brain-processes than its extension to all the instances of a kind ; and the mere mystery, as such, of the knowledge, is equally great, whether generals or singulars be the things known. In sum, therefore, the traditional universal-worship can only be called a bit of perverse sentimentalism, a philosophic ' idol of the cave.' It may seem hardly necessary to add (what follows as a matter of course from pp. 229-237, and what has been implied in our assertions all along) that nothing can be conceived twice over without being conceived in entirely different states of mind. Thus, my arm-chair is one of the things of which I have a conception ; I knew it yesterday and recognized it when I looked at it. But if I think of it to-day as the same arm-chair which I looked at yesterday, it is obvious that the very conception of it as the same is an additional complication to the thought, whose inward con stitution must alter in consequence. In short, it is logically impossible that the same thing should be known as the same by two successive copies of the same thought. As a matter of fact, the thoughts by which we know that we mean the same thing are apt to be very different indeed from each other. We think the thing now in one context, now in another ; now in a definite image, now in a symbol. Sometimes our sense of its identity pertains to the mere fringe, sometimes it involves the nucleus, of our thought. We never can break the thought asunder and tell just which one of its bits is the part that lets us know which subject is referred to ; but nevertheless we always do know which of all possible subjects we have in mind. Introspective psychology must here throw up the sponge ; the fluctuations of subjective life are too exquisite to be arrested by its coarse means. It must confine itself to bearing witness to the fact that all sorts of different subjective states do form the vehicle by which the same is known ; and it must contradict the opposite view. The ordinary Psychology of * ideas ' constantly talks as CONCEPTION. 481 if the vehicle of the same thing-known must be the same re current state of mind, and as if the having over again of the same ' idea ' were not only a necessary but a sufficient con dition for meaning the same thing twice. But this recur rence of the same idea would utterly clef eat' the existence of a repeated knowledge of anything. It would be a simple re version into a pre-existent state, with nothing gained in the interval, and with complete unconsciousness of the state having existed before. Such is not the way in which we think. As a rule we are fully aAvare that we have thought before of the thing we think of now. The continuity and permanency of the topic is of the essence of our intellection. We recognize the old problem, and the old solutions ; and we go on to alter and improve and substitute one predicate for another without ever letting the subject change. This is what is meant when it is said that thinking con sists in making judgments. A succession of judgments may all be about the same thing. The general practical postulate which encourages us to keep thinking at all is that by going on to do so we shall judge better of the same things than if we do not.* In the successive judgments, all sorts of new operations are performed on the things, and all sorts of new results brought out, without the sense of the main topic ever getting lost. At the outset, we merely have the topic ; then we operate on it ; and finally we have it again in a richer and truer way. A compound conception has been substituted for the simple one, but with full conscious ness that both are of the Same. The distinction between having and operating is as natural in the mental as in the material world. As our hands may hold a bit of wood and a knife, and yet do naught with either; so bur mind may simply be aware of a thing's existence, and yet neither attend to it nor discrimi nate it, neither locate nor count nor compare nor like nor dislike nor deduce it, nor recognize it articulately as having been met with before. At the same time we know that, instead of staring at it in this entranced and senseless way, we may rally our activity in a moment, and locate, class, Compare the admirable passage in Hodgson's Time and Space, p. 310. 482 PSYCHOLOGY. compare, count, and judge it. There is nothing involved in all this which we did not postulate at the very outset of our introspective work . realities, namely, extra mentem, thoughts, and possible relations of cognition between the two. The result of the thoughts' operating on the data given to sense is to transform the order in which experience comes into an entirely different order, that of the conceived world. There is no spot of light, for example, which I pick out and proceed to define as a pebble, which is not thereby torn from its mere time- and space-neighbors, and thought in conjunction with things physically parted from it by the width of nature. Compare the form in which facts appear in a text-book of physics, as logically subordinated laws, with that in which we naturally make their acquaintance. The conceptual scheme is a sort of sieve in which we try to gather up the world's contents. Most facts and relations fall through its meshes, being either too subtle or insig nificant to be fixed in any conception. But whenever a physical reality is caught and identified as the same with something already conceived, it remains on the sieve, and all the predicates and relations of the conception with which it is identified become its predicates and relations too ; it is subjected to the sieve's network, in other words. Thus comes to pass what Mr. Hodgson calls the translation of the perceptual into the conceptual order of the world.* In Chapter XXII we shall see how this translation always takes place for the sake of some subjective interest, and how the conception with which we handle a bit of sen sible experience is really nothing but a teleological instru ment. This whole function of conceiving, of fixing, and hold ing fast to meanings, has no significance apart from the fact that the conceiver is a creature with partial purposes and pri vate ends. There remains, therefore, much more to be saic? about conception, but for the present this will suffice. * Philosophy of Keflection, i. 273-308. CHAPTER XIII. DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. IT is matter of popular observation that some men have sharper senses than others, and that sonic have acuter minds and are able to 'split hairs' and see two shades of meaning where the majority see but one. Locke long ago set apart the faculty of discrimination as one in which men differ individually. What he wrote is good enough to quote us an introduction to this chapter: " Another faculty we may take notice of in our minds is that of discerning and distinguishing between the several ideas it has. It i*S not enough to have a confused perception of something in general : un less the mind had a distinct perception of different objects and their qualities, it would be capable of very little knowledge ; though the bodies that affect us were as busy about us as they are now, and the mind were continually employed in thinking. On this faculty of dis tinguishing one thing from another depends the evidence and certainty of several even very general propositions, which have passed for innate truths ; because men, overlooking the true cause why those propositions find universal assent, impute it wholly to native uniform impressions -. whereas it in truth depends upon this clear discerning faculty of the mind, whereby it perceives two ideas to be the same or different. But of this more hereafter ? " How much the imperfection of accurately discriminating ideas one from another lies either in the dulness or faults of the organs of sense, or want of acuteness, exercise, or attention in the understanding, or hastiness and precipitancy natural to some tempers, I will not here ex amine : it suffices to take notice that this is one of the operations that the mind may reflect on and observe in itself. It is of that conse quence to its other knowledge, that so far as this faculty is in itself dull, or not rightly made use of for the distinguishing one thing from another, so far our notions are confused, and our reason and judgment disturbed or misled. If in having our ideas in the memory ready at hand consists quickness of parts ; in this of having them un- confused, and being able nicely to distinguish one thing from another where there is but the least difference, consists in a great measure the exactness of judgment and clearness of reason which is to be observed \n one man above another. 4iu! lieuce, perhaps, may be given some 483 484 PSYCHOLOGY. reason of that common observation, — that men who have a great deal of wit and prompt memories have not always the clearest judg ment or deepest reason. For, wit lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and variety wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy; judgment, on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully one from another ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude and by affinity to take one thing for another. This is a way of proceeding quite contrary to metaphor and allusion, wherein for the most part lies that entertainment and pleasantry of wit which strikes so lively on the fancy, and therefore, so acceptable to all people because its beauty appears at first sight, and there is required no labor of thought to ex amine what truth or reason there is in it." * But Locke's descendants have been slow to enter into the path whose fruitfulness was thus pointed out by their mas ter, and have so neglected the study of discrimination that one might almost say that the classic English psychologists have, as a school, hardly recognized it to exist. 'Associa tion' has proved itself in their hands the one all-absorbing power of the mind. Dr. Martineau, in his review of Bain, makes some very weighty remarks on this onesidedness of the Lockian sc'hool. Our mental history, says he, is, in its view, " a perpetual formation of new compounds : and the words * associ ation,' ' cohesion,' ' fusion,' ' indissoluble connection,' all express the change from plurality of data to some unity of result. An explanation of the process therefore requires two things : a true enumeration of the primary constituents, and a correct statement of their laws of com bination : just as, in chemistry, we are furnished with a list of the simple elements, and the with then principles of their synthesis. Now the latter of these two conditions we find satisfied by the association- psychologists : but not the former. They are not agreed upon their catalogue of elements, or the marks by which they may know the simple from the compound. The psychologic unit is not fixed ; that which is called one impression by Hartley is treated as half-a-dozen or more by Mill : and the tendency of the modern teachers on this point is to recede more and more from the better-chosen track of their master. Hartley, for example, regarded the whole present effect upon us of any single object — say, an orange — as a single sensation ; and the whole vestige it left behind, as a single *idea of sensation.' His modern disciples, * ¥uman Understanding, n. xi. 1, 3. DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 485 on the other hand, consider this same effect as an aggregate from a plurality of sensations, and the ideal trace it leaves as highly compound. 'The idea of an object,' instead of being an elementary starting-point with them, is one of the elaborate results of repetition and experience ; and is continually adduced as remarkably illustrating the fusing power of habitual association. Thus James Mill observes : " ' It is to this great law of association that we trace the formation of our ideas of what we call external objects ; that is, the ideas of a cer tain number of sensations, received together so frequently that they coalesce as it were, and are spoken of under the idea of unity. Hence, what we call the idea of a tree, the idea of a stone, the idea of a horse, the idea of a man. In using the names, tree, horse, man, the names of what I call objects, I am referring, and can be referring, only to my own sensations ; in fact, therefore, only naming a certain number of sensations regarded as in a particular state of combination, that is, concomitance. Particular sensations of sight, of touch, of the muscles, are the sensations to the ideas of which, color, extension, roughness, hardness, smoothness, taste, smell, so coalescing as to appear one idea, I give the name of the idea of a tree.' * "To precisely the same effect Mr. Bain remarks : "'External objects usually affect us through a plurality of senses. The pebble on the sea-shore is pictured on the eye as form and color. We take it up in the hand and repeat the impression of form, with the additional feeling of touch. Knock two together, and there is a charac teristic sound. To preserve the impression of an object of this kind, there must be an association of all these different effects. Such associa tion, when matured and firm, is our idea, our intellectual grasp of the pebble. Passing to the organic world, and plucking a rose, we have the same effects of form to the eye and hand, color and touch, with new effects of odor and taste. A certain time is requisite for the co herence of all these qualities in one aggregate, so as to give us for all purposes the enduring image of the rose. When fully acquired, any one of the characteristic impressions will revive the others ; the odor, the sight, the feeling of the thorny stalk — each of these by itself will hoist the entire impression into the view.' \ "Now, this order of derivation, making our objective knowledge be gin with plurality of impression and arrive at unity, we take to be a complete inversion of our psychological history. Hartley, we think, was perfectly right in taking no notice of the number of inlets through which an object delivers its effect upon us, and, in spite of this circum stance, treating the effect as one. . . . Even now, after life has read us so many analytic lessons, in proportion as we can fix the attitude of our scene and ourselves, the sense of plurality in our impressions re treats, and we lapse into an undivided consciousness ; losing, for in- * Analysis, vol. i. p. 71. Senses and the Intellect, page 411. 486 PSYCHOLOGY. stance, the separate notice of any uniform hum in the car, or light in the eye, or weight of clothes on the body, though not one of them is in operative on the complexion of our feeling. This law, once granted, must be carried far beyond Hartley's point. Not only must each ob ject present itself to us integrally before it shells off into its qualities, but'the whole scene around us must disengage for us object after object from its still background by emergence and change ; and even our self-detachment from the world over against us must wait for the start of collision between the force we issue and that which we receive. To confine ourselves to the simplest case : when a red ivory ball, seen for the first time, has been withdrawn, it will leave a mental represen tation of itself, in which all that it simultaneously gave us will indis- tinguishably coexist. Let a white ball succeed to it ; now, and not before, will an attribute detach itself, and the color, by force of con trast, be shaken out into the foregronnd. Let the white ball be re placed by an egg : and this new difference will bring the form into notice from its previous slumber. And thus, that which began by being simply an object, cut out from the surrounding scene, becomes for us first a red object, and then a red round object ; and so on. In stead, therefore, of the qualities, as separately given, subscribing to gether and adding themselves up to present us with the object as their aggregate, the object is beforehand with them, and from its integrity delivers them out to our knowledge, one by one. In this disintegration, the primary nucleus never loses its substantive character or name ; whilst the difference which it throws off appears as a mere attribute, ex pressed by an adjective. Hence it is that we are compelled to think of the object as having, not as being, its qualities ; and can never heartily admit the belief of any loose lot of attributes really fusing themselves into a tlting. The unity of the original whole is not felt to go to pieces and be resolved into the properties which it successively gives off ; it retains a residuary existence, which constitutes it a substance, as against the emerging quality, which is only its phenomenal predicate. Were it not for this perpetual process of differentiation of self from the world, of object from its scene, of attribute from object, no step of Abstraction could be taken ; no qualities could fall under our notice ; and had we ten thousand senses, they would all converge and meet in but one consciousness. But if this be so, it is an utter falsification of the order of nature to speak of sensations grouping themselves into aggregates, and so composing for us the objects of which we think ; and the whole language of the theory, in regard to the field of synchronous existences, is a direct inversion of the truth. Experience proceeds and intellect is trained, not by Association, but by Dissoci ation, not by reduction of pluralities of impression to one, but by the opening out of one into many ; and a true psychological history must expound itself in analytic rather than synthetic terms. Precisely those ideas — of Substance, of Mind, of Cause, of Space — which this system treats as infinitely complex, the last result of myriads of confluent ele- DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 487 ments, are in truth the residuary simplicities of consciousness, whose stability the eddies and currents of phenomenal experience have left undisturbed."* The truth is that Experience is trained by both associa tion and dissociation, and that psychology must be writ both in synthetic and in analytic terms. Our original sen sible totals are, on the one hand, subdivided by discrimi native attention, and, on the other, united with other totals, — either through the agency of our own movements, carrying our senses from one part of space to another, or because new objects come successively and replace those by which we were at first impressed. The ' simple impression ' of Hume, the ' simple idea ' of Locke are both abstractions, never realized in experience. Experience, from the very first, presents us with concreted objects, vaguely continuous with the rest of the world which envelops them in space and time, and potentially divisible into inward elements and parts. These objects we break asunder and reunite. We must treat them in both ways for our knowledge of them to grow ; and it is hard to say, on the whole, which way preponderates. But since the elements with which the traditional associationism performs its constructions — ' simple sensations,' namely — are all products of discrimi nation carried to a high pitch, it seems as if we ought to discuss the subject of analytic attention and discrimination first. The noticing of any part whatever of our object is an act of discrimination. Already on p. 404 I have described the manner in which we often spontaneously lapse into the undiscriminating state, even with regard to objects which we have already learned to distinguish. Such anaesthetics as chloroform, nitrous oxide, etc., sometimes bring about transient lapses even more total, in which numerical dis crimination especially seems gone ; for one sees light and hears sound, but whether one or many lights and sounds is quite impossible to tell. Where the parts of an object have already been discerned, and each made the object of a special discriminative act, we can with difficulty feel the * Essays Philosophical and Theological : First Series, pp. 268-273. 488 PSYCHOLOGY. object again in its pristine unity ; and so prominent may our consciousness of its composition be, that we may hardly believe that it ever could have appeared undivided. But this is an erroneous view, the undeniable fact being that any number of impressions, from any number of sensory sources, falling simultaneously on a mind WHICH HAS NOT YET EXPERI ENCED THEM SEPARATELY, will fuse into a single undivided ofe- jectfor that mind. The law is that all things fuse that can fuse, and nothing separates except what must. What makes impressions separate we have to study in this chapter. Although they separate easier if they come in through dis tinct nerves, yet distinct nerves are not an unconditional ground of their discrimination, as we shall presently see. The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confu sion ; and to the very end of life, our location of all things in one space is due to the fact that the original extents or bignesses of all the sensations which came to our notice at once, coalesced together into one and the same space. There is no other reason than this why " the hand I touch and see coincides spatially with the hand I immediately feel."* It is true that we may sometimes be tempted to exclaim, when once a lot of hitherto unnoticed details of the object lie before us, " How could we ever have been ignorant of these things and yet have felt the object, or drawn the conclusion, as if it were a continuum, a plenum ? There would have been gaps — but we felt no gaps ; wherefore we must have seen and heard these details, leaned upon these steps ; they must h#ve been operative upon our minds, just as they are now, only unconsciously, or at least inattentively. Our first unanalyzed sensation was really composed of these elementary sensa tions, our first rapid conclusion was really based on these intermediate inferences, all the while, only we failed to note the fact. ' * But this is nothing but the fatal ' psychologists fal lacy ' (p. 196) of treating an inferior state of mind as if it must somehow know implicitly all that is explicitly known * Montgomery in 'Mind/x. 527. Of. also Lipps: Grundtatsachen des Seeleulebens, p, 579 if. ; and see below. Chapter XIX. DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 489 about the &ame topic by superior states of mind. The thing thought of is unquestionably the same, but it is thought twice over in two absolutely different psychoses, — once as an unbroken unit, and again as a sum of discriminated parts. It is not one thought in two editions, but two entirely distinct thoughts of one thing. And each thought is within itself a wntinuum, & plenum, needing no contributions from the other to fill up its gaps. As I sit here, I think objects, and I make inferences, which the future is sure to analyze and articulate and riddle with discriminations, showing me many things wherever I now notice one. Nevertheless, my thought feels quite sufficient unto itself for the time being ; and ranges from pole to pole, as free, and as unconscious of having overlooked anything, as if it possessed the great est discriminative enlightenment. We all cease analyzing the world at some point, and notice no more differences. The last units with which we stop are our objective elements of being. Those of a dog are different from those of a Humboldt ; those of a practical man from those of a meta physician. But the dog's and the practical man's thoughts feel continuous, though to the Humboldt or the metaphy sician, they would appear full of gaps and defects. And they are continuous, as thoughts. It is only as mirrors of things that the superior minds find them full of omissions. And when the omitted things are discovered and the un noticed differences laid bare, it is not that the old thoughts split up, but that new thoughts supersede them, which make new judgments about the same objective world. THE PRINCIPLE OF MEDIATE COMPARISON. When we discriminate an element, we may contrast it with the case of its own absence, of its simply not being there, without reference to what is there ; or we may also take the latter into account. Let the first sort of discrim ination be called existential, the latter differential discrimina tion. A peculiarity of differential discriminations is that they result in a perception of differences which are felt as greater or less one than the other. Entire groups of differ ences may be ranged in series : the musical scale, the colof scale, are examples. Every department of our experience 490 PSYCHOLOGY. may have its data written down in an evenly gradated order, from a lowest to a highest member. And any one datum may be a term in several such orders. A given note may have a high place in the pitch-series, a low place in the loudness-series, and a medium place in the series of agree- ablenesses. A given tint must, in order to be fully deter mined, have its place assigned in the series of qualities, in the series of purities (freedom from white), and in the series of intensities or brightnesses. It may be low in one of these respects, but high in another. In passing from term to term in any such series we are conscious not only of each step of difference being equal to (or greater or less than) the last, but we are conscious of proceeding in a uniform direction, different from other possible directions. This consciousness of serial increase of differences is one of the fundamental facts of our intellectual life. More, more, MOKE, of the same kind of difference, we say, as we advance from term to term, and realize that the farther on we get the larger grows the breach between the term we are at and the one from which we started Between any two terms of such a series the difference is greater than that be tween any intermediate terms, or than that between an inter mediate term and either of the extremes. The louder than the loud is louder than the less loud ; the farther than the far is farther than the less far ; the earlier than the early is earlier than the late ; the higher than the high is higher than the low ; the bigger than the big is bigger than the small ; or, to put it briefly and universally, the more than the more is more than the less ; such is the great synthetic prin- cifile of mediate comparison ivhich is involved in the posses^ sion by the human mind of the sense of serial increase. In Chapter XXVIII we shall see the altogether overwhelming importance of this principle in the conduct of all our higher rational operations. ABE ALL DIFFERENCES DIFFERENCES OF COMPOSITION? Each of the differences in one of these uniform series feels like a definite sensible quantity, and each term seems like the last term with this quantity added. In many con crete objects which differ from one another we can plainly DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 491 see that tbe difference does consist simply in the fact that one object is the same as the other plus something else, or that they both have an identical part, to which each adds a distinct remainder. Thus two pictures may be struck from the same block, but one of them may differ in having color adtlecl ; or two carpets may show an identical pattern which in each is woven in distinct hues. Similarly, two classes of sensation may have the same emotional tone but negate each other in remaining respects — a dark color and a deep sound, for example ; or two faces may have the same sh; ,pe of nose but everything else unlike. The similarity of the same note sounded by instruments of different tim bre is explained by the coexistence of a fundamental tone common to both, with over-tones in one which the other lacks. Dipping my hand into water and anon into a colder water. 1 may then observe certain additional feelings, broader and deeper irradiations of the cold, so to speak, which were not in the earlier experience, though for aught I can tell, the feelings may be otherwise the same. 'Hefting' first one woight, and then another, new feelings may start out in m.'y elbow-joint, wrist, and elsewhere, and make me call the second weight the heavier of the twain. In all these cases each of the differing things may be represented by two parts, one that is common to it and the others, and an other that is peculiar to itself. If they form a series, A, B, C, D, etc., and the common part be called X, whilst the lowest difference be called d, then the composition of the series would be as follows : B = (X+ d) + d, orX + C = X+3d; D = If X itself were ultimately composed of cf s we should have the entire series explained as due to the varying com bination and re-combination with itself of an unvarying ele ment ; and all the apparent differences of quality would "be translated into differences of quantity alone. This is the sort of reduction which the atomic theory in physics and 492 P8YCEOLOOT. the mind-stuff theory in psychology regard as their ideal. So that, following the analogy of our instances, one might easily be tempted to generalize and to say that all difference is but addition and subtraction, and that what we called ' differential ' discrimination is only ' existential ' discrimina tion in disguise ; that is to say, that where A and B differ, we merely discern something in the one which the other is without. Absolute identity in tilings up to a certain point, then absolute non-identity, would on this theory take the place of those ultimate qualitative unlikenesses between them, in which we naturally believe ; and the mental func tion of discrimination, ceasing to be regarded as an ultimate one, would resolve itself into mere logical affirmation and negation, or perception that a feature found in one thing, in another does not exist. Theoretically, however, this theory is full of difficulty. If all the differences which we feel were in one direction, so that all objects could be arranged in one series (how ever long), it might still work. But when we consider the notorious fact that objects differ from each other in divergent directions, it grows well nigh impossible to make it do so. For then, supposing that an object differed from things in one direction by the increment d, it would have to differ from things in another direction by a different sort of incre ment, call it d'\ so that, after getting rid of qualitative un- likeness between objects, we should have it back on our hands again between their increments. We may of course re-apply our method, and say that the difference between d and d' is not a qualitative unlikeuess, but a fact of com position, one of them being the same as the other plus an increment of still higher order, S for example, added. But when we recollect that even- thing in the world can be com pared with everything else, and that the number of direc tions of difference is indefinitely great, then we see that the complication of self-compoundiugs of the ultimate differen tial increment by which, on this theory, all the innumerable unlikenesses of the world are explained, in order to avoid writing any of them down as ultimate differences of kind, would beggar all conception. It is the mind-dust theory. DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 493 with all its difficulties in a particularly uncompromising form ; and all for the sake of the fantastic pleasure of being able arbitrarily to say that there is between the things in the world and between the 'ideas' in the mind nothing but absolute sameness and absolute not-sameness of elements the not-sameness admitting no degrees. To me it seems much -wiser to turn away from such transcendental extravagances of speculation, and to abide by the natural appearances. These would leave unlikeness as an indecomposable relation amongst things, and a rela tion moreover of which there were all degrees. Absolute not-sameness would be the maximal degree, absolute same ness the minimal degree of this unlikeness, the discernment of which would be one of our ultimate cognitive powers.* Certainly the natural appearances are dead against the notion that no qualitative differences exist. With the same clear ness with which, in certain objects, we do feel a difference to be a mere matter of plus and minus, in other objects we feel that this is not the case. Contrast our feeling of the differ ence between the length of two lines with our feeling of the difference between blue and yellow, or with that between right and left. Is right equal to left with something added ? Is blue yellow plus something ? If so, plus what ?f So long as we stick to verifiable psychology, ice are forced to admit that differences of simple KIND form an irreducible sort of relation between some of the elements of our experi ence, and forced to deny that differential discrimination * Stumpf (Tonpsychologie, I. 116 ff.) tries to prove that the theory that all differences are differences of composition leads necessarily to an infinite regression when we try to determine the unit. It seems to me that in his particular reasoning he forgets the ultimate units of the mind-stuff theory. I cannot find the completed infinite to be one of the obstacles to belief in this theory, although I fully accept Stumpf 's general reasoning, and am only too happy to find myself on the same side with such an ex ceptionally clear thinker. The strictures by Wahle in the Vierteljsch. f. wiss. Phil, seem to me to have no force, since the writer does not dis criminate between resemblance of things obviously compound and that of things sensibly simple. f The belief that the causes of effects felt by us to differ qualitatively are facts which differ only in quantity (e.g. that blue is caused by so many ether- waves, and yellow by a smaller number) must not be confounded with the feeling that the effects differ quantitatively themselves. 494 PSYCHOLOGY. can everywhere be reduced to the mere ascertainment that elements present in one fact, in another fail to exist. The perception that an element exists in one thing and does not exist in another and the perception of qualitative differ ence are, in short, entirely disconnected mental functions.* But at the same time that we insist on this, we must also admit that differences of quality, however abundant, are not the only distinctions with which our mind has to deal. Differences which seem of mere composition, of number, of plus and minus, also abound, t But it will be best for the present to disregard all these quantitative cases and, taking the others (which, by the least favorable calculation, will still be numerous enough), to consider next the manner in ivhich we come to cognize simple differences of kind. We cannot explain the cognition ; we can only as certain the conditions by virtue of which it occurs. THE CONDITIONS OF DISCRIMINATION. What, then, are the conditions under which we discriminate things differing in a simple way ? First, the things must BE different, either in time, or place, or quality. If the difference in any of these regards is sufficiently great, then we cannot overlook it, except by not noticing the things at all. No one can help singling out a black stripe on a wrhite ground, or feeling the contrast between a bass note and a high one sounded immediately after it. Discrimination is here involuntary. But where the objective difference is less, discrimination need not so inevitably occur, and may even require considerable effort of attention to be performed at all. * Herr G. H. Schneider, in his youthful pamphlet (Die Unterscheidung, 1877) has tried to show that there are no positively existent elements of sensibility, no substantive qualities between which differences obtain, but that the terms we call such, the sensations, are but sums of differences, loci or starting points whence many directions of difference proceed. ' TJjiterscJiiedsempfindungs-Complexe ' are what he calls them. This absurd carrying out of that ' principle of relativity ' which we shall have to men tion in Chapter XVII may serve as a counterpoise to the mind-stuff theory, which says that there are nothing but substantive sensations, and denies the existence of relations of difference between them at all. { Cf. Stumpf, Tonpsychologie, i. 121, and James Ward, Mind, i. 464. DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 496 Another condition which then favors it is that the sen sations excited by the differing objects should not come to us simultaneously but fall in immediate SUCCESSION upon the same organ. It is easier to compare successive than simul taneous sounds, easier to compare two weights or two tem peratures by testing one after the other with the same hand, than by using both hands and comparing both at once. Similarly it is easier to discriminate shades of light or color by moving the eye from one to the other, so that they suc cessively stimulate the same retinal tract. In testing the local discrimination of the skin, by applying compass- points, it is found that they are felt to touch different spots much more readily when set down one after the other than when both are applied at once. In the latter case they may be two or three inches apart on the back, thighs, etc., and still feel as if they were set down in one spot. Finally, in the case of smell and taste it is well-nigh impossible to compare simultaneous impressions at all. The reason why successive impression so much favors the result seems to be that there is a real sensation of difference, aroused by the shock of transition from one perception to another which is unlike the first. This sensation of difference has its own peculiar quality, as difference, which remains sensible, no matter of what sort the terms may be, between which it obtains. It is, in short, one of those transitive feelings, or feelings of relation, of which I treated in a former place (pp. 245 if.); and, when once aroused, its object lingers in the memory along with the substantive terms which precede and follow, and enables our judgments of comparison to be made. We shall soon see reason to believe that no two terms can possibly be simultaneously perceived to differ, unless, in a preliminary operation, we have suc cessively attended to each, and, in so doing, had the transi tional sensation of difference between them aroused. A field of consciousness, however complex, is never analyzed unless some of its ingredients have changed. We now discern, 'tis true, a multitude of coexisting things about us at every moment : but this is because we have had a long education, and each thing we now see distinct has been already differentiated from its neighbors by repeated 496 PSYCHOLOGY. appearances in successive order. To the infant, sounds, sights, touches, and pains, form probably one unanalyzed bloom of confusion.* Where the difference between the successive sensations is but slight, the transition between them must be made as immediate as possible, and both must be compared in mem ory, in order to get the best results. One cannot judge accurately of the difference between two similar wines, whilst the second is still in one's mouth. So of sounds, warmths, etc. — we must get the dying phases of both sen sations of the pair we are comparing. Where, however, the difference is strong, this condition is immaterial, and we can then compare a sensation actually felt with another carried in memory only. The longer the interval of time between the sensations, the more uncertain is their discrim ination. The difference, thus immediately felt between two terms, is independent of our ability to identify either of the terms by itself. I can feel two distinct spots to be touched on my skin, yet not know which is above and which below. I can observe two neighboring musical tones to differ, and still not know which of the two is the higher in pitch. Similarly I may discriminate two neighboring tints, whilst remaining uncertain which is the bluer or the yellower, or hoio either differs from its mate.f With such direct perceptions of difference as this, we must not confound those entirely unlike cases in which we infer that two things must differ because we know enough about each of them taken by itself to warrant our classing * The ordinary treatment of this is to call it the result of the fusion of a lot of sensations, in themselves separate. This is pure mythology, as the sequel will abundantly show. f " We often begin to be dimly aware of a difference in a sensation or group of sensations, before we can assign any definite character to that which differs. Thus we detect a strange or foreign ingredient or flavor in a familiar dish, or of tone in a familiar tune, and yet are wholly unable for a while to say what the intruder is like. Hence perhaps discrimination may be regarded as the earliest and most primordial mode of intellectual activity." (Sully : Outlines of Psychology, p. 142. Cf. also G. H. Schneider: Die Unterscheid ting, pp. 9-10.) DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 497 them under distinct heads. It often happens, when the interval is long between two experiences, that our judg ments are guided, not so much by a positive image or copy of the earlier one, as by our recollection of certain facts about it. Thus I know that the sunshine to-day is less bright than on a certain day last week, because I then said it was quite dazzling, a remark I should not now care to make. Or I know myself to feel better now than I was last summer, because I can now psychologize, and then I could not. We are constantly busy comparing feelings with whose quality our imagination has no sort of acquaintance at the time — pleasures, or pains, for example. It is notori ously hard to conjure up in imagination a lively image of either of these classes of feeling. The associationists may prate of an idea of pleasure being a pleasant idea, of an idea of pain being a painful one, but the unsophisticated sense of mankind is against them, agreeing with Homer that the memory of griefs when past may be a joy, and with Dante that there is no greater sorrow than, in misery, to recollect one's happier time. Feelings remembered in this imperfect way must be compared with present or recent feelings by the aid of what we know about them. We identify the remote experience in such a case by conceiving it. The most perfect way of conceiving it is by denning it in terms of some standard scale. If I know the thermometer to stand at zero to-day and to have stood at 32° last Sunday, I know to-day to be colder, and I know just how much colder, than it was last Sunday. If I know that a certain note was c, and that this note is d, I know that this note must be the higher of the two. The inference that two things differ because their con comitants, effects, names, kinds, or — to put it generally— their signs, differ, is of course susceptible of unlimited complication. The sciences furnish examples, in the way in which men are led, by noticing differences in effects, to assume new hypothetical causes, differing from any known heretofore. But no matter how many may be the steps by which such inferential discriminations are made, they all end in a direct intuition of difference, someivhere. The last 498 PSYCHOLOGY. ground for inferring that A and B differ must be that, whilst A is an w, B is an n, and that m and n are seen to differ. Let us then neglect the complex cases, the A's and the B's, and go back to the study of the unanalyzable per ception of difference between their signs, the m's and the w's, when these are seemingly simple terms. I said that in their immediate succession the shock of their difference was felt. It is felt repeatedly when we go back and forth from m to n ; and we make a point of get ting it thus repeatedly (by alternating our attention at least) whenever the shock is so slight as to be with difficulty per ceived. But in addition to being felt at the brief instant of transition, the difference also feels as if incorporated and taken up into the second term, which feels ' difterent- from-the-first ' even while it lasts. It is obvious that the ' second term ' of the mind in this case is not bald n, but a very complex object ; and that the sequence is not sim ply first 'm,' then 'difference,' then 'n'; but first ' m,' then 'difference,' then ' n- differ ent-from-m.' The several thoughts, however, to which these three several objects are revealed, are three ordinary ' segments ' of the mental * stream.* As our brains and minds are actually made, it is impos sible to get certain m's and w's in immediate sequence and to keep them pure. If kept pure, it would mean that they remained uncompared. With us, inevitably, by a mechan ism which we as yet fail to understand, the shock of differ ence is felt between them, and the second object is not n pure, but n-as-different-from-m* It is no more a paradox that under these conditions this cognition of m and n in mutual relation should occur, than that under other condi tions the cognition of m's or TI'S simple quality should occur. But as it has been treated as a paradox, and as a spiritual agent, not itself a portion of the stream, has been * In cases where the difference is slight, we may need, as previously remarked, to get the dying phase of n as well as of m before n-different- from-m is distinctly felt. In that case the inevitably successive feelings (as far as we can sever what is so continuous) would be four, m, difference, n, n-different-from-m. This slight additional complication alters not a whit the essential features of the case. DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 49& invoked to account for it, a word of further remark seems desirable. My account, it will be noted, is merely a description of the facts as they occur : feelings (or thoughts) each know ing something, but the later one knowing, if preceded by a certain earlier one, a more complicated object than it would have known had the earlier one not been there. I offer no explanation of such a sequence of cognitions. The explanation (I devoutly expect) will be found some day to depend on cerebral conditions. Until it is forthcoming, we can only treat the sequence as a special case of the general law that every experience undergone by the brain leaves in it a modification which is one factor in determining what manner of experiences the following ones shall be (cf. pp. 232-236). To anyone who denies the possibility of such a law I have nothing to say, until he brings his proofs. The sensationalists and the spiritualists meanwhile (filled both of them with their notion that the mind must in some fashion contain what it knows) begin by giving a crooked account of the facts. Both admit that for m and n to be known in any way whatever, little rounded and fin ished off duplicates of each must be contained in the mind as separate entities. These pure ideas, so called, of m and n respectively, succeed each other there. And since they are distinct, say the sensationalists, they are eo ipso distin guished. " To have ideas different and ideas distinguished, are synonymous expressions ; different and distinguished meaning exactly the same thing," says James Mill.* "Dis tinguished!" say the spiritualists, "distinguished l>y ivhat, forsooth ? Truly the respective ideas of m and of n in the mind are distinct. But for that very reason neither can distinguish itself from the other, for to do that it would have to be aware of the other, and thus for the time being become the other, and that would be to get mixed up with the other and to lose its own distinctness. Distinctness of ideas and idea of distinctness, are not one thing, but two. This last is a relation. Only a relating principle, op posed in nature to all facts of feeling, an Ego, Soul, or * Analysis. J. S. Mill's ed., n. 17. Cf. also pp. 12, 14. 600 PSYCHOLOGY. Subject, is competent, by being present to both of the ideas alike, to hold them together and at the same time to keep them distinct." But if the plain facts be admitted that the pure idea of * 7i ' is never in the mind at all, when ' m ' has once gone be fore ; and that the feeling ' n-different-from-m ' is itself an absolutely unique pulse of thought, the bottom of this precious quarrel drops out and neither party is left with anything to fight about. Surely such a consummation ought to be welcomed, especially when brought about, us here, by a formulation of the facts which offers itself so naturally and unsophistically.* * There is only one obstacle, and that is our inveterate tendency to be lieve that where two things or qualities are compared, it must be that exact duplicates of both have got into the mind and have matched them selves against each other there. To which the first reply is the empirical one of " Look into the mind and see." When I recognize a weight which I now lift as inferior to the one I just lifted; when, with my tootli now aching, I perceive the pain to be less intense than it was a minute ago; the two things in the mind which are compared would, by the authors I criti cise, be admitted to be an actual sensation and an image in the memory. An image in the memory, by general consent of these same authors, is ad mitted to be a weaker thing than a sensation. Nevertheless it is in these instances judged stronger; that is, an object supposed to be known only in so far forth as this image represents it, is judged stronger. Ought not this to shake one's belief in the notion of separate representative 'ideas' weigh ing themselves, or being weighed by the Ego, against each other in the mind ? And let it not be said that what makes us judge the felt pain to be weaker than the imagined one of a moment since is our recollection of the downward nature of the shock of difference which we felt as we passed to the present moment from the one before it. That shock does undoubtedly have a different character according as it comes between terms of which the second diminishes or increases; and it may be admitted that in cases where the past term is doubtfully remembered, the memory of the shock as pcus or minus, might sometimes enable us to establish a relation whicl otherwise we should not perceive. But one could hardly expect the mem ory of this shock to overpower our actual comparison of terms, both of which are present (us are the image and the sensation in the case supposed), and make us judge the weaker one to be the stronger. — And hereupon comes the second reply: Suppose the mind does compare two realities by comparing two ideas of its own which represent them — what is gained? The same mystery is still there. The ideas must still be known; and, as the attention in comparing oscillates from one to the other, past must be known with present just as before. If you must end by simply saying that your ' Ego,' whilst being neither the idea of m nor the idea of n, }ret knows and compares both, why not allow your pulse of thought, which u DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 501 We may, then, conclude our examination of the manner in which simple involuntary discrimination comes about, by saying, 1) that its vehicle is a thought possessed of a knowl edge of both terms compared and of their difference ; 2) that the necessary and sufficient condition (as the human mind goes) for arousing this thought is that a thought or feeling of one of the terms discriminated should, as imme diately as possible, precede that in which the other term is known ; and 3) and that the thought which knows the second term will then also know the difference (or in more difficult cases will be continuously succeeded by one which does know the difference) and both of the terms between which it holds. This last thought need, however, not be these terms with their difference, nor contain them. A man's thought can know and mean all sorts of things without those things get ting bodily into it — the distant, for example, the future, and the past* The vanishing term in the case which occupies us vanishes ; but because it is the specific term it is and nothing else, it leaves a specific influence behind it when it vanishes, the effect of which is to determine the succeeding pulse of thought in a perfectly characteristic way. What ever consciousness comes next must know the vanished term and call it different from the one now there. Here we are at the end of our tether about involuntary discrimination of successively felt simple things ; and must drop the subject, hopeless of seeing any deeper into it for neither the thing m nor the thing n, to know and compare both directly? 