SENSATION. 31 



experiment can inform us of what we shall perceive when we 

 get many stimuli at once. 



THE • ECCEWTKIC PROJECTION ' OF SENSATIONS. 



We often liear the opinion expressed that all our sensa- 

 tions at first appear to us as subjective or internal, and are 

 afterwards and by a special act on our part ' extradited ' or 



* projected ' so as to aj^pear located in an outer world. 

 Thus we read in Professor Ladd's valuable work that 



" Sensations . . . are psychical states whose place — so far as they can 

 be said to have one — is the mind. The transference of these sensations 

 from mere mental states to physical processes located in the periphery 

 of the body, or to qualities of things projected in space external to the 

 body, is a mental act. It may rather be said to be a mental achievement 

 [cf. Cud worth, above, as to knowledge being conquering], for it is an act 

 which in its perfection results from a long and intricate process of de- 

 velopment. . . . Two noteworthy stages, or 'epoch-making' achieve- 

 ments in the process of elaborating the presentations of sense, require 

 a special consideration. These are ' localization,'' or the transference 

 of the composite sensations from mere states of the mind to processes 

 or conditions recognized as taking place at more or less definitely fixed 

 pointsor areas of the body; and '■ eccentric projection'' (sometimes called 



* eccentric perception ') or the giving to these sensations an objective 

 existence (in the fullest sense of the word ' objective ') as qualities of 

 objects situated within a field of space and in contact with, or more or 

 less remotely distant from, the body."*" 



It seems to me that there is not a vestige of evidence for 

 this view. It hangs together with the opinion that our sen- 

 sations are originally devoid of all spatial content, t an 

 opinion which I confess that I am wholly at a loss to under- 

 stand. As I look at my bookshelf opposite I cannot frame 

 to myself an idea, however imaginary, of any feeling which 

 1 could ever possibly have got from it except the feeling of 



* Physiological Psychology, 385, 387. See also such passages as that in 

 Bain ; The Senses and the Intellect, pp. 364-6. 



t ' ' Especially must we avoid all attempts, whether avowed or concealed, 

 to account for the spatial qualities of the presentations of sense by merely 

 describing the qualities of the simple sensations and the modes of their 

 combination. It is position and extension in space which constitutes the 

 very peculiarity of the objects as no longer mere sensations or affections of 

 the mind. As sensations, they are neither out of ourselves nor possessed of 

 the qualities indicated by the word sprend-out." (Ladd, oj). cit. p. 391.) 



