LiBRARY 
 
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 presented to the 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO 
 by 
 
 FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY 
 
 ME. JOHN C. ROSE 
 
 donor
 
 The Story of Thought and Feeling
 
 The Story of 
 Thought and Feeling 
 
 BY 
 FREDERICK RYLAND, M.A. 
 
 Author of " Psychology, an Introductory Manual" etc. 
 
 LONDON 
 GEORGE NEWNES, LIMITED 
 
 SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND 
 1900
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THIS little book is intended to serve as an intro- 
 duction to the study of some portions of the field 
 of Psychology. It deals with the elementary 
 phenomena of mental life in a more or less con- 
 crete and simple fashion, and avoids technicalities 
 as much as possible; not entirely, however, 
 because no clear notions can be obtained in any 
 department of human knowledge without the use 
 of at least a few technical terms. My chief 
 object has been to give a clear outline, free from 
 discussions on method and free from confusing 
 detail. 
 
 The book was written before Professor Bald- 
 win's volume in the present series (The Story of 
 the Mind) was published. I may perhaps be 
 permitted to recommend that work as a most 
 valuable sequel to the present. 
 
 FKEDERICK EYLAND. 
 PUTNEY.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PACK. 
 
 I. THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 9 
 II. MENTAL IMAGES 36 
 III. PERCEPTION AND ILLUSION - 58 
 IV. THE DATA OF PERCEPTION - 83 
 V. HOW WE COME TO KNOW THE POSI- 
 TION OF THINGS - - 107 
 VI. FEELING - - - 119 
 VII. MOVEMENT AND WILL - - 149 
 VIII. THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE - - l86
 
 The 
 
 Story of Thought and Feeling 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 As I walk down this suburban street, my mind 
 is occupied by a series of " objects,' 7 to which I 
 assign an existence apart from and external to 
 myself. The road and the pavement, the red 
 fronts of the houses, the trees in the garden, the 
 butcher's cart, the children going to school, and 
 the cloudy sky, I know to be somehow in my 
 mind ; they are (as 1 am at the present moment 
 aware of them) ideas of my own. But I also 
 know that, in a sense, they have a reality apart 
 from myself, and that % if I were to die or to drop 
 unconscious on the pavement they would con- 
 tinue to exist as realities. What leads me to 
 attribute to them an existence independent of 
 my consciousness we shall have to consider later; 
 for the present let us remember that these ideas 
 are by psychologists called percept*, and the act 
 of having such percepts is called perception. 
 Under certain conditions I may have a long 
 series of such pcvcepts without interruption ; the 
 
 9
 
 10 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 mind passes from one to another without any- 
 thing to divert it. Sometimes a part of the 
 series is, so to speak, doubled on itself. As I 
 follow with my eyes the figure of a friend on a 
 bicycle, I turn my head and that part of the 
 road through which I have passed recurs to me ; 
 the same houses appear again, but in the opposite 
 order, and other changes in the percepts appear. 
 I recognise them as essentially the same, how- 
 ever, in spite of minor changes. Less clearly 
 in the background, as it were, of my mind I am 
 occasionally aware of other percepts more pecu- 
 liar to myself the pressure of my clothes, the 
 pressure of my boots on my feet, and of my feet 
 on the pavement, the scent and flavour of my 
 cigarette, perhaps a little headache. These less 
 important percepts do not arouse much interest 
 at the moment, but they are in some sense 
 present, and could be brought into fuller con- 
 sciousness if something called my attention to 
 them. 
 
 In addition to these ideas of things actually 
 present, or percepts, I am aware of ideas of a 
 different character coming before my mind. I 
 see a neighbour coming from his house, and I 
 suddenly remember that last time I saw him I 
 promised to lend him a book. Then an idea of a 
 quite distinct type presents itself, brought into my 
 consciousness by the percept of my neighbour. 
 The name of the book and the appearance of the 
 book are, in a way, present to me, so are the cir- 
 cumstances under which I made the promise, and 
 the polite expressions of pleasure with which he 
 Acknowledged my offer. But if I cast one of
 
 THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 11 
 
 those side-glances which people call introspective, 
 or if, within a short time, I recall the contents 
 of my mind at this moment of recollection, I 
 shall notice that these new ideas have a character 
 in many ways distinct from the percepts which 
 had previously occupied my attention. They are 
 fainter, less full of detail, less impressive. I do 
 not attribute to them the same immediate 
 reality that I do to the percepts of the houses, 
 the garden-fence, and my neighbour himself. 
 They are more easily put aside. Unless I close 
 my eyes I cannot shut out percepts entirely from 
 my mind. If I am a careful mental observer, I 
 am indeed aware that this affair of the book has 
 somewhat thrust the other ideas, the percepts, 
 into the background. But they will come back 
 into full consciousness instantly if I let my eyes 
 wander or my interest in the promise lapse. 
 The objects of my percepts are here and now 
 before me ; the objects of these other ideas, my 
 memories or images, are away from me. Under 
 ordinary circumstances, then, memories or images 
 are harder to keep in my mind than the others, 
 as well as less vivid and clear ; and I do not 
 believe that they refer to things immediately 
 present to me. 
 
 Let us suppose that my neighbour does not 
 see me, and continues his walk in front of me as 
 I go down the road. I suddenly see a carriage 
 drive by, and I recognise a local medical man ; 
 this percept leads to a fresh train of memories ; 
 I recall that another neighbour has been seri- 
 ously ill, and I wonder how he is ; I think that I 
 ought to have called or sent to know how he is.
 
 12 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 I resolve to call on my way back. This leads to 
 fresh memories. There are other things to be 
 seen to on my way home, and there I had 
 nearly forgotten it a telegram to despatch on 
 my way to the station. Just then I hear a bell, 
 and this percept, which derives all its impulsive 
 force from the fact that I recognise it as the 
 station-bell, rouses me effectually. All my small 
 anxieties disappear, and I hurry forward in the 
 hope of catching my train. 
 
 Let us stop here and consider the result of this 
 little bit of introspective observation somewhat 
 more closely. I notice that there has been a 
 series of mental facts before me ; and that the 
 percepts and memories, although they differ, yet 
 form one series more or less continuous. True, 
 there has been constant change ; but the changes 
 have, as a rule, been gradual, one percept slowly 
 passing into another, one image giving place 
 without any appreciable gap to the next, Once 
 or twice, indeed, there has been a more or less 
 sudden intrusion. The railway bell, for instance, 
 seemed to cut the series in two ; a new set of 
 images rushed upon me, I thought of the station, 
 of the train running into it, of the fact that I really 
 must not miss this train. But reflection, or as it 
 is sometimes called, retrospection (which I must 
 confirm by direct introspection when I get an op- 
 portunity) shows me that side by side with this 
 great and sudden change in the principal series 
 of memories certain other ideas persisted, namely 
 those percepts of the road, the houses, the slcy, 
 and so on ; as well as the less prominent percepts 
 derived from the contact with my clothes, from
 
 THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 13 
 
 my cigarette, etc. They may have been all over- 
 looked at the time, but they were there, and 
 they helped to give the sense of continuity to 
 the main stream. Whenever we observe the 
 contents of our mind we shall find the same thing. 
 There is always constant change going on in it ; 
 and there is yet a substantial sameness. 
 
 It is true that gaps do appear in it. When we 
 wake up in the morning from a dreamless sleep 
 and when we drop oft' into sleep at night, there 
 is, no doubt, a breach. Some psychologists con- 
 sider that there is always a small degree of con- 
 sciousness present even in the deepest sleep; but 
 for all practical purposes AVG may agree with 
 Locke that the train of consciousness is some- 
 times broken, or, as he puts it, that " the mind 
 thinks not always. 1 ' The reader can test this for 
 himself by taking laughing-gas. My own ex- 
 perience tells me that ordinarily, though not 
 always, there is an absolute gap in time between 
 the two trains of consciousness, before and after 
 I have inhaled it ; although of course there are a 
 great many percepts common to the two. for in- 
 stance, the dentist's room, the operator, and so on. 
 The thoughtful reader may ask, What is it, then, 
 that constitutes the link between the two ? How 
 is it that they are both mine, that the new train 
 of percepts and images will have a practical 
 identity with the old I This question is an ex- 
 tremely interesting one, but AVC must content 
 ourselves fcr the present with merely noting the 
 difficulty and leaA'ing it unsoh'ed. 
 
 Continuing to reflect on my train of conscious- 
 ness, I notice further that the different percepts
 
 14 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 and images did not all interest me to the same 
 degree or in the same way. Some, as we saw, 
 never took any real hold of my mind ; such Avere 
 the sensations due to my clothes. Others, for 
 instance, the butcher's cart, got only a momentary 
 glance; while yetothers occupied all myattention. 
 Such were the memory of my broken promise 
 and the percept of the station-bell. Those that 
 <lid attract my attention produced a special effect 
 upon me, which we call feeling or emotion. AY hen 
 I remembered my broken promise I felt a little 
 annoyed ; when I heard the bell I felt anxious, 
 and perhaps a little surprised. There seems 
 reason to think that some degree of emotion ac- 
 companies all conscious trains, though the amount 
 varies very much. If I ask myself what it is 
 that distinguishes emotions from ideas, I may not 
 be able to give a complete or satisfactory answer, 
 but I see this, at any rate, that the feeling of 
 annoyance was not a definite idea, which came 
 into consciousness as a part of the series of ideas, 
 taking its place between a preceding idea and a 
 succeeding idea ; that it was not like the ideas 
 more or less precise in outline, so that I can give 
 any clear account of its shape and contents ; that 
 it gave me an " all-overish " kind of consciousness, 
 so that I seemed to be aware of it in my body 
 and limbs, but not as a distinguishable percept, 
 like the pinching of a boot or even the contact 
 of my merino vest ; and further, that it impelled 
 me to action, for I remember that I made an im- 
 patient gesture with my hands and felt foolish 
 for ha.ving done so. 
 
 These may not be sufficiently marked features
 
 THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 15 
 
 to distinguish emotion from ideas always and in 
 every case ; but they will serve our purpose for 
 the present. We see that the feelings do not 
 clearly form part of the train of consciousness ; 
 that is, they do not form items in it. But they, 
 so to speak, soak into it and add colour to it; 
 and under ordinary conditions, at any rate, it is 
 not until some degree of emotion arises that we 
 begin to act on an idea, 
 
 Attention. 
 
 We have in the present chapter several times 
 employed the term attention. Every one knows 
 what is meant by the word, so far that he can 
 recognise the mental fact denoted by it. The 
 external signs of attention are so well marked 
 that there is seldom any difficulty in detecting 
 it, or its opposite, in others. But in order to be 
 somewhat more precise, let us consider the matter 
 more closely. 
 
 Let us suppose that we are sitting in an easy- 
 chair reading a not too interesting paragraph in 
 A newspaper. A bell is heard, and does not 
 rouse us ; a servant opens the front door, and 
 then we suddenly hear a strange voice, pitched 
 in rather a loud tone. The servant replies in an 
 agitated way then there is a loud noise as of 
 something upset. Our attention is at once fully 
 aroused, and we listen with all our might. If 
 -any one could see us, he would notice that our 
 eyes are set, our forehead is knitted, our head is 
 held rigidly erect ; we are sitting bolt upright, 
 clutching the elbows of the chair, in which a
 
 1C THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 minute ago we were lolling listlessly. Simul- 
 taneously mental changes have occurred. In- 
 stead of the images feebly aroused by the news- 
 paper paragraph, instead of the accompanying 
 half-perceived sights and sounds of the sitting- 
 room, the tones of the strange voice occupy the 
 whole of our mind. Nearly everything else dis- 
 appears. AVe do not notice that the cat has 
 roused herself, that a big lump of coal has fallen 
 on the hearth, that the clock has struck the half- 
 hour. Any of these a few minutes ago would 
 have obtained a place in our train of conscious- 
 ness ; but they are overlooked now. Our \vhole 
 consciousness appears to be taken up by the 
 unknown voice. As a matter of fact, this is not 
 quite true ; the other ideas have receded further 
 into the background, but they have not entirely 
 disappeared. Still they have lost most of their 
 importance ; and we see clearly that in attention 
 our consciousness is limited in extent. This is 
 one of the most familiar facts in life, yet there 
 are people who are foolish enough to forget it. 
 Parents and nurses stupidly scold children who 
 are playing, reading, or even learning their 
 lessons, because they do not notice what is going 
 on in the room. The child who does notice 
 everything that is going on in the room is not 
 devoting its attention to the subject in hand : 
 and is on the high road to mental feebleness and 
 superficiality. A boy deep in his book cannot 
 notice the condition of the fire, or the position 
 of his grandmother's spectacles. The " bright " 
 children, who notice everything, will be usually 
 found incapable of effective attention to anything.
 
 THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 17 
 
 Further, it is seen that with attention our con- 
 sciousness is intensified. The skin-irritation which 
 passes unnoticed under ordinary circumstances 
 becomes intolerable if we constantly direct 
 attention to it ; and so, too, the unpleasant tone of 
 voice or the vulgar accent. It is well-known that 
 during a battle the soldier often overlooks a 
 wound. The other day I read of a bicycle 
 accident in which a man who had received a 
 large and dangerous wound, in the abdomen, 
 walked for some miles without noticing it, and 
 passed some time attending to his brother, who 
 had met, with merely a slight hurt. It was only 
 after the doctor had examined, his brother's 
 trifling injuries that his own serious condition 
 was noticed. Hypnotic experiments go to prove 
 the same thing. If a patient's attention is fixed 
 on some slight sensation, the sensation increase? 
 greatly in importance and presumably in in- 
 tensity. The component tones of a chord are 
 difficult to hear; but most musical amateurs 
 can distinguish them after little practice by 
 simply trying to attend to them. Some psy- 
 chologists 1 have denied that ideas to which 
 we attend increase in intensity ; but this denial 
 is not supported by facts. Of course the increase 
 is strictly limited in amount. You cannot by 
 attention increase the tick of a clock until it 
 becomes as loud as that of an ore-crushing 
 machine ; but you can intensify it to some extent. 
 At the same time the percept becomes more 
 
 *For instance Fechner and Miinsterberg. The latter, 
 however, admits that in the case of light sensation there 
 is increase of intensity. 
 
 B
 
 18 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 definite. This is exemplified in the case of the 
 inner notes of the chord just spoken of ; and other 
 examples will be found in the acquired ability of 
 the hunter to recognise marks of the passage of 
 animals where the novice can see nothing, and in 
 the power of the artist to see reflected colours on 
 surfaces which to the ordinary eye show nothing 
 but their own hue. 
 
 Another feature of attention, in fact its most 
 characteristic one, is the fixation of the ideas to 
 Avhich we attend. The mind is naturally, as we 
 have seen, in a state of change. There is a con- 
 stant alteration in the ideas immediately before 
 us, whether they are percepts or images Until 
 special interest is aroused, we let them slip by 
 Avithout attempting to stop them. We remain, 
 as it were, passive spectators of the procession. 
 When an idea arouses interest, we, so to speak, put 
 out our hand and detain it for a time. But the 
 effort soon becomes difficult, and in a few seconds 
 we find that our thoughts have wandered on 
 not very far, perhaps, but still away from the 
 idea which arrested us. At first sight this seems 
 absurd. It does not strike one as difficult to fix 
 the mind for a considerable time on one subject ; 
 in fact, this is almost the first lesson we learn in 
 "the conduct of the understanding," But though 
 the same subject is before us, we constantly 
 change our point of view. The mind hovers 
 about it. The attention is rapidly transferred 
 from one aspect to-another. When I look at the 
 inkstand before me, my full consciousness is given 
 to the shape, the colour, the material, the blots 
 on it, the amount of ink in it, and so on. There
 
 THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 19 
 
 is constant oscillation, although relatively to 
 other objects the attention is fixed. Let the 
 reader try this for himself, and he will be sur- 
 prised at the chai usefulness of his mind. Under 
 normal circumstances he does not retain exactly 
 the same thought, whether percept or image, for 
 more than a brief instant If the attention be- 
 comes quite fixed, one's consciousness gradually 
 becomes not only less wide but less intense, and 
 one either goes to sleep outright, or into that 
 strange state of consciousness known as the hyp- 
 notic or mesmeric trance. 
 
 For the beginner in psychology there is no 
 better \vay of studying the laws of attention 
 than to place two different photographs, or a 
 piece of print and a picture, in the two sides of a 
 stereoscope the old-fashioned box-shaped instru- 
 ment is the best and examine them closely. It 
 is well known that the stereoscope, by the shape 
 of the lenses, enables us to combine two very 
 similar pictures, so that one overlaps the other, 
 and the illusion of solidity is increased. If the 
 pictures are quite different they will not, of 
 course, be combined into a single picture ; but 
 the two images will be thrown, so to speak, on 
 the top of each other by the action of the lenses. 
 This optical effect, however, does not produce a 
 corresponding mental effect. We shall find that 
 we do not confuse together the images, as might 
 have been expected. Sometimes one prevails and 
 sometimes the other; while, at times, both are 
 combined, but seldom in equal proportions. As 
 a rule, the more forcible or interesting object will 
 prevail, .and the other disappear. Thus, if a face
 
 20 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 with well-marked features, or a piece of print, is 
 superposed on a blank space in the other picture, 
 the face or the print is seen and not the blank 
 space. But, at the same time, by fixing our 
 attention on the feebler or less interesting object 
 we can usually make it prevail over the other 
 one. This shows us that two incompatible per- 
 cepts cannot both occupy the focus of attention 
 at once, and that merely physical or physiologi- 
 cal causas do not of themselves determine which 
 of two rival percepts shall prevail. It is obvi- 
 ously not merely a contest between the actual 
 sensations of the two eyes By an effort we can 
 get entirely rid of one of the images, and then 
 the other looks as well defined as if both the pic- 
 tures had been alike. It is attention that decides 
 which of the two shall prevail. And attention is 
 determined by its own laws. If a part or the 
 whole of one of the objects has any special 
 interest for us, by reason of greater strength of 
 outline or otherwise, it will tend to get the upper 
 hand. Again, that percept with which we are 
 most familiar is more likely to be seen than the 
 other. Again, if we form a more or less precise 
 mental picture of one of the objects we shall pro- 
 bably see that one, while the picture which we 
 do not anticipate seeing will not be seen. 
 
 It will be found that it is not enough to make 
 up our mind to see with, say, the right eye only; 
 but that we must make up our mind which 
 picture we are going to see, we must preadjust 
 our attention for one particular portrait if we are 
 to sec that and not the other. The same thing 
 will be found true if we look at one and the same
 
 THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 21 
 
 object with spectacles having two differently 
 coloured glasses. For percepts of sight, then, we 
 establish by our experiments, (1) the existence of 
 rivalry of ideas, (2) that intensity and interest in 
 an object will, unless there is special attention to 
 the other, cause the former to prevail in the 
 struggle, (3) the fact that attention adds intensity 
 and definiteness to the object attended to, (4) 
 that it implies momentary loss of consciousness 
 for other objects, (5) that attention has special 
 conditions favourable to it, (6) that we attend 
 most easily by forming an anticipation of what 
 we want to perceive. 
 
 The same truths will be found to hold with 
 regard to images or memories, as well as per 
 cepts ; though we cannot use a stereoscope to 
 prove it. 
 
 What we call consciousness may then exist in 
 various degrees of intensity. In order to be re- 
 cognised as consciousness at all, it must be in 
 some degree concentrated. If we place a single 
 lighted candle in the midst of a huge cavern it 
 diffuses its light equally in all directions ; and if 
 we go even a hundred yards from it a certain 
 amount of light will fall on the page of an open 
 book, but so faint is the light that we cannot 
 recognise it, and we say that the book is in dark- 
 ness. But if we gather a large number of the 
 rays by means of a great convex lens and make 
 them converge on one point we shall be able to 
 read by this focus of light. We shall, however, 
 be able to see only a few letters at a time, and 
 the rest of the page will be darker than before, 
 because we have intercepted the rays that previ-
 
 22 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 ously fell upon it. Something like this is the case 
 with the mind. Even in the deepest sleep some 
 degree of consciousness is perhaps present ; when 
 we are fully awake and are earnestly attending a 
 very high degree of consciousness is present, hut 
 it is limited in extent. The total amount of con- 
 sciousness at our disposal varies ; and even at any 
 moment, with a given amount, it may be variously 
 distributed. If I sit watching the people in a 
 crowd, my attention is fully aroused, but it is 
 scattered over a wide area ; directly I fix a man 
 in the crowd whom I think I recognise, my con- 
 sciousness is still further heightened but it is 
 very much limited. For the instant I neglect 
 everything but the one man; I do not see the 
 buildings on the other side of the street, the rest 
 of the crowd (except a few persons just near him), 
 although the same physical stimuli are still 
 making impressions on my brain. This alone 
 shows us, we may remark, that the laws of mind 
 are not really derivable from the laws of man's 
 physical body, although they must be reconcilable 
 with these latter, and be in a sense parallel with 
 them. Subject to the fact that the total amount 
 of consciousness varies from hour to hour, it is 
 roughly true that the greater the intensity of 
 consciousness the less the area. The more fully 
 I attend to one given idea, the less I attend to all 
 other ideas except those in immediate relation to 
 that given idea. 
 
 Writers on the mechanism of sight make a dis- 
 tinction between what they call the field of vision 
 and what they call the point of vision. We see 
 with perfect clearness only the object directly
 
 THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 23 
 
 situated in the axis of the eye, the line which 
 joins the centre of the pupil with the centre of 
 the retina. Objects whose pictures fall nearer 
 the circumference of the retina are seen with 
 diminished clearness. Only experiment will 
 convince the reader that this is true, because all 
 our life we have been acquiring the art of disre- 
 garding this fact. For merely practical purposes 
 it is best not to be aware of it; for scientific 
 purposes, it is important to know it. We may 
 borrow the terms to describe the phenomena of 
 attention. The idea I am fully attending to is 
 at the paint or focus of attention ; lying round it 
 are other ideas, less distinct, which are in the 
 field of attention. This must not be thought of as 
 definitely marked off, but as passing into a region 
 of still less intense consciousness, the region of 
 sub-consciousness. Remember these terms are only 
 metaphors. We know very well that there is no 
 question of spaces or areas in the mind. But 
 there are varieties of intensity; and in this in- 
 tensity we note three well-marked grades which 
 we have called (1) the point or focus of attention, 
 (2) the field or marginal area of consciousness, 
 and (3) the area of sub-consciousness. 
 
 There is, of course, a difference between the 
 three cases. We know by direct introspection 
 that is, by direct observation that (1) and (2) 
 exist ; but the existence of (3) is a matter of 
 inference. What, then, are the reasons Avhich 
 have induced psychologists to accept the doctrine 
 of the existence of states of consciousness which 
 are not really conscious? And what do they 
 mean by an idea which is only sub-conscious, an
 
 24 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 idea which we cannot be directly aware of as an 
 idea? 
 
 Sub-consciousness. 
 
 The hypothesis of the existence of unconscious 
 or of sub-conscious ideas is adopted to explain 
 certain facts of perception and memory. The 
 percept of an object must be made up of a 
 number of indistinct, faint impressions which 
 produce no separate effect on the mind, but unite 
 in producing a total effect in which the individual 
 elements are indistinguishable. Thus my im- 
 pression of a grass-plot must be made up of the 
 impression of numberless green leaves, none of 
 which I can distinguish as leaves. The noise of 
 the waves on the beach must be made up of the 
 noises of an almost infinite number of separate 
 crashes and splashes, each of which produces 
 some effect on my mind, though so faint that I 
 cannot particularise it. 
 
 It may be argued that each infinitesimal effect 
 is not really a mental fact at all, but a physical 
 one ; that it is a change in the nerves of hearing, 
 unaccompanied by any change in the region of 
 mind. But this view, though possibly true, is 
 less probable than the other one ; since in Xature 
 continuity is the rule, sudden change the excep- 
 tion. It is much more likely that a very faint 
 impression on the nerves and brain is accom- 
 panied by a very faint mental change, than that 
 it is accompanied by no mental change. AYe 
 know that after a certain degree of nervous 
 stimulation has been reached consciousness ap- 
 pears. Thus if the muffin-man rings his bell all
 
 THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 25 
 
 down a long street as he approaches my house, I 
 at first do not hear him, but at length the sound 
 appears as an element in my consciousness. We 
 may suppose either that this appearance is a 
 sudden change with no kind of preparation, or 
 that it is gradual, and that the consciousness gets 
 more and more intense until it becomes aware of 
 itself, passing from the stage of sub-consciousness 
 to that of full consciousness. This latter seems 
 the more probable explanation ; in other words, 
 the doctrine of sub-conscious mental modifications 
 is more likely to be true than the doctrine of 
 unconscious brain modifications. 
 
 And in the case of memory we often find one 
 idea suggesting another idea through the media- 
 tion of a third idea which never really comes 
 before us at all. The idea A suggests B, through 
 the intermediate idea X, of which we are not 
 actually aware, but whose existence we only 
 afterwards infer. We are suddenly surprised by 
 the arrival of an entirely incongruous thought, 
 which seems to have no connection whatever 
 with any other thought or percept now before 
 our minds. On examination we trace the con- 
 necting idea X, and we can only suppose that X 
 has been aroused somewhere in the outskirts of 
 the vague marginal region of consciousness, but 
 has never become sufficiently intense to attract 
 attention. Readers will be able to supply 
 examples from their own experience, but here is a 
 well-known example given by Sir William Hamil- 
 ton, the famous Edinburgh Professor of Logic 
 and Metaphysics : " Thinking of Ben Lomond, 
 this thought was immediately followed by the
 
 26 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 thought of the Prussian system of education. 
 Now, conceivable connection between these two 
 ideas in themselves there was none. A little 
 reflection, however, explained the anomaly. On 
 my last visit to the mountain, I had met upon 
 its summit a German gentleman, and though I 
 had no consciousness of the intermediate and 
 unawakened links between Ben Lomond and the 
 Prussian schools, they were undoubtedly there 
 the German, Germany, Prussia and, these media 
 being admitted, the connection between the ex- 
 tremes was manifest." Hamilton points out the 
 analogy between these psychological facts of 
 association, and the passing onward of physical 
 movement through a series of objects themselves 
 unmoved. If a number of balls be suspended in 
 a row by strings so that they just touch, and the 
 first ball A be raised and allowed to fall on the 
 next, the last ball B will fly off from its neigh- 
 bour, the intermediate ones remaining still. 
 This, of course, is only a rough mechanical illus- 
 tration, and must by no means be taken as an 
 explanation of how one idea may rouse another 
 by means of intermediate ideas. 
 
 In the case of memory again it seems more 
 likely that the intermediate links are really facts 
 of mind and not merely facts of brain, changes 
 in the mental sphere though not in the full sense 
 of the term conscious. Continuity of operation 
 is everywhere found in both the mental and the 
 physical world, and it is more likely that the X 
 which links A and B is an idea, (of course ac- 
 companied as all ideas are by a change in the 
 cells and fibres of the brain,) than that it is a
 
 THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 2T 
 
 change merely in the brain, without any degree 
 of corresponding consciousness. 
 
 The existence of sub-conscious ideas, that is, 
 of ideas with so little intensity that they do not 
 actually appear in consciousness at all, is made 
 more probable by the phenomena of forgetfulness. 
 No sooner do we cease to attend to an idea than 
 it begins to fade. If we have occasion to recall 
 it within a short period there is little difficulty ; 
 but as time goes on the difficulty of recalling in- 
 creases unless it has been revived in the interval. 
 Thus I read of some event in this morning's 
 paper, a member of the Government has influenza. 
 If the name of this M.P. happens to be mentioned 
 to-day, or this week, I shall recall the fact of his- 
 having influenza ; in a month's time I shall 
 hardly remember it. In a year's time, even if I 
 were to meet him, I should be most unlikely to 
 think of his attack. The complex idea, Hrwm 
 + influenza, will have faded away into practical 
 nothingness ; but if anyone should mention the 
 attack I may recollect hearing about it, so that 
 it has not absolutely been destroyed. Some 
 abnormal circumstance may revive a memory 
 which has apparently long perished. In positions- 
 of great peril and in the delirium of fever men 
 sometimes remember trivial incidents of their 
 past life. The same thing is true of hypnotised 
 people. Persons usually unable to recall events 
 which happened to them before the age of seven, 
 have, when hypnotised, been able to recall events 
 which occurred at the age of three. Hypnotised 
 patients also frequently remember ideas suggested 
 to them in a previous hypnotic condition, which
 
 28 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 in the normal condition between they do not 
 remember. 
 
 The experiments of Beaunis, Gurney, Myers, 
 Podmore and other recent workers in this field of 
 research go far to establish the existence of sub- 
 conscious ideas, which direct introspection makes 
 probable. We may then provisionally assume 
 that besides the focus of attention, and the mar- 
 ginal field of consciousness, there exists a vast 
 territory of sub-consciousness, where the ideas 
 are of such low intensity that they can not 
 ordinarily be attended to at all. This sub-li- 
 minal consciousness (consciousness below the 
 threshold) of which we know so little, plays a 
 very important part in our mental life, particularly 
 in perception, memory, and emotion. What we 
 sec, what we remember, and how we feel are to a 
 large extent determined by facts which we must 
 call mental, but which never come into clear 
 consciousness. Just in the same way there are 
 degrees of heat which we cannot even recog- 
 nise as heat because they are so slight ; so 
 there are degrees of consciousness which we 
 cannot recognise as such. Lord Kelvin puts the 
 absolute zero point about 460 Fahrenheit below 
 freezing point. No actual cold has ever been 
 felt lower than about 90 Fahrenheit below 
 freezing point. And it is needless to say that 
 we should not recognise 90 Fahrenheit as a 
 degree of heat, though in point of fact it is being 
 nearly 400 above absolute zero. 
 
 We have, then, to think of our stream of con- 
 sciousness as something more than a simple flow 
 of ideas, a stream running between well-built
 
 THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 20 
 
 banks. We must imagine it as varying much 
 in depth and in breadth ; sometimes reduced to 
 a mere trickle and at other times a river in full 
 flood submerging its ordinary borders. Before 
 going to sleep the stream gets turned off into a 
 thin trickle, and so it seems to be during the 
 hypnotic trance ; only one series of ideas seems 
 to occupy the attention. Now the stream runs 
 swiftly and now slowly ; for sometimes the ideas 
 succeed each other with startling rapidity, as in 
 moments of excitement and strain, and at other 
 times only dawdle along in slow viscous flow, 
 like glue or treacle. Sometimes the stream 
 appears to divide bodily for a time, or to forsake 
 its old channel for a new one ; for the conscious- 
 ness may occasionally become, as it were, split 
 into two parts, neither of which is in clear relation 
 to the other one part of my consciousness may 
 be engaged in thinking thoughts which are un- 
 known to the rest of my consciousness; and 
 occasionally, too, the old consciousness seems to 
 come to an end, and a new one to establish 
 itself, knowing nothing of what has gone before. 
 Let us return to the subject of attention. We 
 have seen that attention constantly varies in 
 intensity, extent, direction and fixation ; that as we 
 walk along percepts and images lay hold of us 
 with different degrees of violence, and pull us 
 now this way and now that. We must not 
 represent it to ourselves as a bull's-eye lantern 
 turned now on one object and now on another ; 
 but as a lantern which is put out of focus and the 
 light of which is turned down as it is transferred 
 from one thing to another. It does not, to
 
 SO THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 change the metaphor, hop from one object to 
 another. If we notice carefully what happens, 
 we still see that attention is being focussed, then 
 diffused, then focussed again on a fresh object. 
 There is a kind of rhythm in this, a period of 
 emphasis followed by a period of relaxation, and 
 that again by a period of emphasis. We pass 
 not only from ideas to ideas and percepts to per- 
 cepts, but even from percepts to ideas without any 
 perceptible jolt, and vice versa. There are transi- 
 tions, but during the transitions the attention is 
 less vivid. 
 
 Inattention. 
 
 Inattention is as necessary to mental activity 
 as attention. Morbid attention to a particular 
 subject shows a tendency to insanity ; we often 
 speak of people being "mad on music" or "mad 
 on politics." A perfectly healthy mind has 
 special interests, but these are held in proper 
 check by other interests, so that it is always 
 possible for us not to attend to our hobby. 
 With the majority of people the difficulty is to 
 overcome the distractions of the world around 
 us. The child learning his task on a summer 
 morning in full sight of daisied meadows and 
 inviting comrades, the weary barrister getting up 
 his brief after dinner when he wants to be in the 
 smoking-room, are examples. The cases differ, 
 because the barrister has acquired greater ability 
 in withdrawing his attention from the counter- 
 attractions than the child, and has acquired 
 greater interest in subjects originally uninterest-
 
 THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 31 
 
 ing. He can keep his mind fixed, because he 
 reinforces the originally slight interest of his task 
 by interests of an indirect kind. He remembers 
 his fee, his reputation, his duty to his client, the 
 special technical features of the case, and other 
 sources of interest. These supply an artificial 
 attractiveness to his labour. At the same time, 
 not the strongest will c&a persevere against the 
 combination of total lack of interest in the subject 
 matter and considerable iviterest in the rival per- 
 cepts and ideas. We can only make repeated 
 efforts to exclude the latfcer, and let the subject 
 matter have fair play, so that whatever power of 
 stimulating attention it may have it can find time 
 to develop. Under ordinary circumstances the 
 constrained voluntary attention soon passes into 
 automatic attention ; the task becomes relatively 
 interesting and the temptations to attend else- 
 where less pressing. Voluntary attention pro- 
 perly so called is thus based on involuntary 
 attention. The most self-controlled can at best 
 only keep recalling the wandering thoughts, and 
 thus leave the intrinsic interest of the subject to 
 make itself felt. We help the process by using 
 our limbs and fingers, by walking up and down 
 the room, by " fidgeting " with objects in our 
 reach (which stupid teachers are much too ready 
 to regard as a serious crime) and by other ways 
 of working off superabundant nervous energy. 
 It has been suggested that in this way the 
 nervous currents which are set up by the sights 
 and sounds around us flow off at once without 
 invading the higher centres of the brain, and thus 
 disturbing the processes in the brain which are 
 necessary to thought.
 
 32 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 "\Ve attend only to those percepts which in- 
 terest us. Most elementary percepts are interest- 
 ing only in so far as they are signs which betoken 
 the presence of other elementary percepts. Thus 
 the comparative sizes of objects at different 
 distances and the other features which help to 
 make up what we call "perspective/' are only 
 interesting to most of us in so far as they indicate 
 the actual size and distance of the object. Hence 
 we pay no attention to them. Our observation 
 passes over them and disregards the sign in order 
 to dwell on that for which it stands. The 
 patches of light or colour due to reflection we 
 neglect in themselves, and think of them only as 
 hinting at the nature of the surface. Only the 
 artist notices these things ; and he notices them 
 because for him they have a value of their own. 
 Ordinary folk do not remark the exact shape and 
 size of the type employed by the printer ; they 
 pass at once from the sign to the thing signified. 
 The proof-reader, however, does notice the type ; 
 because for him it is something more than a 
 sign. This acquired capacity for inattention is of 
 enormous value to us, by economising mental 
 labour, as well as by diminishing the distractions 
 that beset us. Thus we cease under ordinary 
 conditions to attend to the irritation caused by 
 our clothes, the sensations of heat and cold on the 
 face, and the movements necessary to preserve a 
 correct posture. We should not enjoy our novel 
 if we read it as the proof-reader reads, with our 
 attention arrested by every broken letter and 
 every instance of bad spacing. 
 
 Whilst we are fully attending we are usually
 
 THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 33 
 
 aware of a sensation of strain. If we are watching 
 a distant object or finding a place in a map, we 
 feel this sensation in the eye and the forehead ; if 
 we are listening to a faint noise or trying to hear 
 the separate tones of a chord, we feel it in the 
 interior of the ears ; if we wish to discriminate a 
 flavour we feel it in the tongue. Thus in the case 
 of external perception we refer the sensation of 
 strain to the particular organ of sense employed. 
 But when we are trying to recollect or to solve a 
 problem, we seem to feel the strain in the interior 
 of the head. This characteristic accompaniment 
 of attention is doubtless due to actual physical 
 changes in the parts where we locate the sen- 
 sation. The amount of blood supplied to the 
 brain and to the sense organ employed increases 
 and the muscles of the latter become tense. This 
 is how we come to be aware of the fact that we 
 are attending. 
 
 Preadjustment. 
 
 In all complete attention there is expectation. 
 When I am attending to a minute or distant 
 object, I am trying to recognise it, and this 
 means that I have hovering about the percept an 
 image of that which I expect the percept to be. 
 Attention implies an effort to understand, that is 
 to link what we are attending to with previous 
 knowledge (apperception). And this in turn 
 implies anticipation of what the result of the 
 process will be. We shall have further illustra- 
 tion of this when we come to treat of the per- 
 ception of external objects ; here it is only 
 
 c
 
 34 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 necessary to say that complete attention implies 
 pre-adjustment of the sense organs and of the 
 mental machinery to the task. When a stimulus 
 suddenly makes itself felt, before adjustment can 
 take place, our perception is baulked and is 
 slower than it otherwise would be in coming to 
 maturity. 
 
