1876.] ^ZL [Hartshorne. 



in their very words, that sensation is in the first place always intuitive; the 

 process of perception then following, by which a reference of the quasi- 

 subjective impi'ession of consciousness is made, to an external cause. Now 

 I believe that we are justified in denying the correctness of such language; 

 and refusing to admit that sensation is per se intuitive, in any proper 

 sense of that word. Subjectice it may be, just in so far as it is an affection 

 of the subject whose organs of sense (and through them the consciousness) 

 are impressed. But I would insist that the affection of consciousness in 

 sense-perception, nay, in primary sensation, is distinctly objective in its 

 nature; at least to the extent that the bodily organ affected (not the central 

 ego of the metaphysician, nor the brain which receives the termina- 

 tions of the nerves of sense) is always, to us, the immediate seat of sensory 

 cognition; while, at least in the cases of sight and hearing, externality 

 belongs, by the law of our constitution, to sense-perception, in its primary 

 nature; not needing a secondary process to attach the inference of outward- 

 ness to it. "We cannot explain this farther than to say that it is the fact or 

 law of sense-cognition, according to our bodily and mental constitution; but 

 this is true of any and every other view of the subject which may be taken, 

 whether old or new; and the legitimate aim of psychological science must 

 be, as with any other science, to find by observation, experiment and care- 

 ful induction, what are the facts and laws of mind, in all its actual rela- 

 tions. I believe that it may promote definiteness of thought upon this sub- 

 ject, to introduce a new term into psychology; namely, extvAtion. While 

 the word intuition is, as familiarly used, well adapted to denote the reflec- 

 tive process, by which ^c?ea« <?/ reaso» are obtained, it appears to be alto- 

 gether misapplied when the same word is made (as by some leading authors 

 it is) to indicate also the mental affection or act occurring in sensation. 

 The importance, in my judgment, of this addition to the language of 

 philosophy, of so explicit a term as extuition, conveying a meaning for 

 which there is now actually no existing word, and scarcely a simple 

 English phrase, is the raison d'etre of the present communication. Word- 

 making has always against it a strong presumption of uselessness, if not of 

 impropriety; but in this case, the presumption seems to me to be over-ruled 

 by a real necessity of thought and of expression. By means of the thought 

 which is intended to be thus expressed, a satisfactory antithesis, and (as it 

 is inductive) a tenable refutation, of Berkleyan idealism may be obtained; 

 through the aid (too often overlooked by psychologists) of some of the niost 

 clearly demonstrable facts of physiology. Our sensorial consciousness 

 affirms the reality and externality of the objective world, no less simply, 

 directly and positively, than our reflective consciousness affirms our subjec- 

 tive being. 



III. On OcuLx^.r Color-Spectra and their Catjsation. 



In order to introduce a few observations which, if not novel, have at all 

 events been but seldom noticed, and to bring forward what I believe to be 

 a new explanation of a remarkable group of optical phenomena, it is need- 



