8 P8YCH0L00T. 



after birth are passed in almost unbroken sleep by human 

 infants. It takes a strong message from the sense-organs to 

 break this slumber. In a new-born brain this gives rise to 

 an absolutely pure sensation. But the experience leaves 

 its ' unimaginable touch ' on the matter of the convolutions, 

 and the next impression which a sense-organ transmits 

 pi'oduces a cerebral reaction in which the awakened vestige 

 of the last impression plays its part. Another sort of feel- 

 ing and a higher grade of cognition are the consequence ; 

 and the complication goes on increasing till the end of life, 

 no two successive impressions falling on an identical brain, 

 and no two successive thoughts being exactly the same. 

 (See above, p. 230 ff.) 



The first sensation which an in/ant gets is for him the Uni- 

 verse. And the Universe which he later comes to know is 

 nothing but an amplification and an implication of that first 

 simple germ which, by accretion on the one hand and in- 

 tussusception on the other, has grown so big and complex 

 and articulate that its first estate is unrememberable. In 

 his dumb awakening to the consciousness of something there, 

 a mere this as yet (or something for which even the term 

 this would perhaps be too discriminative, and the intellec- 

 tual acknowledgment of which would be better expressed 

 by the bare interjection ' lo ! '), the infant encounters an ob- 

 ject in which (though it be given in a pure sensation) all 

 the * categories of the understanding' are contained. It has 

 objectivity, unity, substantiality, causality, in the full sense in 

 ivhich any later object or system of objects has tJiese things. 

 Here the young knower meets and greets his world ; and 

 tlie miracle of knowledge bursts forth, as Voltaire says, as 

 much in the infant's lowest sensation as in the highest 

 achievement of a Newton's brain. The physiological con- 

 dition of this first sensible experience is probably nerve- 

 currents coming in from many peripheral organs at once. 

 Later, the one confused Fact which these currents cause to 

 appear is perceived to be many facts, and to contain many 

 qualities.* For as the currents vary, and the brain-paths 



* " So far is it from being true that we necessarily have as many feel- 

 ings in consciousness at onetime as there are inlets to the sense then played 

 upon, that it is a fundamental law of pure sensation that each momentary 