 In some cases this delay gives rise to a painful 
 shock of surprise. Everyone knows the un- 
 pleasant feeling which accompanies a sudden and 
 unexpected noise, a false step at the bottom of a 
 staircase, the sudden failure of an anticipation 
 even if the anticipation is not entirely pleasant. 
 Imperfect adjustment always brings pain, because 
 it involves the strain of attempting to adjust 
 properly. Let the reader note what happens 
 when he suddenly hears some strange sound in 
 the middle of the night. He is bound to attend 
 to it ; the novelty and comparative loudness of it are 
 sufficient to ensure that. But he cannot attend 
 to it properly because he does not know what to 
 listen for. The room is in utter darkness, and he 
 tries to locate the sound by slowly turning his 
 head. At first he cannot tell whether it is a 
 loudish sound originating at some distance, like 
 steady creaking of an obstinate cupboard door in 
 the next room slowly forced open, or a quiet 
 soft sound in his own room close to him. In this 
 state of uncertainty he cannot even attend to it 
 with any precision, much less arrive at any clear 
 judgment about it. Experiments go to show that 
 when pre-adjustment is perfect the impression 
 enters the focus of attention without any appreci- 
 able delay, even if not particularly intense;
 
 THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 35 
 
 whereas in all other cases a certain appreciable 
 amount of time is taken. If the image we form 
 be inadequate, or inappropriate for instance, if 
 we expect a sound and receive a sensation of a 
 flash of light, or expect a low sound and hear a 
 loud one it interferes with the act of perception, 
 because of the imperfect adjustment. When we 
 have a clear image of what we are going to see 
 we shall see it more quickly and more clearly 
 than if we do not know what we are going to 
 see. In certain circumstances, when the adjust- 
 ment is very accurate we may actually perceive 
 the impression before it occurs. What I mean is 
 this. Suppose a number of events happen in the 
 order A, B, C, D, and I fix my attention on C, 
 expecting it intently, that is, forming a very clear 
 image of it, I may actually appear to see C before 
 B instead of after. Thus, according to Fechner, 
 the patient who is going to be bled sometimes 
 sees the blood flow (C) before he sees the lancet 
 enter the skin (B). The explanation is evidently 
 this. The patient's attention is fixed mainly on 
 the appearance of the blood ; it is this which 
 chiefly interests him, it is easily pictured, and for 
 this the adjustment is perfect ; but he is not so 
 interested in, nor so capable of foreseeing, the 
 movement of the lancet. Hence the latter (B) 
 requires a comparatively long time for its com- 
 plete perception, while the former (C) enters the 
 focus of attention the very instant it occurs.
 
 36 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 MENTAL IMAGES 
 
 IF I look at an incandescent electric light for 
 a quarter or a third of a second and rapidly turn 
 my eyes away or close them, I see either immedi- 
 ately or after a few seconds a bright image of 
 the glowing looped thread, which 1 had hardly 
 been able to distinguish when my eyes were 
 actually fixed on the vacuum-bulb. This bright 
 image is projected forward ; I can see it on the 
 opposite wall or on the ceiling, and it bears con- 
 siderable resemblance to a percept. It impresses 
 me as being real and not as being a mere idea, 
 a mere mental fact ; like a percept it cannot be 
 voluntarily changed in character; like the percept 
 of a speck in the lens of my eye it moves as I move 
 my head or eyes. On the other hand it is a mere 
 flat diagram, little more than an outline, without 
 suggestion of solidity. Such an image is called 
 by psychologists a positive after-image. If the 
 exposure has been longer, or the light very 
 intense, it very rapidly disappears and in its 
 place appears a negative after-image, in which the 
 outline is dark and the ground lighter. Every- 
 body knows the dark spot which he sees on the 
 road after looking at the unclouded sun. Alter- 
 nation of colours may go on for some time. Let 
 the reader try it for himself by looking at the 
 bars of a Venetian blind against a clear sky, or 
 by looking at a strong light, for instance the 
 Betting sun. He will find that by rubbing his 
 eyes, a dying after-imago may be revived. In
 
 MENTAL IMAGES 37 
 
 my own case after looking at the sun through a 
 mist, and then shutting the eyes, I sec in 
 succession : First, a small light dot against the 
 red background of the eyelids ; this gets 
 distorted owing to movements of the eyes, 
 and appears as an elongated spot with a 
 lighter centre ; then I see a green spot with 
 darker green or blue border against the red back- 
 ground, other spots make their appearance, but 
 less well defined ; if I put my hands over my 
 eyes and darken the bright crimson background 
 made by my eyelids, a red border appears round 
 the green spot, now somewhat duller ; and, 
 finally, if at any time I open my eyes and look 
 at a white sheet of paper the spot, now red, is 
 seen projected against the paper. This case of 
 the sun is more complex than the others, since 
 here the colour of the after-image is affected by 
 contrast with the brilliant red of the background. 
 White positive after-images seen against a dark 
 background pass through green, blue, violet and 
 rose-red, before they fade. 1 
 
 "NVe see, then, in after-images a transitional 
 form between a percept and a true mental image. 
 Closely allied with them, if not indeed special 
 forms of them, are the recurrent sensations (or re- 
 current percepts) observed by workers with the 
 microscope. A long while after his work is 
 finished an observer will sometimes see projected 
 on a blank surface, or in the dark, an image of 
 the object at which he has been looking. The 
 
 1 There is reason to think that some difference among 
 individuals exists as to the degrees of vividness and 
 persistence of after-images.
 
 38 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 late Lord Tennyson related how, after trying to 
 read a Persian manuscript written in a small, 
 confusing hand, he saw " the Persian letters like 
 giants stalking round the room." Here, again, 
 we have what is after all more a percept than a 
 mental image, properly so-called ; it is regarded 
 as located outside the body, on the ceiling or 
 wall at which we are looking. Persistent after- 
 images help to explain the sight of ghosts, devils, 
 and so forth. It has been shown that if we go 
 to sleep after looking at an object (putting out 
 the light and shutting our eyes at the same 
 instant so as to prevent a fresh vision arising), 
 and if directly we awake in the morning we look 
 up at the white ceiling over our head, we may, 
 on again closing our eyes, perceive a long-delayed 
 after-image of the object. After-images seem to- 
 be constantly occurring to our marginal conscious- 
 ness. We overlook them under ordinary circum- 
 stances; but in abnormal conditions of mind they 
 may give rise to hallucinations. 
 
 Visualization. 
 
 The true memory-image is recognised at once as 
 a mental fact and not as a physical one. If I 
 picture an object, say, a friend's face, in my 
 own mind, it is seen not as a flat diagram 
 but as in relief, with the effect of solidity 
 and perspective. I can dismiss it when I 
 choose and substitute another ; it does net 
 follow the movements of my eyes and head, nor 
 is it projected on a surface in front of me if I 
 open my eyes. If we look at an object, say a
 
 MENTAL IMAGES 39 
 
 stranger's face, for a few seconds, and then close 
 the eyes, the memory-image we get is particu- 
 larly bright and clear, but it soon fades. This 
 is the primary memory-image. Later on it will be 
 only possible to get an ordinary memory-image 
 much less definite and A'ivid. At each successive 
 repetition the original is more blurred, and with 
 many people after a few hours it becomes im- 
 possible to accurately revive the image of a 
 stranger's face. 
 
 Persons differ enormously in their power of 
 visualizing. In consequence of a famous inquiry 
 made by Mr. Francis Galton in 1880, he dis- 
 covered that "the great majority of men of 
 science to whom I first applied protested that 
 mental imagery was unknown to them, and they 
 looked on me as fanciful and fantastic in suppos- 
 ing that the words ' mental imagery ' really ex- 
 pressed Avhat I believed everybody supposed 
 them to mean." He found this inability not 
 confined to scientific men ; it occurs even with 
 artists. Royal Academicians are sometimes with- 
 out the capacity of visualization ; and I myself 
 know of one R.A. who, if he paints without a 
 "model," makes a clay statue or portion of a statue 
 and then paints from that, apparently because his 
 tactual and motor memory is so much better than 
 his visual one. To quote Mr. Galton again : 
 " When I spoke to persons whom I met in general 
 society, I found an entirely different disposition 
 to prevail. Many men, and a yet larger number 
 of women, and many boys and girls, declare that 
 they habitually saw mental imagery, and that it 
 was perfectly distinct to them and full of colour.
 
 40 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 I have many cases of persons mentally reading 
 oft' scores when playing the pianoforte, or manu- 
 script when they are making, speeches." 
 
 We must not think that imagination is neces- 
 sarily visual. There is, for instance, such a thing 
 as auditory imagination, the re-hearing by the 
 mental ear of tones and other sounds. The 
 musician can recall a tune distinctly and com- 
 pletely, in the tones of any voice or instrument 
 he chooses. The unmusical recall it imperfectly 
 and indistinctly, if at all. Let someone play or 
 sing a new melody to three or four persons, and 
 let them each try to sing it or hum it after an 
 interval of a few minutes, and again in a few 
 hours, of course, not in hearing of each other. 
 The different degrees of accuracy with which it 
 will be remembered are sui-prising, and it may 
 be found that persons with considerable musical 
 taste and executive skill may be markedly de- 
 ficient in musical imagination. We find, too, 
 phenomena in the case of hearing, which corre- 
 spond to visual after-images. After a gun has 
 gone off near us, or a locomotive engine has 
 uttered its intolerable whistle, we have a ringing 
 in the ears which seems to be clearly an after- 
 image. So also we experience auditory phenomena 
 answering to the primary memory -image of sight. 
 After we have heard a clock strike, or a door- 
 knocker sound, we have for some seconds a very 
 vivid image of the sound, so that we can count 
 the strokes (up to seven or eight) even if we 
 failed to do so when the sound actually reached 
 our ears. Parallel, though not equally distinct, 
 phenomena can be noticed in the case of touch, 
 taste, and other sensations.
 
 MENTAL IMAGES 41 
 
 Constructive Im agin a tion. 
 
 All imagination is in its essence reproductive. 
 When we speak of an imaginative person, how- 
 ever, we usually mean a person who does not 
 merely visualize clearly, but one who combines 
 his images in new ways, not in strict accordance 
 with actual fact. This is natural enough, but a 
 little misleading. It is not the want of regard 
 for fact, the originality, of the novelist or poet 
 which makes him imaginative ; the two char- 
 acteristics may or may not exist together. 
 Defoe was less original than many a writer of 
 fairy-stories, but he was infinitely more imagina- 
 tive than most of them. He saw things as they 
 must actually have occurred to Crusoe. With 
 all its details complete he saw the cave, and its 
 shelves, and furniture, the osier baskets and 
 pottery vessels, he knew where the corn and 
 powder were kept, and so forth. And note that 
 this power of constructing clear and definite 
 mental pictures out of elements already acquired 
 by experience is not confined to the artistic 
 mind. Imagination, creative as well as repro- 
 ductive, is often necessary to the man of science, 
 and the man of affairs. Just think how a physi- 
 ologist gets to know the behaviour of an interior 
 organ, say the heart ; he cannot see it working, 
 even the Eontgen rays have not enabled him to 
 do that. From what he has seen in dissection, 
 and from what he has seen in the behaviour of 
 the valves of pumps, he puts together a mental 
 picture of how the heart must behave when 
 actually at work in the living body. Unless this
 
 42 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 power exists he never really knows how the heart 
 acts, though he may have a great many particu- 
 lars at his finger-ends ; he has only a verbal 
 memory of truths about the heart's action, in- 
 stead of a direct knowledge of the action itself. 
 The same thing is true, though in a less degree, 
 of the practical man, who has to picture exactly 
 how the people he has to deal with will act on 
 the receipt of a certain letter. In the purely 
 abstract sciences, such as mathematics, imagina- 
 tion is of less importance ; and in following 
 trains of reasoning the tendency to visualize 
 becomes a positive hindrance. It is impossible, 
 for instance, to think out economical problems 
 concerning the value of commodities e.g., the 
 effect produced on prices by the introduction of a 
 bimetallic currency if we keep picturing to 
 ourselves sovereigns and shillings, and people 
 buying and selling. Gralton, as we have seen, 
 found that the majority of men of science whom 
 he first questioned seemed to be ignorant almost 
 of the existence of the power of mental imagery. 
 
 TJie Child's Imagination. 
 
 When children first begin to notice the images 
 in their minds they often fail to distinguish be- 
 tween images and percepts. A vivid image tends 
 to be regarded as an actual fact of the external 
 world. In my own childhood I certainly never 
 completely disentangled certain fancies and 
 dreams from my waking experience. A child I 
 knew, aged five or six years, believed that on the 
 top of a certain wardrobe in the nursery lived
 
 MENTAL IMAGES 43 
 
 a malignant being about a foot high, which 
 occasionally looked over at him ; and that bears 
 lived in the chimney. He never seriously asked 
 his elders about these matters, partly because 
 he was afraid of being laughed at, and partly 
 because he believed that they practised a system 
 of hypocritical reserve, just as they did about 
 some other subjects of interest, and that their 
 denials about bogies and ghosts were never to be 
 taken quite literally. This belief of his was 
 not persistent ; it went away and came back from 
 time to time until he was seven or eight years old, 
 reinforced possibly by dreams. All children's 
 play has nearly always an element of imagination. 
 The doll is not the same thing to the child who 
 is playing with it as to the elder who is looking 
 on. It comes "trailing clouds of glory" which 
 are invisible to us but are as real to the child as 
 any fact of perception. The ugliest travesty of 
 the human form, legless and armless, divested of 
 hair and of complexion, if wrapped in bright- 
 coloured rags, becomes a princess, as readily as 
 the newest and most modish waxen model. 
 
 Some starting-point is generally needed, but 
 what the starting-point is matters very little. It 
 connects the world of fancy with the world of 
 sense ; since it can at least be touched and felt. 
 It occupies space, can be laid down and taken up 
 again. So the fancies borrow a degree of reality 
 which otherwise they would not possess. The 
 same thing is found to be true of the illusions of 
 hypnotized persons. It is necessary to give them 
 something to look at or touch as a nucleus for 
 their imagination, but what it is is comparatively
 
 44 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 unimportant. A rolling-pin in the hands of the 
 patient becomes a baby or a snake or a gun ; a 
 blank card serves as a photograph of a land- 
 scape or of a person. From watching my 
 own little girls I am fully persuaded that up 
 to the age of about thirteen tliey sometimes 
 during the holidays lived a detached life of 
 considerable completeness for days together with 
 their dolls, all of whom had distinct personalities 
 and histories of their own ; and that this isolated 
 life was not much less vivid (between the in- 
 tervals of meals and walks) than the life which 
 we call real. This imaginary existence was con- 
 tinuous : what the dolls learned on one day was 
 supposed to be remembered on the next, they 
 had their likes and dislikes, their illnesses and 
 recoveries, their fits of temper and their moments 
 of good behaviour. Many charming accounts of 
 the force of childish imagination will be found in 
 Professor Sully 's " Studies of Childhood," a book 
 which all sensible people who have to deal with 
 children should read. Dr. Sully points out how 
 "through the perfect gift of visual realisation 
 which a child brings to it the verbal narrative 
 becomes a record of fact, a true history." Hence 
 children strongly resent any variation in the 
 telling of the stories; they keep the details in 
 their minds because they picture them all ; and 
 any change strikes them as an outrage because it 
 is in palpable conflict with what they so clearly 
 apprehend as here and now present. "Woe to 
 the unfortunate mother who in telling one of the 
 good stock nursery tales varies a detail. One 
 such, a friend of mine, repeating 'Puss in
 
 MENTAL IMAGES 45 
 
 Boots' inadvertently made the hero sit on a 
 chair instead of on a box to pull on his boots. 
 She was greeted by a sharp volley of ' No's ! ' 
 The same lady tells me that when narrating the 
 story of ' Beauty and the Beast ' for the second 
 time only, she forgot in describing the effect of 
 the Beast's sighing to add after the words ' till 
 the glasses on the table shake,' and 'the candles 
 are nearly blown out ' ; whereupon the serene 
 little listeners at once stopped the narrator and 
 supplied the interesting detail." (Sully.) 
 
 Imagination and Memory. 
 
 Let us now consider the difference between a 
 memory or recollection, and an image. If the 
 reader conjures up first an image of a table he 
 has never seen an imaginary table, and then the 
 image of his own dining-table, he will notice that 
 the former differs from the latter in two ways. 
 To begin with it is less full of detail and probably 
 less clear and vivid ; and then it is cut off from 
 other ideas, and he does not pass easily from the 
 picture of the table to the picture of the surround- 
 ing circumstances, the carpet, the chairs, the 
 walls, etc. In the one case we are aware of the 
 image of the table as part of a larger whole, with 
 which we can easily connect it ; in the other we 
 arc aware of it only as an isolated thing, for 
 although we can if we choose add fresh surround- 
 ings to it, we do not think of them as originally 
 forming part of a whole to which the table 
 actually belonged. But there is a more impor- 
 tant difference; there is a particular kind of
 
 40 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 feeling about the recollection or memory ; it feels 
 familiar, and on reflection we see that it belongs 
 to our own past. We cannot always locate it 
 exactly in our own past, but we feel sure that it 
 has a proper place in that portion of " the dark 
 backward and abysm" of time which we call ours. 
 In fact, such a reminiscence as that of the table 
 may be regarded as the image of a table phis the 
 recognition of it as representing a part of our own 
 experience. There is a reference to the past and 
 my own past. This is probably due to the 
 revival of something more than the image itself, 
 viz., a fringe of partially represented images of 
 other connected things. Round the clearly 
 represented table, lying in what we call the field 
 of attention or else in the sub-conscious region, 
 are faintly represented images of my chairs, 
 carpet, bookcases, and myself entering the room. 
 This brings about what we call recognition, which 
 in itself seems to be rather a kind of emotion or 
 feeling than a kind of knowledge, a feeling of 
 " warmth and intimacy," as Professor James calls 
 it. A mere image does not involve belief, a 
 reminiscence or recollection does. And belief is 
 essentially a mode of feeling. 
 
 Defects of Memory. 
 
 Faults of memory are of several types. "\Ve 
 may be lacking in retentive power, so that things 
 soon fade ; but until they do fade they may be 
 easily recalled. "We may, on the other hand, be 
 fairly retentive, but the power of recall may be 
 slow and uncertain. We are all familiar with
 
 MENTAL IMAGES 47 
 
 the man who, if we give him time, can remember 
 almost anything, but whose knowledge is seldom 
 entirely available at the moment. Both of these 
 are defects of memory, or, as they are termed, 
 amnesias. Amnesia may be total or partial. 
 After a severe blow on the head total forgetful- 
 ness of the past may follow. Such total forget- 
 fulness may also, it would seem, occur in cases 
 of lunacy, and under hypnotism. But partial 
 amnesia is much more common. In some cases 
 there is forgetfulness of an entire group or class 
 of ideas. Perhaps the most important is the 
 case of forgetfulness of speech (aphasia) which in 
 a marked form is usually the symptom of very 
 serious mental disease. Medical men have care- 
 fully distinguished different sub-divisions of 
 aphasia ; such as ataxic aphasia, in which there is 
 loss of the power of uttering words and writing, 
 though the patient can understand spoken or 
 written language ; sensorial aphasia, in which there 
 is loss of power to understand spoken or written 
 language ; paraphasia, in which while words are 
 remembered they are not connected with their 
 proper meanings, and so on. Sometimes a single 
 class of words only is forgotten, for instance all 
 those beginning with the letter B. 
 
 These are all examples of defect of retentive 
 power. A much less usual defect is that of ex- 
 cessive memory (hypcrmnesia). This is usually 
 only temporary and often precedes outbursts of 
 mental disease. It is found both in persons of 
 very low and very high mental capacity. Dr. 
 Forbes TVinslow has recorded the case of a man 
 "who could remember the day when every
 
 48 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 person had been buried in the parish for thirty- 
 five years, and could repeat with unvarying 
 accuracy the name and age of the deceased and 
 the mourners at the funeral." But the man was 
 "a complete fool. Out of the line of funerals he 
 had not one idea, could not give an intelligible 
 reply to a single question, nor be trusted even to 
 feed himself." An idiot at Earlswood " showed 
 evidence of being the possessor of a memory 
 which was almost encyclopedic." On the other 
 hand, Porson, the great Greek scholar, could 
 repeat by heart pages and chapters which he had 
 read only once. Joseph Scaliger, the great six- 
 teenth century classical scholar, in three weeks 
 committed to memory the whole of Plomer. 
 Macaulay could say by heart any part of his 
 works. 
 
 During the hypnotic and other abnormal 
 states, and during delirium, a great exaltation 
 of memory occasionally occurs. A living physi- 
 ological professor (Luys) relates that a young lady 
 who attended one of his lectures repeated it 
 several months afterwards, when in a state of 
 somnambulism, though in the normal condition 
 she was unable to repeat a word of it, and 
 asserted that she had not listened to it, and did 
 not in the least understand it. This is very 
 similar to a well-known incident related by 
 Coleridge in the Biographia Literaria, as having 
 happened in Germany shortly before his arrival 
 at Gottingen (1799). Dr. Rush, an American 
 writer on mental disease, relates on the authority 
 of a Lutheran pastor in Philadelphia that the old 
 Swedes who inhabited one part of the city, would
 
 MENTAL IMAGES 49 
 
 upon their death-beds pray in the Swedish 
 language, although they had not spoken it for 
 fifty or sixty years, and had probably in their 
 ordinary condition quite forgotten it. 
 
 Inability to recall is much more common than 
 inability to recognise. Eecent experimental 
 researches (Binet and Henri) go to show that the 
 errors from the former cause are sixteen or 
 seventeen times more numerous, when the test is 
 applied a few minutes after the ideas have been 
 committed to memory ; doubtless the proportion 
 greatly diminishes afterwards. A more moderate 
 estimate (E. A. Kirkpatrick) gives the proportion 
 as only two to one. Inability to recognise a per- 
 fectly clear percept which we have previously 
 had is, however, quite common, especially in re- 
 gard to sounds. Persons with some musical 
 skill and taste will often fail, after a short inter- 
 val, to recognise a tune they have previously 
 heard ; and among those with less than the 
 average musical ear no shame is felt in owning 
 the inability. It is said that a great authority 
 in the Moral Sciences is unable to recognise any 
 tune except God save the Queen and Duke Domum, 
 and these two he does not know apart. So, too, 
 images of the past which ought to be recognised 
 as belonging to our own experience often pass 
 into the condition of mere images. This happens 
 frequently in the healthy mind, and is, in fact, a 
 condition of complete knowledge. Who remem- 
 bers when he first learnt that William the Con- 
 queror landed in 1066, or that twelve twelves are 
 one hundred and forty-four ? But it occurs in a 
 striking form in the insane. In some cases of
 
 50 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 mental disease, according to Griesinger, the 
 events of the past are recalled, but the patient is 
 scarcely able to recognise them as having hap- 
 pened to himself. For him they remain images 
 which hardly attain the position of recollections. 
 False recognition, that is, recognition where 
 there is no ground for it, because the experience 
 is in point of fact new, is now called by psycholo- 
 gists paramnesia. Here we have the acceptance 
 of a new percept as in reality being identical with 
 an old image. It is usually rather an alarming 
 phenomenon, being sometimes accompanied with 
 great confusion, and a keen feeling of dread 
 approaching terror, though at other times pro- 
 ducing little emotional disturbance. 
 
 The phenomenon in its milder form is familiar 
 to most of us. To take an example from a 
 recent French writer on the subject : " C 
 relates that at his rim wee examination in history 
 for his bachelor's degree, it appeared to him that 
 he had already heard the same questions pro- 
 pounded by the same professor, speaking in the 
 same room, and in the same voice. His own 
 answer, it seemed to him, had been already 
 uttered; he himself once more listened to himself 
 speaking. Everything appeared to have already 
 happened before." Here is a more remarkable 
 case recorded in the year 1876. Dr. Pick reported 
 that a well-educated young man was attacked at 
 the age of thirty -two with this illusory memory, 
 now called paramnesia. " If he was present at a 
 social gathering, if he visited any place whatever, 
 if he met a stranger, the incident, with all the 
 attendant circumstances, appeared so familiar
 
 MENTAL IMAGES 51 
 
 that he was convinced of having received the 
 same impression before, of having been sur- 
 rounded by the same persons or the same objects, 
 under the same sky, and the same state of the 
 weather. If he undertook any new occupation, 
 he seemed to have gone through with it at some 
 previous time and under the same condition." 
 In this case the mental affection became almost 
 chronic, and the unfortunate young man became 
 insane. This is a well-defined, but fairly typical, 
 case. Both Dickens and Oliver Wendell Holmes 
 refer to this feeling of "having seen all this 
 before." The more alarming type is desciibed 
 in the following account, quoted by M. La- 
 lande : " Whilst reading a novel in the train, I 
 was suddenly seized with the idea that I had 
 already read it, and at the same instant there 
 arose in my mind such a whirlwind of memories 
 and images that I thought I was going mad. 
 That endured for five minutes, during which I 
 suffered horribly." No satisfactory explanation 
 of the phenomenon has yet been found. The 
 theory that it is due to independent action of the 
 two halves of the brain may be at once dis- 
 missed. It is hardly more satisfactory than the 
 crazy notion that we have "pre-existed," and 
 that our present life is a more or less exact 
 repetition of a preceding one, a belief which 
 finds its most illustrious exponent in Mr. 
 Chucks, the ship's carpenter in Peter Simple. It 
 is possible that the actual recognition of a portion 
 of what we see leads to the belief that the whole 
 scene has been witnessed before ; a partial recog- 
 nition is exaggerated into a total one. Some-
 
 52 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 tiling gives rise to the " feeling of warmth and 
 intimacy," and the feeling overflows and tinges 
 the whole complex percept, so that we appear to 
 recognise every item, instead of a very small 
 part of the total. 
 
 Memory is relatively stronger in young people 
 than in old, especially the memory for merely 
 casual and non-rational connections. Probably 
 our memory is at its best between the ages of 
 thirteen and twenty-five, after that the power to 
 retain and the power to recall show some en- 
 feeblement in reference to purely arbitrary 
 connections. The link between a man and 
 his name is an instance of such a merely 
 arbitrary connection, and the memory for 
 people's names begins to diminish in early man- 
 hood. It is common for people between thirty 
 and forty to become nervously anxious about 
 their failing mental powers owing to this. But 
 it seems that enfecblement of memory in relation 
 to such purely casual connections is quite com- 
 patible not only with a higher development of 
 judgment and reasoning, but with a higher 
 development of memory itself in other directions. 
 The doctor who forgets the names of patients 
 may have a most retentive memory for their 
 symptoms. It is probably due to a tendency 
 to economize our mental efforts that we pay 
 slight attention to what has little real significance. 
 The name docs not help us to judge the circum- 
 stances of the case, to estimate the nature of the 
 symptoms, to infer the character of the in- 
 dividual ; so we give it but slight attention. 
 Later we pay the penalty of this slight attention
 
 MENTAL IMAGES 53 
 
 by forgetting the name. The child and the 
 v/oman of the world have much more interest 
 in names, and they remember them better. 
 Adults up to middle age are on the whole 
 superior to children in the power of voluntary 
 recollection, that is, of recalling what they want 
 to recall ; while children are at least equally 
 strong in involuntary memory. 
 
 There arc not only degrees of memory but d ifferent 
 kinds of memory. It has been found that persons 
 differ much in the kind of images which form the 
 principal stock-in-trade of their minds. Some 
 habitually retain and revive visual images ; 
 others auditory ones, that is, images of sound ; 
 others motor ones, that is, images of movement ; 
 others tactile, that is, images derived from touch. 
 Any of them may form the main part of our 
 memories. Of course the blind must do without 
 the first ; and the deaf without the second. But 
 there seems, from recent experimental research 
 by Miinsterberg and others, to be a decided 
 advantage in trusting to visual memory. Thus 
 in one series of experiments it was found that the 
 errors made in the case of visual memory were 
 20 per cent, of the total attempts, while in 
 auditory memoiy they were over 30 per cent. ; 
 that is, a person was half as likely again to 
 remember when he trusted to the eye alone as 
 when he trusted to the ear alone. 
 
 Conditions of Recollection. 
 
 So far we have considered the nature of images 
 and what distinguishes memory from mere
 
 54 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 imagination. Let us now look for a moment at 
 the conditions Avhich determine recollection. 
 It is impossible to consider separately all the 
 different types, and as psychology in the abstract 
 is about as interesting as that "love in the 
 abstract " which the Scotsman wanted to talk 
 about, let us confine ourselves to the case of the 
 memory of names. How do we revive the 
 memory of words 1 Setting aside the case in 
 which a word has just been seen or heard, where 
 a kind of after-image or primary memory image 
 survives in the field of attention, and confining 
 ourselves to cases of true revival, we notice the 
 following points : 
 
 Firstly, the name sometimes rises of itself 
 without any connection that we can detect, just 
 as a tune sometimes docs ; it rises straight oiit of 
 the dim regions of sub-consciousness, where it 
 has been resting (or so it seems) for an oppor- 
 tunity to rise once more above the threshold 
 of consciousness. When we are interested in 
 any particular subject, our minds go back 
 to it as soon as room is made. Business 
 worries which are banished during the social 
 meal are apt to corne back over the unin- 
 teresting book or during the solitary walk, 
 a propos of nothing at all, simply because there 
 are no rival ideas present of so much interest to 
 us. It is something like the case of the two 
 photographs already mentioned ; where a blank 
 space is shown in (say) the right-hand one, 
 features of the left-hand photograph shine 
 through. 
 
 Secondly, the name revives in consequence of
 
 MENTAL IMAGES 55 
 
 having been originally heard or seen in close 
 connection with other words, sounds, or things 
 let us say percepts in general which are now 
 again present. Then when I see a man I 
 normally and naturally think of his name. This 
 is called by psychologists suggestion (or association) 
 by contiguity. 
 
 Thirdly, names appear to revive in consequence 
 of similarity in sound or spelling to other words 
 in consciousness, or in consequence of their simi- 
 larity of meaning. Thus, I see the name Roland, 
 and I immediately think of my own name. Here 
 we have what is called suggestion (or association) 
 li/ similarity. It is very doubtful whether mere 
 likeness ever acts in entire independence of 
 contiguity ; but if we remember this, we may 
 allow that similarity may have an important 
 share in bringing about revival. 
 
 Fourthly, names are revived more easily when 
 they have been frequently repeated. Experiments 
 made in the last few years confirm the great 
 value put on repetition by teachers, etc. 
 
 Fifthly, attention to the thing to be re- 
 membered is necessary as well as repetition ; the 
 boy who merely repeats a word or phrase many 
 times without attending to it gains comparatively 
 little by it. It is better remembered if he at- 
 tends fully to it once for all and does not repeat. 
 The dismal attempts most children make at 
 learning by heart are due to neglect of attention. 
 The excuse, " I spent half an hour over it," or 
 "I went over it six times," is only too familiar 
 to most teachers. 
 
 Sixthly, names are remembered more easily by
 
 56 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 some persons than others. The original "adhe- 
 siveness" as Dr. Bain calls it, that is, the natural 
 power of retention, the nature of the subject- 
 matter, the age of the person, all these influence 
 the power to recollect. But on these points 
 enough has been already said. 
 
 Seventhly, names recently heard are more 
 likely to be remembered than others. The lapse 
 of time counts for a great deal. Where there is 
 no repetition and no fresh application of attention 
 to the name it gradually fades, like all other 
 ideas. 
 
 Eighthly, names are remembered because we 
 try to revive them. Voluntary recollection may 
 recall what would not otherwise come back to us. 
 We fix our attention, as it were, on the vacant 
 space where the word ought to be, and wait. 
 But while this direction of attention is very im- 
 portant, it does not act independently of itself. 
 When I try to remember the author of a book of 
 which I remember the title, I fix my attention 
 on the appearance of the book, I try to remember 
 how the lettering on the back looks, or the title 
 page. Part of the image is before me, and I 
 wait for the rest to come. What my voluntary 
 attention does is to exclude rival images which 
 would distract me, and to increase the clearness 
 and vividness of the image. Attention is 
 absolutely necessary ; association is of no use 
 without it, misleading us more easily than 
 helping us, for it revives other images rather 
 than the image we want. Indeed if we do not 
 attend at all, association ceases to act and we fall 
 asleep. If the name of the author of the book
 
 MENTAL IMAGES 57 
 
 does not come at once, various other names are 
 sure to suggest themselves. These are usually 
 somewhat like the name we want, or in some 
 way connected with it. As a rule they begin 
 with the same letter. Thus, for years when I 
 wanted to remember the editor of the great 
 Dictionary of English and American Authors I 
 always thought of Appleton before I thought 
 of the right name Allibone; Appleton being 
 the name of the publisher of another well- 
 known American work of reference, which I 
 frequently had occasion to consult at the same 
 time that I was consulting Allibone. Each wrong 
 suggestion is rejected (if our power of recognition 
 is good) and we wait again, acutely conscious of 
 what Professor James calls "the aching void" that 
 we want to fill. Sometimes there seems to be 
 an actual prohibition laid on the particular name 
 we want. It cannot rise though it tries to. To 
 put it more accurately, there is not merely 
 negative failure to remember, but positive in- 
 capacity to remember. Other words come up 
 but this one cannot. Hypnotic experiments show 
 that; such a state of things does occur. If a 
 hypnotized person is told that he cannot remem- 
 ber a certain word he cannot. However clearly 
 it is suggested, he fails to revive it. This is 
 parallel to the inability of such patients to see or 
 touch or in any way perceive the presence of 
 objects which they are told they cannot see. 
 We all know that the belief that we cannot find 
 an object, or perform an act, very often prevents 
 us from doing so. So it may be here in trying 
 to remember the name. The thing cannot be
 
 oS THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 done because we believe it cannot. The inability 
 is only made worse by our struggles ; and our 
 one hope is to let the matter drop. Attention 
 having been diverted from the "aching void," 
 the mental machinery of recall begins to work of 
 itself, and in time the name turns up without 
 effort. It has been hovering just below the 
 threshold of consciousness all the time, and now 
 that the paralysing suggestion of inability has 
 disappeared, it conies into the full light of 
 consciousness. 
 
 In all this active remembrance we can do no 
 more than give the links of association already 
 formed the chance of acting. If no associations 
 have been formed, we cannot supply their place. 
 Hence the supreme importance of attending to 
 things that we want to remember, detaining 
 them in consciousness, noting their relations to 
 other things, concentrating our thought on them. 
 Thus Binet and Henri, two French psychologists, 
 found on careful experiment that foreign words 
 were more easily remembered than native ; and 
 they reasonably attribute this difference to the 
 additional attention bestowed on such words. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PERCEPTION AND ILLUSION 
 
 IF we ask ourselves how we come to perceive 
 things around us, the natural answer is to say, 
 that the thinsrs affect our or^nas of sense in such
 
 PERCEPTION AND ILLUSION 59 
 
 a way that we somehow come to have in our 
 minds images of them. Let us suppose that we 
 are looking at a glass inkstand. The plain man's 
 account of the matter would probably be some- 
 thing like this : There is an actual material ink- 
 stand there on the table, which would exist in 
 exactly the same way whether AVC looked at it or 
 not ; when we see it, it produces changes in our 
 eyes owing to the rays of light which proceed 
 from it ; these effects on our eyes are transferred 
 to the brain by means of the nerves of the eyes, 
 and then we necessarily see the inkstand, just as- 
 it is. 
 
 This account differs in many ways from the 
 truth. In the first place it assumes that what we 
 call the cause of the percept, viz., the inkstand, is 
 in qualities the same as the percept itself, or to- 
 put the matter in another way, that the mental 
 fact we call a percept is a kind of copy of an 
 external fact we call a material thing. In the 
 next place it assumes that so far as perception is- 
 concerned the whole work of the mind is simply 
 to receive ; as John Locke, the great seventeenth 
 century psychologist puts it, "in bare naked per- 
 ception the mind is, for the most part, only 
 passive, and what it perceives it cannot help 
 perceiving." Modern psychology on the other 
 hand has shown decisively, without leaving any 
 room for a shadow of doubt, that our percepts- 
 are not in any sense copies of external realities, 
 somehow thrown on to the mind, as (let us say) 
 an image is thrown on to the film of a camera ; 
 but that they are elaborate compound states of 
 consciousness put together by the mind from
 
 60 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 materials long ago accumulated. A percept of an 
 inkstand is not a single new idea, but a group of 
 ideas, nearly all of which are old ones. Conse- 
 quently several persons with different mental 
 histories looking at an object do not obtain 
 exactly the same percept, for they have not the 
 same stock of ideas to draw upon. Granted that 
 in normal individuals there must be something 
 in common, yet the percepts they have on the 
 presentation of the same object will differ in a 
 notable degree. To justify and illustrate this 
 statement, which is surely as striking as any 
 discovery made in the physical sciences during 
 the last two centuries is our chief business in the 
 present chapter. 
 