'Tis but a question of how to name the facts least artificially. The egoist explains them, by naming them as an Ego 'combining* or ' synthetizing ' two ideas, no more than we do by naming them a pulse of thought know ing two facts. * 1 fear that few will be converted by my words, so obstinately do thinkers of all schools refuse to admit the unmediated function of knowing a thing, and so incorrigibly do they substitute being the thing for it. E.g., in the latest utterance of the spiritualistic philosophy (Bowue's Introduction to Psychological Theory, 1887, published only three days before this writing) one of the first sentences which catch my eye is this : " What remembers 7 The spiritualist says, the soul remembers ; it abides across the years acd the flow of the body, and gathering up its past, carries it with it " (p. 28). Why, for heaven's sake, O Bowne, cannot you say ' knows it "i If there is anything our soul does not do to its past, it is to carry it with it. 502 PSYCHOLOGY. the present, and turn to discriminations of a less simple sort. THE PROCESS OF ANALYSIS. And first, of tlie discrimination of simultaneously felt impressions ! Our first way of looking at a reality is often to suppose it simple, but later we may learn to perceive it as compound. This new way of knowing the same reality may conveniently be called by the name of Analysis. It is manifestly one of the most incessantly performed of all our mental processes, so let us examine the conditions under which it occurs. I think we may safely lay down at the outset this fun damental principle, that any total impression made on the mind must be unanalyzable, whose elements are never experi enced apart. The components of an absolutely changeless group of not-elsewhere-occurring attributes could never be discriminated. If all cold things were wet and all wet things cold, if all hard things pricked our skin, and no other things did so ; is it likely that we should discrimi nate between coldness and wetness, and hardness and pungency respectively ? If all liquids were transparent and no non-liquid were transparent, it would be long before we had separate names for liquidity and transparenc}r. If heat were a function of position above the earth's surface, so that the higher a thing was the hotter it became, one word would serve for hot and high. We have, in fact, a number of sensations whose concomitants are almost in variably the same, and we find it, accordingly, almost im- ppssible to analyze them out from the totals in which they are found. The contraction of the diaphragm and the ex pansion of the lungs, the shortening of certain muscles and the rotation of certain joints, are examples. The converg ing of the eyeballs and the accommodation for near objects are, for each distance of the object (in the common use of the eyes) inseparably linked, and neither can (without a sort of artificial training which shall presently be mentioned) be felt by itself, We learn that the causes of such groups of feelings are multiple, and therefore we frame theories about the composition of the feelings themselves, by ' fusion ' DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 503 1 integration,' ' synthesis,' or what not. But by direct intro spection no analysis of them is ever made. A conspicuous case will come to view when we treat of the emotions. Every emotion has its ' expression,' of quick breathing, palpitating heart, flushed face, or the like. The expression gives rise to bodily feelings; and the emotion is thus neces sarily and invariably accompanied by these bodily feelings. The consequence is that it is impossible to apprehend it as a spiritual state by itself, or to analyze it away from the lower feelings in question. It is in fact impossible to prove that it exists as a distinct psychic fact. The present writer strongly doubts that it does so exist. But those who are most firmly persuaded of its existence must wait, to prove their point, until they can quote some as yetunfound patho logical case of an individual who shall have emotions in a body in which either complete paralysis will have prevented their expression, or complete anaesthesia will have made the latter unfelt. In general, then, if an object affects us simultaneously in a number of ways, abed, we get a peculiar integral impres sion, which thereafter characterizes to our mind the individ uality of that object, and becomes the sign of its presence ; and which is only resolved into a, b, c, d, respectively by the aid of farther experiences. These we now may turn to consider. If any single quality or constituent, a, of such an object, have previously been known by us isolatedly, or have in any other manner already become an object of separate acquaintance on our part, so that we have an image of it, distinct or vague, in our mind, disconnected with bed, then that constituent a may be analyzed out from the total impression. Analysis of a thing means separate attention to each of its parts. In Chapter XI we saw that one condition of attending to a thing was the formation from within of a separate image of that thing, which should, as it were, go out to meet the impres sion received. Attention being the condition of analysis, and separate imagination being the condition of attention, it follows also that separate imagination is the condition o* analysis. Only such elements as we are acquainted with, and can imagine, separately, can be discriminated within a total 504 PSYCHOLOGY. sense-impression. The image seems to welcome its own mate from out of the compound, and to heighten the feel ing thereof ; whereas it dampens and opposes the feeling of the other constituents ; and thus the compound becomes broken for our consciousness into parts. All the facts cited in Chapter XI, to prove that attention involves inward reproduction, go to prove this point as well. In looking for any object in a room, for a book in a library, for example, we detect it the more readily if, in addition to merely knowing its name, etc., we carry in our • mind a distinct image of its appearance. The assafcetida in ' Worcestershire sauce ' is not obvious to anyone who has not tasted assafcetida per se. In a 'cold' color an artist would never be able to analyze out the pervasive presence of blue, unless he had previously made acquaint ance with the color blue by itself. All the colors we ac tually experience are mixtures. Even the purest primaries always come to us with some white. Absolutely pure red or green or violet is never experienced, and so can never be discerned in the so-called primaries with which we have to deal : the latter consequently pass for pure. — The reader will remember how an overtone can only be attended to in the midst of its consorts in the voice of a musical instru ment, by sounding it previously alone. The imagination, being then full of it, hears the like of it in the compound tone. Helmholtz, whose account of this observation we formerly quoted, goes on to explain the difficulty of the case in a way which beautifully corroborates the point I now seek to prove. He says : " The ultimate simple elements of the sensation of tone, simple tones themselves, are rarely heard alone. Even those instruments by which they can be produced (as tuning-forks before resonance-chambers), when strongly excited, give rise to weak harmonic upper partials, partly within and partly without the ear. . . . Hence the opportunities are very scanty for impressing on our memory an exact and sure image of these simple elementary tones. But if the constituents are only indefi nitely and vaguely known, the analysis of their sum into them must be correspondingly uncertain. If wre do not know with certainty how much of the musical tone under consideration is to be attributed to its prime, we cannot but be uncertain as to what belongs to the partials. Consequently we must begin by making the individual elements which DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 505 have to be distinguished individually audible, so as to obtain an en tirely fresh recollection of the corresponding sensation, and the whole business requires undisturbed and concentrated attention. We are even without the ease that can be obtained by frequent repetitions of the experiment, such as we possess in the analysis of musical chords into their individual notes. In that case we hear the individual notes suffi ciently often by themselves, whereas we rarely hear simple tones, and may almost be said never to hear the building up of a crmpound from its simple tones. " * THE PROCESS OF ABSTRACTION. Very few elements of reality are experienced by us in absolute isolation. The most that usually happens to a constituent a, of a compound phenomenon abed, is that its strength relatively to bed varies from a maximum to a minimum ; or that it appears linked with oilier qualities, in other compounds, as aefg, or ahik. Either of these vicissitudes in the mode of our experiencing a may, under favorable circumstances, lead us to feel the difference be tween it and its concomitants, and to single it out — not absolutely, it is true, but approximately — and so to analyze the compound of which it is a part. The act of singling out is then called abstraction, and the element disengaged is an abstract. Consider the case of fluctuations of relative strength or intensity first. Let there be three grades of the com pound, as Abed, abed, and abcD. In passing between these compounds, the mind will feel shocks of difference. The differences, moreover, will serially increase, and their direc tion will be felt as of a distinct sort. The increase from abed to Abed is on the a side ; that to abcD is on the d side. And these two differences of direction are differently felt. I do not say that this discernment of the a-direction from the cZ-direction will give us an actual intuition either of a or of d in the abstract. But it leads us to conceive or postulate each of these qualities, and to define it as the extreme of a certain direction. * Dry ' wines and ' sweet ' wines, for example, differ, and form a series. It happens that we have an experience of sweetness pure and simple in the taste of sugar, and this we can * Sensations of Tone, 2d English Ed., p. 65. 506 PSYCHOLOGY. analyze out of the wine-taste. But no one knows what ' dryness ' tastes like, all by itself. It must, however, be something extreme in the dry direction; and we should probably not fail to recognize it as the original of our ab stract conception, in case we ever did come across it. In some such way we get to form notions of the flavor oi meats, apart from their feeling to the tongue, or of that of fruits apart from their acidity, etc., and we abstract the touch of bodies as distinct from their temperature. We may even apprehend the quality of a muscle's contraction as distin guished from its extent, or one muscle's contraction from another's, as when, by practising with prismatic glasses, and varying our eyes' convergence whilst our accommoda tion remains the same, we learn the direction in which our feeling of the convergence differs from that of the accom modation. But the fluctuation in a quality's intensity is a less effi cient aid to our abstracting of it than the diversity of the other qualities in whose company it may appear. What is associated now with one thing and now with another tends to become dissociated from either, and to groiv into an object of ab stract contemplation by the mind. One might call this the law of dissociation by varying concomitants. The practical result of it will be to allow the mind which has thus disso ciated and abstracted a character to analyze it out of a total, whenever it meets with it again. The law has been frequently recognized by psychologists, though I know of none who has given it the emphatic prominence in our men tal history which it deserves. Mr. Spencer says : " If the property A occurs here along with the properties B, C, D, there along with C, F, H, and again with E, G, B, . . . it must happen that by multiplication of experiences the impressions produced by these properties on the organism will be disconnected and rendered so far independent in the organism as the properties are in the environ ment, whence must eventually result a power to recognize attributes in themselves, apart from particular bodies.1' * And still more to the point Dr. Martineau, in the passage I have already quoted, writes : "When a red ivory ball, seen for the first time, has been with drawn, it will leave a mental representation of itself, in which all that * Psychology, i. 345. DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 507 it simultaneously gave us will indistinguishably coexist. Let a white ball succeed to it ; now, and not before, will an attribute detach itself, and the color, by force of contrast, be shaken out into the foreground. Let the white ball be replaced by an egg, and this new difference will bring the form into notice from its previous slumber, and thus that which began by being simply an object cut out from the surrounding scene becomes for us first a red object, then a red round object, and so on." Why the repetition of the character in combination with different wholes will cause it thus to break up its adhesion with any one of them, and roll out, as it were, alone upon the table of consciousness, is a little of a mystery. One might suppose the nerve-processes of the various concom itants to neutralize or inhibit each other more or less and to leave the process of the common term alone distinctly active. Mr. Spencer appears to think that the mere fact that the common term is repeated more often than any one of its associates will, of itself, give it such a degree of in tensity that its abstraction must needs ensue. This has a plausible sound, but breaks down when ex amined closely. For it is not always the often-repeated character which is first noticed when its concomitants have varied a certain number of times ; it is even more likely to be the most novel of all the concomitants, which wall arrest the attention. If a boy has seen nothing all his life but sloops and schooners, he will probably never distinctly have singled out in his notion of ' sail ' the character of be ing hung lengthwise. When for the first time he sees a square-rigged ship, the opportunity of extracting the length wise mode of hanging as a special accident, and of disso ciating it from the general notion of sail, is offered. But there are twenty chances to one that that will not be the form of the boy's consciousness. What he notices will be the new and exceptional character of being hung crosswise. He will go home and speak of that, and perhaps never con sciously formulate what the more familiar peculiarity con sists in. This mode of abstraction is realized on a very wide scale, because the elements of the world in which we find ourselves appear, as a matter of fact, here, there, and every where, and are changing their concomitants all the while. 508 PSYCHOLOGY. But on the other hand the abstraction is, so to speak, never complete, the analysis of a compound never perfect, be cause no element is ever given to us absolutely alone, and we can never therefore approach a compound with the image in our mind of any one of its components in a perfectly pure form. Colors, sounds, smells, are just as much en tangled with other matter as are more formal elements of experience, such as extension, intensity, effort, pleasure, difference, likeness, harmony, badness, strength, and even consciousness itself. All are embedded in one world. But by the fluctuations and permutations of which we have spoken, we come to form a pretty good notion of the direc tion in which each element differs from the rest, and so we frame the notion of it as a terminus, and continue to mean it as an individual thing. In the case of many elements, the simple sensibles, like heat, cold, the colors, smells, etc., the extremes of the directions are almost touched, and in these instances we have a comparatively exact perception of what it is we mean to abstract. But even this is only an approximation ; and in literal mathematical strictness all our abstracts must be confessed to be but imperfectly im aginable things. At bottom the process is one of concep tion, and is everywhere, even in the sphere of simple sensi ble qualities, the same as that by which we are usually understood to attain to the notions of abstract goodness, perfect felicity, absolute power, and the like : the direct perception of a difference between compounds, and the imaginary prolongation of the direction of the difference to an ideal terminus, the notion of which we fix and keep as one of our permanent subjects of discourse. This is all that I can say usefully about abstraction, or about analysis, to which it leads. THE IMPROVEMENT OF DISCRIMINATION BY PRACTICE. In all the cases considered hitherto I have supposed the differences involved to be so large as to be flagrant, and the discrimination, where successive, was treated as invol untary. But, so far from being always involuntary, dis criminations are often difficult in the extreme, and by most men never performed. Professor de Morgan, thinking, it DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 509 is true, rather of conceptual than of perceptive discrimi nation, wrote, wittily enough: "The great bulk of the illogical part of the educated community— whether majority or minority I know not ; perhaps six of one and half a dozen of the other— have not power to make a distinction, and of course cannot be made to take a distinction, and of course never at tempt to shake a distinction. With them all such things are evasions, subterfuges, come-offs, loop-holes, etc. They would hang a man for horse-stealing under a statute against sheep-stealing ; and would laugh at you if you quibbled about the distinction between a horse and a sheep." * Any personal or practical interest, however, in the re sults to be obtained by distinguishing, makes one's wits amazingly sharp to detect differences. The culprit himself is not likely to overlook the difference between a horse and a sheep. And long training and practice in distinguishing has the same effect as personal interest. Both of these agencies give to small amounts of objective difference the same effectiveness upon the mind that, under other circum stances, only large ones would have. Let us seek to pene trate the modus operandi of their influence — beginning with that of practice and habit. That ' practice makes perfect ' is notorious in the field of motor accomplishments. But motor accomplishments depend in part on sensory discrimination. Billiard-play ing, rifle- shooting, tight-rope-dancing, demand the most delicate appreciation of minute disparities of sensation, as well as the power to make accurately graduated muscular response thereto. In the purely sensorial field we have the well-known virtuosity displayed by the professional buyers and testers of various kinds of goods. One man will distinguish by taste between the upper and the lower half of a bottle of old Madeira. Another will recognize, by feeling the flour in a barrel, whether the wheat was grown in Iowa or Tennessee. The blind deaf-mute, Laura Bridgman, had so improved her touch as to recognize, after a year's interval, the hand of a person who once had shaken hers ; and her sister in misfortune, Julia Brace, is said to have been employed in the Hartford Asylum to sort * A Budget of Paradoxes, p. 380. 510 PSYCHOLOGY. the linen of its multitudinous inmates, after it came from the wash, by her wonderfully educated sense of smell. The fact is so familiar that few, if any, psychologists have even recognized it as needing explanation. They have seemed to think that practice must, in the nature of things, improve the delicacy of discernment, and have let the matter rest. At most they have said : " Attention accounts for it ; we attend more to habitual things, and what we at tend to we perceive more minutely." This answer is true, but too general ; it seems to me that we can be a little more precise. There are at least two distinct causes which we can see at work whenever experience improves discrimination : First, the terms Avhose difference comes to be felt con tract disparate associates and these help to drag them apart. Second, the difference reminds us of larger differences of the same sort, and these help us to notice it. Let us study the first cause first, and begin by suppos ing two compounds, of ten elements apiece. Suppose no one element of either compound to differ from the correspond ing element of the other compound enough to be distin guished from it if the two are compared alone, and let the amount of this imperceptible difference be called equal to 1. The compounds will differ from each other, however, in ten different ways ; and, although each difference by it self might pass unperceived, the total difference, equal to 10, may very well be sufficient to strike the sense. In a word, increasing the number of 'points' involved in a difference may excite our discrimination as effectually as increasing the amount of difference at any one point. Two men whose mouth, nose, eyes, cheeks, chin, and hair, all differ slightly, will be as little confounded by us, as two appearances of the same man one with, and the other without, a false nose. The only contrast in the cases is that we can easily name the point of difference in the one, whilst in the other we cannot. Two things, then, B and C, indistinguishable when compared together alone, may each contract adhesions with different associates, and the compounds thus formed DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 511 may, ^ as wholes, be judged very distinct. The effect of practice in increasing discrimination must then, in part be due to the reinforcing effect, upon an original slight difference between the terms, of additional differences between the diverse associates lohich they severally affect. Let B and C be the terms : If A contract adhesions with B, and C with D, AB may ap pear very distinct from CD, though B and C per se might have been almost identical. To illustrate, how does one learn to distinguish claret from burgundy? Probably they have been drunk on different occasions. When we first drank claret we heard it called by that name, we were eating such and such a dinner, etc. Next time we drink it, a dim reminder of all those things chimes through us as we get the taste of the wine. When we try burgundy our first impression is that it is a kind of claret ; but something falls short of full iden tification, and presently we hear it called burgundy. Dur ing the next few experiences, the discrimination may stil] be uncertain — " which," we ask ourselves, " of the two wines is this present specimen ?" But at last the claret-flavor re calls pretty distinctly its own name, ' claret,' " that wine I drank at So-and-so's table," etc. ; and the burgundy -flavor recalls the name burgundy and some one else's table. And only when this different SETTING has come to each is our dis crimination betiveen the two flavors solid and stable. After a while the tables and other parts of the setting, besides the name, grow so multifarious as not to come up distinctly into consciousness ; but pari passu with this, the adhesion of each wine with its own name becomes more and more in veterate, and at last each flavor suggests instantly and cer tainly its own name and nothing else. The names differ far more than the flavors, and help to stretch these latter farther apart. Some such process as this must go on in all our experience. Beef and mutton, strawberries and rasp berries, odor of rose and odor of violet, contract different adhesions which reinforce the differences already felt in the terms. The reader may say that this has nothing to do with making us feel the difference between the two uerms. It is merely fixing, identifying, and so to speak substantializing, 512 PSYCHOLOGY. the terms. But what we feel as their difference, we should feel, even though we were unable to name or otherwise identify the terms. To which I reply that I believe that the difference is always concreted and made to seem more substantial by rec ognizing the terms. I went out for instance the other day and found that the snow just fallen had a very odd look, different from the common appearance of snow. I presently called it a ' micaceous ' look ; and it seemed to me as if, the moment I did so, the difference grew more distinct and fixed than it was before. The other connotations of the word 'micaceous' dragged the snow farther away from ordinary snow and seemed even to aggravate the peculiar look in question. I think some such effect as this on our way of feeling a difference will be very generally admitted to follow from naming the terms between Avhich it obtains ; although I admit myself that it is difficult to show coercively that naming or otherwise identifying any given pair of hardly distinguishable terms is essential to their being felt as different at first* * The explanation I offer presupposes that a difference too faint to have any direct effect in the way of makiug the miud notice it per se will never theless be strong enough to keep its ' terms ' from calling up identical associates. It seems probable from many observations that this is the case. All the facts of ' unconscious ' inference are proofs of it. We say a painting ' looks ' like the work of a certain artist, though we cannot name the characteristic differentiae. We see by a man's face that he is sincere, though we can give no definite reason for our faith. The facts of sense- perception quoted from Helmholtz a few pages below will be additional examples. Here is another good one, though it will perhaps be easier understood after reading the chapter on Space-perception than now. Take two stereoscopic slides and represent on each half-slide a pair of spots, a and b, but make their distances such that the a's are equidistant on both slides, whilst the b's are nearer together on slide 1 than on slide 2. Make moreover the distance ab = db'" and the distance ab' = ab" Then a, b a b' Slide 1. • • 6 * a b" a b'" Slide 2. 9 • • c look successively at the two slides stereoscopically. so that the a's in both are directly fixated (that fc fall on the two foveae, or centres of distinct- DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 513 I offer the explanation only as a partial one : it certainly is not complete. Take the way in which practice refines our local discrimination on the skin, for example. Two compass-points touching the palm of the hand must be kept, say, half an inch asunder in order not to be mistaken for one point. But at the end of an hour or so of practice with them we can distinguish them as two, even when less than a quarter of an inch apart. If the same two regions of the skin were constantly touched, in this experience, the explanation we have been considering would perfectly apply. Suppose a line abed e/of points upon the skin. Suppose the local difference of feeling between a and f to be so strong as to be instantly recognized when the points are simultaneously touched, but suppose that between c and d to be at first too small for this purpose. If we began by putting the compasses on a and f and gradually contracted their opening, the strong doubleness recognized at first would still be suggested, as the compass-points approached the positions c and d ; for the point e would be so near/, and so like it, as not to be aroused without/also coming to mind. Similarly d would recall e and, more remotely,/. In such wise c — d would no longer be bare c — d, but something more like abc — def, — palpably differing impressions. But in ac tual experience the education can take place in a much less methodical way, and we learn at last to discriminate c and d without any constant adhesion being contracted between est vision). The «'s will then appear single, and so probably will the b's. But the now single-seeming & on slide 1 will look nearer, whilst that on slide 2 will look farther than the a. But, if the diagrams are rightly drawn, ft and V" imv4 affect 'identical' spots, spots equally far to the right of the fovea, ft in the left eye and ft'" in the right eye. The same is true of ft' and ft". Identical spots are spots whose sensations cannot possibly be discriminated as such. Since in these two observations, however, they give rise to such opposite perceptions of distance, and prompt such op posite tendencies to movement (since in slide 1 we converge in looking from a to ft, whilst in slide 2 we diverge], it follows that two processes which occasion feelings quite indistinguishable to direct consciousness may never theless be each allied with disparate associates both of a sensorial and of a motor kind. Cf. Donders, Archiv f. Ophthalmologie, Bd. 13 (1807). The basis of his essay is that we cannot feel on which eye any particular ele. ment of a compound picture falls, but its effects on our total perception differ in the two eyes. 514 PSYCHOLOGY. one of these spots and aft, and the other and ef. Volkmann s experiments show this. He and Fechner, prompted by Czermak's observation that the skin of the blind was twice as discriminative as that of seeing folks, sought by experi ment to show the effects of practice upon themselves. They discovered that even within the limits of a single sitting the distances at which points were felt double might fall at the end to considerably less than half of their magnitude at the beginning ; and that some, though not all, of this improved sensibility was retained next day. But they also found that exercising one part of the skin in this way improved the discrimination not only of the corresponding part of the opposite side of the body, but of the neighbor ing parts as well. Thus, at the beginning of an experimen tal sitting, the compass-points had to be a Paris line asun der, in order to be distinguished by the little-finger-tip. But after exercising the other fingers, it was found that the little-finger-tip could discriminate points only half a line apart.* The same relation existed betwixt divers points of the arm and hand.f Here it is clear that the cause which I first suggested fails to apply, and that we must invoke another. What are the exact experimental phenomena? The spots, as such, are not distinctly located, and the difference, as such, between their feelings, is not distinctly felt, until the interval is greater than the minimum required for the mere perception of their doubleness. What we first feel is a bluntness, then a suspicion of doubleness, which presently becomes a distinct doubleness, and at last two different- feeling and differently placed spots with a definite tract of space between them. Some of the places we try give us this latest stage of the perception immediately ; some only give us the earliest ; and between them are intermediary places. But as soon as the image of the doubleness as it is felt in the more discriminative places gets lodged in our memory, it helps us to find its like in places where other wise we might have missed it, much as the recent hearing of * A. W. Volkmann : Ueber den Einfluss der Uetmng, etc., Leipzig Be richte, Math.-phys. Classe, x, 1858, p. 67. \lbid., Tabellel, p. 43. DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 515 an ' overtone ' helps us to detect the latter in a compound sound (supra, pp. 439-40). A dim doubleness grows clearer by being assimilated to the image of a distincter doubleness felt a moment before. It is interpreted by means of the latter. And so is any difference, like any other sort of im pression, more easily perceived when we carry in our rnind to meet it a distinct image of what sort of a thing we are to look for, of what its nature is likely to be.* These two processes, the reinforcement of the terms by disparate associates, and the tilling of the memory with past differences, of similar direction with the present one, but of more conspicuous amount, are the only explanations I can offer of the effects of education in this line. What is accomplished by both processes is essentially the same thing : they make small differences affect us as if they were large ones — that large differences should affect us as they do remains an inexplicable fact. In principle these two pro cesses ought to be sufficient to account for all possible cases. Whether in fact they are sufficient, whether there be no residual factor which we have failed to detect and analyze out, I will not presume to decide. PRACTICAL INTERESTS LIMIT DISCRIMINATION. It will be remembered that on page 509 personal inter est was named as a sharpener of discrimination alongside of practice. But personal interest probably acts through attention and not in any immediate or specific way. A distinction in which we have a practical stake is one which we concentrate our minds upon and which we are on the look-out for. AVe draw it frequently, and we get all the benefits of so doing, benefits which have just been ex plained. Where, on the other hand, a distinction has no practical interest, where we gain nothing by analyzing a feature from out of the compound total of which it forms a * Professor Lipps accounts for the tactile discrimination of the blind in a way which (divested of its < mythological ' assumptions) seems to me essentially to agree with this. Stronger ideas are supposed to raise weaker ones over the threshold of consciousness by fusing w'th them, the tenden cy to fuse being proportional to the similarity of the ideas Cf. Grmidtiit sachen, etc., pp. 233-3 ; also pp. 118, 492, 52G-7. 516 PSTCHOLOGT. part, we contract a habit of leaving it unnoticed, and at last grow callous to its presence. Helmholtz was the first psy chologist who dwelt on these facts as emphatically as they deserve, and I can do no better than quote his very words. "We are accustomed," he says, " in a large number of cases where sensations of different kinds, or in different parts of the body, exist simultaneously, to recognize that they are distinct as soon as they are perceived, and to direct our attention at will to any one of them sepa rately. Thus at any moment we can be separately conscious of what we see, of what we hear, of what we feel ; and distinguish what we feel in a finger or in the great toe, whether pressure, gentle touch, or warmth. So also in the field of vision. Indeed, as I shall endeavor to show in what follows, we readily distinguish our sensations from one another when we have a precise knowledge that they are composite, as, for example, when we have become certain, by frequently repeated and invariable experience, that our present sensation arises from the simul taneous action of many independent stimuli, each of which usually ex cites an equally well-known individual sensation." This, it will be observed, is only another statement of our law, that the only individual components which we can pick out of compounds are those of which we have inde pendent knowledge in a separate form. ' ' This induces us to think that nothing can be easier, when a num ber of different sensations are simultaneously excited, than to distin guish them individually from each other, and that this is an innate faculty of our minds. "Thus we find, among other things, that it is quite a matter of course to hear separately the different musical tones which come to our senses collectively; and we expect that in every case when two of them occur together, we shall be able to do the like. ' ' The matter becomes very different when we set to workto investi gate the more unusual cases of perception, and seek more completely to understand the conditions under which the above-mentioned distinction can or cannot be made, as is the case in the physiology of the senses. We then become aware that two different kinds or grades must be dis tinguished in our becoming conscious of a sensation. The lower grade of this consciousness is that in which the influence of the sensation in question makes itself felt only in the conceptions we form of external things and processes, and assists in determining them. This can take place without our needing, or indeed being able, to ascertain to what particular part of our sensations we owe this or that circumstance ia our perceptions. In this case we will say that the impression of ttw sensation in question is perceived synthetically. The second higher grade is when we immediately distinguish the sensation in question a?. DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 517 an existing part of the sum of the sensations excited in us. We will say, then, that the sensation is perceived analytically. The two cases must be carefully distinguished from each other." * By the sensation being perceived synthetically, Helm- holtz means that it is not discriminated at all, but only felt in a mass with other simultaneous sensations. That it is felt there he thinks is proved by the fact that our judg ment of the total will change if anything occurs to alter the outer cause of the sensation. f The following pages from an earlier edition show what the concrete cases of synthetic perception and what those of analytic perception are wont to be : " In the use of our senses, practice and experience play a much larger part than we ordinarily suppose. Our sensations are in the first in stance important only in so far as they enable us to judge rightly of the world about us ; and our practice in discriminating between them usually goes only just far enough to meet this end. We are, however, too much disposed to think that we must be immediately conscious of every ingredient of our sensations. This natural prejudice is due to the fact that we are indeed conscious, immediately and without effort, of everything in our sensations which has a bearing upon those practi cal purposes, for the sake of which we wish to know the outer world. Daily and hourly, during our whole life, we keep our senses in training for this end exclusively, and for its sake our experiences are accumu lated. But even within the sphere of these sensations, which do corre spond to outer things, training and practice make themselves felt. It is well known how much finer and quicker the painter is in discriminating colors and illuminations than one whose eye is not trained in these matters ; how the musician and the musical-instrument maker perceive with ease and certainty differences of pitch and tone which for the car of the layman do not exist ; and how even in the inferior realms of cookery and wine-judging it takes a long habit of comparing to make a master. But more strikingly still is seen the effect of practice when we pass to sensations which depend only on inner conditions of oui organs, and which, not corresponding at all to outer things or to their effects upon us, are therefore of no value in giving us information about the outer world. The physiology of the sense-organs has, in n times, made us acquainted with a number of such phenomena, discov ered partly in consequence of theoretic speculations and questionings, partly by individuals, like Goethe and Purkinje, specially endowed ^ by nature with talent for this sort of observation. These so-called subjec- * Sensations of Tone, 2d English Edition, p. 62. f Compare as to this, however, what 1 said above, Chapter V, pp 173-176. 518 PSYCHOLOGY. tive phenomena are extraordinarily hard to find ; and when they are once found, special aids for the attention are almost ahrays required to observe them. It is usually hard to notice the phenomenon again even when one knows already the description of the first observer. Th< reason is that we are not only unpractised in singling out these subjec tive sensations, but that we are, on the contrary, most thoroughly trained in abstracting our attention from them, because they would only hinder us in observing the outer world. Only when their inten sity is so strong as actually to hinder us in observing the outer world do we begin to notice them ; or they may sometimes, in dreaming and delirium, form the starting point of hallucinations. " Let me give a few well-known cases, taken from physiological optics, as examples. Every eye probably contains muscce, volttantes, so called ; these are fibres, granules, etc., floating in the vitreous humor, throwing their shadows on the retina, and appearing in the field of vision as little dark moving spots. They are most easily detected by looking at tentively at a broad, bright, blank surface like the sky. Most persons who have not had their attention expressly called to the existence of these figures are apt to notice them for the first time when some ail ment befalls their eyes and attracts their attention to the subjective state of these organs. The usual complaint then is that the muscce volitantes came in with the malady ; and this often makes the patients very anxious about these harmless things, and attentive to all their peculiarities. It is then hard work to make them believe that these figures have existed throughout all their previous life, and that all healthy eyes contain them. I knew an old gentleman who once had occasion to cover one of his eyes which had accidentally become dis eased, and who was then in no small degree shocked at finding that his other eye was totally blind ; with a sort of blindness, moreover, which must have lasted years, and yet he never was aware of it. " Who, besides, would believe without performing the appropriate ex periments, that when one of his eyes is closed there is a great gap, the so- called ' blind spot,' not far from the middle of the field of the open eye, in which he sees nothing at all, but which he fills out with his imagination ? Mariotte, who was led by theoretic speculations to discover this phenomenon, awakened no small surprise when he showed it at the court of Charles II. of England. The experiment was at that time repeated with many variations, and became a fashioaable amusement. The gap is, in fact, so large that seven full moons alongside of each other would not cover its diameter, and that a man's face 6 or 7 feet off disappears within it. In our ordinary use of vision this great hole in the field fails utterly to be noticed ; because our eyes are constantly wandering, and the moment an object interests us we turn them full upon it. So it follows that the object which at any actual moment excites our attention never happens to fall upon this gap, and thus it is that we never grow conscious of the blind spot in the field. In order to notice it, we must first purposely rivet our gaze upon one object and DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 519 then move about a second object in the neighborhood of the blind spot, striving meanwhile to attend to this latter without moving the direction of our gaze from the first object. This runs counter to all our habits, and is therefore a difficult thing to accomplish. With some people it is even an impossibility. But only when it is accomplished do we see the second object vanish and convince ourselves of the existence of this gap. "Finally, let me refer to the double images of ordinary binocular vision. Whenever we look at a point with both eyes, all objects on this side of it or beyond it appear double. It takes but a moderate effort of observation to ascertain this fact ; and from this we may conclude that we have been seeing the far greater part of the external world double all our lives, although numbers of persons are unaware of it, and are in the highest degree astonished when it is brought to their attention. As a matter of fact, we never have seen in this double fashion any particular object upon which our attention was directed at the time ; for upon such objects we always converge both eyes. In the habitual use of our eyes, our attention is always withdrawn from such objects as give us double images at the time ; this is the reason why we so seldom learn that these images exist. In order to find them we must set our attention a new and unusual task ; we must make it explore the lateral parts of the field of vision, not, as usual, to find what objects are there, but to analyze our sensations. Then only do we notice this phenomenon.* " The same difficulty which is found in the observation of subjective sensations to which no external object corresponds is found also in the analysis of compound sensations which correspond to a single object. Of this sort are many of our sensations of sound. When the sound of a violin, no matter how often we hear it, excites over and over again in our ear the same sum of partial tones, the result is that our feeling of this sum of tones ends by becoming for our mind a mere sign for the voice of the violin. Another combination of partial tones becomes the sensible sign of the voice of a clarionet, etc. And the oftener any such combination is heard, the more accustomed we grow to perceiving it as an integral total, and the harder it becomes to analyze it by immediate observation. I believe that this is one of the principal reasons why the analysis of the notes of the human voice in singing is relatively so * When a person squints, double images are formed in the centre of the field. As a matter of fact, most squinters are found blind of one eye, or almost so ; and it has long been supposed amongst ophthalmologists that the blindness is a secondary affection superinduced by the voluntary sup pression of one of the sets of double images, in other words by the positive and persistent refusal to use one of the eyes. This explanation of the blindness has, however, been called in question of late years. See, for a brief account of the matter, O. F. Wadsworth in Boston Med. and Surg. Journ., cxvi. 49 (Jan. 20, '87), and the replies by Derby and others a little later.— W. J. 520 PSYCHOLOGY. difficult. Such fusions of many sensations into what, to conscious perception, seems a simple whole, abound in all our senses. "Physiological optics affords other interesting examples. The per ception of the bodily form of a near object comes about through the combination of two diverse pictures which the eyes severally receive from it, and whose diversity is due to the different position of each eye, altering the perspective view of what is before it. Before the invention of the stereoscope this explanation could only be assumed hypothetically ; but it can now be proved at any moment by the use of the instrument. Into the stereoscope we insert two flat drawings, representing the two perspective views of the two eyes, in such a manner that each eye sees its own view in the proper place ; and we obtain, in consequence, the perception of a single extended solid, as complete and vivid as if we had the real object before us. " Now we can, it is true, by shutting one eye after the other and at tending to the point, recognize the difference in the pictures — at least when it is not too small. But, for the stereoscopic perception of solidity, pictures suffice whose difference is so extraordinarily slight as hardly to be recognized by the most careful comparison ; and it is certain that, in our ordinary careless observing of bodily objects, we never dream that the perception is due to two perspective views fused into one, be cause it is an entirely different kind of perception from that of either flat perspective view by itself. It is certain, therefore, that two different sensations of our two eyes fuse into a third perception entirely different from either. Just as partial tones fuse into the perception of a certain instrument's voice ; and just as we learn to separate the partial tones of a vibrating string by pinching a nodal point and letting them sound in isolation ; so we learn to separate the images on the two eyes by opening and closing them alternately. "There are other much more complex instances of the way in which many sensations may combine to serve as the basis of a quite simple perception. When, for example we perceive an object in a certain direction, we must somehow be impressed by the fact that certain of our optic nerve-fibres, and no others, are impressed by its light. Fur thermore, we must rightly judge the position of our eyes in our head, and of our head upon our body, by means of feelings in our eye-muscles and our neck-muscles respectively. If any of these processes is dis turbed we get a false perception of the object's position. The nerve- fibres can be changed by a prism before the eye; or the eyeball's position changed by pressing the organ towards one side; and such experiments show that, for the simple seeing of the position of an object, sensations of these two sorts must concur. But it would be quite impossible to gather this directly from the sensible impression which the object makes. Even when we have made experiments and convinced ourselves in every possible manner that such must be the fact, it still remains hidden from our immediate introspective observation. "These examples" [of 'synthetic perception,' perception in which DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 521 each contributory sensation is felt in the whole, and is a co-determinant of what the whole shall be, but does not attract the attention to its separate self] " may suffice to show the vital part which the direction of attention and practice in observing play in sense-perception. To apply this now to the ear. The ordinary task which our ear has to solve when many sounds assail it at once is to discern the voices of the several sounding bodies or instruments engaged ; beyond this it has no objective interest in analyzing. We wish to know, when many men are speaking together, what each one says, when many instruments and voices combine, which melody is executed by each. Any deeper analysis, such as that of each separate note into its partial tones (although it might be performed by the same means and faculty of hearing as the first analysis) would tell us nothing new about the sources of sound actually present, but might lead us astray as to their number. For this reason we confine our attention in analyzing a mass of sound to the several instruments' voices, and expressly abstain, as it were, from discriminating the elementary components of the latter. In this last sort of discrimination we are as unpractised as we are, on the contrary, well trained in the former kind." * * Tonempfindungen, Dritte Auflage, pp. 102-107.— The reader who has assimilated the contents of our Chapter V, above, will doubtless have remarked that the illustrious physiologist has fallen, in these para graphs, into that sort of interpretation of the facts which we there tried to prove erroneous. Helmholtz, however, is no more careless than most psychologists in confounding together the object perceived, the organic conditions of the perception, and the sensations which would be excited by the several parts of the object, or by the several organic conditions, provided they came into action separately or were separately attended to, and in assuming that what is true of any one of these sorts of fact must be true of the other sorts also. If each organic condition or part of the object is there, its sensation, he thinks, must be there also, only in a ' synthetic ' — which is indistinguishable from what the authors whom we formerly reviewed called an ' unconscious ' — state. I will not repeat argu ments sufficiently detailed in the earlier chapter (see especially pp. 170-176), but simply say that what he calls the ' fusion of many sensations into one ' is really the production of one sensation by the co-operation of many organic conditions; and that what perception fails to discriminate (when it is ' synthetic') is not sensations already existent but not singled out, but new objective/acte, judged truer than the facts already synthetically perceived — two views of the solid body, many harmonic tones, instead of one view and one tone, states of the eyeball-muscles thitherto unknown, and the like. These new facts, when first discovered, are known in states of conscious ness never till that moment exactly realized before, states of consciousness which at the same time judge them to be determinations of the same matter of fact which was previously realized. All that Helmholtz says of the conditions which hinder and further analysis applies just as naturally to the analysis, through the advent of new feelings, of objects into their ele 522 PSYCHOLOGY. After all we have said, no comment seems called for upon these interesting and important facts and reflections of Helrnholtz. ments, as to the analysis of aggregate feelings into elementary feelings sup posed to have been hidden in them all the while. The reader can himself apply this criticism to the following passages from Lotze and Sttimpf respectively, which I quote because they are the ablest expressions of the view opposed to my own. Both authors, it seems to me, commit the psychologist's fallacy, and allow their later knowledge of the things felt to be foisted into their account of the primitive way of feeling them. Lotze says: "It is indubitable that the simultaneous assault of a variety of different stimuli on different senses, or even on the same sense, puts us into a state of confused general feeling in which we are certainly not conscious of clearly distinguishing the different impressions. Still it does not follow that in such a case we have a positive perception of an actual unity of the contents of our ideas, arising from their mixture ; our state of mind seems rather to consist in (1) the consciousness of our inabil ity to separate what really has remained diverse, and (2) in the general feeling of the disturbance produced in the economy of our body by the simultaneous assault of the stimuli. . . . Not that the sensations melt into one another, but simply that the act of distinguishing them is absent; and this again certainly not so far that the fact of the difference remains entirely unperceived, but only so far as to prevent us from determining the amount of the difference, and from apprehending other relations between the different impressions. Anyone who is annoyed at one and the same time by glowing heat, dazzling light, deafening noise, and an offensive smell, will certainly not fuse these disparate sensations into a single one with a single content which could be sensuously perceived ; they remain for him in separation, and he merely finds it impossible to be conscious of one of them apart from the others. But, further, he will have a feeling of discomfort — what I mentioned above as the second constituent of his whole state. For every stimulus which produces in consciousness a definite con tent of sensation is also a definite degree of disturbance, and therefore makes a call upon the forces of the nerves ; and the sum of these little changes, which in their character as disturbances are not so diverse as the contents of consciousness they give rise to, produce the general feeling which, added to the inability to distinguish, deludes us into the belief in an actual absence of diversity in our sensations. It is only in some such way as this, again, that I can imagine that state which is sometimes de scribed as the beginning of our whole education, a state which in itself is supposed to be simple, and to be afterwards divided into different sensa tions by an activity of separation. No activity of separation in the world could establish differences where no real diversity existed ; for it would have nothing to guide it to the places where it was to establish them, or to indicate the width it was to give them.'' (Metaphysic, §260, English trans- lation.) Stumpf writes as follows : " Of coexistent sensations there are aJ DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 523 REACTION-TIME AFTER DISCRIMINATION. The time required for discrimination has been made a subject of experimental measurement. Wundt calls it Un- terscheidungszeit. His subjects (whose simple reaction -time — see p. 85 ft'.— had previously been determined) were re quired to make a movement, always the same, the instant they discerned which of two or more signals they received. The exact time of the signal and that of the movement were automatically registered by a galvanic chronoscope. The particular signal to be received was unknown in ad vance, and the excess of time occupied by those reactions in which its character had first to be discerned, over the simple reaction-time, measured, according to Wundt, the time required for the act of discrimination. It was found longer when four different signals were irregularly used than when only two were used. In the former case it averaged, for three observers respectively (the signals be ing the sudden appearance of a black or of a white object), 0.050 sec.; 0.047 " 0.079 " ways a large number undiscriminated in consciousness, or (if one prefer to call what is undiscriminated unconscious) in the soul. They are, how ever, not fused into a simple quality. When, on entering a room, we receive sensations of odor and warmth together, without expressly attend ing 1o either, the two qualities of sensation are not, as it were, an entirely new simple quality, which first at the moment in which attention analyti cally steps in changes into smell and warmth. ... In such cases we find ourselves in presence of an indefinable, unmiinable total of feeling. And when, after successfully analyzing this total, we call it back to memory, as it was in its unanalyzed state, and compare it with the elements we have found, the latter (as it seems to me) may be recognized as real parts con tained in the former, and the former seen to be their sum. So, for example, when we clearly perceive that the content of our sensation of oil of pepper- meiit is partly a sensation of taste and partly one of temperature." (Ton- pay chologie, 1. 107.) I should prefer to say that we perceive that objective fact, known to us as the peppermint taste, to contain those other objective facts known as aromatic or sapid quality, and coldness, respectively. No ground to sup pose that the vehicle of this last very complex perception has any identity with the earlier psychosis— least of all is contained in it. 524 PSYCHOLOGY. In the latter case, a red and a green signal being added to the former ones, it became, for the same observers, 0.157 ; 0.073 ; 0.132.* Later, in Wundt's Laboratory, Herr Tischer made many careful experiments after the same method, where the facts to be discriminated were the different degrees of loudness in the sound which served as a signal. I subjoin Herr Tischer's table of results, explaining that each vertical col umn after the first gives the average results obtained from a distinct individual, and that the figure in the first column stands for the number of possible loudnesses that might be expected in the particular series of reactions made. The times are expressed in thousandths of a second. 6 10 16.7 25.6 8 5 14.4 20.8 31 10.75 19.9 29 10.7 22.7 29.1 40.1 33 58.5 75 95.5 53 57.8 84 138 f The interesting points here are the great individual varia tions, and the rapid way in which the time for discrimina tion increases with the number of possible terms to dis criminate. The individual variations are largely due to want of practice in the particular task set, but partly also to discrepancies in the psychic process. One gentleman said, for example, that in the experiments with three sounds, he kept the image of the middle one ready in his mind, and compared what he heard as either louder, lower, or the same. His discrimination among three possibilities became thus very similar to a discrimination between two. if Mr. J. M. Cattell found lie could get no results by this method,§ and reverted to one used by observers previous * Physiol. Psych., n. 248. f Wundt's Philos. Studien, i. 527. t Ibid. p. 530. § Mind, xi. 377 if. He says: " I apparently either distinguished the impression and made the motion simultaneously, or if I tried to avoid this by waiting until I had formed a distinct impression before I began to make the motion, I added to the simple reaction, not only a perception, but a volition." — Which remark may well confirm our doubts as to the strict psychologic worth of any of these measurements. DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 525 to Wundt and which Wundt had rejected. This is the einfache Wahlmethode, as Wundt calls it. The reacter awaits the signal and reacts if it is of one sort, but omits to act if it is of another sort. The reaction thus occurs after discrimination ; the motor impulse cannot be sent to the hand until the subject knows what the signal is. The nervous impulse, as Mr. Cattell says, must probably travel to the cortex and excite changes there, causing in conscious ness the perception of the signal. These changes occupy the time of discrimination (or perception-time, as it is called by Mr. C.) But then a nervous impulse must descend from the cortex to the lower motor centre which stands primed and ready to discharge ; and this, as Mr. C. says, gives a will-time as well. The total reaction-time thus includes both ' will-time ' and * discrimination-time.' But as the centrifugal and centripetal processes occupying these two times respectively are probably about the same, and the time used in the cortex is about equally divided between the perception of the signal and the preparation of the motor discharge, if we divide it equally between percep tion (discrimination) and volition, the error cannot be great.