SPACE AND TIME 163 



memory as to phenomena. By this method of regard- 

 ing the matter we certainly gain new insight into the 

 manner in which space may result from the nature of the 

 psychical machinery. No one can look upon the space 

 whereby the impresses of past experience are grouped 

 and distinguished as a reality apart from internal per- 

 ceptions ; it is too obviously a mode of the retentive 

 faculty. But the distinction between the world of pheno- 

 mena and the world of memories lies not in the order 

 and relation of their contents, but in the intensity of the 

 stimulus and the quality of the association in the two 

 cases. The candies, the inkstand, the books and papers 

 on my table have the same order and relation, whether I 

 see and touch them or simply shut my eyes and recall 

 them as a memory, but there is a great difference in the 

 vividness^ of the external and internal perceptions, and a 

 considerable change in the range of stored impresses with 

 which the contents of perception arc associated in the 

 two cases. 



Once recognise space as the mode in which we perceive 

 coexisting things apart, and we have either to multiply 

 spaces or to consider that logically all separation denotes 

 space. Thus our thoughts and conceptions will be found 

 almost invariably to involve spacial relationship, while the 

 psychical processes themselves are, like pain, being more 

 and more localised or associated with individual centres 

 of brain-activity. It may fairly be said that until the 

 spacial relationship is recognised in any field, until we are 

 able to perceive things apart, we have no basis for 

 distinction, comparison, classification, and the resulting 

 scientific knowledge. It is especially from the localisation 

 of psychical processes that we may hope for great results, 

 for a true science of psychology in the future. This 

 localisation is not a " materialisation " of thought, it is 

 merely an association of " internal " and " external " 



1 Hume's definition of belief, slightly modified, well marks the difference : 

 A group of immediate sense-impressions is a " more vivid, lively, forcible, 

 firm, ste idy " perception of an object than a group of stored impresses alone 

 is ever able to provide {Essay Concerning JIuDian Understanding, sec. v. 

 part ii.). 



