00 PSTCUOLOGT. 



inaccurate for use, and, as Wundt himself admits, * the pre- 

 cise duration of stage 3 must at present be left enveloped 

 with that of the other j^rocesses, in the total reaction-time. 

 My own belief is that no such succession of conscious 

 feelings as Wundt describes takes place during stage 3. 

 It is a process of central excitement and discharge, with 

 which doubtless some feeling coexists, but ivhat feeling we 

 cannot tell, because it is so fugitive and so immediately 

 eclipsed b}^ the more substantive and enduring memory of 

 the impression as it came in, and of the executed move- 

 ment of response. Feeling of the impression, attention to 

 it, thought of the reaction, volition to react, ivould, undoubt- 

 edly, all be links of the process under other conditions, j- and 

 would lead to the same reaction — after an indefinitely longer 

 time. But these other conditions are not those of the 

 experiments we are discussing ; and it is mythological psy- 

 chology (of which we shall see many later examples) to con- 

 clude that because two mental processes lead to the same 

 result they must be similar in their inward subjective con- 

 stitution. The feeling of stage 3 is certainly no articulate 

 perception. It can be nothing but the mere sense of a 

 reflex discharge. The reaction ivhose time is measured is, 

 in short, a reflex action pure and simple, and not a psychic 

 act. A foregoing psychic condition is, it is true, a pre- 

 requisite for this reflex action. The preparation of the 

 attention and volition ; the exjDectation of the signal and 

 the readiness of the hand to move, the instant it shall come ; 

 the nervous tension in which the subject waits, are all con- 

 ditions of the formation in him for the time being of a new 

 path or arc of reflex discharge. The tract from the sense- 

 organ which receives the stimulus, into the motor centre 

 which discharges the reaction, is already tingling with pre- 

 monitory innervation, is raised to such a pitch of lie.ghtened 

 irritability by the expectant attention, that the signal is 

 instantaneously sufficient to cause the overflow.:}: No other 



* P. 222. Cf. also Ricbet, Rev. Philos., vi. 395-6. 



f For instance, if, on the previous day. one had resolved to act on a 

 signal when it should come, and it now came whilst we were engaged in 

 other things, and reminded us of the resolve. 



^ " I need hardly mention that success in these experiments depends in 

 a high degree on our concentration of attention. If inattentive, one gets 



