THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 35 



of an absent object. What may be this factor at the basis of 

 the conventional image theory, it is our business to find out. It 

 is also probable that the doctrine of images is acceptable because 

 it aids us to minimize the consideration of a remarkable and 

 puzzling peculiarity of consciousness: the fact, namely, that we 

 can be conscious of what is not present either in space or in time. 

 I can be conscious of objects which are so far removed that they 

 can exert no appreciable influence on my body, or which even 

 no longer exist. Not only, I repeat, may the past influences of 

 such an object on my body in certain cases influence my present 

 behavior, a fact which may be given a purely physiological 

 explanation; but the object can be in or before my consciousness; 

 that is to say, I think of it, a fact of which psychology alone 

 can take scientific cognizance. 



Psychology, however, has shrunk from the acknowledgment of 

 this transcendant power of consciousness and has turned her at- 

 tention almost exclusively to the forms of experience which are 

 seemingly more commonplace, namely, the experience of the 

 present or immediate contents of the thought. It has, therefore, 

 made much of the image and has ascribed to it certain character- 

 istics which belong really not to the image, but to the ultimate 

 object of thought. 



I contend that the image, as a copy or reproduction of sensa- 

 tion of variable mode does not exist. There is indeed a present 

 content essentially connected with imagination or thought; but 

 this present content is in each case a muscle sensation, or a com- 

 plex of muscle sensations. We are, therefore, in investigating 

 images, dealing not with copies, or pale ghosts of former sensa- 

 tions but with actual present sensations. 



The image, defined as a mere shadow of an auditory object, 

 a visual object, or an object of some other mode of sense, has no 

 discoverable explanatory function, even if the existence of such 

 an image be admitted. But the muscle sensation render^ an 

 explanatory service which is badly needed in psychology. In 

 order to demonstrate this, let us turn to the essential condition 

 of consciousness; the arc-reaction. 



