The Principles of Psychology, Vols. 1-2

other place, called * front,' which is given us by certain sen-* sations of the arm and hand or of the head and body. But at the first moment of our optical experience, even though we already had an acquaintance with our head, hand, and body, we could not possibly know anything about their relations to this new seen object. It could not be immediately located in respect of them. How its place agrees with the places which their feelings yield is a matter of which only later experience can inform us; and in the next chapter we shall see with some detail how later experience does this by means of discrimination, association, selection, and other constantly working functions of the mind. When, therefore, the baby grasps at the moon, that does not mean that what he sees fails to give him the sensation which he afterwards knows as distance ; it means only that he has not learned at what tactile or maniial distance things which appear at that visual distance are.^ And when a person just operated for cataract gropes close to his face for far-off objects, that only means the same thing. All the ordinary optical signs of differing distances are absent from the poor creature's sensation anyhow. His vision is monocular (only one eye being operated at a time); the lens is gone, and everything is out of focus; he feels photophobia, lachrymation, and other painful resident sensations of the eyeball itself, whose place he has long since learned to know in tactile terms ; what wonder, then, that the first tactile reaction which the new sensations provoke should be one associated with the tactile situation of the organ itself? And as for his assertions about the matter, what wonder, again, if, as Prof. Paul Janet says, they are still expressed in the tactile language which is the only one he knows.

" To be toiujhed means for him to receive an impression without first making a movement." His eye gets such an impression now ; so he can only say that the objects are * touching it.' "All his language, borrowed from touch, but applied to the objects of his sight, make us think that he perceives differently from ourselves, * In reality it probably means only a restless movement of desire, which he might make even after he had become aware of his impotence to touch the object.

whereas, at bottom, it is only his different way of talking about the same experience." * The other cases of translocation of our sensations are equally easily interpreted without supposing any * projection ' from a centre at which they are originally perceived. Unfortunately the details are intricate ; and what I say now can only be made fully clear when we come to the next chapter. We shall then see that we are constantly selecting certain of our sensations as realities and degrading others to the status of signs of these. When we get one of the signs we think of the reality signified ; and the strange thing is that then the reality (which need not be itself a sensation at all at the time, but only an idea) is so interesting that it acquires an hallucinatory strength, which may even eclipse that of the relatively uninteresting sign and entirely divert our attention from the latter. Thus the sensations to which our joints give rise when they rotate are signs of what, through a large number of other sensations, tactile and optical, we have come to know as the movement of the whole limb. This movement of the whole limb is what we think of when the joint's nerves are excited in that way ; and its place is so much more important than the joint's place that our sense of the latter is taken up, so to speak, into our perception of the former, and the sensation of the movement seems to diffuse itself into our very fingers and toes. But by abstracting our attention from the suggestion of the entire extremity we can perfectly well perceive the same sensation as if it were concentrated in one spot. We can identify it with a differently located tactile and visual image of * the joint ' itself.

Just so when we feel the tip of our cane against the ground. The peculiar sort of movement of the hand (impossible in one direction, but free in every other) which we experience when the tip touches * the ground,' is a sign to us of the visual and tactile object which we already * Revue Philosophique, vii. p. 1 ff., an admirable critical article, in the course of which M. Janet gives a bibliography of the cases in question. See also Dunan: tbid. xxv. 165-7. They are also discussed and similarly interpreted by T. K. Abbot : Sight and Touch (1864), chapter x.

