36 PSYCHOLOGY. 



easily overlooked. One of the complications comes from 

 tlie fact tliat things move, and that the original object which 

 we feel them to be splits into two parts, one of which re- 

 mains as their whereabouts and the other goes off as their 

 quality or nature. We then contrast where they icere with 

 where they are. If ive do not move, the sensation of ivhere 

 they ivere remains unchanged ; but we ourselves presently 

 move, so that that also changes ; and ' where they were ' 

 becomes no longer the actual sensation which it was origi- 

 nally, but a sensation which we merely conceive as possible. 

 Gradually the system of these possible sensations, takes 

 more and more the place of the actual sensations. ' Up ' 

 and ' down ' become ' subjective ' notions ; east and west 

 grow more ' correct ' than ' right ' and ' left ' etc.; and things 

 get at last more ' truly ' located by their relation to certain 

 ideal fixed co-ordinates than by their relation either to 

 our bodies or to those objects by which their place was 

 originally defined, Noiv this revision of our oinginal locali- 

 zations is a complex affair ; and contains some facts ivhich may 

 very naturally come to he described as translocations ivherehy 

 sensations get shoved farther off than they originally appeared. 

 Few things indeed are more striking than the change- 

 able distance which the objects of many of our sensations 

 may be made to assume. A fly's humming may be taken 

 for a distant steam-whistle ; or the fly itself, seen out of 

 focus, may for a moment give us the illusion of a distant 

 bird. The same things seem much nearer or much farther, 

 according as we look at them through one end or another of 

 an opera-glass. Our whole optical education indeed is 

 largely taken up with assigning their proper distances to the 

 objects of our retinal sensations. An infant will grasp at the 

 moon ; later, it is said, he projects that sensation to a dis- 

 tance which he knows to be beyond his reach. In the 

 much quoted case of the 'young gentleman who was born 

 blind,' and who was ' couched ' for the cataract by Mr. 

 Chesselden, it is reported of the patient that " when he first 

 saw, he was so far from making any judgment about dis- 

 tances, that he thought all objects whatever touched his 

 eyes (as he expressed it) as what he felt did his skin." 

 And other patients born blind, but relieved by surgical op- 