 Let us imagine ourselves taking an afternoon 
 walk along a straight country road which gives 
 us an uninterrupted view of several miles. As 
 we go along we see something we have not 
 noticed before. Against the yellow white sur- 
 face almost on a level with our eyes, which we 
 believe is the prolongation of the road, we see a 
 grayish patch of no very clear form. A moment 
 or two afterwards we think that it is the post- 
 man's cart from X. The patch of colour which 
 at present we cannot discriminate is obviously 
 moving, whether towards us or away from us we 
 cannot immediately tell. That will take a 
 minute or two of careful watching to decide. 
 But without hesitation we jump to the con- 
 clusion, That is the postman's cart from X. 
 Why ? If something called us away and made 
 us terminate our walk at this point, we should 
 unhesitatingly say (perhaps after consulting our
 
 PERCEPTION AND ILLUSION 61 
 
 watch) that we had seen the postman's cart. Yet 
 how much have we actually seen ? How much 
 represents mere sensations, and how much re- 
 presents additional features which we have 
 added to the sensation ? 
 
 The time at which the event occurs has, it is 
 clear, greatly helped to decide us ; if the gray 
 patch had appeared three hours earlier or three 
 hours later we should have said, That cannot be 
 the postman's cart from X. Thus our sup- 
 posed sight of the cart coming towards us turns 
 out to be an inference from the fact that the 
 postman always comes along the road in the 
 afternoon in the opposite direction to that in 
 which we are walking, and at a certain time 
 usually reaches a certain place near where we 
 seem to see the gray patch. Our percept turns 
 out to have in it a large element of inference, or 
 guessing, and on the apprehension of that moving 
 gray patch we fly to a conclusion, which if 
 challenged appears, to say the least, a very 
 daring one. The patch is so small that, if I try, 
 I can cover it with the point of my cedar pencil, 
 just the protruding lead, held at arm's length; 
 and yet I believe it to be an object which measures 
 five or six feet in total width. It is gray, and 
 the cart with which I identify it is red, while 
 the horse is black. It creeps along very slowly, 
 and I believe it is moving at the rate of seven or 
 eight miles an hour. In form it is markedly 
 unlike the form of an actual horse and cart. 
 Yet I feel a good deal of certainty in my 
 decision, and if on continuing my walk I were to 
 discover that my gray patch were a cow or a
 
 <)2 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AXD FEELING 
 
 four-wheeled waggon ; or that it were moving in 
 the same direction as myself instead of meeting 
 me ; or even if I found that it were not the post- 
 man's cart but some other two-wheeled cart, 
 I should feel a decided shock of surprise. 
 On the basis of a very small amount of 
 directly received sensation, I have built up a 
 large structure of guess-work ; and yet unless a 
 psychologist's habit of introspection had laid hold 
 of me, I should never have felt any suspicion of 
 the true state of the case. 
 
 All Perception Involves Inference. 
 
 Yes, the reader may perhaps say, that is all 
 very well ; but you have taken a peculiar and un- 
 usual case. Here the element of direct sensation 
 is very small and uncertain ; we acknowledge 
 that, and supply the plea by guessing. But how 
 about an object in the same room ? Do psycho- 
 logists mean to say that we only infer the 
 presence of the apple on the plate, of the wine in 
 the decanter, of the" flowers in the vases on the 
 table here before us ? 
 
 " Are things what they seem, 
 Or is visions about ? " 
 
 The psychologist replies, The two cases are 
 essentially similar, though, of course, they differ 
 in detail. Look at the apple. You are quite 
 certain that it is an apple. Why ? Because you 
 know that under the conditions existing it is 
 much more likely to be an apple than a wax- 
 imitation of an apple, or one of those ingenious
 
 PERCEPTION AND ILLUSION 03 
 
 cakes of scented soap which imitate the appear- 
 ance of an apple so well. On your table after 
 dinner you expect apples, and a momentary 
 apprehension of green and red colour and a 
 roimdish shape convinces you that the apple is 
 there. But you know you may be mistaken. If 
 it were the 1st of April and your son and heir 
 were at home, it is possible that now I start the 
 doubt you might not sweep it away so easily. 
 The appearance is normal, and there is nothing 
 to rouse suspicion, so you do not hesitate, but at 
 once lay hold of the fruit. Suppose that the 
 weight were rather greater or rather less than 
 you expect, would not your doubt return 1 Or 
 if the apple felt a little colder or a little 
 warmer? 
 
 The possibility of mistake shows us that what 
 we call perception is not a simple process of re- 
 ceiving into the mind complete, ready-made 
 ideas, but a process by which we arrive at a 
 highly complex idea by using knowledge previ- 
 ously obtained. Ordinarily, no doubt, the Avhole 
 thing takes place so easily and so quickly that 
 he steps by which the result is arrived at cannot 
 be detected ; but, all the same, perception is 
 never a simple reception of an impression made 
 on the mind. It is never the registration of a 
 mere bundle of sensations, imprinted on a blank 
 film, but a process of essentially the same kind 
 as inference or thought. 
 
 The point is so important that we may be per- 
 mitted to dwell on it a little longer. Let us 
 first quote a passage from John Stuart Mill 
 which will help to make the matter clearer :
 
 C4 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 "I affirm that I hear a man's voice. This 
 would pass, in common language, for a direct 
 perception. All, however, which is really per- 
 ception [Mill means all that is immediately given 
 me by sensation] is that I hear a sound. That 
 the sound is a voice, and that voice the voice of 
 a man, are not perceptions but inferences. I 
 affirm, again, "that I saw my brother at a certain 
 hour this morning. If any proposition concern- 
 ing a matter of fact would commonly be said to 
 be known by the direct testimony of the senses, 
 this surely would be so. The truth, however, is 
 far otherwise. I only saw a certain coloured 
 surface ; or rather I had the kind of visual 
 sensations which are usually produced by a 
 coloured surface; and from these as marks, known 
 to be such by previous experience, I concluded 
 that I saw my brother. I might have had sensa- 
 tions precisely similar, when my brother was not 
 there. I might have seen some other person so- 
 li early resembling him in appearance, as, at the 
 distance, and with the degree of attention which 
 I bestowed, to be mistaken for him. I might 
 have been asleep, arid have dreamed that I saw 
 him ; or in a state of nervous disorder, which 
 brought his image before me in a waking halluci- 
 nation. In all these modes, many have been 
 led to believe that they saw persons well known 
 to them who were dead or far distant. If any 
 of these suppositions had been true, the affirma- 
 tion that I saw my brother would have been 
 erroneous." 1 
 
 1 Mill, Logic, Book IV., ch. I., 2.
 
 PERCEPTION AKD ILLUSION 65 
 
 Illusions of Perception. 
 
 In this passage Mill mentions the case of 
 illusions, which throw much light on the subject. 
 An illusion is a false percept, the basis of which 
 can be assigned. If from a given object of ex- 
 perience I get a percept which is different from 
 that which a normal person would get under the 
 most favourable circumstances for getting a true 
 percept, there is illusion. Thus when the con- 
 jurer makes me apparently see him break up my 
 watch by a blow of a hammer and then reproduces 
 the watch unharmed, I know that if a person of 
 perfectly clear sight and full power of attention 
 had been placed in the most favourable possible 
 position for seeing, he would not see what I see 
 (or appear to see) but something else. In all 
 cases of illusion there is a misinterpretation of 
 some of the data which, under ordinary circum- 
 stances, might give rise to valid percepts. 
 
 There is a well-known passage in Sir Walter 
 Scott's Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft which 
 relates how he saw an apparition of Lord Byron 
 at Abbotsford. Scott had been reading an 
 account of his lately deceased friend. He laid 
 down the book, and, passing into the hall, saw by 
 the rays of the moon "right before him and in a 
 standing posture, the exact representation of his 
 departed friend, whose recollection had been so 
 strongly brought to his imagination. He stopped 
 for a single moment, so as to notice the wonder- 
 ful accuracy with which fancy had impressed 
 upon the bodily eye the peculiarities of dress and 
 posture of the illustrious poet. Sensible, how- 
 
 E
 
 <3G THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELIXG 
 
 ever, of the delusion, he felt no sentiment save 
 that of wonder at the extraordinary accuracy of 
 the resemblance, and stepped onwards toward 
 the figure, which resolved itself, as he approached, 
 into the various materials of which it was com- 
 posed. These were merely a screen, occupied by 
 greatcoats, shawls, plaids, and such other articles 
 as usually are found in a country entrance-hall. 
 The spectator returned to the spot from which he 
 had seen the illusion, and endeavoured, with all 
 his power, to recall the image which had been so 
 singularly vivid. But this was beyond his 
 capacity." 
 
 This is a good typical case of illusion. AVe 
 have the previous occupation of the mind with a 
 certain set of ideas ; the image of Lord Byron 
 must have been hovering in the "marginal" 
 region of Scott's consciousness ready to come into 
 the focus of attention on the slightest suggestion. 
 We have absence of interesting rival ideas in the 
 field of attention, so that when the image of Lord 
 Byron " in his habit as he lived " is suggested it 
 is less likely to suffer eclipse. The coats and 
 plaids were of course never seen as such : what 
 Avas seen was ambiguous, and that interpretation 
 is placed on it which suits the particular mood of 
 mind, and so the image of the dead poet is super- 
 posed on or read into the data supplied by the 
 eyes. And the important point to notice is that 
 this is in no way different from ordinary percep- 
 tions except that the wrong image is suggested. 
 In all cases we have the imposition of a pre- 
 perceptive image, and this image does not come 
 from without but from within. It does not exist
 
 PERCEPTION AND ILLUSION 67 
 
 ready made as a distinct mental fact until the 
 occurrence of a sight sensation which is susceptible 
 of such an image. When it is suggested, the 
 image appears not as an image but as a percept ; 
 that is, it is distinctly referred to a position in 
 space outside of our bodies and in front of our 
 eyes. This happens always in visual percepts. The 
 illusion is not due to the fact that we have read 
 into the data of sensation something which is not 
 there. That occurs in all perception. The illu- 
 sion is due to the fact that we have read into our 
 data something which we ought not something 
 which further thought or perception will con- 
 vince us is impossible and absurd, or which is at 
 any rate at variance with what a perfectly sane 
 And healthy person in complete possession of his 
 faculties would read into them, if he had full 
 opportunities of investigation. 
 
 In some cases, as we have seen, the data supplied 
 by the senses is open to two or more interpreta- 
 tions. Simple instances of this will be found in 
 the following diagrams. Thus Fig. A may repre- 
 sent a pyramid with the top cut off as one would 
 see it from above, or the inside of a box ; in the 
 one case the smaller square represents the top, in 
 the other it represents the furthest side. Fig. B 
 may represent a transparent cube with the lowest 
 line nearest the spectator, or a similar cube 
 with the lowest lino furthest away from the 
 spectator ; in the one case he is partly looking on 
 the top of the cube, in the latter partly upwards 
 at the bottom of it. Fig. C in the same way 
 represents either a flight of steps or an overhang- 
 ing cornice, according to whether the surface X
 
 68 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 or the surface Y is regarded as nearer to the 
 spectator. In each case the interpretation which 
 
 gains the upper hand succeeds in so completely 
 ousting the other that it is difficult for us 
 to conceive of the latter ; and the transitions 
 from one to the other percept comes with a 
 curious shock. 
 
 In all perception, then, we have much more than 
 the reception of sensations. The mind, instead 
 of being " for the most part passive," as Locke 
 thought, is in a highly active state. The sensations
 
 PERCEPTION AND ILLUSION 69 
 
 now received are combined, previously received 
 sensations are revived, an image is imposed on, 
 and fused into a whole with, the sensations ; the 
 whole is localized in space, and regarded as a 
 real thing not created by the imagination, but 
 having an existence of its own ; and, further- 
 more, it is recognized as a so-and-so, as a thing 
 of a certain kind, and as having a right to a 
 certain name. 
 
 The Personal Factor. 
 
 AVhat the images are with which we overlay 
 the data of sense depends on a number of con- 
 ditions. For instance, our history and ex- 
 perience, our education, our emotional condition, 
 our natural temperament, our race and religion, 
 all predispose us in various ways. We never get 
 free from the predisposition. Thus the image 
 which a Scott would be likely to combine with a 
 percept is seldom the same as that which his cook 
 would be likely to combine with it. If a student of 
 religious ceremonies is taken into a church during 
 Mass he absolutely sees different sights from a 
 man who cares for none of these things. The 
 old native hunter and the newly-arrived subaltern 
 do not have the same percepts in the jungle, even 
 if they have the same data of sensation. In each 
 case things which do not interest and have no 
 meaning for the novice pass by unheeded, while 
 others which interest, but are not understood on 
 account of want of previous experience, are seen 
 falsely. Imagine a savage who has never seen a 
 book, and perhaps even has no conception of a
 
 70 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 written language, being taken into a library. He 
 sees horizontal rows of patches of colour, but the 
 significance of those patches of colour is hidden. 
 He possibly regards them simply as adornments. 
 He does not distinguish between the different 
 volumes, but regards a whole set as a single 
 object, as we think of railings or a panelled wall. 
 A European with some education sees books ; 
 he knows that each of those patches of colour is 
 a volume containing many printed pages, that it 
 can be opened and read in a certain way. A 
 student sees the works of particular authors, and 
 particular editions of these ; his attention is 
 arrested by features which even the second man 
 overlooks entirely. He says to himself, "Ah, 
 there is the new variorum edition of Shakespeare, 
 there is the ' Encyclopedia Britannica,' " and so 
 on. The actual data of sight may be the same in 
 each case, but the percepts which result are 
 widely different. 
 
 It is now quite clear that a child or a savage 
 who has never seen an inkstand or a postman's 
 cart will not see the inkstand or the postman's 
 cart when you or I would do so. They must of 
 necessity put a different interpretation on the 
 sensations they receive. The truth can be made 
 clear to them if they have the necessary experi- 
 ence, but not otherwise. 
 
 Apperception. 
 
 Some psychologists, following the German philo- 
 sopher, Herbart, call all such recognition or 
 identification apperception; and the set of ideas
 
 PERCEPTION AND ILLUSION 71 
 
 to which the new idea gets attached is called an 
 apperceptive system or apperceptive group. Different 
 people form different groups, and what we may 
 call the eagerness of the groups thus formed to 
 add to themselves fresh ideas differs very much. 
 With the student, the group of thoughts con- 
 nected with his favourite study and the books 
 about it is more eager to attract new ideas than 
 the groups connected with sport or with handi- 
 craft. Whatever touches study is instantly re- 
 cognized ; what touches sport is laid hold of very 
 feebly or not at all by the group of ideas whose- 
 business it is to assimilate or absorb it. This is 
 really only a rather fanciful way of picturing the 
 facts, which other psychologists have already 
 recognized, though perhaps not so clearly as the- 
 followers of Herbart. We know that all fresh 
 ideas are made our own only by assimilation, 
 either subconscious or fully conscious ; and that 
 mental assimilation implies some kind of selective- 
 activity on the part of the mind, or the contents 
 of the mind, just as bodily assimilation implies 
 some kind of selective activity on the part of 
 the walls of the stomach and the intestines. 
 
 All perception is selective. The mind does 
 not come unbiassed to the task of viewing things. 
 Professor Sully, in his delightful Studies of 
 Childhood, remarks how very restricted is the 
 observation of the child. Colour has for the 
 child more interest than form. " A little girl of 
 eighteen months, who knew lambs and called 
 them 'lammies,' on seeing two black ones in a 
 field among some white ones, called out, ' Eh ! 
 doggie ! doggie ! ' The likeness of colour to-
 
 72 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 the black dog overpowered the likeness in form 
 to the other lambs close by." He goes on to point 
 out that the extraordinary fancies of the child, 
 the quaint and extravagant resemblances which 
 he sees in things, come from this source. " The 
 reason why it is so easy for a child to super- 
 impose a fanciful analogy on an object of sense is 
 that his mind is untroubled by all the complexity 
 of the object. It fastens on some salient picture 
 of supreme attractiveness or interest, and flies 
 away on the wings of this to what seems to us 
 a far-off resemblance." The child sees the 
 strangest shapes in clouds and in the glowing 
 cinders of the fire, faces, houses, animals. I once 
 knew a child of about five or six who for years 
 was distinctly under the impression that he had 
 :seen on one occasion in the western clouds at 
 sunset the vision of a mighty angel sitting on a 
 great white throne. It is hardly necessary to 
 add that his favourite reading at the time in- 
 cluded certain chapters of the book of the "Reve- 
 lation of St. John." Whether this was a case 
 of false perception, or a case of false recollection, 
 it is difficult to say. 
 
 How completely the child may mistake vivid 
 images for percepts is seen in the case of dreams. 
 Every observant parent and nurse knows how 
 children mix up their visions with the actual 
 world. An odd instance is given by Dr. Sully : 
 " Another child, a little girl in the same school, 
 told her mother that she had seen a funeral last 
 night, and on being asked ' Where ? ' answered 
 .gravely, ' I saw it on my pillow.' " I fancy one 
 treason why our dream-images in adult life fade
 
 PERCEPTION AND ILLUSION 73 
 
 go quickly is because we do not dwell on them, 
 and attach so little importance to them. The 
 child taking them for facts of perception, they 
 attract him by their strangeness and oddity, and 
 he keeps his attention fixed on them sufficiently 
 to enable him to remember them for years. A 
 friend of mine says : " Certain childish dreams 
 of my own remain as vivid as any actual memories 
 that I possess ; one of them in particular, which I 
 can positively date as within a few months of 
 my seventh birthday, seems as clear as it was 
 nearly forty years ago." 
 
 Recent work by Dr. Hodgson and other 
 members of the Society for Psychical Research 
 has gone far to show that our records of extra- 
 ordinary and unusual occurrences are much 
 more tainted by fault of memory than is usually 
 thought. " Our researches have led us gradually 
 to attach more and more importance to the effect 
 of time on the value of testimony " (Podmore). 
 
 But there is such a thing as direct illusion or 
 false perception, and this process is very closely 
 related to the normal process called perception. 
 A great French psychologist, with the love of 
 paradox which is sometimes found in French 
 thinkers, maintains that all perception is illusive. 
 This is, of course, not to be taken literally ; he 
 only means that in every percept there are ele- 
 ments which, unless kept in check, would lead to 
 illusion. In every percept there is the making 
 of an illusion, as in every image there is the 
 making of an hallucination. How, then, can I 
 know a real percept when I have it ? The only 
 way I know of arriving at truth is by criticism.
 
 74 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 The suspected percept must be brought face to 
 face with other percepts of ray own and of others. 
 For instance, I must see whether by moving my 
 eyes, or my head, or by taking a few steps, I can 
 bring about another percept incompatible with the 
 one which claims my acceptance. By walking a 
 pace or two Scott's spectre of Lord Byron evapor- 
 ated, and so have many other apparitions. When 
 more clearly denned, the percepts of the screen, 
 greatcoats, plaids, and so on, drove out the image 
 which the poet had read into them when more 
 dimly seen. But suppose this fails, and that a 
 percept remains which we feel unable to accept 
 as quite true because it conflicts with our pre- 
 viously acquired knowledge. Let us, in the 
 second place, bring a fresh sense to bear, and add 
 touch and hearing to sight. If this is not possible, 
 optical instruments may enable us to bring such 
 additional facts into consciousness as may settle 
 the question. And, finally, there is the testimony 
 of others, where this is attainable. Thus it seems 
 possible that the so-called canals of Mars may 
 turn out to be mere optical illusions, because 
 it appears as though only one astronomer has 
 been able to see them with any degree of clearness. 
 None of these ways of checking the percept is 
 infallible ; for instance, even the test of confirma- 
 tion by others may break down, for such is the 
 effect of suggestion that illusions may be gener- 
 ated in a number of persons together. We tend 
 to see what others see, just as we tend to think 
 what others think. In a sense, we may almost 
 say that ideas under favourable conditions become 
 catching.
 
 PERCEPTION AND ILLUSION 75 
 
 Suggestion and Perception. 
 
 Tin's is such an important fact that a little 
 additional attention may be given to it. We all 
 know that occasionally a person may be led inta 
 accepting a false or ridiculous idea by simply sug- 
 gesting it to him in a quiet and inoffensive way. 
 He will for a moment accept the absurdity, 
 because his attention is not fully aroused, and! 
 what there is of it is mainly occupied with some- 
 thing else ; we will say watching a distant object. 
 You say to him, " You are an oddity, are you 
 not, Jack ? " and he replies, " Yes, I am an 
 oddity." There is a quiet acceptance of what 
 you say, because no antagonistic ideas are 
 aroused. When people are dreaming you can 
 modify their dreams by speaking to them, and 
 you may arouse dream-images by touching them 
 or making slight noises. Indeed, when persons 
 are awake direct sensations may be aroused by 
 suggesting them. If one talks of yawning, people 
 begin to gape ; if one talks of vermin, they begin 
 to feel unpleasant tickling and itching of the 
 skin. What occurs only occasionally in per- 
 sons awake, or in the state of normal sleep, 
 occurs with more frequency and regularity in 
 persons in the hypnotic state. There we some- 
 times have it in a very high degree, but not by 
 any means always. But we must not think that 
 suggestibility is peculiar to the hypnotic state. 
 Every time a card is forced on you in a card- trick, 
 every time that a conjurer makes a " pass," we 
 have the same thing. In fact, nearly the whole 
 secret of the modern juggler lies in this the
 
 76 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 control of the attention of his audience. He has 
 next to no apparatus, and stands clear of tables 
 -and cupboards, with sleeves ostentatiously turned 
 up. But in spite of his delightful frankness and 
 air of careless disengagement, he is full of deter- 
 mination that you shall attend carefully to certain 
 of his acts which are of no importance, and shall 
 not attend at all to certain other of his acts Avhich 
 are all-important. He is not so artless as to say, 
 "Look here," or "Look there " ; he only suggests 
 the idea. Yet it produces its effect, not only on 
 single individuals, but on whole rooms full of 
 people. 
 
 In the best book on conjuring that I know of 
 this is put very clearly. Mr. Edwin Sachs tells 
 us in his Sleight of Hand that " the prevailing 
 idea with the public is that a conjurer moves 
 things about from place to place before one's very 
 eyes, but with such extreme rapidity as to avoid 
 detection. . . . Articles are indeed transmitted 
 from one place to another before the eyes of the 
 .audience, but it is always sub rosa. This is the 
 reason Avhy conjurors say so much about the 
 hand being quicker than the eye, etc. The 
 audience is continually trying to detect move- 
 ments which are never even attempted, the result 
 being that other movements are conducted with 
 impunity. The conjuror must start with the one 
 principle firmly fixed in his mind that he is to 
 -deceive his audience in every way possible. At 
 no time is he actually to do that which he says he 
 is doing. Every look and every gesture, besides 
 very word, should tend to lead the mind into 
 the wrong groove. Misdirection is the grand basis
 
 PERCEPTION AND ILLUSION 77 
 
 of the conjuror's actions ; and the more natural 
 the performer's movements in this particular, the 
 more complete will be his success." 
 
 The conjurer has to divert attention from 
 what he does not want us to see, and therefore 
 tries to fix it on something which will interest 
 and amuse us, while he performs unnoticed his 
 passes, substitutes one article for another, and 
 so forth. There can be little doubt that the vast 
 majority of the better approved phenomena of 
 " Spiritualism " belong to that class of conscious 
 or unconscious trickery of this kind. There is a 
 still greater majority of phenomena which really 
 rests on no evidence which would hold water for 
 a moment ; but speaking only of those cases in 
 which at any rate some degree of precaution against 
 fraud is taken, we may hold with Mr. Podmore 
 that " the phenomena upon which spiritualists rely 
 are such as to require the exercise of continuous 
 observation, and experiments designed to dispense 
 with the necessity of such observation [by means 
 of purely mechanical arrangements] have invari- 
 ably failed." 
 
 The results of suggestibility in hypnotic patients 
 and in the audience of the spiritualist medium 
 are so startling that one is inclined to forget that 
 they are closely related to many very familiar 
 facts. Some of the most striking and apparently 
 exceptional phenomena of physical nature turn 
 out to be merely special cases of well-known laws. 
 Thus the action of the syphon, which, when em- 
 ployed by the Italian lemonade seller still arouses 
 the curiosity of the blase London street-boy, does 
 not really involve any suspension of the law that,
 
 78 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 left to itself, water will not flow uphill ; it is 
 explained for us in every elementary book on 
 physical science as a special case of the venerable 
 principle that, left to itself, a smaller weight will 
 not balance a larger one. So is suggestibility 
 after all only found to be a special case of a 
 well-known law, that one idea suggests another. 
 It is a particular instance of the principle that 
 we spoke of in Chapter II. the law of contiguity. 
 All speech exemplifies it. When I say, " Here is 
 Mrs. Kobinson," a mental visage of Mrs. Robin- 
 son rises in your mind. As long as you are in 
 your normal state, with full and clear conscious- 
 ness of all about you, this will not give rise to an 
 illusion. If Mrs. Smith enters instead, a struggle 
 instantly begins between the rival ideas, the 
 nascent or imperfectly formed image of Mrs. 
 Robinson and the percept of Mrs. Smith. In 
 ordinary cases there is no difficulty of decision. 
 The superiority is all on the side of the percept. 
 But let us suppose that the lady calls during a 
 twilight afternoon before the lamps are lit, and 
 that in figure and general appearance she re- 
 sembles Mrs. Robinson, you may be deceived and 
 accept the suggestion. The percept is too vague 
 and faint to drive out the image. And I have 
 forced on you an illusion which, if you had been 
 alone, you would not have experienced. The verbal 
 percept (the name, Mrs. Robinson) produced in 
 you by me gave rise, according to the law of 
 contiguity, to an image of the lady, and this 
 image was, as it were, impressed on the percept, 
 combined with it, and formed a false percept, 
 that of Mrs. Smith.
 
 PERCEPTION AND ILLUSION 79 
 
 Hallucinations 
 
 Sometimes false percepts arise without any 
 discoverable cause or object external to the organ- 
 ism. These are not called illusions, but hallucina- 
 tions. No clear line can be marked out between 
 them ; they shade off into one another. In some 
 illusions the basis of actual sensation is very 
 slight ; in most hallucinations some sensation, 
 especially an organic sensation, serves as a 
 starting-point. Hallucinations are usually looked 
 on as a much graver symptom of mental 
 disturbance than illusions. All sane persons 
 are subject to illusions; but only a few are 
 subject to hallucinations when wide-awake, 
 and under conditions favourable to clear percep- 
 tion. Among the insane they are very common. 
 One patient in Bethlem Hospital used to hear 
 the voice of some female calling to her from her 
 abdomen. An epileptic patient in another asylum 
 used to hear distant sounds of music from the 
 abdomen ; they grew more and more loud and 
 distinct, and gradually rose through the chest, 
 neck, and head ; when they reached the top of 
 the head she lost all consciousness. Another be- 
 lieved he had a " spiritual wife " within him, 
 who constantly communed with him. " In each 
 of these instances some part of the bodily organ- 
 ism was referred to as the source from which the 
 sensory impression was derived" (Hyslop). As 
 a rule, spontaneous hallucinations occur frequently 
 only in persons afflicted with mental disease. 
 Yet some undoubtedly sane persons suffer from 
 recurrent hallucinations; for instance, Christopher
 
 80 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 Xicolai, the German critic and publisher, whose 
 greatest monument is the Allgemeine Deutsche, 
 Jtibliothek in 106 volumes. This unfortunate 
 man, while suffering from intermittent fever, saw 
 figures of men constantly moving and changing ; 
 but he always regarded them as hallucinatory. 
 He saw them, but did not quite believe in them. 
 The recent inquiries set on foot by the Society 
 for Psychical Research have proved that occa- 
 sional hallucinations are much more common 
 among the sane than was formerly supposed. 
 Of men, nearly eight per cent., and of women, just 
 twelve per cent., reported themselves as having 
 experienced them. 
 
 Where there is expectant attention there is 
 liability to hallucination. Those who expect to 
 see ghosts are, on the whole, more likely to 
 see them than others. The psychologist, Dr. 
 Parrish, was told by a friend that when he 
 took his usual afternoon walk he used regularly 
 to see at a certain spot the first man and horse of 
 a squadron of cavalry returning from their daily 
 exercise, as they crossed the street at some dis- 
 tance in front. One day. when he had seen this 
 as usual, he began to wonder why the rest of the 
 men did not follow, and he then found out that 
 the men and horses he had just seen, or fancied 
 he had seen, Avere not real ; they were phantoms, 
 or hallucinatory percepts. An American psych- 
 ologist has produced hallucinations of this sort 
 experimentally. A blue bead one and a half 
 inches long and half as broad was hung up in the 
 Yale Psychological Laboratory by a fine black 
 thread in front of a black surface. This bead
 
 PERCEPTION AND ILLUSION 81 
 
 could, by a concealed arrangement, be drawn 
 away and replaced without the observer's notice. 
 The observer, or subject, was shown the bead, 
 and then walked to the end of a marked line on 
 which the distance from the bead was measured ; 
 he next walked slowly towards the bead along 
 the marked line, and mentioned directly he saw it. 
 In all he did this twenty times in succession ; every 
 now and then the bead was withdrawn, but in 
 many cases the subject still saw the bead as before. 
 About two-thirds of the persons who were tried 
 perceived the bead, or seemed to do so, Avhen it 
 was not there. What they expected to see they 
 saw, whether it was actually there to see or not. 
 Their eyes, and nerves, and brain were all ad- 
 justed to see the bead, and they saw it. 
 
 Hallucinations, then, can be suggested, as 
 well as illusions ; but not, ordinarily, among 
 sane persons in a normal condition. During the 
 hypnotic trance a certain small percentage of 
 persons are susceptible to them ; most are not. 
 But those that are susceptible can often be made 
 the victims of hallucination even after they have 
 (at anyrate, apparently) been entirely awakened. 
 Here is an ordinary case. " I say to someone in 
 hypnosis (the hypnotic condition) 'When I cough 
 after you wake, you will see a pigeon sitting on 
 the table ; you will be thoroughly awake.' The 
 suggestion takes effect ; the subject sees a pigeon 
 where no pigeon is, but it is impossible to make 
 him accept a further suggestion " (Moll.). Very 
 startling are some of the instances given by Binet 
 and Fe're in their dnimal Magnetism. In genera), 
 character they are all more or less like the one 
 
 F
 
 82 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 just given, but they are much more striking 
 because of the full details that are added. Charcot 
 frequently performed the following experiment. 
 He suggested to a subject that on one (which we 
 will call No. 1) out of a number of blank cards 
 a portrait was visible ; the subject, of course, 
 saw the portrait ; he was then awakened and 
 asked to look through the dozen or so of 
 cards, amongst which was Xo. 1. When the 
 subject came to this he saw the imaginary 
 portrait at once. In cases such as this some 
 distinctive marks probably exist on the card, 
 such little specks and raised spots as we know 
 to occur, and the hallucinatory image is as- 
 sociated with these, so that directly the patient 
 sees them the image appears. This view is borne 
 out by a number of facts. For instance, for him 
 to see the (imaginary) photograph on No. 1, the 
 card must be held closer to him than a real 
 photograph would need to be held, for the dots, 
 etc., on the surface, on which we assume the 
 recognition is based, are very small. Again, 
 such recognition takes longer than ordinary re- 
 cognition. Some more quotations from Binet 
 and Fere's interesting book will serve to eluci- 
 date the character of these hypnotic hallucinations. 
 "If, during the hypnotic sleep, it is suggested 
 to the subject that a profile portrait is on a table 
 of dark wood before him, he distinctly sees his 
 portrait on awakening. If, without warning, a 
 prism is placed before one eye, the subject is 
 astonished to see two portraits, and the position 
 of the false image is always in conformity with 
 the laws of physics." That is, the hallucinatory
 
 THE DATA OF PERCEPTION 83 
 
 image is subject to the same changes as a real 
 percept would be. u If the subject is made to 
 look at the hallucinatory object through an opera- 
 glass, it appears to be nearer or more distant 
 according to the end of the glass presented to 
 the eye/' Imposture is guarded against by not 
 allowing the subject to see which end of the 
 glass is in use, which is easily secured by placing 
 it in a cardboard box, with holes of equal size. 
 In these and other ways it is shown that the laws 
 of refraction and reflection apply to the hallucina- 
 tory percepts ; and it is difficult, therefore, to 
 avoid the conclusion that in reality something is 
 seen, namely, the dots and spots, etc., on the card, 
 and that these form the basis or starting-point of 
 the hallucination. If this is so, it is additional 
 proof that there is no essential difference between 
 illusion and hallucination. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE DATA OF PERCEPTION 
 
 WE may now briefly consider the chief kinds of 
 sensation on which our percepts of external things 
 are based. We have several times vised the term 
 sensation ; let us consider more precisely what 
 we mean by it. 
 
 By a sensation we mean an elementary mental 
 state, which ordinarily forms a part of a more 
 complex percept, but which, if attention is con- 
 centrated upon it, can be known by itself. When
 
 84 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 so known it is not regarded as belonging to an 
 external object, but is referred to our own bodjr. 
 Thus, there is the sensation of red, which is 
 usually at once referred to an external object, 
 and forms part of the complex percept which we 
 call a stick of sealing-wax on the writing-table ; 
 but which can be introspected as a distinct 
 percept and referred to my own eyes. 
 
 Sensations are traditionally classified by refer- 
 ence to the organ of the body from which they 
 originate. Thus, we call sensations of sight, sound, 
 touch, taste, and smell those which originate in 
 activities of the eye, ear, skin, mouth, and nose 
 respectively. But although very important dif- 
 ferences of quality are associated with difference 
 of organ, we must remember that some sensations 
 derived from the eye are not purely visual, that 
 some derived from the mouth are not purely 
 sensations of taste, and so on. The sensations 
 derived through the agency of the skin are really 
 of several distinct kinds, and are easily discrimi- 
 nated as such. Then the traditional classification 
 also overlooks two very important kinds of 
 sensations those arising from movement (motor 
 sensations) and those belonging to the general 
 sensibility of the body (systemic or organic 
 sensations). 
 
 In the first place, we notice that a pure sensa- 
 tion, a sensation without any interpretation what- 
 ever, can hardly be said to exist. It is only a 
 hypothesis. We know that our ej r es are affected 
 by rays of light. We know that from the change 
 thus produced in the nerves and brain sensations 
 somehow arise. But when we examine our sensa-
 
 THE DATA OF PERCEPTION 85 
 
 tions we find always some interpretation of what 
 we have given us. This is Hue, that is red, 
 implies more than merely passive reception, a 
 mere getting of an impression ; even here the 
 mind has added something, for it has revived 
 other sensations of colour and identified the new 
 sensation with some of these, distinguishing it 
 thereby from other sensations not only of colour 
 T)ut of sound, touch, taste, and so on. The 
 recognition of a sensation of blue as a sensation 
 of colour at all implies some reaction on the part 
 of the mind. We must think, then, of a "mere 
 sensation " as a sort of hypothetical or abstract 
 thing, just like a perfect circle or a perfect man, 
 a thing towards which we may approach more or 
 less near but perhaps never exactly attain. 
 
 The sensations chiefly concerned in external 
 perception are those of sight, touch, movement, 
 and sound. There are, of course, others; but 
 after all, a civilized man would lose little of the 
 sense of reality and little important knowledge of 
 the universe if taste and smell were lacking. He 
 would lose an enormous deal in the way of 
 pleasure, and some slight amount of pain ; but 
 he would not, unless he were a cook or a wine- 
 taster, or something of that sort, have to forego 
 his daily work. 
 
 Sensations of Touch. 
 
 Sensations arising from the skin embrace those 
 of touch proper, including those arising from 
 contact when the skin is lightly touched, and 
 from pressure; those of temperature; some sen-
 
 86 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 sations mainly organic, such as tickling, stinging, 
 itching, smarting, and so on ; and some important 
 combinations of sensations of pure touch with 
 sensations arising from movement. Modern ex- 
 perimental psychology has gone far towards 
 showing that the skin is an exceedingly complex 
 organ of sensation. Anatomy shows that the 
 surface is supplied with an enormous number of 
 nerves and peculiar kinds of nerve endings. It 
 may be looked upon as a kind of mosaic, made 
 up of a variety of different sensory organs. 
 Dotted about it, according to recent writers, are 
 minute spots, on which any kind of stimulus, 
 whether made by pressure with an ivory point or 
 by the end of a hot wire or of a cold wire, will 
 produce sensations of touch proper (pressure or 
 contact). Intermingled irregularly with these 
 are spots which are only sensitive to heat, and 
 others only sensitive to cold. Finally, there are 
 spots which are not sensitive to pressure, heat, or 
 cold, but only yield organic sensations of pain, 
 such as that of pricking or stinging, etc. These 
 results are perhaps not yet quite beyond criticism, 
 but a great deal of evidence has already been 
 accumulated which points in this direction. The 
 German psychologists have been in the forefront 
 here, and in the last few years the researches of 
 Blix, Goldscheider, Kiesow, and Frey appear to 
 have taught us more about the skin as an organ 
 of sensation than had been learnt during all the 
 preceding centuries in which men have studied 
 the subject. 
 
