A Limit to Evolution 297 



door opened. Very complex motions of the kind are some- 

 times performed in order to complete a harmony which the 

 imagination craves. It craves for fresh completing sensa- 

 tions, and is thus led to perform appropriate movements, 

 when certain initial sensations, after which the completing 

 sensations have (in past experience) habitually followed, have 

 been afresh excited. This, then, is the jyraciical imaginaiion 

 of means to effect a desired end, without any intellectual 

 apprehension of either end or means. Such are some of the 

 many and wonderful powers of feeling with which human 

 nature is endowed — powers apart from the intellect, for they 

 may be exhibited by persons who are permanently devoid of 

 intellect or in whom it is temporarily dormant. 



Now let us turn to the higher and intellectual powers of 

 our nature, and examine two or three of them. As before 

 said, we all know that we have perceptions of things about 

 us. But what is a perception ? 



We perceive a handkerchief! How do we perceive it? 

 Through a number of impressions which it makes on our 

 senses — such as the feeling of a white colour, of a certain 

 softness and pliability, a certain smoothness, and other feel- 

 ings such as those described a little time ago as culminating 

 in 'sense-perception.' But all these feelings are only the 

 means, not the object of perception. It is through and by 

 them that we directly apprehend the object, the handkerchief 

 itself, with its various properties. 



So with all other external objects, the feelings they 

 occasion in us, however intimately grouped, are but the signs 

 of the object they make known. We can, however, attend 

 to the signs themselves if we wiU. In looking at a house, for 

 example, we can, if we please, observe the shape of the image 

 made by it on our field of vision, and draw out its perspective 

 lines. But when we look at a house ordinarily, we do not 

 perceive them but it. 