* We can moreover change the nature of the per ception without altering the will-time, and thus investigate with considerable thoroughness the length of the percep tion-time. Guided by these principles, Prof. Cattell found the time required for distinguishing a white signal from no signal to be, in two observers : 0.030 sec. and 0.050 sec.; that for distinguishing one color from another was simi larly : 0.100 and 0.110; that for distinguishing a certain color from ten other col ors : 0.105 and 0.117 ; that for distinguishing the letter A in ordinary print from the letter Z : 0.142 and 0.137; Miud, xi. 379. 526 PSYCHOLOGY. that for distinguishing a given letter from all the rest of the alphabet (not reacting until that letter appeared) 0.119 and 0.116 ; that for distinguishing a word from any of twenty-five other words, from 0.118 sec. to 0.158 sec. The difference depending on the length of the words and the familiarity of the language to which they belonged. Prof. Cattell calls attention to the fact that the time for distinguishing a word is often but little more than that for distinguishing a letter : "We do not, therefore, distinguish separately the letters of which a word is composed, but the word as a whole. The application of- this in teaching children to read is evident." He also finds a great difference in the time with which various letters are distinguished, E being particularly bad.* I have, in describing these experiments, followed the ex ample of previous writers and spoken as if the process by which the nature of the signal determines the reaction were identical with the ordinary conscious process of discrimina tive perception and volition. I am convinced, however, that this is not the case ; and that although the results are the same, the form of consciousness is quite different. The reader will remember my contention (supra, p. 90 ff.) that the simple reaction-time (usually supposed to include a conscious pro cess of perceiving) really measures nothing but a reflex act. Anyone who will perform reactions with discrimina tion will easily convince himself that the process here also is far more like a reflex, than like a deliberate, operation. I have made, with myself and students, a large number of measurements where the signal expected was in one series a touch someivliere on the skin of the back and head, and in another series a spark somewhere in the field of view. The hand had to move as quickly as possible towards the * For other determinations of discrimination-time by this method cf. v. Kries and Auerbach, Archiv f. Physiologic, Bd. i. p. 297 ff. (these au thors get much smaller figures); Fricdrich, Psychologische Studien, i. 39. Chapter ix of Buccola's book, Le Legge del tempo, etc., gives a full ac count of the subject. DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 527 place of the touch or the spark. It did so infallibly, and sensibly instantly ; whilst both place and movement seemed to be perceived only a moment later, in memory. These ex periments were undertaken for the express purpose of ascer taining whether the movement at the sight of the spark was discharged immediately by the visual perception, or whether a * motor-idea ' had to intervene between the perception of the spark and the reaction.* The first thing that was mani fest to introspection was that no perception or idea of any sort preceded the reaction. It jumped of itself, whenever the signal came ; and perception was retrospective. We must suppose, then, that the state of eager expectancy of a certain definite range of possible discharges, innervates a whole set of paths in advance, so that when a particular sensation comes it is drafted into its appropriate motor outlet too quickly for the perceptive process to be aroused. In the experiments I describe, the conditions were most favorable for rapidity, for the connection between the signals and their movements might almost be called iii- nace. It is instinctive to move the hand towards a thing seen or a skin-spot touched. But where the movement is conventionally attached to the signal, there would be more chance for delay, and the amount of practice would then determine the speed. This is well shown in Tischer's re sults, quoted on p. 524, where the most practised observer, Tischer himself, reacted in one eighth of the time needed by one of the others. f But what all investigators have aimed to determine in these experiments is the minimum time. I trust I have said enough to convince the student that this minimum time by no means measures what we consciously know as discrimination. It only measures something which, under the experimental conditions, leads * If so, the reactions upon the spark would have to be slower than those upon the touch. The investigation was abandoned because it was found impossible to narrow down the difference between the conditions of the sight-series and those of the touch-series, to nothing more than the possible presence in the latter of the intervening motor-idea. Other dis parities could not be excluded. f Tischer gives figures from quite unpractised individuals which I have not quoted. The discrimination-time of one of them is 22 times longer than Tischer's own ! (Psychol Studieu, i. 527.) 528 PSYCHOLOGY. to a similar result. But it is the bane of psychology to suppose that where results are similar, processes must be the same. Psychologists are too apt to reason as geometers would, if the latter were to say that the diameter of a circle is the same thing as its semi-circumference, because, for sooth, they terminate in the same two points.* THE PERCEPTION OF LIKENESS. The perception of likeness is practically very much bound up with that of difference. That is to say, the only differ ences we note as differences, and estimate quantitatively, and arrange along a scale, are those comparatively limited dif ferences which we rind between members of a common genus. The force of gravity and the color of this ink are things it never occurred to me to compare until now that I am casting about for examples of the incomparable. Similarly the elastic quality of this india-rubber band, the comfort of last night's sleep, the good that can be done with a legacy, these are things too discrepant to have ever been compared ere now. Their relation to each other is less that of difference than of mere logical negativity. To be found different, things must as a rule have some commensurability, some aspect in common, which suggests the possibility of their being treated in the same way. This is of course not a theoretic necessity — for any distinction may be called a 1 difference,' if one likes — but a practical and linguistic re mark. The same things, th en, which arouse the perception of difference usually arouse that of resemblance also. And the analysis of them, so as to define Avherein the difference and wherein the resemblance respectively consists, is called comparison. If we start to deal with the things as simply the same or alike, we are liable to be surprised by the difference. If we start to * Compare Lipps's excellent passage to the same critical effect in bis Grundtatsaclien des Seelenlebens, pp. 390-393. — I leave my text just as it was written before tbe publication of Lange's and Mtinsterberg's results cited on pp. 92 and 432. Tbeir 'shortened' or 'muscular' times, got when the expectant attention was addressed to the possible reactions rather than to the stimulus, constitute the minimal reaction-time of which I speak, aud all that I say in the text falls beautifully into line with their results. DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 629 treat them as merely different, we are apt to discover how much they are alike. Difference, commonly so called, is thus betivecn species of a genus. And the faculty by which we perceive the resemblance upon which the genus is based, is just as ultimate and inexplicable a mental endowment as that by which we perceive the differences upon which the species depend. There is a shock of likeness when we pass from one thing to another which in the first instance we merely discriminate numerically, but, at the moment of bringing our attention to bear, perceive to be similar to the first ; just as there is a shock of difference when we pass be tween two dissimilars.* The objective extent of the like ness, just like that of the difference, determines the magni tude of the shock. The likeness may be so evanescent, or the basis of it so habitual and little liable to be attended to, that it will escape observation altogether. Where, how ever, we find it, there we make a genus of the things com pared ; and their discrepancies and incommensurabilities in other respects can then figure as the differentiae, of so many species. As ' thinkables ' or ' existents ' even the smoke of a cigarette and the worth of a dollar-bill are comparable — still more so as 'perishables,' or as ' enjoyables.' Much, then, of what I have said of difference in the course of this chapter will apply, with a simple change of language, to resemblance as well. We go through the world, carrying on the two functions abreast, discovering differences in the like, and likenesses in the different. To abstract the ground of either difference or likeness (where it is not ultimate) demands an analysis of the given objects into their parts. So that all that was said of the depend ence of analysis upon a preliminary separate acquaintance with the character to be abstracted, and upon its having varied concomitants, finds a place in the psychology of re semblance as well as in that of difference. But when all is said and done about the conditions which favor our perception of resemblance and our ab straction of its ground, the crude fact remains, that some * Cf . Sully : Mind, x. 494-5 ; Bradley: ibid. xi. 83 ; Bosauquet : ibid. xr. 405- 530 PSYCHOLOGY. people are far more sensitive to resemblances, and far more ready to point out wherein they consist, than others are. They are the wits, the poets, the inventors, the scientific men, the practical geniuses. A native talent for perceiving analogies is reckoned by Prof. Bain, and by others before and after him, as the leading fact in genius of every order. But as this chapter is already long, and as the question of genius had better wait till Chapter XXII, where its practical consequences can be discussed at the same time, I will say nothing more at present either about it or about the faculty of noting resemblances. If the reader feels that this faculty is having small justice done it at rny hands, and that it ought to be wondered at and made much more of than has been done in these last few pages, he will per haps find some compensation when that later chapter is reached. I think I emphasize it enough when I call it one of the ultimate foundation-pillars of the intellectual life, the others being Discrimination, Retentiveness, and Asso ciation. THE MAGNITUDE OF DIFFERENCES. On page 489 I spoke of differences being greater or less, and of certain groups of them being susceptible of a linear arrangement exhibiting serial increase. A series whose terms grow more and more different from the starting point is one whose terms grow less and less like it. They grow more and more like it if you read them the other way. So that likeness and unlikeness to the starting point are functions inverse to each other, of the position of any term in such a series. Professor Stumpf introduces the word distance to de note the position of a term in any such series. The less like is the term, the more distant it is from the start ing point. The ideally regular series of this sort would be one in which the distances — the steps of resemblance or difference — between all pairs of adjacent terms were equal. This would be an evenly gradated series. And it is an interesting fact in psychology that we are able, in many departments of our sensibility, to arrange the terms without difficulty in this evenly gradated way. Dif- DISCRIMINATIVE AND COMPARISON. 531 ferences, in other words, between diverse pairs of terms, a and 6, for example, on the one hand, and c and d on the other,* can be judged equal or diverse in amount. The dis tances from one term to another in the series are equal. Linear magnitudes and musical notes are perhaps the im pressions which we easiest arrange in this way. Next come shades of light or color, which we have little difficulty in arranging by steps of difference of sensibly equal value. Messrs. Plateau and Delbceuf have found it fairly easy to determine what shade of gray will be judged by every one to hit the exact middle between a darker and a lighter shade, f How now do we so readily recognize the equality of two differences between different pairs of terms? or, more briefly, how do we recognize the magnitude of a difference at all V Prof. Stumpf discusses this question in an inter esting way ; ^ and comes to the conclusion that our feeling for the size of a difference, and our perception that the terms of two diverse pairs are equally or unequally distant from each other, can be explained by no simpler mental process, but, like the shock of difference itself, must be regarded as for the present an unanalyzable endowment * The judgment becomes easier if the two couples of terms have one member in common, if a — b and b — c, for example, are compared. This, as Stumpf says (Toupsychologie, i. 131), is probably because the introduction of the fourth term brings involuntary cross- comparisons with it, a and b with d, b with c, etc., which confuses us by withdrawing our attention from the relations we ought alone to be estimating. f J. Delbceuf : Elements de Psych ophysique (Paris, 1883), p. 64. Pla teau in Stumpf, Tonpsych., i. 125. I have noticed a curious enlargement of certain 'distances' of difference under the influence of chloroform. The jingling of the bells on the horses of a horse car passing the door, for example, and the rumbling of the vehicle itself, which to our ordinary hearing merge together very readily into a quasi-coulimious body of sound, have seemed so far apart as to require a sort of mental facing in opposite directions to get from one to the other, as if they belonged in dif ferent worlds. I am inclined to suspect, from certain data, that the ulti mate philosophy of difference and likeness will have to be built upon experiences of intoxication, especially by nitrous oxide gas, which lets MS into intuitions the subtlety whereof is denied to the waking state. Cf. B. P. Blood : The Anaesthetic Revelation, and the Gist of Philosophy (Am sterdam, N. Y., 1874). Cf. also Mind, vn. 200. i Oo. cit. v 126 ft. 532 PSYCHOLOGY. of the mind. This acute author rejects in particular the notion which would make our judgment of the distance between two sensations depend upon our mentally travers ing the intermediary steps. We may of course do so, and may often find it useful to do so, as in musical intervals, or figured lines, But we need not do so ; and nothing more is really required for a comparative judgment of the amount of a 'distance' than three or four impressions belonging to a common kind. The vanishing of all perceptible difference between two numerically distinct things makes them qualitatively the same or equal. Equality, or qualitative (as distinguished from numerical) identity, is thus nothing but the extreme degree of likeness.* We saw above (p. 492) that some persons consider that the difference between two objects is constituted of two things, viz., their absolute identity in certain respects, plus their absolute non-identity in others. We saw that this theory would not apply to all cases (p. 493). So here any theory which would base likeness 011 identity, and not rather iden tity on likeness, must fail. It is supposed perhaps, by most people, that two resembling things owe their resemblance to their absolute identity in respect of some attribute or attributes, combined with the absolute non-identity of the rest of their being. This, which may be true of compound things, breaks down when we come to simple impressions. " When we compare a deep, a middle, and a high note, e.g. (7, /sharp, a'", we remark immediately that the first is less like the third than the second is. The same would be true of c d e in the same region of the scale. Our very calling one of the notes a ' middle ' note is the expres sion of a judgment of this sort. But where here is the identical and where the non-identical part ? We cannot think of the overtones ; for the first-named three notes have none in common, at least not on musi cal instruments. Moreover, we might take simple tones, and still our judgment would be unhesitatingly the same, provided the tones were not chosen too close together. . . . Neither can it be said that the identity consists in their all being sounds, and not a sound, a smell, and a color, respectively. For this identical attribute comes to each of them in equal measure, whereas the first, being less like the third than the second is, ought, on the terms of the theory we are criticising, to have * Stumpf, pp. 111-121. DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 533 less of the identical quality. . . . It thus appears impracticable to define all possible cases of likeness as partial identity plus partial disparity; and it is vain to seek in all cases for identical elements."* And as all compound resemblances are based on simple ones like these, it follows that likeness iiberhaupt must not be conceived as a special complication of identity, but rather that identity must be conceived as a special degree of likeness, according to the proposition expressed at the outset of the paragraph that precedes. Likeness and dif ference are ultimate relations perceived. As a matter of fact, no two sensations, no two objects of all those we know, are in scientific rigor identical. We call those of them identical whose difference is unperceived. Over and above this we have a conception of absolute sameness, it is true, but this, like so many of our conceptions (cf. p. 508), is an ideal construction got by following a certain direction of serial increase to its maximum supposable extreme. It plays an important part, among other permanent meanings possessed by us, in our ideal intellectual constructions. But it plays no part whatever in explaining psychologically how we perceive likenesses between simple things. THE MEASUBE OF DISCRIMINATIVE SENSIBILITY. In 1860, Professor G. T. Feclmer of Leipzig, a man of great learning and subtlety of mind, published two volumes entitled ' Psychophysik,' devoted to establishing and ex plaining a law called by him the psychophysic law, which * Stumpf, pp. 1 16-7. I have omitted, so as not to make my text too intri cate, an extremely acute and conclusive paragraph, which I reproduce here : " We may generalize : Wherever a numBer of sensible impressions are apprehended as a series, there in the last instance must perceptions of sim ple likeness be found. Proof: Assume that all the terms of a series, e.g. the qualities of tone, c d efg, have something in common, — no matter what it is, call it X; then I say that the differing parts of eacli of these terms must not only be differently constituted in each, but must themselves form a series, whose existence is the ground for our apprehending the original terms in serial form. We thus get instead of the original series a b c d ef . . . the equivalent series X(r, Xft, Xy, . . . etc. What is gained ? The question immediately arises : How is a ft y known as a series? According to the theory, these elements must themselves be made up of -i part common to all, and of parts differing in each, which latter parts form a new series, and so on ad infinitum, which is absurd." 534 PSYCHOLOGY. he considered to express the deepest and most elementary relation between the mental and the physical worlds. It is a formula for the connection between the amount of our sensations and the amount of their outward causes. Its simplest expression is, that when we pass from one sensa tion to a stronger one of the same kind, the sensations in crease proportionally to the logarithms of their exciting causes. Feclmer's book was the starting point of a new department of literature, which it would be perhaps impos sible to match for the qualities of thoroughness and sub tlety, but of which, in the humble opinion of the present writer, the proper psychological outcome is just nothing. The psychophysic law controversy has prompted a good many series of observations on sense-discrimination, and has made discussion of them very rigorous. It has also cleared up our ideas about the best methods for getting average results, when particular observations vary ; and beyond this it has done nothing ; but as it is a chapter in the history of our science, some account of it is here due to the reader. Fechner's train of thought has been popularly expounded a great many times. As I have nothing new to add, it is but just that I should quote an existing account. I choose the one given by Wundt in his Yorlesungen iiber Menschen and Thierseele, 1863, omitting a good deal : "How much stronger or weaker one sensation is than another, we are never able to say. Whether the sun be a hundred or a thousand times brighter than the moon, a cannon a hundred or a thousand times louder than a pistol, is beyond our power to estimate. The natural measure of sensation which we possess enables us to judge of the equal ity, of the ' more ' and of the ' less,' but not of ' how many times more or less.' This natural measure is, therefore, as good as no measure at all, whenever it becomes a question of accurately ascertaining intensi ties in the sensational sphere. Even though it may teach us in a genera] way that with the strength of the outward physical stimulus the strength of the concomitant sensation waxes or wanes, still it leaves us without the slightest knowledge of whether the sensation varies in exactly the same proportion as the stimulus itself, or at a slower or a more rapid rate. In a word, we know by our natural sensibility nothing of the law that connects the sensation and its outward cause together. To find this law we must first find an exact measure for the sensation itself ; we must be able to s;»y : A stimulus of strength one begets a sensation DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 535 of strength one; a stimulus of strength two begets a sensation of strength two, or three, or four, etc. But to do this we must first know what a sensation two, three, or four times greater than another signifies. . . . " Space magnitudes we soon learn to determine exactly, because we only measure one space against another. The measure of mental mas mtudes is far more difficult But the problem of measuring the magnitude of sensations is the first step in the bold enterprise of mak ing mental magnitudes altogether subject to exact measurement Were our whole knowledge limited to the fact that the sensation rises when the stimulus rises, and falls when the latter falls, much would not be gained. But even immediate unaided observation teaches us certain facts which, at least in a general way, suggest the law according to which the sensations vary with their outward cause. "Every one knows that in the stilly night we hear things unnoticed in the noise of day. The gentle ticking of the clock, the air circulating through the chimney, the cracking of the chairs in the room, and a thousand other slight noises, impress themselves upon our ear. It is equally well known that in the confused hubbub of the streets, or the clamor of a railway, we may lose not only what our neighbor says to us, but even not hear the sound of our own voice. The stars which are brightest at night are invisible by day ; and although we see the moon then, she is far paler than at night. Everyone who has luid to deal with weights knows that if to a pound in the hand a second pound be added, the difference is immediately felt ; whilst if it be added to a hundredweight, we are not aware of the difference at all. . . . " The sound of the clock, the light of the stars, the pressure of the pound, these are all stimuli to our senses, and stimuli whoso outward amount remains the same. What then do these experiences teach ? Evidently nothing but this, that one and the same stimulus, according to the circumstances under which it operates, will be felt either more or less intensely, or not felt at all. Of what sort now is the alteration in the circumstances, upon which this alteration in the feeling may depend ? On considering the matter closely we see that it is everywhere of one and the same kind. The tick of the clock is a feeble stimulus for our auditory nerve, which we hear plainly when it is alone, but not when it is added to the strong stimulus of the carriage-wheels and other noises of the day. The light of the stars is a stimulus to the eye. But if the stimulation which this light exerts be added to the strong stimulus of daylight, we feel nothing of it, although we feel it distinctly when it unites itself with the feebler stimulation of the twilight. The pound- weight is a stimulus to our skin, which we feel when it joins itself to a preceding stimulus of equal strength, but which vanishes when it is combined with a stimulus a thousand times greater in amount. u We may therefore lay it down as a general rule that a stimulus, in order to be felt, may be so much the smaller if the already pre-exist ing stimulation of the organ is small, but must be so much the larger; 536 PSYCHOLOGY. the greater the pre-existing stimulation is. From this in a general way we can perceive the connection between the stimulus and the feeling it excites. At least thus much appears, that the law of dependence is not as simple a one as might have been expected beforehand. The simplest relation would obviously be that the sensation should increase in identically the same ratio as the stimulus, thus that if a stimulus of strength one occasioned a sensation one, a stimulus of two should occa sion sensation two, stimulus three, sensation three, etc. But if this simplest of all relations prevailed, a stimulus added to a pre-existing strong stimulus ought to provoke as great an increase of feeling as if it were added to a pre-existing weak stimulus ; the light of the stars e.g., ought to make as great an addition to the daylight as it does to the darkness of the nocturnal sky. This we know not to be the case : the stars are invisible by day, the addition they make to our sensation then is unnoticable, whereas the same addition to our feeling of the twi light is very considerable indeed. So it is clear that the strength of the sensations does not increase in proportion to the amount of the stimuli, but more slowly. And now comes the question, in what proportion does the increase of the sensation grow less as the increase of the stimulus grows greater. To answer this question, every-day experiences do not suffice. We need exact measurements both of the amounts of the various stimuli, and of the intensity of the sensations themselves. ''How to execute these measurements, however, is something which daily experience suggests. To measure the strength of sensations is, as we saw, impossible ; we can only measure the difference of sensations. Experience showed us what very unequal differences of sensation might come from equal differences of outward stimulus. But all these ex periences expressed themselves in one kind of fact, that the same differ ence of stimulus could in one case be felt, and in another case not felt at all— a pound felt if added to another pound, but not if added to a hundred- weight. . . . We can quickest reach a result with our observa tions if we start with an arbitrary strength of stimulus, notice what sensation it gives us, and then s\,e how much we can increase the stim ulus without making the sensation seem to change. If we carry out such observations with stimuli of varying absolute amounts, we shall be forced to choose in an equally varying way the amounts of addition to the stimulus which are capable of giving us a just barely perceptible feeling of more. A light, to be just perceptible in the twilight need not be near as bright as the starlight ; it must be far brighter to be just per ceived during the day. If now we institute such observations for all possible strengths of the various stimuli, and note for each strength the amount of addition of the latter required to produce a barely per ceptible alteration of sensation, we shall have a series of figures in which is immediately expressed the law according to which the sensa tion alters when the stimulation is increased. ..." Observations according to this method are particularly DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 537 easy to make in the spheres of light-, sound-, and pressure- sensation. . . . Beginning with the latter case, "We find a surprisingly simple result. The barely sensible ad dition to the original weight must stand exactly in the same proportion to it, be the same fraction of it, no matter what the absolute value may be of the weights on which the experiment is made. ... As the average of a number of experiments, this fraction is found to be about £ ; that is, no matter what pressure there may already be made upon the skin, an increase or a diminution of the pressure will be felt, as soon as the added or subtracted weight amounts to one third of the weight originally there." Wundt then describes how differences may be observed in the muscular feelings, in the feelings of heat, in those of light, and in those of sound ; and he concludes his seventh lecture (from which our extracts have been made) thus : " So we have found that all the senses whose stimuli we are enabled to measure accurately, obey a uniform law. However various may be their several delicacies of discrimination, this holds true of all, that the increase of the stimulus necessary to produce an increase of the sen sation bears a constant ratio to the total stimulus. The figures which express this ratio in the several senses may be shown thus in tabular form: Sensation of light, yj-g. Muscular sensation, . , 1if- Feeling of pressure, " " warmth " " sound, "These figures are far from giving as accurate a measure as might be desired. But at least they are fit to convey a general notion of the relative discriminative susceptibility of the 'different senses. . . . The important law which gives in so simple a form the relation of the sen sation to the stimulus that calls it forth was first discovered by the physiologist Ernst Hcinrich Weber to obtain in special cases. Gustav Theodor Fechner first proved it to be a law for all departments of sen sation. Psychology owes to him the first comprehensive investigation of sensations from a physical point of view7, the first basis of an exact Theory of Sensibility." So much for a general account of what Fechner calls Weber's law. The ' exactness ' of the theory of sensibility to which it leads consists in the supposed fact that it gives the means of representing sensations by numbers. The unit of any kind of sensation will be that increment which, 538 PSYCHOLOGY. when the stimulus is increased, we can just barely perceive to be added. The total number of units which any given sensation contains will consist of the total number of such increments which may be perceived in passing from no sensation of the kind to a sensation of the present amount. We cannot get at this number directly, but we can, now that we know Weber's law, get at it by means of the physi cal stimulus of which it is a function. For if we know how much of the stimulus it will take to give a barely percep tible sensation, and then what percentage of addition to the stimulus will constantly give a barely perceptible incre ment to the sensation, it is at bottom only a question of compound interest to compute, out of the total amount of stimulus which we may be employing at any moment, the number of such increments, or, in other words, of sensa tional units to which it may give rise. This number bears the same relation to the total stimulus which the time elapsed bears to the capital plus the compound interest accrued. To take an example : If stimulus A just falls short of producing a sensation, and if r be the percentage of itself which must be added to it to get a sensation which is barely perceptible — call this sensation 1 — then we should have the series of sensation-numbers corresponding to their several stimuli as follows : Sensation 0 = stimulus A ; 1 = « A (1 + r) ; " 2— " A(l + r)a; 3 __ ,< A (1 + r)8 ; n = " A (1 + r)n. The sensations here form an arithmetical series, and the stimuli a geometrical series, and the two series corre spond term for term. Now, of two series corresponding in this way, the terms of the arithmetical one are called the logarithms of the terms corresponding in rank to them in the geometrical series. A conventional arithmetical series beginning with zero has been formed in the ordinary log arithmic tables, so that we may truly say (assuming our DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 539 facts to be correct so far) that the sensations vary in the same proportion as the logarithms of their respective stimuli. And we can thereupon proceed to compute the number of units in any given sensation (considering the unit of sen sation to be equal to the just perceptible increment above zero, and the unit of stimulus to be equal to the increment of stimulus r, which brings this about) by multiplying the logarithm of the stimulus by a constant factor which must vary with the particular kind of sensation in question. If wre call the stimulus R, and the constant factor C, we get the formula S = C log R, which is what For-hnor calls the psychophysischer Maas- forniel. This, in brief, is Fechner's reasoning, as 1 under stand it. The Maasformd admits of mathematical development in various directions, and has given rise to arduous discus sions into which I am glad to be exempted from entering here, since their interest is mathematical and metaphysical and not primarily psychological at all.* I must say a word about them metaphysically a few pages later on. Mean while it should be understood that no human being, in any investigation into which sensations entered, has ever used the numbers computed in this or any other way in order to test a theory or to reach a new result. The whole notion of measuring sensations numerically, remains in short a mere mathematical speculation about possibilities, which has never been applied to practice. Incidentally to the discussion of it, however, a great many particular facts have been discovered about discrimination which merit a place in this chapter. In the first place it is found, when the difference of two sensations approaches the limit of disceruibility, that at one moment we discern it and at the next we do not. There are accidental fluctuations in our inner sensibility which make it impossible to tell just what the least discernible * The most important ameliorations of Feehner's formula are Delbceuf s In his Recherches sur la Mesure des Sensations (1873), p. 85, and Elsus's in his pamphlet Uber die Psychophysik (1886) p. 10. 040 PSYCHOLOGY. increment of the sensation is without taking the average ol a large number of appreciations. These accidental errors are as likely to increase as to diminish our sensibility, and are eliminated in such an average, for those above and those below the line then neutralize each other in the sum, and the normal sensibility, if there be one (that is, the sensibility due to constant causes as distinguished from these accidental ones), stands revealed. The best way of getting at the average sensibility has been very minutely worked over. Feclmer discussed three methods, as follows : (1) The Method of just-discernible Differences. Take a standard sensation S, and add to it until you distinctly feel the addition d ; then subtract from S -j- d until you distinctly feel the effect of the subtraction ; * call the difference here d'. The least discernible difference sought is — ~ — ; and 2 the ratio of this quantity to the original 8 (or rather to J3 + d — d') is what Fechner calls the difference-threshold. This difference-threshold should be a constant fraction (no matter what is the size of 8) if Weber's law holds universally true. The difficulty in applying this method is that we are so often in doubt whether anything has been added to S or not. Furthermore, if we simply take the smallest d about which we are never in doubt or in error, we certainly get our least discernible difference larger than it ought theo retically to be.f Of course the sensibility is small when the least dis cernible difference is large, and vice versa ; in other words, it and the difference-threshold are inversely related to each oilier. (2) The Method of True and False Cases. A sensation which is barely greater than another will, on account of accidental errors in a long series of experiments, sometimes be judged equal, and sometimes smaller ; i.e., we shall make a certain number of false and a certain number of * Reversing the order is for the sake of letting the opposite accidental errors due to ' contrast ' neutralize each other. f Theoretically it would seem that it ought to be equal to the sum of all the additions which we judge to be increases divided by the total num ber of judgments made. DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 541 true judgments about the difference between the two sen sations which we are comparing. " But the larger this difference is, the more the number of the true judgments will increase at the expense of the false ones ; or, otherwise expressed, the nearer to unity will be the fraction whose denominator represents the whole number of judgments, and whose numerator rep resents those which are true. If m is a ratio of this nature, obtained by comparison of two stimuli, A and B, we may seek another couple of stimuli, a and 6, which when compared will give the same ratio of true to false cases."* If this were done, and the ratio of a to b then proved to be equal to that of A to B, that would prove that pairs of small stimuli and pairs of large stimuli may affect our discriminative sensibility similarly so long as the ratio of the components to each other within each pair is the same. In other words, it would in so far forth prove the Weberian law. Feclmer made use of this method to ascertain his own power of discriminating differences of weight, record ing no less than 24,576 separate judgments, and computing as a result that his discrimination for the same relative increase of weight was less good in the neighborhood of 500 than of 300 grams, but that after 500 grams it improved up to 3000, which was the highest weight he experimented with. (3) The Method of Average Errors consists in taking a standard stimulus and then trying to make another one of the same sort exactly equal to it. There will in general be an error whose amount is large when the discriminative sensibility called in play is small, and vice versa. The sum of the errors, no matter whether they be positive or negative, divided by their number, gives the average error. This, when certain corrections are made, is assumed by Feclmer to be the 'reciprocal' of the discriminative sensi bility in question. It should bear a constant proportion to the stimulus, no matter what the absolute size of the latter may be, if Weber's law hold true. These methods deal with just perceptible differences. Delbceuf and Wundt have experimented with larger differ- * J. Delbceuf, Elements de Psychophysique (1883), p. 9. 542 PSYCHOLOGY. ences oy means of what Wundt calls the Methode tier mitt- leren Abstufungen, and what we may call (4) The Method of Equal- appear ing Intervals. This con sists in so arranging three stimuli in a series that the inter vals between the first and the second shall appear equal to that between the second and the third. At first sight there seems to be no direct logical connection between this method and the preceding ones. By them we compare equally per ceptible increments of stimulus in different regions of the latter's scale ; but by the fourth method we compare incre ments which strike us as equally big. But what we can but just notice as an increment need not appear always of the same bigness after it is noticed. On the contrary, it will appear much bigger when we are dealing with stimuli that are already large. (5) The method of doubling the stimulus has been employed by Wundt's collaborator, Merkel, who tried to make one stimulus seem just double the other, and then measured the objective relation of the two. The remarks just made apply also to this case. So much for the methods. The results differ in the hands of different observers. I will add a few of them, and will take first the discriminative sensibility to light. By the first method, Yolkmann, Aubert, Masson, Helm- holtz, and Krapelin find figures varying from J or J to y^-y of the original stimulus. The smaller fractional increments are discriminated when the light is already fairly strong, the larger ones when it is weak or intense. That is, the dis criminative sensibility is low when weak or overstrong lights are compared, and at its best with a certain medium illumination. It is thus a function of the light's intensity ; but throughout a certain range of the latter it keeps con stant, and in so far forth Weber's law is verified for light. Absolute figures cannot be given, but Merkel, by method 1, found that Weber's law held good for stimuli (measured by his arbitrary unit) betAveen 96 and 4096, beyond which in tensity no experiments were made.* Konig and Brodhun * Philos. Studien, iv. 588. DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 543 have given measurements by method 1 which cover the most extensive series, and moreover apply to six different colors of light. These experiments (performed in Helm- holtz's laboratory, apparently,) ran from an intensity called 1 to one which was 100,000 times as great. From intensity 2000 to 20,000 Weber's law held good ; below and above this range discriminative sensibility declined. The incre ment discriminated here was the same for all colors of light, and lay (according to the tables) between 1 and 2 per cent of the stimulus.* Delbceuf had verified Weber's law for a certain range of luminous intensities by method 4 ; that is, he had found that the objective intensity of a light which appeared midway between two others was really the geometrical mean of the latter's intensities. But A. Lehmann and afterwards Neiglick, in Wuudt's laboratory, found that effects of contrast played so large a part in experiments performed in this way that Delboeuf's results could not be held conclusive. Merkel, repeating the experiments still later, found that the objective intensity of the light which we judge to stand midway between two others neither stands midway nor is a geometric mean. The discrepancy from both figures is enormous, but is least large from the midway figure or arithmetical mean of the two extreme in tensities, t Finally, the stars have from time immemorial been arranged in ' magnitudes ' supposed to differ by equal- seeming intervals. Lately their intensities have been gauged photometrically, and the comparison of the subjec tive with the objective series has been made. Prof. J. Jas- trow is the latest worker in this field. He finds, taking Pickering's Harvard photometric tables as a basis, that the ratio of the average intensity of each ' magnitude ' to that below it decreases as we pass from lower to higher magni tudes, showing a uniform departure from Weber's law, if the method of equal-appearing intervals be held to have any direct relevance to the latter.:}: ~ * Berlin AcfidTSitz"iuigsberichte, 1888, p. 917. Other observers (Dobro. wolsky, Lamausky) found great differences in different colors. f See Merkel's tables, loc. cit. p. 568. f American Journal of Psychology, i. 125. The rate of decrease is small but steady, and I cannot well understand what Professor J. means by saying that his figures verify Weber's law. 544 PSYCHOLOGY. Sounds are less delicately discriminated in intensity than lights. A certain difficulty has come from disputes as to the measurement of the objective intensity of the stimulus. Earlier inquiries made the perceptible increase of the stim ulus to be about ^ of the latter. Merkel's latest results of the method of just perceptible differences make it about •£$ for that part of the scale of intensities during which Weber's law holds good, which is from 20 to 5000 of M.'s arbitrary unit.* Below this the fractional increment must be larger. Above it no measurements were made. For pressure and muscular sense we have rather divergent results. Weber found by the method of just-perceptible differences that persons could distinguish an increase of weight of ^j- when the two weights were successively lifted by the same hand. It took a much larger fraction to be discerned when the weights were laid on a hand which rested on the table. He seems to have verified his results for only two pairs of differing weights, t and on this founded his ' law.' Experiments in Hering's laboratory on lifting 11 weights, running from 250 to 2750 grams showed that the least perceptible increment varied from g*T for 250 grams to ^ for 2500. For 2750 it rose to ^ again. Merkel's recent and very careful experiments, in which the finger pressed down the beam of a balance counterweighted by from 25 to 8020 grams, showed that between 200 and 2000 grams a constant fractional increase of about T^ was felt when there was no movement of the finger, and of about fa when there was movement. Above and below these limits the discriminative power grew less. It was greater when the pressure was upon one square millimeter of sur face than when it was upon seven.J Wo.rmih and taste have been made the subject of similar investigations with the result of verifying something like Weber's law. The determination of the unit of stimu lus is, however, so hard here that I will give no figures. The results may be found in Wundt's Physiologische Psy- chologie, 3d Ed. I. 370-2. * PhilosophischeStudien, v. 514-5. f Cf. G. E. Miiller: Zur Grandlegung der Psychophysik, §§ 68-70. i Philosophische Studien, v. 287 ff. DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 545 The discrimination of lengths by the eye has been found also to obey to a certain extent Weber's law. The figures will all be found in G. E. Miiller, op. cit., part n, chap, x, to which the reader is referred. Professor Jastrow has published some experiments, made by what may be called a modification of the method of equal-appearing differ ences, on our estimation of the length of sticks, by which it would seem that the estimated intervals and the real ones are directly and not logarithmically proportionate to each other. This resembles Merkel's results by that method for weights, lights, and sounds, and differs from Jastrow' s own finding about star-magnitudes.* If we look back over these facts as a whole, we see that it is not any fixed amount added to an impression that makes us notice an increase in the latter, but that the amount depends on how large the impression already is. The amount is expressible as a certain fraction of the entire impression to which it is added ; and it is found that the fraction is a well-nigh constant figure throughout an entire region of the scale of intensities of the impression in ques tion. Above and below this region the fraction increases in value. This is Weber's law, which in so far forth expresses an empirical generalization of practical importance, without involving any theory whatever or seeking any absolute measure of the sensations themselves. It is in the Theoretic Interpretation of Weber s Law that Fechner's originality exclusively consists, in his as sumptions, namely, 1) that the just-perceptible increment is the sensation-unit, and is in all parts of the scale the same (mathematically expressed, As — const.) ; 2) that all our sensations consist of sums of these units ; and finally, 3) that the reason why it takes a constant fractional increase of the stimulus to awaken this unit lies in an ultimate law of the connection of mind with matter, whereby the quantities of our feelings are related logarithmically to the quantities of their objects. Fechner seems to find something in scrutably sublime in the existence of an ultimate 'psycho- physic ' law of this form. * American J. of Psychology, in. 44-7. 546 PSYCHOLOGY. These assumptions are all peculiarly fragile. To begin with, the mental fact which in the experiments corresponds to the increase of the stimulus is not an enlarged sensation, but a judgment that the sensation is enlarged. What Fech- ner calls the ' sensation ' is what appears to the mind as the objective phenomenon of light, warmth, weight, sound, impressed part of body, etc. Fechner tacitly if not openly assumes that such a judgment of increase consists in the simple fact that an increased number of sensation-units are present to the mind; and that the judgment is thus itself a quantitatively bigger mental thing when it judges large differences, or differences between large terms, than when it judges small ones. But these ideas are really absurd. The hardest sort of judgment, the judgment which strains the attention most (if that be any criterion of the judgment's * size '), is that about the smallest things and differences. But really it has no meaning to talk about one judgment being bigger than another. And even if we leave out judgments and talk of sensations only, we have already found ourselves (in Chapter YI) quite unable to read any clear meaning into the notion that they are masses of units combined. To introspection, our feeling of pink is surely not a portion of our feeling of scarlet ; nor does the light of an electric arc seem to con tain that of a tallow-candle in itself. Compound things contain parts ; and one such thing may have twice or three times as many parts as another. But when we take a sim ple sensible quality like light or sound, and say that there is now twice or thrice as much of it present as there wras a moment ago, although we seem to mean the same thing as if we were talking of compound objects, we really mean something different. We mean that if we were to arrange the various possible degrees of the quality in a scale of serial increase, the distance, interval, or difference between the stronger and the weaker specimen before us would seem about as great as that between the weaker one and the beginning of the scale. It is these KELATIONS, these DIS TANCED, ivhich ice are measuring and not the composition of the qualities themselves, as Feclmer thinks. Whilst if we turn to objects which are divisible, surely a big object may be known in a little thought. Introspection shows moreover DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 547 that in most sensations a new kind of feeling invariably ac companies our judgment of an increased impression ; and this is a fact which Fechner's formula disregards.* But apart from these a priori difficulties, and even sup posing that sensations did consist of added units, Feclmer's assumption that all equally perceptible additions are equally great additions is entirely arbitrary. Why might not a small addition to a small sensation be as perceptible as a large addition to a large one ? In this case Weber's law would apply not to the additions themselves, but only to their perceptibility. Our noticing of a difference of units in two sensations would depend on the latter being in a fixed ratio. But the difference itself would depend directly on that between their respective stimuli. So many units added to the stimulus, so many added to the sensation, and if the stimulus giew in a certain ratio, in exactly the same ratio would the sensation also grow, though its perceptibility grew according to the logarithmic law.t If J stand for the smallest difference which we perceive, then we should have, instead of the formula As = const., which is Feclmer's, the formula - = const,, a formula rS which interprets all the facts of Weber's law, in an entirely different theoretic way from that adopted by Fechner.J The entire superstructure which Feclmer rears upon the * Cf. Stumpf , Tonpsychologie, pp. 397-9. " One sensation cannot be a multiple of another. If it could, we ought tc be able to subtract the one from the other, and to feel the remainder by itself. Every sensation pre sents itself as an indivisible unit." Professor von Kries, in the Viertel- iahrschrift fur wiss. Philosophic, vi. 257 ff., shows very clearly the a surdity of supposing that our stronger sensations contain our weaker ones as parts They differ as qualitative units. Compare also J. farmery in - - - - • ««oo% - 1-j.i 4jt. j. Ward in Mind, i 464- Lotze, Metaphysik, $ 258. ' + F Brentano Psychologic, i. 9, 88 ff.-Uerkel thinks that his results with the method of equal-appearing intervals show that we «>|»Par« ;;«n; siderable intervals with each other by a different law from that by whicl we notice barely perceptible intervals. The stimuli lorn, an arithmetic al series (a pretty wild one according to his tigurcs) in the foiuici geometrical oife in the latter-* least so 1 understand this valiant expert- meiiter but somewhat obscure if acute writer. t This is the formula which Merkel thinks he has verihed (if 1 under- stand him aright) by his experiments by method 4. 548 PSYCHOLOGY. facts is thus not only seen to be arbitrary and subjective, but in the highest degree improbable as well. The depart ures from Weber's law in regions where it does not obtain, he explains by the compounding with it of other unknown laws which mask its effects. As if any law could not be found in any set of phenomena, provided one have the wit to invent enough other coexisting laws to overlap and neutral ize it! The whole outcome of the discussion, so far as Feclmer's theories are concerned, is indeed nil. Weber's law alone remains true as an empirical generalization of fair extent : What we add to a large stimulus we notice less than what we add to a small one, unless it happen rela tively to the stimulus to be as great. Weber's law is probably purely physiological. One can express this state of things otherwise by saying that the whole of the stimulus does not seem to be effective in giving us the perception of ' more,' and the simplest in terpretation of such a state of things would be physical. The loss of effect would take place in the nervous system. If our feelings resulted from a condition of the nerve- molecules which it grew ever more difficult for the stimulus to increase, our feelings would naturally grow at a slower rate than the stimulus itself. An ever larger part of the latter's work would go to overcoming the resistances, and an ever smaller part to the realization of the feeling-bring ing state. Weber's law would thus be a sort of latv of friction in the neural machine.* Just how these inner resistances and frictions are to be conceived is a specu lative question. Delboeuf has formulated them as fa tigue ; Bernstein and Ward, as irradiations. The latest, and probably the most ' real/ hypothesis is that of Ebbing- haus, who supposes that the intensity of sensation depends on the number of neural molecules which are disintegrated in the unit of time. There are only a certain number at any time which are capable of disintegrating ; and whilst most of these are in an average condition of instability, * Elsas : Ueber die Psychophysik (1886), p. 41. When the pans of a balance are already loaded, but in equilibrium, it takes a proportionally larger weight added to one of them to incline the beam. DISCRIMINATION AND COMPARISON. 