2 P8YGH0L0OT. 



view, differs from Perception only in the extreme simplicity of its 

 object or content* Its function is that of mere acquaintance 

 witli a fact. Perception's function, on the other hand, is 

 knowledge about f a fact ; and this knowledge admits of 

 numberless degrees of complication. But in both sensa- 

 tion and perception we perceive the fact as an immediately 

 present outioard reality, and this makes them differ from 

 * thought ' and ' conception,' whose objects do not appear 

 present in this immediate physical way. From the physio- 



* Some persons will say that we never have a really simple object or 

 content. My definition of sensation does not require the simplicity to be 

 absolutely, but only relatively, extreme. It is worth while in passing, 

 however, to warn the reader against a couple of inferences that are often 

 made. One is that because we gradually learn to analyze so many quali- 

 ties we ought to conclude that there are no really indecomposable feelings 

 in the mind. The other is that because the processes that produce our sen- 

 sations are multiple, the sensations regarded as subjective facts must also 

 be compound. To take an example, to a child the taste of lemonade comes 

 at first as a simple quality. He later learns both that many stimuli and 

 many nerves are involved in the exhibition of this taste to his mind, and 

 he also learns to perceive separately the sourness, the coolness, the sweet, 

 the lemon aroma, etc. , and the several degrees of strength of each and all 

 of these things, — the experience falling into a large number of aspects, 

 each of which is abstracted, classed, named, etc., and all of which appear 

 to be the elementary sensations into which the original ' lemonade flavor ' 

 is decomposed. It is argued from this that the latter never was me simple 

 thing which it seemed. I have already criticised this sort of reasoning 

 in Chapter VI (see pp. 170 if.). The mind of the child enjoying the simple 

 lemonade flavor and that of the same child grown up and analyzing it are 

 in two entirely different conditions. Subjectively considered, the two 

 states of mind are tw'o altogether distinct sorts of fact. The later mental 

 state says 'this is the same flavor {or fluid) which that earlier state per- 

 ceived as simple, ' but that does not make the two states themselves identical. 

 It is nothing but a case of learning more and more about the same topics 

 of discourse or things. — Many of these topics, however, must be confessed 

 to resist all analysis, the various colors for example. He who sees blue and 

 yellow ' in ' a certain green means merely that when green is confronted 

 with these other colors he sees relations of similarity. He who sees abstract 

 ' color ' in it means merely that he sees a similarity between it and all the 

 other objects known as colors. (Similarity itself cannot ultimately be ac- 

 counted for by an identical abstract element buried in all the similars, as 

 has been already shown, p. 492 ff.) He who sees abstract paleness, inten- 

 sity, purity, in the green means other similarities still. These are all out- 

 ward determinations of that special green, knowledges a6(?wi it, zufalligeAn- 

 sichten, as Herbart would say, not elements of its composition. Compare 

 the article by Meinong in the Vierteljahrschrif t fur wiss. Phil. , xii. 334. 



f See above, p. 231. 



