468 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



note, there are half a dozen notes, of which the chief has its char- 

 acter specialized by the others. In the second place, each of these 

 notes, consisting objectively of a rapid series of aerial waves, pro- 

 duces subjectively a rapid series of impressions on the auditory 

 nerve. Either by Savart's machine or by the siren, it is proved to 

 demonstration that every musical sound is the product of success- 

 ive units of sound, each in itself unmusical, which, as they succeed 

 one another with increasing rapidity, produce a tone which pro- 

 gressively rises in pitch. Here again, then, under an apparent 

 simplicity there is a double complexity. 



Most of these examples of the illusiveness of unaided percep- 

 tion, whether exercised upon objective or subjective existences, 

 were unknown to Kant. Had they been known to him they might 

 have suggested other views concerning certain of our states of 

 consciousness, and might have given a different character to his 

 philosophy. Let us observe what would possibly have been the 

 changes in two of his cardinal conceptions — metaphysical and 

 ethical. 



Our consciousness of Time and Space appeared to him, as they 

 appear to every one, perfectly simple ; and the apparent simplicity 

 he accepted as actual simplicity. Had he suspected that, just as 

 the seemingly homogeneous and undecomposable consciousness of 

 Sound really consists of multitudinous units of consciousness, so 

 might the apparently homogeneous and undecomposable con- 

 sciousness of Space, he would possibly have been led to inquire 

 whether the consciousness of Space is not wholly composed of in- 

 finitely numerous relations of position, such as those which every 

 portion of it presents. And finding that every portion of Space, 

 immense or minute, can not be either known or conceived save in 

 some relative position to the conscious subject, and that, besides 

 involving the relations of distance and direction, it invariably 

 contains within itself relations of right and left, top and bottom, 

 nearer and further ; he might perhaps have concluded that our 

 consciousness of that matrix of phenomena we call Space, has been 

 built up in the course of Evolution by accumulated experiences 

 registered in the nervous system. And had he concluded this, he 

 would not have committed himself to the many absurdities which 

 his doctrine involves.* 



Similarly, if, instead of assuming that conscience is simple be- 

 cause it seems simple to careless introspection, he had entertained 

 the hypothesis that it is perhaps complex — a consolidated product 

 of multitudinous experiences received mainly by ancestors and 

 added to by self — he might have arrived at a consistent system of 

 Ethics. That the habitual association of pains with certain 



* See "Principles of Psychology," § 399. 