549 some are almost stable and some already near to decom position. The smallest stimuli affect these latter molecules only ; and as they are but few, the sensational effect from adding a given quantity of stimulus at first is relatively small. Medium stimuli affect the majority o!" the mole cules, but affect fewer and fewer in proportion as they have already diminished their number. The latest additions tc the stimuli find all the medium molecules already disinte grated, and only affect the small relatively indecomposable remainder, thus giving rise to increments of feeling which are correspondingly small. (Pfliiger's Archiv. 45, 113.) It is surely in some such way as this that Weber's law is to be interpreted, if it ever is. The Feclmerian Maas- formel and the conception of it as an ultimate * psychophysic law' will remain an 'idol of the den,' if ever there was one. Feclmer himself indeed was a German Gelehrterol the ideal type, at once simple and shrewd, a mystic and an experi mentalist, homely and daring, and as loyal to facts as to his theories. But it would be terrible if even such a dear old man as this could saddle our Science forever with his patient whimsies, and, in a world so full of more nutritious objects of attention, compel all future students to plough through the difficulties, not only of his own works, but of the still drier ones written in his refutation. Those who desire this dreadful literature can find it ; it has a ' disci plinary value ;' but I will not even enumerate it in a foot note. The only amusing part of it is that Feclmer's critics should always feel bound, after smiting his theories hip and thigh and leaving not a stick of them standing, to wind up by saying that nevertheless to him belongs the imperishable glory, of first formulating them and thereby turning psychology into an exact science, " And everybody praised the duke Who this great light did win.' ' But what good came of it at last? ' Quoth little Peterkiu. Why, that I cannot tell,' said he, 1 But 'twas a famous victory ! ' " CHAPTER XIV.* ASSOCIATION. AFTER discrimination, association ! Already in the last chapter I have had to invoke, in order to explain the im provement of certain discriminations by practice, the ' as sociation ' of the objects to be distinguished, with other more widely differing ones. It is obvious that the advance of our knowledge must consist of both operations ; for objects at first appearing as wholes are analyzed into parts, and objects appearing separately are brought together and ap pear as new compound wholes to the mind. Analysis and synthesis are thus the incessantly alternating mental activities, a stroke of the one preparing the way for a stroke of the other, much as, in walking, a man's two legs are alternately brought into use, both being indispensable for any orderly advance. The manner in which trains of imagery and consideration follow each other through our thinking, the restless flight of one idea before the next, the transitions our minds make between things wide as the poles asunder, transitions which at first sight startle us by their abruptness, but which, when scrutinized closely, often reveal intermediating links of perfect naturalness and propriety — all this magical, im ponderable streaming has from time immemorial excited the admiration of all whose attention happened to be caught by its omnipresent mystery. And it has furthermore challenged the race of philosophers to banish something of the mystery by formulating the process in simpler terniSo The problem which the philosophers have set themselves is that of ascertaining principles of connection between the thoughts which thus appear to sprout one out *The theory propounded in this chapter, and a good many pages of the text, were originally published in the Popular Science Monthly for March, 1880. 550 ASSOCIATION. 551 of the other, whereby their peculiar succession or coexist ence may be explained. But immediately an ambiguity arises : which sort of connection is meant? connection thought-of, or connection between thoughts ? These are two entirely different things, and only in the case of one of them is there any hope of finding 'principles.' The jungle of connections thought of can never be formulated simply. Every conceivable con nection may be thought of — of coexistence, succession, re semblance, contrast, contradiction, cause and effect, means and end, genus and species, part and whole, substance and property, early and late, large and small, landlord and tenant, master and servant, — Heaven knows what, for the list is literally inexhaustible. The only simplification which could possibly be aimed at would be the reduction of the relations to a smaller number of types, like those which such authors as Kant and Eenouvier call the ' cate gories ' of the understanding.* According as we followed one category or another we should sweep, with our thought, through the world in this way or in that. And all the cate gories would be logical, would be relations of reason. They i would fuse the items into a continuum. Were this the sort v of connection sought between one moment of our thinking and another, our chapter might end here. For the only summary description of these infinite possibilities of transi tion, is that they are all acts of reason, and that the mind proceeds from one object to another by some rational path of connection. The trueness of this formula is only equalled by its sterility, for psychological purposes. Practically it amounts to simply referring the inquirer to the relations between facts or things, and to telling him that his thinking follows them. But as a matter of fact, his thinking only sometimes follows them, and these so-called 'transitions of reason' are far from being all alike reasonable. If pure thought runs all our trains, why should she run some so fast and some so slow, some through dull flats and some through * Compare Renouvier's criticism of associationism in his Essais de Critique generate, Logique, n. p. 493 foil. 552 PSYCHOLOGY. gorgeous scenery, some to mountain-heights and jewelled mines, others through dismal swamps and darkness ? — and run some off the track altogether, and into the wilderness of lunacy? Why do we spend years straining after a certain scientific or practical problem, but all in vain — thought refusing to evoke the solution we desire ? And why, some day, walking in the street with our attention miles away from that quest, does the answer saunter into our minds as carelessly as if it had never been called for — suggested, possibly, by the flowers on the bonnet of the lady in front of us, or possibly by nothing that we can dis cover ? If reason can give us relief then, why did she not do so earlier ? The truth must be admitted that thought works under conditions imposed ab extra. The great law of habit itself —that twenty experiences make us recall a thing better than one, that long indulgence in error makes right thinking \ almost impossible — seems to have no essential foundation in reason. The business of thought is with truth — the number of experiences ought to have nothing to do with her hold of it ; and she ought by right to be able to hug it all the oloser, after years wasted out of its presence. The contrary arrangements seem quite fantastic and arbitrary, but nevertheless are part of the very bone and marrow of our minds. Reason is only one out of a thousand possi bilities in the thinking of each of us. Who can count all the silly fancies, the grotesque suppositions, the utterly irrelevant reflections he makes in the course of a day? Who can swear that his prejudices and irrational beliefs con stitute a less bulky part of his mental furniture than his clarified opinions? It is true that a presiding arbiter seems to sit aloft in the mind, and emphasize the better suggestions into permanence, while it ends by droopping out and leaving unrecorded the confusion. But this is all the difference. The mode of genesis of the worthy and the worthless seems the same. The laws of our actual thinking, of the cogitatum, must account alike for the bad and the good materials on which the arbiter has to decide, for wisdom and for folly. The laws of the arbiter, of the cogitandum, of what we ought to think, are to the former as the ASSOCIATION. 553 laws of ethics are to those of history. Who but an hegelian historian ever pretended that reason in action was per se a sufficient explanation of the political changes in Europe ? I There are, then, mechanical conditions on which thought depends, and ivhich, to say the least, determine the order in ivhich is presented the content or material for her compari sons, selections, and decisions. It is a suggestive fact that Locke, and many more recent Continental psychologists, have found themselves obliged to invoke a mechanical process to account for the aberrations of thought, the ob structive preprocessions, the frustrations of reason. This they found in the law of habit, or what we now call As sociation by Contiguity. But it never occurred to these writers that a process which could go the length of actually producing some ideas and sequences in the mind might safely be trusted to produce others too ; and that those habitual associations which further thought may also come from the same mechanical source as those which hinder it. Hartley accordingly suggested habit as a sufficient explana tion of all connections of our thoughts, and in so doing planted himself squarely upon the properly psychological aspect of the problem of connection, and sought to treat both rational and irrational connections from a single point of view. The problem which he essayed, however lamely, to answer, was that of the connection between our psychic states considered purely as such, regardless of the objective connections of which they might take cognizance. How does a man come, after thinking of A, to think of B the next moment? or how does he come to think A and B always together ? These were the phenomena which I Hartley undertook to explain by cerebral physiology. I believe that he was, in many essential respects, on the • right track, and I propose simply to revise his conclusions by the aid of distinctions which he did not make. But the whole historic doctrine of psychological asso ciation is tainted with one huge error — that of the construc tion of our thoughts out of the compounding of themselves together of immutable and incessantly recurring ' simple ideas.' It is the cohesion of these which the ' principles of 564 PSYCHOLOGY. association ' are considered to account for. In Chapters VI and IX we saw abundant reasons for treating the doctrine of simple ideas or psychic atoms as mythological ; and, in all that follows, our problem will be to keep whatever truths the associationist doctrine has caught sight of without ( weighing it down with the untenable iucumbrance that the t association is between ' ideas.' Association, so far as the word stands for an effect, is *. ^ between THINGS THOUGHT OF — it is THINGS, not ideas, which are associated in the mind. We ought to talk of the association of objects, not of the association of ideas. And so far as association stands for a cause, it is between processes in the brain — it is these which, by being associated in certain ways, determine what successive objects shall be thought. Let us proceed towards our final generalizations by survey ing first a few familiar facts. I The laws of motor habit in the lower centres of the ner vous system are disputed by no one. A series of move ments repeated in a certain order tend to unroll themselves with peculiar ease in that order for ever afterward. Num ber one awakens number two, and that awakens number three, and so on, till the last is produced. A habit of this kind once become inveterate may go on automatically. And so it is with the objects with which our thinking is con cerned. With some persons each note of a melody, heard but once, will accurately revive in its proper sequence. Small boys at school learn the inflections of many a Greek noun, adjective, or verb, from the reiterated recitations ! of .the upper classes falling on their ear as they sit at their desks. All this happens with no voluntary effort on their part and with no thought of the spelling of the words. The doggerel rhymes which children use in their games, such as the formula " Ana mana mona mike Barcelona bona strike," used for ' counting out,' form another familiar example of things heard in sequence cohering in the same order in the memory ASSOCIATION. 555 In touch we have a smaller number of instances, though probably every one who bathes himself in a certain fixed manner is familiar with the fact that each part of his body over which the water is squeezed from the sponge awakens a premonitory tingling consciousness in that portion of skin which is habitually the next to be deluged. Tastes and smells form no very habitual series in our experience. But even if they did, it is doubtful whether habit would fix the order of their reproduction quite so well as it does that of other sensations. In vision, however, we have a sense in which the order of reproduced things is very nearly as much influenced by habit as is the order of remembered sounds. Kooms, landscapes, buildings, pictures, or persons with whose look we are very familiar, surge up before the mind's eye with all the details of their appearance complete, so soon as we think of any one of their component parts. Some persons, in reciting printed matter by heart, will seem to see each successive word, before they utter it, ap pear in its order on an imaginary page. A certain chess player, one of those heroes who train themselves to play several games at once blindfold, is reported to say that in bed at night after a match the games are played all over again before his mental eye, each board being pictured as passing in turn through each of its successive stages. In this case, of course, the intense previous voluntary strain of the power of visual representation is what facilitated the fixed order of revival. Association occurs as amply between impressions of different senses as between homogeneous sensations. Seen things and heard things cohere with each other, and with odors and tastes, in representation, in the same order in which they cohered as impressions of the outer world. Feelings of contact reproduce similarly the sights, sounds, and tastes with which experience has associated them. In fact, the ' objects ' of our perception, as trees, men, houses, microscopes, of which the real world seems composed, are nothing but clusters of qualities which through simulta neous stimulation have so coalesced that the moment one is excited actually it serves as a sign or cue for the idea oi the others to arise. Let a person enter his room in the 556 PSYCHOLOGY. dark and grope among the objects there. The touch of the matches will instantaneously recall their appearance. If his hand comes in contact with an orange on the table, the golden yellow of the fruit, its savor and perfume will forth with shoot through his mind. In passing the hand over the sideboard or in jogging the coal-scuttle with the foot, the large glossy dark shape of the one and the irregular blackness of the other awaken like a flash and constitute I what we call the recognition of the objects. The voice of the violin faintly echoes through the mind as the hand is laid upon it in the dark, and the feeling of the garments or draperies which may hang about the room is not understood till the look correlative to the feeling has in each case been resuscitated. Smells notoriously have the power of recall ing the other experiences in whose company they were wont to be felt, perhaps long years ago ; and the voluminous emotional character assumed by the images which sud denly pour into the mind at such a time forms one of the staple topics of popular psychologic wonder — " Lost and gone and lost and gone ! A breath, a whisper — some divine farewell — Desolate sweetness — far and far away. " We cannot hear the din of a railroad train or the yell I of its whistle, without thinking of its long, jointed appear ance and its headlong speed, nor catch a familiar voice in a crowd without recalling, with the name of the speaker, also his face. But the most notorious and important case of the mental combination of auditory with optical impres sions originally experienced together is furnished by lan guage. The child is offered a new and delicious fruit and is at the same time told that it is called a 'fig.' Or looking out of the window he exclaims, " What a funny horse ! " and is told that it is a ' piebald ' horse. When learning his let ters, the sound of each is repeated to him whilst its shape is before his eye. Thenceforward, long as he may live, he will never see a fig, a piebald horse, or a letter of the alpha- Ibet without the name which he first heard in conjunction with each clinging to it in his mind ; and inversely he will ASSOCIATION. 557 never hear the name without the faint arousal of the image of the object.* THE RAPIDITY OF ASSOCIATION. Beading exemplifies this kind of cohesion even more beautifully. It is an uninterrupted and protracted recall of sounds by sights which have always been coupled with them in the past. I find that I can name six hundred let ters in two minutes on a printed page. Five distinct acts of association between sight and sound (not to speak of all the other processes concerned) must then have occurred in each second in my mind. In reading entire words the speed is much more rapid. Valentin relates in his Physiology that the reading of a single page of the proof, containing 2629 letters, took him 1 minute and 32 seconds. In this experiment each letter was understood in ^ of a second, but owing to the integration of letters into entire words, forming each a single aggregate impression directly associ ated with a single acoustic image, we need not suppose as many as 28 separate associations in a sound. The figures, however, suffice to show with what extreme rapidity an actual sensation recalls its customary associates. Both in fact seem to our ordinary attention to come into the mind at once. The time-measuring psychologists of recent days have tried their hand at this problem by more elaborate methods. Galton, using a very simple apparatus, found that the sight of an unforeseen word would awaken an associated ' idea ' in about f of a second, t Wundt next made determinations * Unless the name belong to a rapidly uttered sentence, when no sub stantive image may have time to arise. fTn his observations he says that time was lost in mentally taking in the word which was the cue, •• owing to the quiet unobtrusive way in which I found it necessary to bring it into view, so as not to distract the thoughts. Moreover, a substantive standing by itself is usually the cquiv- alent°of too abstract an idea for us to conceive properly without delay. Thus it is very difficult to get a quick conception of the word 'carnage, because there are so many different kinds-two-wheeled, four-wheeled open and closed, and in so many different possible positions, that the n possibly hesitates amidst an obscure sense of many alternations that cannot blend together. But limit the idea to say a landau, and the mental assc elation declares itself more quickly." (Inquiries, etc. , p. 190.) 558 PSYCHOLOGY. in which the ' cue ' was given by single-syllabled Avoids called out by an assistant. The person experimented on had to press a key as soon as the sound of the word awak ened an associated idea. Both word and reaction were chronographically registered, and the total time-interval between the two amounted, in four observers, to 1.009, 0.896, 1.037, and 1.154 seconds respectively. From this the simple physiological reaction-time and the time of merely identifying the word's sound (the 'apperception-time,' as Wundt calls it) must be subtracted, to get the exact time required for the associated idea to arise. These times were separately determined and subtracted. The difference, called by Wundt the association-time, amounted, in the same four persons, to 706, 723, 752, and 874 thousandths of a second respectively.* The length of the last figure is due to the fact that the person reacting (President G. S. Hall) was an American, whose associations with German words would naturally be slower than those of natives. The short est association-time noted was when the word ' Sturm ' sug gested to Prof. Wundt the word ' Wind ' in 0.341 second. t — Finally, Mr. Cattell made some interesting observations upon the association-time between the look of letters and their names. "I pasted letters," he says, "on a revolving drum, and determined at what rate they could be read aloud as they passed by a slit in a screen." He found it to vary according as one, or more than one letter, was visi ble at a time through the slit, and gives half a second as about the time which it takes to see and name a single letter seen alone. ' ' When two or more letters are always in view, not only do the pro cesses of seeing and naming overlap, but while the subject is seeing one letter he begins to see the ones next following, and so can read them more quickly. Of the nine persons experimented on, four could read the letters faster when five were in view at once, but were not helped by a sixth letter ; three were not helped by a fifth, and two not by a fourth letter. This shows that while one idea is in the centre, two, * Physiol. Psych., n. 280 fol. f For interesting remarks ou the sorts of things associated, in these ex periments, with the prompting word, see Galton, op. ctt. pp. 185-203. and Trautscholdt in Wundt's Psychologische Studien. i. 213. ASSOCIATION. 559 three, or four additional ideas may be in the background of consciou ness The second letter in view shortens the time about -4V, the third sV the fourth ^ the fifth ^ sec. " I find it takes about twice as long to read (aloud, as fast as pos sible) words which have no connection as words which make sentences and letters which have no connection as letters which make words' When the words make sentences and the letters words, not only do the processes of seeing and naming overlap, but by one mental effort the subject can recognize a whole group of words or letters, and by one will-act choose the motions to be made in naming, so that the rate at which the words and letters are read is really only limited by the maximum rapidity at which the speech-organs can be moved. As the result of a large number of experiments, the writer found that he had read words not making sentences at the rate of £ sec., words makin« sentences (a passage from Swift) at the rate of i sec., per word. . . ! The rate at which a person reads a foreign language is proportional to his familiarity with the language. For example, when reading as fast as possible the writer's rate was, English 188, French 167, German 250, Italian 327, Latin 434, and Greek 484 ; the figures giving the thou sandths of a second taken to read each word. Experiments made on others strikingly confirm these results. The subject does not know that he is reading the foreign language more slowly than his own ; this explains why foreigners seem to talk so fast. This simple method of determining a person's familiarity with a language might be used in school examinations. "The time required to see and name colors and pictures of objects was determined in the same way. The time was found to be about the same (over -J sec.) for colors as for pictures, and about twice as long as for words and letters. Other experiments I have made show that we can recognize a single color or picture in a slightly shorter time than a word or letter, but take longer to name it. This is because, in the case of words and letters, the association between the idea and name has taken place so often that the process has become automatic, whereas in the case of colors and pictures we must by a voluntary effort choose the name.* In later experiments Mr. Cattell studied the time for various associations to be performed, the termini (i.e., cue and answer) being words. A word in one language was to call up its equivalent in another, the name of an author the tongue in which he wrote, that of a city the country in which it lay, that of a writer one of his works, etc. The mean variation from the average is very great in all these experiments ; and the interesting feature which they show * Mind, xr. 04-5. 560 PSYCHOLOGY. is the existence of certain constant differences between as sociations of different sorts. Thus : From country to city, Mr. C.'s time was 0.340 sec. " ' season " month, " " " 0.399 " language " author, " " " 0.523 " author " work, " " " 0.596 The average time of two observers, experimenting on eight different types of association, was 0.420 and 0.436 sec. respectively.* The very wide range of variation is undoubtedly a consequence of the fact that the words used * This value is much smaller than that got by Wundt as above. No reason for the difference is suggested by Mr. Cattell. Wuudt calls atten tion to the fact that the figures found by him give an average, 0.720", ex actly equal to the time interval which in his experiments (mfo infra, chapter on Time) was reproduced without error either way, and to that required, according to the Webers, for the legs to swing in rapid locomotion. " It is not improbable," he adds, " that this psychic constant, of the mean asso ciation-time and of the most correct appreciation of a time-interval, may have been developed under the influence of the most usual bodily move ments, which also have determined the manner in which we tend to sub divide rhythmically longer periods of time." (Physiol. Psch., IT. 286). The r approvement is of that tentative sort which it is no harm for psy chologists to make, provided they recollect how very fictitious and incom parable mutually all these averages derived from different observers, work ing under different conditions, are. Mr. Cattell's figure throws Wundt's ingenious parallel entirely out of line — The only measurements of asso ciation-time which so far seem likely to have much theoretic importance are a few made on insane patients by Von Tschisch (Mendel's Neurolo gisches Centralblatt, 15 Mai, 1885,3 Jhrg., p. 217). The simple reaction time was found about normal in three patients, one with progressive paralysis, one with inveterate mania of persecution, one recovering from ordinary mania. In the convalescent maniac and the paralytic, however, the association-time was hardly half as much as Wundt's normal figure (0.28" and 0.23" instead of 0.7' —smaller also than Cattell's), whilst in the sufferer from delusions of persecution and hallucinations it was twice as great as normal (1.39" instead of 0.7"). This latter patient's time was six fold that of the paralytic. Herr von Tschisch remarks on the connection of the short times with diminished power for clear and consistent processes of thought, and on that of the long times with the persistent fixation of the attention upon monotonous objects (delusions). Miss Marie Walitzky (Revue Philosophique, xxvm. 583) has carried Von Tschisch's observations still farther, making 18,000 measurements in all. She found association- time increased in paralytic dementia and diminished iu mania. Choice time, on the contrary, is increased in mania. ASSOCIATION. 561 as cues, and the different types of association studied, differ mucli in their degree of familiarity. "For example, B is a teacher of mathematics ; C has busied him self more with literature. C knows quite as well as B that 7 + 5 = 12, yet he needs Vo of a second longer to call it to mind ; B knows quite as well as C that Dante was a poet, but needs ^V of a second longer to think of it. Such experiments lay bare the mental life in a way that is startling and not always gratifying." * THE LAW OF CONTIGUITY. Time-determinations apart, the facts we have run over can all be summed up in the simple statement that objects once experienced together tend to become associated in the imagi nation, so that when any one of them is thought of, the others are likely to be thought of also, in the same order of sequence or coexistence as before. This statement we may name the law of mental association by contiguity.^ I preserve this name in order to depart as little as pos sible from tradition, although Mr. Ward's designation of the process as that of association by continuity $ or Wundt's as that of external association (to distinguish it from the internal association which we shall presently learn to know under the name of association by similarity) § are perhaps better terms. Whatever we name the law, since it ex presses merely a phenomenon of mental habit, the most natural way of accounting for it is to conceive it as a result * Mind, xii. 67-74. f Compare Bum's law of Association by Contiguity : " Actions, bensa- tions, and States of Feeling, occurring together or in close succession, tend to grow together, or cohere, in such a way that, when any one of them is afterwards presented to the mind, the others are apt to be brought up in idea" (Senses and Intellect, p. 327). Compare also Hartley's formula tion • " Any sensations A, B. C, etc., by being associated with one another a sufficient Number of Times, get such a power over the corresponding Ideas a b, c, etc., that anyone of the sensations A, when impressed alone, shall be able to excite in the Mind b, c, etc., the ideas of the rest."^ (Ob servations on Man. parti, chap. i. §2, Prop, x.) The statement in the text differs from these in holding fast to the objective point of view. J thing*, and objective properties in things, which are associatec °J Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th Ed., article Psychology, p. 60, col. 2. §Physiol. Psych., 2d ed. n. 300 562 PSYCHOLOGY. of the laws of habit in the nervous system; in other words, it is to ascribe it to a physiological cause. If it be truly a law of those nerve-centres which co-ordinate sensory and motor processes together that paths once used for coupling any pair of them are thereby made more permea ble, there appears no reason why the same law should not hold good of ideational centres and their coupling-paths as well.* Parts of these centres which have once been in action together will thus grow so linked that excitement at one point will irradiate through the system. The chances of complete irradiation will be strong in proportion as the previous excitements have been frequent, and as the present points excited afresh are numerous. If all points were originally excited together, the irradiation may be sensibly simultaneous throughout the system, when any single point or group of points is touched off. But where the original impressions were successive — the conjugation of * The difficulty here as with habit uberJiaupl is in seeing how new paths come first to be formed (cf. above, 109). Experience shows that a new path is formed between centres for sensible impressions whenever these vibrate together or in rapid succession. A child sees a certain bottle and hears it called ' milk,' and thenceforward thinks the name when he again sees the bottle. But why the successive or simultaneous excitement of two centres independently stimulated from without, one by sight and the other by hearing, should result in a path between them, one does not im mediately see. We can only make hypotheses. Any hypothesis of the specific mode of their formation which tallies well with the observed facts of association will be in so far forth credible, in spite of possible obscurity. Herr Mimsterberg thinks (Beitriige zur exp. Psychologic, Heft 1, p. 132) that between centres excited successively from without no path ought to be formed, and that consequently all contiguous association is between simultaneous experiences. Mr. Ward (loc. cit.) thinks, on the contrary, that it can only be between successive experiences : " The association of objects simultaneously presented can be resolved into an association of objects successively attended to. ... It seems hardly possible to mention a case in which attention to the associated objects could not have been successive. In fact, an aggregate of objects on which attention could be focussed at once vrould be already associated." Between these extreme possibilities, I have refrained from deciding in the text, and have described contiguous association as holding between both successively and coexistently pre sented objects. The physiological question as to how we may conceive the paths to originate had better be postponed till it comes to us again in the chapter on the Will, where we can treat it in a broader way. It is enough here to have called attention to it as a serious problem. ASSOCIATION. 663 a Greek verb, for example— awakening nerve-tracts in a definite order, they will now, when one of them awakens, discharge into each other in that definite order and in no other way. The reader will recollect all that has been said of in creased tension in nerve-tracts and of the summation of stimuli (p. 82 ff.). We must therefore suppose that in these ideational tracts as well as elsewhere, activity may be awakened, in any particular locality, by the summation therein of a number of tensions, each incapable alone of provoking an actual discharge. Suppose for example the locality M to be in functional continuity with four other localities, K, L, N, and O. Suppose moreover that on four previous occasions it has been separately combined with each of these localities in a common activity. M may then be indirectly awakened by any cause which tends to awaken either K, L, N, or O. But if the cause which awakens K, for instance, be so slight as only to increase its tension without arousing it to full discharge, K will only succeed in slightly increasing the tension of M. But if at the same time the tensions of L, N, and O are simi larly increased, the combined effects of all four upon M may be so great as to awaken an actual discharge in this latter locality. In like manner if the paths between M and the four other localities have been so slightly excavated by previous experience as to require a very intense excitement in either of the localities before M can be awakened, a less strong excitement than this in any one will fail to reach M. But if all four at once are mildly excited, their com pound effect on M may be adequate to its full arousal. The psychological law of association of objects thought of through their previous contiguity in thought or experience would tJirts lie an effect, within the mind, of the physical fart that nerve-currents propayaic themselvex easiest through those tracts of conduction which have been already most in use. Des cartes and Locke hit upon this explanation, which modern science has not yet succeeded in improving. "Custom," says Lycke, "settles habits of thinking in the under standing, as well as of determining in the will, and of motions in tin- body ; all which seem to l>c but trains of motion in the animal sjiirftn 564 PSYCHOLOGY. [by this Locke meant identically what we understand by neural pro cesses] which, once set agoing, continue in the same steps they have been used to, which by often treading are worn into a smooth path, and the motion in it becomes easy and, as it were, natural." * Hartley was more thorough in his grasp of tlie prin ciple. The sensorial nerve-currents, produced when objects are fully present, were for him * vibrations/ and those which produce ideas of objects in their absence were ' miniature vibrations.' And he sums up the cause of mental associa tion in a single formula by saying : "Any vibrations, A, B, C, etc., by being associated together a suffi cient Number of Times, get such a Power over a, b, c, etc. , the corre sponding Miniature Vibrations, that any of the Vibrations A, when impressed alone, shall be able to excite 6, c, etc., the Miniatures of the rest."f It is evident that if there be any law of neural habit similar to this, the contiguities, coexistences, and succes sions, met with in outer experience, must inevitably be copied more or less perfectly in our thought. If A B C D E be a sequence of outer impressions (they may be events * Essay, bk. n. chap, xxxin. § 6. Compare Hume, who, like Locke, only uses the principle to account for unreasonable and obstructive mental associations : " 'Twould have been easy to have made an imaginary dissection of the brain, and have shown why, upon our conception of any idea, the animal spirits run into all the contiguous traces, and rouse up the other ideas that are related to it. But though I have neglected any advantage which I might have drawn from this topic in explaining the relations of ideas, I am afraid I must here have recourse to it, in order to account for the mistakes that arise from these relations. I shall therefore observe, that as the mind is endowed with a power of exciting any idea it pleases ; whenever it dis patches the spirits into that region of the brain in which the idea is placed, these spirits always excite the idea, when they run precisely into the propel1 traces, and rummage that cell which belongs to the idea. But as their mo tion is seldom direct, and naturally turns a little to the one side or the other: for this reason the animal spirits, falling into the contiguous traces, pre sent other related ideas in lieu of that which the mind desired at first to survey. This change we are not always sensible of ; but continuing still the same train of thought, make use of the related idea which is presented to us, and employ it in our reasoning, as if it were the same with what we demanded. This is the cause of many mistakes and sophisms in philoso phy; as will naturally be imagined, and as it would be easy to show, if there was occasion." I Op. cit proo. xi. ASSOCIATION. 565 or they may be successively experienced properties of an object) which once gave rise to the successive ' ideas,'a bcde, then no sooner will A impress us again and awaken the a, than bode will arise as ideas even before BCDE have come in as impressions. In other words, the order of impressions will the next time be anticipated ; and the men tal order will so far forth copy the order of the outer- world. Any object when met again will make us expect its tormer concomitants, through the overflowing of its brain- tract into the paths which lead to theirs. And all these suggestions will be effects of a material law. Where the associations are, as here, of successively ap pearing things, the distinction I made at the outset of the chapter, between a connection thought of and a connection of thoughts, is unimportant. For the connection thought of is concomitance or succession ; and the connection between the thoughts is just the same. The ' objects ' and the * ideas ' fit into parallel schemes, and may be described in identical language, as contiguous things tending to be thought again together, or contiguous ideas tending to recur together. Now were these cases fair samples of all association, the distinction I drew might well be termed a Spitzfindigkeit or piece of pedantic hair-splitting, and be dropped. But as a matter of fact we cannot treat the subject so simply. The same outer object may suggest either of many realities for merly associated with it — for in the vicissitudes of our outer experience we are constantly liable to meet the same thing in the midst of differing companions — and a philosophy of association that should merely say that it will suggest one of these, or even of that one of them which it has oftenest accompanied, would go but a very short way into the ra tionale of the subject. This, however, is about as far as most associationists have gone with their ' principle of con tiguity.' Granted an object, A, they never tell us before hand which of its associates it will suggest ; their wisdom is limited to showing, after it has suggested a second object, that that object was once an associate. They have had to supplement their principle of Contiguity by other priuci- 566 PSYCHOLOGY. pies, such as those of Similarity and Contrast, before could begin to do justice to the richness of the facts. THE ELEMENTARY LAW OF ASSOCIATION. I shall try to show, in the pages which immediately follow, that there is no other elementary causal law of asso ciation than the law of neural habit. All the materials of our thought are due to the way in which one elementary process of the cerebral hemispheres tends to excite what ever other elementary process it may have excited at some former time. The number of elementary processes at work, however, and the nature of those which at any time are fully effective in rousing the others, determine the character of the total brain-action, and, as a consequence of this, they determine the object thought of at the time. According as this resultant object is one thing or another, we call it a product of association by contiguity or of as sociation by similarity, or contrast, or whatever other sorts we may have recognized as ultimate. Its production, how ever, is, in each one of these cases, to be explained by a merely quantitative variation in the elementary brain-pro cesses momentarily at work under the law of habit, so that psychic contiguity, similarity, etc., are derivatives of a sin gle profounder kind of fact. My thesis, stated thus briefly, will soon become more clear ; and at the same time certain disturbing factors, which co-operate with the law of neural habit, will come to view. Let us then assume as the basis of all our subsequent reasoning this law : When two elementary brain-processes have been active together or in immediate succession, one oj them, on reoccurring, tends to propagate its excitement into the other. But, as a matter of fact, every elementary process has found itself at different times excited in conjunction with many other processes, and this by unavoidable outward causes. Which of these others it shall awaken now be comes a problem. Shall b or c be aroused next by the present a ? We must make a further postulate, based, how ever, on the fact of tension in nerve-tissue, and on the fact ASSOCIATION. 567 of summation of excitements, each incomplete or latent in itself, into an open resultant* The process b, rather than c, will awake, if in addition to the vibrating tract a some other tract d is in a state of sub-excitement, and formerly was excited with b alone and not with a. In short, we may say : The amount of activity at any given point in the brain-cor tex is the sum of the tendencies of all other points to discharge into it, such tendencies being proportionate (1) to the number of times the excitement of each other point may have accompanied that of the point in question; (2) to the intensity of such excite ments ; and (3) to the absence of any rival point functionally disconnected with the first point, into ivhich the discharges might be diverted. Expressing the fundamental law in this most compli cated way leads to the greatest ultimate simplification. Let us, for the present, only treat of spontaneous trains of thought and ideation, such as occur in revery or musing. The case of voluntary thinking toward a certain end shall come up later. Take, to fix our ideas, the two verses from ' Locksley Kail ' : "I, the heir of all the ages in the foremost tiles of time," and — " For I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs." Why is it that when we recite horn memory one of these lines, and get as far as the ages, that portion of the other line which follows, and, so to speak, sprouts out of the ages, does not also sprout out of our memory, and confuse the sense of our words ? Simply because the word that fol lows the ages has its brain-process awakened not simply by the brain-process of the ages alone, but by it plus the brain- processes of all the words preceding the ages. The word ages at its moment of strongest activity would, per se, indif ferently discharge into either ' in' or « one.' So would the previous words (whose tension is momentarily much less strong than that of ages) each of them indifferently dis- * See Chapter III, pp. 82-5. 568 PSYCHOLOGY. charge into either of a large number ol other words with which they have been at different times combined. But when the processes of ' /, the heir of all the ages,' simul taneously vibrate in «he brain, the last one of them in a maximal, the others in a fading phase of excitement ; then the strongest line of discharge will be that which they all alike tend to take. ' In ' and not ' one ' or any other word wi]l be the next to awaken, for its brain-process has previ ously vibrated in unison not only with that of ages, but with that of all those other words whose activity is dying away. It is a good case of the effectiveness over thought of what we called on p. 258 a ' fringe.' But if some one of these preceding words — 'heir,' for example — had an intensely strong association with some brain-tracts entirely disjoined in experience from the poem of ' Locksley Hall ' — if the reciter, for instance, were tremu lously awaiting the opening of a will which might make him a millionaire — it is probable that the path of discharge through the words of the poem would be suddenly inter rupted at the word * heir.' His emotional interest in that word would be such that its own special associations ivoidd prevail over the combined ones of the other words. He would, as we say, be abruptly reminded of his personal situation, and the poem would lapse altogether from his thoughts. The writer of these pages has every year to learn the names of a large number of students who sit in alphabeti cal order in a lecture-room. He finally learns to call them by name, as they sit in their accustomed places. On meet ing one in the street, however, early in the year, the face hardly ever recalls the name, but it may recall the place of its owner in the lecture-room, his neighbors' faces, and con sequently his general alphabetical position ; and then, usually as the common associate of all these combined data, the student's name surges up in his mind. A father wishes to show to some guests the progress of his rather dull child in Kindergarten instruction. Holding the knife upright on the table, he says, " What do you call that, my boy ?" " I calls it a knife, I does," is the sturdy re ply, from which the child cannot be induced to swerve by ASSOCIATION. 569 any alteration in the form of question, until the father recollecting that in the Kindergarten a pencil was used, and not a knife, draws a long one from his pocket, holds it in the same way, and then gets the wished-f or answer, " I calls it vertical." All the concomitants of the Kindergarten ex perience had to recombine their effect before the word ' vertical ' could be reawakened. Professor Bain, in his chapters on ' Compound Associa tion,' has treated in a minute and exhaustive way of this type of mental sequence, and what he has done so well need not be here repeated.* Impartial Redintegration. The ideal working of the law of compound association, were it unmodified by any extraneous influence, would be such as to keep the mind in a perpetual treadmill of con crete reminiscences from which no detail could be omitted. Suppose, for example, we begin by thinking of a certain dinner-party. The only thing which all the components of the dinner-party could combine to recall would be the first concrete occurrence which ensued upon it. All the details of this occurrence could in turn only combine to awaken the next following occurrence, and so on. If a, b, c, d, e, for in stance, be the elementary nerve-tracts excited by the last act 01 the dinner-party, call this act A, and I, m, n, o, p be those of walking home through the frosty night, which we may call B, then the thought of A must awaken that of B, because a, 65 c, d, e, will each and all discharge into I through the paths by which their original discharge took place. Similarly they will discharge into w, n3 o, and p ; and these latter tracts will also each reinforce the other's action because, in the experience B, they have already vibrated in unison. The lines in Fig. 40, p. 570, symbolize the summation of discharges into each of the components of B, and the consequent strength of the combination of influences by which B in its totality is awakened. Hamilton first used the word ' redintegration y to desig nate all association. Such processes as we have just de- *I strongly advise the student to read his Sense* and Intellect, pp. 544- 556. 570 PSYCHOLOGY. scribed might in an emphatic sense be termed redintegra tions, for they would necessarily lead, if unobstructed, to the reinstatement in thought of the entire content of large trains of past experience. From this complete redintegra tion there could be no escape save through the irruption of some new and strong present impression of the senses, or through the excessive tendency of some one of the elemen tary brain-tracts to discharge independently into an aber rant quarter of the brain. Such was the tendency of the Fio. 40. word ' heir ' in the verse from ' Locksley Hall,' which was our first example. How such tendencies are constituted we shall have soon to inquire with some care. Unless they are present, the panorama of the past, once opened, must unroll itself with fatal literality to the end, unless some outward sound, sight, or touch divert the current of thought. Let us call this process impartial redintegration. Whether it ever occurs in an absolutely complete form is doubtful. We all immediately recognize, however, that in some minds there is a much greater tendency than in others for the flow of thought to take this form. Those insufferably gar rulous old women, those dry and fanciless beings who spare you no detail, however petty, of the facts they are recount ing, and upon the thread of whose narrative all the irrele vant items cluster as pertinaciously as the essential ones, ASSOCIATION. 571 the slaves of literal fact, the stumblers over tlie smallest abrupt step in thought, are figures known to all of us. Comic literature has made her profit out of them. Juliet's nurse is a classical example. George Eliot's village char acters and some of Dickens' s minor personages supply excellent instances. Perhaps as successful a rendering as any of this mental type is the character of Miss Bates in Miss Austen's ' Em- nia.' Hear how she redintegrates : u ' But where could you hear it ?' cried Miss Bates. ' Where could you possibly hear it, Mr. Knightley ? For it is not five minutes since I received Mrs. Cole's note— no, it cannot be more than five— or at least ten — for I had got my bonnet and spencer on, just ready to come out — I was only gone down to speak to Fatty again about the pork — Jane was standing in the passage — were not you, Jane ?— for my mother was so afraid that we had not any salting-pan large enough. So I said I would go down and see, and Jane said : " Shall I go down instead ? for 1 think you have a little cold, and Patty has been washing the kitchen.'" "Oh, my dear," said I — well, and just then came the note. A Miss Haw- tins—that's all I know— a Miss Hawkins, of Bath. But, Mr. Knightley, how could you possibly have heard it ? for the very moment Mr. Cole told Mrs. Cole of it, she sat down and wrote to me. A Miss Hawkins—' " But in every one of us there are moments when this complete reproduction of all the items of a past experience occurs. What are those moments ? They are moments of emotional recall of the past as something which once was, but is gone for ever— moments, the interest of which con sists in the feeling that our self was once other than it now is. When this is the case, any detail, however minute, which will make the past picture more complete, will also have its effect in swelling that total contrast between now and then which forms the central interest of our contempla tion. ORDINARY OR MIXED ASSOCIATION. This case helps us to understand why it is that the ordinary spontaneous flow of our ideas does not foHow the law of impartial redintegration. In no revival of a past ex perience are all the items of our thought equally operative in determining ivliat the next thought shall be. Always some in gredient is prepotent over the rest. Its special suggestions or 572 PSTCHOL007. associations in this case will often be different from those which it has in common with the whole group of items; and its tendency to awaken these outlying associates will deflect the path of our revery. Just as in the original sensible experience our attention focalized it self upon a few of the impressions of the scene before us, so here in the reproduction of those impressions an equal partiality is shown, and some items are emphasized above the rest. What these items shall be is, in most cases of spontaneous revery, hard to determine beforehand. In subjective terms we say that the prepotent items are those which appeal most to OUr INTEREST. Expressed in brain-terms, the law of interest will be : some one brain-process is alivays prepotent above its concomi tants in arousing action elsewhere. " Two processes," says Mr. Hodgson,* " are constantly going on in redintegration. The one a process of corrosion, melting, decay; the other a process of renewing, arising, becoming. . . . No object of repre sentation remains long before consciousness in the same state, but fades, decays, and becomes indistinct. Those parts of the object, how ever, which possess an interest resist this tendency to gradual decay of the whole object. . . . This inequality in the object — some parts, the un interesting, submitting to decay; others, the interesting parts, resisting it — when it has continued for a certain time, ends in becoming a new object." Only where the interest is diffused equally over all the parts (as in the emotional memory just referred to, where, as all past, they all interest us alike) is this law departed from. It will be least obeyed by those minds which have the smallest variety and intensity of interests — those who, by the general flatness and poverty of their aesthetic nature, are kept for ever rotating among the literal sequences of their local and personal history. Most of us, however, are better organised than this, and * Time and Space, p. 266. Compare Coleridge : " The true practical general lav/ of association is this : that whatever makes certain parts of a total impression more vivid or distinct than the rest will determine the mind to recall these, in preference to others equally linked together by the com mon condition of contemporneity or of contiguity. But the will itself, by confining and intensifying the attention, may arbitrarily give vividness or distinctness to any object whatsoever. " (Biographia Litteraria, Chap. V.) ASSOCIATION. 673 our musings pursue an erratic course, swerving continu ally into some new direction traced by the shifting play of interest as it ever falls on some partial item in each complex representation that is evoked. Thus it so often comes about that we find ourselves thinking at two nearly adjacent moments of things separated by the whole diam eter of space and time. Not till we carefully recall each step of our cogitation do we see how naturally we came by Hodgson's law to pass from one to the other. Thus, for instance, after looking at my clock just now (1879), I found myself thinking of a recent resolution in the Senate about our legal-tender notes. The clock called up the image of the man who had repaired its gong. He suggested the jeweller's shop where I had last seen him ; that shop, some shirt-studs which I had bought there ; they, the value of gold and its recent decline ; the latter, the equal value of greenbacks, and this, naturally, the question of how long they were to last, and of the Bayard proposition. Each of these images offered various points of interest. Those which formed the turning-points of my thought are easily assigned. The gong was momentarily the most interesting part of the clock, because, from having begun with a beau tiful tone, it had become discordant and aroused disap pointment. But for this the clock might have suggested the friend who gave it to me, or any one of a thousand cir cumstances connected with clocks. The jeweller's shop suggested the studs, because they alone of all its contents were tinged with the egoistic interest of possession. This interest in the studs, their value, made me single out the material as its chief source, etc., to the end. Every reader who will arrest himself at any moment and say, " How came I to be thinking of just this ?" will be sure to trace a train of representations linked together by lines of conti guity and points of interest inextricably combined. This is the ordinary process of the association of ideas as it spontaneously goes on in average minds. We may call it OBDINARY, Or MIXED, ASSOCIATION. Another example of it is given by Hobbes in a passage which has been quoted so often as to be classical : 674 PSYCHOLOGY. " In a discourse of our present civil war, what could seem more im pertinent than to ask (as one did) what was the value of a Roman penny? Yet the coherence to me was manifest enough. For the thought of the war introduced the thought of the delivering up' the King to his enemies; the thought of that brought in the thought of the delivering up of Christ; and that again the thought of the thirty pence, which was the price of that treason: and thence easily followed that malicious question; and all this in a moment of time; for thought is quick."