678 PSYCHOLOGY. 



83'llables by numbers, if the first list were 1, 2, 3, 4, . . . 13, 

 14, 15, 16, the secoud wouhl be 1, 3, 5, . . . 15, 2, 4, 6, . . . 

 16, aud so forth, with many variations. 



Now, if 1 aud 3 in the first list were learned in that order 

 merely by 1 calling up 2, and by 2 calling up 3, leaving out 

 the 2 ought to leave 1 and 3 Avith no tie in the mind ; and 

 the second list ought to take as much time in the learning 

 as if tlie first list had never been heard of. If, on the other 

 liand, 1 has a direct influence on 3 as well as on 2, that in- 

 iluence should be exerted even when 2 is dropped out ; and 

 a. person familiar with the first list ought to learn the 

 secoud one more rapidly than otherwise he could. This 

 latter case is what actually occurs ; and Dr. Ebbinghau3 

 has found that syllables originally separated by as many as 

 seven intermediaries still reveal, by tlie increased rapidity 

 with which they are learned in order, the strength of the 

 tie that the original learning established between them, 

 over the heads, so to speak, of all the rest. These last re- 

 sults ought to make us careful, when we speak of nervous 

 * paths,' to use the word in no restricted sense. They add 

 one more fact to the set of facts which prove that associa- 

 tion is subtler than consciousness, and that a nerve-process 

 mav, without producing consciousness, be effective in the 

 same way in which consciousness would have seemed to be 

 -effective if it had been there,* Evidently the path from 1 



* All the inferences for which we can give no articulate reasons exem- 

 •plify this law. In the chapter on Perception we shall have innumerable 

 examples of it. A good pathological illustration of it is given in the curi- 

 ous observations of M. Binet on certain hysterical subjects, with anaesthetic 

 tamls. who saw what was done with their hands as an independent vision 

 hut did not feel it. The hand being hidden by a screen, the patient was 

 ordered to look at another screen and to tell of any visual image which 

 might project itself thereon. Numbers would then come, corresponding 

 to the number of times the insensible member was raised, touched, etc. 

 Colored lines aud figures would come, corresponding to similar ones, traced 

 on the palm; the hand it.self, or its fingers, would come when manipulated; 

 and, finally, objects placed in it would come; but on the hand itself noth- 

 ing could ever be felt. The whole phenomenon shows how an idea which 

 Temaius itself below the threshold of a certain conscious self may occasion 

 mssociative effects therein. The skin-sensations, unfelt by the patient's 

 primarjr consciousness, awaken, nevertheless, their usual visual associates 

 theraiQ, 



