34 PSYCHOLOGY. 



begin with, is constantly, in psychological literature, used 

 as if it meant one and the same thing with the physical im- 

 pression either in the terminal organs or in the centres, 

 which is its antecedent condition, and this notwithstanding 

 that by sensation we mean a mental, not a physical, fact. 

 But those who expressly mean by it a mental fact still 

 leave to it a physical place, still think of it as objectively 

 inhabiting the very neural tracts which occasion its appear- 

 ance when they are excited ; and then (going a step farther) 

 they think that it must place itself where they place it, or be 

 subjectively sensible of that place as its habitat in the 

 first instance, and afterwards have to be moved so as to 

 appear elsewhere. 



All this seems highly confused and unintelligible. CoU' 

 sciousness, as we saw in an earlier chapter (p. 214) canno, 

 properly J3e said to inhabit any place. It has dynamic re- 

 lations with the brain, and cognitive relations with every- 

 thing and anything. From the one point of view ive may 

 say that a sensation is in the same place with the brain (if 

 we like), just as from the other point of view we may say 

 that it is in the same place with whatever quality it may be 

 cognizing. But the supposition that a sensation primi- 

 tively /eeZs either itself or its object to be in the same place ivith 

 the brain is absolutely groundless, and neither a priori 

 probability nor facts from experience can be adduced to 

 show that such a deliverance forms any part of the original 

 cognitive function of our sensibility. 



Where, then, do we feel the objects of our original sensa- 

 tions to be ? 



Certainly a child newly born in Boston, who gets a sen- 

 sation from the candle-flame which lights the bedroom, or 

 from his diaper-pin, does not feel either of these objects to 



one is conscious of the phenomenon in the nervous centres, . . . but one 

 perceives it in the peripheric organs. This phenomenon depends on the 

 experience of the sensations themselves, in which there is a rfflecttori of 

 the subjective phenomenon and a tendency on the part of perception to 

 return as it were to the external cause which has roused the mental state 

 because the latter is connected with the former." (Sergi : Psychologic 

 Physiologique (Paris, 1888), p. 189.)— The clearest and best passage I know 

 is in Liebmann: Der Objective Anblick (1869), pp. 67-73, but it is unfortu- 

 nately too long to quote. 