* Can we determine, now, when a certain portion of the going thought has, by dint of its interest, become so pre potent as to make its own exclusive associates the dominant features of the coming thought — can we, I say, determine ivhich of its own associates shall be evoked ? For they are many. As Hodgson says : " The interesting parts of the decaying object are free to combine again with any objects or parts of objects with which at any time they have been combined before. All the former combinations of these parts may come back into consciousness; one must; but which will?" Mr. Hodgson replies : " There can be but one answer : that which has been most habitually combined with them before. This new object begins at once to form itself in consciousness, and to group its parts round the part still re maining from the former object; part after part comes out and arranges I itself in its old position ; but scarcely has the process begun, when the I original law of interest begins to operate on this new formation, seizes 1 on the interesting parts and impresses them on the attention to the ex clusion of the rest, and the whole process is repeated again with end less variety. I venture to propose this as a complete and true account of the whole process of redintegration." In restricting the discharge from the interesting item into that channel which is simply most habitual in the sense of most frequent, Hodgson's account is assuredly imperfect. An image by no means always revives its most frequent associate, although frequency is certainly one of the most potent determinants of revival. If I abruptly utter the word swallow, the reader, if by habit an ornithologist, will think of a bird ; if a physiologist or a medical specialist in throat diseases, he will think of deglutition. If I say date, * Leviathan, pt. i. chap, in., init. ASSOCIATION. 575 he will, if a fruit-merchant or an Arabian traveller, think of the produce of the palm ; if an habitual student of history, figures with A.D. or B.C. before them will rise in his mind. If I say bed, bath, morning, his own daily toilet will be in- ! vincibly suggested by the combined names of three of its habitual associates. But frequent lines of transition are often set at naught. The sight of C. Goring' s 'System derv kritischen Philosophic ' has most frequently awakened in \ v me thoughts of the opinions therein propounded. The idea of suicide has never been connected with the volumes. But a moment since, as my eye fell upon them, suicide was the thought that flashed into my mind. Why ? Because but yesterday I received a letter from Leipzig informing me . that this philosopher's recent death by drowning was an act of self-destruction. Thoughts tend, then, to awaken their most recent as well as their most habitual associates. This is a matter of notorious experience, too notorious, in fact, to need illustration. If we have seen our friend this morning, the mention of his name now recalls the circum stances of that interview, rather than any more remote details concerning him. If Shakespeare's plays are men tioned, and we were last night reading ' Richard II.,' ves tiges of that play rather than of ' Hamlet ' or ' Othello ' float through our mind. Excitement of peculiar tracts, or peculiar modes of general excitement in the brain, leave a sort of tenderness or exalted sensibility behind them which takes days to die away. As long as it lasts, those tracts or those modes are liable to have their activities awakened by causes which at other times might leave them in repose. Hence, recency in experience is a prime factor in determining revival in thought.* Vividness in an original experience may also have the same effect as habit or recency in bringing about likelihood of revival. If we have once witnessed an execution, any subsequent conversation or reading about capital punish ment will almost certainly suggest images of that particular * I refer to a recency of a few hours. Mr. Galton found that experi ences from boyhood and youth were more likely to be suggested by words seen at random than experiences of later years. See his highly interesting account of experiments in his Inquiries into Human Faculty, pp. 1 576 PSYCHOLOGY. scene. Thus it is that events lived through only once, and in youth, may come in after-years, by reason of their excit ing quality or emotional intensity, to serve as types or instances used by our mind to illustrate any and every occurring topic Avhose interest is most remotely pertinent to theirs. If a man in his boyhood once talked with Napo leon, any mention of great men or historical events, battles or thrones, or the whirligig of fortune, or islands in the ocean, will be apt to draw to his lips the incidents of that one memorable interview. If the word tooth now suddenly appears on the page before the reader's eye, there are fifty •, chances out of a hundred that, if he gives it time to awaken any image, it will be an image of some operation of den tistry in which he has been the sufferer. Daily he has touched his teeth and masticated with them ; this very morning he brushed them, chewed his breakfast and picked them ; but the rarer and remoter associations arise more promptly because they were so much more intense.* A fourth factor in tracing the course of reproduction is congruity in emotional tone between the reproduced idea and our mood. The same objects do not recall the same asso ciates when we are cheerful as when we are melancholy. Nothing, in fact, is more striking than our utter inability to keep up trains of joyous imagery when we are depressed in spirits. Storm, darkness, war, images of disease, poverty, I and perishing afflict unremittingly the imaginations of mel- ancholiacs. And those of sanguine temperament, when their spirits are high, find it impossible to give any permanence to evil forebodings or to gloomy thoughts. In an instant the train of association dances off to flowers and sunshine, and images of spring and hope. The records of Arctic or African travel perused in one mood awaken no thoughts but those of horror at the malignity of Nature; read at : another time they suggest only enthusiastic reflections on \ the indomitable power and pluck of man. Few novels so overflow with joyous animal spirits as ' The Three Guards men' of Dumas. Yet it may awaken in the mind of a *For other instances see Wahle, in Vierteljsch f. Wiss. Phil., ix. 144- 41? (1885). ASSOCIATION. 677 reader depressed with sea-sickness (as the writer can per sonally testify) a most dismal and woful consciousness of the cruelty and carnage of which heroes like Athos, Por- thos, and Aramis make themselves guilty. Habit, recency, vividness, and emotional congruity are, then, } \f all reasons why one representation rather than another should be awakened by the interesting portion of a depart- kig thought. We may say with truth that in the majority of cases the coming representation ivill have been either habitual, recent, or vivid, and ivill be congruous. If all these qualities unite in any one absent associate, we may predict almost infallibly that that associate of the going thought will form an important ingredient in the coming thought. In spite of the fact, however, that the succession of representations is thus redeemed from perfect indeter- minism and limited to a few classes whose characteristic quality is fixed by the nature of our past experience, it must still be confessed that an immense number of terms in the linked chain of our representations fall outside of all assignable rule. To take the instance of the clock given on page 586. Why did the jeweller's shop suggest the shirt- studs rather than a chain which I had bought there more recently, which had cost more, and whose sentimental as sociations were much more interesting? Both chain and studs had excited brain-tracts simultaneously with the shop. The only reason why the nerve-stream from the shop-tract switched off into the stud-tract rather than into the chain- tract must be that the stud-tract happened at that moment to lie more open, either because of some accidental alteration in its nutrition or because the incipient sub-conscious tensions of the brain as a whole had so distributed their equilibrium that it was more unstable here than in the chain-tract. Any reader's introspection will easily furnish similar in stances. It thus remains true that to a certain extent, even in those forms of ordinary mixed association whic-h lie nearest to impartial redintegration, which associate of the interesting item shall emerge must be called largely a mat-) ter of accident — accident, that is, for our intelligence. No doubt it is determined by cerebral causes, but they are too subtile and shifting for our analysis, 578 PSYCHOLOGY, ASSOCIATION BY SIMILAEITY. In partial or mixed association we have all along sup posed the interesting portion of the disappearing thought ! to be of considerable extent, and to be sufficiently com plex to constitute by itself a concrete object. Sir Wil liam Hamilton relates, for instance, that after thinking of Ben Lomond he found himself thinking of the Prussian system of education, and discovered that the links of asso ciation were a German gentleman whom he had met on Ben Lomond, Germany, etc. The interesting part of Ben Lomond, as he had experienced it, the part operative in determining the train of his ideas was the complex image of a particular man. But now let us suppose that that selective agency of interested attention, which may thus convert impartial redintegration into partial association — • let us suppose that it refines itself still further and accen tuates a portion of the passing thought, so small as to be no longer the image of a concrete thing, but only of an abstract quality or property. Let us moreover suppose that the part thus accentuated persists in consciousness (or, in cerebral terms, has its brain-process continue) after the other portions of the thought have faded. This small sur viving portion ivill then surround itself with its own associates after the fashion we have already seen, and the relation between the new thought's object and the object of the faded thought will be a relation of similarity. The pair of thoughts will form an instance of what is called ' Associa tion by Similarity.'' * The similars which are here associated, or of which the first is followed by the second in the mind, are seen to be compounds. Experience proves that this is always the *I retain the title of association by similarity in order not to depart from common usage. The reader will observe, however, that my nomen clature is not based on the same principle throughoiit. Impartial redinte gration connotes neiiral processes ; similarity is an objective relation per ceived by the mind ; ordinary or mixed association is a merely denotative word. Total recall, partial recall, and focalized recall, of associates, would be better terms. But as the denotation of the latter word is almost identical with that of association by similarity, 1 think it better to sacrifice propriety to popularity, and to keep the latter well-worn phrase. ASSOCIATION. 579 case. There is no tendency on the part of SIMPLE * ideas,' attri butes, or qualities to remind us of their like. The thought of one shade of blue does not remind us of that of another shade of blue, etc., unless indeed we have in mind some general purpose like naming the tint, when we should naturally think of other blues of the scale, through ' mixed association' of purpose, names, and tints, together. But there is no elementary tendency of pure qualities to awaken their similars in the mind. We saw in the chapter on Discrimination that two com pound things are similar when some one quality or group of qualities is shared alike by both, although as regards their other qualities they may have nothing in common. The moon is similar to a gas-jet, it is also similar to a foot ball ; but a gas-jet and a foot-ball are not similar to each other. When we affirm the similarity of two compound things, we should always say in wind respect it obtains. Moon and gas-jet are similar in respect of luminosity, and nothing else ; moon and foot-ball in respect of ro tundity, and nothing else. Foot-ball and gas-jet are in no respect similar — that is, they possess no common point, no identical attribute. Similarity, in compounds, is partial identity. When the same attribute appears in two phenomena, though it be their only common property, the two phenomena are similar in so far forth. To return now to our associated representations. If the thought of the moon is succeeded by the thought of a foot-ball, and that by the thought of one of Mr. X's railroads, it is because the attribute rotundity in the moon broke away from all the rest and surrounded itself with an entirely new set of com panions—elasticity, leathery integument, swift mobility m obedience to human caprice, etc. ; and because the last- named attribute in the foot-ball in turn broke away from its companions, and, itself persisting, surrounded itself with such new attributes as make up the notions of a ' railroad king,' of a rising and falling stock-market, and the like. The gradual passage from impartial redintegration to similar association through what we have called ordinary mixed association may be symbolized by diagrams. Fig. 41 is impartial redintegration, Fig. 42 is mixed, and Fig. 4H 580 PSYCHOLOGY. similar association. A in each is the passing, B the coming thought. In 'impartial,' all parts of A are equally opera- FIG. 41. tive in calling up B. In * mixed,' most parts of A are inert The part M alone breaks out and awakens B. In ' similar,' the focalized part M is much smaller than in the previous case, and after awakening its new set of associates, instead of fading out itself, it continues persistently active along with them, forming an identical part in the two ideas, and making these, pro tanto, resemble each other. FIG. 43. Why a single portion of the passing thought should break out from its concert with the rest and act, as we say, on its own hook, why the other parts should become inert, are mysteries which we can ascertain but not explain. Pos sibly a minuter insight into the laws of neural action will ASSOCIATION. 581 some day clear the matter up ; possibly neural laws will not suffice, and we shall need to invoke a dynamic reaction of the form of consciousness upon its content. But into this we cannot enter now. To ^sum up, then, we see that the difference between the three kinds of association reduces itself to d simple difference in the amount of that portion of the nerve-tract supporting tha going thought ivhich is operative in calling up the thought which comes. But the modus operandi of this active part is the same, be it large or be it small. The items constituting the coming object waken in every instance because theii nerve-tracts once were excited continuously with those ol the going object or its operative part. This ultimate physio logical law of habit among the neural elements is what runs the train. The direction of its course and the form of its transitions, whether redintegrate, associative, or similar, are due to unknown regulative or determinative conditions which accomplish their effect by opening this switch and closing that, setting the engine sometimes at half-speed, and coupling or uncoupling cars. This last figure of speech, into which I have glided un wittingly, affords itself an excellent instance of association by similarity. I was thinking of the deflections of the course of ideas. Now, from Hobbes's time downward, English writers have been fond of speaking of the train of our representations. This word happened to stand out in the midst of my complex thought Avith peculiarly sharp accentuation, and to surround itself with numerous details of railroad imagery. Only such details became clear, how ever, as had their nerve-tracts besieged by a double set of influences — those from train on the one hand, and those from the movement of thought en the other. It may possibly be that the prepotency of the suggestions of the word train at this moment were due to the recent excitation of the rail road brain-tract by the instance chosen a few pages back of a, railroad king playing foot- ball with the stock-market. It is apparent from such an example how inextricably complex are all the contributory factors whose resultant is the line of our reverie. It would be folly in most cases to 582 PSYCHOLOGY. attempt to trace them out. From an instance like the above, where the pivot of the Similar Association was formed by a definite concrete word, train, to those where it is so subtile as utterly to elude our analysis, the passage is unbroken. We can form a series of examples. When Mr. Bagehot says that the mind of the savage, so far from being in a state of nature, is tattooed all over with monstrous superstitions, the case is very like the one we have just been considering. When Sir James Stephen compares our belief in the uni formity of nature, the congruity of the future with the past, to a man rowing one way and looking another, and steering his boat by keeping her stern in a line with an object behind him, the operative link becomes harder to dissect out. It is subtler still in Dr. Holmes's phrase, that stories in pass ing from mouth to mouth make a great deal of lee-way in proportion to their headway ; or in Mr. Lowell's descrip tion of German sentences, that they have a way of yawing and going stern-foremost and not minding the helm for sev eral minutes after it has been put down. And finally, it is a real puzzle when the color pale-blue is said to have femi nine and blood-red masculine affinities. And if I hear a friend describe a certain family as having blotting-paper voices, the image, though immediately felt to be appo site, baffies the utmost powers of analysis. The higher poets all use abrupt epithets, which are alike intimate and remote, and, as Emerson says, sweetly torment us with in vitations to their inaccessible homes. In these latter instances we must suppose that there is an identical portion in the similar objects, and that its brain- tract is energetically operative, without, however, being suffi ciently isolable in its activity as to stand out per se, and form the condition of a distinctly discriminated 'abstract idea.' We cannot even by careful search see the bridge over which we passed from the heart of one representation to that of the next. In some brains, however, this mode of transition is extremely common. It would be one of the most impor tant of physiological discoveries could we assign the me chanical or chemical difference which makes the thoughts of one brain cling close to impartial redintegration, while those of another shoot about in all the lawless revelry of ASSOCIATION. 583 similarity. Why, in these latter brains, action should tend to focalize itself in small spots, while in the others it fills patiently its broad bed, it seems impossible to guess. Whatever the difference may be, it is what separates the man of genius from the prosaic creature of habit and rou tine thinking. In Chapter XXII we shall need to recur again to this point. ASSOCIATION IN VOLUNTARY THOUGHT. Hitherto we have assumed the process of suggestion of one object by another to be spontaneous. The train of imagery wanders at its own sweet will, now trudging in sober grooves of habit, now with a hop, skip, and jump darting across the whole field of time and space. This is revery, or musing ; but great segments of the fiux of our ideas consist of something very different from this. They are guided by a distinct purpose or conscious interest. As the Germans say, we nachdenken, or think towards a certain end. It is now necessary to examine what modification is made in the trains of our imagery by the having of an end in view. The course of our ideas is then called voluntary. Physiologically considered, we must suppose that a purpose means the persistent activity of certain rather definite brain-processes throughout the whole course of thought. Our most usual cogitations are not pure reveries, absolute driftings, but revolve about some central interest or topic to which most of the images are relevant, and to wards which we return promptly after occasional digres sions. This interest is subserved by the persistently active brain-tracts we have supposed. In the mixed associations which we have hitherto studied, the parts of each object which form the pivots on which our thoughts successively turn have their interest largely determined by their con nection with some general interest which for the time has seized upon the mind. If we call Z the brain-tract of gen eral interest, then, if the object abc turns up, and b has more associations with Z than have either a or c, b will be come the object's interesting, pivotal portion, and will call up its own associates exclusively. For the energy of 6's brain- tract will be augmented by Z's activity, — an activity which, 684 PSYCHOLOGY. from lack of previous connection between Z and a or c, does not influence a or c. If, for instance, I think of Paris whilst I am hungry, I shall not improbably find that its restaurants have become the pivot of my thought, etc., etc. But in the theoretic as well as in the practical life there are interests of a more acute sort, taking the form of defi nite images of some achievement, be it action or acquisition; which we desire to effect. The train of ideas arising under the influence of such an interest constitutes usually the thought of the means by which the end shall be attained. If the end by its simple presence does not instantaneously suggest the means, the search for the latter becomes an in tellectual problem. The solution of problems is the most characteristic and peculiar sort of voluntary thinking. Where the end thought of is some outward deed or gain, the solution is largely composed of the actual motor pro cesses, walking, speaking, writing, etc., which lead up to it. Where the end is in the first instance only ideal, as in lay ing out a place of operations, the steps are purely imagi nary. In both of these cases the discovery of the means may form a new sort of end, of an entirely peculiar nature, an end, namely, which we intensely desire before we have attained it, but of the nature of which, even whilst most strongly craving it, we have no distinct imagination what ever. Such an end is a problem. The same state of things occurs whenever we seek to recall something forgotten, or to state the reason for a judgment which we have made intuitively. The desire strains and presses in a direction which it feels to be right but towards a point which it is unable to see. In short, the absence of an item is a determinant of our representa tions quite as positive as its presence can ever be. The gap becomes no mere void, but what is called an aching void. If we try to explain in terms of brain-action how a thought which only potentially exists can yet be effective, we seem driven to believe that the brain-tract thereof must actually be excited, but only in a minimal and sub-con scious way. Try, for instance, to symbolize what goes on in a man who is racking his brains to remember a thought which occurred to him last week. The associates of the ASSOCIATION. 585 thought are there, many of them at least, but they refuse to awaken the thought itself. We cannot suppose that they do not irradiate at all into its brain-tract, because his mind quivers on the very edge of its recovery. Its actual rhythm sounds in his ears ; the words seem on the imminent point of following, but fail. What it is that blocks the discharge and keeps the brain-excitement here from passing beyond the nascent into the vivid state cannot be guessed. But we see in the philosophy of desire and pleasure, that such nas cent excitements, spontaneously tending to a crescendo, but inhibited or checked by other causes, may become potent mental stimuli and determinants of desire. All questioning, wonder, emotion of curiosity, must be referred to cerebral causes of some such form as this. The great difference between the effort to recall things forgotten and the search after the means to a given end, is that the latter have not, whilst the former have, already formed a part of our experience. If we first study the mode of recalling a thing forgotten, we can take up with better understanding the voluntary quest of the unknown. The forgotten thing is felt by us as a gap in the midst of certain other things. If it is a thought, we possess a dim idea of where we were and what we were about when it oc curred to us. We recollect the general subject to which it relates. But all these details refuse to shoot together into a solid whole, for the lack of the vivid traits of this missing thought, the relation whereof io each detail forms now the main interest of the latter. We keep running over the de tails in our mind, dissatisfied, craving something more. Prom each detail there radiate lines of association forming so many tentative guesses. Many of these are immediately seen to be irrelevant, are therefore void of interest, and lapse immediately from consciousness. Others are asso ciated with the other details present, and with the missing thought as well. When these surge up, we have a peculiar feeling that we are ' warm,' as the children say when they play hide and seek ; and such associates as these we clutch at and keep before the attention. Thus we recollect suc cessively that when we had the thought in question we were at the dinner-table ; then that our friend J. D. was 586 PSYCHOLOGY. there ; then that the subject talked about was so and so , finally, that the thought came d propos of a certain anecdote, and then that it had something to do with a French quota tion. Now all these added associations arise independently of the will, by the spontaneous process we know so well. All that the will does is to emphasize and linger over those ivhich seem pertinent, and ignore the rest. Through this hovering of the attention in the neighborhood of the desired object, the accumulation of associates becomes so great that the com bined tensions of their neural processes break through the bar, and the nervous wave pours into the tract v/hicli has so long been awaiting its advent. And as the expectant, sub-conscious itching there, bursts into the fulness of vivid feeling, the mind finds an inexpressible relief. The whole process can be rudely symbolized in a dia gram. Call the forgotten thing Z, the first facts with which we felt it was related, a, b, and c, and the details finally operative in calling it up, I, m, and n. Each circle will then stand for the brain-process underlying the thought of the object denoted by the letter contained within it. The activity in Z will at first be a mere tension ; but as the ac tivities in a, b, and c little by little irradiate into ly m, and n, fia. 44. and as all these processes are somehow connected with Z, their combined irradiations upon Z, represented by the cen tripetal arrows, succeed in helping the tension there to overcome the resistance, and in rousing Z also to full ac tivity. ASSOCIATION. 587 The tension present from the first in Z, even though it keep below the threshold of discharge, is probably to some degree co-operative with a, b, c in determining that I, m, n shall awake. Without Z's tension there might be a slower accumulation of objects connected with it. But, as aforesaid, the objects come before us through the brain's own laws, and the Ego of the thinker can only remain on hand, as it were, to recognize their relative values and brood over some of them, whilst others are let drop. As when we have lost a material object we cannot recover it by a direct ef fort, but only through moving about such neighborhoods wherein it is likely to lie, and trusting that it will then strike our eye ; so here, by not letting our attention leave the neighborhood of what we seek, we trust that it will end by speaking to us of its own accord.* Turn now to the case of finding the unknoivn means to a distinctly conceived end. The end here stands in the place of a, b, c, in the diagram. It is the starting-point of the irradiations of suggestion ; and here, as in that case, what the voluntary attention does is only to dismiss some of the suggestions as irrelevant, and hold fast to others which are felt to be more pertinent— let these be symbolized by I, m, n. These latter at last accumulate sufficiently to discharge all together into Z, the excitement of which pro cess is, in the mental sphere, equivalent to the solution of our problem. The only difference between this case and the last, is that in this one there need be no original sub- excitement in Z, co-operating from the very first. When * No one has described this process better than Hobbes : " Sometimes a man seeks what he hath lost ; and from that place and time wherein he misses it, his mind runs back from place to place and time to time to and where and when he had it; that is to say, to lind some certain and limited time and place, in which to begin a method of seeking. Again, from thence his thoughts run over the same places and times to find what action or other occasion might make him lose it. This we call Itemem brance, or calling to mind. Sometimes a man knows a place determinate, within the compass whereof he is to seek ; and then his thoughts run over all the parts thereof, in the same manner as one would sweep a room to find a jewel, or as a spaniel ranges the field till he find a scent, or as a man should run over the alphabet *.o start a rhyme." (Leviathan, 165, p. 10.) 588 PSYCHOLOGY. we seek a forgotten name, we must suppose the name's centre to be in a state of active tension from the very out set, because of that peculiar feeling of recognition which we get at the moment of recall. The plenitude of the thought seems here but a maximum degree of something which our mind divined in advance. It instantaneously fills a socket completely moulded to its shape ; and it seems most natural to ascribe the identity of quality in our feeling of the gaping socket and our feeling of what comes to fill it, to the sameness of a nerve-tract excited in different degrees. In the solving of a problem, on the contrary, the recognition that we have found the means is much less immediate. Here, what we are aware of in advance seems to be its relations with the items we already know. It must bear a causal relation, or it must be an effect, or it must contain an attribute common to two items, or it must be a uniform concomitant, or what not. We know, in short, a lot about it, whilst as yet we have no knowledge of acquaintance with it (see p. 221), or in Mr. Hodgson's language, " we know what we want to find beforehand, in a certain sense, in its second intention, and do not know it, in another sense, in its first intention." * Our intuition that one of the ideas which turn up is, at last, our quwsitum, is due to our recog nition that its relations are identical with those we had in mind, and this may be a rather slow act of judgment. In fact, every one knows that an object may be for some time present to his mind before its relations to other mat ters are perceived. To quote Hodgson again : " The mode of operation is common to voluntary memory and reason. . . . But reasoning adds to memory the function of comparing or judging the images which arise. . . . Memory aims at filling the gap with an image which has at some particular time filled it before, rea soning with one which bears certain time- and space-relations to the images before and after" — or, to use perhaps clearer language, one which stands in determinate logical relations to those data round about the gap which filled our mind at the start. This feeling of the blank form of relationship before we get the material quality * Theory of Practice, vol. T. p. 394. ASSOCIATION. 589 of the thing related will surprise no one who has read Chapter IX. From the guessing of newspaper enigmas to the plot ting of the policy of an empire there is no other process than this. We trust to the laws of cerebral nature to pre sent us spontaneously with the appropriate idea : ''Our only command over it is by the effort we make to keep the painful unfilled gap in consciousness.* . . . Two circumstances are important to notice: the first is, that volition has no power of calling up images, but only of rejecting and selecting from those offered by spontaneous redintegration. t But the rapidity with which this selec tion is made, owing to the familiarity of the ways in which spontaneous redintegration runs, gives the process of reasoning the appearance of evoking images that are foreseen to be conformable to the purpose. There is no seeing them before they are offered; there is no summoning them before they are seen. The other circumstance is, that every kind of reasoning is nothing, in its simplest form, but attention."}: f It is foreign to our purpose here to enter into any detailed analysis of the different classes of mental pursuit. In a scientific research we get perhaps as rich an example as can be found. The inquirer starts with a fact of which he seeks the reason, or with an hypothesis of which he seeks the proof. In either case he keeps turning the matter incessantly in his mind until, by the arousal of asso ciate upon associate, some habitual, some similar, one arises which he recognizes to suit his need. This, however, may take years. No rules can be given by which the investi gator may proceed straight to his result; but both here and in the case of reminiscence the accumulation of helps in the way of associations may advance more rapidly by the use of certain routine methods. In striving to recall a thought, for example, we may of set purpose run through the successive classes of circumstance with which it may * Ibid. p. 394. f All association is called redintegration by Hodgson. i Ibid. p. 400. Compare Bain, Emotions aud Will. p. 377. "The out goings of the mind are necessarily random; the end alone is the thing that is clear to the view, and with that there is a [perception of the fitness of every passing suggestion. The volitional energy keeps up the attention on the active search; and the moment that anything in point rises before the mind, it springs upon that like a wild beast upon its prey." 690 PSYCHOLOGY. possibly have been connected, trusting that when the right member of the class has turned up it will help the thought's revival. Thus we may run through all the places in which we may have had it. We may run through the persons whom we remember to have conversed with, or we may call up successively all the books we have lately been reading. If we are trying to remember a person we may run through a list of streets or of professions. Some item out of the lists thus methodically gone over will very likely be asso ciated with the fact we are in need of, and may suggest it or help to do so. And yet the item might never have arisen without such systematic procedure. In scientific research this accumulation of associates has been methodized by Mill under the title of ' The Four Methods of Experi mental Inquiry.' By the ' method of agreement,' by that of ' difference,' by those of ' residues ' and ' concomitant variations ' (which cannot here be more nearly defined), we make certain lists of cases ; and by ruminating these lists in our minds the cause we seek will be more likely to emerge. But the final stroke of discovery is only prepared, not effected, by them. The brain-tracts must, of their own accord, shoot the right way at last, or we shall still grope in darkness. That in some brains the tracts do shoot the right way much oftener than in others, and that we cannot tell why, — these are ultimate facts to which we must never close our eyes. Even in forming our lists of instances according to Mill's methods, we are at the mercy of the spontaneous workings of Similarity in our brain. How are a number of facts, resembling the one whose cause we seek, to be brought together in a list unless the one will rapidly suggest the other through association by similarity ? SIMILARITY NO ELEMENTARY LAW. Such is the analysis I propose, first of the three main types of spontaneous association, and then of voluntary association. It will be observed that the object called up may bear any logical relation whatever to the one which sug gested it. The law requires only that one condition should be fulfilled. The fading object must be due to a brain- process some of whose elements awaken through habit ASSOCIATION. 591 some of the elements of the brain-process of the ob ject which comes to view. This awakening is the opera tive machinery, the causal agency, throughout, quite as much so in the kind of association I have called by the name of Similarity, as in any other sort. The similarity between the objects, or between the thoughts (if similarity there be between these latter), has no causal agency hi carrying us from one to the other. It is but a result-^the effect of the usual causal agent when this happens to work in a certain particular and assignable way. But ordinary writers talk as if the similarity of the objects were itself an agent, co-ordinate with habit, and independent of it, and like it able to push objects before the mind. This is quite unintelligible. The similarity of two things does not exist till both things are there — it is meaningless to talk of it as an agent of production of anything, whether in the physical or the psychical realms.* It is a relation which the mind perceives after the fact, just as it may perceive the relations of superiority, of distance, of causality, of container and content, of substance and accident, or of contrast, between an object and some second object which the associative machinery calls up.f There are, nevertheless, able writers who not only insist on preserving association by similarity as a distinct ele mentary law, but who make it the most elementary law, and seek to derive contiguous association from it. Their reasoning is as follows : When the present impression A * Compare what is said of the principle of Similarity by F. H. Bradley, Principles of Logic, pp. 294 if.; E. Rabier, Psychologic, 187 ff.; Paulhan, Critique Philosophique, 2me Serie, i. 458; Rabier, ibid. 460; Pillon, ibid. n. 55; B. P. Bowue, Introduction to Psych. Theory, 92; Ward, Encyclop. Britt. art. Psychology, p. 60; Wahle, Vierteljahrsch. f. wiss. Philos. ix. 426-431. f Dr. McCosh is accordingly only logical when he sinks similarity in what he calls the "Law of Correlation, according to which, when we have discovered a relation between things, the idea of one tends to bring up the others" (Psychology, the Cognitive Powers, p. 130) The relations men tioned by this author are Identity, Whole and Parts, Resemblance, Space, Time, Quantity, Active Property, and Cause and Effect. If perceived relations among objects are to be treated as grounds for their appearance before the mind, similarity has of course no right to an exclusive, or even to a predominant, place. 592 PSYCHOLOGY. awakens the idea b of its past contiguous associate B, ho\v can this occur except through first reviving an image a oi its own past occurrence. This is the term directly con nected with b ; so that the process instead of being simply A — b is A — a — b. Now A and a are similars ; therefore no association by contiguity can occur except through a previ ous association by similarity. The most important suppo sition here made is that every impression on entering the mind must needs awaken an image of its past self, in the light of which itis'apperceived' or understood, and through the intermediation of which it enters into relation with the mind's other objects. This assumption is almost univer sally made ; and yet it is hard to find any good reason for it. It first came before us when we were reviewing the facts of aphasia and mental blindness (see p. 50 if.). But we then saw no need of optical and auditory images to interpret opti cal and auditory sensations by. On the contrary, we agreed that auditory sensations were understood by us only so far as they awakened non-auditory images, and optical sensa tions only so far as they awakened wow-optical images. In the chapters on Memory, on Reasoning, and on Percep tion the same assumption will meet us again, and again will have to be rejected as groundless. The sensational process A and the ideational process a probably occupy essentially the same tracts. When the outer stimulus comes and those tracts vibrate with the sensation A, they discharge as directly into the paths which lead to B as when there is no outer stimulus and they only vibrate with the idea a. To say that the process A can only reach these paths by the help of the weaker process a is like saying that we need a candle to see the sun by. A replaces a, does all that a does and more ; and there is no intelligible meaning, to my mind, in saying that the weaker process coexists with the stronger. I therefore consider that these writers are altogether wrong. The only plausible proof they give of the coexistence of a with A is when A gives us a sense of familiarity but fails to awaken any distinct thought of past contiguous associates. In a later chapter I shall consider this case. Here I content myself with say ing that it does not seem conclusive as to the point at issue ; ASSOCIATION. 593 and that I still believe association of coexistent or sequent impressions to be the one elementary law. CONTKAST has also been held to be an independent agent in association. But the reproduction of an object contrasting with one already in the mind is easily explained on our principles. Recent writers, in fact, all reduce it either to similarity or contiguity. Contrast always presupposes generic similarity ; it is only the extremes of a class which are contrasted, black and white, not black and sour, or white and prickly. A machinery which reproduces a simi lar at all, may reproduce the opposite similar, as well as any intermediate term. Moreover, the greater number of contrasts are habitually coupled in speech, young and old, life and death, rich and poor, etc., and are, as Dr. Bain says, in everybody's memory.* I trust that the student will now feel that the way to a deeper understanding of the order of our ideas lies in the direction of cerebral physiology. The elementary process of revival can be nothing but the law of habit. Truly the clay is distant when physiologists shall actually trace from cell-group to cell-group the irradiations which we have hypo- thetically invoked. Probably it will never arrive. The schematism we have used is, moreover, taken immediately from the analysis of objects into their elementary parts, and only extended by analogy to the brain. And yet it is only as incorporated in the brain that such a schematism can represent anything causal This is, to my mind, the con clusive reason for saying that the order of presentation of the mind's materials is due to cerebral physiology alone. The law of accidental prepotency of certain processes over others falls also within the sphere of cerebral proba bilities. Granting such instability as the brain-tissue re quires, certain points must always discharge more quickly and strongly than others ; and this prepotency would shift its place from moment to moment by accidental causes, * Of. Bain, Senses jiml Intellect, 504 if.; J. S. Mill, Note :J9 to J. Mill's Analysis ; Lipps, Grundtatsachen. 97. 594 PSYCHOLOGY. giving us a perfect mechanical diagram of the capricious play of similar association in the most gifted mind. The study of dreams confirms this view. The usual abundance of paths of irradiation seems, in the dormant brain, reduced. A few only are pervious, and the most fantastic sequences occur because the currents run — ' like sparks in burnt-up paper ' — wherever the nutrition of the moment creates an opening, but nowhere else. The effects of interested attention and volition remain. These activities seem to hold fast to certain elements, and by emphasizing them and dwelling on them, to make their associates the only ones which are evoked. This is the point at which an anti-mechanical psychology must, if any where, make it stand in dealing with association. Every thing else is pretty certainly due to cerebral laws. My own opinion on the question of active attention and spirit ual spontaneity is expressed elsewhere. But even though there be a mental spontaneity, it can certainly not create ideas or summon them ex abnupto. Its power is limited to selecting amongst those which the associative machinery has already introduced or tends to introduce. If it can emphasize, reinforce, or protract for a second either one of these, it can do all that the most eager advocate of free will need demand ; for it then decides the direction of the next associations by making them hinge upon the emphasized term ; and determining in this wise the course of the man's thinking, it also determines his acts. THE HISTORY OF OPINION CONCERNING ASSOCIATION inay be briefly glanced at ere we end the chapter.* Aris totle seems to have caught both the facts and the principle of explanation ; but he did not expand his views, and it was not till the time of Hobbes that the matter was again touched on in a definite way. Hobbes first formulated the problem of the succession of our thoughts. He writes in Leviathan, chapter in, as follows : * See, for farther details, Hamilton's Reid, Appendices D** and D***; and L. Ferri, La Psychologic de I'Associatioii (Paris, 1883). Also Kohert- son, art. Association in Eucyclop. Britannica. ASSOCIATION. 695 " By consequence, or train of thoughts, I understand that succession of one thought to another which is called, to distinguish it from dis course in words, mental discourse. When a man thinketh on anything whatsoever, his next thought after is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. Not every thought to every thought succeeds indiffer ently. But as we have no imagination, whereof we have not formerly had sense, in whole or in parts ; so we have no transition from one imagination to another, whereof we never had the like before in our senses. The reason whereof is this. All fancies are motions within us. relics of those made in the sense : and those motions that immediately succeeded one another in the sense continue also together after sense : insomuch as the former coming again to take place, and be predomi nant, the latter followeth, by coherence of the matter moved, in such manner, as water upon a plane table is drawn which way any one part of it is guided by the finger. But because in sense, to one and the same thing perceived, sometimes one thing, sometimes another succeedeth, it comes to pass in time that, in the imagining of anything, there is no certainty what we shall imagine next; only this is certain, it shall be something that succeeded the same before, at one time or another. This train of thoughts, or mental discourse, is of two sorts. The first is unguided, without design, and inconstant ; wherein there is no pas sionate thought, to govern and direct those that follow, to itself, as the end and scope of some desire, or other passion. . . . The second is more constant; as being regulated by some desire and design. For the impression made by such things as we desire, or fear, is strong and permanent, or, if it cease for a time, of quick return : so strong is it, sometimes, as to hinder and break our sleep. From desire ariseth the thought of some means we have seen produce the like of that which we aim at; and from the thought of that, the thought of means to that mean; and so continually, till we come to some beginning within our own power. And because the end, by the greatness of the impression, comes often to mind, in case our thoughts begin to wander, they are quickly again reduced into the way : which observed by one of the seven wise men, made him give men this precept, which is now worn out, Respwefinem; that is to say, in all your actions, look often upon what you would have, as the thing that directs all your thoughts in the way to attain it. "The train of regulated thoughts is of two kinds; one, when an effect imagined we sock the causes, or means that produce it : and this is common to man and beast. The other is, when imagining any- thin" whatsoever, we seek all the possible effects that can by it be pro duced • that is to say, we imagine what we can do with it, when we have it Of which I have not at any time seen any sign, but in man onlv • for this is a curiosity hardly incident to the nature of any living creature that has no other passion but sensual, such as are hunger thirst lust and anger. In sum, the discourse of the mind, when it is governed by design, is nothing bat P*****. <«' the faculty or invention, 596 PSYCHOLOGY. which the Latins called sayacitas, and sollertia ; a hunting out of the causes, of some effect, present or past ; or of the effects, of some present or past cause." The most important passage after this of Hobbes is Hume's : "As all simple ideas may be separated by the imagination, and may be united again in what form it pleases, nothing would be more unaccountable than the operations of that faculty, were it not guided by some universal principles, which render it, in some measure, uniform with itself in all times and places. Were ideas entirely loose and un connected, chance alone would join them ; and 'tis impossible the same simple ideas should fall regularly into complex ones (as they commonly do) without some bond of union among them, some associating quality, by which one idea naturally introduces another. This uniting princi ple among ideas is not to be considered as an inseparable connection ; for that has been already excluded from the imagination. Nor yet are we to conclude that without it the mind cannot join two ideas ; for nothing is more free than that faculty : but we are only to regard it as a gentle force, which commonly prevails, and is the cause why, among other things, languages so nearly correspond to each other ; nature in a manner pointing to every one those simple ideas which are most proper to be united in a complex one. The qualities from which this association arises, and by which the mind is after this manner con veyed from one idea to another, are three, viz., RESEMBLANCE, CON TIGUITY in time or place, and CAUSE and EFFECT. " I believe it will not be very necessary to prove that these qualities produce an association among ideas, and upon the appearance of one idea naturally introduce another. Tis plain that in the course of our thinking, and in the constant revolution of our ideas, our imagination runs easily from one idea to any other that resembles it, and that this quality alone is to the fancy a sufficient bond and association. Tis likewise evident, that as the senses, in changing their objects, are necessitated to change them regularly, and take them as they lie con tiguous to each other, the imagination must by long custom acquire the same method of thinking, and run along the parts of space and time in conceiving its objects. As to the connection that is made by the relation of cause and effect, we shall have occasion afterwards to examine it to the bottom, and therefore shall not at present insist upon it. 'Tis sufficient to observe that there is no relation which produces a stronger connection in the fancy, and makes one idea more readily recall another, than the relation of cause and effect betwixt their ob jects. . . . These are therefore the principles of union or cohesion among our simple ideas, and in the imagination supply the place of that inseparable connection by which they are united in our memory. Here is a kind of ATTRACTION, which in the mental world will be found ASSOCIATION. f>9? to have as extraordinary effects as in the natural, and to show itself in as many and as various forms. Its effects are everywhere conspicuous ; but as to its causes, they are mostly unknown, and must be resolved into original qualities of human nature, which I pretend not to explain." * Hume did not, however, any more than Hobbes, follow out the effects of which he speaks, and the task of populariz ing the notion of association and making an effective school based on association of ideas alone was reserved for Hart- leyf and James Mill.J These authors traced minutely the presence of association in all the cardinal notions and op erations of the mind. The several ' faculties ' of the Mind were dispossessed ; the one principle of association between ideas did all their work. As Priestley says : " Nothing is requisite to make any man whatever he is, but a sentient principle with this single law. . . . Not only all our intel lectual pleasures and pains but all the phenomena of memory, imagina tion, volition, reasoning and every other mental affection and operation, are but different modes or cases of the association of ideas." § An eminent French psychologist, M. Bibot, repeats Hume's comparison of the law of association with that of gravitation, and goes on to say : "It is remarkable that this discovery was made so late. Nothing is simpler, apparently, than to notice that this law of association is the truly fundamental, irreducible phenomenon of our mental life ; that it is at the bottom of all our acts ; that it permits of no exception ; that neither dream, revery, mystic ecstasy, nor the most abstract reasoning can exist without it ; that its suppression would be equivalent to that of thought itself. Nevertheless no ancient author understood it, for one cannot seriously maintain that a few scattered lines in Aristotle and the Stoics constitute a theory and clear view of the subject. It is to Hobbes, Hume, and Hartley that we must attribute the origin of these studies on the connection of our ideas. The discovery of the ultimate law of our psychologic acts has this, then, in common with many other discoveries : it came late and seems so simple that it may justly astonish us. " Perhaps it is not superfluous to ask in what this manner of ex planation is superior to the current theory of Faculties. || The most * Treatise of Human Nature, part I. § iv. f Observations on Man (London, 1749). f Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829). § Hartley's Theory, 2d ed. (1790) p. xxvri. 'll [Current, that is, in France.