Sense 

 Sensibility 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



620 



of improvement, no dormant or undeveloped 

 powers leading up to wider and wider 

 spheres of action. With man, on the con- 

 trary, the law of his being is a law \vhich 

 demands progress, which endows him with 

 faculties enabling him to make it, and fills 

 him with aspirations which cause him to 

 desire it. Among the lowest savages there 

 is some curiosity and some sense of wonder, 

 else even the rude inventions they have 

 achieved would never have been made, and 

 their degraded superstitions would not have 

 kept their hold. Man's sense of ignorance 

 is one of the greatest of his gifts, for it is 

 the secret of his wish to know. The whole 

 structure and the whole furniture of his 

 mind are adapted to this condition. The 

 highest law of his being is to advance in 

 wisdom and knowledge, and his sense of the 

 presence and of the power of things which 

 he can only partially understand is an abi- 

 ding witness of this law, and an abiding in- 

 centive to its fulfilment. ARGYLL Unity of 

 Nature, ch. 9, p. 189. (Burt.) 



3068. SENSE OF PROPERTY MANI- 

 FESTED BY DOGS Dogs seem to have 

 the feeling of the value of their master's 

 personal property, or at least a particular 

 interest in objects which their master uses. 

 A dog left with his master's coat will defend 

 it, tho never taught to do so. I know of 

 a dog accustomed to swim after sticks in 

 the water, but who always refused to dive 

 for stones. Nevertheless, when a fish-basket, 

 which he had never been trained to carry, 

 but merely knew as his master's, fell over, 

 he immediately dived after it and brought 

 it up. Dogs thus discern, at any rate so 

 far as to be able to act, this partial charac- 

 ter of being valuable, which lies hidden in 

 certain things. JAMES Psychology, vol. ii, 

 ch. 22, p. 350. (H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



3069. SENSE-IMPRESSIONS. COM- 

 BINATION AND INTERPRETATION OF 



Attention of Infant Is Automatic. In the 

 young child, as among the lower animals, 

 the attention seems purely automatic, being 

 solely determined by the attractiveness of 

 the object; and the diversion of it from 

 one object to another simply depends upon 

 the relative force of the two attractions. 

 It is this automatic fixation of the attention 

 on the sense-impressions received from the 

 external world that enables the infant to 

 effect that marvelous combination of visual 

 and tactile perceptions which guides the 

 whole subsequent interpretation of its phe- 

 nomena. . . . When an attractive object 

 is presented to it, which it grasps in its lit- 

 tle hands, carries to its lips, and holds at 

 different distances, earnestly gazing at it all 

 the while, it is learning a most valuable 

 lesson, and the judicious mother or nurse 

 will not interrupt this process, but will 

 allow the infant to go on with its examina- 

 tion of the object as long as it is so dis- 

 posed. CARPENTER Mental Physiology, ch. 

 3, p. 133. (A., 1900.) 



3D 7 O. SENSE - PERCEPTIONS ACT 

 ONE AT A TIME Sight and Hearing among 

 Astronomers. Astronomers have long been 

 aware that no human being can hear and 

 see at the same time. If a moving star is 

 being observed through a telescope, and the 

 observer is required to announce, while 

 counting the strokes of a pendulum, at 

 which stroke the star is found at a certain 

 point, he never fails to make a mistake. 

 He generally counts one too many strokes of 

 the pendulum. He sees first and then hears. 

 PREYER Ueber Empfindungen (a Lecture). 

 (Translated for Scientific Side-Lights.) 



3O71. SENSES, ASSUMED "FAL- 

 LACY ' ' OF Intellectual Fallacy by Erroneous 

 Inference. Note that in every illusion what 

 is false is what is inferred, not what is 

 immediately given. The " this," if it were 

 felt by itself alone, would be all right; it 

 only becomes misleading by what it suggests. 

 If it is a sensation of sight, it may suggest 

 a tactile object, for example, which later 

 tactile experiences prove to be not there. 

 The so-called " fallacy of the senses/' of 

 which the ancient skeptics made so much 

 account, is not fallacy of the senses proper, 

 but rather of the intellect, which interprets 

 wrongly what the senses give. JAMES Psy- 

 chology, vol. ii, ch. 19, p. 86. (H. H. & Co., 

 1899.) 



3O 7 2. SENSES IN CONFLICT Vision 

 on Precipice Opposed to Muscular Sense of 

 Equilibrium Resultant Feeling of Inse- 

 curity. Thus a person unaccustomed to look 

 down heights feels insecure at the top of a 

 tower or a precipice, altho he knows that 

 his body is properly supported, for the void 

 which he sees below him contradicts (as it 

 were) the muscular sense by which he is 

 made conscious of its due equilibrium. So, 

 again, altho any one can walk along a 

 narrow plank which forms part of the floor 

 of a room, or which is elevated but little 

 above it, without the least difficulty, and 

 even without any consciousness of effort, 

 yet if that plank be laid across a chasm 

 the bottom of which is so far removed from 

 the eye that the visual sense gives no as- 

 sistance, even those who have braced their 

 nerves against all emotional distraction feel 

 that an effort is requisite to maintain the 

 equilibrium during their passage over it, 

 that effort being aided by the withdrawal 

 of the eyes from the depth below, and the 

 fixation of them on a point beyond, which 

 at the same time helps to give steadiness 

 to the movements and distracts the mind 

 from the sense of its danger. CARPENTER 

 Mental Physiology, bk. i, ch. 5, p. 214. (A., 

 1900.) 



3O73. SENSES, JUDGMENT NEEDED 

 TO INTERPRET The question whether ver- 

 milion is really red as we see it, or whether 

 that is only a delusion of our sense, is there- 

 fore unmeaning. The sensation of red is 

 the normal reaction from the light reflected 

 from vermilion upon normally constructed 



