i 
1907-8. | SPACE AND ITs DIMENSIONS. 207 
even rf at concerns extensive magnitudes. Vf we perceive a line or distance 
as greater than another we pronounce this judgment on the basis of the 
intensity of specific sensations, which either directly participate in the 
perception or are reproduced parts of former perceptions. It does not 
matter what name we give these specific states of consciousness: muscular 
sensations, feelings of innervation, sensations of movements, kinesthetic 
sensations, etc. All our judgments on magnitude rest on such sensations; 
even in the case of measurement with the finest instruments of precision, 
where, as it is usually said, the inaccuracy of the human senses is eliminated, 
we have at every reading in the last instance an appeal to the sense of sight 
or the sense of touch, no matter how indirectly or by what auxiliary instru- 
ments the reading may be secured. Besides this we must not forget 
that the instruments of precision have all been made by the human hand 
and with the help of the humaneye. I think this is the same fact as Mein- ~ 
ong has in view when he says that every measurement is psychical, never 
purely physical;and that the exactness is nearly altogether in the psychical 
part.* 
There are no purely extensive magnitudes.. That which in extension 
is magnitude is still.in the last analysis intensity. The characteristic 
part in extension is not magnitude; all magnitude presupposes intensity, 
but extension is not simply a special case of magnitude though it admits 
of metric (measuring) considerations. Measurement or the determination 
of magnitudes is not a simple process, but it is composed of distinction and 
comparison. Number, too, is the product of repeated distinction and 
comparison. ‘The purely extensive can be distinguished but not measured. 
It needs the addition of the intensive to make measurement possible. 
Comparison presupposes distinction. Distinction is either qualitative 
or spacial. Qualities can only be regarded as magnitudes in so far as they 
admit, from some standpoint, of intensive consideration. Consequently 
measurement though referring to the intensive side, yet presupposes ex- 
tension. The things to be compared, i. e., the object to be measured 
and the standard must be separated in space or in time, but even time is 
only a magnitude when considered in analogy with space. Whenever 
we speak of the extension of time, we regard this extension in analogy 
with that of a direction in space. We can measure time only by space, 
(sun-dial, sand-glass, or clock-face, etc.) and the laws of phoronomy 
possess certainty only in so far as time can be represented as a spacial 
magnitude. 
Thus we see that the separation hitherto so strongly emphasized of 
*Meinong, Ztschr. f. Psychologie und Physiologie d. Sinn. XI. K. 230. 