 Eecent experiments have shown that the variety 
 <?f the sensations received from the skin is very
 
 THE DATA OF PERCEPTION 87 
 
 much greater than has been until lately supposed. 
 After prolonged tracing over the surface of the 
 body with a metallic pencil, which was in connec- 
 tion with an electrical machine, Professor Stanley 
 Hall distinguished pain-points, " thrill-points," 
 "tickle-points," "acceleration-points" (where the 
 rapidity of the movement of his pencil was 
 apparently increased), "blind-points" (where no 
 sensation is aroused), as well as the previously 
 recognised heat-, cold-, and pressure-points. 
 
 Localization of Touches. 
 
 The skin being such a highly varied surface, it 
 can be easily understood that the power of dis- 
 criminating sensations of touch varies very much 
 according to the part affected. Thus, if we take 
 the points of a pair of compasses used in drawing, 
 and blunt them slightly so they shall not prick 
 the skin, and apply them to the back of the hand 
 of another person (whose eyes should be closed), 
 we shall find that the two points are not perceived 
 as two, but, so to speak, run together, when the 
 points are less than about 1 to inches apart. If 
 measured long-wise on the back of the hand 
 that is, in the direction of the fingers the dis- 
 tance between the points may be greater than if 
 measured cross-wise. On the forearm the distance 
 may be over 1| inches ; on the back, from 2 to 
 2\ inches. In marked contrast to this, at the 
 finger-tips the points which are more than T a T of 
 an inch apart, are felt as two, and on the tip of 
 the tongue the distance is only about half of this. 
 
 Notice that the two points must be of the same
 
 8 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 material, and ought to be put down simultaneously. 
 If the points are of different materials, difference 
 of temperature sensations come in to strengthen 
 the purely touch sensation. If put down one 
 after the other it will be found that the power of 
 discrimination is increased; so that we perceive 
 as two points an arrangement which, when applied 
 simultaneously, appears only as one. Again, the 
 discrimination varies, as we have just seen, accord- 
 ing to the direction in which the line joining the 
 points runs ; if the measurement is made length- 
 wise the discrimination is less than if made cross- 
 wise. Further, the two hands may vary somewhat; 
 thus, the back of the right hand, I have found, is 
 sometimes less sensitive than the back of the left. 
 And practice always increases the power of dis- 
 criminating that is, diminishes the distance 
 which must occur between the two points if they 
 are to be discriminated ; when, however, fatigue 
 sets in, the powers rapidly decrease. Individuals 
 vary, of course, more or less from the average 
 results here given. As might be expected from 
 the attention they habitually give to touch-sensa- 
 tions, and from constant practice, the discrimina- 
 tion of blind persons will be found much greater 
 than that of others. 
 
 Sensations of Temperature. 
 
 Sensations of temperature differ greatly from 
 those of touch proper. In some respects they 
 more closely resemble the organic or common 
 sensations arising from the general state of the 
 bodily organs. Recent investigation shows (as
 
 THE DATA OF PERCEPTION 89 
 
 we have just seen) that there exist in the skin 
 points which are, speaking broadly, only sensitive 
 to heat, and others only sensitive to cold. 1 These 
 spots are arranged in rows, slightly curved in 
 arrangement, which radiate from certain points 
 in the skin, particularly the roots of hairs. The 
 cold spots are more numerous than the heat 
 spots, and vary somewhat in their distribution. 
 
 When anything having the same temperature 
 as the skin is placed in contact with it, no sensa- 
 tion of temperature as a rule arises. This degree 
 of temperature (called the zero-point), at which an 
 object feels neither hot nor cold, varies in different 
 parts of the body, according to the degree of ex- 
 posure to the air. The tip of the nose has a 
 lower zero-point than the armpit, and therefore 
 the same actual temperature will appear warmer 
 at the tip of the nose than in the armpit. As we 
 pass from a hot room to a cooler, or vice versa, it 
 takes a few minutes for the exposed parts of the 
 body to get accommodated to the new tempera- 
 ture ; but the zero-point is in due time lowered, 
 and if the difference does not amount to very 
 much we may in time no longer notice the 
 change. If one hand is placed in hot water 
 and the other in cold, they will feel the 
 temperature of a basin of just warm water 
 
 1 When we test the spots with points of wires heated 
 to a very considerable temperature, it is sometimes found 
 that a cold-spot will respond to the stimulus, and a sen- 
 sation not of heat but of cold is then felt. Again, points 
 of wires heated to a moderate temperature are responded 
 to by both heat- and cold-spots, and then though wo 
 recognize that there is a sensation of temperature we 
 caimot discriminate it as hot or cold.
 
 90 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 differently; the hand that has been in hot Avater 
 will feel the lukewarm water as cold, and the 
 other hand will feel it warm. Then, again, the 
 amount of surface affected varies. We can bear 
 the tip of one finger in water too hot to safely 
 place the whole hand, and Avater in Avhich we 
 can place the Avhole hand Avould be intolerable to 
 the whole body. Bad conductors (like felt or 
 blankets), which are not warmer than the body, 
 may appear Avarm, because they preA 7 ent the 
 radiation of heat from the part touched, and thus 
 keep up its temperature. Good conductors (like 
 metals), Avhich are beloAv the temperature of the 
 body, as a rule appear cold, because they run off 
 Avith some of the heat ; and if hot they appear 
 very hot, because they so easily part Avith their 
 heat. 
 
 Motor Sensations. 
 
 Closely associated with touch-sensations are 
 those of movement. They are of A r ery great im- 
 portance in our perception of objects, especially in 
 relation to space. They reinforce the sensations of 
 touch, sight, and hearing Avith Avhich they are as- 
 sociated, and the latter appear stronger than they 
 do when unaccompanied by moA^ement. In the 
 same way, moA r ement increases our poAA-er to dis- 
 criminate and to remember sensations of the 
 special senses; therefore Ave perceiA'e an outline 
 Avhich Ave trace Avith our finger as Avell as obserA-e 
 Avith the eyes much more clearly than if AVC merely 
 see it. The child usually learns the form of the 
 coastline of a country or the course of a
 
 THE DATA OF PERCEPTION 91 
 
 better by tracing it two or three times than by 
 simply looking at it twenty or thirty times. 
 Even movements not so directly connected with 
 the business in hand appear to assist. The child 
 probably gains something by those strange move- 
 ments of the lips and tongue which accompany 
 the first efforts to write or draw. 
 
 There is some difference of opinion among 
 psychologists as to the nature of the motor sen- 
 sations. After they were first clearly distin- 
 guished from ordinary touch-sensations, they 
 were commonly regarded as being the conscious- 
 ness answering to the flow of nervous energy 
 from the brain to the muscles. They were not 
 supposed to accompany and correspond to the 
 flow of nervous energy to the brain from the 
 surface of the body, as the other sensations were 
 known to do. Eeccnt investigation has, however, 
 gone far towards upsetting this theory. Some- 
 modern psychologists maintain that motor sen- 
 sations are at bottom only sensations of pressure- 
 and sensations due to the organic condition of the 
 skin, muscles, sinews, and bones. As the arm is 
 raised various combinations of such sensations are 
 successively produced. The occurrence of a par- 
 ticular set of these sensations in a particular order 
 tells me that my arm is raised or has fallen again; 
 and so with all other parts of the body. It is- 
 probable, however, that there are distinct sensa- 
 tions arising from movement, in addition to those- 
 arising from mere position of the limbs, head, etc. 
 The surfaces of the joints, as they glide over each 
 other, are, according to Goldscheider, the origin of 
 these special sensations ; and this opinion has been
 
 92 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 accepted by many other authorities. Another 
 (lonuau investigator, Schiff, has put forward the 
 idea that changes in the tension of the skin are 
 the physiological cause of the motor sensations; 
 but the motor sensations derived from the vocal 
 organs and the eyes can scarcely be explained in 
 this way. It is difficult to resist the conviction 
 that the muscles have something to do with the 
 origin of motor sensations, though not everything 
 to do with it. 
 
 AVhile there is not enough evidence to show 
 that the outflowing currents of nervous energy 
 sent from the brain to the muscles are the im- 
 mediate cause or physiological concomitant of 
 motor sensations, these currents almost cer- 
 tainly assist in producing them indirectly by 
 the changes they bring about in the shape 
 and size of the muscle. What we call motor 
 sensations, then, are probably very complex, and 
 are a combination of conscious and subconscious 
 elements arising from changes of various sorts in 
 the member moved, alterations of the size and 
 shape of muscles, blood-vessels, skin, mucous 
 membrane, etc., as well as from friction and 
 pressure in the joints. 
 
 Sensations of Sight. 
 
 Sensations of sight arising through the eye are 
 of two kinds those which are directly due to 
 the effect of the rays of light on the retina, and 
 those which are due to the movements of the eye 
 or parts of the eye. It is of the former, called 
 the purely optical sensations, that we must first
 
 THE DATA OF PERCEPTION' 9& 
 
 speak. They include those of brightness and of 
 colour. Their usual physical cause is found in, 
 the transverse undulations set up in ether in 
 various ways, when these undulations are within 
 certain limits of rapidity. When a wire is 
 heated in a spirit lamp placed in a dark room 
 the particles of which the Avire is composed 
 are throAvn into a state of A'iolent vibration. 
 As the heat increases the vibrations increase 
 in rapidity. They are communicated to the 
 ether, which surrounds and permeates every- 
 thing ; and the movements thus set up in- 
 finitely small waves on this infinitely big ocean 
 Avhich fills all space are sent off on their journey 
 in all directions. At first the undulations are 
 too sloAT to affect the retina, though they affect 
 the skin. We can perceiA^e that the Avire is hot 
 if Ave hold it to our cheek an inch or tAvo- 
 aAvay, but our eye reveals no change. As the 
 heat increases the rate of the waA'cs increases, 
 and when they reach to the enormous number of 
 about 450 billions that is, 450 millions of mil- 
 lions per second AVC see that the Avire is gloAving 
 red. The ordinary physical cause of sight, then, 
 is found in the fact that undulations or vibrations 
 of almost inconceivable rapidity are affecting an 
 organ specially adapted for receiving them wz. y 
 the retina. 
 
 But AVC must remember that sensations of 
 sight may be produced in other Avays, though 
 such sensations are of no use for the purpose of 
 giving us knoAvledge of external things. If in 
 the dark, Avith our eyes shut, AVC press the closed 
 eyeball Avith the end of a penholder, we see a
 
 94 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 circular patch of light at the opposite corner; 
 this is known as a phosphene. When a weak 
 electric current is sent through the eye, and also 
 when the current is broken, a flash of light is 
 seen. These little experiments tend to show that 
 the particular kind of sensation we call light 
 derives its character not from the nature of the 
 stimulus but from the nature of the nervous 
 mechanism which is affected by the stimulus. 
 Thus the same thing is found in the case of 
 other sensations. The same weak current of 
 electricity which, passed through the eye, pro- 
 duces a flash of light, when passed through the 
 tongue or nose produces a sensation of taste or 
 smell. Eapid undulations of ether falling on the 
 cheek or forehead produce the sensation of warmth 
 and no sensation of light, but falling on the retina 
 give us a sensation of light and no sensation of 
 heat. 
 
 If we think this over we shall see that it 
 involves the conclusion that what we call light 
 does not exist in the universe apart from eyes to 
 see it. The "light rays" that physical science 
 deals with are in themselves no more red or blue 
 than the dark heat rays or than the X rays of 
 which we have heard so much of late ; the sun- 
 shine would have no splendour but from the eyes 
 which see it. If eyes did not exist, the sun's rays 
 would produce their beneficent effects on plants 
 and animals just as they do now ; but the splen- 
 dour and the beauty would not exist. They are 
 due, not to the physical cause, but to the mys- 
 teries of a piece of living tissue, the retina, which 
 has been given the power to select those rays
 
 THE DATA OF PERCEPTION 95 
 
 composed of undulations of a certain degree of 
 rapidity, and to somehow make them the occasion 
 of mental facts of unspeakable beauty. It is 
 therefore conceivable that other organised beings 
 might become keenly sensitive to the agency of 
 rays of higher or less velocity than those which 
 lie between the limits of 450 and 800 billions per 
 second, that is, they might be able to see the rays 
 which we call dark heat rays arid ultra-violet 
 rays. 
 
 The eye is in construction essentially an optical 
 intrument of the same general type as a camera 
 obscura or a photographic camera. An arrange- 
 ment of lenses focusses the rays of light in such a 
 way that the image of the object seen is thrown 
 on to a screen at the back. An automatic dia- 
 phragm (the iris), capable of enlarging or dimin- 
 ishing the opening through which the rays pass, 
 according to the intensity of the light, and an 
 automatic arrangement for altering the curvation 
 of the principal lens according to the distance of 
 the object, are two advantages possessed by the eye 
 which the most ingenious American camera has 
 not at present been able to imitate. The screen 
 on which the image falls is a highly complex 
 structure of several layers. In the centre of the 
 retina is a little oval depression about -^ of an 
 inch long, in which all the layers except one 
 that known as the layer of curves and rods dis- 
 appear or become very thin. This depression is 
 known as the yellow spot, and when rays of light 
 fall on this the resulting sensation is most distinct. 
 Less than a quarter of an inch to the inside of the 
 yellow spot that is, nearer to the nose is the
 
 9G THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 blind sjjot, through which the fibres of the optifc 
 nerve pass. This is insensitive to light, as a 
 well-known experiment serves to show. If the 
 
 A 
 
 reader holds this page about a foot away, shuts 
 the left eye, and fixes the other on the cross, ho 
 will see the letter A not clearly but still suili- 
 ciently well. As he brings the paper nearer the 
 A suddenly disappears from view, but reappears 
 when the page gets still nearer his nose. \Vith 
 most people it will disappear at about the distance 
 of 8 or 9 inches and reappear at about 6 or 7 
 inches, if the cross comes just in front of the eye. 
 This disappearance of the A occurs because at that 
 distance the image of the letter is thrown on to 
 the blind spot. 
 
 Colour. 
 
 The purely optical sensations given us through 
 the eye are those of brightness and colour. The 
 latter are due to the simpler cause. If a ray of 
 physical light that is, a ray of ether vibrations 
 were to consist entirely of vibrations of the same 
 length, we should get-a colour sensation. If the 
 undulations succeeded each other at the rate of 
 450 billions a second, the colour sensation in a 
 normal eye would be red ; if about 526 billions a 
 second, the colour sensation is yellow; if about 
 590 billions, green; if about 720 billions, blue;
 
 THE DATA OF PERCEPTION 97 
 
 if 790, violet. If the undulations became much 
 quicker than that we should no longer perceive 
 them as light; in other words, the ultra-violet 
 rays are invisible, though very active in pro- 
 ducing chemical changes, as every amateur 
 photographer is aware. 
 
 The reader knows that if a ray of white light 
 is passed through a prism it is broken up into a. 
 bright band of colours. This spectrum, as it is* 
 called, consists of hundreds of distinguishable- 
 shades of colours. They all pass into each other, 
 but the colours always come in the same; 
 or.lcr, with the red at one end of the spectrum 
 and the violet at the other. For convenience' 
 sake it has been customary to recognize certain 
 colours as "primary"; but there is no reason, 
 whatever for considering that red, violet, and 
 green, or red, blue, and yellow, are in themselves 
 more simple than the others. Why is it that 
 just these five or six colours have been always 
 selected as primary ] Because they are the 
 colours of objects which must always have 
 strongly appealed to the colour sense of primitive 
 man. Blue is the hue of the sky ; green that- 
 of vegetation; yellow that of sand and earth. 
 Eed is the colour of blood, and the very name 
 red (like the German roth, the Welsh rlmdd, and 
 the Greek epvdpos) is connected with the Sanskrit 
 word rudhira, meaning blood. 
 
 If all the colours are mixed together, or if 
 two colours form certain separated portions of 
 the spectrum (red, green-blue ; orange and blue ;. 
 green-yellow and violet) we get the sensation 
 of white. That is, by putting together the 
 
 G
 
 98 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 results of our analysis of white light we get 
 white light again. White light, then, is more 
 complex, physically speaking, than red light or 
 .green light; but the sensation white is just as 
 simple as the sensation red or green. The 
 stimulus to the retina is more complex, but the 
 .state of consciousness which it gives rise to is 
 not. The sensations we call, white, grey, and 
 'black (of which many hundred intermediate 
 shades can be detected) are all varieties of 
 brightness; they are all due to the stimulus of 
 mixed light of different degrees of intensity. 
 Pairs of colours which, like red and greenish 
 blue, yellow and indigo blue, green-yellow and 
 violet, together give the sensation of white, are 
 called complementary colours. 
 
 There are some very interesting facts con- 
 nected Avith our sensations of colour. The 
 existence of the strange defect called colour- 
 blindness is well known. The retina of a person 
 who suffers in this way is insensible to certain 
 kinds of rays. Thus a man will be unable to 
 recognize red rays as such, while recognizing 
 green and yellow rays ; the red rays appear just 
 the same as green and yellow rays, and he sees 
 no difference in the colour (though he perhaps 
 .sees difference in brightness) between a stick of 
 sealing-wax and a leaf of a tree. This defect 
 occurs in at least four per cent, of men in civilized 
 countries, and Government has found it necessary 
 to apply elaborate tests to prevent colour-blind 
 persons from becoming railway signalmen, mates 
 or masters of ships. Unfortunately the kind of 
 colour-blindness which is most common is that
 
 THE DATA OF PERCEPTION 99 
 
 \vhich most completely unfits a man for employ- 
 ment. For while red-green colour-blindness is 
 relatively common, yellow-blue colour-blindness 
 is extremely rare. Total colour-blindness, in 
 which only shades of brightness (that is, white, 
 grey, and black) are visible, is also very un- 
 common. No satisfactory explanation has yet 
 been found for the phenomenon, which doubtless 
 depends on some peculiarity in the structure of 
 the retina. It undoubtedly tends to be heredi- 
 tary. Xot only was John Dalton, who discovered 
 it, himself colour-blind, but his brothers also. 
 
 Different parts of the retina vary in their 
 susceptibility to colour. At the centre the 
 sensibility is greatest; in the outer regions of 
 the retina coloured rays appear white or grey; 
 in the intermediate portion the degree of sensi- 
 bility to colour gets less as we leave the centre. 
 In practice we overlook this, just as we overlook 
 the existence of the blind-spot. All parts of the 
 field of vision appear to be equally full of colour. 
 But the reader may convince himself of the truth 
 by shutting one of his eyes and carefully fixing 
 the other on a spot directly in front, and getting 
 a friend to present at the side pieces of coloured 
 paper or cloth all of the same size and shape. 
 He will find that he has very much more difficulty 
 in identifying the colours than if the pieces are 
 held just before the eye, so that the rays from 
 them can fall on the centre of the retina. 
 
 The colour-susceptibility of the two eyes of the 
 same person may also dift'er, though this is un- 
 usual. When the intensity of the light is very 
 small, all colours except red disappear, as we see
 
 100 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 in the evening twilight ; when the intensity of 
 the light is very great colour also tends to dis- 
 appear, red and green become yellow, and at last 
 only white is seen. 
 
 Complementary colours, when placed near each 
 other, reinforce each other. Thus red placed on 
 green looks redder, while the green background 
 looks greener, than when they are separately 
 seen. This, of course, is well known to all artists 
 and dressmakers. In the same way, if a piece of 
 white paper is placed on a green surface it tends 
 to look red. This seems due to the effects of 
 exhaustion in the retina, and to be due to the 
 formation of a negative after-image. 1 
 
 Besides the purely retinal sensations which we 
 derive from the eye, viz., those of colour and 
 brightness, there are others which arise in con- 
 sequence of the movements of the eyeball. The 
 eyeball is held in position by six muscles, and it 
 can be moved in almost any direction by means 
 of them. As it moves sensations, more or less 
 subconscious, arise, and these sensations have 
 much to do with our perception of the spacial 
 qualities of objects. To them we shall have 
 occasion to refer when we come to speak of the 
 origin of our ideas of space. The varying degree 
 of convergence of the eyes plays an important part 
 in our estimation of distance. We shall see that 
 the position of different objects in the field of 
 vision is not settled by the position of their 
 images on the retina, but by the movements of 
 the eye. 
 
 1 See p. 36, above.
 
 THE DATA OF PERCEPTION 101 
 
 Binocular Vision. 
 
 The two eyes ordinarily act together as one 
 organ of sense, at anyrate for the adult. Although 
 there are, of course, two images thrown on the two 
 retinas, only one percept is formed of the object. 
 How is this? The explanation lies in the same 
 set of facts which explain why we only perceive 
 one object when the two hands co-operate in 
 holding it. Experience teaches the child that 
 the two distinct sets of touches and motor sensa- 
 tions do not under certain conditions imply that 
 there are two objects; and he knows this even 
 when he lays hold of a thing in the dark. In 
 the same way he learns that when he receives 
 through the two eyes very similar pictures the two 
 pictures really refer to one and the same object, 
 and the two coalesce. As far as the eyes them- 
 selves are concerned, we may say that by constant 
 use certain parts of the two retinas become re- 
 lated, so that when a similar retinal image falls 
 on both only one object is seen. Experiment 
 shows that such corresponding parts actually 
 exist. Let the reader hold up a pencil at 
 arm's length and look at it; his two eyes will 
 instantly adapt themselves so that the axes 
 converge somewhat, and he will be seen by 
 any bystander to squint a little. By this con- 
 vergence the image of the pencil is made to fall 
 on points which correspond, viz., on the centre of 
 the yellow spot and just above and below it, and 
 he therefore sees only one object. Let him now 
 look at the pencil with one eye, while he fixes the 
 other on the wall just beyond ; he instantly sees
 
 102 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 two pencils. The same thing will happen (after a 
 little practice) if he presses one eyeball slightly so 
 as to rotate it a little to left or right. When a man 
 is drunk the muscles of his eyes become partially 
 paralysed, and do not adapt themselves properly, 
 so that the images do not fall on corresponding 
 parts ; hence the phenomenon of double vision 
 which forms so characteristic a feature of the state 
 of intoxication. Even when the man tries to fix 
 his eyes properly he fails to accomplish it. Of 
 course we are not really aware of the image on 
 the retina itself, since the fact that an image 
 exists in the eye at all is a comparatively recent 
 discovery, and is certainly known to only a very 
 small percentage of the human race even at the 
 present time ; but we are aware of the set of sen- 
 sations which that image arouses. When those 
 retinal sensations are practically the same for 
 both eyes, and are referred to corresponding 
 parts, only one percept is formed. Here we 
 have a striking instance of the way in which the 
 percept is related to the sensations which furnish 
 the data for it. Two sets of sensations are rolled 
 into one so completely that, under normal circum- 
 stances, no one even suspects that there are two 
 sets. We do not, in fact, become aware of them 
 as sensations at all, but refer them to an object 
 in space. It is here very clearly seen how com- 
 pletely perception is a matter of interpretation, 
 and that it is not merely the passive taking in of 
 Mutation. 
 
 Sensations of Hearing. 
 Sensations of Hearing are of less importance than
 
 THE DATA OF PERCEPTION 103 
 
 those of sight and touch in giving us knowledge 
 of the external world. But they are of enormous 
 importance in connection with language, and have 
 therefore had a marked influence on the develop- 
 ment of the mind. We read so much nowadays 
 that we almost forget that spoken language is the 
 original form, and that for the vast majority of 
 the human race in the present as well as the past 
 it is the only form. Music, too, with all its 
 subtle pleasure, plays so great a part in adding 
 to the happiness of man that the ear seems 
 scarcely less necessary than the eye. As is well 
 known, sensations of hearing are divided into 
 two chief groups, noises and musical tones. A 
 musical tone is produced by vibrations all of the 
 same degree of rapidity, or of vibrations whose 
 respective rates bear some fixed relation to 
 each other. A noise is produced by vibrations 
 of many different kinds. In both cases the par- 
 ticles of the air are thrown into vibration by 
 some means or other, only in one case we haA'e 
 a relatively simple set of vibrations which do not 
 interfere with each other, and in the other a mere 
 confused clashing of vibrations. 
 
 The ear is a scarcely less complicated organ 
 than the eye. The outer ear, which is the part 
 we see, gathers and reflects the sound, which is 
 carried along the tunnel to the membrane of 
 the drum of the ear, a thin membrane of 
 oval form, which separates the outer from the 
 middle portion of the ear. Attached to the 
 inner surface of the drum is a small chain 
 of three delicate bones, which carries the 
 vibratory movements of the membrane across
 
 104 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 the chamber of the middle ear. One end of the 
 chain is fastened to the drum of the ear, and the 
 other end to the membrane which covers one of 
 the openings of the inner ear, which is lodged 
 deep in the bones of the skull. 
 
 The inner ear contains two extremely complex 
 organs, the semi-circular canals and the cochlea. 
 The former, besides doing work in connection 
 with sensations of sound, are supposed to be the 
 source in which certain subconscious sensations 
 that help us to a knowledge of the position of the 
 head take their origin. The latter a structure 
 like a minute snail shell, one quarter of an inch 
 high is supposed to be the source in which 
 sensations of musical tone originate. It contains 
 a vast number of fibres known as the arches of Corti, 
 to which a portion of the nerve of hearing is dis- 
 tributed; and Helmholtz believed that these fibres, 
 which bear some resemblance to the strings of a 
 piano, being arranged parallel to each other and 
 being of different lengths, are the means by which 
 vibrations of different rates are sorted out and 
 separately communicated to the brain. 1 The 
 whole of the inner ear is filled with a watery 
 fluid, known as the endo-lymph, 
 
 However they may be received and communi- 
 cated, musical tones are of great variety. When 
 regular vibrations take place, about 16 to the 
 second, a tone begins to be heard; by many 
 persons, however, no tone is heard until the 
 vibrations reach nearly double that rate. Thirty- 
 
 1 There are reasons for thinking that the basilar 
 membrcme, just below the arches of Corli, is the 
 immediate analysing organ.
 
 THE DATA OF PERCEPTION 105 
 
 two vibrations per second give us the bottom C 
 of a piano, three octaves below the middle C ; 
 the thirty-two foot unstopped pipe of an organ pro- 
 duces a tone due to 16 or 17 vibrations per second, 
 which is an octave lower. The highest tones which 
 can be heard arc those produced by about 40,000 
 vibrations ; here again differences occur, as might 
 be expected, and a good many persons cannot 
 hear any sound when the vibrations are more 
 frequent than about 20,000 in the second. This 
 last number would produce a sound three octaves 
 above the highest D on a modern piano, while 
 40,000 would give one an octave higher still. 
 The differences of pitch are like those of colour. 
 The physical causes which produce them are 
 practically continuous, and if we had perfect ears 
 we should be able to discriminate some 20,000 
 tones, or even more. As a matter of fact, the power 
 of discrimination differs greatly with different per- 
 sons ; it depends on the original endowment of 
 sensitiveness, on practice, on the position of the 
 given notes in the general scale, and other condi- 
 tions. A man with normal ear, but without special 
 practice, can in the middle octaves detect a differ- 
 ence in tone answering to 8 or 10 vibrations. A 
 trained musician has a much greater capacity than 
 this. In the middle octave a musician with good ear 
 can detect some 200 tones, of which music only re- 
 cognizes a little more than a dozen. In the highest 
 and lowest octaves discrimination is much less fine. 
 
 Other Sensations. 
 
 Sensations of Smell and Taste are of so little 
 importance in building up the fabric of our
 
 106 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 knowledge of the world, though of great value in 
 other ways, that there is no need to dwell on 
 them. The qualities of smell and taste sensations 
 do not seem capable of the same exact discrimina- 
 tion as those of sight and hearing. At any rate, 
 up to the present no success has followed in the 
 attempts made to group them. We all know the 
 scent of lemons from the scent of onions or that 
 of musk, but we cannot arrange them in any 
 sort of series like the scale in music or the colour 
 spectrum in the case of sight sensation. 
 
 In addition to the special sensations and the 
 sensations of movement there are a number of 
 sensations produced by abnormal conditions of the 
 system*. Ordinarily, we do not receive any 
 sensations from the movement of our heart and 
 lungs, or from the condition of our digestive 
 organs. It will be easily inferred that animals 
 whose attention was largely taken up by sensa- 
 tions arising from the ordinary activity of their 
 organs would be at a distinct disadvantage in the 
 struggle for life. The monkey whose attention 
 was mainly taken up by the sensations due to 
 the movements of his heart and respiratory 
 machinery would soon starve or be captured by 
 beasts of prey. And so with men. The struggle 
 for existence must long ago have crushed out any 
 undue tendency to notice the sensations which 
 may arise from the working of our machinery. 
 It is only in abnormal states of mind, such as 
 hysteria, madness, and the hypnotic state, that 
 we pay any attention to them. When, however, 
 anything goes wrong, or when from any cause an 
 extra amount of stimulation occurs, sensations
 
 TO KNOW THE POSITION OF THINGS 107 
 
 (which are usually referred to the organ involved) 
 soon arise. The most frequent are those of the 
 alimentary canal. When the body is in need of 
 food or water, and in certain cases of disease, 
 sensations of hunger and thirst arise ; when we 
 have eaten just enough a pleasant sensation makes- 
 its appearance; when we have eaten too much 
 a painful sensation of oppression occurs. Fatigue, 
 giddiness, the sensations of pain which accompany 
 a wound or sore throat, are other examples of 
 organic sensation which forms a link between 
 sensation proper on the one hand and the emo- 
 tions on the other. The most specialized types 
 approach very near to the five senses in their 
 comparative defmiteness and in our power to 
 localize them; the least specialized like those 
 of the general malaise which so often heralds an 
 approaching illness, or those sensations of ex- 
 hilaration which we experience when out for a 
 walk on a fine, fresh, sunny morning have many 
 of the characteristics of emotion. 
 
 CHAPTEE V 
 
 HOW WE COME TO KNOW THE POSITION 
 OF THINGS 
 
 ONE of the most important kinds of knowledge 
 that we have is that of the position of things. 
 Some other facts are more necessary for the 
 immediate needs of animal life, and for some 
 days or weeks after birth the child has no
 
 108 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 knowledge of the position in space of such bright 
 objects as attract him; taste and the sense of 
 temperature are for him much more important. 
 But this very soon passes away, and for all the 
 needs of practical life the knowledge of the 
 position of objects in space is of supreme interest 
 to us. How can we reach anything, even if we 
 have gained the most perfect command of our 
 limbs, and even if we recognize what the thing 
 we want is, unless we know where it is ? 
 
 At the first glance it looks as though the 
 knowledge of things must be given in the very 
 fact that they are perceived. In a certain sense 
 this is true. If we do not know where to locate 
 a certain impression in space we are not sure 
 what that impression exactly signifies. The 
 apparent size of the impression of an object 
 differs according to its distance, and until we are 
 sure of its distance we cannot be sure of the 
 object. Is this tapering grey object we see on 
 the top of yonder hill, overhung with trees, part 
 of the spire of a church on the other side, or a 
 gas-standard, of which the lamp is hidden by 
 foliage ? \Ve cannot quite settle this question 
 until we know the distance of the grey object. 
 If it is only a hundred yards away, just at the 
 top of the hill, it is a gas-lamp ; but if it is half a 
 mile away, we put it down as the top of a spire. 
 
 Berkeley. 
 
 Modern psychology has proved that the know- 
 ledge of the distance, direction, size, and even 
 shape, of things we perceive is not given in the
 
 TO KNOW THE POSITION OF THINGS 109 
 
 sensations themselves. It was in 1709 that 
 George Berkeley, afterwards Bishop of Cloync, 
 but at that time a young graduate of Trinity 
 College, Dublin, published his Nciv Theory oj 
 Vision, in which he showed that seeing an object 
 is not a mere reception of sensations, but an 
 interpretation of hints given by sensation. 
 " Looking at an object, I perceive a certain 
 visible figure and colour, with some degree of 
 faintness and other circumstances, which from 
 what I have formerly observed determines me to 
 think that if I advance forward so many paces or 
 miles I shall be affected with such-and-such ideas 
 of touch ; so that, in truth and strictness of 
 speech, I neither see distance itself nor anything 
 that I take to be at a distance. I say neither 
 distance nor things placed at a distance are truly 
 perceived by sight. This I am persuaded of, a& 
 to what concerns myself ; and I believe whoever 
 will look narrowly into his own thoughts will agree 
 with me that what he sees only suggests to his 
 understanding that after having passed a certain 
 distance, to be measured by the motion of his body, 
 which is perceivable by touch, he shall come to per- 
 ceive such-and-such tangible ideas, which have been- 
 usually connected with such-and-such visible iclcas.' r 
 This important statement he proves almost up 
 to the hilt, and although some of his demonstra- 
 tions contain unguarded assertions, yet on the 
 whole it is not too much to say that he here made 
 as striking a discovery as any made by his great 
 contemporary, Newton, in the realm of physical 
 science, and that all the modern psychology of 
 perception is based on it.
 
 110 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AXD FEELING 
 
 After reading and considering the account we 
 have given of the process of perception (Chapter 
 III.), the reader will probably be prepared to agree 
 with Berkeley and the modern psychologists that 
 distance is not immediately revealed to us directly 
 we receive a sensation, but that our recognition 
 of it is due to a process of unconscious inference, 
 like the recognition of the nature and meaning of 
 the object itself. A gentleman once told me 
 .that he was looking through a telescope at a 
 distant building, placed in perspective ; that is, in 
 the line of a road which ran directly from him. 
 Th'j sun fell full on the side of the building, but 
 to his surprise he could not discover the opening 
 of a large archway which he knew to be there. 
 He looked again and again through his glass, and 
 then moved it upwards and downwards, when he 
 saw distinctly the shape of the opening. The 
 two sides of it had appeared continuous as long as 
 Tie did not see the arch at the top of the opening or 
 the road at the bottom. Why 1 he asked. I told 
 him, simply because he could not see distance, and 
 there was not hint enough in what he saw through 
 the telescope to suggest it. It seems the sun 
 fell fully on the archway, and no shadow helped 
 to suggest the gap between the two plain brick 
 .sides of it, which were understood as forming one 
 continuous surface. 
 
 Among the chief facts which serve as hints to 
 indicate distance are the comparative smallness of 
 the image, where the normal size of the object is 
 known, and the distinctness and colour of the 
 image. This latter is perhaps what painters 
 anean by aerial perspective ; distant objects must
 
 TO KNOW THE POSITION OF THISGS 111 
 
 be represented not only smaller, but less clear 
 and more blue than near ones. The perception 
 of other objects and our estimate of their size 
 and position has also its effect. And further, 
 there are the subconscious or obscurely conscious 
 sensations which reveal to us the degree to which 
 the eyes converge, for in order to see near things 
 we have to squint a little, and the degree of 
 flattening of the lenses of the eyes, because to see 
 things that are distant the lenses must be less 
 convex than to see those that are near. 
 
 Since Berkeley's time his line of thought has 
 been carried further ; and to-day the mediate and 
 complex nature of the perception of all space 
 relations is generally accepted by psychologists. 
 Not only our perception, distance, and magnitude, 
 but also our power to localize the position of a 
 touch on the surface of the body, and the power 
 to localize the direction from which a ray of light 
 comes, are the results of a process of thinking set 
 on foot by the sensations that reach us. Modern 
 writers, it must be understood, do not accept the 
 whole of Berkeley's teaching in his New Theory of 
 Vision, but they agree in holding that experience 
 is necessary to give us space knowledge. 
 
 Localization of Sensations. 
 
 When the baby gets pricked by a careless nurse 
 he is aware of an uncomfortable sensation, but he 
 is no more aware of the place in which he is 
 Avounded than of the nature of the instrument by 
 Avhich the injury is inflicted. He will learn both 
 in time by experience ; he will fix his attention on
 
 112 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 the phenomenon of pin-pricks, and systematically 
 investigate it. Every child is a philosopher with- 
 out knowing it, and the amount of serious, system- 
 atic, and continuous study gone through in those 
 first few years of babyhood is little less than 
 appalling. 
 
