70 PS7CH0L0GT. 



sense-organs are directly excited in consequence of imagi 

 nation are exceptional rarities, if they exist at all. In com' 

 mon cases of imagination it icould seem more natural to suppose 

 that the seat of the process is purely cerebral, and that the sense- 

 organ is left out. Reasons for such a conclusion would be 

 briefly these : 



1) In imagination the starting-point of the process must 

 be in the brain. Now we know that currents usually flow 

 one Avay in the nervous system ; and for the peripheral sense- 

 organs to be excited in these cases, the current would have 

 to flow backward. 



2) There is between imagined objects and felt objects 

 a difference of conscious quality which may be called al- 

 most absolute. It is hardly possible to confound the live- 

 liest image of fancy with the weakest real sensation. The 

 felt object has a plastic reality and outwardness which the 

 imagined object wholly lacks. Moreover, as Fechner says, 

 in imagination the attention feels as if drawn backwards to 

 the brain ; in sensation (even of after-images) it is directed 

 forward towards the sense-organ.* The difference between 

 the two processes feels like one of kind, and not like a mere 

 'more' or ' less ' of the same.f If a sensation of sound 

 were only a strong imagination, and an imagination a weak 

 sensation, there ought to be a border-line of experience 

 where we never could tell whether we were hearing a weak 

 sound or imagining a strong one. In comparing a present 

 sensation felt with a past one imagined, it Avill be remem- 

 bered that we often judge the imagined one to liave been the 

 stronger (see above, p. 500, note). This is inexplicable if 

 the imagination be simply a weaker excitement of the sen- 

 sational process. 



To these reasons the following objections may be made : 

 To 1) : The current demonstrably does flow backward 



* See above, Vol. II. p. 50, note. 



f V. Kandinsky (Kritische u. kllnische Betrachtiingen im Gebiete der 

 Sinnestauschungen (Berlin, 1885), p. 135 ff.) insists that in even the live- 

 liest pseudo-hallucinations (see below, Chapter XX), which may be re- 

 garded as the intensest possible results of the imaginative process, there 

 is no outward objectivity perceived in the thing represented, and that a 

 gamer Abgrund separates these ' ideas' from true hallucination and objec- 

 tive perception. 



