28 THEORETICAL BIOLOGY 



melody need sound in order for us to recognise the object 

 again. For many objects we must form several melodies if 

 we want to recognise them at the first glance. If we have 

 not done this for one side of the object, we do not recognise 

 it, but content ourselves with saying that something is there 

 whose outline stirs no melody when our glance rests on it. 



We are faced here with the astonishing fact that we are 

 completely ignorant as to one of the main characteristics of 

 objects, certainly no less important than colour or smell, 

 and become conscious of it only when we make use of it, and 

 then in virtue of the accompanying quality. We employ 

 impulse-sequences all the time, and yet they remain con- 

 cealed, like the impulses to our larynx when we sing ; of these 

 we become conscious only when they are translated into 

 sounds, either in reality or in our imagination. 



Here we get to know a very real factor in our organisation, 

 a factor which, in order to become apparent, must find ex- 

 pression either in time as a melody of sounds, or in time and 

 space as a melody of direction-signs. We can do no more 

 than observe its operation and establish its existence. As 

 soon as we attempt to classify it in the organisation of our 

 subject, or ask ourselves whether we can find something that 

 represents it in our brain, it eludes us. 



What is so tantalising is that we formed the melodies from 

 the impulse-sequences themselves ; assuredly, knowledge of 

 the letters of the alphabet is not inborn. Neither can we 

 content ourselves by saying that the melody is just a rule or 

 a method of systematising which we then impose on the 

 sequence of direction-signs, a rule that simply cannot exist 

 apart from the phenomenon with which it is associated. No, 

 the impulse-sequence forms the sign-series quite on its own, 

 and without reference to whether we are cognisant of it 

 or not. 



All we can do is to estabHsh the fact that, after frequent 