 Let us suppose that a baby, a few days old, is- 
 pricked on the right knee. The only conscious- 
 ness we can suppose to be aroused is one of pain, 
 and the only response is certainly an instinctive 
 shriek and convulsive movement of the limbs. 
 If the same thing happens to a child of two or 
 three years old, the response is very different ; 
 the shriek may or may not come, but the hand 
 will go down to the right knee in an endeavour 
 to remove the cause of offence. How does this 
 change come about ? In two ways ; first, the 
 child has learnt to localize the sensation ; and, 
 secondly, he has learnt to use his hands. But 
 even if the new-born baby were able to control 
 his limbs, there is evidence to show that he would 
 be quite unable to move his hand to the scene of 
 disaster. This also, as we have said, has to be 
 learnt by experience, and is actually learnt in the 
 first few years of life. As in all other perception, 
 the problem is, how to read the hints given by 
 sensations, which differ as much from the thing 
 signified as the printed words on this page differ 
 from the sounds they represent. As the power 
 to read them increases, the individual sensations 
 lose their interest for us, and we have seen it is 
 a general law that what does not interest us and 
 arouse our attention tends to disappear from con- 
 sciousness, so the sensations which serve as hints
 
 TO KNOW THE POSITION OF THINGS 113 
 
 disappear, and are, as it were, absorbed into the com- 
 plex percept of which they form part. The child 
 of two or three appears to feel or see immediately 
 all that it has learnt to read into the sensation 
 of pin-prick. 
 
 We saw in the last chapter that the skin 
 varies very much in structure. Every square 
 inch of skin has its own character. Hence it 
 follows that any sensation arising from touching 
 a particular portion of skin will have a special 
 character. The sensation aroused by touching 
 the elbow is different in kind from the sensation 
 aroused by touching the cheek or the knee with 
 exactly the same object, because the anatomic 
 structure is different. It feels different, as we 
 say. When anything touches me on the back of 
 the neck I subconsciously recognize the particular 
 quality of sensation which means back of the 
 neck. It is true that when I was a baby I did 
 not know that that particular kind of sensation 
 meant a particular place on the surface of my 
 body ; now I do, because I learnt it for myself, 
 like all other babies. Side by side with the 
 particular kind of sensation which I feel (pin- 
 prick, pencil touch, finger touch, etc.) there are 
 aroused a number of dim sensations, some quite 
 subconscious, others sufficiently strong to be 
 separately recognized, which are characteristic of 
 the part of the skin touched. They are called the 
 local sign of that part. In the baby they are 
 probably very indistinct, and he has both to 
 make them clearer and learn what they signify. 
 The pin-prick in his knee arouses such a group, 
 though at first he does not discriminate it, any 
 
 H
 
 114 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 more than the prick itself. He gradually learns 
 to recognize the local sign, and to recognize it as 
 the local sign of a particular place on his body. 
 Later on, when he has thoroughly learnt his 
 lesson, probably the local sign again becomes 
 fainter ; it is of less interest for him. The smallest 
 hint is sufficient to enable him at once to fix on 
 the spot which is touched, so that he no more 
 notices it than we notice the exact proportion 
 and shape of the letters which make up the words 
 we read. 
 
 The work of learning to understand the local 
 signs is chiefly carried on by means of movement. 
 The baby's limbs are constantly passing over 
 each other ; whenever he has nothing else to do, 
 he explores the surface of his body, and in this 
 way he gets a sort of topographical knowledge of 
 the surface. He touches one side of the nose, 
 and a particular local sign is brought before con- 
 sciousness ; then he touches the other side, and 
 another local sign somewhat different is aroused. 
 He touches one of his toes, and an entirely different 
 local sign comes into consciousness. The different 
 appearance of the parts to the eye, and the 
 sensations which accompany the change from one 
 posture to another (motor sensations), both com- 
 bine to give a meaning to the local sign ; that is, 
 to the particular group of skin sensations which 
 always accompanies a touch or prick or blow on 
 a given part. 
 
 Psychologists have of late perhaps somewhat 
 over-estimated the importance of the part which 
 sensation of movement plays in this education, 
 since the lower animals acquire considerable
 
 TO KNOW THE POSITION OF THINGS 115 
 
 powers of localization with very little "ex- 
 ploration of the surface," such as the human 
 infant indulges in. A puppy or a frog does not 
 constantly investigate the surface of its body 
 with its limbs or mouth, and yet they soon acquire 
 the power to touch the spot tickled or otherwise 
 stimulated. Sometimes I have my doubts whether 
 the healthy human infant is quite such an ener- 
 getic explorer as he is usually represented by 
 psychologists. 
 
 \Vhat is true of the skin as an organ of 
 sensation is true of the eye. We learn to tell 
 the position of things in space through constant 
 use of our eyes. The retina, as we have seen 
 is a sort of mosaic, and every part of it has 
 its own special quality. Suppose a ray of 
 red light falls on a certain spot of the retina 
 which we will call A, this awakens the particular 
 kind of sensation which is always aroused when 
 the spot A is stimulated, as well as the sensation 
 red. If it falls on another spot, B, the other side 
 of the centre of the retina, another " local sign," 
 one associated with B is aroused. Similarly every 
 spot on the retina has its own local sign, made up 
 not only of the imperfectly-felt (subconscious) 
 retinal sensations derived from the partial stimula- 
 tion of the surrounding " cones and rods," but of 
 certain sensations of movement closely associated 
 with these. Let us see exactly what this means. 
 A red ray from a distant railway signal 
 lamp falls on the spot A of my eye. For 
 the sake of simplicity I will assume that I 
 am one-eyed. Instinctively, in order to see 
 it more clearly, I move my eye towards tho
 
 116 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 lamp ; that is, I move it so that the ray falls 
 on the centre of the eye. This movement, I may 
 add, is very early acquired by children ; even in 
 the first few days after birth a tendency shows 
 itself for the eyes to follow a light, and even for 
 them to converge on an object which is too near 
 to be seen with the lines of sight quite parallel. 
 My eye thus swings round automatically so that 
 the bright red spot moves from A to the 
 centre of the yellow spot. This movement 
 means, first, a set of obscure retinal sensa- 
 tions as some hundreds or thousands of "cones 
 and rods " are rapidly passed over by the light ; 
 secondly, a set of obscure motor sensations 
 due to the contraction of the muscles of the 
 eye, the pressure on the socket, etc. This par- 
 ticular combination forms the local sign of the 
 spot A. It is feebly aroused even when the eye 
 docs not move, if a ray of light falls on A. To 
 B, and to every other point on the retina, belongs 
 also a local sign. Consequently, directly a ray of 
 light falls on one of them I am aware of the 
 direction in which the ray is coming, which is 
 the same thing as the direction in which I must 
 look if I want a perfectly clear image of the 
 source of the ray. 
 
 In a rough way we have shown how the great 
 lesson of localization is learnt. It takes years to 
 acquire it, and our education is still going on. 
 Some parts of the body are but little trained. 
 Touches on the back are less perfectly localized 
 than touches on the face, or legs or arms, because 
 the exact position of the touch on the back does 
 not ordinarily concern us very much. But if you
 
 TO KNOW THE POSITION OF THINGS 117 
 
 will take the trouble to educate your own back 
 you will find that in a few days you can learn to 
 locate touches with much more accuracy than 
 you do at present. 
 
 Erect Vision. 
 
 We may now try to explain what is al- 
 ways a puzzle to thoughtful people who know 
 something of physiology. In accordance with 
 the laws of optics the image of an object is 
 found on the retina upside down ; how is it that 
 we do not see it upside down 1 The answer lies 
 in repeating what \ve have so often said before ; 
 a perception is not the consciousness of a physical 
 stimulus as the stimulus is in itself, but an 
 elaborate state of consciousness, put together 
 on the hint given by the physical stimulus. The 
 image on your retina is not actually perceived by 
 you at all. It simply brings about that a certain 
 number of the " cones and rods," the elements 
 that make up the mosaic surface of your retina, 
 are affected. The image does not get absorbed 
 by the retina and somehow pass into the brain, 
 and then somehow get known as a percept. 
 Physiologists and psychologists alike know that 
 this is impossible and absurd. The fact that the 
 physical image falls on your retina gives rise to 
 a mass of unnoticed or subconscious sensations, 
 which are taken up into and form part of a still 
 vaster mass of revived sensations of sight, touch, 
 and movement, and this is recognized as a thing 
 of a certain sort, having a definite place in 
 space. Objects are seen in the position in
 
 118 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 which touch and motor experience tells us 
 they actually are. Experience shows us that to 
 touch the top of the lamp we have to raise our hand 
 a certain distance against gravity, and that to touch 
 the bottom afterwards we have only to let the 
 hand fall in the direction in which its weight pulls 
 it. To see clearly the top of the lamp chimney 
 I must make a certain movement of the eye. 
 This is made by a certain muscle or combination 
 of muscles ; it has a certain character of its own, 
 and I know that it is in the same direction as the 
 movement of my hand, viz., against gravity. 
 That is enough for us. There is no question of 
 correcting the inverted image, simply because we do 
 not know directly that any image (inverted or other- 
 wise) exists in our eye at all. The experiments 
 recently made by Mr. G. Stratton, an American 
 psychologist, tend to confirm this view. This 
 enthusiastic experimentalist wore for three days 
 a bandage over one eye, and in front of the other 
 eye a double convex lens which inverted the 
 image, so that by the double inversion the image 
 was actually projected erect on the retina. The 
 immediate consequence was that he saw every 
 object upside down. At first, of course, he 
 was excessively bothered by the change, but 
 towards the close of the period there were 
 signs that his mind was accommodating itself 
 to the new condition of affairs, and that it 
 was beginning to read the image aright. That 
 is, he began to see things erect, because ex- 
 perience was beginning to teach him how to read 
 the new retinal sensations. The language had 
 changed, but the meaning was the same; and
 
 FEELING 119 
 
 after two or three days he had begun to auto 
 matically realize that the new sensation symbols 
 meant the same as the old. 
 
 CHAPTEK VI 
 
 FEELING 
 
 LET us imagine that you are in a passion. You 
 have been lying quietly in a hammock reading a 
 novel and smoking a cigarette. A practical joker 
 of your acquaintance, full of malicious energy, 
 slips behind you unseen and unsuspected, and 
 rushes in upon your repose with a yell of ungodly 
 triumph. What happens ? 
 
 There is, of course, the perception of the sound 
 and the sight ; you recognize the percept more 
 or less, and locate it. "There is Jones !" But 
 that is by no means all. In addition to the 
 percept, a wave of what we call feeling makes itself 
 known to you ; and this may lead to words and 
 movements which the mere percept certainly 
 would not. You use a hurried exclamation of 
 annoyance, and either call or think of Jones as a 
 more or less condemned fool. You frown and 
 clench your hand, and unless you are a very 
 amicable person you find a difficulty in being 
 cordial to Jones for some seconds. The state is 
 one which you would rather not have experienced; 
 it is unpleasant, annoying, even painful. But it 
 has other qualities besides the quality of un- 
 pleasantness. That is shared by the feeling we
 
 120 THE STOllY OF THOUGHT AND FEELIXG 
 
 call fear, and the feeling we call sorrow, and both 
 are quite distinguishable from the present, which 
 we recognize as anger. 
 
 Now let us take a more serious case. In an 
 outburst of uncontrolled anger, such as one sees 
 in a child or a savage, and which one may retain 
 as a reminiscence of childhood, we get a great 
 increase in the circulation of the head and upper 
 part of the body, especially the forehead, where 
 the great veins stand out in startling prominence. 
 Sometimes this excessive congestion gives rise to 
 bleeding from the nose, and even to apoplexy 
 and death. The smaller blood-vessels in the 
 skin are also congested, and the face is therefore 
 flushed, and even crimson. The muscles arc no 
 longer under complete control ; but they are 
 stimulated to act by great activity of the nerves 
 that control them, so that the movements are 
 clumsy, although violent. The opponent who gets 
 in a rage is at a distinct disadvantage, as every 
 reader of novels of adventure well knows. The 
 breathing is irregular and painful, the nostrils are 
 widely expanded, and the chest labours. The 
 teeth are clenched; the lips are drawn back as in 
 an angry dog, so as to show the organs of primitive 
 warfare ; the fists clenched and the arms advanced. 
 A curious change takes place in the tones of the 
 voice, the vocal chords are under imperfect 
 control, and the sound becomes grating and un- 
 musical, and the man may repeat a single Avord 
 with increasing vehemence, or fall to growling 
 like a beast. The muscles of the face, and especi- 
 ally of the lips, are trembling with convulsions ; 
 the eyes appear staring, and flash with a lurid
 
 FE FILING 121 
 
 light which we see in them at no other time. 
 Sometimes the whole body trembles, and some- 
 times a hideous pallor takes the place of the 
 bright red flush. The secretions . are greatly 
 altered. As is well known, the milk of a mother 
 who is angry becomes a positive poison to her 
 babe; and the investigations of Trousseau and 
 other physiologists have shown that the saliva 
 becomes charged with an appreciable quantity 
 of the poisonous organic compounds known as 
 ptomaines. 
 
 In this analysis of the state of rage we have not 
 attempted to keep distinct the purely mental and 
 the physical characteristics. In fact, it is one of 
 the special features of what we call an emotional 
 state that the two are so closely and so obviously 
 connected. When you simply perceive Jones, or 
 think about Jones, there is "no bodily disturbance. 
 When you are angry with Jones, a whole series of 
 bodily disturbances take places. No doubt every 
 thought is accompanied by some change in the 
 cells of the brain, but the change is, com- 
 paratively speaking, slight, and is quite in- 
 accessible to our notice. Even now the most 
 accomplished physiologist has no exact conception 
 of what this brain-process may be, and no physio- 
 logist expects that his successors, say a hundred 
 years hence, will have discovered any method of 
 making it visible. But the bodily accompani- 
 ments of emotion cannot be overlooked ; indeed, 
 they are absolutely necessary to the emotion. 
 The)'- are not merely expressions of an emotion 
 already complete without this : they are the 
 very basis and substance of the emotion itself.
 
 122 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 Looked at as a mental fact, an emotion has 
 two essential elements : first, the feeling of 
 pleasure or pain, of liking or disliking : secondly, 
 the more or less confused presentation of the 
 organic sensations which arise from the bodily 
 changes which we commonly call its expressions. 
 
 Pure Feeling and Sensation. 
 
 The feeling of pleasure or pain is closely con- 
 nected with desire or aversion ; in fact, it seems 
 the same thing looked at from another point of 
 view. What we mean by pleasurable feeling is 
 such feeling as we like or wish to retain ; what 
 we mean by painful feeling is such feeling as we 
 desire to get rid of. It is true that we often 
 use the word " pain " to indicate a specific kind of 
 sensation, as when we speak of a pain in the head or 
 in the fingers. In this case there are two distin- 
 guishable mental facts which may exist apart. One 
 is the particular kind of elementary percept, let us 
 say sensation of burning, which we can definitely 
 locate at a given spot on the body ; the other is the 
 feeling of dislike or aversion, the shrinking from 
 and hatred of the sensation which we call the "pure 
 feeling ; " that is, the feeling divested of the 
 elements of perception. I have heard a suffering 
 child say of some pain: "I don't like it; take it 
 away ! " and this exactly expresses the mental 
 fact of which we are speaking. The degree of 
 aversion may be altogether out of proportion to 
 the apparent importance of the presentation or 
 its physical cause. The irritation set up by some 
 minute injury to an unimportant nerve supplied
 
 FEELING 123 
 
 to a tooth may produce an intolerable degree of 
 pain. Besides the physical facts of injury to the 
 nerve there are two separate mental facts to be 
 noticed : one is the sensation, the other the feeling. 
 The sensation may be present in such a low 
 degree of intensity as to cause no pain, although 
 it is quite distinguishable as the same kind of 
 sensation as we ordinarily call toothache. This 
 is a by no means infrequent experience. A 
 particular kind of sensation or elementary per- 
 cept attracts our attention ; we locate it in a front 
 tooth, and say to ourselves, " I hope that does 
 not mean toothache." It is not toothache yet, 
 and the aversion or dislike, the pure feeling of 
 pain has not at present been aroused. If the 
 sensation grows more intense, this feeling is 
 aroused; and the two blend together and are 
 spoken of as one thing "a pain in the tooth." 
 But psychologically the two are distinct. Phy- 
 siological research suggests the existence of 
 distinct nerves which convey the sensation of 
 injury ; or, to speak more exactly, which convey 
 the physical changes that produce the change 
 in the brain on which the sensation of organic 
 injury depends. But the feeling of pain proper 
 appears to be dependent on the general condition 
 of the organism. In operations under chloroform 
 or other anaesthetics, sensations of contact are 
 sometimes perceived without any attendant pain 
 being felt. The patient forgets this when he 
 awakes, although he is sometimes able to speak 
 of them during the progress of the operation. 
 Thus Dr. Eitchie records the case of a woman 
 who was aware of the contact of the scissors in a
 
 12-i THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 severe operation, and distinguished the four 
 separate incisions it was necessary to make, and 
 who yet felt no pain. Another, when a feather was 
 passed beneath his nose, said, "Don't tickle me," 
 at the moment when the large arteries were 
 being tied, the most painful part of the operation. 
 Careful introspection will make this clear even in 
 the case of bodily sensations ; in the case of the 
 aesthetic and moral pains, the pure feeling is still 
 more easy to distinguish from the presentation 
 which causes it. If you see a hideously ugly dress 
 you can at once distinguish between the percept 
 and the feeling. 
 
 The state we usually call pleasure or joy or 
 delight, it must be remembered, is not usually 
 one in which the sole emotional element is pure 
 feeling. With this there goes something of the 
 other element of which we have yet to speak. 
 In other words, the term "pleasure," like 
 "pain," is ambiguous. It includes pure feeling 
 of liking or disliking, phis a certain degree of 
 sensation fully or partly conscious. 
 
 It would seem that every idea affects us, or 
 tends to affect us, with some degree of liking or 
 disliking. The purely intellectual idea is only 
 an abstraction. Some degree of feeling can 
 always, or nearly always, be detected in the 
 normal consciousness. Of course, when we isolate 
 and distort portions of our train of consciousness 
 for the purposes of observation the affective 
 clement may become obscured; but in actual 
 life some degree of desire or aversion seems to 
 belong to every idea, whether percept or image. 
 If we contemplate a mass of objects, some
 
 FEELING 125 
 
 attract us more than others. Wherever we 
 find rivalry, wo have our favourites. When we 
 Bee a number of men contending for a prize, we 
 want one to win. Earnest contemplation of an 
 image makes us long for it to become a reality. 
 The man who, in shaving, thinks about cutting 
 himself, begins to form the nascent wish to cut 
 himself; the man who, standing on a tower, 
 thinks of falling, begins to want to throw himself 
 over. And so with other harmful as well as 
 serviceable ideas. Nervous people near a cannon 
 about to be fired, although they dread its explo- 
 sion, yet find themselves wishing for it to go off 
 simply because the idea has presented itself so. 
 clearly to them. If we suggest an idea to a 
 person in the hypnotic trance, he at once proceeds 
 to try to realize it. 
 
 Bodily Disturbances in Emotion. 
 
 Let us now turn our attention to this other 
 element of emotion, the mass of bodily sensations 
 which arise from, and which are at once the 
 cause and the effect of, a number of bodily 
 changes. 
 
 It has been usual to make an emphatic dis- 
 tinction between an emotion and its bodily 
 expression. We all know that we often have a. 
 feeling which we do not clearly express, and that 
 we sometimes express feelings which we do not 
 actually possess. In fact, in only the youngest 
 children do we find the emotion and its expression, 
 exactly proportioned to each other. We soon 
 learn to conceal and to feign ; and, deceitftil as it
 
 126 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 looks at first sight, we must see on reflection that 
 social intercourse is only possible on this con- 
 dition. If every passing feeling were allowed to 
 display itself, society would become impossible. 
 The professional actor is an evidence to what a 
 high degree of perfection the dissociation of 
 emotion and its expression may be carried. We 
 see him apparently suffering, and we weep in 
 sympathy ; we see him apparently overwhelmed 
 with triumphant joy, and we cannot refrain from 
 laughter. And yet we must believe that the 
 suffering and the joy on this, let us say, five- 
 hundredth night of the performance cannot be 
 very real ; and if we saw him in his dressing- 
 room a few minutes after, we should in most 
 cases have ample evidence of the truth of our 
 inference. 
 
 A closer attention to the facts of the case 
 shows us, however, that the line between the 
 expression and the feeling cannot be drawn quite 
 so sharply as we think. It cannot have escaped 
 notice that if we begin to express an emotion the 
 emotion itself begins to take possession of us. If 
 we double our fists and knit our brows, the tone 
 of feeling becomes more earnest, resolute, and 
 even fierce. If we loll with open hands and 
 placid face, we cannot feel heroic or even decided. 
 When we want to get rid of an angry feeling, we 
 <:an often do so by suppressing all external ex- 
 pression of it. Let us walk up to the person 
 towards Avhom we feel quarrelsome, and enter 
 into cheerful and amiable conversation with him, 
 and the evil spirit at once begins to disappear. 
 Pious writers on the devout life have recognized
 
 FEELING 127 
 
 the value of this remedy against anger, and re- 
 commend their disciples who wish to avoid it 
 to practice gentleness and sedateness of manner 
 in all their intercourse with others, and even 
 with regard to themselves. It is impossible for 
 some to remain absolute doubters of religion 
 when on their knees in the attitude of prayer. 
 Pascal advises the sceptic to follow the example 
 of others who have passed from doubt to faith, 
 by " making believe that they believed," by 
 taking the holy water, and conforming to the out- 
 ward demands of the Catholic religion. The man 
 who kneels down and says his prayers cannot 
 be in the same emotional condition as the man 
 who stands in a stiff attitude of protest and 
 defiance. Hypnotic experiments confirm the be- 
 lief. If they are made to kneel with their hands 
 folded and their faces raised, the patients some- 
 times become prayerful ; if their fists are doubled 
 and they are put in fighting posture, they some- 
 times become angry and pugnacious. 
 
 Then, again, some of the actors, of whom we 
 have been speaking assure us that, as a matter 
 of fact, they do feel, at least to an appreciable 
 degree, the emotions whose expression they simu- 
 late. Mere facial mimicry can take place without 
 any corresponding emotion being aroused, but 
 when the actor throws himself thoroughly into a 
 great emotional part, like that of Othello, the 
 general consensus of opinion amongst actors 
 appears to be that actual emotion is felt. 
 
 Direct attention to our own consciousness 
 (introspection) when we are greatly moved will 
 demonstrate the same thing. We have, most of
 
 128 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELIXG 
 
 us, experienced the strange thrill that goes down 
 the back when we hear of some great deed of 
 patriotism or self-sacrifice, or when we listen to 
 martial music. The creeping sensation in the 
 roots of the hair, the aching of the toes and 
 fingers, and the blanching of the face which 
 affect us during the narration of some terrible 
 adventure are at once evidence of bodily changes, 
 and part of the composite state which we call the 
 emotion itself. As Professor James says : "If 
 we fancy some strange emotion, and then try to 
 abstract from our consciousness of it all the 
 feelings of its bodily symptoms, we find we have 
 nothing left behind." This is true in the main, 
 though not quite. There is something left behind, 
 viz., the consciousness of liking or disliking what 
 we have called the "pure feeling" of pleasure or 
 pain. But overlooking this, we may accept Professor 
 James's statement. " What kind of an emotion of 
 fear would be left if the feeling neither of quickened 
 heart-beats nor of shallow breathing, neither of 
 trembling lips nor of weakened limbs, neither of 
 goose-flesh nor of visceral stirrings were present, 
 it is quite impossible for one to think. Can one 
 fancy the state of rage and picture no ebullition 
 in the chest, no flashing of the face, no dilatation 
 of the nostrils, no clenching of the teeth, no 
 impulse to vigorous action, but in their stead 
 limp muscles, calm breathing, and a placid face ? 
 The present writer, for one, certainly cannot. 
 The rage is as completely evaporated as the 
 sensation of its so-called manifestations, and the 
 only thing that can possibly be supposed to take 
 its place is some cold-blooded and dispassionate
 
 FEELING 129 
 
 judicial sentence, confined entirely to the in- 
 tellectual realm, to the effect that a certain 
 person or persons merit chastisement for their 
 sins. In like manner of grief : what would it be: 
 without its tears, its sobs, its suffocation of the 
 heart, its pang in the breast-bone ? A feelingless 
 cognition that certain circumstances arc deplorable 
 and nothing more." 
 
 Additional evidence in favour of this view is 
 found in the fact that when persons suffer from 
 diminished bodily sensibility their capacity for 
 emotion appears to be also lessened. The more 
 completely general sensibility (called coencesthesit) 
 is abolished, the less, it would seem, remains oi' 
 the capacity for emotion. This has been shown 
 to be true in some cases where the insensibility 
 is due to disease, and also when it has been 
 artificially produced by hypnotism. In spite of 
 some observations which point to the opposite 
 direction, it seems probable that Dr. P. Sollier's 
 conclusions will be substantiated, viz., that the 
 suppression of the general sensibility of the body 
 involves a proportional suppression of capacity 
 for emotion, so that at last only the capacity for a 
 purely intellectual state remains. Dr. Sollier con- 
 siders that the sensations derived from the 
 internal organs are much more important in this 
 reference than those arising from the surface of 
 the body, or from the movements of the limbs. 
 It is the sensations which arise from the breast 
 and lungs and organs of digestion, rather than 
 those of the special senses or of the motor 
 apparatus, which form the " body" of the emotion. 
 If this is correct, we can understand why au 
 
 i
 
 130 THE STOBY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 actor may imitate the external signs of emotion 
 without feeling it. He can, to a large extent, 
 dissociate these from the visceral changes which 
 usually accompany them ; and so far he can 
 mimic without feeling. If he feels the emotions, 
 this must be because he has not completely 
 dissociated the two sets of bodily changes, the 
 internal and diffused disturbances of heart, lungs, 
 bowels, etc., on the one hand, and of the special 
 muscles concerned with facial expression and the 
 movements of the limbs on the other. 
 
 The More. Refined Emotions. 
 
 If there be any exception to this view, that 
 emotion consists in great part of conscious or 
 not-so-conscious organic sensations, it is found 
 in the region of the more abstract forms of feel- 
 ing usually called sentiments. Even Dr. James 
 hesitates to push his view to its extreme extent 
 in reference to those. He allows that in aesthetic 
 emotion, for instance, there is an element not 
 due to organic sensations. There is a direct 
 pleasure derived from the visual percepts or the 
 auditory percepts. Certain arrangements of 
 colours and lines, or of tones, give us pleasure 
 directly and of themselves, independently of any 
 "repercussion backwards of other sensations 
 elsewhere consecutively aroused " ; that is, of 
 any sensations arising from disturbances in the 
 heart, lungs, digestive organs, skin, and so forth. 
 These latter follow and confuse themselves with 
 the former. But the former can exist without 
 them. " In every art there is the keen percep-
 
 FEELING 131 
 
 tion of certain relations being right or not, and 
 there is the emotional flush and thrill consequent 
 thereupon" (James). To some extent what we 
 call classical and romantic art are distinguished 
 by the relative importance of the primary and 
 the secondary kinds of emotion : that which 
 follows at once from the perception and that 
 which follows more remotely from the effects 
 of the diffused wave of nervous disturbance. 
 Romantic art depends largely on suggestion, 
 arousing a great mass of more or less indefinite 
 feelings. Classic art relies for its effect on the 
 pleasure derived from simple arrangement of 
 colour and line. The pleasure of the expert is 
 of this kind the " primary emotion," as James 
 calls it. He further says: "Where long familiar- 
 ity with a certain class of effect, even an esthetic 
 one, has blended mere emotional excitability as 
 much as it has sharpened taste and judgment, 
 we do get the intellectual emotion, if such it can 
 be called, pure and undefiled. And the dryness 
 of it, the paleness, the absence of all glow, as it 
 may exist in a thoroughly expert critic's mind, 
 not only shows us what an altogether different 
 thing it is from the ' coarser ' emotions we con- 
 sider first, but makes us suspect that almost the 
 entire difference lies in the fact that the bodily 
 sounding-board, vibrating in the one case, is in 
 the other mute." 
 
 It seems to me very doubtful whether we can 
 make the exception that James is willing to make. 
 In the extreme case in the limit, as mathema- 
 ticians would say emotion quite disappears, and 
 we have no feeling at all. We know that, as
 
 132 THE STORY OF TEOUGHT AND FEELIXG 
 
 a matter of fact, no human state of mind is so 
 simple as this. There is always some element 
 of feeling. It is perhaps conceivable that this 
 element may be pure feeling, mere pleasure and 
 pain, mere liking or disliking. But we know 
 that this feeling is never, so far as introspection 
 shows, absolutely calm ; that it always tends to 
 excite and stimulate the bodily organs. If A is 
 always accompanied by B, and B, so far as we 
 can see, always by C, then we may assume that 
 where A is C will be. We may fairly assume, 
 then, that where perception or imagination occurs 
 it will be accompanied by some diffused feeling, 
 however slight, and this diffused feeling means in 
 the long run conscious or subconscious organic 
 sensation. 
 
 The Expression of Emotion. 
 
 But it may be objected : Does not emotion 
 grow with the suppression of its outward mani- 
 festations ? How, then, can you make out that 
 emotion is simply the consciousness of its mani- 
 festations 1 In reply to this we may say, first, 
 that emotion does not consist simply of its 
 organic disturbances ; that in an emotional state 
 we have always some idea (percept, or image, or 
 concept), and some degree of pure feeling (pleasure 
 or pain). In the next place, to suppress the out- 
 ward manifestations is not to suppress all the 
 bodily changes which form the characteristic 
 quality of the emotion. ~\Ye said that internal 
 changes are probably of more importance 
 than external. It is the sensations we derive
 
 FEELING 133 
 
 from the organs of life, from the hidden 
 bones and the partially hidden skin, more than 
 those AVC derive from the muscles of the face and 
 limbs, which are important. To suppress the 
 latter may very likely lead in most cases must 
 lead to the increase of the former. In fact, the 
 case is something like that of an actor. The 
 more restricted discharge of nervous energy may 
 be more or less turned on or off as we like, if we 
 will only take the trouble to learn to manage the 
 taps ; but the more diffused parts of the flow is, to 
 a large extent, out of our control. Where the 
 muscular, facial and other movements, which con- 
 stitute what we call expression and gesture, are 
 the most important, to suppress them means 
 almost necessarily to suppress the emotion; to set 
 them going means almost necessarily to start 
 the emotion. But where there is great " bodily 
 resonance " as well, we may suppress the more 
 obvious manifestations without diminishing, and 
 if our mind is still allowed to dwell on the 
 exciting cause, even with the effect of increasing, 
 the emotional disturbance. 
 
 We now see that the expression of emotion 
 must be essentially a matter of instinct ; that is, 
 of untaught ability. We have to learn how to 
 express our thoughts by means of spoken language 
 or some equivalent, and the process of learning 
 takes several years. Not so with our emotions. 
 Here the expression is, so to speak, part of the 
 state expressed ; if we did not smile, we should 
 not be happy ; if wo did not tremble and feel 
 weak about the knees, we should not fear. An 
 essential part of the total mental condition we
 
 134 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 call fear consists in the vaguely perceived organic 
 sensations arising from the bodily organs affected. 
 They are partly conscious, partly sub-conscious 
 (or marginal) percepts ; very indefinite and con- 
 fused, and very imperfectly localized. But they 
 belong to the class of presentations or ideas, and 
 not to the phenomena of pure feeling or desire. 
 If these vague ideas were not present there would 
 be no real emotion, at any rate, only a mere feel- 
 ing of attraction or of shrinking without definite 
 quality. Directly such definite quality becomes 
 present, we still find bodily manifestations if we 
 look attentively. These may be wholly internal 
 at first, but very soon external signs will be 
 added. In one case reported, the first true smile 
 was observed about the forty-fifth day after the 
 birth of the child ; Darwin thinks the smile 
 appears between the eighth and tenth week. 
 Fear was first shown by different children at 
 twenty-three days, two months, and four months 
 respectively ; anger at two months and ten 
 months ; and sympathetic affection at the age of 
 from nine to twelve months. 1 
 
 Like other instincts, the expressive movements 
 of emotion are practically uniform among all 
 races of men. How were they originally ac- 
 quired ? 
 
 Origin of Forms of Emotional Expression. 
 
 The answer is not to be found in psychology 
 alone, but partly in physiology. There is every 
 
 1 Authorities for these dates are Darwin, Perez, Preyer, 
 and Sully.
 
 FEELIXG 135 
 
 reason to believe that when a disturbance is set 
 up in any part of the nervous system it tends to 
 spread into other parts of the system. Some- 
 times the disturbance is highly localized ; and 
 this seems to be the case with these changes in 
 the substance of the brain which accompany 
 thought that is, the purely intellectual opera- 
 tions when we think the nerve cells and fibres 
 in only a small area of the brain are affected ; 
 but more usually the nervous discharge passes 
 along the nerves which run outward from the 
 brain, and produces, in addition to the central 
 disturbance connected with thought, changes in the 
 voluntary muscles and in the organs of life. When 
 the outgoing discharge is small, the small muscles 
 only are moved, and those which are attached to and 
 have to move the smallest weights. Thus when 
 we are slightly pleased, the small muscles which 
 cause the wrinkles at the corners of the eyes, and 
 those which pucker the mouth into smiles, are 
 affected ; if the disturbance increases, the other 
 muscles of the face are brought into play, and the 
 smile broadens into a grin. The muscles which 
 support the head become invaded, and the head 
 rolls about. Finally the whole body becomes 
 convulsed, and Ave " laugh till we cannot stand." 
 A similar progress in the size and importance of 
 the muscles affected will be found to hold good 
 in the case of other emotions. Even in the case 
 of the lower animals the same thing occurs. The 
 dog begins to manifest his joy by gently waving 
 his tail, and finishes by throwing his whole body 
 into a series of flexible curves. When a little 
 angry, his tail at first becomes stiff, and the corners
 
 136 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 of his upper lip are drawn back. Then he walks 
 stiffly, and soon he becomes entirely rigid with 
 hair erect, all his teeth showing, and every muscle 
 tense. We may lay down, then, as generally 
 true, with regard to this diffused nervous dis- 
 charge, that " other things equal it affects muscles 
 in the inverse order of their sizes and the weights 
 of parts to Avhich they are attached, and by so 
 doing yields an additional indication of its quan- 
 tity " (Spencer). What becomes of such a diffused 
 discharge of nervous energy? It cannot go on 
 for ever ; and it may terminate in one of several 
 ways. It sometimes dies away because the central 
 disturbance has come to an end, and there is no 
 further supply to keep up the excitement in the 
 outgoing nerves. If it does not come to an end 
 in this fashion, but the cause continues, it is cut 
 short by the disturbance it creates in the organ 
 of respiration and circulation. The blood supply 
 is affected, imperfectly oxygenated blood is sent 
 from the lungs which have ceased to attend to 
 their proper work, and this imperfectly oxy- 
 genated blood is pumped along irregularly and 
 inefficiently. We become weak and fatigued as 
 though after violent labour. Thus the excess of 
 emotion brings about its own cessation. Some- 
 times, indeed, the physiological effects are so 
 intense as to cause death. It is well known that 
 excessive joy or grief, fear or anger, may be fatal. 
 
 Serviceable Associated Habits. 
 
 Besides the diffused discharge which tends to 
 invade the whole system, so that all emotions
 
 FEELING 137 
 
 are found to cause changes, or be accompanied by 
 disorder, in the functions of the heart, lungs, etc.. 
 there are more restricted discharges, which vary 
 from one emotion to another; or rather, a portion, 
 of the nervous discharge, sent out by the brain, is 
 directed to special groups of muscles which differ 
 according to the emotion felt. We find that 
 different muscles are involved in smiling and in 
 frowning, in the expression of fear and of con- 
 tempt. How has it come about that a particular set 
 of muscular contractions accompanies one feeling, 
 while another set accompanies another feeling ? 
 In other words, why do we not smile when we 
 are angry, frown when we are merry, and double 
 our fists when we are in sorrow 1 The reason, 
 according to Spencer and Darwin, is this : 
 "These external muscular movements which 'ex- 
 press ' an emotion are more or less imperfect 
 forms of movements, which originally, in our 
 ancestors, if not ourselves, served to satisfy the 
 emotion." If a man now doubles his fist when he 
 is angry, it is because this movement is a step 
 towards gratifying hatred by attacking the offend- 
 ing object. If he frowns, it is because his early 
 ancestors found themselves at an advantage in 
 fighting when they excluded the sun from their 
 eyes by a similar movement. It will be noticed 
 that such movements, caused, as Spencer would 
 say, by the restricted discharge, are more under 
 our control then those brought about by the 
 general overflow of nervous energy. 
 