know under that name. We think of ' the ground ' as being there and giving us the sensation of this kind of movement. The sensation, we say, comes/row the ground. The ground's place seems to be its place ; although at the same time, and for very similar practical reasons, we think of another optical and tactile object, ' the hand ' namely, and consider that its place also must be the place of our sensation. In other words, we take an object or sensible content A, and confounding it with another object otherwise known, B, or with two objects otherwise known, B and C, we identify its place with their places. But in all this there is no ^projecting ' (such as the extradition-philosophers talk of) of A out of an original place; no primitive location which it first occupied, away from these other sensations, has to be contradicted ; no natural ' centre,' from which it is expelled, exists. That would imply that A aboriginally came to us in definite local relations with other sensations, for to be out of B and C is to be in local relation with them as much as to be in them is so. But it was no more out of B and C than it was in them when it first came to us. It simply had nothing to do with them. To say that we feel a sensation's seat to be * in the brain ' or ' against the eye ' or ' under the skin ' is to say as much about it and to deal with it in as non-primitive a way as to say that it is a mile off. These are all secondary perceptions, wa^^s of defining the sensation's seat per aliud. They involve numberless associations, identifications, and imaginations, and admit a great deal of vacillation and uncertainty in the result.*

I conclude, tlwn, that there is no truth in the ' eccentric projection ' theory. It is due to the confused assumption that the bodily processes which cause a sensation must also be its seat, f But sensations have no seat in this sense. They * The intermediary and shortened locations of the lost hand and foot in the amputation cases also show this. It is easy to see why the phantom foot might continue to follow the position of the artificial one. But I confess that I cannot explain its half way-positions.

f It is from this confused assumption that the time-honored riddle comes, of how, with an upside-down picture on the retina, we can see things right-side up. Our consciousness is naively supposed to inhabit the become seats for each other, as fast as experience associates them together ; but that violates no primitive seat possessed by any one of them. And though our sensations cannot then so analyze and talk of themselves, yet at their very first appearance quite as much as at any later date are they cognizant of all those qualities which we end by extracting and conceiving under the names of objectivity, exteriority, and extent. It is surely subjectivity and interiority which are the notions latest acquired by the human mind. *

picture and to feel the picture's position as related to other objects of space. But the truth is that the picture is non-existent either as a habitat or as anything else, for immediate consciousness. Our notion of it is an enormously late conception. The outer object is given immediately with all those qualities which later are named and determined in relation to other sensations. The ' bottom ' of this object is where we see what by touch we afterwards know as onxfeet, the ' top ' is the place in which we see what we know as other people's heads, etc., etc. Berkeley long ago made this matter perfectly clear (see his Essay towards a new Theory of Vision,

* For full justification the reader must see the next chapter. He may object, against the summary account given now, that in a babe's immediate field of vision the various things which appear are located relatively to each other from the outset. I admit that if discriminated, they would appear so located. But they are parts of the content of one sensation, not sensations separately experienced, such as the text is concerned with. The fully developed 'world,' in which all our sensations ultimately find location, is nothing but an imaginary object framed after the pattern of the field of vision, by the addition and continuation of one sensation upon another in an orderly and systematic way. In corroboration of my text I must refer to pp. 57-60 of Riehl's book quoted above on page 33, and to Uphues : Wahrnehmung und Empfindung (1888), especially the Mnleitung and pp. 51-61.

Sensations, once experienced, modify the nervous organisnit BO that copies of them arise again in the mind after the original outward stimulus is gone. No mental copy, however, can arise in the mind, of any kind of sensation which has never been directly excited from without. The blind may dream of sights, the deaf of sounds, for years after they have lost their vision or hearing ; * but the man born deaf can never be made to imagine what sound is like, nor can the man born blind ever have a mental vision. In Locke's words, already quoted, " the mind can frame unto itself no one new simple idea." The originals of them all must have been given from without. Fantasy, or ImaginatioQ, are the names given to the faculty of reproducing copies of originals once felt. The imagination is called * reproductive ' when the copies are literal ; * productive ' when elements from different originals are recombined so as to make new wholes.

