Deoembek 5, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



797 



the glorious fame of immortal virtue." 

 But it is unnecessary, ladies and gentle- 

 men, it is unnecessary, our speaker will say, 

 to bring the issue to final trial in the court 

 of temperaments and tastes. We should 

 have there a too easy victory. The critics 

 are psychologists, some of them eminent 

 psychologists. Let the issue be tried in the 

 court of psychology, for it is there that of 

 right it belongs. They know the funda- 

 mental and relevant facts. What is the 

 verdict according to these? The critics 

 know the experiments that have led to and 

 confirmed the psychological law of Weber 

 and Fechner and the doctrine of thresholds ; 

 they know that, in accordance with that 

 doctrine and that law, an appropriate 

 stimulus, no matter what the department 

 of sense, may be finite in amount and yet 

 too small, or finite and yet too large, to 

 yield a sensation ; they know that the differ- 

 ence between two stimuli appropriate to a 

 given sense department, no matter what 

 department, may be a finite difference and 

 yet too small for sensibility to detect, or to 

 work a change of sensation ; they ought to 

 know, though they seem not to have recog- 

 nized, much less to have weighed, the fact 

 that, owing to the presence of thresholds, 

 the greatest number of distinct sensations 

 possible in any department of sense is a 

 finite number; they ought to know that the 

 number of different departments of sense 

 is also a finite number; they ought to know 

 that, therefore, the total number of distinct 

 or different sensations of which a human 

 being is capable is a finite number; they 

 ought to know, though they seem not to 

 have recognized the fact, that, on the other 

 hand, the world of concepts is of infinite 

 multiplicity, that concepts, the fruit of intel- 

 lect, as distinguished from sensations, the 

 fruit of sensibility, are infinite in number; 

 they ought, therefore, to see, our speaker will 

 say, though none of them has seen, that in 



attemping to derive intellect out of sensi- 

 bility, in attempting to show that (as 

 James says) "concepts flow out of per- 

 cepts," they are confronted with the prob- 

 lem of bridging the immeasurable gulf 

 between the finite and the infinite, of show- 

 ing, that is, how an infinite multiplicity can 

 arise from one that is finite. But even if 

 they solved that apparently insoluble prob- 

 lem, they would not yet be in position to 

 affirm that the function of intellect and its 

 concepts is, like that of sensibility, just the 

 function of dealing with matter, as the 

 function of teeth is biting and chewing. 

 Far from it. 



Let us have another look, the lecturer 

 will say, at the psychological facts of the 

 case. Owing to the presence of thresholds 

 in every department of sense it may happen 

 and indeed it does happen constantly, in 

 every department, that three different 

 amounts of stimulus of a same kind give 

 three sensations such that two of them are 

 each indistinguishable from the third and 

 yet are distinguishable from one another. 

 Now, for sensibility in any department of 

 sense, two magnitudes of stimulus are un- 

 equal or are equal according as the sensa- 

 tions given by them are or are not distin- 

 guishable. Accordingly in the world of 

 sensible magnitudes, in the sensible uni- 

 verse, in the world, that is, of felt weights 

 and thrusts and pulls and pressures, of 

 felt brightnesses and warmths and lengths 

 and breadths and thicknesses and so on, in 

 this world, which is the world of matter, 

 magnitudes are such that two of them may 

 each be equal to a third without being 

 equal to one another. That, our speaker 

 will say, is a most significant fact and it 

 means that the sensible world, the world of 

 matter, is irrational, infected with contra- 

 diction, contravening the essential laws of 

 thought. No wonder, he will say, that old 