 A great many emotional movements can be ex- 
 plained by this principle of "serviceable associated 
 habits " which Darwin and Spencer laid down. Let
 
 138 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 us state it in the words of the former : " Certain 
 complete actions are of direct or indirect service 
 under certain states of mind, in order to gratify 
 certain sensations, desires, etc. ; and whenever 
 the same state of mind is induced, however 
 feebly, there is a tendency, through the force of 
 habit and association, for the same movements to 
 be performed, though they are not of the least 
 use." Spencer brings more clearly before us the 
 part played by Evolution in establishing these 
 connections. He says : " The special effects are 
 partly due to the relations established in the 
 course of evolution between particular feelings 
 and particular sets of muscles habitually brought 
 into play for the satisfaction of them, and partly 
 due to the kindred relations between the muscular 
 actions and the conscious motives existing at the 
 moment." I cannot forbear quoting the follow- 
 ing well-known passage from Mr. Spencer as an 
 illustration : 
 
 " If you want to see a distant object in bright 
 sunshine, you are aided by putting your hand 
 above your eyes ; and in the tropics this shading 
 of the eyes to gain distinctness of vision is far 
 more needful than here. In the absence of 
 shade yielded by the hand or by a hat, the effort 
 to see clearly in broad sunshine is always accom- 
 panied by a contraction of those muscles of the 
 forehead which cause the eyebrows to be lowered 
 and protruded, so making them serve as much as 
 possible the same purpose that the hand serves. 
 . Now if we bear in mind that during the 
 combats of superior animals, which have various 
 movements of attack and defence, success largely
 
 FEELING 139 
 
 depends on quickness and clearness of vision, if 
 we remember that the skill of a fencer is shown 
 partly in his power of instantly detecting the 
 sign of a movement about to be made, so that ho 
 may be prepared to guard against it or take 
 advantage of it, and that in animals as for ex- 
 ample, in cocks fighting the intentness with 
 which they watch each other shows how much 
 depends on promptly anticipating one another's 
 motions ; it will be manifest that a slight im- 
 provement of vision, obtained by keeping the 
 sun's rays out of the eyes, may often be of great 
 importance, and where the combatants are nearly 
 equal, may determine the victory. There is, 
 indeed, no need to infer this a priori, for we have 
 a posteriori proof : in prize-fights it is a recognized 
 disadvantage to have the sun in front. Hence 
 we may infer that during the evolution of those 
 types from which man more immediately inherits, 
 it must have happened that individuals in whom 
 the nervous discharge accompanying the excite- 
 ment of combat caused an unusual contraction of 
 these corrugating muscles of the forehead, would, 
 other things equal, be the more likely to conquer 
 and to leave posterity survival of the fittest 
 tending in their posterity to establish and increase 
 this peculiarity. Support for this inference may: 
 be found in the fact that the male of the most 
 formidable anthropoid ape, which has canine teeth 
 nearly equal to those of a tiger, with jaws and 
 temporal muscles to match, is remarkable for an 
 enormous supra-orbital ridge of bone, over which, 
 when angry, he is said to draw the hair-covered
 
 140 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 skin, so producing a formidable frown tliat is, 
 an efficient shade. 
 
 "But why should this mark of anger be also a 
 mark of pain, physical or moral ? May we not, 
 in reply, say that since pains, physical and moral, 
 are throughout the lives of inferior animals, as 
 well as the life of man, inextricably entangled 
 with the other accompaniments of combats, 
 their physiological effects become entangled with 
 the physiological effects of combat ; so that the 
 pain, no less than the anger, comes to excite 
 sundry of those muscular actions, which originally 
 established themselves by conducing to success 
 in combat 1 The laws of association will, I think, 
 justify this conclusion." 
 
 According to this view the modes of expression 
 which accompany a given emotion, say anger, 
 may be extended to a nearly related emotion. 
 This principle has been put forward more defi- 
 nitely by the German psychologist, Wundt. 
 When we feel pleased we exhibit something of 
 the same movements of the mouth as we show 
 when we taste something sweet; when AVC feel 
 dislike we exhibit some of the movements which 
 accompany the test of what is very sour or 
 bitter. There is a kind of mimicry of the move- 
 ments whose meaning is already known. We 
 utilize the movements expressive of physical 
 liking or disgust to express purely moral ap- 
 proval or disapproval, because the latter are 
 analogous to the former. Thus we clench our 
 list when we resolve to make a heroic effort, 
 even if no actual fighting is involved; and we 
 ghake our head that is, turn it from one side
 
 FEELING 141 
 
 to the other when we dislike anything we see 
 or imagine, just as a child or a dog does in the 
 presence of something nasty. If you ever 
 watch a dog holding a frog in his mouth you 
 will see the germ of our own human expressions 
 of moral dislike and contempt ; the solemn shake 
 of the head and the retracted lips, leaving the 
 side teeth bare, are eloquent of disapproval. 
 
 Classification of the Emotions. 
 
 The scientific classification of the emotions 
 seems to be a hopeless task. The distinctions we 
 recognize in common speech have been forced 
 on us by practical needs, not from any interest 
 in psychological theory. The psychologist may 
 hold that there is more in common between the 
 higher forms of, let us say, reverence and fear 
 than between the higher and lower forms of 
 fear. But to the plain man the practical con- 
 siderations are all-important, and he draws rigid 
 lines of separation between reverence and fear, 
 because the actions of men, moved by these two, 
 are so markedly different. The classifications of 
 the psychologists confuse together emotional 
 states which, in ordinary life, we put far apart ; 
 and they separate emotional states which, in 
 ordinary life, we regard as closely related. 
 
 Thus Mr. Spencer separates the instinctive 
 terror we feel in the presence of an object we do 
 not understand from the terror we feel in the 
 presence of a clearly perceived object, and both 
 from the terror we feel when we recall the such 
 clearly perceived object in memory. The first,
 
 142 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 he would tell us, belongs to the great class 
 of presentative feelings, the next to the class of 
 presentative-representative feelings, and the third to 
 the class of purely representative feelings. Most of 
 us would regard them as all three more closely 
 connected than any two kinds of feeling included 
 in any one of these three classes could be. 
 
 Fortunately, we may here spare ourselves the 
 task of classification, and content ourselves with 
 recognising a few well-marked groups which have 
 received universal recognition. Such are the 
 following : 
 
 (1) Pleasure, joy, delight, satisfaction, content. 
 
 (2) Pain, grief, sorrow, regret. 
 
 (3) Fear, terror, horror, anxiety, apprehension, 
 suspicion. 
 
 (4) Anger, dislike, hatred, envy, malice, 
 jealousy. 
 
 (5) Affection, sympathy, love, benevolence, 
 esteem, respect, veneration. 
 
 (6) Pride, vanity, conceit, self-esteem, ambition. 
 
 (7) Surprise, wonder, amazement, curiosity, 
 admiration. 
 
 It will be seen at once that some of these are 
 much simpler states than others ; or at any rate 
 may be much simpler. Fear, for instance, can 
 exist as a very elementary feeling in an infant, 
 and so may anger; but suspicion and jealousy 
 are obviously more complex forms, which demand 
 more intellectual development than the infant 
 has reached before they can exist at all. 
 We cannot be suspicious until we have learnt
 
 FEELING 143 
 
 that what is apparently an object of satisfaction 
 may turn out to be an object of dislike ; we can- 
 not be jealous until the emotions accompanying 
 possession have been aroused in us. Such com- 
 plex emotions might often be classed under 
 several distinct heads, because they are a blend 
 of simpler emotional states. Thus veneration has 
 in it something of the element of surprise, as well 
 as something of the element of affection. Some- 
 times one aspect seems to predominate, sometimes 
 the other. We cannot get the whole emotion 
 put before us by naming the group to which it 
 belongs. The greatest skill of the novelist lies 
 in his power to describe the exact shades of highly 
 complex emotional states. 
 
 Sentiments. 
 
 The most complex and abstract group of feel- 
 ings are those connected with the acquisition of 
 knowledge, the judgment of conduct, the percep- 
 tion of beauty, and the belief in the supernatural. 
 These feelings, with some others, have acquired 
 the name sentiments. The name is loosely used, 
 and there is no reason why psychologists should 
 preserve it. The objects which give rise to them 
 are, as a rule, ideal and abstract in character; 
 they involve the possession of more highly- 
 developed intellectual powers than do the in- 
 stinctive emotions, such as fear or anger. A 
 young child or a savage is incapable of disin- 
 terested love of truth, or disinterested moral 
 emotion. Again, such feelings are not, as a rule, 
 accompanied by strong bodily symptoms ; the
 
 144 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING* 
 
 diffused discharge of nervous power must be 
 smaller than in the less intellectual feelings. 
 These two features arc, however, not well marked. 
 Some aesthetic emotion is felt by quite young 
 children, and by savages at the bottom of the 
 scale of humanity. No race of men that we 
 know of is without some delight in dancing, 
 music, poetry, arid decorative design. Primitive 
 men in the older Stone Age (palaeolithic) engraved 
 hunting scenes on bones and on antlers. Remains 
 of this very early art, found in France, Switzer- 
 land, Belgium, and Great Britain, still exist in 
 our museums. 1 In the same way moral and 
 religious emotions, of a sort, are found in the 
 earliest types of humanity to which we have 
 access. It is evident, then, that the sentiments 
 are not marked off clearly in this respect from 
 the more instinctive and less ideal types of 
 emotion. At most, all we can say is that they 
 can exist in a highly abstract form only 
 in minds that have reached a relatively high 
 degree of development. Then, again, with regard 
 to the other characteristic of the sentiments, 
 absence of marked bodily changes, we find that 
 certain forms of moral feeling, of religious feeling, 
 and even of sesthetic feeling, are characterized by 
 very considerable muscular and visceral disturb- 
 ance. The hearts of disciples "burn within 
 them " ; passionate prostration and fiery indig- 
 nation, accompanied by disorder in the circulation 
 and respiration, by paleness or blushing, and other 
 signs of extensive physiological upset, are found 
 
 1 The reader who wishes to learn more of it may con- 
 sult Mr. Clodd's Story of Primitive Man.
 
 FEELING 145 
 
 in men devoted to great causes and lofty ideals. 
 The fanatic is usually a man moved by religious 
 or moral feeling; and he is by no means notable 
 for calm. We do not look for quiet refinement 
 and aloofness in the artist, the saint, or the moral 
 reformer. On the other hand, fear or hatred 
 may take a form in which we find little trace of 
 bodily excitement. It seems, then, a mistake to 
 attempt to discriminate a special group of senti- 
 ments, since the calm, abstract form of emotion 
 which we usually call by the name is, after all, 
 only an imperfectly marked phase of certain 
 complex feelings. Nearly all feelings may take 
 a relatively calm form in which there is little 
 bodily disturbance, and in which the object has 
 become little more than an abstraction. Thus 
 the calm, settled contempt for the ordinary aims 
 and conditions of life, which we call cynicism, is 
 as much a sentiment as the love of beauty or the 
 love of God. 
 
 Species of Feeling not clearly marked off. 
 
 The truth is that no forms of feeling are clearly 
 marked off from each other. The attempt to 
 analyse them from the psychological side is so 
 difficult that some psychologists have preferred 
 to approach them from the physiological point of 
 view, and have endeavoured to discriminate them, 
 not by their intellectual causes or their qualities 
 as conscious states, but by their bodily accom- 
 paniments, which, as we have seen, are also the 
 causes and sources of their characteristics as 
 
 K
 
 46 THE STORY OF TilOUGHT AXD FEELINO 
 
 mental states. It cannot be said, however, that 
 any such attempt has been a success. 
 
 Every emotion is a highly complex state of 
 consciousness, involving intellectual elements (at 
 least a perception, an image, or an abstract 
 concept), a tone of pure feeling (pleasure or pain, 
 liking or aversion), and an indefinite mass of 
 conscious and subconscious organic sensations 
 derived from the muscles and other organs 
 affected by the diffused nervous excitement. 
 Even the simplest emotion of joy or sorrow 
 has these. The more complex have several, or 
 many, of each. In an emotion like that of sym- 
 pathy for others in distress there are scores of 
 separate elements, which can be more or less 
 definitely distinguished by introspection and 
 physiological observation. Nearly all of these 
 elements form part of other emotions, and no 
 clear lines can be drawn where one begins and 
 and another leaves off. Parental feeling, sexual 
 feeling, enjoyment of mere sensations of contact, 
 enjoyment of pleasures of converse, aesthetic 
 feeling, pride, delight in possession, sympathy, 
 or the direct sharing of the feelings of others, 
 anxiety for the well-being of others, anxiety 
 far one's own interest, jealousy, pity, admiration, 
 and a dozen other simpler forms of feeling can be 
 detected in a well-developed emotion of " love," 
 such as is felt by a typical Englishman for a 
 typical Englishwoman. Each of these elements 
 has its general and particular bodily characteristic 
 the physiological changes which have been so 
 often spoken of in this chapter. And each has 
 its special tone of pleasure or pain, so that the
 
 FEELING 147 
 
 whole emotion is neither absolutely pleasant nor 
 absolutely painful, though no doubt the pleasure 
 predominates with all but the most unfortunate 
 of lovers. 
 
 The same thing is true of nearly all the other 
 emotions as we find them experienced by highly- 
 civilized adults. We see that it is impossible to 
 draw lines of division. We do not find, as in the 
 case of natural objects, a number of well-defined 
 classes, in some sense " made by Nature," owing 
 to the action of the same causes over untold 
 lengths of time. We find a practically infinite 
 variety of emotions, varying from race to race, 
 from man to man, and even from year to year in 
 the same man. There are few intermediate 
 forms in Nature ; species are on the whole fixed, 
 and they are distinguished from each other, as Mill 
 puts it, by " an indeterminate multitude of pro- 
 perties," which remain constant and unchanged. 
 On the other hand, " there is no limit," as James 
 says, "to the number of possible different emotions 
 which may exist." Nothing more, therefore, than 
 a rough classification, made for purely practical 
 purposes, is possible. Every attempt at a scien- 
 tific classification must fail to cope with the 
 enormous mass of varieties. 
 
 Importance of Feeling. 
 
 Whatever feeling is, it is of vast importance 
 in our mental life. Thoughtful people get too 
 much in the habit of thinking that intellect is 
 everything. Yet the world is governed not by 
 thought, but by emotion. The motive impulses
 
 148 THE STOTIY OF THOUGHT AXD FEELIXG . 
 
 are not usually ideas, but feelings ; and the 
 particular ideas to which the feelings attach them- 
 selves are determined almost by accident. Ambi- 
 tion, anger, lust, love, reverence, conscience, and 
 so on, have different objects according to age, 
 sex, history, and so forth. But they are the same 
 fundamental passions. 
 
 Even in abstract thought emotion bears a great 
 part. A man becomes a philosopher or an ex- 
 perimenter because curiosity, love of consistency, 
 impatience of inconsistency, and reverence for 
 truth are dominant in his character ; and of 
 course his work increases the intensity and 
 predominating influence of these modes of feeling. 
 Keenness of logical faculty no more makes a great 
 man of science than does keenness of sight or 
 hearing. The most acute rcasoners often fail be- 
 cause their splendid machinery has no motive force 
 behind it. A man of science is something more 
 than a clever barrister, with a finely-constructed 
 apparatus for arriving at conclusions from facts ; 
 and it is very largely his specific emotional 
 nature which makes the difference. He cannot 
 bear to have a flaw in his theory, even if no one 
 but himself sees the flaw. He cannot bear to 
 know that there are facts which his hypothesis 
 ought to account for, but cannot be made to 
 account for. He is always asking himself, " Am 
 I certain that I arrived at that conclusion legiti- 
 mately 1 Was the fact as I thought it to be 1 " 
 He never, like other men, flags in his capacity for 
 wonder and for curiosity. The plain man soon 
 gets satisfied. He sees nothing to wonder at in 
 this or that familiar fact. For him mere use and
 
 MOVEMENT AND WILL 149 
 
 wont is sufficient to dull all interest. It is the 
 capacity for wonder that marks off the scientific 
 man, perhaps more than anything else. The 
 most commonplace fact arouses his attention, 
 and suggests a question. Then comes an irre- 
 sistible desire to solve this question. The fact, 
 brought into unexpected relation with some 
 previously unconnected notion, stands out as an 
 apparent exception. The apple falls ; Newton 
 asks, Why ? But the average man pockets the 
 ribstone pippin, and says no more about it. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 MOVEMENT AND WILL 
 
 MOVEMENT we are familiar with as one of the 
 most persistent features in animal life. Nearly 
 all animals move of themselves; that is, their 
 movements originate, as a rule, from within. Dead 
 things and plants may be moved, but with a few 
 striking exceptions (e.g., the sensitive plants) 
 they do not move of themselves. Most animals 
 do ; but we recognise considerable differences in 
 these animal movements. 
 
 Some are, so to speak, mecliamcat,. They belong 
 to the organs on which life depends, and cannot 
 come under control of the will, except in abnormal 
 circumstances and for a short time. Such are 
 the movements of the heart, lungs, and other 
 organs. In their origin they are quite inde- 
 pendent of consciousness, and seldom give rise to 
 percepts unless disturbed. It does not follow,
 
 150 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELIXG 
 
 however, that they are absolutely unnoticed; 
 some trace in consciousness they certainly seem 
 to have. Others, called spontaneous or random 
 movements, seem to originate within the body 
 without any external cause, but are not necessary 
 to continuance of life. Others, again, are due to 
 the occurrence of some external stimulus, 
 and are performed instantly and without 
 hesitation. 
 
 Reflex Movements. 
 
 If we touch the eye of a snail at the end of its 
 long stalk, the eye is instantly drawn back much 
 in the same fashion as the leaf of a sensitive 
 plant when we touch it. If we turn a strong 
 ray of light on the eye of a person the iris 
 inevitably contracts as long as the apparatus is 
 sound. Such actions are called reflex. They 
 may take place without any clear sensation 
 whatever arising. Closely allied to them, and 
 difficult to be distinguished from them, are those 
 actions (also called reflex) in which there is 
 present a sensation that is an elementary percept 
 not necessarily referred to any external object. 
 In this last class we may place the sudden turning 
 of the head when a noise is heard, and the grasp- 
 ing by a newly-born infant of anything placed in 
 its palm. Both these classes are reflex, but the 
 former involves less consciousness than the latter. 
 
 Instinctive Movements. 
 Instinctive movements are more complex than
 
 MOVEMENT AND WILL 151 
 
 mere reflex movements ; they are accompanied by 
 more consciousness, and the sensations which, 
 originate them are accompanied by feelings of 
 pleasure or pain. We have here an element of 
 vnpulse ; a liking or disliking of the present state, 
 and a tendency to continue it or put an end 
 to it accordingly. To this class belong a large 
 number of ordinary human movements, as well 
 as many of them performed by the lower animals. 
 The sucking of the babe at the breast is a simple 
 instance ; the very complex scries of actions 
 concerned in nest-building is a more elaborate 
 one. Many of the external movements expres- 
 sive of emotion belong to this class ; for instance, 
 smiling when pleased and clenching the fist when 
 angry. 
 
 Purposive Movements. 
 
 Purposive movements involve a still higher degree 
 of consciousness; besides the occurrence of a 
 sensation or percept, there is aroused the image 
 of a movement. This engages the attention as 
 well as the percept. " Suppose I am hungry, 
 and see a supply of food. The idea [percept] of 
 the food possesses me, holds my attention. At 
 the same time that I have this idea I have the 
 further idea [image] of a movement towards the 
 food and of its seizure. That is to say, the sight 
 of the food brings up in my mind [subconscious] 
 memories of all the organic and other sensations 
 which woulf? be aroused by a real movement 
 towards the food. The attention is now directed, 
 not upon the idea of the food, but upon the idea
 
 152 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 of the food plus the idea of my own movement. 
 Attention to this pleasurably- toned compound 
 idea is the psychological condition of actual 
 movement ; my hand goes out towards the plate, 
 and the sensations which I had imagined are 
 realized" (Titchener). 1 This is a very simple 
 case of purposive movement ; in more complex 
 cases we have a choice of acts. But it will serve 
 as a type of the kind of movement to which 
 what we call voluntary movement belongs. 
 
 There is always present a conscious recognition 
 of an end to be attained, and a recognition per- 
 haps less clear of the nature of the movement by 
 which this end can be attained. This involves 
 attention to both object and movement. Further, 
 there is some degree of feeling, some amount of 
 pleasure in anticipating the end, and of uneasi- 
 ness in so far as the attainment is hindered. And 
 last, there is usually present an element of choice, 
 which may be merely between action and in- 
 action, or may be also (as just now said) between 
 the acts which come into our consciousness as 
 necessary to reach it. This element of choice 
 must not be overlooked. In the lower kinds of 
 purposive action that is, those which most 
 nearly approach impulsive action the element 
 of choice is not very clear ; and it may perhaps 
 be entirely absent. Some acts done by hypnotic 
 patients, even after they have actually been 
 awakened from the trance, appear to be lacking in 
 the element of choice. But this is seldom the case. 
 
 1 The words in square brackets are not in the original. 
 I ought to add that Dr. Titchencr calls these simple 
 purposive movements "impulsive."
 
 MOVEMENT AND WILL 153 
 
 Origin of Purposive Action. 
 
 How do we come to be able to perform a 
 certain act on the occurrence of certain pre- 
 sentation ? 
 
 If the act has often been performed before the 
 matter is easy enough to understand ; and it is 
 highly probable that all reflex acts were originally 
 voluntary. The difficulty is to see how, on the 
 first occurrence of a certain stimulus, a child is 
 able to make an appropriate movement. Wundt 
 finds the beginning of voluntary action in acts of 
 an impulsive character. Professor Ward is in- 
 clined to find it in avcrsive movements, and 
 secondarily in other movements immediately ex- 
 pressive of feeling. A movement which carries 
 away a limb from a painful stimulus is continued. 
 The transition from painful feeling to pleasurable 
 feeling increases attention. The motor sensa- 
 tions involved in the movement are remembered 
 because of the pain and its cessation. The 
 anticipation of a similar painful experience will 
 be likely to lead to a repetition of the movement ; 
 for the mental image of the circumstances arouses 
 a mental image of the movement, a visual picture 
 of the moving limb, strengthened and enriched 
 by recalled muscular and joint sensations. In 
 the same way when a pleasurable stimulus is 
 found to be increased by a movement, the move- 
 ment and the stimulus become associated ; and 
 the stimulus is likely to lead to a reproduction of 
 the movement. 
 
 But how is it that the occurrence of an idea of
 
 154 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELIXG 
 
 movement leads to the actual execution of the 
 movement ? We know that the mere thinking of 
 a movement does not always and necessarily in- 
 volve the execution of the movement. I can picture 
 my right foot kicking without actually kicking ; 
 and if my right side were paralysed the picture 
 would never lead to the reality. Yet it is true 
 that the occurrence of a motor image, containing 
 as it does elements derived not only from sight 
 but from muscles, joints, etc., tends to produce the. 
 movement itself. The division which we make 
 between thoughts and movements, the intel- 
 lectual and the conative sides of mind, is not so 
 absolute as we think it All states of conscious- 
 ness have a motor side. Movement is the 
 natural result of feeling. This is involved in the 
 very statement that all ideas have a pleasure-pain 
 quality. Pure feeling means inclination to and 
 aversion from ; and this inclination or aversion is 
 to be regarded as the mental correlative of a 
 nascent movement. It does not matter whether 
 we say that every idea is accompanied by some 
 feeling and every feeling is a mental accompani- 
 ment of the beginning of a movement, or whether 
 we say that every idea tends to produce move- 
 ment. What are called fixed ideas give us an 
 extreme example of the tendency; but the 
 tendency is always present. The somnambulist 
 Avho acts out the motor images of his dream, the 
 hypnotized patient who, when told he is a 
 soldier, uses a walking-stick like a rifle, the 
 excitable woman who tries to throw herself oft' a 
 tower because the image of herself falling has 
 taken possession of her, are instances. The
 
 MOVEMENT AND WILL 155 
 
 " thought-reader " is able to utilize the tendency, 
 and by surrendering himself to the guidance of 
 the involuntary muscular movements made by 
 his conductors, he is led by them to the object of 
 which they are thinking. Careful observation 
 and Introspection assure us that during trains of 
 thought there is a constant tendency to move- 
 ment of the vocal organs. Many of us habitually 
 make actual movements of lips and tongue when 
 we think ; the rest only do so occasionally. 
 There can be no doubt that during thought the 
 organs of speech are in a state of innervation. 
 They are the recipients of nervous energy, and 
 the movements though not actual are nascent. 
 When we watch a man learning the bicycle we 
 are liable to make the same movements of re- 
 covery that he does. As we look on at a game 
 we sometimes find ourselves imitating the players. 
 The motor percepts and images are direct causes 
 of movements although we do not wish to make 
 them, and know that they only make us look 
 ridiculous. 
 
 Ideas, then, tend to act themselves out. And 
 this tendency is made in proportion to the atten- 
 tion we pay to them. Every idea would result 
 in action if it were not for the rivalry of other 
 ideas. 
 
 Internal Struggle and Control. 
 
 When we dwell on the image of a movement, 
 and further wish the movement to take place, 
 because it will secure us something we want, the 
 idea of the movement becomes so vivid that actual
 
 156 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 movement takes place, provided always, first, that 
 the physiological machinery is in working order; 
 and secondly, that there are no rival ideas suggest- 
 ing quiescence or contradictory movements. 
 
 If a child sees a peach on the table and is 
 desperately thirsty, and fully realizes the delight 
 to be got from the peach, he will inevitably make 
 the appropriate movement of seizure, unless the 
 image of a scolding, and perhaps worse, occurs 
 to him, or the thought of the eighth command- 
 ment, and the dreadful consequences which 
 his teachers assure him will result from his 
 breaking it, or perhaps the image of his invalid 
 sister, for whom the peach is intended. If one 
 or more of such rival ideas present themselves, 
 they will restrain the movement suggested by 
 the idea of appropriating the fruit. For a time 
 the child is torn by conflicting wishes. He wants 
 the fruit, but he does not want to offend his 
 mother or to offend God ; he does not want to 
 deprive his sister of what she likes. The victory 
 for one or other course, appropriation or absten- 
 tion, will be determined under normal circum- 
 stances by the way in which the attention of the 
 child is held. If his social instincts are strong, 
 if he hates to see his mother angry with him 
 .and if he loves to see his sister pleased, he will 
 restrain his appetite for peaches, and the move- 
 ment will not take place. Images of his angry 
 parent or his delighted sister will fill his mind, 
 and the actual presence of the peach will be less 
 stimulating than these pictures of what may be 
 in the future. The image will become dominant. 
 He will withdraw his eyes and get away from the
 
 MOVEMENT AND WILL 157 
 
 room. But if his imagination is weak and his 
 sympathies dull, these pictures will be elbowed 
 out by the percept of the peach, and the vivid 
 image (supported and made intense by the per- 
 cept) of himself eating the peach. This last Avill 
 claim all his attention, and the movement of 
 appropriation will be made. 
 
 Self. 
 
 In the adult this struggle will be complicated 
 by the presence of the concept of Self. During 
 childhood and youth there grows up in our minds 
 an idea of our self, as a being having a certain 
 history and a more or less definite character. 
 Based largely on organic sensations, such as those 
 spoken of at the end of Chapter IV., but em- 
 bodying many other elements of thought and 
 feeling, this concept exercises a very important 
 influence on our actions. We come to know 
 it, to talk of it, to reverence it, and to seek to 
 modify it. In part it is what we mean by char- 
 acter ; though it is more than this. In all cases 
 of rivalry of impulses the idea of self comes in. 
 The struggle is no longer, as in a very young 
 child, a mere oscillation between opposing im- 
 pulses. Our whole mind, with its recollections 
 and anticipations, its organized likes and dislikes, 
 its systematized knowledge of life, and its know- 
 ledge of self, is involved. The child's idea of self 
 is a poor affair, without substance enough to be 
 of much influence in the rivalry of ideas. The 
 adult's idea of self links together the whole of 
 his past and future. Is this act, this peach
 
 158 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 stealing, this gain of momentary pleasure at the 
 expense of my own future and the happiness of 
 others, compatible with my own character 1 Will 
 it fit into my own notion of what I am, and of 
 what I am wishing to become 1 What Adam 
 Smith somewhat quaintly calls " the love of the 
 grandeur and dignity and superiority of our own 
 character " becomes in adult life a motive idea 
 of extraordinary power. It makes us not only 
 refrain from pleasure, but prompts us to active 
 self-sacrifice. In this wider self, partly identified 
 with, and partly discriminated from, the social 
 environment the conscious selves of others 
 our conscious life reaches its highest develop- 
 ment. 
 
 Habit. 
 
 When an act has been often performed under 
 similar circumstances there usually grows up a 
 tendency for it to be performed again in the same 
 way under the same circumstances. This is a habit. 
 Thus if a man shaves every morning for many years 
 there grows up a tendency for the action to be 
 performed, and to be performed in the same way. 
 The young man who begins to shave himself does 
 it irregularly, sometimes in the morning, some- 
 times in the evening, now before dressing, now 
 after dressing, occasionally he omits it for a day 
 or two. The old man does it with slavish 
 regularity as to time, order of operations, and so 
 on. Consequently he does it with less attention 
 to details than the beginner. Where such atten- 
 tion is aroused it often leads him to disaster.
 
 MOVEMENT AND WILL 159 
 
 Few men strop their razor so well or shave 
 themselves so well, if they think too much about 
 it. Where the habit is interfered with, so that 
 the act cannot be performed, a great or less de- 
 gree of discomfort is aroused. The formation of 
 regular habits involves, therefore, an enormous 
 saving in attention, time, and effort. Let us 
 compare the first faltering efforts of a child 
 learning to walk or talk with his ready perform- 
 ance after the action has become habitual ; or, 
 perhaps more striking still, the efforts of a person 
 learning to use a typewriter, or play the piano, or 
 ride a bicycle, with those of the same person when 
 he has acquired the habit. The constant effort of 
 attention, the ineffective attempts to realize what 
 movement is wanted, and the still more ineffective 
 attempts to perform it, the miserably slow pro- 
 gress, the irksomeness and fatigue of it all, are in 
 extraordinary contrast with the ease, speed, 
 certainty, and regularity with which he after- 
 wards executes the necessary movements. If 
 this power of acquiring habits did not exist, all 
 progress would be impossible. Fresh acquire- 
 ments are only possible because what we have 
 already acquired has become habitual. If it took 
 us as much effort to walk and read as it did when 
 we began, we should never be able to learn to do 
 anything else. Those two difficulties would 
 suffice to occupy us all our lives. Everything 
 that seems so much a matter of course to us now 
 would involve a world of difficulty and anxious 
 thought. We should take half the day to get up 
 and dress ourselves, and the other half would 
 barely see us through breakfast. There is no
 
 160 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 need to choose by what series of acts I shall 
 dress, whether the bath shall precede or 
 follow shaving, and in what order I shall 
 put on my clothes. By the blessed influence 
 of habit we can spare our efforts for dealing with 
 new difficulties ; the old have solved themselves. 
 
 "We may express this by saying that through 
 the influence of habit all purposive or voluntary 
 acts tend to become automatic; to become fixed, 
 mechanical, and unconscious. In fact, the 
 eighteenth-century psychologist, Hartley, called 
 habitual action "secondarily automatic" and 
 the name is still sometimes used. 
 
 Some psychologists, following Lamarck, have 
 maintained that all instinctive actions are in 
 like manner degraded forms of fully purposive 
 actions. Some of them, (e.g., Wundt, Ward, 
 Titchener) indeed maintain that even reflex 
 actions were once performed with full conscious- 
 ness ; that the movements of the iris by which 
 the eye is accommodated to the degree of light 
 which falls upon it, or the movements of the 
 throat by which we swallow food, are in the 
 strict sense secondarily automatic actions. Ac- 
 cording to this view all the instinctive and reflex 
 acts of both man and the lower animals were 
 once purposive. They stand upon quite a 
 different level from the movements of the heart 
 and lungs, although now some of them may bo 
 performed with just as little consciousness. The 
 pleasure which accompanied them has disappeared. 
 There is no longer any deliberate adjustment of 
 movement to end. But in our remote ancestors 
 there was both pleasure and adjustment. Primi-
 
 MOVEMENT AND WILL 1G1 
 
 live men learnt with difficulty, it may be, to 
 walk upright, and what they acquired has some- 
 how or other been passed on to us, so that the 
 modern human baby learns the habit much more 
 easily. Our pre-human ancestors, perhaps far 
 down the scale of quadrupeds, acquired the habit 
 of winking when an object was seen approaching 
 the eye ; therefore by inheritance the human baby 
 is able to do this from the first, and the act is in 
 the strict sense reflex. In the case of winking 
 the mechanism has been perfected in the dim past 
 of the world's history ; in the case of walking it 
 has not been finally completed and needs a cer- 
 tain amount of individual experience. Either in 
 my own experience or in that of my ancestors, 
 human or pre-human, not only my instinctive 
 actions but even my reflex movements have been 
 slowly developed from actions originally more or 
 less purposive, that is involving an element of 
 effort; they were once conscious attempts to 
 perform an action which should achieve a pictured 
 end. 
 
 This theory is certainly rather startling ; but 
 in its favour we have the fact that we see in our 
 daily life that actions once completely voluntary 
 may become automatic, as already explained. 
 Further, there is the fact that, as far as we can 
 judge, the movements of the lower animals are 
 not of the nature of reflex acts, but usually 
 involve an element of choice. Of whatever 
 nature may be the consciousness of, say, a fish, 
 it is impossible for an angler to doubt that its 
 movements are accompanied by consciousness 
 of some kind. They are scarcely ever purely 
 
 L
 
 162 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 mechanical ; the uniformity, precision, certainty 
 of the machine are strikingly absent. Instead of 
 these we find constant irregularity and hesitancy. 
 The fish learn before your very eyes. Every 
 kitchenmaid knows that black-beetles cannot be 
 caught indefinitely with the same traps or poisons. 
 For a few nights there is terrible havoc, and 
 the wildest hopes are raised. But a week later, 
 though many of the pests are still seen, the tale 
 of victims drops to one or two a night. There 
 has been no time for the action of natural selec- 
 tion or heredity, or any other refuge of the 
 scientifically distressed. What can it be but 
 choice ? Even the owest forms of life show it ; 
 the movements of even the amceba are strikingly 
 suggestive of it. And there is a third argument 
 for the doctrine that our automatic actions are 
 degraded forms of actions once purposive. As 
 we saw in the last chapter, many actions used in 
 the expression of emotion are actions which were 
 once serviceable to an end for pursuit, defence, 
 and so on. There can be no practical doubt that 
 when a baby clenches its hand during a fit of 
 anger, this is because its ancestors used their fists 
 for offence. 
 
 The utility of the action shows it must once 
 have had a purpose ; that it was consciously 
 executed for a consciously pictured end. So 
 with the knitting of the brows, the dilating of 
 the nostrils, and so on. If this is so, why may 
 we not infer that the reflex actions, which show 
 a similar degree of adaptation to some useful 
 end, have likewise originated in conscious pur- 
 posive movements ?
 
 MOVEMENT AND WILL 163 
 
 In a normal human being, then, we find (putting 
 aside the mechanical internal movements of the 
 heart, etc.) reflex actions, instinctive actions, and 
 purposive actions. Of these, the reflexes are no 
 longer of much interest to us as students of the 
 mind, except on account of their probable origin. 
 As activities of living tissue unaccompanied by 
 consciousness, they belong rather to physiology 
 than psychology. Instinctive actions are of great 
 importance, especially in the lower animals. We 
 have every reason to believe that many, if not 
 most, of the actions of insects, crustaceans, and 
 the lower vertebrates, are performed more or less 
 automatically, althoug they are doubtless ac- 
 companied by some degree of consciousness. 
 Instinct means untaught ability ; and while cer- 
 tain purely mental abilities are often called 
 instinctive, the name in its stricter signification 
 signifies the inherited capacity to perform bodily 
 .movements without individual experience or in- 
 struction. Viewed apart from the question of its 
 origin, instinctive action means highly complex 
 reflex action, accompanied by consciousness. 
 
 Isntinds of the Lower Animals. 
 
 The most interesting cases of instinct are, of 
 course, found among the lower animals. We 
 must not assume that man is without instincts^ 
 but in him they are stunted and overlaid by the 
 new habits acquired by each individual. "Our 
 instincts are indeed probably to a large extent 
 the remains of the pre-human history of the race.
 
