On the Relation of Muscle Sense to Pressure Sense 19 



much alike that it requires considerable search to find a differ- 

 ence, and when such a difference is found it is not a something 

 more of the same kind, but a new and entirely different fact. 

 Now try, for example, to make a discrimination between two 

 male English sparrows. That distinction will rest upon the fact 

 that one has a crooked toe or a ruffied tail feather. Such points 

 are new facts. A chicken will give a diff'erent peck for objects 

 lying at different distances or in different directions. Large and 

 small jumps mean for a dog different things. Such responses 

 seem to follow along one line in their changes or they change in 

 the same direction, which gives to them the suggestion of being 

 quantitative in character. That, however, belongs to our reflec- 

 tion upon the matter. The scale of values is to be found in our 

 representation and not in the things. The dog makes one spring 

 in catching a mouse and a very different one for catching a 

 ground hog, and in this way he has made a distinction between 

 the two. Reflection places one beside the other as larger. Prim- 

 itive discrimination took the form of measuring objects by laying 

 them over a part of the body or of laying the body against the 

 objects. One object is greater than another or more extensive 

 than another, or a group is more numerous than another, by the 

 fact that one excites a local sign that the other has not aft'ected. 

 This local sign means another thing, something that the other has 

 not. An object is represented as a thing that will excite a local 

 sign upon the toe at the same time that it excites another local 

 sign on the heel, and it is then a foot — long. Another object will 

 excite simultaneously a local sign upon the shoulder and the tip 

 of the forefinger ; it is then a yard — long. All these local signs 

 have been given an orderly arrangement — they have been put into 

 a system which means our body. But each local sign is some- 

 thing in itself every time it is excited. The local sign is to be 

 looked upon as a functional process, a stimulus evoking an adapt- 

 ive movement. The local sign thus becomes the unit of compo- 

 sition in mental life ; it is a unit of conduct or adaptive movement. 

 Counting and numbering began by matching diff'erent parts of 

 the body, as the fingers, with different parts of the object or of 

 different objects ; each thing or part of a thing calls for a move- 



193 