— W. J.] 598 PSYCHO LOOT. extended usage consists, as we know, in dividing intellectual phenom ena into classes, in separating those which differ, in grouping together those of the same nature and in giving to these a common name and in attributing them to the same cause ; it is thus that we have come to dis tinguish those diverse aspects of intelligence which are called judgment, reasoning, abstraction, perception, etc. This method is precisely the one followed in Physics, where the words caloric, electricity, gravity, designate the unknown causes of certain groups of phenomena. If one thus never forgets that the diverse faculties are only the unknown causes of known phenomena, that they are simply a convenient means of classifying the facts and speaking of them, if one does not fall into the common fault of making out of them substantial entities, creations which now agree, now disagree, so forming in the intelligence a little republic ; then, we can see nothing reprehensible in this distribution into faculties, conformable as it is to the rules of a sound method and of a good natural classification. In what then is Mr. Bain's procedure superior to the method of the faculties ? It is that the latter is simply a classification while his is an explanation. Between the psychology which traces intellectual facts back to certain faculties, and that which reduces them to the single law of association, there is, according to our way of thinking, the same difference that we find in Physics between those who attribute its phenomena to five or six causes, and those who 'derive gravity caloric, light, etc., from motion. The system of the faculties explains nothing because each one of them is only & flatus vocis which is of value merely through the phenomena which it contains, and signifies nothing more than these phenomena. The new theory, on the contrary, shows that the different processes of intelligence are only diverse cases of a single law ; that imagination, deduction, induction, perception, etc., are but so many determinate ways in which ideas may combine with each other ; and that the differences of faculties are only differences of association. It explains all intellectual facts, certainly not after the manner of Metaphysics which demands the ultimate and absolute reason of things ; but after the manner of Physics which seeks only their secondary and immediate cause." * The inexperienced reader may be glad of a brief indica tion of the manner in which all the different mental oper ations may be conceived to consist of images of sensation associated together. Memory is the association of a present image with others known to belong to the past. Expectation the same, with future substituted for past. Fancy, the association of images without temporal order. Belief in anything not present to sense is the very lively, * La Psychologic Angloise, p. 242- ASSOCIATION. 599 strong, and steadfast association of the image of that thing with some present sensation, so that as long as the sensation persists the image cannot be excluded from the mind. ^ Judgment is ' transferring the idea of truth by associ ation from one proposition to another that resembles it.'* Reasoning is the perception that " whatever has any mark has that which it is a mark of " ; in the concrete case the mark or middle term being always associated with each of the other terms and so serving as a link by which they are themselves indirectly associated together. This same kind of transfer of a sensible experience associated with another to a third also associated with that other, serves to explain emotional facts. When we are pleased or hurt we express it, and the expression associates itself with the feeling. Hearing the same expression from another revives the as sociated feeling, and we sympathize, i.e. grieve or are glad with him. The other social affections, Benevolence, Conscientiouness, Ambition, etc., arise in like manner by the transfer of the bodily pleasure experienced as a reward for social service, and hence associated with it, to the act of service itself, the link of reward being dropped out. Just so Avarice when the miser transfers the bodily pleasures associated with the spending of money to the money itself, dropping the link of spending. Fear is a transfer of the bodily hurt associated by ex perience with the thing feared, to the thought of the thing, with the precise features of the hurt left out. Thus we feai a dog without distinctly imagining his bite. Love is the association of the agreeableness of certain sensible experiences with the idea of the object capable of affording them. The experiences themselves may cease to be distinctly imagined after the notion of their pleasure has been transferred to the object, constituting our love there for. Volition is the association of ideas of muscular motion with the ideas of those pleasures which the motion pro duces. The motion at first occurs automatically and results * Priestley, op. cit. p. xxx. 600 PS YCHOLOG T. in a pleasure unforeseen. The latter becomes so associated with the motion that whenever we think of it the idea of the motion arises ; and the idea of the motion when vivid causes the motion to occur. This is an act of will. Nothing is easier than for a philosopher of this school to explain from experience such a notion as that of infinitude. " He sees in it an ordinary manifestation of one of the laws of the association of ideas, — the law that the idea of a thing irresistibly sug gests the idea of any other thing which has been often experienced in close conjunction with it, and not otherwise. As we have never had experience of any point of space without other points beyond it, nor of any point of time without others following it, the law of indissoluble association makes it impossible for us to think of any point of space or time, however distant, without having the idea irresistibly realized, in imagination, of other points still more remote. And thus the supposed original and inherent property of these two ideas is completely explained and accounted for by the law of association ; and we are enabled to see that if Space or Time were really susceptible of termination, we should be just as unable as we now are to conceive the idea." * These examples of the Associationist Psychology are with the exception of the last, very crudely expressed, but they suffice for our temporary need. Hartley and James Mill t improved upon Hume so far as to employ but a single prin ciple of association, that of contiguity or habit. Hartley ignores resemblance, James Mill expressly repudiates it in a passage which is assuredly one of the curiosities of liter ature : " I believe it will be found that we are accustomed to see like rnings together. When we see a tree, we generally see more trees than one ; a sheep, more sheep than one ; a man, more men than one. From this observation, I think, we may refer resemblance to the law of frequency fi.e., contiguity], of which it seems to form only a particular case." Mr. Herbert Spencer has still more recently tried to con struct a Psychology which ignores Association by Simi larity,:): and in a chapter, which also is a curiosity, he tries * Review of Bain's Psychology, by J. S. Mill, in Edinb. Review, Oct. 1, 1859, p. 293. f Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, J. S. Mill's edition, vol. i. p. 111. \ On the Associability of Relations between Feelings, in Principles of Psychology, vol. I. p. 259. It is impossible to regard the " cohering of each feeling with previously-experienced feeling? of thfi same class, order, ASSOCIATION. QQI to explain the association of two ideas by a conscious refer ence of the first to the point of time when its sensation was experienced, which point of time is no sooner thought of than its content, namely, the second idea, arises. Messrs Bam and Mill, however, and the immense majority of con temporary psychologists retain both Resemblance and Con tiguity as irreducible principles of Association. Professor Bain's exposition of association is by common consent looked upon as the best expression of the English school. Perception of agreement and difference, retentive- ness, and the two sorts of association, contiguity and similar ity, are by him regarded as constituting all that is meant by intellect proper. His pages are painstaking and instructive from a descriptive point of view ; though, after my own at tempt to deal with the subject causally, I can hardly award to them any profound explanatory value. Associa tion by Similarity, too much neglected by the British school before Bain, receives from him the most generous exempli fication. As an instructive passage, the following, out of many equally good, may be chosen to quote : " We may have similarity in form with diversity of use, and similar ity of use with diversity of form. A rope suggests other ropes and cords, if we look to the appearance; but looking to the use, it may sug gest an iron cable, a wooden prop, an iron girding, a leather band, or bevelled gear. In spite of diversity of appearance, the suggestion turns on what answers a common end. If we are very much attracted by sensible appearances, there will be the more difficulty in recalling things that agree only in the use; if, on the other hand, we are pro foundly sensitive to the one point of practical efficiency as a tool, the peculiarities not essential to this will be little noticed, and we shall be ever ready to revive past objects corresponding in use to some one pres ent, although diverse in all other circumstances. We become oblivious to the difference between a horse, a steam-engine, and a waterfall, when our minds are engrossed with the one circumstance of moving power. The diversity in these had no doubt for a long time the effect of keeping back their first identification; and to obtuse intellects, this identification might have been for ever impossible. A strong concen tration of mind upon the single peculiarity of mechanical force, and a degree of indifference to the general aspect of the things themselves, genus, species, and, so far as may be, the same variety," which Spencer calls (p. 257) ' the sole process of association of feelings,' as any equivalent for What is commonly known as Association by similarity. 602 PSYCHOLOGY. must conspire with the intellectual energy of resuscitation by similars, in order to summon together in the view three structures so different. We can see, by an instance like this, how new adaptations of existing machinery might arise in the mind of a mechanical inventor. When it first occurred to a reflecting mind that moving water had a property identical with human or brute force, namely, the property ot setting other masses in motion, overcoming inertia and resistance, — when the sight of the stream suggested through this point of likeness the power of the animal, — a ne\v addition was made to the class cf prime movers, and when circumstances permitted, this power could become a substi tute for the others. It may seem to the modern understanding, famil iar with water-wheels and drifting rafts, that the similarity here was an extremely obvious one. But if we put ourselves back into an early state of mind, when running water affected the mind by its brilliancy, its roar, and irregular devastation, we may easily suppose that to iden tify this with animal muscular energy was by no means an obvious effect. Doubtless when a mind arose, insensible by natural constitution to the superficial aspects of things, and having withal a great stretch of identifying intellect, such a comparison would then be possible. We may pursue the same example one stage further, and come to the dis covery of steam power, or the identification of expanding vapor with the previously known sources of mechanical force. To the common eye, for ages, vapor presented itself as clouds in the sky; or as a hissing noise at the spout of a kettle, with the formation of a foggy curling cloud at a few inches' distance. The forcing up of the lid of a kettle may also have been occasionally observed. But how long was it ere any one was struck with the parallelism of this appearance with a blast of wrind, a rush of water, or an exertion of animal muscle ? The dis cordance was too great to be broken through by such a faint and limited amount of likeness. In one mind, however, the identification did take place, and was followed out into its consequences. The likeness had occurred to other minds previously, but not with the same results. Such minds must have been in some way or other distinguished above the millions of mankind; and we are now endeavoring to give the ex planation of their superiority. The intellectual character of Watt con tained all the elements preparatory to a great stroke of similarity in such a case; — a high susceptibility, both by nature and by education, to the mechanical properties of bodies; ample previous knowledge or familiarity; and indifference to the superficial and sensational effects of things. It is not only possible, however, but exceedingly probable, that many men possessed all these accomplishments; they are of a kind not transcending common abilities. They would in some degree attach to a mechanical education almost as a matter of course. That the dis covery was not sooner made supposes that something farther, and not of common occurrence, was necessary; and this additional endowment appears to be the identifying power of Similarity in general; the ten dency to detect likeness in the midst of disparity and disguise. This ASSOCIATION. 603 supposition accounts for the fact, and is consistent with the known in tellectual character of the inventor of the steam-engine." * Dr. Hodgson's account of association is by all odds the best yet propounded in English, f All these writers hold more or less explicitly to the notion of atomistic ' ideas ' which recur. In Germany, the same mythological suppo sition has been more radically grasped, and carried out to a still more logical, if more repulsive, extreme, by Her- bart J and his followers, who until recently may be said to have reigned almost supreme in their native country.§ For Herbart each idea is a permanently existing entity, the entrance whereof into consciousness is but an accidental determination of its being. So far as it succeeds in occu pying the theatre of consciousness, it crowds out another idea previously there. This act of inhibition gives it, how ever, a sort of hold on the other representation which on all later occasions facilitates its following the other into the mind. The ingenuity with which most special cases of as sociation are formulated in this mechanical language of struggle and inhibition, is great, and surpasses in analytic thoroughness anything that has been done by the British school. This, however, is a doubtful merit, in a case where the elements dealt with are artificial ; and I must confess that to my mind there is something almost hideous in the glib Herbartian jargon about Vorstellungsmassen and their Hemmungen and Hemmungssummen, and sinken and erJteben and schiveben, and Verschmehungen and Complexionen. Herr Lipps, the most recent systematic German Psychologist, has, I regret to say, carried out the theory of ideas in a way which the great originality, learning, and acuteness he * The Senses and the Intellect, pp. 491-3. f See his Time and Space, chapter v, and his Theory of Practice, §§ 53 to 57. \ Psychologic als Wissenschaft (1824), 2. § Prof. Ribot, in chapter i of his ' Contemporary German Psychol ogy,' has given a good account of Herbart and his school, and of Beneke, his rival and partial analogue. See also two articles on the Herbartian Psychology, by G. F. Stout, in Mind for 1888. J. T). Morrell'p Outlines of Mental Philosophy (2d ed., London, 1862) largely follows Herbart and Beneke. I know of no other English book which does so. 604 PSYCHOLOGY. shows make only the more regrettable.* Such elaborately artificial constructions are, it seems to me, only a burden and a hindrance, not a help, to our science, t In French, M. Babier in his chapter on Association,^ handles the subject more vigorously and acutely than any one. His treatment of it, though short, seems to me for general soundness to rank second only to Hodgson's. In the last chapter we already invoked association to account for the effects of use in improving discrimination. In later chapters we shall see abundant proof of the im mense part which it plays in other processes, and shall then readily admit that few principles of analysis, in any science, have proved more fertile than this one, however vaguely formulated it often may have been. Our own attempt to formulate it more definitely, and to escape the usual con fusion between causal agencies and relations merely known, must not blind us to the immense services of those by whom the confusion was unfelt. From this practical point of view it would be a true ignoratio elenchi to flatter one's self that one has dealt a heavy blow at the psychology of association, when one has exploded the theory of atomistic ideas, or shown that contiguity and similarity between ideas can only be there after association is done.§ The whole body of the associationist psychology remains stand ing after you have translated 'ideas' into 'objects,' on the one hand, and ' brain-processes ' on the other ; and the analysis of faculties and operations is as conclusive in these terms as in those traditionally used. * See his Grundtatsachen des Bewusstseins (1883), chap, vi et passim, -especially pp. 106 if., 364 f The most burdensome and utterly gratuitous of them are perhaps Steintlial's, in his Einleitung in die Psychologic, 2te Aufl. (1881). Cf. also G. Glogau: Steintlial's Psychologische Formelu (1886). $ Le9ons de Philosophic, i. Psychologic, chap, xvi (1884). §Mr. F. H. Bradley seems to me to have been guilty of something very like this ignoratio elenchi in the, of course, subtle and witty but decidedly long-winded critique of the association of ideas, contained in book n. part ii. chap. i. of his Principles of Logic. CHAPTER XV.* THE PERCEPTION OF TIME. IN the next two chapters I shall deal with what is some times called internal perception, or the perception of time, and of events as occupying a date therein, especially when the date is a past one, in which case the perception in question goes by the name of memory. To remember a thing as past, it is necessary that the notion of ' past ' should be one of our ' ideas.' We shall see in the chapter on Mem ory that many things come to be thought by us as past, not because of any intrinsic quality of their own, but rather because they are associated with other things which for us signify pastness. But how do these things get their past- uess ? What is the original of our experience of pastuess, from whence we get the meaning of the term ? It is this question which the reader is invited to consider in the pres ent chapter. We shall see that we have a constant feeling sui generis of -pastness, to which every one of our experi ences in turn falls a prey. To think a thing as past is to think it amongst the objects or in the direction of the ob jects which at the present moment appear affected by this quality. This is the original of our notion of past time, upon which memory and history build their svstem.s. And in this chapter we shall consider this immediate sense of time alone. If the constitution of consciousness were that of a string of bead-like sensations and images, all separate, " we never cou*d have respectively, and (thought that his observations roughly corrobo rated Weber's law. As 'maximum' and 'minimum' are printed inter dmnsrrably in Glass's article it is hard to follow. f With Vierordt and his pupils the indifference point lay as higl from 1.5 sec to 4.9 sec., according to the observer (cf. Per Zeitsinn, 1808, p. 112). In. most of these experiments the time heard was actively repro duced, after a short pause, by movements of the hand, which were ro- corded. Wundt gives good reasons (Physiol. Psych., n. 289, 290) for re jecting Vierorclt's figures as erroneous. Vierordt's book, it should be s nd, is full of important matter, nevertheless. % Physiol. Psych., n. 286, 290. § Philosophische Studien, i. 86. || Mind, xi. 400. *fi Loc. cit. p. 144. ** Op cit p. 376. Mach's and Buccola's figures, it will be observed, are about one half of the rest-sub-multiples, therefore, observed, however, that Buccola's figure has little value, hi* observatio not being well fitted to show this particular point. 618 PSYCHOLOGY. as the interval of time most easy to catcli and reproduce, Odder still, both Estel and Mehuer found that multiples of this time were more accurately reproduced than the time- Intervals of intermediary length ;* and Glass found a certain periodicity, with the constant increment of 1.25 sec., in his observations. There would seem thus to exist something like a periodic or rhythmic sharpening of our time-sense, of which the period differs somewhat from one observer to the next. Our sense of time, like other senses, seems subject to the law of contrast. It appeared pretty plainly in Estel's observations that an interval sounded shorter if a long one had immediately preceded it, and longer when the opposite was the case. Like other senses, too, our sense of time is sharpened by practice. Mehner ascribes almost all the discrepancies between other observers and himself to this cause alone. f Tracts of time filled (with clicks of sound) seem longer than vacant ones of the same duration, when the latter does not exceed a second or two. if This, which reminds one of what happens with spaces seen by the eye, becomes reversed when longer times are taken. It is, perhaps, in accordance with this law that a loud sound, limiting a short interval of time, makes it appear longer, a slight sound shorter. In comparing intervals marked out by sounds, we must take care to keep the sounds uniform.§ There is a certain emotional feeling accompanying the intervals of time, as is well known in music. The sense of haste goes ivith one measure of rapidity, that of delay with another ; and these two feelings harmonize with different mental moods. Vierordt listened to series of strokes per formed by a metronome at rates varying from 40 to 200 a * Estel's figures led him to think that all the multiples enjoyed this priv ilege; with Mehner, on the other hand, only the odd multiples showed diminution of the average error; thus, 0.71, 2.15, 3.55, 5, 6.4, 7.8, 9.8, and 10.65 second were respectively registered with the least error. Cf. Phil Studien, n. pp. 57, 562-565. t Cf. especially pp. 558-561. j Wundt: Physiol. Psych., n. 287. Hall and Jastrow: Mind, XI. 62. § Mehner- loc. cit. p. 553. THE PERCEPTION OF TIME. 619 minute, and found that they very naturally fell into seven categories, from ' very slow ' to ' very fast.' * Each category of feeling included the intervals following each other within a certain range of speed, and no others. This is a qualita tive, not a quantitative judgment — an aesthetic judgment, in fact. The middle category, of speed that was neutral, or, as he calls it, ' adequate,' contained intervals that were grouped about 0.62 second, and Vierordt says that this made what one might almost call an agreeable time.t The feeling of time and accent in music, of rhythm, is quite independent of that of melody. Tunes with marked rhythm can be readily recognized when simply drummed on the table with the finger-tips. WE HAVE NO SENSE FOR EMPTY TIME. Although subdividing the time by beats of sensation aids our accurate knowledge of the amount of it that elapses, such subdivision does not seem at the first glance essential to our perception of its flow. Let one sit with closed eyes and, abstracting entirely from the outer world, attend exclusively to the passage of time, like one who wakes, as the poet says, " to hear time flowing in the middle of the night, and all things moving to a day of doom." There seems under such circumstances as these no variety in the material content of our thought, and what we notice appears, if anything, to be the pure series of durations budding, as it were, and growing beneath our indrawn gaze. Is this really so or not ? The question is important, for, if the experience be what it roughly seems, we have a sort of special sense for pure time — a sense to which empty duration is an adequate stimulus ; while if it be an illusion, it must be that our perception of time's flight, in the expe riences quoted, is due to the filling of the time, and to our memory of a content which it had a moment previous, and which we feel to agree or disagree with its content now. It takes but a small exertion of introspection to show *The number of distinguishable differences of speed between these limits is as, he takes care to remark, very much larger than 7 (Der Zeitsinn, p. 137). f P. 19, § 18, p. 112. 620 PSYCHOLOGY. that the latter alternative is the true one, and that we can no more intuit a duration than ice can intuit an extension, devoid of all sensible content. Just as with closed eyes we perceive a dark visual field in which a curdling play of ob scurest luminosity is always going on ; so, be we never so abstracted from distinct outward impressions, we are always inwardly immersed in what Wundt has somewhere called the twilight of our general consciousness. Our heart-beats, our breathing, the pulses of our attention, fragments of words or sentences that pass through our imagination, are what people this dim habitat. Now, all these processes are rhythmical, and are apprehended by us, as they occur, in their totality ; the breathing and pulses of attention, as coherent successions, each with its rise and fall ; the heart beats similarly, only relatively far more brief ; the words not separately, but in connected groups. In short, empty our minds as we may, some form of changing process remains for us to feel, and cannot be expelled. And along with the sense of the process and its rhythm goes the sense of the length of time it lasts. Awareness of change is thus the condition on which our perception of time's flow depends ; but there exists no reason to suppose that empty time's own changes are sufficient for the awareness of change to be aroused. The change must be of some concrete sort — an outward or inward sensible series, or a process of attention or voli tion.* * I leave the text just as it was printed in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy (for 'Oct. 1886') in 1887. Since then Mtinsterberg in his masterly Beitriige zur experimentellen Psychologie (Heft 2, 1889) seems to have made it clear what the sensible changes are by which we measure the lapse of time. When the time which separates two sensible impressions is less than one third of a second, he thinks it is almost entirely the amount to which the memory -image of the first impression has faded when the second one overtakes it, which makes us feel how wide they are apart (p. 29). When the time is longer than this, we rely, he thinks, exclusively upon the feelings of muscular tension and relaxation, which we are constantly receiving although we give to them so little of our direct attention. These feelings are primarily in the muscles by which we adapt our sense-organs in attending to the signals used, some of the muscles being in the eye and ear them selves, some of them in the head, neck, etc. We here judge two time- intervals to be equal when between the beginning and end of each we feel exactlv similar relaxations and subsequent expectant tensions of these THE PERCEPTION OF TIME. 621 And here again we have aii analogy with space. The earliest form of distinct space-perception is undoubtedly that of a movement over some one of our sensitive surfaces, and this movement is originally given as a simple whole of feeling, and is only decomposed into its elements — succes sive positions successively occupied by the moving body— when our education in discrimination is much advanced. muscles to have occurred. In reproducing intervals ourselves we try to make our feelings of this sort just what they were when we passively heard the interval. These feelings by themselves, however, can only be used when the intervals are very short, for the tension anticipatory of the terminal stimulus naturally reaches its maximum very soon. With longer intervals we take the feeling of our inspirations and expirations into account. With our expirations all the other muscular tensions in our body undergo a rhythmi cal decrease; with our inspirations the reverse takes place. When, there fore, we note a time-interval of several seconds with intent to reproduce it, what we seek is to make the earlier and later interval agree in the number and amount of these respiratory changes combined with sense-organ adjustments with which they are filled. Miinsterberg has studied care fully in his own case the variations of the respiratory factor. They are many ; but he sums up his experience by saying that whether he meas ured by inspirations that were divided by momentary pauses into six parts, or by inspirations that were continuous ; whether with sensory tension dur ing inspiration and relaxation during expiration, or by tension during both inspiration and expiration, separated by a sudden interpolated relaxation ; whether with special notice taken of the cephalic tensions, or of those in the trunk and shoulders, in all cases alike and without exception he in voluntarily endeavored, whenever he compared two times or tried to make one the same as the other, to get exactly the same respiratory conditions and conditions of tension, all the subjective conditions, in short, exactly the same during the second interval as they were during the first. Miinsterberg corroborated his subjective observations by experiments. The observer of the time had to reproduce as exactly as possible an interval between two sharp sounds given him by an assistant. The only condition imposed upon him was that he should not modify his breathing for the purposes of measurement. It was then found that when the assistant broke in at random with his signals, the judgment of the observer was vastly less accurate than when the assistant carefully watched the observer's breathing and made both tLe beginning of the time given him and that of the time which he was to give coincide with identical phases thereof.— Finally, Miinsterberg with great plausibility tries to explain the discrepancies be tween the results of Vierordt, Estel, Mehner, Glass, etc., as due to the fact that they did not all use tlie sarne measure. Some breathe a little faster, some a little slower. Some break their inspirations into two parts, some do not, etc. The coincidence of the objective times measured with definite natural phases of breathing would very easily give periodical maxiinn of facility in measuring accurately 622 PSYCHOLOGY. But a movement is a change, a process ; so we see that iu tha time-world and the space-world alike the first known things are not elements, but combinations, not separate units, but wholes already formed. The condition of being of the wholes may be the elements ; but the condition of our knowing the elements is our having already felt the wholes as wholes. In the experience of watching empty time flow — 'empty : to be taken hereafter in the relative sense just set forth — we tell it off in pulses. We say ' now ! now ! now ! : or we count ' more ! more ! more ! ' as we feel it bud. This com position out of units of duration is called the law of time's discrete flow. The discreteness is, however, merely due to the fact that our successive acts of recognition or appercep tion of what it is are discrete. The sensation is as continu ous as any sensation can be. All continuous sensations are named in beats. We notice that a certain finite ' more ' of them is passing or already past. To adopt Hodgson's image, the sensation is the measuring-tape, the perception the dividing-engine which stamps its length. As we listen to a steady sound, we take it in in discrete pulses of recog nition, calling it successively * the same! the same! the same ! ' The case stands no otherwise with time. After a small number of beats our impression of the amount we have told off becomes quite vague. Our only way of knowing it accurately is by counting, or noticing the clock, or through some other symbolic conception.* When the times exceed hours or days, the conception is absolutely symbolic. We think of the amount we mean either solely as a name, or by running over a few salient dates therein, with no pretence of imagining the full durations that lie between them. No one has anything like a perception of the greater length of the time between now and the first century than of that between now and the tenth. To an historian, * " Any one wishing yet further examples of this mental substitution will find one on observing how habitually he thinks of the spaces on the clock-face instead of the periods they stand for ; how, on discovering it to be half an hour later than he supposed, ne does not represent the half hour in its duration, but scarcely passes beyond the sign of it marked by the finger." (H. Spencer: Psychology, §336.) THE PERCEPTION OF TIME. 6&i it is true, tlie longer interval will suggest a host of additional dates and events, and so appear a more multitudinous thing. And for the same reason most people will think the}* directly perceive the length of the past fortnight to exceed that of the past week. But there is properly no comparative time intuition in these cases at all. It is but dates and events. representing time ; their abundance symbolizing its length. I am sure that this is so, even where the times compared are no more than an hour or so in length, it is the same with Spaces of many miles, which we always compare with each other by the numbers which measure them.* * The ouly objections to this which I can think of are : (1) The accuracy with which some men judge of the hour of day or night without looking at the clock ; (2) the faculty some have of waking at a preappointed hour; (8) the accuracy of time-perception reported to exist in certain trance-subjects. It might seem that in these persons some sort of a sub-conscious record was kept of the lapse of time per se. But this cannot be admitted until it is proved that there are no physiological processes, the feeling of whose course may serve as a sign of how much time has sped, and so lead us to infer the hour. That there are such processes it is hardly possible to doubt. An ingenious friend of mine was long puzzled to know why each day of the week had such a characteristic physiognomy to him. That of Sunday was soon noticed to be due to the cessation of the city's rumbling, and the sound of people's feet shuffling on the sidewalk; of Monday, to come from the clothes drying in the yard and casting a white reflection on the ceiling; of Tuesday, to a cause which I forget ; and I think my friend did not get beyond Wednesday. Probably each hour in the day has for most of us some outer or inner sign associated with it as closely as these signs with the days of the week. It must be admitted, after all, however, that the great improvement of the time-perception during sleep and trance is a mystery not as yet cleared up. All my life I have been struck by the accuracy with which I will wake at the same exact minute night after night and morning after morning, if only the habit fortuitously begins. The organic registra tion in me is independent of sleep. After lying in bed a long time awake I suddenly rise without knowing the time, and for days and weeks together will do so at an identical minute by the clock, as if some inward physio logical process caused the act by punctually running down.— Idiots are said sometimes to possess the time-measuring faculty in a marked degree. I have an interesting manuscript account of an idiot girl which says : was punctual almost to a minute in her demand for food and other regular attentions Her dinner was generally furnished her at l: that hour she would begin to scream if it were not forthcoming. Fast-day or Thanksgiving it were delayed, in accordance witl England custom, she screamed from her usual dinner-hour until was carried to her. On the next day, however, she again made known want« nromnti" »« 12.30. Any slight attention shown her on one day was 624 PSYCHOLOGY. From tliis we pass naturally to speak of certain familial variations in our estimation of lengths of time. In general, a time Jilled ivitli varied and interesting experiences seems short in passing, but long as we look back. On the other hand, a tract of time empty of experiences seems long in passing, but in retrospect short. A. week of travel and siglit-seeing may subtend an angle more like three weeks in the memory ; and a month of sickness hardly yields more memories than a day. The length in retrospect depends obviously on the multitudinoiisness of the memories which the time affords. Many objects, events, changes, many subdivisions, immedi ately widen the view as we look back. Emptiness, monot ony, familiarity, make it shrivel up. In Yon Holtei's * Vagabonds ' one Anton is described as revisiting his native village. " Seven years," he exclaims, "seven years since I ran away ! More like seventy it seems, so much has happened. I cannot think of it ail without becoming dizzy — at any rate not now. And yet again, when 11 look at the village, at the church -tower, it seems as if I could hardlj have been seven days away." Prof. Lazarus * (from whom I borrow this quotation), thus explains both of these contrasted illusions by our principle of the awakened memories being multitudinous or few : "The circle of experiences, widely extended, rich in variety, which he had in view on the day of his leaving the village rises now in his mind as its image lies before him. And with it — in rapid succession and violent motion, not in chronologic order, or from chronologic motives, but suggesting each other by all sorts of connections — arise massive images of all his rich vagabondage and roving life. They roll and wave confusedly together, first perhaps one from the first year, then from the sixth, soon from the second, again from the fifth, the demanded on the next at the corresponding hour. If an orange were given her at 4 P.M. on Wednesday, at the same hour on Thursday she made known her expectation, and if the fruit were not given her she continued to call for it at intervals for two or three hours. At four on Friday the process would be repeated but would last less long ; and so on for two or three days. If one of her sisters visited her accidentally at a certain hour, the sharp piercing scream was sure to summon her at the same hour the next day," etc., etc.— For these obscure matters consult C. Du Prel : The Philosophy of Mysticism, chap. in. § 1. * Ideale Fragen (1878), p. 219 (Essay, 'Zeit und Weile '). THE PERCEPTION OF TIME. 025 first, etc., until it seems as if seventy years must have been there, and he reels with the fulness of his vision. . . . Then the inner eye turns away from all this past. The outer one turns to the village, especially to the church-tower. The sight of it calls back the old sight of it, so that the consciousness is filled with that alone, or almost alone. The one vision compares itself with the other, and looks so near, so un changed, that it seems as if only a week of J:ime could have come be tween." The same space of time seems shorter as we grow older — that is, the clays, the months, and the years do so ; whether the hours do so is doubtful, and the minutes and seconds to all appearance remain about the same. "Whoever counts many lustra in his memory need only question himself to find that the last of these, the past five years, have sped much more quickly than the preceding periods of equal amount. Let any one remember his last eight or ten school years : it is the space of a. century. Compare with them the last eight or ten years of life : it is the space of an hour." So writes Prof. Paul Janet/ and gives a solution which can hardly be said to diminish the mystery. There is a law, lie says, by which the apparent length of an interval at a given epoch of a man's life is proportional to the total length of the life itself. A child of 10 feels a year as yV of his whole life_a man of 50 as ^, the whole life meanwhile apparently preserving a constant length. This formula roughly ex presses the phenomena, it is true, but cannot possibly be an elementary psychic law ; and it is certain that, in great part at least, the foreshortening of the years as we grow older is due to the monotony of memory's content, and the consequent simplification of the backward-glancing view. In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, sub jective or objective, every hour of the day. Apprehension is vivid, retentiveiiess strong, and our recollections of that time, like those of a time spent in rapid and interesting travel, are of something intricate, multitudinous, and long- drawn-out. But as each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recol lection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse. * Revue Philosophique, vol i:r. p. 49fr 626 PSYCHOLOGY. So much for the apparent shortening of tracts of time in retrospect. They shorten in passing whenever we are so fully occupied with their content as not to note the actual time itself. A clay full of excitement, with no pause, is said to pass ' ere we know it.' On the contrary, a day full of waiting, of unsatisfied desire for change, will seem a small eternity. Tcedium, ennui, Langwetle, boredom, are words for which, probably, every language known to man has its, equivalent. It comes about whenever, from the relative emptiness of content of a tract of time, we grow attentive to the passage of the time itself. Expecting, and being ready for, a new impression to succeed ; when it fails to come, we get an empty time instead of it ; and such experi ences, ceaselessly i enewed, make us most formidably aware of the extent of the mere time itself.* Close your eyes and simply wait to hear somebody tell you that a minute has elapsed. The full length of your leisure with it seems in credible. You engulf yourself into its bowels as into those of that interminable first week of an ocean voyage, and find yourself wondering that history can have overcome many such periods in its course. All because you attend so closely to the mere feeling of the time per se, and because your attention to that is susceptible of such fine-grained successive subdivision. The odiousness of the whole expe rience comes from its insipidity ; for stimulation is the indis pensable requisite for pleasure in an experience, and the feeling of bare time is the least stimulating experience we can have.f The sensation of tsedium is a protest, says Volkmann, against the entire present. * "Empty time is most strongly perceived when it comes as a pause in mus'.e or in speech. Suppose a preacher in the pulpit, a professor at his desk, to stick still in the midst of his discourse; or let a composer (as is sometimes purposety done) make all his instruments stop at once; we await every instant the resumption of the performance, and, in this awaiting, per ceive, more than in any other possible way, the empty time. To change the example, let, in a piece of polyphonic music — a figure, for instance, in which a tangle of melodies are under way— suddenly a single voice be heard, which sustains a long note, while all else is hushed. . . . This one note will appear very protracted — why? Because we expect to hear accom panying it the notes of the other instruments, but they fail to come." (Herbart: PsychoL als \V. , §115.) — Compare also Munsterberg, Beitraga Heft 2, p. 41. + A night of pr.iu will seem terribly lone: we keep looking forward t<3 THE PERCEPTION OF TIME. 627 Exactly parallel variations occur in our consciousness of space. A road we walk back over, hoping to find at each step an object tve have dropped, seems to us longer than when we walked over it the other way. A space we meas ure by pacing appears longer than one we traverse with no thought of its length. And in general an amount of space attended to in itself leaves with us more impression of spa ciousness than one of which we only note the content.* I do not say that everything in these fluctuations of esti mate can be accounted for by the time's content being crowded and interesting, or simple and tame. Both in the shortening of time by old age and in its lengthening by ennui some deeper cause may be at work. This cause can only be ascertained, if it exist, by finding out why ice per ceive time at all To this inquiry let us, though without much hope, proceed. THE PEELING OF PAST TIME IS A PRESENT PEELING. If asked why we perceive the light of the sun, or the sound of an explosion, we reply, " Because certain outer forces, ether-waves or air-waves, smite upon the brain, awakening therein changes, to which the conscious percep tions, light and sound, respond." But we hasten to add that neither light nor sound copy or mirror the ether- or air-waves ; they represent them only symbolically. The only case, says Helmholtz, in which such copying occurs, and in which a moment which never comes — the moment when it shall cease. But the odiousness of this experience is not named ennui or Langweile, like the odionsness of time that seems long from its emptiness. The more positive odiousness of the pain, rather, is what tiuges our memory of the night. What we feel, as Prof. Lazarus says (op. cit. p. 202), is the long time of the suffering, not the suffering of the long time per se. * On these variations of time-estimate, cf. Romanes, Consciousness of Time, in Mind, vol. m. p. 297; J. Sully, Illusions, pp. 245-261, 302-305; W. Wundt. Fhysiol. Psych., n. 287, 288; besides the essays quoted from Lazarus and Janet. In German, the successors of Herbart have treated of this subject: compare Volkraann's Lehrbucli d. Psych., § 89, and for refer ences to other authors his note 3 to this section. Lindner (Lbh. d. empir. Psych.), as a parallel effect, instances Alexander the Great's life (thirty three years), which seems to us as if it must be long, because it was r" eventful S'milar.y the English Commonwealth, etc. 628 PYSCHOLOGY. "our perceptions can truly correspond with outer reality, is that oi the time-succession of phenomena. Simultaneity, succession, and the regular return of simultaneity or succession, can obtain as well in sen sations as in outer events. Events, like our perceptions of them, take place in time, so that the time-relations of the latter can furnish a true copy of those of the former. The sensation of the thunder follows the sensation of the lightning just as the sonorous convulsing of the air by the electric discharge reaches the observer's place later than that of the luminiferous ether." * One experiences an almost instinctive impulse, in pur suing such reflections as these, to follow them to a sort of crude speculative conclusion, and to think that he has at last got the mystery of cognition where, to use a vulgar phrase, 'the wool is short.' "What more natural, we say, than that the sequences and durations of things should be* come known? The succession of the outer forces stamps itself as a like succession upon the brain. The brain's successive changes are copied exactly by correspondingly successive pulses of the mental stream. The mental stream, feeling itself, must feel the time-relations of its own states. But as these are copies of the outward time-relations, so must it know them too. That is to say, these latter time- relations arouse their own cognition; or, in other words, the mere existence of time in those changes out of the mind which affect the mind is a sufficient cause why time is per ceived by the mind. This philosophy is unfortunately too crude. Even though we were to conceive the outer successions as forces stamping their image on the brain, and the brain's succes sions as forces stamping their image on the mind,f still, between the mind's own changes being successive, and knowing their own succession, lies as broad a chasm as be tween the object and subject of any casv> of cognition in the world. A succession of feelings, in and of itself, is not a feel ing of succession. And since, to our successive feelings, a feel ing of their own succession is added, that must be treated as an *Physiol. Optik, p. 445. f Succession, time per se, is no force. Our talk about its devouring tooth, etc., is all elliptical. Its contents are what devour. The law of in ertia is incompatible with time's being assumed as an efficient cause of anything. THE PERCEPTION OF TIME. 629 additional fact requiring its own special elucidation, which this talk about outer time-relations stamping copies of them selves within, leaves all untouched. I have shown, at the outset of the article, that what is past, to be known as past, must be known with what is present, and during the 'present' spot of time. As the clear understanding of this point has some importance, let me, at the risk of repetition, recur to it again. Volkmanu has expressed the matter admirably, as follows : "One might be tempted to answer the question of the origin of the time-idea by simply pointing to the train of ideas, whose various mem bers, starting from the first, successively attain to full clearness. But against this it must be objected that the successive ideas are not yet the idea of succession, because succession in thought is not the thought of succession. If idea A follows idea B, consciousness simply exchanges one for another. That B comes after A is for our consciousness a non existent fact; for this after is given neither in B nor in A ; and no third idea has been supposed. The thinking of the sequence of B upon A is another kind of thinking from that which brought forth A and then brought forth B ; and this first kind of thinking is absent so long as merely the thinking of A and the thinking of B are there. In short, when we look at the matter sharply, we come to this antithesis, that if A and B are to be represented as occurring in succession they must be simultaneously represented; if we are to think of them as one after the other, we must think them both at once." * If we represent the actual time-stream of our thinking by an horizontal line, the thought of the stream or of any segment of its length, past, present, or to come, might be figured in a perpendicular raised upon the horizontal at a certain point. The length of this perpendicular stands for a certain object or content, which in this case is the time thought of, and all of which is thought of together at the actual moment of the stream upon which the perpendicular is raised. Mr. James Ward puts the matter very well in his masterly article ' Psychology ' in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, page 64. He says : "We may, if we represent succession as a line, represent simul taneity as a 'second line at right angles to the first; empty time— or time-length without time-breadth, we may say— is a mere abstraction. Now, it is with the former line that we have to do in treating of time * Lehrbur-Ji d. Psych. , § 87. Compare also H. Lotze. Melaphysik, § 1 54 630 PSYCHOLOGY. as it is, and -with the latter in treating of our intuition of time, where, just as in a perspective representation of distance, \ve are confined to lines in a plane at right angles to the actual line of depth. In a succes sion of events, say of sense-impressions, ABODE. . . , the presence of B means the absence of A and 0, but the presentation of this succes sion involves the simultaneous presence in some mode or other of two or more of the presentations A B C D. In reality, past, present, and future are differences in time, but in presentation all that corresponds to these differences is ;n consciousness simultaneously." There is thus a sort of perspective projection of past ob jects upon present consciousness, similar to that of wide landscapes upon a camera-screen. And since we saw a while ago that our maximum dis tinct intuition of duration hardly covers more than a dozen seconds (while our maximum vague intuition is probably not more than that of a minute or so), we must suppose that this amount of duration is pictured fairly steadily in each passing instant of consciousness by virtue of some fairly con stant feature in the brain-process to which the conscious ness is tied. This feature of the brain-process, whatever it be, must be the came of our perceiving the fact of time at all* The duration thus steadily perceived is hardly more than the ' specious present,' as it was called a few pages back. Its content is in a constant flux, events dawning into its forward end as fast as they fade out of its rearward one, and each of them changing its time-coefficient from 'not yet,' or 'not quite yet,' to ' just gone ' or ' gone,' as it passes by. Mean while, the specious present, the intuited duration, stands permanent, like the rainbow on the waterfall, with its own quality unchanged by the events that stream through it. Each of these, as it slips out, retains the power of being reproduced ; and when reproduced, is reproduced with the duration and neighbors which it originally had. Please observe, however, that the reproduction of an event, after it has once completely dropped out of the rearward end of the specious present, is an entirely different psychic fact from its direct perception in the specious present as a thing immediately past. A creature might be entirely devoid of reproductive memory, and yet have the time-sense ; but the * The cause of the perceiving, not the object perceived ! THE PERCEPTION OF TIME. 631 Jitter would be limited, in his case, to tlie few seconds im mediately passing by. Time older than that he would never recall. I assume reproduction in the text, because I am speaking of human beings who notoriously possess it Thus memory gets strewn with dated things-dated in the sense of being before or after each other. * The date of a thing is a mere relation of before or after the present thing or some past or future thing. Some things we date simply by men tally tossing them into the past or future direction So in space we think of England as simply to the eastward oi Charleston as lying south. But, again, we may date an event exactly, by fitting it between two terms of a past or future series explicitly conceived, just as we may accurately think of England or Charleston being just so many miles away, f The things and events thus vaguely or exactly dated become thenceforward those signs and symbols of longer time-spaces, of which we previously spoke. According as we think of a multitude of them, or of few, so we imagine the time they represent to be long or short. But the original paragon and prototype of all conceived times is the specious 'present, the short duration of wliicli we are immediately and in cessantly sensible. * " ' No more ' and 'not yet ' are the proper time-feelings, and we are aware of time in no other way than through these feelings," says Volk- mann (Psychol., § 87). This, which is not strictly true of oiir feeling of time pe1) se, as an elementary bit of duration, is true of our feeling of dctte in its events. f We construct the miles just as we construct the years. Travelling in ihe cars makes a succession of different fields of view pass before our eyes. When those that have passed from present sight revive in memory, they maintain tneir mutual order because their contents overlap. We think them as having been before or behind each other; and, from the multitude of the views we can recall behind the one now presented, we compute the total space we have passed through. It is often said that the perception of time develops later than that of space, because children have so vague an idea of all dates before yesterday and after to-morrow. But no vaguer than they have of extensions that exceed as greatly their unit of space-intuition. Recently I heard my child of four tell a visitor that he had been ' as much as one week ' in the country. As he had been there three months, the visitor expressed surprise; where upon the child corrected himself by saying he had been there 'twelve years.' But the child made exactly the same kind of mietake when he asked if Boston was not one hundred miles from Cambridge, the distance being three miles. 