 164 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 We see them best in 'infancy. The tendency to 
 cling with its hands which the baby shows, and 
 its tendency to sit and crawl near the wall or in 
 corners and avoid the open, are neither of them 
 of much utility now; but they Avere all impor- 
 tant to the remote, unarmed anthropoid creatures 
 who probably spent most of their life in trees, 
 and had a score of possible enemies lurking in 
 every dark corner. Other instincts, such as 
 walking upright and talking are of later origin, 
 and belong to the definitely human period of 
 development. But in the case of the adult man 
 instinct becomes insignificant. His intelligence 
 has rendered them unnecessary. When we get 
 guns we cease using bows and arrows ; and when 
 we acquire the power of adapting our actions to 
 the rapidly changing circumstances of human life 
 the remains of our instincts are often only a 
 nuisance. The inclination to bite and scratch 
 and tear is of no use to the warrior armed with 
 sword and spear, and so the inherited ability 
 tends to get starved and to die out. In animals 
 of considerable intelligence and power of adapta- 
 tion, indeed, we never find instinct developed in 
 the same high degree as in the lower races. 
 Young insects and reptiles may show their 
 untaught ability in the first movements of their 
 lives. Thus one observer reports how he saw 
 little alligators, not completely hatched, rush at 
 anything which irritated them and bite at it 
 furiously. In the same way chickens may be 
 observed to pick up food within a few hours of 
 emerging from the shell. But careful observa- 
 tions, like those of Professor Lloyd Morgan, show
 
 MOVEMENT AND WILL 165 
 
 that the ability is far from complete in chickens. 
 Look at the following account : 
 
 "Selecting one about eighteen hours old for 
 definite experiment, I placed before him three 
 small pieces of white of egg, moving them about 
 a little in front of him with a long pin to draw 
 his attention to them. He soon pecked at one of 
 them, and seized it at the fifth attempt, swallow- 
 ing it a little awkwardly. The next he struck at 
 the second attempt, but not fairly so that it was 
 thrust aside. Transferring his attention, there- 
 fore, to the third piece, he seized it and swallowed 
 it at the thii'd attempt. An hour later I tried 
 him again with egg and crumbs of bread. He 
 generally struck the morsel at the second or 
 third peck, though he sometimes failed to seize 
 it. Once he seized and struck at the first 
 attempt. The observations on this chick are, I 
 think, typical. The pecking co-ordination in 
 young chicks is fairly accurate but by no means 
 perfect at birth." 
 
 Other experiments showed that chicks two 
 days old betrayed no sign of fear, that 
 (having been hatched in an incubator) they 
 showed absolute indifference to the clucking of a 
 hen, that they failed to discriminate between the 
 harmless fly and the dangerous bee as articles of 
 diet. Thus, a certain amount of experience, 
 which presupposes some degree of intelligence, is 
 necessary. There is a tendency to perform the 
 acts, and to perform them adequately and easily ; 
 but in such comparatively highly-developed 
 animals some actual practice on the part of the 
 individual animal is necessary as well. Not only
 
 166 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 this. Professor Lloyd Morgan holds that 
 education plays a part, and indeed he says : 
 " I am inclined to regard imitation and tradition, 
 especially in animals which live in flocks, packs, 
 or herds, as of very great importance." 
 
 How we Acquire Control of our Movements. 
 
 Let us now reconsider in greater detail how 
 the child acquires control over his movements. 
 It must be remembered that we have no in- 
 herited control over our limbs. The mere want 
 to get an object in its reach does not enable the 
 baby to get it. The use of his arms and legs has 
 to be learnt by a baby just as much as the control 
 of any other instrument. A man may wish to 
 bicycle, and may have a bicycle at hand to ride, 
 but until he has learnt to use it, it is of no 
 service in gratifying his wish. Indeed, we realize 
 this clearly enough in regard to the legs of the 
 child, though we are sometimes liable to forget 
 it in the case of the arms. We do not expect a 
 child to be able to walk until it has learned to 
 walk, though to most of us it does seem a little 
 odd that the same child is unable to take hold of 
 an object which we place close to it. 
 
 Putting aside all instinctive and reflex move- 
 ments, and confining ourselves to those of the 
 purposive type, the question presents itself, how 
 do we acquire the power of performing the right 
 movement when a given percept or a given image 
 is presented ? To go back to Dr. Titchener's 
 example, how docs a baby come to be able to
 
 MOVEMENT AND WILL 1G7 
 
 stretch out his hand to the plate merely because 
 he is hungry and sees food before him 1 
 
 There are a number of involuntary reflex 
 movements and instinctive movements, not neces- 
 sarily fitted for the present occasion, but liable 
 to be aroused by the overflowing of the nervous 
 energy brought about by the sight of food. 
 Pleasurable emotion in the infant involves move- 
 ment of arms and legs, as every nurse knows. 
 But where unpleasant emotion is aroused, move- 
 ment is also originated. Aversive movements, 
 tending to remove the object or exclude it from 
 sight, are at least as primitive as others. Not 
 only do we find them instinctive in the human 
 baby, but we find them exhibited by the simplest 
 form of animal life. Touch one of the little 
 lumps of living jelly called amoebae with the point 
 of a needle, and it shrinks ; but if an edible 
 particle comes close to it, it throws out towards 
 it a kind of feeler, a prolongation of a portion of 
 its own substance. On the presentation, then, of 
 an object which causes pleasurable feeling, move- 
 ments ensue. 
 
 Most of these movements will be quite useless. 
 that is, they will not secure to the baby the 
 possession of the food. But if one happens to 
 carry his hand to the plate, a great wave of 
 pleasure is caused, and this serves to increase- 
 the attention paid to the movement, and to make 
 the baby remember it more clearly. A vivid 
 image of the movement is therefore formed, a 
 much more vivid image than the baby forms 
 of the unsuccessful movements which caused no- 
 increase of pleasure. The formation of this.
 
 168 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 motor image is all -important. The tendency, 
 then, is for this movement to be recalled, perhaps 
 not in full consciousness, but in marginal con- 
 sciousness, when the child next notices the at- 
 tractive object. A link has been forged between 
 the image of the object and the image of the 
 movement. And there is, of course, a necessary 
 link between the image of the movement and 
 the movement itself. We have seen that moA e- 
 ments leave behind them a motor image, which 
 is a complex affair, consisting of revived sensa- 
 tions arising from the changes which take place 
 in the limb moved. The more attention that is 
 paid to the movement, the clearer and more vivid 
 will be the motor image derived from it. The 
 motor image and the percept of the cake on 
 the plate are thus closely connected, so that if 
 the latter again recur, the image of the success- 
 ful movement again rises in consciousness. 
 
 We have seen just now that attention to the 
 motor image is itself a step towards bringing the 
 movement about. Every clear image of this 
 -sort tends to become a real movement. If we 
 stand on an elevated place and begin to 
 picture ourselves tumbling, we begin to tumble. 
 This may help to account for the fact that if we 
 see other men running to catch the train, we run 
 although we know we are in no hurry. If other 
 persons yawn in our company, there is a direct 
 inclination to imitate the performance. Of course, 
 under ordinary circumstances this tendency to 
 turn ideal into real movements is held in check 
 by the presence of other ideas which are incom- 
 patible. But when this is not the case, the
 
 MOVEMENT AND WILL 160 
 
 tendency fulfils itself. Every image has, in fact, 
 for its physiological basis a very faint form of 
 the same kind of excitation as the corresponding 
 percept has. If I imagine a touch on the tip of 
 my nose, the same kind of nervous change takes 
 place there as if I had actually been touched 
 there, only in a much weaker degree. If I 
 imagine a bright light, the retina is affected in 
 the same manner, though in a less degree, as if I 
 actually saw the light. So when I imagine a 
 movement, the same nerves and muscles are 
 affected as when the actual movement takes 
 place. 
 
 Side by side with the effect of success in fixing 
 the image of the lucky movement, and causing 
 its repetition, we have the effect of failure in 
 stopping those movements which do not bring 
 the hand of the child to the food. These will, 
 on the whole, be less likely to be repeated than 
 the successful ones. 
 
 With every repetition the successful movement 
 becomes easier and more precise. The partial 
 errors are corrected, and the child, instead of 
 carrying his hand round in a curve, learns to 
 carry it straight to the object. It is combined 
 with other movements which assist to bring about 
 the result ; for instance, the child learns to lean 
 forward or to employ his two hands together in 
 order to get at the food more easily. 
 
 Imitation alsa comes into play. The child sees 
 other people doing what he does, or is trying to 
 do, or would like to do. This gives him a clearer 
 picture of how the movement ought to look, and 
 so strengthens the sight element in the motor
 
 170 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 image. Professor Baldwin, in his observations 
 on his own child, noticed the first imitative 
 movements in the eighth or ninth month. 
 Other observers have noticed them earlier, for 
 instance, Dr. Sully in the fourth month. But 
 these refer to movements obviously undertaken 
 by way of mimicry. From a still earlier date the 
 sight of others doing the same thing is probably 
 a direct help to the child in developing movements 
 which he has already begun to perform. 
 
 After a time the mere image of the end sought 
 inevitably suggests the movement necessary to 
 obtain it. It is no longer necessary to see food 
 in order to make a movement towards it. When 
 the hungry child thinks of food, that is when he 
 has even an image of the food, he begins to make 
 the necessary movements to obtain it. And in 
 time the motor idea itself ceases to be prominent 
 in consciousness. The child has no longer to 
 think of the movement ; he only thinks of the 
 food. The motor image is doubtless somewhere 
 in the margin of consciousness, but it no longer 
 occupies his attention. \Ye see this for ourselves 
 in the case of learning to ride the bicycle. At 
 first every movement has to be the object of 
 attention. All the movements necessary to 
 pedal, to preserve our balance, and to guide the 
 machine are fully and painfully present to con- 
 sciousness. If our attention is momentarily 
 diverted, a disaster is inevitable. To see some- 
 one we know is enough to upset us. But after a 
 short time most of these sensations become sub- 
 conscious, and we only pay complete attention to 
 the more important and difficult adjustments.
 
 MOVEMENT AND WILL 171 
 
 Later still and we are fully conscious of none of 
 them. They all become marginal, so that pedal- 
 ling, preserving our balance, and even guiding the- 
 machine, all become almost automatic. For all 
 practical purposes this is a great gain. " This is 
 the distinguishing feature of the good player," 
 says a writer on athletic games. " The good 
 player, confident in his training and practice, in 
 the critical game trusts entirely to his impulse, 
 and does not think out every move. The poor 
 player, unable to trust his impulsive actions, is- 
 compelled to think carefully all the time. He 
 thus not only loses the opportunities through his- 
 slowness in comprehending the whole situation, 
 but, being compelled to think rapidly all the- 
 time, at critical points becomes confused ; while 
 the first-rate player, not trying to reason, but 
 acting as impulse directs, is continually distin- 
 guishing himself, and plays the better game- 
 under the greater pressure." 
 
 Control of our Thoughts. 
 
 Somewhat in this way the child learns to con- 
 trol its movements. But this is not the only 
 control which it has to exercise. It has to learn 
 how to control its thoughts and its feelings. This 
 later stage does not begin till a year or two after 
 the child has learnt to use its arms and legs in a. 
 highly efficient way. What do we mean by con- 
 trol of thought ? We have seen that left to> 
 themselves our ideas follow each other in an 
 order which is determined by what is called 
 suggestion or association. One image pulls another-
 
 172 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 into consciousness, without any interference on 
 our part, and so a stream of consciousness is 
 formed. This has been sufficiently explained 
 -above (Chapters I. and II.) and need not be 
 again described here. But directly we begin to 
 think about any subject seriously, especially if it 
 be one which is not in itself particularly interest- 
 ing, we find a very different state of affairs. All 
 the wandering branches of association must be 
 rigorously lopped off and the plain trunk only 
 must remain. My mental condition in active 
 'thought compared to my mental condition during 
 reverie is as a hewn log compared with the 
 original tree, or a canal compared with a natural 
 stream. All the time I am busy removing the 
 constant tendency of my thoughts to wander from 
 the central subject of interest, and trying to con- 
 centrate them on the ideas which are more or less 
 directly suggested by the central idea itself, and 
 .are in logical relation to it. For instance, let us 
 suppose I am trying to work out a little alge- 
 braical problem about the respective ages of a 
 ship and her boilers. I have an inclination to 
 visualize, that is, to have clear mental pictures, 
 .and unless I take care I am more than likely to 
 let my attention wander in this direction ; I shall 
 begin to picture an iron ship with her boilers 
 being taken out of her, and then to picture a 
 quay, a river, men standing about, and soon the 
 conditions of the problem will have slipped from 
 my focus of attention. These images of ships 
 .and men hovering about in the marginal field 
 have more interest for me than those purely 
 .mathematical notions which ought to be occupying
 
 MOVEMENT AXD WILL 173- 
 
 my attention, and in the struggle which always- 
 
 foes on for mastery they begin to gain the day. 
 hen perhaps the noise of the breeze, the flashes- 
 of the sunshine on the swaying leaves, the bark- 
 ing of a dog, the crowing of a cock, come 
 successively before my mind and compete with 
 the other two sets of ideas, viz., the mathematical 
 and the visual. But I resist them all and return, 
 to my problem every time that I am disturbed. 
 How is this ? Because I have a desire to solve 
 it. This desire may have been set up by 
 curiosity to know the answer, or curiosity to see 
 whether I have forgotten my algebra, vanity, 
 because I do not want to believe that I cannot solve- 
 the problem, genuine pleasure in solving problems, 
 or any other motive or motives. But there it is. 
 Just as I want some object of daily use say a 
 hammer I want the answer to this problem. 
 And just as I have to set about finding the 
 hammer, I have to set about finding this answer. 
 In both cases the strength of the desire is the- 
 matter of chief importance. If the desire is- 
 strong, I shall at once remove my attention from 
 images which lead me away from the steps- 
 necessary to settle the difficulty. If it is weak, I 
 shall let my thoughts stray some distance before- 
 recalling them. The presence of this constant 
 interest in the same group of ideas is one of the- 
 chief things which mark off thinking from mere 
 association of images. I keep the terms of the 
 problem clear before my attention, and constantly 
 withdraw attention from all competing ideas. 
 Other features are no doubt present too. I con- 
 stantly split up or analyze the complex notions,
 
 174 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 and re-arrange the parts so that I may try to 
 understand their relation to each other. For 
 instance, I ask myself what does it mean, if we 
 say that the age of the ship six years ago is half 
 what it is now ,; what other facts are involved in 
 this statement ? I keep on attending to the 
 relation of time, of quantity of time, and to that 
 only. All notions disconnected with this I ruth- 
 lessly drive out of the focus of attention ; while I 
 from time to time strengthen my desire by 
 dwelling on the importance that this particular 
 point has for me, since until it is settled I 
 cannot obtain the solution I desire to obtain. 
 Voluntary attention is mainly a matter of volun- 
 tary inattention. 
 
 Control of our Feelings. 
 
 Besides control of thought there must be in 
 the sane, normal man control of feeling. In the 
 child we find neither. The course of his thoughts 
 .and the course of his feelings are alike at the mercy 
 of every passing percept. It is only after a year or 
 two that he learns to attend to objects which are 
 not in themselves interesting. And it is somewhat 
 later still that he learns to control his desires 
 and feelings. The child, the idiot, and the lunatic 
 -are all marked by inability to control their desires, 
 lowcver slight. " I have known a man steal," 
 ;says the well-known authority on lunacy, Dr. 
 Clouston, " who said he had no intense longing 
 for the article he appropriated at all at least 
 consciously, but his will was in abeyance, and he 
 could not resist the ordinary desire of possession
 
 MOVEMENT AND WILL 175 
 
 common to all human nature." " Ask half the 
 common drunkards you know why it is that they 
 fall so often a prey to temptation, and they will 
 say that most of the time they cannot tell. . . . 
 They do not thirst for the beverage ; the taste of 
 it may even appear repugnant, and they perfectly 
 foresee the morrow's remorse. But when they 
 think of the liquor or see it, they find themselves 
 preparing to drink, and do not stop themselves ; 
 and more than this they cannot say." (James.) 
 Of course there are many instances where we 
 must suppose that the fault does not lie wholly 
 in want of controlling power, but partly also in 
 the diseased strength of the impulse. As Dr. 
 Clouston puts it, " The driver may be so weak 
 that he cannot control well-broken horses, or the 
 horses may be so hard-mouthed that no driver 
 can pull them up." With the normal human 
 being the latter condition of affairs seldom obtains. 
 It is not a question of excess of impulse, but of 
 lack of control. Hence the hope of improve- 
 ment. The child is in the position of the weak 
 driver ; his horses, that is, his impulses and feel- 
 ings, will be quite within his control if he con- 
 tinues to develop. 
 
 Such control comes about chiefly by means of 
 our already acquired control of our movements 
 and control of our thoughts. The child is 
 taught to suppress those movements which 
 express strong feeling, and in suppressing the 
 movements he is not only "behaving nicely," 
 but he is suppressing the feeling itself. We have 
 seen in the last chapter that the emotion is in 
 large part simply a consciousness of the bodily
 
 176 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 changes which we call its expression. Some of 
 those bodily changes are within our control, and 
 so far as we inhibit them (that is suppress them) 
 we are inhibiting the feeling itself. Thus if a 
 child is greedy we actually diminish the greedi- 
 ness if we restrain the movements that express it, 
 the hand thrust forward, the eager eye, and so on. 
 If he is unduly jubilant we calm down the feeling 
 by making him sit quiet. Further, we can even 
 help to institute a new and better state of feeling 
 by making him imitate movements appropriate to 
 it and incompatible with the feeling which we 
 wish to suppress. If we make the greedy boy 
 give away something, with as good a grace as 
 possible, or the passionate boy speak gently, we 
 stand a better chance of success than if we merely 
 suppress the symptoms of greediness or anger. 
 There is, no doubt, a certain danger of hypocrisy 
 here; but there are few useful remedies which 
 are not dangerous in some degree and under some 
 conditions of the patient. Another important 
 means of control over feelings comes from our 
 power to control our ideas. We can withdraw 
 our attention from that which stimulates the feeling. 
 In the case of young children this withdrawal 
 must be accomplished for them, as they can no 
 more resist the pressure of ideas than the pressure 
 of feelings. If a child is in grief we must try to 
 amuse it by presenting interesting objects to it. 
 It is no use to say, " Don't cry," or " Cheer up." 
 We must call the dog, or produce a new toy, 
 or a sweetmeat, or begin to talk of some 
 promised treat, As we get older we learn to 
 direct our attention for ourselves from that which
 
 MOVEMENT AND WILL 177 
 
 arouses undesirable feelings to that which banishes 
 them by exciting other feelings incompatible with 
 them. We can force ourselves to remember 
 circumstances which will mitigate our resentment 
 against an erring brother, or turn aside our 
 thoughts entirely to less irritating topics. The 
 control of the feelings comes partly through 
 control of the muscles, but still more through 
 control of ideas. 
 
 Deliberation. 
 
 With the power of control of our thoughts and 
 feelings comes the possibility of a higher develop- 
 ment of will. We can postpone action until we 
 have had time to consider all the circumstances, 
 and see, first, whether the end sought is worth 
 seeking ; and secondly, what are the best means 
 for attaining that end. We have then what is 
 called deliberation. Habitual deliberation is 
 possible only for the man who has learnt well 
 the control of his impulses. The man of ardent 
 temper, eager, impetuous, never gives himself 
 time to think. The considerations of prudence, 
 affection for the absent, regard for law, stand 
 little chance ; he sins and blunders, and if he is a 
 good fellow repents. This is what Dr. James 
 calls the " explosive will." At the other extreme, 
 amongst persons who are not abnormal enough to 
 be called in any sense insane, is the type which 
 is so " sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought" 
 that it cannot deliberate enough ; which con- 
 siders, and reconsiders, and for ever puts off the 
 moment of action. This is what Dr. James calls 
 
 M
 
 178 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 the "distracted will." A little less inhibitory 
 power, or a little more, and we have positive 
 mental disease. The one abnormal type is violent 
 with uncontrollable impulses towards homicide or 
 self-injury, or he becomes a dipsomaniac or a 
 kleptomaniac. The other abnormal type is 
 characterized by inability to come to any 
 decision. Here is an instance of the latter taken 
 from Dr. Hyslop of Bethlem Hospital, London : 
 " One patient, formerly an inmate of Bethlem, 
 used to lament this inability to act. She was 
 able to understand and reason upon her ordinary 
 experiences without any observable impairment 
 of intelligence. She was, however, unable to 
 put into effect the result of her deliberations, and 
 the desire to reach the circumstances proved 
 ineffective." Such patients, left to themselves, 
 can sometimes do nothing. " If you abandon 
 them to themselves they pass whole days on a 
 bed or in a chair," says another authority. 
 
 Choice and Resolution. 
 
 "We see, then, that the power of deliberation 
 must be supplanted by the power of arriving 
 at a decision, and of making a choice. This is, in 
 fact, the most central fact of will. This is what 
 voluntary action in its higher sense really means, 
 action not simply followed, but selected out of 
 two or more possible courses. Selection implies 
 rejection. If I choose to take the course A, I at 
 the same time choose not to take the courses B 
 and C. Consequently, where there is effective 
 choice, the rejected alternatives must drop out
 
 MOVEMENT AND WILL 179 
 
 of sight. You may sometimes see a man on a 
 railway platform running up and down till the 
 train starts, quite unable to make up his mind as 
 to which compartment he shall enter, although 
 none of them are full. This is a Hamlet on a 
 small scale. His " native hue of resolution " is 
 " sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." 
 
 When a choice is made, it may involve action 
 at a future time, and not an immediate realiza- 
 tion. We, then, have the mental fact we call 
 resolution. The resolute man is one who adheres 
 to his choice after it has been made, in spite of 
 the chances and changes brought about by time. 
 He refuses to reconsider the point after it has 
 been decided ; and when the rejected courses of 
 action, or fresh possibilities, obtrude themselves, he 
 inhibits them, dismissing them from his focus of 
 attention. Of course, circumstances may so change 
 that the man who does this, and will not recon- 
 sider his decision, is a fool. Then the resolution 
 is spoken of as obstinacy. But human nature is 
 more often too weak than too determined ; and 
 given an average degree of intelligence and know- 
 ledge, a man is not so likely to be too firm as to 
 be lacking in firmness. Obstinacy comes easy 
 only to the stupid man. 
 
 Will 
 
 What, then, is the act of will itself ? It is 
 essentially the fixing of attention on one par- 
 ticular object, and the acts necessary to realise 
 it, and the withdrawal of attention from the rival 
 object. " The essential achievement of the will,
 
 180 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 in short, when it is most 'voluntary,' is to attend 
 to a difficult object, and hold it fast before the 
 mind" (James). You are tempted to do some- 
 thing which you know to be imprudent. You 
 very much want to do it, but you have control 
 enough over your thoughts and feelings not to 
 allow yourself to be "rushed." You recall the 
 evil consequences to yourself and others, and you 
 shrink from enduring and inflicting them. But 
 the attractive influence of the tempting object is 
 very great, and the image of it is much more 
 vivid and much more stimulating to immediate 
 action than the picture of possible consequences. 
 If you were a mere automatic machine the temp- 
 tation would be too great for you; but just 
 because you are not, you can keep your attention 
 fixed on the vision of the evil consequences, and 
 by so doing develop and deduce them in your 
 mind until such a force of feeling is produced as 
 will cause you to turn away in disgust and self- 
 anger from that which a short time before 
 attracted you. 
 
 Several rival conceptions of the nature of 
 voluntary action claim our acceptance. Accord- 
 ing to one theory, there is in the act of deliberate 
 choice something more than a purely natural 
 event. The action of ideas and feelings does not 
 suffice to explain what we mean by choice or 
 decision. Another force comes into play, not 
 determined by purely natural causation, namely, 
 the I-myself, the ego which knows and thinks. 
 It is just this which prevents our being elaborate 
 pieces of conscious machinery. Will, in the- 
 strict sense of the term, just means this conscious
 
 MOVEMENT AND WILL 181 
 
 selection by the ego of one of the alternatives. 
 This is the view which is taken by the average 
 plain man. Am I not conscious, he asks, that in 
 the act of willing I myself do actually choose ? 
 And is not this consciousness absolutely clear 
 and decisive of the matter in hand ? 
 
 The second view comes in here. Yes, say 
 those who hold it, you are conscious of the fact 
 that you determine your actions for yourself. 
 But what do you mean by yourself ? You mean 
 the series of thoughts and feelings, and of ten- 
 dencies to thought and feeling; the I-myself 
 which you have come to know by means of ob- 
 servation and experience, just as you can come to 
 know the world at large. This is what you mean 
 by character and disposition ; and this it is that 
 determines your action. As for the other I- 
 myself you talk of, that is a pure assumption, not 
 an object of experience at all. What do you 
 mean by an I-myself which never comes into con- 
 sciousness at all, which cannot be known, which 
 is not subject to the law of causation 1 If this 
 <-<lo is not subject to causation, then how can it 
 be educated, how can it develop and give evi- 
 dence of moral improvement ? No, put aside as 
 absurd the conception that any imaginary I-myself 
 interferes in the conflict of motives and makes 
 the final choice. The only meaning to be 
 attached to I-myself is the meaning which, after 
 all, you as a man of common sense probably do 
 attribute to it, namely, the sum of tendencies to 
 particular kinds of ideas and feelings ; and there 
 is no doubt that this the real, not the fanciful, /-
 
 182 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 myself does decide which of two courses of action 
 shall be followed. 
 
 I am not going to attempt to decide between 
 these two statements, but I would point out that 
 the consciousness of free choice which seems so 
 convincing to the plain man is not quite such a 
 strong piece of evidence as he fancies. Experi- 
 ments made on hypnotic patients go to show that 
 one may have the fullest belief that one is acting 
 spontaneously and yet, as a matter of fact, be 
 acting in a purely mechanical way. Professor 
 Richet gives the following account : " One of my 
 friends who was drowsy, but not quite asleep, 
 carefully studied this phenomenon of incapacity 
 to act, combined with the illusion of capacity. 
 When I prescribed a movement, he always per- 
 formed it even although he had, before he was 
 magnetized, been determined to resist. He 
 found this hard to understand when he awoke, 
 and said that he certainly could have resisted, 
 only he did not wish to do so." Another patient 
 was hypnotized by the same distinguished psy- 
 chologist, and the suggestion made that when she 
 awoke she would take the shade off the lamp. 
 " I awoke her, and when we had conversed a few 
 minutes she said, 'We do not see well,' and took 
 off the shade. Another time I said to B : ' When 
 you awake you will put a good deal of sugar in 
 your tea.' I awoke her, tea was served, and she 
 filled her cup with sugar. Someone asked what 
 she was about. ' I am putting in the sugar.' 
 ' But you put in too much.' ' Really, that is a 
 pity.' And she continued to put it in. Then 
 she said, on finding the tea undrinkable : ' What
 
 MOVEMENT AND WILL 18L 
 
 would you have ? It was a stupid thing to do ; 
 but have you never done anything stupid ? ' " 
 
 Dr. Moll, in his book on hypnotism, gives the 
 following account of an experiment he has 
 repeated in various ways with different patients. 
 He suggests a post-hypnotic act to a subject, that 
 is, tells a subject in the trance state that when he 
 wakes he will do a certain thing. For example, 
 he tells him to lay an umbrella on the ground. 
 " The subject now wakes, and I tell him to do 
 anything he pleases ; but at the same time I give 
 him a folded paper, on which I have written what 
 he is to do. He does what I have suggested, and 
 is much astonished when he reads the paper 
 afterwards. He declares that this time he was 
 quite sure he would do something else than what 
 I had suggested." 
 
 Of course the hypnotic state is an abnormal 
 state, and you cannot directly argue from what 
 occurs in the case of hypnotic subjects even after 
 being waked to perfectly normal people who 
 have not been hypnotized. But there is enough 
 here to cause a doubt whether the apparent con- 
 sciousness of free will is as convincing a proof of 
 the reality of free will as we are apt to think it. 
 
 Self and Selfishness. 
 
 Psychologists have in former times given 
 accounts of the facts of volition which entirely 
 left out of sight the existence of a self of any kind. 
 Thus Dr. Bain regards the mind as a mere arena 
 for the motives to fight in. The strongest motive 
 wins the day, There is no interference of any-
 
 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 thing. The only determining circumstances are 
 the motives themselves. " The equipoise may 
 continue for a long time ; but when the decision 
 is actually come to, the fact and the meaning are 
 that some consideration has risen to the mind, 
 giving a superior energy of motive to the side 
 that has preponderated." The objection to this 
 view is the fact that motives derive all their 
 strength from their relation to the self or char- 
 acter. The "consideration" which gives the 
 victory to a certain motive does not rise of itself, 
 but in consequence of the nature and previous 
 experience of the mind. Instead of the concep- 
 tion of two or more opposing motives, one of 
 which wins, and suppresses and destroys the rest, 
 we must have the conception of a number of 
 motives constantly varying in strength as they 
 are attended to. A high degree of attention is 
 accompanied by a sensation of effort, and this 
 strengthens the consciousness of self. 
 
 Remember that all purposive action is not 
 selfish merely because it is all the outcome of a 
 self. All your actions are the outcome of your 
 present self ; but they are not all intended to 
 procure selfish ends. You may as well say that 
 all your ideas are about yourself, because they 
 are all your ideas, determined by the nature of 
 your own mind, and by its contents. Among 
 your own desires and determinations two great 
 groups can be distinguished. One has for its 
 immediate and direct object the increase of your 
 own happiness ; the other has not. You may 
 determine to do a certain thing because it will 
 add to your own happiness, on the one hand ; or
 
 MOVEMENT AND WILL 185 
 
 on the other, because it will add to the happiness 
 of someone else, or advance some cause or ideal 
 in which you are interested. "Ah," you say, 
 " that is where the self comes in ! I must be 
 interested in it, that is, I must know that if it 
 succeeds it will give me pleasure, and if it fails it 
 will give me pain." Quite true. But there is all 
 the difference in the world between desiring what 
 will give you pleasure simply because it gives you 
 pleasure, and desiring what will give you pleasure 
 because you have recognised that it belongs to a 
 particular group of things which you believe to 
 be right and good for everybody. You cannot 
 get rid of self any more than you can jump out- 
 side of your own skin. Your thoughts and hopes 
 are your own, or you would be unaware of them. 
 But whereas some of those thoughts and hopes 
 have self for an object, others have something 
 else. The attainment of any aim, the fulfilment 
 of any desire, gives satisfaction, because the 
 painful state of desire then ceases. But the 
 desire may be for something in itself painful. 
 " How am I straitened till it be accomplished ! " 
 says our great Master, referring to His own 
 sufferings and death. The martyr and the hero 
 do not go to pain and death on account of the 
 future pleasure they look forward to, or the pain 
 and contempt they wish to avoid. There have 
 indeed been non-Christian martyrs who hoped 
 for no future life, and who went to death only 
 because they loved what they believed to be the 
 truth, and hated what they believed to be a 
 lie.
 
 186 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE 
 
 IN Chapter II. we talked of the formation and 
 revival of images that is, mental representations 
 or pictures (if we may so stretch the word '' pic- 
 tures ") of objects perceived by the senses. For 
 simplicity's sake let us at present confine our- 
 selves to visual images, or revived percepts of 
 sight. 
 
 Let the reader try to recall the appearance of 
 someone whom he has seen many times, though 
 not within the last few minutes. This mental 
 image is clearly not simply the reproduction of 
 the last view we have had of the person, it is a 
 result of all our various acts of perception blended 
 together. It is curious how often we find that 
 the first look we get at a person is different from 
 the view we afterwards take. Persons keen in 
 observation have told me that they nearly always 
 feel a slight shock of surprise on returning home 
 to their wife and children after an absence of a 
 month or two. The new percept is distinctly 
 not quite the same as the image which had been 
 formed by many thousands of separate acts of 
 vision. In the image they took away with them 
 much was overlooked ; changes of feature of the 
 last few months had not made a deep impression, 
 because the lines of the old image were so much 
 more familiar. That the wife's hair has a few 
 grey threads in it, and that the baby's is more 
 brown than golden ; that the matronly wrinkles
 
 THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE 187 
 
 are beginning to show a little, and that baby is 
 really not so bad looking, all this may escape 
 notice at ordinary times, and yet be sharply 
 impressed on us on our return after a longer 
 absence than usual. A photograph, in the same 
 way, usually differs from our mental picture of a 
 person. The camera only looks once, and from 
 one point of view, and we have been looking 
 scores or even thousands of times from many 
 points of view when the person is smiling, when 
 he is cross, when he is well, and when he is out 
 of sorts. 
 
 Composite Portraits. 
 
 As is well known, Mr. Francis Galton, the 
 cousin of Charles Darwin, has produced what 
 he calls composite portraits, but printing off a 
 number of plates, each exposed for a very short 
 period, one on the top of another. He makes 
 arrangements so that they are of the same size, 
 and so that they fall exactly on the top of one 
 another ; the centre of the eyes, for instance, 
 must be strictly in the same place. Such a com- 
 posite portrait would more nearly represent our 
 mental image than any single photograph. Mr. 
 Galton has carried the process further, and taken 
 portraits of different individuals of the same 
 type, in order to get not a portrait of any one of 
 them, but a portrait of the typical individual. 
 The special peculiarities of each tend to become 
 obliterated. In proportion as a feature is typical 
 it stands a better chance of appearing in the 
 portrait. What appears in all the individuals
 
 188 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 will be most strongly emphasized. Thus we get 
 composite portraits of the typical murderer, the 
 typical idiot, the typical soldier, the typical Jew, 
 in which the general features common to all come 
 out clearly, while the features peculiar to each 
 are blurred and suppressed. 
 
 Now, we know that something of the same sort 
 must go on when we form a general picture. My 
 mental picture of a sailor or a stockbroker is pro- 
 duced somewhat in the same way. "A composite 
 portrait," as Mr. Galton says, "represents the 
 picture that could rise before the mind's eye of 
 an individual who had the gift of pictorial imagi- 
 nation in an excellent degree." 
 
 When a child begins his observations he sees 
 many individual dogs, and he gradually forms an 
 image which resembles no single dog exactly, but 
 which will serve for all dogs. It is a generic 
 image. It will not coincide exactly with what 
 we should get by taking a composite portrait of 
 a dog, because the mind is always biassed and the 
 camera is not. The mind is always selective. 
 What interests one of us does not interest 
 another ; what claims the attention of the dog 
 fancier or the policeman is not the same feature 
 as that which claims the interest of the child. The 
 policeman looks at the muzzle, and the child 
 usually at the other extremity, where he knows 
 the chief organ for expressing emotion is to be 
 found. This does not show that the camera gives 
 a more valuable result ; but it gives one just in 
 proportion to the numbers. The effect produced 
 by facts of perception is not exactly in proportion 
 to the number of times a given feature is found.
 
 THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE 189 
 
 A very striking feature seen two or three times 
 may produce more impression than a less remark- 
 able feature seen a hundred times. 
 
 When objects differ very much no composite 1 
 portrait can be obtained. It is no use to try and 
 get a composite portrait of a snake and an ele- 
 phant. And what is true of an extreme case 
 like this is partially true of less extreme cases. 
 Where the class is too general, or where the 
 visible appearance of members of the class vary 
 greatly, the portrait becomes only a very rough 
 diagram. When we have seen many soldiers in 
 different uniforms we cease to try and picture a 
 soldier in general. To a man who knows dogs- 
 the idea of a generic image of a dog seems 
 equally absurd. A very imperfect and partial 
 diagram is our nearest approach. If we try 
 to visualize (imagine) completely and fully r 
 we find that we are filling in details, and 
 getting the picture of a particular variety of dog T 
 a fox-terrier, a pug, or a water-spaniel, and not an 
 picture of a dog in general. Let the reader try 
 to visualize a triangle in general, not isosceles,. 
 not equilateral, and not scalene ; that is, not 
 belonging to the particular sort having two equal 
 sides, or having three equal sides, or having no- 
 equal sides, but triangle simply. Of course, it is- 
 impossible. You might just as well try to draw 
 a triangle which belongs to none of the three- 
 sorts. You can only begin to picture it and get 
 a half-constructed diagram, which cannot be com- 
 pleted without belonging to one of the three 
 kinds. We cannot then get a generic image of 
 every sort of object ; but we may just begin to
 
 190 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 construct a generic image, and then stop, regard 
 ing it for our purposes as a sufficient representa- 
 tion, though incomplete. Or we may picture an 
 individual specimen more fully, so as to get all 
 the details of it, while we know that it is not a 
 representative of the class but only of some 
 small part of the class. Thus I can construct 
 either an imperfect image of a dog, just a rough, 
 incomplete thing with perhaps the head of a 
 retriever, but everything else quite uncertain ; or 
 a fully-developed portrait of a favourite fox- 
 terrier. 
 
 Some persons, as we have seen (Chap III.), 
 have the power of visualizing in a very high 
 degree ; others in a very low one. The work 
 done by visual images in one man is done by 
 motor or auditory images in another. Indeed, 
 there need be no image of the thing we think 
 .about at all ; an image of the word by which 
 we call it will suffice. 
 