After-images belong to sensation rather than to imagination ; so that the most immediate phenomena of imagination would seem to be those tardier images (due to what the Germans call Sinnesgeddchtniss) which were spoken of in Vol. I, p. 647, — coercive hauntings of the mind by echoes of unusual experiences for hours after the latter have taken place. The phenomena ordinarily ascribed to imagination, however, are those mental pictures of possible sensible

* Prof. Jastrow has ascertained by statistical inquiry among the blind that if their blindness have occurred before a period embraced between the fifth and seventh years the visual centres seem to decay, and visual dreams and images are gradually outgrown. If sight is lost after the seventh year, visual imagination seems to survive through life. See Prof. J. 's interesting article on the Dreams of the Blind, in the New Princeton Review for January 1888.

experiences, to which the ordinary processes of associative thought give rise. When represented with surroundings concrete enough to constitute a date, these pictures, when they revive, form recollections. We have already studied the machinery of recollection in Chapter XVI. When the mental pictures are of data freely combined, and reproducing no past combination exactly, we have acts of imagination properly so called. For the ordinary * analytic ' psychology, each sensibly discernible element of the object imagined is represented by its own separate idea, and the total object is imagined by a ' cluster ' or * gang ' of ideas. We have seen abundant reason to reject this view (see p. 276 ff.). An imagined object, however complex, is at any one moment thought in one idea, which is aware of all its qualities together. If I slip into the ordinary way of talking, and speak of various ideas * combining,' the reader will understand that this is only for popularity and convenience, and he will not construe it into a concession to the atomistic theory in psychology.

Hume was the hero of the atomistic theory. Not only were ideas copies of original impressions made on the senseorgans, but they were, according to him, completely adequate copies, and were all so separate from each other as to possess no manner of connection. Hume proves ideas in the imagination to be completely adequate copies, not by appeal to observation, but by a priori reasoning, as follows: "The mind cannot form any notion of quantity or quality, without forming a precise notion of the degrees of each," for "'tis confessed that no object can appear to the senses ; or in other words, that no impression* can become present to the mind, without being determined in its degrees both of quantity and quality. The confusion in which impressions are sometimes involved proceeds only from their faintness and unsteadiness, not from any capacity in the mind to receive any impression, which in its real existence has no particular degree nor proportion. That is a contradiction in terms; and even implies the flattest

of all contradictions, viz.^ that 'tis possible for the same thing both to be and not to be. Now since all ideas are derived from impressions, and are nothing but copies and representations of them, whatever is true of the one must be acknowledged concerning the other. Impressions and ideas differ only in their strength and vivacity. The foregoing conclusion is not founded on any particular degree of vivacity. It cannot therefore be affected by any variation in that particular. An idea is a weaker impression ; and as a strong impression must necessarily have a determinate quantity and quality, the case must be the same with its copy or representative." *

The slightest introspectiye glance will show to anyone the falsity of this opinion. Hume surely had images of his own works without seeing distinctly every word and letter upon the pages which floated before his mind's eye. His dictum is therefore an exquisite example of the way in which a man will be blinded by a priori theories to the most flagrant facts. It is a rather remarkable thing, too, that the psychologists of Hume's own empiricist school have, as a rule, been more guilty of this blindness than their opponents. The fundamental facts of consciousness have been, on the whole, more accurately reported by the spiritualistic writers. None of Hume's pupils, so far as I know, until Taine and Huxley, ever took the pains to contradict the opinion of their master. Prof. Huxley in his brilliant little work on Hume set the matter straight in the following words :

** When complex impressions or complex ideas are reproduced as memories, it is probable that the copies never give all the details of the originals with perfect accuracy, and it is certain that they rarely do so. No one possesses a memory so good, that if he has only once observed a natural object, a second inspection does not show him something that he has forgotten. Almost all, if not all, our memories are therefore sketches, rather than portraits, of the originals — the salient features are obvious, while the subordinate characters are obscure or unrepresented.

