SENSATION. O 



But tlie trouble is that most, if not all, of those wliti 

 admit it, admit it as a fractional part of the thought, in the 

 old-fashioned atomistic sense which we have so often criti- 

 cised. 



Take the pain called toothache for example. Again 

 and again we feel it and greet it as the same real item in 

 the universe. We must therefore, it is supposed, have a 

 distinct pocket for it in our mind into which it and nothing 

 else will lit. This pocket, when filled, is the sensation of 

 toothache ; and must be either filled or half-filled whenever 

 and under whatever form toothache is present to our 

 thought, and whether much or little of the rest of the 

 mind be filled at the same time. Thereupon of course 

 comes up the paradox and mystery : If the knowledge of 

 toothache be pent up in this separate mental pocket, how 

 can it be known cum alio or brought into one view with 

 anything else ? This pocket knows nothing else ; no other 

 part of the mind knows toothache. The knowing of tooth- 

 ache cum alio must be a miracle. And the miracle must 

 have an Agent. And the Agent must be a Subject or Ego 

 ' out of time,' — and all the rest of it, as we saw in Chapter 

 X. And then begins the well-worn round of recrimination 

 between the sensationalists and the spiritualists, from which 

 we are saved by our determination from the outset to accept 

 the psychological point of view, and to admit knowledge 

 whether of simple toothaches or of philosophic systems as 

 an ultimate fact. There are realities and there are ' states 

 of mind,' and the latter know the former ; and it is just as 

 wonderful for a state of mind to be a ' sensation ' and know 

 a simple pain as for it to be a thought and know a system 



but that this sensation, in consequence of practice and experience, is differ- 

 ently interpi'eted the last time, and elaborated into a different perception 

 from the first. For the only real data are, on the one hand, the physical 

 picture on the retina, — and that is both times the same; and, on the other 

 hand, the resultant state of consciousness {ausgeloste Empfindungscomplex) 

 — and that is both times distinct. Of any third thing, namely, a pure sen- 

 sation thrust between the retinal and the mental pictures, toe know nothing. 

 We can then, if we wish to avoid all hypothesis, only say that the nervous appa- 

 ratus reacts upon the same stimulus differently the last time from the first, and 

 that in consequence the consciousness is different too." (Hermann's Hdbch,, 

 III. I. 567-8.) 



