SPACE 49 



OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE 



As we advance, our investigations increasingly compel us 

 to seek a clear definition of the concepts " objective " and 

 " subjective." 



We have shown that, in Kant's sense, there is no such 

 thing as absolute space on which our subject is without in- 

 fluence. For both the specific material of space, namely- 

 local signs and direction-signs, and the form this material 

 assumes, are subjective creations. Without the spatial 

 qualities and the bringing of them together into their common 

 form that apperception makes possible, there would be no 

 space at all, but merely a number of sense-qualities, such as 

 colours, sounds, smells, and so forth ; these would, of course, 

 have their specific forms and laws, but there would be no 

 common arena in which they could all play their part. 



We may satisfy ourselves as to this, and yet the distinc- 

 tion between objective and subjective has a real meaning, 

 even if it be admitted from the first that there is no such 

 thing as absolute objectivity. 



Even if we were cognisant of our subjective direction- 

 signs which accompany the movements of our muscles, we 

 should know nothing of an objective world, but would be 

 surrounded merely by a subjective space. 



Music furnishes us with a means of making a representa- 

 tion of subjective space. When we are so much under the 

 influence of music that, forgetting the origin of the sounds 

 and whether they come from this instrument or that, we 

 give ourselves up to the rhythm, the subjective direction- 

 sounds are aroused in us without there being any accompany- 

 ing movement of our body ; and these, together with the 

 sounds, seem to fill the space belonging to them. 



It was Helmholtz who once pointed out that music creates 

 sensations of movement ; and in all languages the popular 



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