"Now, when several complex impressions which are more or less different from one another— let us say that out of ten impressions in each, six are the same in all, and four are different from all the rest — are successively presented to the mind, it is easy to see what must be the nature of the result. The repetition of the six similar impressions will strengthen the six corresponding elements of the complex idea, which will therefore acquire greater vividness ; while the four differing impressions of each will not only acquire no greater strength than they had at first, but, in accordance with the law of association, they wiU all tend to appear at once, and will thus neutralize one another.

"This mental operation may be rendered comprehensible by considering what takes place in the formation of compound photographs — when the images of the faces of six sitters, for example, are each received on the same photographic plate, for a sixth of the time requisite to take one portrait. The final result is that all those points in which the six faces agree are brought out strongly, while all those in which they differ are left vague ; and thus what may be termed a generic portrait of the six, in contradistinction to a specific portrait of any one, is produced.

" Thus our ideas of single complex impressions are incomplete in one way, and those of numerous, more or less similar, complex impressions are incomplete in another way ; that is to say, they are generic^ not specific. And hence it follows that our ideas of the impressions in question are not, in the strict sense of the word, copies of those impressions ; while, at the same time, they may exist in the mind independently of language. " The generic ideas which are formed from several similar, but not identical, complex experiences are what are called abstract or general ideas ; and Berkeley endeavored to prove that all general ideas are nothing but particular ideas annexed to a certain term, which gives them a more extensive signification, and makes them recall, upon occasion, other individuals which are similar to them. Hume says that he regards this as ' one of the greatest and the most valuable discoveries that has been made of late years in the republic of letters,' and endeavors to confirm it in such a manner that it shall be ' put beyond all doubt and controversy. '

" I may venture to express a doubt whether he has succeeded in his object ; but the subject is an abstruse one ; and I must content myself with the remark, that though Berkeley's view appears to be largely applicable to such general ideas as are formed after language has been acquired, and to all the more abstract sort of conceptions, yet that general ideas of sensible objects may nevertheless be produced in the way indicated, and may exist independently of language. Tn dreams, one sees houses, trees, and other objects, which are perfectly recognizable as such, but which remind one of the actual objects as seen ' out of the corner of the eye,' or of the pictures thrown by a badly-focussed magic lantern. A man addresses us who is like a figure seen in twilight ; or we travel through countries where every feature of the scenery is vague ; the outlines of the hills are ill-marked, and the rivers have no defined banks. They are, in short, generic ideas of many past impressions of men, hills, and rivers. An anatomist who occupies himself intently with the examination of several specimens of some new kind of animal, in course of time acquires so vivid a conception of its form and struc-

ture that the idea may take visible shape and become a sort of waking dream. But the figure which thus presents itself is generic, not specific. It is no copy of any one specimen, but, more or less, a mean of the series ; and there seems no reason to doubt that the minds of children before they learn to speak, and of deaf-mutes, are peopled wi*h similarly generated generic ideas of sensible objects." * Are Vague Images ' Abstract Ideas ' ? The only point which I am tempted to criticise in this account is Prof. Huxley's identification of these generic images with * abstract or general ideas ' in the sense of universal conceptions. Taine gives the truer vie^. He writes :

"Some years ago I saw in England, in Kew Gardens, for the first time, araucarias, and I walked along the beds looking at these strange plants, with their rigid bark and compact, short, scaly leaves, of a sombre green, whose abrupt, rough, bristling form cut in upon the fine softly-lighted turf of the fresh grass-plat. If I now inquire what this experience has left in me, I find, first, the sensible representation of an araucaria ; in fact, I have been able to describe almost exactly the form and color of the plant. But there is a difference between this representation and the former sensations, of which it is the present echo. The internal semblance, from which I have just made my description, is vague, and my past sensations were precise. For, assuredly, each of the araucarias I saw then excited in me a distinct visual sensation ; there are no two absolutely similar plants in nature ; I observed perhaps twenty or thirty araucarias ; without a doubt each one of them differed from the others in size, in girth, by the more or less obtuse angles of its branches, by the more or less abrupt jutting out of its scales, by the style of its texture ; consequently, my twenty or thirty visual sensations were different. But no one of these sensations has completely survived in its echo ; the twenty or thirty revivals have blunted one another ; thus upset and agglutinated by their resemblance they are confounded together, and my present representation is their residue only. This is the product, or rather the fragment, which is deposited in us, when we have gone through a series of similar facts or individuals.

