CONFORMITY WITH PLAN 



359 



These indications, taken collectively, are subjective mark- 

 signs of the observer. That being so, when they play the part 

 of objective indications or external properties in the sensed- 

 world of the animal observed, the observer will be obliged, as 

 we have already said, to confer on them the laws governing 

 his own subjective indications or qualities. So he will always 

 surround the living organism with space and time, since these 

 constitute the formal laws of his order-qualities. In the same 

 way he will always endow them with the laws of relationship 

 and of the regular increase in colour, sound, etc., since these 

 are the formal laws of his content-qualities. 



But the conclusions to be drawn from Miiller's theory 

 are of great interest, if, as observers, we follow what goes on 

 in our own central nervous system. Excitation is transferred 

 in the familiar way, and arrives in the mark-organ of our 

 cerebrum. Now the impulses become active, the bridges are 

 built on which the excitation will be conducted on to the action- 

 organ. But in this case we know the impulses ; they say, for 

 instance, " a way for blue." At the same moment, the indica- 

 tion " blue " appears in our world-as-sensed. The subjective 

 mark-sign " blue " forces a place for itself as objective indication 

 in our appearance-world. It acts as an imperative on the 

 properties of the external world, which it transforms and 

 enriches. 



The command given by the super-mechanical impulse acts 

 on the world like an enchanter's wand. By a stroke of magic, 

 the sum of the impulses that appear creates around us the 

 whole vast world of colour and sound. 



From the standpoint of the outside observer, the task 

 of the impulses is to steer to the action-organ the excitation 

 produced by the external stimulus, and so to convert it into 

 an indication. We must therefore try to discover whether 

 the psychical mark-signs also show a steering. If we consider 

 the three great works of Kant from this point of view, those 