632 PSYCHOLOGY. TO WHAT CEBEBRAL PROCESS IS THE SENSE OP TIME DUE F Now, to wliat dement in the brain-process may this sensibil ity be due ? It cannot, as we have seen, be due to the mere duration itself of the process ; it must be due to an element present at every moment of the process, and this element must bear the same inscrutable sort of relation to its cor relative feeling which all other elements of neural activity bear to their psychic products, be the latter what they may. Several suggestions have been made as to what the element is in the case of time. Treating of them in a note, * I will try to express briefly the only conclusion which * Most of these explanations simply give the signs which, adhering to impressions, lead us to dale them within a duration, or, in other words, to assign to them their order. Why it should be a time-order, however, is not explained. Herbart's would-be explanation is a simple description of time-perception. He says it comes when, with the last member of a series present to our consciousness, we also think of the first; and then the whole series revives in onr thought at once, but with strength diminishing in the backward direction (Psychol. als Wiss., § 115; Lehrb. zur Psychol., §$ 171, 172, 175). Similarly Drobisch, who adds that the series must appear as one already elapsed (durchlaufene), a word which shows even more clearly the question-begging nature of this sort of account (Empirische Psychol., § 59). Th. Waitz is guilty of similar question-begging when he explains our time- consciousness to be engendered by a set of unsuccessful attempts to make our percepts agree with our expectations (Lehrb. d. Psychol., § 52). Volk- maun's mythological account of past representations striving to drive pres ent ones out of the seat of consciousness, being driven back by them, etc., suffers from the same fallacy (Psychol., § 87). But all such accounts agree in implying one fact — viz., that the brain-processes of various events must be active simultaneously, and in varying strength, for a time-perception to be possible. Later authors have made this idea more precise. Thus, Lipps : " Sensations arise, occupy consciousness, fade into images, and vanish. According as two of them, a and b, go through this process simultaneously, or as one precedes or follows the other, the phases of their fading w7ill agree or differ; and the difference will be proportional to the time-difference between their several moments of beginning. Thus there are differences of quality in the images, which the mind may translate into corresponding differences of their temporal order. There is no other possible middle term between the objective time-relations and those in the mind than these differences of phase." (Grundtatsacheu des Seelenlebens, p. 588.) Lipps accordingly calls them ' temporal signs,' and hastens explicitly to add that the soul's translation of their order of strength into a time-order is entirely 'nexplicable (p. 591). M. Guyau's account (Revue Philosophique, xix. 353) hardly differs from that of his predecessors, except in picturesqueuess of style. Every change leaves a series of trainees lumineuses in the mind like THE PERCEPTION OF TIME. 633 seems to emerge from a study of them and of the facts — uoiripe though that conclusion be. the passage of shooting stars. Each image is in a more fading phase, according as its original was more remote. This group of images gives duration, the mere time-form, the ' bed' of time. The distinction of past, present, and future within the bed comes from our active nature. The future (as with Waitz) is what I want, but have not yet got, and must wait for. All this is doubtless true, but is no explanation. Mr. Ward gives, in his Encyclopaedia Britanniea article (Psychology, p. 65, col. 1), a still more refined attempt to specify the 'temporal sign.' The problem being, among a number of other things thought as successive, but simultaneously thought, to determine which is first and which last, he says: "After each distinct representation, abed, there may inter vene the representation of that movement of attention of which we are aware in passing from one object to another. In our present reminiscence we have, it must be allowed, little direct proof of this intervention ; though there is, I think, indirect evidence of it in the tendency of the flow of ideas to follow the order in which the presentations were at first attended to. With the movement itself when the direction of attention changes, we are familiar enough, though the residua of such movements are not ordinarily conspicuous. These residua, then, are our temporal signs. . . . But tem poral signs alone will not furnish all the pictorial exactness of the time-per spective. These give us only a fixed series; but the law of oblivisceuce, by insuring a progressive variation in intensity as we pass from one member of the series to the other, yields the effect which we call time-distance. By themselves such variations in intensity would leave us liable to confound more vivid representations in the distance with fainter ones nearer the present, but from this mistake the temporal signs save us ; where the memory-continuum is imperfect such mistakes continually occur. On the other hand, where these variations are slight and imperceptible, though the memory-continuum preserves the order of events intact, we have still no such distinct appreciation of comparative distance in time as we have nearer to the present, where these perceptive effects are considerable. . . . Locke speaks of our ideas succeeding each other ' at certain distances not much unlike the images in the inside of a lantern turned round by the heat of a candle, 'and 'guesses' that 'this appearance of theirs in train varies not very much in awaking man.' Now what is this ' distance ' that separates a from b, bfrom c, and so on ; and what means have we of knowing that it is tolerably constant in waking life? It is, probably, that, the residuum of which I have called a temporal sign; or, in other words, it is the movement of attention from a to b." Nevertheless, Mr. Ward does not call our feeling of this movement of attention the original of our feeling of time, or its brain -process the brun-process which directly causes us to perceive time. He says, a moment later, that " though the fixation of attention does of course really occupy time, it is probably not in the first instance perceived as time— i.e. as continuous ' protensily,' to use a term of Hamilton's— but as intensity. Thus, if this supposition be true, there is an element in our concrete time perceptions which has no place in our abstract conception of Tim*. In Time physically conceived there is no trace of intensity ; in time 634 PSYCHOZiWY. The phenomena of ' summation of stimuli ' in the nervous system prove that each stimulus leaves some latent activity psychically experienced, duration is primarily an intensive magnitude, and so far literally a perception." Its 'original' is, then, if I understand Mr Ward, something like a feeling which accompanies, as pleasure and pain may accompany, the movements of attention. Its brain-process must, it would seem, be assimilated in general type to the brain -processes of pleasure and pain. Such would seem more or less consciously to be Mr. Ward's own view, for he says : " Everybody knows what it is to be distracted by a rapid succession of varied impressions, and equally what it is to be wearied by the slow and monotonous recurrence of the same impressions. Now these ' feelings ' of distraction and tedium owe their characteristic qualities to movements of attention. In the first, attention is kept incessantly on the move ; before it is accommodated to a, it is disturbed by the sudden ness, intensity, and novelty of b ; in the second, it is kept all but stationary by the repeated presentation of the same impression. Such excess and defect of surprises make one realize a fact which in ordinary life is so obscure as to escape notice. But recent experiments have set this fact in a more striking light, and made clear what Locke had dimly before his mind in talking of a certain distance between the presentations of a waking man. In estimating very short periods of time of a second or less, indicated, say, by the beats of a metronome, it is found that there is a certain period for which the mean of a number of estimates is correct, while shorter periods are on the whole over-, and longer periods under-estimated. I take this to be evidence of the time occupied in accommodating or fixing attention.' Alluding to the fact that a series of experiences, a b c d e, may seen* short in retrospect, which seemed everlasting in passing, he says: " What tells in retrospect is the series abode, etc.; what tells in the present is the intervening t\ ty t<, , etc., or rather the original accommodation of which these temporal signs are the residuum." And he concludes thus : "We seem to have proof that our perception of duration rests ultimately upon quasi-motor objects of varying intensity, the duration of which we do not directly experience as duration at all." Wundt also thinks that the interval of about three-fourths of a second, which is estimated with the minimum of error, points to a connection between the time-feeling and the succession of distinctly ' apperceived ' objects before the mind. The 'association-time' is also equal to about thr£e fourths of a second. This association-time he regards as a sort of ;uterual standard of duration to which we in voluntarily assimilate all inter vals which we trj to reproduce, bringing shorter ones up to it and longer ones down. [In the Stevens result we should have to say contrast instead of assimilate, for the longer intervals there seem longer, and the shorter ones shorter still.] "Singularly enough," he adds (Physiol. Psych., IT. 286), " this time is about that in which in rapid walking, according to the Webers, our legs perform their swing. It seems thus not unlikely that both psychical constants, that of the average speed of reproduction and that of the surest estimation of time, have formed themselves under the influ ence of those most habitual movements of the body which we also use when w? try to subdivide rhythmically longer tracts of time." THE PERCEPTION OF TIME. 635 jehind it which only gradually passes away. (See above, pp. 82-85.) Psychological proof of the same fact is afforded by those ' after-images ' which we perceive when a sensorial stimulus is gone. We may read off peculiarities in an after-image, left by an object on the eye, which we failed to note in the original. We may ' hark back ' and take in the meaning of a sound several seconds after it has ceased. Delay for a minute, however, and the echo itself of the clock or the question is mute ; present sensations have banished it beyond recall. With the feeling of the present thing there must at all times mingle the fading echo of all those other things which the previous few seconds have supplied. Or, to state it in neural terms, there is at every moment a cumulation of brain-processes overlapping each other, of ivhich the fainter ones are the dying phases of processes ivhich bict shortly previous were active in a maximal degree. The AMOUNT OF THE OVERLAPPING determines the feeling of the DURATION OCCUPIED. WHAT EVENTS shall appear to occupy the duration depends on just WHAT PROCESSES the overlapping pro cesses are. We know so little of the intimate nature of the brain's activity that even where a sensation monotonously endures, we cannot say that the earlier moments of it do Finally, Prof. Mach makes a suggestion move specific still. After say ing very rightly that we have a real sensation of time — how otherwise should we identify two entirely different airs as being played in the same 'time'? how distinguish in memory the first stroke of the clock from the second, unless to each there clove its special time-sensation, which revived with it? — he says "it is probable that this feeling is connected with that organic consumption which is necessarily linked with the production of conscious ness, and that the time which we feel is probably due to the [mechanical?] work of [the process of ?] attention. When attention is strained, time seems long; during easy occupation, short, etc. . . . The fatigue of the organ of consciousness, as long as we wake, continually increases, and the work of attention augments as continually. Those impressions which are conjoined with a greater amount of work of attention appear to us as the later." The apparent relative displacement of certain simultaneous events and certain anachronisms of dreams are held by Mach to be easily explicable as effects of a splitting of the attention between two objects, one of which consumes most of it (Beitnlge zur Analyse der Empfindungen, p. 103 foil.). Mach's theory seems worthy of being better worked out. It is hard to say now whether he, Ward, and Wundt mean at bottom the same thing or not. The theory advanced in my own text, it will be remarked, does not pretend to bean explanation, but only an elementary statement of the 'law' whic> makes us aware of time. The Herbartian mythology purports to explain 636 PSYCHOLOGY. not leave fading processes behind which coexist with those of the present moment. Duration and events together form our intuition of the specious present with its content.* Why such an intuition should result from such a combination of brain-processes I do not pretend to say. All I aim at is to state the most elemental form of the psycho-physical con junction. I have assumed that the brain-processes are sensational ones. Processes of active attention (see Mr. Ward's account in the long foot-note) will leave similar fading brain-pro cesses behind. If the mental processes are conceptual, a complication is introduced of which I will in a moment speak. Meanwhile, still speaking of sensational processes, a remark of Wundt's will throw additional light on the account I give. As is known, Wundt and others have proved that every act of perception of a sensorial stimulus takes an appreciable time. When two different stimuli — e.g. a sight and a sound — are given at once or nearly at once, we have difficulty in attending to both, and may wrongly judge their interval, or even invert their order. Now, as the result of his experiments on such stimuli. Wundt lays down this law : t that of the three possible de terminations we may make of their order — "namely, simultaneity, continuous transition, and discontinuous tran sition — only the first and last are realized, never the second. Invari ably, when we fail to perceive the impressions as simultaneous, we notice a shorter or longer empty time between them, wlricli seems to correspond to the sinking of one of the ideas and to the rise of the other. . . . For our attention may share itself equally between the two impressions, which will then compose one total percept [and be simultaneously felt]; or it may be so adapted to one event as to cause * It would be rash to say definitely just how many seconds long this specious present must needs be, for processes fade ' asymptotically,' and the distinctly intuited present merges into a penumbra of mere dim recency before it turns into the past which is simply reproduced and conceived. Many a thing which we do not distinctly date by intercalating it in a place between two other things will, nevertheless, come to us with this feeling of belonging to a near past. This sense of recency is a feeling sui generis, and may affect things that happened hours ago. It would seem to show that their brain-processes are still in a state modified by the foregoing excite ment, still in a ' fading ' phase, in spite of the long interval. f Physiol. Psych., n. 263. THE PERCEPTION OF TIME. 637 it to be perceived immediately, and then the second event can be per ceived only after a certain time of latency, during which the attention reaches its effective maximum for it and diminishes for the first event. In this case the events are perceived as two, and in successive order — that is, as separated by a time-interval in which attention is not sufficient ly accommodated to either to bring a distinct perception about. . . . While we are hurrying from one to the other, everything between them vanishes in the twilight of general consciousness." * One might call this the law of discontinuous succession in lime, of percepts to tvhich we cannot easily attend at once. Each percept then requires a separate brain-process ; and when one brain-process is at its maximum, the other would ap pear perforce to be in either a waning or a waxing phase. If our theory of the time-feeling be true, empty time must then subjectively appear to separate the two percepts, no matter how close together they may objectively be ; for, according to that theory, the feeling of a time-duration is the immediate effect of such an overlapping of brain-pro- *1 leave my text as it was printed before Miinsterberg's essay appeared (see above page 620, note). He denies that we measure any but minimal durations by the amount of fading in the ideatioual processes, and talks almost exclusively of our feelings of muscular tension in his account, whereas I have made no mention of such things in mine. I cannot, how ever, see that there is any conflict between what he and I suggest. I am mainly concerned with the consciousness of duration regarded as a specific sort of object, he is concerned with this object's measurement exclusively. Feelings of tension might be the means of the measurement, whilst overlap ping processes of any and every kind gave the object to be measured. The accommodative and respiratory movements from which the feelings of tension come form regularly recurring sensations divided by their ' phases ' into intervals as definite as those by which a yardstick is divided by the marks upon its length. Let a1, a2, a3, a4, be homologous phases in four successive movements of this kind. If four outer stimuli 1, 2, 3, 4, coincide each with one of these successive phases, then their 'distances apart ' are felt as equal, other wise not. But there is no reason whatever to suppose that the mere over lapping of the brain-process of 2 by the fading process of 1, or that of 8 by that of 2, etc., does not give the cJiaracteristic quality of content which we call ' distance apart ' in this experience, and which by aid of the muscular feelings gets judged to be equal. Doubtless the muscular feelings can give us the object ' time ' as well as its measure, because their earlier phases leave fading sensations which constantly overlap the vivid sensation of the present phase. But it would be contrary to analogy to suppose that they should be the only experiences which give this object. 1 do not understand Herr Munsterberg to claim this for them. He takes our seme of time for granted, and only discusses its measurement. 638 PSYCHOLOGY. cesses of different phase — wherever and from whatever cause it may occur. To pass, now, to conceptual processes : Suppose I think of the Creation, then of the Christian era, then of the battle of Waterloo, all within a few seconds. These matters have their dates far outside the specious present. The pro cesses by which I think them, however, all overlap. What events, then, does the specious present seem to contain? Simply my successive acts of thinking these long-past things, not the long-past things themselves. As the in stantly-present thought may be of a long-past thing, so the just-past thought may be of another long-past thing. When a long-past event is reproduced in memory and conceived with its date, the reproduction and conceiving traverse the specious present. The immediate content of the latter is thus all my direct experiences, whether subjective or ob jective. Some of these meanwhile may be representative of other experiences indefinitely remote. The number of these direct experiences which the specious present and immediately-intuited past may em brace measures the extent of our ' primary,' as Exner calls it, or, as Richet calls it, of our ' elementary ' memory.* The sensation resultant from the overlapping is that of the duration which the experiences seem to fill. As is the num ber of any larger set of events to that of these experiences, so we suppose is the length of that duration to this duration. But of the longer duration we have no direct * realizing sense.' The variations in our appreciation of the same amount of real time may possibly be explained by altera tions in the rate of fading in the images, producing changes in the complication of superposed processes, to which changes changed states of consciousness may correspond. But however long ivemay conceive a space of time to be, the objective amount of it which is directly perceived at any one moment by us can never exceed the scope of our * primary memory ' at the moment in question.! * Exner in Hermann's Hdbch. d. Physiol., Bd. n. Thl. n. p. 281. Richet in Revue Philosophique, xxi. 568 (juin, 1886). See the next chap ter, pp. 642-646. f I have spoken of fading brain- processes alone, but only for simplicity's sake. Dawning processes probably play as important a part in giving the feeling of duration to the specious present. THE PERCEPTION OF TIME. 639 We have every reason to think that creatures may possi bly differ enormously in the amounts of duration which they intuitively feel, and in the fineness of the events that may fill it. Yon Bser has indulged* in some interesting compu tations of the effect of such differences in changing the aspect of Nature. Suppose we were able, within the length of a second, to note 10,000 events distinctly, instead of barely 10, as now ; if our life were then destined to hold the same number of impressions, it might be 1000 times as short. We should live less than a month, and personally know nothing of the change of seasons. If born in winter, we should believe in summer as we now believe in the heats of the Carbonifer ous era. The motions of organic beings would be so slow to our senses as to be inferred, not seen. The sun would stand still in the sky, the moon be almost free from change, and so on. But now reverse the hypothesis and suppose a being to get only one 1000th part of the sensations that we get in a given time, and consequently to live 1000 times as long. Winters and summers will be to him like quarters of an hour. Mushrooms and the swifter-growing plants will shoot into being so rapidly as to appear instantaneous creations ; annual shrubs will rise and fall from the earth like restlessly boiling- water springs ; the motions of animals will be as invisible as are to us the movements of bullets and cannon-balls ; the sun will scour through the sky like a meteor, leaving a fiery trail behind him, etc. That such imaginary cases (barring the superhuman longevity) may be realized somewheie in the animal kingdom, it would be rash to deny. "A gnat's wings,' says Mr Spencor,t " make ten or fifteen thousand strokes a second. Each stroke implies a separate nervous action. Each sucn nervous action or change in a nervous centre is probably as ap preciable by the gnat as is a quick movement of his arm by a man. And if this, or anything like this, is the fact, then the time occupied by a given external change, measured by many movements in the one case, must seem much longer than in the other case, when measured by one movement." Iii hashish-intoxication there is a curious increase in the apparent time-perspective. We utter a sentence, and ere * Reden (St. Petersburg, 1804), vol i pp. ~!55-2G8. | Psychology, § 91. 640 PSYCHOLOGY. fclie end is reached the beginning seems already to date from indefinitely long ago. We enter a short street, and it is aa if we should never get to the end of it. This alteration might conceivably result from an approach to the condition of Von Brer's and Spencer's short-lived beings. If our dis crimination of successions became finer-grained, so that we noted ten stages in a process where previously we only noted one ; and if at the same time the processes faded ten times as fast as before ; we might have a specious present of the same subjective length as now, giving us the same time-feeling and containing as many distinguishable suc cessive events, but out from the earlier end of it would have dropped nine tenths of the real events it now contains. They would have fallen into the general reservoir of merely dated memories, reproducible at will. The beginning of our sentences would have to be expressly recalled ; each word would appear to pass through consciousness at a tenth of its usual speed. The condition would, in short, be ex actly analogous to the enlargement of space by a micro scope ; fewer real things at once in the immediate field of view, but each of them taking up more than its normal room, and making the excluded ones seem unnaturally far away. Under other conditions, processes seem to fade rapidly without the compensating increase in the subdivisibility of successions. Here the apparent length of the specious present contracts. Consciousness dwindles to a point, and loses all intuitive sense of the whence and whither of its path. Express acts of memory replace rapid bird's-eye views. In my own case, something like this occurs in ex treme fatigue. Long illnesses produce it. Occasionally, it appears to accompany aphasia.* It would be vain to seek *"The patient cannot retain the image of an object more than a moment. His memory is as short for sounds, letters, figures, and printed words. If we cover a written or printed word with a sheet of paper in which a little window has been cut, so that only the first letter is visible through the window, he pronounces this letter. If, then, the sheet is moved so as to cover the first letter and make the second one visible, he pro nounces the second, but forgets the first, and cannot pronounce the first and second together." And so forth to the end. " If he closes his eyes and draws his finger explori'igly over a well known object like a knife or key THE PERCEPTION Of TIME. 641 to imagine the exact brain-change in any of these cases. But we must admit the possibility that to some extent the variations of time-estimate between youth and age, and ex citement and ennui, are due to such causes, more immedi ate than to the one we assigned some time ago. But whether our feeling of the time which immediately -past * events have filled be of something long or of something short, ii is not ivhat it is because tliose events are past, but because they have left behind them processes which are present. To those pro cesses, however caused, the mind ivould still respond by feeling a specious present, with one part of it just vanishing or vanished into the past. As the Creator is supposed to have made Adam with a navel — sign of a birth which never occurred — • so He might instantaneously make a man with a brain in which were processes just like the ' fading ' ones of an ordi nary brain. The first real stimulus after creation would set up a process additional to these. The processes would over lap ; and the new-created man would unquestionably have the feeling, at the very primal instant of his life, of liaviiito been in existence already some little space of time. he cannot combine the separate impressions and recognize the object. But if it is put into his hand so that he can simultaneously touch it with several fingers, he names it without difficulty. This patient has thus lost the ca pacity for grouping successive . . . impressions . . . into a whole and per ceiving them as a whole." (Grashey, in Archiv fiir Psychiatric, Bd. xvi. pp. 672-673.) It is hard to believe that in such a patient the time intuited was not clipped oil' like the impressions it held, though perhaps not so much of it. I have myself often noted a curious exaggeration of time-perspective at the moment of a falling asleep. A person will be moving or doing some thing in the room, and a certain stage of his act (whatever it may be) will be my last waking perception. Then a subsequent stage will wake me to a new perception. The two stages of the act will not be more than a few seconds apart ; and yet it always seems to me as if, between the earlier and the later one, a long interval has passed away. I conjecturally account for the phenomenon thus, calling the two stages of the act a and b respectively : Were 1 awake, a would leave a fading process in my sensorium which would overlap the process of b when the latter came, and both would then appear in the same specious present, a belonging to its earlier end. But the sudden advent of the brain-change called sleep extinguishes a's fading process abruptly. When b then comes and wakes me, a comes back, it is true, but not as belonging to the specious present. It lias to be specialty revoked in memory. This mode of revocation usually characterizes long- past things — whence the illusion. * Again 1 omit the future, merely for siK'.ulicity 642 PSYCHOLOGY. Let me sum up, now, by saying that we are constantly con scious of a certain duration — the specious present — varying in length from a few seconds to probably not more than a minute, and that this duration (with its content perceived as having one part earlier and the other part later) is the original intuition of time. Longer times are conceived by adding, chorter ones by dividing, portions of this vaguely bounded unit, and are habitually thought by us symboli cally. Kant's notion of an intuition of objective time as an infinite necessary continuum has nothing to support it. The cause of the intuition which we really have cannot be the duration of our brain-processes or our mental changes. That duration is rather the object of the intuition which, being realized at every moment of such duration, must be due to a permanently present cause. This cause — probably the simultaneous presence of brain-processes of different phase — fluctuates ; and hence a certain range of variation in the amount of the intuition, and in its subdivisibility, accrues. CHAPTER XVI. MEMORY. IN the last chapter what concerned us was the direcV intuition of time. We found it limited to intervals of con siderably less than a minute. Beyond its borders extends the immense region of conceived time, past and future, into one direction or another of which we mentally project all the events which we think of as real, and form a systematic order of them by giving to each a date. The relation of con ceived to intuited time is just like that of the fictitious space pictured on the flat back-scene of a theatre to the actual space of the stage. The objects painted on the former (trees, columns, houses in a receding street, etc.) carry back the series of similar objects solidly placed upon the latter, and we think we see things in a continuous perspective, when we really see thus only a few of them and imagine that we see the rest. The chapter which lies before us deals with the way in which we paint the remote past, as it were, upon a canvas in onr memory, and yet often imagine that we have direct vision of its depths. The stream of thought flows on; but most of its seg ments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory survives the instant of their passage. Of others, it is confined to a few moments, hours, or days. Others, again, leave vestiges which are indestructible, and by means of which they may be recalled as long as life endures. Can we explain these differences? PBIMARY MEMORY. The first point to be noticed is that for a state of mind to survive in memory it must have endured for a certain length of time. In other words, it must be what I call a substan tive state. Prepositional and conjunctival states of mind are not remembered as independent facts — we cannot recall 643 644 PSYCHOLOGY. just how we felt when we said 'how* or 'notwithstanding.' Our consciousness of these transitive states is shut up to 1 1 their own moment — hence one difficulty in introspective psychologizing. Any state of mind which is shut up to its own moment and fails to become an object for succeeding states of mind, is as if it belonged to another stream of thought. Or rather, it belongs only physically, not intellectually, to its own stream, forming a bridge from one segment of it to another, but not being appropriated inwardly by former seg ments or appearing as part of the empirical self, in the manner explained in Chapter X. All the intellectual value for us of a state of mind depends on our after-memory of it. Only then is it combined in a system and knowingly made to contribute to a result. Only then does it count for us. So that the EFFECTIVE consciousness we have of our states is the after-consciousness ; and the more of this there is, the more influence does the original state have, and the more perma nent a factor is it of our world. An indelibly-imprinted pain may color a life ; but, as Professor Bichet says : " To suffer for only a hundredth of a second is not to suffer at all ; and for my part I would readily agree to undergo a pain, however acute and intense it might be, provided it should last only a hundredth of a second, and leave after it neither reverberation nor recall." * Not that a momentary state of consciousness need be practically resultless. Far from it : such a state, though absolutely unremembered, might at its own moment deter mine the transition of our thinking in a vital way, and de cide our action irrevocably.! But the idea of it could not * L'Homme et llntelligence, p. 32. f Professor Richet has therefore no right to say, as he does in another place (Revue Philosophique, xxi. 570): " Without memory no conscious sensation, without memory no consciousness." All he is entitled to say is. "Without memory no consciousness known outside of itself." Of the sort of consciousness that is an object for later states, and becomes as it were permanent, he gives a good example: "Who of us, alas ! has not ex perienced a bitter and profound grief, the immense laceration cause by the death of some cherished fellow-being? Well, in these great griefs the ( present endures neither for a minute, for an hour, nor for a day, but for \ weeks and months. The memory of the cruel moment will not efface itself from consciousness. It disappears not, but remains living, present. MEMORY. 645 toftenuards determine transition and action, its content could not be conceived as one of the mind's permanent meanings : that is all I mean by saying that its intellectual value lies in after-memory. As a rule sensations outlast for some little time the ob jective stimulus which occasioned them. This phenomenon is the ground of those ' after-images ' which are familiar in the physiology of the sense-organs. If we open our eyes instantaneously upon a scene, and then shroud them in complete darkness, it will be as if we saw the scene in ghostly light through the dark screen. We can read off details in it which were unnoticed whilst the eyes were open.* In every sphere of sense, an intermittent stimulus, often enough repeated, produces a continuous sensation. This is because the after-image of the impression just gone by blends with the new impression coming in. The effects of stimuli may thus be superposed upon each other many stages deep, the total result in consciousness being an in crease in the feeling's intensity, and in all probability, as we saw in the last chapter, an elementary sense of the lapse of time (see p. 635). coexisting with the multitude of other sensations which are juxtaposed In consciousness alongside of this one persistent emotion which fs felt always in the present tense. A long time is needed ere we can attain to forgetting it, ere we can make it enter into the past. Hcei'et lateri letalis arundo. " (Ibid 583.) * This is the primary positive after-image. According to Helmholtz, one third of a second is the most favorable length of exposure to the light for producing it. Longer exposure, complicated by subsequent admission of light to the eye, results in the ordinary negative and complementary after-images, with their changes, which may (if the original impression was brilliant and the fixation long) last for many minutes. Fechner gives the name of memory-after-images (Psychophysik, n 492) to the instan taneous positive effects, and distinguishes them from ordinary after-images by the following characters : 1) Their originals must have been attended to, only such parts of a compound original as have been attended to ap pearing. This is not the case in common visual after images. 2) The strain of attention towards them is inward, as in ordinary remembering, not outward, as in observing a common after-image. 3) A short fixation cf the original is better for the memory-after-image, a long one for the ordinary after-image. 4) The colors of the memory-after-image are never complementary of those of the original. 646 PSYCHOLOGY. Exner writes : " Impressions to which we are inattentive leave so brief an image in the memory that it is usually overlooked. When deeply absorbed, we j do not hear the clock strike. But our attention may awake after' the striking has ceased, and we may then count off the strokes. Such ex amples are often found in daily life. We can also prove the existence of this primary memory-image, as it may be called, in another person, even when his attention is completely absorbed elsewhere. Ask some one, e.g., to count the lines of a printed page as fast as he can, and whilst this is going on walk a few steps about the room. Then, when the person has done counting, ask him where you stood. He will always reply quite definitely that you have walked. Analogous experi ments may be made with vision. This primary memory-image is, whether attention have been turned to the impression or not, an ex tremely lively one, but is subjectively quite distinct from every sort of after-image or hallucination. ... It vanishes, if not caught by atten tion, in the course of a few seconds. Even when the original impression is attended to, the liveliness of its image in memory fades fast." * The physical condition in the nerve-tissue of this pri- 1 mary memory is called by Eichet ' elementary memory.' f I / much prefer to reserve the word memory for the conscious phenomenon. What happens in the nerve-tissue is but an example of that plasticity or of semi-inertness, yielding to change, but not yielding instantly or wholly, and never quite recovering the original form, which, in Chapter V, we saw to be the groundwork of habit. Elementary habit would be the better name for what Professor Kichet means. Well, the first manifestation of elementary habit is the slow dying away of an impressed movement on the neural matter, and its first effect in consciousness is this so-called elementary memory. But what elementary memory makes us aware of is the just past. The objects we feel in this directly intuited past differ from properly recollected ob jects. An object which is recollected, in the proper sense of that term, is one which has been absent from conscious ness altogether, and now revives anew. It is brought back, recalled, fished up, so to speak, from a reservoir in which, with countless other objects, it lay buried and lost from view. But an object of primary memory is not thus * Hermann's Hdbch., u. 2. 282. t Rev. Philos., 562. MEMORY, 647 brought back ; it never was lost ; its date was never cut off in consciousness from that of the immediately present moment. In fact it comes to us as belonging to the rear ward portion of the present space of time, and not to the genuine past. In the last chapter we saw that the por- tion of time which we directly intuit has a breadth of| several seconds, a rearward and a forward end, and may be ' * called the specious present. All stimuli whose first nerve- vibrations have not yet ceased seem to be conditions of our getting this feeling of the specious present. They give rise to objects which appear to the mind as events just past.* When we have been exposed to an unusual stimulus for many minutes or hours, a nervous process is set up which \ results in the haunting of consciousness by the impression \ ' for a long time afterwards. The tactile and muscular feel ings of a day of skating or riding, after long disuse of the exercise, will come back to us all through the night. Images of the field of view of the microscope will annoy the observer for hours after an unusually long sitting at the instrument. A thread tied around the finger, an unusual constriction in the clothing, will feel as if still there, long after they have been removed. These revivals (called phe nomena of Sinnesgedachtniss by the Germans) have some thing periodical in their nature, f They show that profound - rearrangements and slow settlings into a new equilibrium / )i ?» are going on in the neural substance, and they form the transition to that more peculiar and proper phenomenon of memory, of which the rest of this chapter must treat. The * Richet says : " The present has a certain duration, a variable duration, sometimes a rather long one, which comprehends all the time occupied by the after-reverberation [retentissement, after-image] of a sensation. For ex ample, if the reverberation of an electric shock within our nerves lasts ten minutes, for that electric shock there is a present of ten minutes. On the other hand, a feebler sensation will have a shorter present. But in every case, for a conscious sensation [1 should say for a remembered sensa tion] to occur, there must be a present of a certain duration , of a few sec onds at least." We have seen in the last chapter that it is hard to trace the ' & backward limits of this immediately intuited duration, or specious present. The figures which M. Richet supposes appear to be considerably too large. f Cf. Fechner, Psychophysik. n. 499, 648 PSYCHOLOGY. first condition which makes a thing susceptible of recall after it has been forgotten is that the original impression of it should have been prolonged enough to give rise to a recurrent image of it, as distinguished from one of those pri mary after-images which very fleeting impressions may leave behind, and which contain in themselves no guarantee that they will ever come back after having once faded away.* iA certain length of stimulation seems demanded by the (inertia of the nerve-substance. Exposed to a shorter in fluence, its modification fails to 'set,' and it retains no effective tendency to fall again into the same form of vibra tion at which the original feeling was due. This, as I said at the outset, may be the reason why only ' substantive ' and not * transitive* states of mind are as a rule recol lected, at least as independent things. The transitive states pass by too quickly. ANALYSIS OF THE PHENOMENON OF MEMORY. Memory proper, or secondary memory as it might be styled, is the knowledge of a former state of mind after it has already once dropped from consciousness ; or rather it is the knowledge of an event, or fact, of which meantime we have not been thinking, with the additional conscious ;iess that we have thought or experienced it before. * The primary after-image itself cannot be utilized if the stimulus is too brief. Mr. Cattell found (Psychologische Studien, in. p. 93 ff.) that the color of a light must fall upon the eye fora period varying from 0.00275 to 0.006 of a second, in order to be recognized for what it is. Letters of the alphabet and familiar words require from 0.00075 to 0.00175 sec. — truly an interval extremely short. Some letters, E for example, are harder than others. In 1871 Helmholtz and Baxt had ascertained that \ when an impression was immediately followed by another, the latter quenched the former and prevented it from being known to later conscious ness. The first stimulus was letters of the alphabet, the second a bright white disk. "With an interval of 0.0048 sec. between the two excita tions [I copy here the abstract in Ladd's Physiological Psychology, p. 480], the disk appeared as scarcely a trace of a weak shimmer ; with an interval of 0.0096 sec., letters appeared in the shimmer— one or two which could be partially recognized when the interval increased to 0.0144 sec. When the interval was made 0.0192 sec. the objects were a little more clearly discerned ; at 0.00336 sec. four letters could be well recognized ; at 0.0433 sec., five letters ; and at 0.0528 sec. all the letters could be read." (Pfluger'a Archiv, iv. 325 ff J MEMORY. 649 The first element which such a knowledge involves would seem to be the revival in the mind of an image or copy of the original event.* And it is an assumption made by many writers f that the revival of an image is all that is needed to constitute the memory of the original occurrence. But such a revival is obviously not a memory, whatever else it may be ; it is simply a duplicate, a second event, having absolutely no connection with the first event except that it happens to resemble it. The clock strikes to-day ; it struck yesterday ; and may strike a million times ere it wears out. The rain pours through the gutter this week ; it did so last week ; and will do so in swcula sceculorum. But does the present clock-stroke become aware of the past ones, or the present stream recollect the past stream, because they repeat and resemble them ? Assuredly not. And let it not be said that this is because clock-strokes and gutters are physical and not psychical objects ; for psychical objects (sensations for example) simply recurring in successive editions will remember each other on that account no more than clock- strokes do. No memory is involved in the mere fact of re currence. The successive editions of a feeling are so many * When the past is recalled symbolically, or conceptually only, it is true that no such copy need be there. In no sort of conceptual knowledge is it requisite that definitely resembling images be there (cf. pp. 471 ff.). But as all conceptual knowledge stands for intuitive knowledge, and termi nates therein, I abstract from this complication, and confine myself to those memories in which the past is directly imaged in the mind, or, as we say, intuitively known. f E.g. Spencer, Psychology, i. p. 448. How do the believers in the sufficiency of the 'image' formulate the cases where we remember that something did not happen — that we did not wind our watch, did not lock the door, etc. ? It is very hard to account for these memories of omis sion. The image of winding the watch is just as present to my mind now when I remember that I did not wind it as if I remembered that I did. It must be a difference in the mode of feeling the image which leads me to such different conclusions in the two cases. When I remember that I did wind it, I feel it grown together with its associates of past date and place. When I remember that I did not, it keeps aloof ; the associates fuse with each other, but not with it. This sense of fusion, of the belonging together of things, is a most subtle relation ; the sense of non-fusion is an equally subtle one. Both relations demand most complex mental pro cesses to know them, processes quite different from that mere presence or absence of an image which does such service in the cruder books. 660 PSYCHOLOGY. independent events, each snug in its own skin. Yesterday's feeling is dead and buried ; and the presence of to-day's is | no reason why it should resuscitate. A farther condition is required before the present image can be held to stand for a past original. That condition is that the fact imaged be expressly referred to the past, thought as in the past. But how can we think a thing as in the past, except by thinking of the past to gether with the thing, and of the relation of the two ? And how can we think of the past ? In the chapter on Time-per ception we have seen that our intuitive or immediate con sciousness of pastness hardly carries us more than a few seconds backward of the present instant of time. Hemoter dates are conceived, not perceived ; known symbolically by names, such as ' last week,' ' 1850 ; ' or thought of by events which happened in them, as the year in which we attended such a school, or met with such a loss. — So that if we wish to think of a particular past epoch, we must think of a name or other symbol, or else of certain concrete events, associated therewithal. Both must be thought of, to think the past epoch adequately. And to * refer ' any special fact to the past epoch is to think that fact with the names and events [which characterize its date, to think it, in short, with a lot lof contiguous associates. But even this would not be memory. Memory requires more than mere dating of a fact in the past. It must be dated in my past. In other words, I must think that I di rectly experienced its occurrence. It must have that 'warmth and intimacy' which were so often spoken of in the chapter on the Self, as characterizing all experiences ' appropriated ' by the thinker as his own. A general feeling of the past direction in time, then, a particular date conceived as lying along that direction, and defined by its name or phenomenal contents, an event im agined as located therein, and owned as part of my ex perience,— such are the elements of every act of memory. It follows that what we began by calling the ' image,' or ' copy/ of the fact in the mind, is really not there at all in that simple shape, as a separate 'idea.' Or at least, if it be there as a separate idea, no memory will go with it. What MEMORY. 651 memory goes with is, on the contrary, a very complex rep resentation, that of the fact to be recalled plus its associates, the whole forming one ' object ' (as explained on page 275, Chapter IX), known in one integral pulse of consciousness (as set forth on pp. 276 ff.) and demanding probably a vastly more intricate brain-process than that on which any simple sensorial image depends. Most psychologists have given a perfectly clear analysis of the phenomenon we describe. Christian Wolff, for ex ample, writes: " Suppose you have seen Mevius in the temple, but now afresh in Titus' house. I say you recognize Mevius, that is, are conscious of hav ing seen him before because, although now you perceive him with your senses along with Titus' house, your imagination produces an image of him along with one of the temple, and of the acts of your own mind reflecting on Mevius in the temple. Hence the idea of Mevius which is reproduced in sense is contained in another series of perceptions than that which formerly contained it, and this difference is the reason why we are con scious of having had it before. . . . For whilst now you see Mevius in the house of Titus, your imagination places him in the temple, and renders you conscious of the state of mind which you found in yourself when you beheld him there. By this you know that you have seen him before, that is, you recognize him. But you recognize him because his ; idea is now contained in another series of perceptions from that in which you first saw him. " * Similarly James Mill writes : " In my remembrance of George III., addressing the two houses of parliament, there is, first of all, the mere idea, or simple apprehension, the conception, as it is sometimes called, of the objects. There is com bined with this, to make it memory, my idea of my having seen and heard those objects. And this combination is so close that it is not in my power to separate them. I cannot have the idea of George III. : his person and attitude, the paper he held in his hand, the sound of his voice while reading from it ; without having the other idea along with it, that of my having been a witness of the scene. ... If this ex planation of the case in which we remember sensations is understood, the explanation of the case in which we remember ideas cannot occasion much of difficulty. I have a lively recollection of Polyphemus's cave, and the actions of Ulysses and the Cyclops, as described by Homer. Iu this recollection there is, first of all, the ideas, or simple conceptions ot the objects and acts ; and along with these ideas, and so closely com- * Psychologia Empirica, § 174. 652 PSYCHOLOGY. bined as not to be separable, the idea of my having formerly had those same ideas. And this idea of my having formerly had those ideas is a very complicated idea ; including the idea of myself of the present mo ment remembering, and that of myself of the past moment conceiving; and the whole series of the states of consciousness, which intervened between myself remembering, and myself conceiving." * Memory is then the feeling of belief in a peculiar com plex object ; but all the elements of this object may be known to other states of belief ; nor is there in the particular combination of them as they appear in memory anything so peculiar as to lead us to oppose the latter to other sorts of thought as something altogether sui generis, needing a special faculty to account for it. When later we come to our chapter on Belief we shall see that any represented object which is connected either mediately or immediately with our present sensations or emotional activities tends to be believed in as a reality. The sense of a pecu liar active relation in it to ourselves is what gives to an object the characteristic quality of reality, and a merely imagined past event differs from a recollected one only in the absence of this peculiar-feeling relation. The electric current, so to speak, between it and our present self does not close. But in their other determinations the re- recollected past and the imaginary past may be much the same. In other words, there is nothing unique in the object of memory, and no special faculty is needed to account for its formation. It is a synthesis of parts thought of as re lated together, perception, imagination, comparison and reasoning being analogous syntheses of parts into complex objects. The objects of any of these faculties may awaken belief or fail to awaken it ; the object of memory is only an object imagined in the past (usually very completely imagined ftiere) to which the emotion of belief adheres. * Analysis, i. 330-1. Mill believed that the various things remembered, the self included, enter consciousness in the form of separate ideas, but so rapidly that they are 'all clustered into one.' "Ideas called up in close conjunction . . . assume, even when there is the greatest complexity, the appearance, not of many ideas, but of one " (vol. i. p. 123). This mythol ogy does not imp»ir the accuracy of his description of memory's object MEMORY. MEMORY'S CAUSES. Such being the phenomenon of memory, or the analysis of its object, can we see how it comes to pass ? can we lay bare its causes ? Its complete exercise presupposes two things : 1) The retention of the remembered fact ; 2) Its reminiscence, recollection, reproduction, or recall. Now the cause both of retention and of recollection is the law of habit in the nervous system, working as it does in the ' asso ciation of ideas.' Associationists have long explained recollection by asso ciation. James Mill gives an account of it which I am unable to improve upon, unless it might be by translating his word * idea ' into ' thing thought of,' or ' object,' as explained so often before. " There is," he says, " a state of mind familiar to all men, in which we are said to remember. In this state it is certain we have not in the mind the idea which we are trying to have in it.* How is it, then, that we proceed in the course of our endeavor, to procure its introduction into the mind ? If we have not the idea itself, we have certain ideas connected with it. We run over those ideas, one after another, in hopes that some one of them will suggest the idea we are in quest of; and if any one of them does, it is always one so connected with it as to call it up in the way of association. I meet an old acquaintance, whose name I do not remember, and wish to recollect. I run over a number of names, in hopes that some of them may be associated with the idea of the individual. I think of all the circumstances in which I have seen him engaged ; the time when I knew him, the persons along with whom I knew him, the things he did, or the things he suffered ; and, if I chance upon any idea with which the name is associated, then imme diately I have the recollection ; if not, my pursuit of it is vain, f There is another set of cases, very familiar, but affording very important evi dence on the subject. It frequently happens that there are matters which we desire not to forget. "What is the contrivance to which we have recourse for preserving the memory — that is, for making sure that it will be called into existence, when it is our wish that it should ? All men invariably employ the same expedient. They endeavor to form * Compare, however, p. 251, Chapter IX. f Professor Bain adds, in a note to this passage of Mill's : " This process seems best expressed by laying down a law of Compound or Composite Association, under which a plurality of feeble links of connection may be a substitute for one powerful and self-sufficing link." 654 PSYCHOLOGY. an association between the idea of the thing to be remembered, and some sensation, or some idea, which they know beforehand will occur at or near the time when they wish the remembrance to be in their minds. If this association is formed, and the association or idea with which it has been formed occurs ; the sensation, or idea, calls up the remembrance; and the object of him who formed the association is attained. To use a vulgar instance : a man receives a commission from his friend, and, that he may not forget it, ties a knot in his handkerchief. How is this fact to be explained ? First of all, the idea of the commission is associated with the making of the knot. Next, the handkerchief is a thing which it is known beforehand will be frequently seen, and of course at no great distance of time from the occasion on which the memory is desired. The handkerchief being seen, the knot is seen, and this sensation re calls the idea of the commission, between which and itself the associ ation had been purposely formed." * In short, we make search in our memory for a forgotten idea, just as we rummage our house for a lost object. In both cases we visit what seems to us the probable neighbor hood of that which we miss. "We turn over the things under which, or within which, or alongside of which, it may possibly be ; and if it lies near them, it soon comes to view. But these matters, in the case of a mental object sought, are nothing but its associates. The machinery of recall is thus the same as the machinery of association, and the machinery of association, as we know, is nothing but the elementary law of habit in the nerve-centres. And this same law of habit is the machinery of retention also. Retention means liability to recall, and it means noth ing more than such liability. The only proof of there being retention is that recall actually takes place. The retention of an experience is, in short, but another name for the pos sibility of thinking it again, or the tendency to think it again, with its past surroundings. Whatever accidental cue may turn this tendency into an actuality, the permanent ground of the tendency itself lies in the organized neural paths by which the cue calls up the experience on the proper occa sion, together with its past associates, the sense that the self was there, the belief that it really happened, etc., etc., just as previously described. "When the recollection is of the * ready ' sort, the resuscitation takes place the instant * Analysis, chap. y. MEMORY. 