14 THEORETICAL BIOLOGY 



The melody of the impulses is quite unknown to us, but 

 it enters directly into our consciousness when we perform the 

 actual movement and the direction-signs resound, or when 

 we play off their memory-signs in our imagination. 



As soon as the movement begins, direction-signs appear 

 which give us information not as to the muscles that are in 

 action, but as to the path that is followed in space. So we 

 learn that the left arm is following a different path from the 

 right. In thus far, we are justified in describing the direction- 

 signs as signs of the innervation that has come into action. 

 For the performance of a simple muscular contraction we do 

 not require the melody. 



SPACE AS LAW 



As we know, Kant established the doctrine that we have 

 information about space before we have any experience, 

 because, as the form of intuition, space must precede every 

 experience. But space does not differ therein from the other 

 forms of sense-perception ; the musical scale is in existence 

 as soon as the first sound is perceived, and the first colour seen 

 already has its complementary colour before ever that enters 

 our perception. The relations, regulated by law, which one 

 sound bears to all other sounds, and those which one colour 

 bears to all other colours, must be investigated, it is true, in 

 experience, but they precede all experience and merely reveal 

 their nature with the beginning of the first experience. 



The reason why an exceptional position is accorded to 

 space in contrast to other forms of sense-perception, is quite 

 other. All sense-qualities that are not connected with our 

 movements are called forth by impressions from outside, 

 which are entirely independent of our own activity. Only 

 those qualities which accompany our own movements are 

 quite independent of the outside world, and hence of any 



