28 PSYCHOLOGY. 



deals with them freely and settles to its own satisfaction 

 what each shall be, in view of what the others also are. 

 Wundt says expressly that the Law of Relativity is "not a 

 law of sensation but a law of Apperception ;" and the word 

 Apperception connotes with him a higher intellectual spon- 

 taneity.* This way of taking things belongs with the phi- 

 losophy that looks at the data of sense as something earth- 

 born and servile, and the ' relating of them together ' as 

 something spiritual and free. Lo ! the spirit can even 

 change the intrinsic quality of the sensible facts themselves 

 if by so doing it can relate them better to each other ! But 

 (apart from the difficulty of seeing how changing the sen- 

 sations should relate them better) is it not manifest that 

 the relations are part of the ' content ' of consciousness, 

 part of the 'object,' just as much as the sensations are? 

 Why ascribe the former exclusively to the knoiver and the 

 latter to the known ? The knoiver is in every case a unique 

 pulse of thought corresponding to a unique reaction of the 

 brain upon its conditions. All that the facts of contrast 

 show us is that the same real thing may give us quite 

 different sensations when the conditions alter, and tliat we 

 must therefore be careful which one to select as the thing's 

 truest representative. 



There are many other facts beside the phenomena of contrast 

 which prove that lohen two objects act together on us the 

 sensation lohich either would give alone becomes a different 

 sensation. A certain amount of skin dipped in hot water 

 gives the perception of a certain heat. More skin immersed 

 makes the heat much more intense, although of course the 

 water's heat is the same. A certain extent as well as in- 

 tensity, in the quantity of the stimulus is requisite for any 

 quality to be felt. Fick and Wunderli could not distin- 

 guish heat from touch when both were applied through a 



* Physiol. Psych., i. 351, 458-60. The full inanity of the law of rela- 

 tivity is best to be seen in Wundt's treatment, where the great ' allgemeiner 

 Gesetz der Beziehung,' iuvo]i.cd to account for Weber's law as well as for 

 the phenomena of contrast and many other matters, can only be defined as 

 a tendency to feel all things in relation to each other ! Bless its little soul! 

 But why does it change the things so, when it thus feels them in relation? 



