612 PSYCHO LOOT. 



Our spontaneous tendency is to break up any monoto* 

 nously given series of sounds into some sort of a rliythm. 

 We involuntarily accentuate every second, or third, or 

 fourth beat, or we break the series in still more intricate 

 ways. Whenever we thus grasp the impressions in rhythmic 

 form, we can identify a longer string of them without con- 

 fusion. 



Each variety of verse, for example, has its ' law'; and 

 the recurrent stresses and sinkings make us feel with pe- 

 culiar readiness the lack of a syllable or the presence of 

 one too much. Divers verses may again be bound together 

 in the form of a stanza, and we may then say of another 

 stanza, " Its second verse differs by so much from that of 

 the first stanza," when but for the felt stanza-form the two 

 differing verses would have come to us too se23arately to be 

 compared at all. But these superposed systems of rhythm 

 soon reach their limit. In music, as Wundt * says, " while 

 the measure may easily contain 12 changes of intensity of 

 sound (as in ^- time), the rhythmical group may embrace 

 6 measures, and the period consist of 4, exceptionally of 5 

 [8?] groujDS." 



Wundt and his pupil Dietze have both tried to deter- 

 mine experimentally the maxijnal extent of our immediate 

 distinct conscio7isness for successive impressions. 



Wundt found f that twelve impressions could be distin- 

 giiished clearly as a united cluster, pro^vdded they were 

 caught in a certain rhythm by the mind, and succeeded each 

 other at intervals not smaller than 0.3 and not larger than 

 0.5 of a second. This makes the total time distinctly ap- 

 prehended to be equal to from 3.6 to 6 seconds. 



Dietze :{: gives larger figures. The most favorable inter- 

 vals for clearly catching the strokes were when they came at 

 from 0.3 second to 0.18 second apart. Forty strokes might 

 then be remembered as a Mdiole, and identified without error 

 when repeated, pro^-ided the mind grasped them in five sub- 

 groups of eight, or in eight sub-groups of five strokes each. 

 When no grouping of the strokes beyond making couples of 



* Physiol. Psych.," ii. .54, 55. 



t Ibid TT. 213. 



t Pbilosophische Studien. ii. 362. 