Of our numerous experiences there remain on the following day four or five more or less distinct recollections, which, obliterated themselves, leave behind in us a simple colorless, vague representation, into which enter as components various reviving sensations, in an utterly feeble, incomplete, and abortive state. — But this representation is not the general and abstract idea. It is but its accompaniment, and, if I may say so, the ore from which it is extracted. For the representation, though badly sketched, is a sketch, the sensible sketch of a distinct individual. . . . But my abstract idea corresponds to the whole class ; it differs, then, from the representation of an individual. — Moreover, my abstract idea

is perfectly clear and determinate ; now that I possess it, I never fail to recognize an araucaria among the various plants whichmay be shown me ; it differs then from the confused and floating representation I have of some particular araucaria." * In other words, a blurred picture is just as much a single mental fact as a sharp picture is ; and the use of either picture by the mind to symbolize a whole doss of individuals is a new mental function, requiring some other modification of consciousness than the mere perception that the picture is distinct or not. I may bewail the indistinctness of my mental image of my absent friend. That does not prevent my thought from meaning him alone, however. Audi may mean all mankind, with perhaps a very sharp image of one man in my mind's eye. The meaning is a function of the more * transitive ' parts of consciousness, the * fringe ' of relations which we feel surrounding the image, be the latter sharp or dim. This was explained in a previous place (see p. 473 ff., especially the note to page 477), and I would not touch upon the matter at all here but for its historical interest.

Our ideas or images of past sensible experiences may then be either distinct and adequate or dim, blurred, and incomplete. It is likely that the difierent degrees in which different men are able to make them sharp and complete has had something to do with keeping up such philosophic disputes as that of Berkeley with Locke over abstract ideas. Locke had spoken of our possessing * the general idea of a triangle ' which " must be neither oblique nor rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once." Berkeley says :

'' If any man has the faculty of framing in his mind such an idea of a triangle as is here described, it is in vain to pretend to dispute him out of it, nor would I go about it. All I desire is that the reader would fully and certainly inform himself whether he has such an idea or no." f Until very recent years it was supposed by all philosophers that there was a typical human mind which all individual minds were like, and that propositions of universal validity could be laid down about such faculties as * the

t Principles, Introd. ^ 13. Ctompare al»o the passage quoted abor*, Imagination.' Lately, however, a mass of revelations have poured in, which make us see how false a view this is. There are imaginations, not *the Imagination,' and they must be studied in detail. The first breaker of ground in this direction was Fechner, in 1860. Fechner was gifted with unusual talent for subjective observation, and in chapter xuv of his ' Psychophysik' he gave the results of a most careful comparison of his own optical after-images, with his optical memory-pictures, together with accounts by several other individuals of their optical memory-pictures.* The result was to show a great

* The differences noted by Fechner between after-images and images of imagination proper are as follows : Seem unsubstantial, vaporous Are sharp in outline ; Are bright ; Cannot be voluntarily changed.. Are exact copies of originals. The field within which they appear (with closed eyes) is dark, contracted, flat, close to the eyes, in front, and the images have no perspective ; The attention seems directed forwards towards the sense-organ, in observing after-images.

Are darker than even the darkest black of the after-images ; Incessantly disappear, and have to be renewed by an effort of will. At last even this fails to revive them. Cannot violate the necessary laws of appearance of their originals — e. g. , a man cannot be imagined from in front and behind at once. The imagination must walk round him, so to speak ; The field is extensive in three dimensions, and objects can be imagined in it above or behind almost as easily as in front.