655 the occasion arises ; when it is slow, resuscitation conies after delay. But be the recall prompt or slow, the condi tion which makes it possible at all (or in other words, the ' retention ' of the experience) is neither more nor less than the brain-paths which associate the experience with the occasion and cue of the recall. When slumbering, these paths are the condition of retention ; ivhen active, they are the condi tion of recall. A simple scheme will now make the whole cause of memory plain. Let n be a past event ; o its ' setting ' (concomi tants, date, self present, warmth and intimacy, etc., etc., as already set forth) ; and m some present thought or fact which may appro priately become the occasion of its recall. Let the nerve-centres, ac tive in the thought of m, n, and o, FIG 45 be represented by M, N, and O, re spectively ; then the existence of the paths M — N and N — O will be the fact indicated by the phrase ' retention of the event n in the memory,' and the excitement of the brain along these paths will be the condition of the event n's actual re call. The retention of n, it will be observed, is no mysterious storing up of an ' idea ' in an unconscious state. It is hot a fact of the mental order at all. It is a purely physical phe nomenon, a morphological feature, the presence of these " paths,' namely, in the finest recesses of the brain's tissue. The recall or recollection, on the other hand, is a psycho- physical phenomenon, with both a bodily and a mental side. The bodily side is the functional excitement of the tracts and paths in question ; the mental side is the conscious vision of the past occurrence, and the belief that we ex perienced it before. These habit-worn paths of association are a clear ren dering of what authors mean by 'predispositions,' 'vestiges,' ' traces,' etc., left in the brain by past experience. Most writers leave the nature of these vestiges vague ; few think 656 PSYCHOLOGY. of explicitly assimilating them to channels of association. Dr. Maudsley, for example, writes : " When an idea which we have once had is excited again, there is a reproduction of the same nervous current, with the conscious addition that it is a reproduction — it is the same idea phis the consciousness that it is the same. The question then suggests itself, What is the physical condition of this consciousness ? What is the modification of the anatomi cal substrata of fibres and cells, or of their physiological activity, which is the occasion of this plus element in the reproduced idea ? It may be supposed that the first activity did leave behind it, when it subsided, some after-effect, some modification of the nerve-element, whereby the nerve-circuit was disposed to fall again readily into the same action ; such disposition appearing in consciousness as recognition or memory. Memory is, in fact, the conscious phase of this physiological disposition when it becomes active or discharges its functions on the recurrence of the particular mental experience. To assist our conception of what may happen, let us suppose the individual nerve-elements to be en dowed with their own consciousness, and let us assume them to be, as I have supposed, modified in a certain way by the first experience ; it is hard to conceive that when they fall into the same action on another occasion they should not recognize or remember H ; for the second action is a reproduction of the first, with the addition of what it con tains from the after-effects of the first. As we have assumed the process to be conscious, this reproduction with its addition would be a memory or remembrance." * In this passage Dr. Maudsley seems to mean by the 'nerve-element/ or * anatomical substratum of fibres and cells,' something that corresponds to the N of our diagram. And the ' modification ' he speaks of seems intended to be understood as an internal modification of this same particu lar group of elements. Now the slightest reflection will con vince anyone that there is no conceivable ground for suppos ing that with the mere re-excitation of N there should arise the ' conscious addition ' that it is a re-excitation. The two excitations are simply two excitations, their consciousnesses are two consciousnesses, they have nothing to do with each other. And a vague 'modification,' supposed to be left behind by the first excitation, helps us not a whit. For, according to all analogy, such a modification can only result in making the next excitation more smooth and rapid. This might make it less conscious, perhaps, but could not endow * H. Maudsley, The Physiology of Mind (London, 1876), p 513. MEMORY. 657 it -with any reference to the past. The gutter is worn deeper by each successive shower, but not for that reason brought into contact with previous showers. Psychology (whicn Dr. Maudsley in his next sentence says " affords us not the least help in this matter") puts us on the track of an at least possible brain-explanation. As it is the setting o of the idea, when it recurs, which makes us conscious of it as past, so it can be no intrinsic modification of the ' nerve-element ' N which is the organic condition of mem ory, but something extrinsic to it altogether, namely, its con nections with those other nerve-elements which we called O — that letter standing in the scheme for the cerebral sub stratum of a great plexus of things other than the principal event remembered, dates, names, concrete surroundings, realized intervals, and what not. The ' modification ' is the formation in the plastic nerve-substance of the system of associative paths between N and O. The only hypothesis, in short, to which the facts of inward experience give countenance is that the brain-tracts excited by the event proper, and those excited in its recall, are in part different from each other. If we could revive the past event without any associates we should exclude the possibility of memory, and simply dream that we were un dergoing the experience as if for the first time.* Wheiever, * The only fact which might plausibly be alleged against this view is the familiar one that we may feel the lapse of time in an experience so monot onous that its earlier portions can have no ' associates ' different from its later ones. Sit with closed eyes, for example, and steadily pronounce some vowel-sound, thus, a — a — a — a— a — .... thinking only of the sound. Nothing; changes during the time occupied by the experiment ; and yet at the end of it you know that its beginning was far away. I think, how ever, that a close attention to what happens during this experiment shows that it does not violate in the least the conditions of recall laid down in the text ; and that if the moment to which we mentally hark back lie many seconds behind the present instant, it always has different associates by which we define its date. Thus it was when I had just breathed out. or in ; or it was the ' first moment ' of the performance, the one ' pre ceded by silence ; ' or it was ' one very close to that ; ' or it was ' one when we were looking forward instead of back, as now ; ' or it is simply repre sented by a number and conceived symbolically with no definite image of its date. It seems to me that I have no really intuitive discrimination of the different past moments after the experience has gone on some little time, but that back of the ' specious present ' they all fuse into a single 658 PSYCHOLOGY. in fact, the recalled event does appear without a definite setting, it is hard to distinguish it from a mere creation of fancy. But in proportion as its image lingers and recalls as sociates which gradually become more definite, it grows more and more distinctly into a remembered thing. For example, I enter a friend's room and see on the wall a painting. At first I have the strange, wondering consciousness, ' surely I have seen that before,' but when or how does not become clear. There only clings to the picture a sort of penumbra of familiarity, — when suddenly I exclaim : " I have it, it is a copy of part of one of the Era Angelicos in the Floren tine Academy — I recollect it there ! " But the motive to the recall does not lie in the fact that the brain-tract now excited by the painting was once before excited in a similar way ; it lies simply and solely in the fact that with thai brain-tract other tracts also are excited : those which sus tain my friend's room with all its peculiarities, on the one hand , those which sustain the mental image of the Florence Academy, on the other hand, with the circumstances of my visit there ; and finally those which make me (more dimly) think of the years I have lived through between these two times. The result of this total brain-disturbance is a thought with a peculiar object;, namely, that 1 who now stand here with this picture before me, stood so many years ago in the Florentine Academy looking at its original. M. Taine has described the gradual way in which a mental image develops into an object of memory, in his usual vivid fashion. He says : "I meet casually in the street a person whose appearance I am acquainted with, and say to myself at once that I have seen him before. Instantly the figure recedes into the past, and wavers about there vaguely, without at once fixing itself in any spot. It persists in me for conception of the kind of thing that has been going on, with a more or less clear sense of the total time it has lasted, this latter being based on an automatic counting of the successive pulses of thought by which the process is from moment to moment recognized as being always the same. Within the few seconds which constitute the specious present there is an intuitive perception of the successive moments. But these moments, of which we have a primary memory-image, are not properly recalled from the past, our knowledge of them is in no way analogous to a memory prop erly so called. Cf . supra, p. 646. MEMORY. 659 fcome time, and surrounds itself with new details. * When I saw him he was bare-headed, with a working-jacket on, painting in a studio ; he is BO-and-so, of such-and-such a street. But when was it ? It was not yesterday, nor this week, nor recently. I have it : he told me that he was waiting for the first leaves to come out to go into the country. It was before the spring. But at what exact date ? I saw, the same day, people carrying branches in the streets and omnibuses : it was Palm Sunday ! ' Observe the travels of the internal figure, its various shift- ings to front and rear along the line of the past ; each of these mental sentences has been a swing of the balance. When confronted with the present sensation and with the latent swarm of indistinct images which repeat our recent life, the figure first recoiled suddenly to an indeterminate distance. Then, completed by precise details, and con fronted with all the shortened images by which we sum up the proceed ings of a day or a week, it again receded beyond the present day, be yond yesterday, the day before, the week, still farther, beyond the ill-defined mass constituted by our recent recollections. Then some thing said by the painter was recalled, and it at once receded 'again beyond an almost precise limit, which is marked by the image of the green leaves and denoted by the word spring. A moment afterwards, thanks to a new detail, the recollection of the branches, it has shifted again, but forward this time, not backward; and, by a reference to the calendar, is situated at a precise point, a week further back than Easter, nnd five weeks nearer than the carnival, by the double effect of the contrary impulsions, pushing it, one forward and the other backward, and which are, at a particular moment, annulled by one another." * THE CONDITIONS OF GOODNESS IN MEMOBY. The remembered fact being n, then, the path N — O is what arouses for n its setting when it is recalled, and makes it other than a mere imagination. The path M — N, on the other hand, gives the cue or occasion of its being recalled at all. Memory being thus altogether conditioned on brain- ] pathi, its excellence in a given individual will depend partly on \ v the number and partly on the persistence of these paths. The persistence or permanence of the paths is a physi ological property of the brain-tissue of the individual, whilst their number is altogether due to the facts of his mental experience. Let the quality of permanence in the paths be called the native tenacity, or physiological retentiveness. This tenacity differs enormously from infancy to old age, f and from one persorTto another. Some minds are like wax * On Intelligence, I. 258-9. 660 PSYCHOLOGY. under a seal — no impression, however disconnected with others, is wiped out. Others, like a jelly, vibrate to every touch, but under usual conditions retain no permanent mark. These latter minds, before they can recollect a fact, must weave it into their permanent stores of knowledge. They have no desultory memory. Those persons, on the contrary, who retain names, dates and addresses, anecdotes, gossip, poetry, quotations, and all sorts of miscellaneous facts, without an effort, have desultory memory in a high degree, and certainly owe it to the unusual tenacity of their brain-substance for any path once formed therein. No I one probably was ever effective on a voluminous scale with- ; out a high degree of this physiological retentiveness. In the practical as in the theoretic life, the man whose acquisi tions stick is the man who is always achieving and advancing, whilst his neighbors, spending most of their time in relearn- ing what they once knew but have forgotten, simply hold their own. A Charlemagne, a Luther, a Leibnitz, a Walter Scott, any example, in short, of your quarto or folio editions of mankind, must needs have amazing retentiveness of the purely physiological sort. Men without this retentiveness may excel in the quality of their work at this point or at that, but will never do such mighty sums of it, or be influ ential contemporaneously on such a scale.* *!Sot that mere native tenacity will make a man great. It must be coupled with great passions and great intellect besides. Imbeciles some times have extraordinary desultory memory. Drobisch describes (Empi- rische Psychol., p. 95) the case of a young man whom he examined. He had with difficulty been taught to read and speak. "But if two or three minutes were allowed him to peruse an octavo page, he then could spell the single words out from his memory as well as if the book lay open before him. . . . That there was no deception I could test by means of a new Latin law-dissertation which had just come into my hands, which he never could have seen, and of which both subject and language were unknown to him. He read off [mentally] many lines, skipping about too, of the page which had been given him to see, no worse than if the experi ment had been made with a child's story." Drobisch describes this case as if it were one of unusual persistence in the visual image ['primary memory,' vide supra, p. 643]. But he adds that the youth ' remembered his pages a long time.' In the Journal of Speculative Philosophy for Jan. 1871 (vr. 6) is an account by Mr. W. D. Ileukle (together with the stock classic examples of preternatural memory) of an almost blind Pennsylvania farmer who could remember the day of the week on which any date had MEMORY. 661 But there comes a time of life for all of us when we can do no more than hold our own in the way of acquisitions, when the old paths fade as fast as the new ones form in our brain, and when we forget in a week quite as much as we can learn in the same space of time. This equilibrium may last many, many years. In extreme old age it is upset in the reverse direction, and forgetting prevails over acquisition or rather there is no acquisition. Brain-paths are so tran sient that in the course of a few minutes of conversation the same question is asked and its answer forgotten half a dozen times. Then the superior tenacity of the paths formed in childhood becomes manifest : the dotard will retrace the facts of his earlier years after he has lost all those of later date. So much for the permanence of the paths. Now for their number. It is obvious that the more there are of such paths as M — N in the brain, and the more of such possible cues or occasions for the recall of n in the mind, the prompter and surer, on the whole, the memory of n will be, the more fallen for forty-two years past, and also the kind of weather it was, and what he was doing on each of more than iifteen thousand days. Pity that such a magnificent faculty as this could not have found more worthy appli cation I What these cases show is that the mere organic retentiveness of a man need bear no definite relation to his other mental powers. Men of the highest general powers will often forget nothing, however insignificant. One of the most generally accomplished men I know has a memory of this sort. He never keeps written note of anything, yet is never at a loss for a fact which he has once heard. He remembers the old addresses of all his New York friends, living in numbered streets, addresses which they them selves have long since moved away from and forgotten. He says that he should probably recognize an individual fly, if he had seen him thirty years previous— he is, by the way, an entomologist. As an instance of his desultory memory, he was introduced to a certain colonel at a club. The conversation fell upon the signs of age in man. The colonel challenged him to estimate his age. He looked at him, and gave the exact day of his birth, to the wonder of all. But the secret of this accuracy was that, having picked up some days previously an army-register, he had idly turned over its list of names, with dates of birth, graduation, promotions, etc., attached, and when the colonel's name was mentioned to him at the club, these figures, on which he had not bestowed a moment's thought, involuntarily surged up in his mind. Such a memory is of course a priceless boon. 662 PSYCHOLOGY. frequently one will be reminded of it, the more avenues of approach to it one will possess. In mental terms, the more other facts a fact is associated with in the mind, the better pos session of it our memory retains. Each of its associates be comes a hook to which it hangs, a means to fish it up by when sunk beneath the surface. Together, they form a network of attachments by which it is woven into the entire tissue of our thought. The ' secret of a good mem ory ' is thus the secret of forming diverse and multiple associations with every fact we care to retain. But this forming of associations with a fact, what is it but thinking about the fact as much as possible ? Briefly, then, of two men with the same outward experiences and the same amount of mere native tenacity, the one ivho THINKS over his experiences most, and weaves them into systematic rela tions with each other, will be the one with the best mem ory. We see examples of this on every hand. Most men have a good memory for facts connected with their own pursuits. The college athlete who remains a dunce at his books will astonish you by his knowledge of men's * records ' in various feats and games, and will be a walking diction ary of sporting statistics. The reason is that he is con stantly going over these things in his mind, and comparing and making series of them. They form for him not so many odd facts, but a concept-system — so they stick. So the merchant remembers prices, the politician other politicians' speeches and votes, with a copiousness which amazes out siders, but which the amount of thinking they bestow on these subjects easily explains. The great memory for facts which a Darwin and a Spencer reveal in their books is not incompatible with the possession on their part of a brain with only a middling degree of physiological retentiveness. Let a man early in life set himself the task of verifying such a theory as that of evolution, and facts will soon cluster and cling to him like grapes to their stem. Their relations to the theory will hold them fast ; and the more of these the mind is able to discern, the greater the erudition will become. Meanwhile the theorist may have little, if any, desultory memory. Unutilizable facts may be unnoted by him and forgotten as soon as heard. An MEMORY. 668 almost as encyclopaedic as his erudition may coexist with [ the latter, and hide, as it were, in the interstices of its web. Those who have had much to do with scholars and savant* will readily think of examples of the class of mind I mean. In a system, every fact is connected with every other by , some thought-relation. The consequence is that every fact is retained by the combined suggestive power of all the other facts in the system, and forgetfulness is well-nigh impossible. The reason why cramming is such a bad mode of study is now made clear. I mean by cramming that way of pre paring for examinations by committing ' points ' to memory | during a few hours or days of intense application immedi ately preceding the final ordeal, little or no work having been performed during the previous course of the term. Thrigs learned thus in a few hours, on one occasion, for ( one purpose, cannot possibly have formed many associations with other things in the mind. Their brain-processes are led into by few paths, and are relatively little liable to be awakened again. Speedy oblivion is the almost inevitable fate of all that is committed to memory in this simple way. Whereas, on the contrary, the same materials taken in gradually, day after day, recurring in different contexts, considered in various relations, associated with other exter- \ nal incidents, and repeatedly reflected on, grow into such a system, Jorm such connections with the rest of the mind's fabric, lie open to so many paths of approach, that they remain permanent possessions. This is the intellectual rea son why habits of continuous application should be enforced in educational establishments. Of course there is no moral turpitude in cramming. If it ,led to the desired end of secure learning it would be infinitely the best method of study. But it does not ; and students themselves should understand the reason why. ONE'S NATIVE RETENTIVENESS IS UNCHANGEABLE. It will now appear clear that all improvement of the memory lies in the line of ELABOKATING THE ASSOCIATES of each of the several things to be remembered. No amount of culture would seem capable of modify ina a man's GENERAL 664 PSYCHOLOGY. retentiveness. This is a physiological quality, given once for all with his organization, and which he can never hope to change. It differs no doubt in disease and health ; and it is a fact of observation that it is better in fresh and vigorous hours than when we are fagged or ill. We may say, then, that a man's native tenacity will fluctuate some what with his hygiene, and that whatever is good for his tone of health will also be good for his memory. We may even say that whatever amount of intellectual exercise is bracing to the general tone and nutrition of the brain will also be profitable to the general retentiveness. But more than this we cannot say ; and this, it is obvious, is far less than most people believe. It is, in fact, commonly thought that certain exercises, systematically repeated, will strengthen, not only a man's remembrance of the particular facts used in the exercises, but his faculty for remembering facts at large. And a plausible case is always made out by saying that practice in learning words by heart makes it easier to learn new words in the same way.* If this be true, then what I have just said is false, and the whole doctrine of mem* ory as due to ' paths ' must be revised. But I am dis posed to think the alleged fact untrue. I have carefully questioned several mature actors on the point, and all have denied that the practice of learning parts has made any such difference as is alleged. W^hat it has done for them is to improve their power of studying a part systematically. Their mind is now full of precedents in the way of intona tion, emphasis, gesticulation ; the new words awaken dis tinct suggestions and decisions ; are caught up, in fact, into a pre-existing net-work, like the merchant's prices, or the athlete's store of ' records,' and are recollected easier, al though the mere native tenacity is not a whit improved, and is usually, in fact, impaired by age. It is a case of better remembering by better thinking. Similarly when school boys improve by practice in ease of learning by heart, the improvement will, I am sure, be always found to reside in * Of. Ebbinghaus: Ueber das Gedachtniss (1885), pp. 67, 45. One may hear a person say: ' ' I have a very poor memory, because 1 was never sys tematically made to learn poetry at schooi.' MEMORY. 665 the mode of study of the particular piece (due to the greater interest, the greater suggestiveness, the generic similarity with other pieces, the more sustained attention, etc., etc.), and not at all to any enhancement of the brute retentive power. The error I speak of pervades an otherwise useful and judicious book, ' How to Strengthen the Memory,' by Dr. Holbrook of New York.* The author fails to distinguish between the general physiological retentiveness and the re tention of particular things, and talks as if both must be benefited by the same means. " I am now treating," he says, " a case of loss of memory in a per son advanced in years, who did not know that his memory had failed most remarkably till 1 told him of it. He is making vigorous efforts to bring it back again, and with partial success. The method pursued is to spend two hours daily, one in the morning and one in the evening, in exercising this faculty. The patient is instructed to give the closest attention to all that he learns, so that it shall be impressed on his mind clearly. He is asked to recall every evening all the facts and expe riences of the day, and again the next morning. Every name heard is written down and impressed on his mind clearly, and an effort made to recall it at intervals. Ten names from among public men are or dered to be committed to memory every week. A verse of poetry is to be learned, also a verse from the Bible, daily. He is asked to remem ber the number of the page in any book where any interesting fact is recorded. These and other methods are slowly resuscitating a failing memory." t I find, it very hard to believe that the memory of the poor old gentleman is a bit the better for all this torture except in respect of the particular facts thus wrought into it, the occurrences attended to and repeated on those days, the names of those politicians, those Bible verses, etc., etc. In another place Dr. Holbrook quotes the account given by the late Thurlow Weed, journalist and politician, of his method of strengthening his memory. "My memory was a sieve. I could remember nothing. Dates, names, appointments, faces— everything escaped me. I said to mj wife, ' Catherine, I shall never make a successful politician, for I can not remember, and that is a prime necessity of politicians.' My wife *How to Strengthen the Memory; or, The Natural and Scientific Meth- ods of Never Forgetting. By M. H. Holbrook, M.D. New York (no date), t Page 39. 666 PSYCHOLOGY. told me I must train my memory. So when I came home that night, 1 sat down alone and spent fifteen minutes trying silently to recall with accuracy the principal events of the day. I could remember but little at first; now I remember that I could not then recall what I had for breakfast. After a few days' practice I found I could recall more. Events came back to me more minutely, more accurately, and more vividly than at first. After a fortnight or so of this, Catherine said. 4 Why don't you relate to me the events of the day, instead of recalling them to yourself ? It would be interesting, and my interest in it would be a stimulus to you.' Having great respect for my wife's opinion, I began a habit of oral confession, as it were, which was continued for almost fifty years. Every night, the last thing before retiring, I told her everything I could remember that had happened to me or about me during the day. I generally recalled the dishes I had had for break fast, dinner, and tea; the people I had seen and what they had said; the editorials I had written for my paper, giving her a brief abstract of them. I mentioned all the letters I had sent and received, and the very language used, as nearly as possible; when I had walked or ridden — I told her everything that had come within my observation. I found I could say my lessons better and better every year, and instead of the practice growing irksome, it became a pleasure to go over again the events of the day. I am indebted to this discipline for a memory of somewhat unusual tenacity, and I recommend the practice to all who wish to store up facts, or expect to have much to do with influencing men." * I do not doubt that Mr. Weed's practical command of his past experiences was much greater after fifty years lof this heroic drill than it would have been without it. Expecting to give his account in the evening, he attended better to each incident of the day, named and conceived it differently, set his mind upon it, and in the evening went over it again. He did more thinking about it, and it stayed with him in consequence. But I venture to affirm pretty confidently (although I know how foolish it often is to deny a fact on the strength of a theory) that the same matter, casually attended to and not thought about, would have stuck in his memory no better at the end than at the beginning of his years of heroic self-discipline. He had acquired a better method of noting and recording his experiences, but his physiological retentiveness was probably not a bit im proved, f * Op. cit. p. 100. f In order to test the opinion so confidently expressed in the text, I have tried to see whether a certain amount of daily training in learning poetry MEMORY. 667 All improvement of memory consists, then, in the in- provement of one's habitual methods of recording facts. by heart will shorten the time it takes to learn an entirely different kind of poetry. During eight successive days I learned 158 lines of Victor Hugo's ' Satyr.' The total number of minutes required for this was 131£ — it should be said that I had learned nothing by heart for many years. I then, work- kig for twenty-odd minutes daily, learned the entire first book of Paradise Lost, occupying 38 days in the process. After this training I went back to Victor Hugo's poem, and found that 158 additional lines (divided exactly as on the former occasion) took me 151 1 minutes. In other words, I commit ted my Victor Hugo to memory before the training at the rate of a line in 50 seconds, after the training at the rate of a line in 57 seconds, just the opposite result from that which the popular view would lead one to expect. But as I was peceptibly fagged with other work at the time of the second batch of Victor Hugo, I thought that might explain the retardation ; so I persuaded several other persons to repeat the test. Dr. W. H. Burnham learned 16 lines of In Memoriam for 8 days ; time, 14-17 minutes — daily average 14f. He then trained himself on Schiller's translation of the second book of the JEneid into German, 16 lines daily for 26 consecutive days. On returning to the same quantity of In Memo riam again, he found his maximum time 20 minutes, minimum 10, average 14ff „ As he feared the outer conditions might not have been as favorable this time as the first, he waited a few days and got conditions as near as possible identical. Tne result was . minimum time 8 minutes ; maximum 19^ ; average 14^. Mr. E. S. Drown tested himself on Virgil for 16 days, then again for 16 days, after training himself on Scott. Average time before training, 13 minutes 26 seconds ; after training, 12 minutes 16 seconds. [Sixteen days is too long for the test ; it gives time for training on the test-verse.] Mr. C. H. Baldwin took 10 lines for 15 days as his test, trained himself on 450 lines 'of an entirely different verse,' and then took 15 days more of the former verse 10 lines a day. Average result: 3 minutes 41 seconds before, 3 minutes 2 seconds after, training. [Same criticism as before.] Mr. E. A. Pease tested himself on Idyls of the King, and trained him- self on Paradise Lost. Average result of 6 days each time : 14 minutes 34 seconds before, 14 minutes 55 seconds after, training. Mr. Burnham Hav ing suggested that to eliminate facilitating effect entirely from the training verses one ought to test one's self a la Ebbinghaus on series of nonsense- syllables, having no analogy whatever with any system of expressive verses, I induced two of my students to perform that experiment also. The record is unfortunately lost ; but the result was a very considerable shortening of the average time of the second series of nonsense-syllables, learned after training. This seems to me, however, more to show the effects of rapid habituation to the nonsense-verses themselves than those of the poetry used between them. But I mean to prosecute the experiments farther, and will report in another place. One of my students having quoted a clergyman of his acquaintance who had marvellously improved by practice his power of learning his 668 PSYCHOLOGY. In the traditional terminology methods are divided into the mechanical, the ingenious, and the judicious. The mechanical methods consist in the intensification, pro longation, and repetition oi the impression to be remembered. The modern method of teaching children to read by black board work, in which each word is impressed by the four fold channel of eye, ear, voice, and hand, is an example of an improved mechanical method of memorizing. Judicious methods of remembering tilings are nothing but logical ways of conceiving them and working them into rational systems, classifying them, analyzing them into parts, etc., etc. All the sciences are such methods. Of ingenious methods, many have been invented, under the name of technical memories. By means of these systems it is often possible to retain entirely disconnected facts, lists of names, numbers, and so forth, so multitudinous as to be entirely unrememberable in a natural way. The method consists usually in a framework learned mechani cally, of which the mind is supposed to remain in secure and permanent possession. Then, whatever is to be re membered is deliberately associated by some fanciful analogy or connection with some part of this framework, and this connection thenceforward helps its recall. The best known and most used of these devices is the figure- alphabet. To remember numbers, e.g., a figure-alphabet is first formed, in which each numerical digit is represented by one or more letters. The number is then translated into such letters as will best make a word, if possible a word suggestive of the object to which the number belongs. sermons by heart, I wrote to the gentleman for corroboration. I append his reply, which shows that the increased facility is due rather to a change in his methods of learning than to his native retentiveness having grown by exercise : " As for memory, mine has improved year by year, except when in ill-health, like a gymnast's muscle. Before twenty it took three or four days to commit an hour-long sermon ; after twenty, two days, one day, half a day, and now one slow analytic, very attentive or adhesive reading does it. But memory seems to me the most physical of intellectual powers. Bodily ease and freshness have much to do with it. Then there is a great difference of facility in method. I used to commit sentence by sentence. Now I take the idea of the whole, then its leading divisions, then its subdivisions, then its sentences. " MEMORY. The word will then be remembered when the numbers alone might be forgotten. "The most common figure-alphabet is this: 1, 2/3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, t, n, m, r, 1, sh, g, f, b, s, d, j, k, v, p, c, ch, c, z, g, qu. "To briefly show its use, suppose it is desired to fix 1142 feet in a second as the velocity of sound : t, t, r, n, are the letters and order required. Fill up with vowels forming a phrase, like ' tight run ' and connect it by some such flight of the imagination as that if a man tried to keep up with the velocity of sound, he would have a tight run. When you recall this a few days later great care must be taken not to get confused with the velocity of light, nor to think he had a hard run which would be 3000 feet too fast." * Dr. Pick and others use a system which consists in linking together any two ideas to be remembered by means of an intermediate idea which will be suggested by the first and suggest the second, and so on through the list. Thus, " Let us suppose that we are to retain the following series of ideas : garden, hair, watchman, philosophy, copper, etc. . . . We can combine the ideas in this manner : garden, plant, hair of plant — hair ; hair, bonnet, watchman ;— watchman, wake, study, philosophy ; philosophy, chemistry, copper; etc. etc." (Pick.)f It is matter of popular knowledge that an impression is remembered the better in proportion as it is 1) More recent ; 2) More attended to ; and 3) More often repeated. The effect of recency is all but absolutely constant. Of two events of equal significance the remoter one will be the one more likely to be forgotten. The memories of childhood which persist in old age can hardly be compared with the events of the day or hour which are forgotten, for these latter are trivial once-repeated things, whilst the * E. Pick : Memory and its Doctors (1888), p. 7. \ This system is carried out in great detail in a book called ' Memory Training,' by Win. L. Evans (1889). 670 PSYCHOLOGY. childish reminiscences have been wrought into us during the retrospective hours of our entire intervening life. Other things equal, at all times of life recency promotes memory. The only exception I can think of is the unaccountable memory of certain moments of our childhood, apparently net fitted by their intrinsic interest to survive, but which are perhaps the only incidents we can remember out of the year in which they occurred. Everybody probably has isolated glimpses of certain hours of his nursery life, the position in which he stood or sat, the light of the room, what his father or mother said, etc. These moments so oddly selected for immunity from the tooth of time proba bly owe their good fortune to historical peculiarities which it is now impossible to trace. Yery likely we were re minded of them again soon after they occurred ; that be came a reason why we should again recollect them, etc., so that at last they became ingrained. The attention which we lend to an experience is propor tional to its vivid or interesting character ; and it is a no- torious fact that what interests us most vividly at the time is, other things equal, what we remember best. An impres sion may be so exciting emotionally as almost to leave a scar upon the cerebral tissues ; and thus originates a path ological delusion. " A woman attacked by robbers takes all the men whom she sees, even her own son, for brigands bent on killing her. Another woman sees her child run over by a horse ; no amount of reasoning, not even the sight of the living child, will persuade her that he is not killed. A woman called ' thief ' in a dispute remains convinced that every one accuses her of stealing (Esquirol). Another, at tacked with mania at the sight of the fires in her street during the Commune, still after six months sees in her de lirium flames on every side about her (Luys), etc., etc." ' On the general effectiveness of both attention and repe tition I cannot do better than copy what M. Taine has written : " If we compare different sensations, images, or ideas, we find that their antitudes for revival are not equal. A large number of them are * Paulhan, L'Activite mental, et les Elements de 1'Esprit (1888), p. 70. MEMORY. 671 obliterated, and never reappear through life ; for instance, I drove through Paris a day or two ago, and though I saw plainly some sixty or eighty new faces, I cannot now recall any one of them ; some extra ordinary circumstance, a fit of delirium, or the excitement of haschish would be necessary to give them a chance of revival. On the other hand, there are sensations with a force of revival which nothing de stroys or decreases. Though, as a rule, time weakens and impairs our strongest sensations, these reappear entire and intense, without having lost a particle of their detail, or any degree of their force. M. Brierre de Boismont, having suffered when a child from a disease of the scalp, asserts that ' after fifty-five years have elapsed he can still feel his hair pulled out under the treatment of the skull-cap.'1 — For my own part, after thirty years, i remember feature for feature the appearance of the theatre to which I was taken for the first time. From the third row of boxes, the body of the theatre appeared to me an immense well, red and flaming, swarming with heads ; below, on the right, on a narrow floor, two men and a woman entered, went out, and re-entered, made gestures, and seemed to me like lively dwarfs : to my great surprise, one of these dwarfs fell on his knees, kissed the lady's hand, then hid behind a screen ; the other, who was coming in, seemed angry, and raised his arm. I was then seven, I could understand nothing of what was going on ; but the well of crimson velvet was so crowded, gilded, and bright, that after a quarter of an hour I was, as it were, intoxicated, and fell asleep. " Every one of us may find similar recollections in his memory, and may distinguish in them a common character. The primitive impres sion has been accompanied by an extraordinarg degree of attention, either as being horrible or delightful, or as being new, surprising, and out of proportion to the ordinary run of our life ; this it is we express by saying that we have been strongly impressed ; that we were ab sorbed, that we could not think of anything else ; that our other sen sations were effaced ; that we were pursued all the next day by the re sulting image ; that it beset us, that we could not drive it away ; that all distractions were feeble beside it. It is by force of this dispro portion that impressions of childhood are so persistent ; the mind being quite fresh, ordinary objects and events are surprising. At present, after seeing so many large halls and full theatres, it is impossible for me, when I enter one, to feel swallowed up, engulfed, and, as it were, lost in a huge dazzling well. The medical man of sixty, who has expe rienced much suffering, both personally and in imagination, would be less upset now by a surgical operation than when he was a child. "Whatever may be the kind of attention, voluntary or involuntary, it always acts alike ; the image of an object or event is capable of re vival, and of complete revival, in proportion to the degree of atten* tion with which we have considered the object or event. We put this rule in practice at every moment in ordinary life. If we are apply ing ourselves to a book or are in lively conversation, while an air 672 PSYCHOLOGY. Is being sung in the adjoining room, we do not retain it \ we vaguely that there is singing going on, and that is all We then stop our reading or conversation, we lay aside all internal preoccupa tions and external sensations which our mind or the outer world can throw in our way ; we close our eyes, we cause a silence within and about us, and, if the air is repeated, we listen. We say then that we have listened with all our ears, that we have applied our whole minds. If the air is a fine one, and has touched us deeply, we add that we have been transported, uplifted, ravished, that we have forgotten the world and ourselves; that for some minutes our soul was dead to all but sounds. . . . " This exclusive momentary ascendency of one of our states of mind explains the greater durability of its aptitude for revival and for more complete revival. As the sensation revives in the image, the image reappears with a force proportioned to that of the sensation. What we meet with in the first state is also to be met with in the second, since the second is but a revival of the first. So, in the struggle for life, in which all our images are constantly engaged, the one furnished at the outset with most force retains in each conflict, by the very law of repe tition which gives it being, the capacity of treading down its adversa ries ; this is why it revives, incessantly at first, then frequently, until at last the laws of progressive decay, and the continual accession of new impressions take away its preponderance, and its competitors, finding a clear field, are able to develop in their turn. " A second cause of prolonged revivals is repetition itself. Every one knows that to learn a thing we must not only consider it attentively, but consider it repeatedly. We say as to this in ordinary language, that an impression many times renewed is imprinted more deeply and exactly on the memory. This is how we contrive to retain a language, airs of music, passages of verse or prose, the technical terms and propo sitions of a science, and still more so the ordinary facts by which our conduct is regulated. When, from the form and color of a currant- jelly, we think of its taste, or, when tasting it with our eyes shut, we magine its red tint and the brilliancy of a quivering slice, the images in our mind are brightened by repetition. Whenever we eat, or drink, or walk, or avail ourselves of any of our senses, or commence or con tinue any action whatever, the same thing happens. Every man and every animal thus possesses at every moment of life a certain stock of clear and easily reviving images, which had their source in the past in a confluence of numerous experiences, and are now fed by a flow of re newed experiences. When I want to go from the Tuileries to the Pan theon, or from my study to the dining-room, I foresee at every turn the colored forms which will present themselves to my sight ; it is oth erwise in the case of a house where I have spent two hours, or of a town where I have stayed three days ; after ten years have elapsed the images will be vague, full of blanks, sometimes they will not exist, and i shall have to seek my way or shall lose myself. — This new property of MEMORY. 673 images is also derived from the first. As every sensation tends to re- rive in its image, the sensation twice repeated will leave after it a double tendency, that is, provided the attention be as great the second time as the first ; usually this is not the case, for, the novelty diminishing, the interest diminishes ; but if other circumstances renew the interest, or if the will renovates the attention, the incessantly increasing tendency will incessantly increase the chances of the resurrection and integrity af the image.'1* If a phenomenon is met with, however, too often, and with too great a variety of contexts, although its image is retained and reproduced with correspondingly great facil ity, it fails to come up with any one particular setting, and the projection of it backwards to a particular past date consequently does not come about. We recognize but do not remember it — its associates form too confused a cloud. No one is said to remember, says Mr. Spencer, " that the object at which he looks has an opposite side ; or that a cer tain modification of the visual impression implies a certain distance ; or that the thing he sees moving about is a live animal. To ask a man whether he remembers that the sun shines, that fire burns, that iron is hard, would be a misuse of language. Even the almost fortuitous coiv nections among our experiences cease to be classed as memories when they have become thoroughly familiar. Though, on hearing the voice cf some unseen person slightly known to us, we say we recollect to whom the voice belongs, we do not use the same expression respecting the voices of those with whom we live. The meanings of words which in childhood have to be consciously recalled seem in adult life to be immediately present." f These are cases where too many paths, leading to too diverse associates, block each other's way, and all that the mind gets along with its object is a fringe of felt familiarity or sense that there are associates. A similar result comes about when a definite setting is only nascently aroused. We then feel that we have seen the object already, but when or where we cannot say, though we may seem to ourselves to be on the brink of saying it. That nascent cerebral excita tions can effect consciousness with a sort of sense of the imminence of that which stronger excitations would make us definitely feel, is obvious from what happens when we * On Intelligence, i. 77-82. f Psychology, § 201. 674 PSYCHOLOGY. seek to remember a name. It tingles, it trembles on the verge, but does not come. Just such a tingling and trem bling of unrecovered associates is the penumbra of recog nition that may surround any experience and make it seem familiar, though we know not why.* * Professor HSffding considers that the absence of contiguous associates distinctly though t-of is a proof that associative processes are not concerned in these cases of instantaneous recognition where we get a strong sense of familiarity with the object, but no recall of previous time or place. His theory of what happens is that the object before us, A, comes with a sense of familiarity whenever it awakens a slumbering image, a, of its own past self, whilst without this image it seems unfamiliar. The quality of familiarity is due to the coalescence of the two similar processes A -f a in the brain (Psychologic, p. 188 ; Vierteljsch. f. wiss. Phil., xm. 432 [1889]). This explanation is a very tempting one where the phenomenon of recognition is reduced to its simplest terms. Experiments have been performed in Wundt's laboratory (by Messrs. Wolfe, see below, p. 679, and Lehmann (Philoso- phische Studien, v. 96), in which a person had to tell out of several closely re- sembling sensible impressions (sounds, tints of color) presented, which of them was the same with one presented a moment before. And it does seem here as if the fading process in the just-excited tract must combine with the process of the new impression to give to the latter a peculiar sub jective tinge which should separate it from the impressions which the other objects give. But recognition of this immediate sort is beyond our power after a very short time has intervened. A couple of minutes' in terval is generally fatal to it ; so that it is impossible to conceive that our frequent instantaneous recognition of a face, e.g., as having been met before, takes place by any such simple process. Where we as sociate a head of classification with the object, the time-interval has much less effect. Dr. Lehmann could identify shades of gray much more successfully and permanently after mentally attaching names or numbers to them. Here it is the recall of the contiguous associate, the number or name, which brings about the recognition. Where an experience is complex, each element of the total object has had the other elements for its past contiguous associates. Each element thus tends to revive the other elements from within, at the same time that the outward object is making them revive from without. We have tl-us, whenever we meet a familiar objec.t, that sense of expectation gratified which is so large a, factor in our aesthetic emotions ; and even were there no ' fringe of ten dency ' toward the arousal of extrinsic associates (which there certainly al ways is), still this intrinsic play of mutual association among the parts would give a charaUer of ease to familiar percepts which would make of them a distinct subjective class. A process fills its old bed in a different way from that in which it makes a new bed. One can appeal to introspec tion for proof. When, for example, I go into a slaughter-house into which I once went years ago, and the horrid din of the screaming hogs strikes me with the overpowering sense of identification, when the blood-stained face of the ' sticker,' whom I had long ceased to think of, is immediate^ MEMORY. 675 There is a curious experience which everyone seems to have had — the feeling that the present moment in its com pleteness has been experienced before — we were saying jusf this thing, in just this place, to just these people, etc. This ' sense of pre-existence ' has been treated as a great mys tery and occasioned much speculation. Dr. Wigan con sidered it due to a dissociation of the action of the two hemi spheres, one of them becoming conscious a little later than the other, but both of the same fact.* I must confess that recognized as the face that struck me so before; when the dingy and red dened woodwork, the purple-flowing floor, the smell, the emotion of dis gust, and all the details, in a word, forthwith re-establish themselves as familiar occupants of my mind ; the extraneous associates of the past time are anything but prominent. Again, in trying to think of an engraving, say the portrait of Rajah Brooke prefixed to his biography, I can do so only partially; but when I take down the book and, looking at the actual face, am smitten with the intimate sense of its sameness with the one I was striving to resuscitate, — where in the experience is the element of extrinsic association? In both these cases it surely feels as if the moment when the sense of recall is most vivid were also the moment when all extraneous associates were most suppressed. The butcher's face recalls the former walls of the shambles; their thought recalls the groaning beasts, and they the face again, just as I now experience them, with no different past ingre- iient. In like manner the peculiar deepening of my consciousness of the Rajah's physiognomy at the moment when I open the book and say " Ah! that's the very face! " is so intense as to banish from my mind all collateral circumstances, whether of the present or of former experiences. But here it is the nose preparing tracts for the eye, the eye preparing them for the mouth, the mouth preparing them for the nose again, all these processes involving paths of contiguous association, as defended in the text. I can not agree, therefore, with Prof. Hoffding, in spite of my respect for him as a psychologist, that the phenomenon of instantaneous recognition is only explicable through the recall and comparison of the thing with its own past image. Nor can I see in the facts in question any additional ground foi reinstating the general notion which we have already rejected (supra, p. 592) that a ' sensation ' is ever received into the mind by an 'image' oi its own past self. It is received by contiguous associates; or if they form too faint a fringe, its neural currents run into a bed which is still ' warm ' from just-previous currents, and which consequently feel different from currents whose bed is cold. I agree, however, with Hoffding that Dr. Lehman n's experiments (many of them) do not seem to prove the point which he seeks to establish. Lehmann, indeed, seems himself to believe that we recognize a sensation A by comparing it with its own past image