 Conceptual Symbols, 
 
 An inquiry conducted by Professor Eibot, and 
 since justified by later workers, shows that people 
 may be classed in several different groups, according 
 to the way in which they think. There are persons 
 who always have a visual picture in their minds, 
 whether complete or incomplete ; either a fully- 
 developed visual image of the thing thought 
 about or a partially-developed and diagramatic 
 one. Such persons belong to what is called the 
 visual-concrete type. A more limited group have 
 a motw-concrete image, in which the image of the
 
 THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE 191 
 
 tiling is not mainly visual (though there may be 
 visual elements) but is made up of muscular 
 feeling and other sensations aroused by move- 
 ment. To this group must belong such of the 
 blind as belong to the concrete type of thinkers. 
 I have heard of a very great living painter who 
 before painting a figure finds it necessary to 
 model it in clay ; after which he can paint it. 
 He does not employ a living model, for his clay 
 statue ; but whereas he could not paint from his 
 visual imagination of the figure, he can mould a 
 solid figure for his motor plus visual imagination. 
 To one or other of the concrete types (principally 
 the visual) the great majority of people belong. 
 Others belong to what Eibot calls the visual 
 typographic group, who see a visual image of the 
 printed word ; such are the persons mentioned by 
 Galton, who " see mentally in print every word 
 that is uttered." 
 
 Others, met with less frequently, have before the 
 mind only the spoken word, which as we shall 
 see is something more than a revived sensation of 
 hearing. This last is called by Eibot the audi- 
 tory-motor type of mind. It seems, however, that 
 most persons, whether realizing it or not, form 
 some sort of concrete visual image where this is 
 possible. Experiments conducted on hypnotic 
 patients point to this conclusion. Such experi- 
 ments undoubtedly reveal what is going on in the 
 subconscious region of the mind ; that stratum of 
 thought and feeling which ordinarily cannot be 
 brought clearly before the attention. It is found 
 that persons who, when in their normal fcfcate, 
 deny that they have any image before their
 
 192 THE STORY OF THOUGHT JvXD TEELTNQ 
 
 minds, when quoctioncd in the hypnotic trance 
 describe themselves as having it. 
 
 There is no reason to think that these types of 
 concrete, typographic, andauditory-motor thinking 
 are always found in different persons. The same 
 person may sometimes have one sort of idea 
 before his mind and sometimes another. Thus 
 Professor Sidgwick of Cambridge found that 
 while he employed only the visual image of the 
 printed word in logical or mathematical reasoning, 
 he employed a visual image beside the image of 
 the word when he was thinking out problems 
 belonging to the science of Political Economy. 
 But these images were often curiously arbitrary 
 and sometimes purely symbolic. After much 
 consideration he discovered that "an odd symbolic 
 image which accompanied the word ' A'alue ' was 
 a faint, partial image of a man putting something 
 in a scale." 
 
 And we must not overlook the fact that some 
 kinds of thinking must be conducted with very 
 little aid from concrete images. Thus it is difficult 
 to see how we can form concrete pictures answer- 
 ing to, let us say, legal disqualification, or inverse 
 ratio. Personally, I imagine the printed word 
 only ; but some person may have a symbolic 
 visual image, such as that which answers to Dr. 
 Sidgwick's use of the word "value." In the case 
 of " woman's franchise," I confess to a faint (and 
 unflattering) picture of a woman which must have 
 originally come out of a comic paper.
 
 THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE 193 
 
 Concepts and Images. 
 
 There is an enormous difference between the 
 image, whatever it is, and the notion or concept. 
 My notion of a dog is not at all the same thing 
 as my mental image of a dog. In what does it 
 differ ? It differs in this way. The image docs 
 not imply any knowledge beyond itself. It is 
 what it is and nothing more. The concept has- 
 an image (concrete picture, printed word, or 
 uttered word) as its core, but it is a great deal 
 more than this. Round the core hang much 
 more vaguely represented facts, which we know 
 to be implied, but which we do not attempt to 
 picture now, and many of which cannot be 
 pictured at all. In the concept the image 
 (whether of the thing or the word) is only a 
 symbol. The essential meaning of dog is not 
 what I picture, otherwise one of those elaborate 
 painted earthenware dogs would be a dog. It is- 
 just the facts that we put into Avhat we call the 
 definition of "dog" ; the fact that it is an animal 
 of a certain kind, closely allied to certain other 
 kinds of animals (wolves, foxes, etc.), that it has 
 a certain general size, shape, anatomical develop- 
 ment, mode of life, and so forth. It is all these 
 things which make up what is ordinarily called 
 the definition or connotation of the term "dog," 
 and it is these things that are the really important 
 part of the notion. With just the same mental 
 image before us the connotation may change. 
 The naturalist means by dog so much more than, 
 the child does. Even if the naturalist and the* 
 
 N
 
 194 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 child have the same mental picture aroused they 
 have very different concepts. It is the knowledge 
 that the dog is of the same family as wolves and 
 foxes, sharing with them all the family qualities 
 that mark them off from the other carnivorous 
 animals, as well as those which connect them with 
 the other carnivores ; it is the recognition of the 
 relations of likeness and unlikeness connecting 
 dogs with all other classes of things in the Avorld. 
 The child knows only a very few of them, and 
 those not the most important. He sees that the 
 big dog is rather like a bear, and he is right as 
 far as he goes ; but it is not very far. The ana- 
 tomical likeness and the anatomical unlikeness 
 he knows nothing of ; he has only a very general 
 and inaccurate knowledge that in external ap- 
 pearance the retriever and a small black bear are 
 somewhat similar. He knows next to nothing 
 about the mode of life of dogs in general, though 
 he may know something about this dog in 
 particular. He does not realize that the dog has 
 a set of well-marked mental and physical qualities, 
 that it once lived in a wild state, and that the 
 domesticated variety has many special qualities 
 of its own. 
 
 Thinking. 
 
 Now it is the knowledge of these relations which 
 constitute the chief difference in my state of 
 mind when I think about a dog from my state of 
 mind when I only picture a dog. When I think 
 I use the image (whether concrete, or typographic, 
 or auditory motor) as a symbol to hold in con-
 
 THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE 195 
 
 sciousness in order that I may not forget the 
 relations. Eound the more or less clearly defined 
 image is a " fringe," as James calls it, of im- 
 perfectly realized facts, some of which might be 
 brought into full consciousness, while others are 
 quite incapable of it. Without these it is a mere 
 image, and means very little. With them it is 
 the foundation of a thought, which may mean a 
 great deal. Notice, we do not keep the image 
 in the full focus of attention while we think about 
 it, but we keep it at hand in the field lying round 
 the focus of attention, capable at any instant of 
 entering it. If the image were the thing chiefly 
 attended to we should not be able to think. 
 Persons who visualize well, that is, children, 
 young people generally, and persons of artistic 
 nature, are inclined to do this. The image 
 aroused is nearly always, with them, a concrete 
 one the picture of a thing, and this is so inter- 
 esting that they cannot take their mental eye 
 from it. All the relations lie forgotten and 
 neglected. And in the mind's grasp of the 
 relations consists what we call thought, as 
 opposed to imagination. If they are not appre- 
 hended we are not thinking. We sometimes use 
 the word " think " when we mean " remember " ; 
 we say, "I cannot think of that number," when we 
 mean " I cannot remember that number." But 
 this is not the proper use of it. The thinker, the 
 thoughtful person, is not the person who merely 
 remembers or merely pictures ; indeed, some of 
 the least thoughtful people have very creditable 
 memories. He is the person who grasps the 
 relations which connect the objects which occupy
 
 196 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 his mind with other objects. He understands, 
 or tries to understand, the various ways in which 
 they resemble one another and differ from one 
 another ; how they are connected in regard to 
 time and space ; how they are caused, and what 
 effects they produce. All thoughtful persons 
 will not fix their attention on the same relations 
 of a thing, but they will fix their attention on 
 some of its relations. Thus suppose steam is 
 mentioned. One man, say a student of science, 
 begins to consider its relations to water and ice, 
 to clouds, rain, and other meteorological facts. 
 Another man, an engineer, considers its value as 
 a motive force in machinery, and instead of 
 thinking of ice, clouds, and so on, begins to think 
 of other forms of heat-engines, arid of appliances 
 for preventing waste of energy. A third, a 
 medical man, thinks of steam as cause of scalds. 
 A fourth, a student of social science, begins to 
 think of the changes produced in the nineteenth 
 century by the application of steam to manu- 
 facture and locomotion. An artistic person may 
 content himself with visualizing the beautiful 
 effect of clouds of steam emitted by engines in 
 bright sunshine. If so, he will not be thinking 
 at all, but merely imagining. The others have 
 been employing representations only as a help to 
 bring before their minds the relations of steam to 
 many other things. The artist remains com- 
 pletely interested in the visual picture. They 
 keep looking at the object from all sorts of points 
 of consideration ; he only from the one side its 
 external appearance. They therefore constantly 
 split up or analyze the object of thought, and
 
 THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE 197 
 
 look at eacli part or element in abstraction, then 
 put them together again. The engineer neglects 
 the relation of steam to ice and cloud, but 
 analyzes its relation to heat, its conductivity, and 
 so on. The sociologist forgets all about ice, 
 water, cloud, heat, energy, scalds, beauty, and so 
 forth, and confines himself to the commercial, 
 industrial, political, and military changes brought 
 about. But he keeps analyzing, asking himself 
 how and why such effects are produced. " Is the 
 bettering of the state of the working classes due 
 to steam ? Is the effective growth of democracy 
 due to steam ? Perhaps it may be. The possi- 
 bility of every man taking an intelligent interest 
 in the government of his country is dependent 
 on rapidity and cheapness of communication. If 
 it were not for the steam press and steam loco- 
 motive the cheap newspaper could never have 
 existed. Therefore ..." And so he goes on 
 analyzing the great mass of considerations we 
 call " the condition of society," and separating 
 one fact from another brings each one into some 
 kind of relation with the steam engine. 
 
 At every step ho keeps comparing with other 
 aspects the facts or aspects he has isolated. The 
 recognition of a likeness or unlikeness is in every 
 case the consequence of an act of comparison, 
 sometimes made consciously and voluntarily, 
 sometimes automatically making itself as it 
 were. 
 
 All this requires constant effort of mind. Each 
 moment fresh ideas come before the atttention, 
 chiefly by the action of what we call suggestion 
 or association. But these ideas are so many
 
 198 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 rivals for our attention, and each tries to mono- 
 polize the whole of it. If the philosopher lets 
 his mind run exclusively on political considera- 
 tions, he will find that not only has he overlooked 
 industrial and commercial ones, but that he has 
 forgotten all about steam in its relation to society. 
 and is thinking only of political considerations 
 in general. At every moment the mind of the 
 thinker, dominated by the central notion of the 
 steam engine in relation to social progress, keeps 
 cutting off the attention from these diverging 
 and misleading tracts of associated ideas. He 
 must keep to his subject, so he refuses to be led 
 astray into by-paths, however fascinating. This 
 is what we saw in Chapter VIII. in speaking of 
 the control of our thoughts. The act of thought 
 implies a constant struggle to suppress intruding 
 percepts and seducing images. It is a position 
 of unstable equilibrium, like balancing an egg on 
 its end. The sunshine, the voices of our friends, 
 the hundred sights and sounds that call us back 
 to the world of sense, on the one hand ; the 
 divergent trains of images roused up within us, 
 many of them more interesting than the ruling 
 idea, on the other ; these are the Scylla and 
 Charybdis which threaten wreck and ruin to our 
 bark of thought. 
 
 Language and Thought. 
 
 Fortunately, we have a great help in language,, 
 which fixes our thoughts and helps us to retain 
 them in a tolerably definite form. We never 
 find anything that can properly be called thought
 
 THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE 19!> 
 
 without language. In the growth of a child's 
 mind we have a good opportunity of verifying 
 this, and careful study of the lower animals also 
 confirms it. Many people, of course, hold that at 
 any rate their own pet dog or cat reasons. But 
 those who send extraordinary stories about ani- 
 mals to the newspapers are seldom very exact 
 observers, and the evidence on which they rely 
 to prove that their four-footed friends so reason 
 is, no doubt, often exaggerated, while it is usually 
 susceptible of a much less startling explanation. 
 Thus Professor Lloyd Morgan, who knows more 
 about the subject at first hand than any other 
 living man, says that while he is not prepared to 
 say that animals never do reason, he thinks it 
 very improbable. " The fuller and more careful 
 the investigation, the less is the satisfactory evi- 
 dence of processes of reasoning." 
 
 Language is a system of signs, of ideas, and of 
 relations between ideas. These signs may be 
 spoken sounds, as in ordinary speech, or purely 
 visual, or as the Egyptian hieroglyphs are to a 
 modern student, or constructions of movement, as 
 in the finger language used by deaf-mutes. Most 
 of these signs are acquired by constant use ; they 
 have, as a rule, no powers of suggesting the 
 meaning, but the meaning and the name get 
 linked together by dint of constant repetition. 
 There is no real reason why doy, or hund, or chien, 
 or canis, or KWOV, should represent what is called 
 by these words, rather anything else. The link 
 between name and thing is, in the strict sense of 
 the term, an arbitrary one, though, of course, it 
 is not a matter of chance whether a French boy
 
 200 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 will call a dog cliien or use one of the other words. 
 As long as everybody will all agree to use it in a 
 given sense, one word will do as well as another. 
 How a word conies to be formed and used in 
 a certain sense may be a very interesting story ; 
 but this does not alter the fact that another 
 sound would do just as well, if you could only 
 get everybody to accept it. Any other device on 
 a bank-note would serve just as well as that which 
 the Bank of England puts on it, if only this were 
 agreed to by the bank and public alike. Fresh 
 names are always coming into use owing to the 
 ingenuity of discoverers, the perversity of those 
 who love slang, and other causes. The child 
 sometimes invents them for itself, or gets them 
 invented for it by the nurse. 
 
 A spoken word once formed is, it must be 
 remembered, a rather elaborate affair. Our per- 
 ception of it is not due simply to the ear. It no 
 doubt reaches us through the ear, but the sound 
 revives other sensations besides auditory ones. 
 AVhen a word is heard or remembered a motor 
 image is aroused, a faint revival of the sensations 
 arising from the movements of the vocal organs 
 by which the word is uttered. The larynx is a 
 most complicated musical instrument governed 
 by seven sets of muscles, and by these sounds of 
 varioiis pitch are produced. These sounds are 
 modified in their passage through the pharynx 
 and mouth, and thus we get the vowels. The 
 consonants are produced by the movements of 
 lips, teeth, tongue, and other changes in the 
 cavity of the mouth, all brought about by mus- 
 cular tensions. There arc other sounds produced
 
 THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE 201 
 
 by means of the nose, but there is no need to 
 describe the movements in detail. All these 
 movements leave a trace, and this faint image is 
 revived, incompletely doubtless as well as faintly, 
 when we hear the name or even think of it. 
 
 That these motor elements are included is 
 proved by the way in which people move their 
 lips in thinking. They talk to themselves or 
 think aloud. This is more common in children 
 than in adults, and among uneducated and stupid 
 people than among the cultivated and thoughtful. 
 But when a subject of great difficulty is under 
 consideration, men of great intelligence who at 
 no other time use actual movements occasionally 
 do so. The tendency is there all the time ; but 
 with the assistance of the images of printed words, 
 and the greater experience and ability in the 
 wielding of verbal language, there is in ordinary 
 cases no need for the additional clearness that 
 comes from actual articulation. The philosopher 
 and man of science has the inclination to articu- 
 late, and if he is given to introspection he can 
 detect the suppressed sensations. 
 
 When the baby learns to associate a given 
 word, say "puss," with a given object, the process 
 is rather more complicated than it looks. He 
 has to link the sound with the motor-sensations 
 of which I have just been speaking ; and he has 
 to associate the two (as a whole) with the percept 
 of the cat. A little later he learns to extend the 
 name to other cats ; this is not so difficult as it 
 seems, because he probably does not recognise 
 the differences as easily as the resemblances. 
 Agreement in colour, general shape, and general
 
 202 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 size go a great way in making him identify other 
 animals with " puss." Young children will call a 
 rabbit puss ; as indeed sportsmen do a hare, 
 though they know better. And sheep and even 
 fawns are sometimes called dogs by cockney 
 children on their first introduction to them By 
 applying the same word " puss " to various cats, 
 and learning not to apply it to other animals, he 
 gradually comes to link the word and the percept 
 of the creature very closely, and the sound of the 
 word will bring up the image of the animal if the 
 reality be absent from the room. As he ob^rves 
 the cat in its daily movements, and hears stories 
 about it, he passes from the percept to the con- 
 cept. He gets a notion of cats in general, which 
 contains other elements than those of direct sight 
 and touch. " Puss " means a living creature 
 which likes milk, eats mice and birds, and has a 
 habit of sleeping in front of the fire ; a creature 
 like a dog in some respects, but one which is 
 less companionable, and has uncommonly sharp 
 claws. 
 
 The use of Words, in Thinking. 
 
 Now, what exactly is the service rendered us 
 by the use of names ? In the first place if any 
 one uses it, it enables us to revive the image, or 
 the notion, of the thing named. In the next 
 place it enables us to raise the same idea in the 
 minds of other people. In the third place it 
 enables us to think about the object much more 
 easily than we could do otherwise. It docs this 
 by holding together the group of images and
 
 THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE 20-7 
 
 notions which form the meaning, or as logicians 
 cull it, the connotation of the name. We know 
 that all the attributes a, b, c, d, e, f, and so on, 
 are implied by the name N : and even if some of 
 them are not in the full focus of attention the use 
 of the name pulls the others into the field of con- 
 sciousness ready to come into full focus on the 
 slightest provocation. Until a thing has a name 
 we are much more likely to overlook some of its 
 attributes. The name clamps the whole and 
 gives the thing an individuality. It is something 
 like learning the name of a person. If you 
 are told a man's name and get clearly a hold of it, 
 you are much more likely to know him, and 
 remember who and what he is, than if you can 
 only remember him as the "tall man with grey 
 whiskers that I met last year at Brighton." Yon 
 can certainly communicate your opinions of him 
 much more easily than if you have to allude to 
 him in this round-about way. You may have a 
 very poor mental picture of him and know very 
 little about him, but the name makes up for the 
 indefmiteness. So it is with general names. 
 Suppose that it was impossible to give names to 
 newly-discovered natural objects or natural forces, 
 how much harder it would be for astronomers to 
 think about a given star if they had to remember 
 it as the heavenly body discovered by Professor 
 Jones in 1868 ; or for physicists to think about 
 a given substance as the body formed by the 
 combination of two atoms of such and such an 
 element with three atoms of some other. How 
 could anatomists and physiologists ever know 
 exactly the structure of the body if they were
 
 "204 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 unable to fix the shape and position of every 
 minute muscle and gland by a name 1 And when 
 we come to highly abstract ideas, which are not 
 'the names of things at all but of complex relations 
 of things, the case is still clearer. No definite 
 thought about the origin of species would be 
 possible if we could not link together compara- 
 tively firm and unchanging groups of facts and 
 relations under such names as "variation," "here- 
 dity," "natural selection." In the same way modern 
 physics would be impossible without such words 
 .as "undulation," "ether," "polarization." Imagine 
 yourself trying to explain the principles of free 
 government without such words as " representa- 
 tive," " constituents," " constitutional." Such 
 words enable us to fix our attention on certain 
 important facts and relations (important for the 
 purpose in hand) and neglect others. " The word 
 is the symbol that enables us to hold together in 
 a coherent system, though not in a single image, 
 the relations which make up the contents of our 
 thought." (Bosanquet.) And we are able to wield 
 the whole set of relations just as easily as if we 
 had to deal with one single relation. Some of my t 
 readers may remember how, after a mathematical 
 operation has been performed which gives us a 
 big, involved expression, we may substitute a 
 single letter for all this, and use this letter just 
 .as easily as if it meant something quite short and 
 -simple. Words are used something like this; 
 only there is one important difference. We use 
 the algebraical expression almost mechanically, 
 as a kind of counter. We do not attempt to 
 realize what x and y mean in working out a
 
 THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE 205- 
 
 problem ; we multiply and divide and transpose- 
 without any reference to the meaning. But in 
 non-mathematical thought, which deals with 
 more complicated relations than that of quantity,, 
 we cannot neglect the meaning in this way. 
 When we use a word it is for the purpose of 
 bringing the meaning clearly before us. It does- 
 this almost as well as an actual sight of the object, 
 where it is possible to see the object at all. When 
 the object of thought is simply a great mass of 
 relations which can be understood but not seen 
 or felt or otherwise perceived, the word does- 
 whnt nothing else can. The group of attributes- 
 and relations even in the simplest concept is too- 
 large to come into the focus of attention. The- 
 word is easily remembered and retained in con- 
 sciousness; more easily than any thing else except 
 the concrete image. It is also easily linked with 
 other Avords, so as to form a series or train, and 
 in this way express fresh relations. We re- 
 member a set of words much more easily than a. 
 group of relations. A verbal rule is much more- 
 easily got into the head than a group of facts. 
 Besides this, the meaning and the word are more- 
 closely associated than most other ideas. We- 
 have seen that in perception, when part of an 
 object is perceived the rest is almost inevitably 
 suggested as really and actually present. If I 
 catch sight of a man's head looking over the- 
 fence, I never have the faintest shadow of doubt or 
 hesitation in at once assuming the rest of 
 the body is there too. If I see the outside of 
 an orange there is the same feeling of absolute 
 certainty that there will be the usual inside.
 
 206 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 One or two elements of the percept irresistibly 
 pull the rest into consciousness. With ordinary 
 memory of ideas this is not the case. If I only 
 image a man's head the next idea may be almost 
 anything; there is no such close and necessary 
 link as between the group of sensations which 
 make up a percept. But the link between word 
 and meaning, though not so close and strong as 
 that between the elements of the percept, is a 
 great deal closer and stronger than that between 
 two ordinary images in memory. The word- 
 image, owing to the recalled motor sensations 
 which form part of it, is a particularly vivid form 
 of image, very nearly approaching a true percept. 
 It is always hovering on the brink of perception, 
 The slightest addition to the strength of the 
 nervous currents which accompany it would turn 
 the image into a percept ; and as we see in 
 children and persons with insufficient control of 
 muscles this is constantly happening, the word- 
 image becomes an uttered word, that is, they 
 " talk to themselves." 
 
 Thinking is something more than the manipu- 
 lation of signs that is, words. But the words 
 .afford great assistance to a process, and we could 
 not get very far \vithout them. The work done 
 by language in thought has been compared to 
 that done by the arch in tunnelling through soft 
 soil. You cannot make a tunnel by simply 
 building an arch ; the actual excavation is 
 done in front of the arch, but directly a few 
 inches have been cut away, a brickwork arch is 
 constructed to secure what has been done, and 
 make a further advance possible. The arch is a
 
 THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE 207 
 
 necessary condition of success ; but after all, the 
 real work is done a little in advance of it. In 
 the same way the thinking involves operations 
 beyond and beside those which can be performed 
 by using words. The connotation (meaning) of 
 every word is supposed to be fixed. You and I 
 and everybody else are supposed to use every 
 word in the same sense. We do not as a matter 
 of fact, and Avhen we get into earnest theological 
 or political discussion we find this out. "After all," 
 says Locke, "the provision of words is so scanty 
 in respect of that infinite variety of thought, that 
 men, wanting terms to suit their precise notions, 
 will, notwithstanding their utmost caution, be 
 forced often to use the same word in somewhat 
 different senses." And most of us do not use 
 our "utmost caution," or indeed any caution 
 at all, in the matter. We use terms like 
 "Protestant" and "Catholic," "spiritual" and 
 "material," "freedom" and "tyranny," "right," 
 and "duty," as if no uncertainty whatever at- 
 tached to them ; whereas all thoughtful man 
 know that every one of these words is highly 
 ambiguous. Our first effort must be to try and 
 see what we mean ourselves by such equivocal 
 terms; the next, to see what our opponent means 
 by them. What sign we use does not matter so 
 much as the meaning we attach to it. " Words," 
 says Bacon, " are the tokens current and accepted 
 for conceits [that is, ideas], as moneys are for 
 values." We have got to make sure that we and 
 the other party to the bargain are agreed as to 
 the value to be attached to each. 
 
 But discussion, if it is worth anything, will 
 
 \
 
 208 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 cause us to alter our meanings more or less. We 
 are obliged to assume that the value of each word 
 is fixed and is ascertainable ; but as a matter of 
 fact this is seldom quite true. It is the business 
 of the careful thinker to make himself aware of 
 the changes which occur in the meaning of words. 
 These gradual changes indicate change of opinion, 
 fresh results arrived at through thinking. 
 
 The question may be naturally raised, Can we 
 think at all without language ? In a sense, yes. 
 The proceedings of the successful chess-player and 
 the card-player, for instance, involve a good 
 deal of thought, and this thought is conducted 
 with vfery little language. It is said that patients 
 who have lost all memory for language (aphasia) 
 can yet succeed at chess and cards. But games of 
 this kind require chiefly exact imagination of the 
 possibilities still open ; you must remember what 
 cards have been already played, and by whom, 
 and what cards therefore remain to be played. 
 It may be a question of visual memory simply, 
 to merely keep before our minds how the cards 
 are distributed. Directly we try to make these 
 relations of space and time clear to other people 
 we want a whole set of special words. Suppose 
 we take the rule in Clay's well-known manual on 
 whist, " With a tierce to a king in any suit, it is 
 only right to commence with the knave when you 
 hold at least five of a suit." To convey this 
 general caution without words would be impos- 
 sible. But the player might easily observe it in 
 every case without ever thinking it, just as a man 
 can find his way from the station to the office, 
 and yet perhaps be unable to give directions for
 
 THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE 00 
 
 anyone else to make the same journey. A set of 
 mere space or time relations then can be remem- 
 bered, and new relations even deduced from them 
 without language. " A chess-player," as Professor 
 Stout says, " need not in actual play think about 
 the general laws of the game, or about general 
 maxims derived from previous experience." So 
 far as the highest of the lower animals give 
 evidence of thought, it must be thought of this 
 kind. Of course we cannot expect to find them 
 advancing very far along the road. The intellect 
 of man has for ages been exercised and stimu- 
 lated by the use of language. 
 
 Judgments and Concepts, 
 
 In books on Logic you will have learned that 
 every judgment consists of three essential parts, 
 a subject, a predicate, and the copula, which is 
 really only a symbol of assertion that is, of 
 affirmation or denial. And for logical purposes 
 this is so. When we want to look at a judgment 
 with a view to see what can be inferred from it, 
 or from what it can be inferred, the analysis into 
 subject, predicate, and copula is quite satisfac- 
 tory. When, however, we want to see in what 
 form a judgment actually exists in the mind, we 
 shall not rest satisfied with the form familiar to 
 us in the Logic books. In point of fact there is 
 no essential difference between the judgment and 
 the concept. Every concept is an implicit judg- 
 ment ; every judgment is a concept expanded or 
 rendered in some respects more explicit. 
 
 Probably the simplest form of judgment is the 
 
 o
 
 210 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 impersonal. " It rains," " It snows." This is only 
 an assertion that such or such a predicate is 
 applicable, but it does not say to Avimt subject. 
 There is only one concept the predicate. Im- 
 personal verbs are often found abundantly in 
 early stages of languages, and get dropped in 
 the later stages. The demands of Logic and the 
 analogy of other verbs gradually get rid of the 
 anomalous impersonal verb. 
 
 It matters very little whether we form a con- 
 cept or a judgment. The difference between 
 them is not essential. Let us take the concept of 
 (say) orange, embracing the well-known qualities, 
 shape, colour, weight, softness, odour, and so on, 
 and the less obvious qualities, good for food, 
 thirst-quenching fruit of a tree belonging to the 
 same type -as the lemon and citron. -IJoughly 
 speaking, these together form the essential attri- 
 butes of an orange, and we should hesitate to 
 apply the name to a specimen in which one of 
 them was replaced by a totally different quality. 
 Suppose we take one of these attributes, and, 
 while distinguishing it from the rest, yet assert 
 it of the whole, we have a judgment. A judg- 
 ment implies some degree of disconnection be- 
 tween the attribute . and the whole to which we 
 admit that it belongs. V\ r e make a partial 
 mental analysis, and then assert that one of the 
 elements we have discovered belongs to the whole. 
 Thus in the judgments, ''The orange is round," 
 "The orange contains juice/'' we. ut once discon- 
 nect and reunite one element of the total idea 
 the concept orange,. ..In. the mind, however, they, 
 are held together, as, a whole. The prepositional
 
 THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE 211 
 
 shape, with subject and predicate, while valuable 
 in order to call our attention to just what is 
 capable of being doubted in the synthesis, does 
 not represent something essentially different, 
 but an essentially similar mental process to the 
 concept or percept. 
 
 In all thinking we have assimilation, or apper- 
 ception, as the lierbartians prefer to call it. Ill 
 every case new ideas, or relatively new ideas, are 
 incorporated into one system with other ideas. 
 Sometimes an idea is capable of being absorbed 
 i'.ito several such systems, and actually comes to 
 form part of several. Thus salt is connected with 
 the group of thoughts about eating (meals), with 
 a chemical group (chloride of sodium), and with 
 a literary group (mcrum sal, Attic salt). It is 
 capable of forming part of all these ; and though 
 they are rival claimants for it, we are not con- 
 of any impossibility of its belonging to 
 them all. We cannot think of salt in all three 
 eta of relations at the same moment, but we can 
 in successive moments. We can assent to its 
 being compatible with all of them. Some groups, 
 however, are incompatible. Thus salt cannot, 
 under exactly the same conditions, both be 
 wholesome for me and unwholesome ; it cannot 
 both be a chemical clement and a chemical com- 
 pound. If an i-iea cannot lie taken up by and 
 a^imilatecl with both of two incompatible systems 
 of ideas, a state of mental conflict ensues which 
 is always painful. Here we have inability to 
 decide, our judgment is paralysed, and \ve have 
 what we call a^state of doubt.,. Most of us shrink 
 from it.^vath, intense -dislike. The -plain man,
 
 212 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 uninterested in remote ideals, but desirous of 
 getting on well and comfortably in the practical 
 business of life, avoids it almost as much as the 
 religious devotee who fears that doubt involves 
 damnation. The philosopher and the man of 
 science know that such phases of hesitation and 
 uncertainty, however unpleasant, have to be 
 faced if our thought is to be real. 
 
 FEINTED BY COWAN AND CO., LIMITED, PERTH.
 
 INDEX 
 
 A 
 
 ./Esthetic Feeling, 144. 
 After-image, 36 foil. 
 Amnesia, 47. 
 Anger, 119. 
 Aphasia, 47. 
 
 Apperception, 70 foil., 211. 
 Attention, 15 foil. 
 Auditory-motor Thinking, 191. 
 
 B 
 
 Bacon, 207. 
 
 Bain, 56, 183 foil. 
 
 Basilar Membrane, 104 note. 
 
 Berkeley, 108 foil. 
 
 Binet and Fere, 81, 82. 
 
 Binet on Memory. 49, 58. 
 
 Binocular Vision, 101 foil. 
 
 Blind Spot, 95 foil. 
 
 Blix, 86. 
 
 Bosanquet, 204. 
 
 Choice, 178 foil. 
 Clodd, 144. 
 Clouston, 175. 
 
 213
 
 214 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 Coleridge, 48. 
 
 Colour Blindness, 98 foil. 
 
 Colour Sensation, 9G foil. 
 
 Composite Portraits, 187 foil, 
 
 Concepts, 193 foil., 211 foil. 
 
 Control, 156, 166 foll.,171 foil., 174 foil 
 
 Corresponding Parts of the Retina, 101. 
 
 Corti, Arches of, 104. 
 
 Dalton, 99. 
 
 Darwin on Expression of Emotion, 137. 
 
 Deliberation, 177 foil. 
 
 Dickens, 51. 
 
 Distance, 109 foil. 
 
 Distracted Will, 178. 
 
 Doubt, 211. 
 
 Ear, 103 foil. 
 
 Emotion, 120 foil. ; and Bodily Disturbance, 
 
 125 foil. 
 
 Erect Vision, 117. 
 Explosive Will, 177. 
 
 Expression of Emotion, 125 foil., 132 foil. 
 Eye, 95 foil. 
 
 Fechncr, 17 note. 
 
 Feeling, 119 foil.: Pure Feeling, 122; its Import- 
 ance, 148.
 
 INDEX 215 
 
 Field of Attention, 23. 
 Focus of Attention, 23. 
 Forbes Winslow, 47 foil. 
 Frey, 86. 
 Frowning, 138 foil. 
 
 Galton, F., 39 foil., 187 foil. 
 
 Goldschcider, 86; on Motor Sensations, 91 foil. 
 
 H 
 
 Habit, 158. 
 Hall, Stanley, 87. 
 Hallucination, 79 foil. 
 Hamilton, Sir W., 25 foil. 
 Hartley, 160. 
 Henri on Memory, 49, 58. 
 Herbart, 90 foil. 
 Hypermnesia, 47 foil. 
 Hypnotism, 81, 27. 
 Hyslop, 79, 77. 
 
 Illusion, 65. 
 
 Images, 36 foil. 
 
 Imagination, 41 foil. 
 
 Inattention, 30 foil. 
 
 Inference in Perception, 62 foil. 
 
 Instinctive Movements, 150 foil. 
 
 Instincts of the Lower Animals, 16.3 foil. 
 
 Introspection, 11.
 
 216 THE STORY OF THOUGHT AND FEELING 
 
 James, W., 46, 128, 130, 175. 
 Judgment, 209 foil. 
 
 K 
 
 Kiesow, 86. 
 
 Kirkpatrick, E. A., on Memory, 49. 
 
 Lalande, 51. 
 
 Lamarck, 160. 
 
 Language and Thought, 198 foil. 
 
 Light Sensations, 94. 
 
 Lloyd, Morgan, 164 foil. 
 
 Localization of Touches, 87 foil., Ill foil. 
 
 Local Sign, 113 foil. 
 
 Locke, 59. 
 
 Luys, 48. 
 
 M 
 
 Memory, 46 fdl. 
 
 Mill, 63 foil. 
 
 Moll, 81, 183. 
 
 Motor-concrete Thinking, 190 foil. 
 
 Motor Sensations, 90 foil., 154 foil. 
 
 Miinsterberg, 17 note, 53. 
 
 Myers, R, 28.
 
 INDEX 217 
 
 N 
 
 Nicolai, 80. 
 
 O 
 
 Organic Sensations, 84, 106 folL 
 P 
 
 Paraphrasia, 47. 
 
 Paramnesia, 50 foil., 58 foil. 
 
 Parish, 80. 
 
 Pascal, 127. 
 
 Percept, Perception, 9 foil. 
 
 Phosphenes, 94. 
 
 Pick, 50. 
 
 Pleasure and Pain, 122 foil. 
 
 Podmore, 28. 
 
 Point of Attention, 23. 
 
 Porson, 48. 
 
 Preadjustment of Attention, 33 foil. 
 
 Purposive Movements, 151. 
 
 R 
 
 Random Movements, 150. 
 Recognition, 46. 
 Recollection, 53 foil. 
 Recurrent Sensations, 37 foil. 
 Reflex Movements, ISO, 160. 
 Resolution, 178 foil. 
 Ribot, 190 foil. 
 Richet, 182. 
 Rush, 48.
 
 2 IS TilE STORY OF THOUGHT AND KEELING 
 
 Scott, Sir "W., Records Illusion, 65 foil. 
 
 Subconsciousness, 23, 27 foil. 
 
 Suggestion, Laws of, 55 ; and Perception, 75 
 
 foU 
 
 Sachs, Edwin, on Conjuring, 76. 
 Scaliger, Joseph, 48. 
 Secondarily Automatic Actions, 160. 
 Self, 157 foil., 180 foil., 183 foil. 
 Sentiments, 143. 
 Sidgwick, H., 192. 
 Smith, Adam, 158. 
 Sollier, P., 129. 
 
 Spencer, H., on Expression of Emotion, 136 foil. 
 Stratton, G., 118. 
 Sully, J-, 44 foil., 71 foil. 
 Systemic Sensations, 84. 
 
 Taste, Sensations of, 105 foil. 
 Temperature, Sensations of, 88 foil. 
 Tennyson, Lord, His After-images, 38. 
 Thinking, 172 foil., 194 foil. 
 Titchener, 152, 160. 
 Trouessart, 121. 
 
 V 
 
 Visual Concrete Thinking, 190 foil. 
 
 Visualization, 38 foil. 
 
 Visual Typographic Thinking, 191.
 
 IXDF.X 219 
 
 w 
 
 Ward, 153 foil., 160. 
 Will, 179 foil. 
 Words, 202 foil. 
 Wundt, HI, 160. 
 
 Y 
 
 bellow Spot, 95.
 
 42171
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FA 
 
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