GENERAL CONDITIONS OF BBAIN- ACTIVITY. 89 



Time is also lost, of course, outside the muscle, in the 

 joints, skin, etc., and between the parts of the apparatus ; 

 and when the stimulus which serves as signal is aj)plied to 

 the skin of the trunk or limbs, time is lost in the sensorial 

 conduction through the spinal cord. 



The stage marked 3 is the only one that interests us 

 here. The other stages answer to purely physiological 

 processes, but stage 3 is psycho-physical ; that is, it is a 

 higher-central process, and has probably some sort of con- 

 sciousness accompanying it. What sort? 



Wundt has little difficulty in deciding that it is con- 

 sciousness of a quite elaborate kind. He distinguishes 

 between two stages in the conscious reception of an im- 

 pression, calling one perception, and the other apperception, 

 and likening the one to the mere entrance of an object into 

 the periphery of the field of vision, and the other to its 

 coming to occupy the focus or point of view. Inattentive 

 aivareness of an object, and attention to it, are, it seems to 

 me, equivalents for perception and apperception, as Wundt 

 uses the words. To these two forms of awareness of the 

 impression Wundt adds the conscious volition to react, 

 gives to the trio the name of ' psycho-physical ' processes, 

 and assumes that they actually follow upon each other in 

 the succession in which they have been named. * So at 

 least I understand him. The simplest way to determine 

 the time taken up by this psycho-j)hysical stage No. 3 

 would be to determine separately the duration of the sev- 

 eral purely physical processes, 1, 2, 4, and 5, and to sub- 

 tract them from the total reaction-time. Such attempts 

 have been made, t But the data for calculation are too 



* Physiol. Psych., ii. 221-3. Cf. also the first edition, T28-9. I must 

 confess to finding all Wundt's utterances about ' apperception ' both vacil- 

 lating and obscure. I see no use whatever for the word, as he employs it, 

 in Psychology. Attention, perception, conception, volition, are its ample 

 equivalents. Why we should need a single word to denote all these things 

 by turns. Wundt fails to make clear. Consult, however, his pupil Staude's 

 article, ' Ueber den Begriff der Apperception,' etc.. in Wundt's periodical 

 Philosophische Studien, i. 149, which may be supposed official. For a 

 minute criticism of Wundt's ' apperception,' see Marty. Vierteljahrschrift 

 f. wiss. Philos. , X. 346. 



f B}' Exner, for example, Pfluger's Archiv, vii. 638 ff. 



