104 P8TCH0L0Q7. 



which on previous occasions the reaction was most frequent- 

 ly aroused. 



But we can, I think, without danger of being too 

 speculative, be a little more exact than this, and conceive 

 of a physiological reason why the felt quality of an object 

 changes when, instead of being apjjrehended in a mere sen- 

 sation, the object is perceived as a thing. All consciousness 

 seems to depend on a certain slowness of the process in the 

 cortical cells. The rapider currents are, the less feeling 

 they seem to awaken. If a region A, then, be so connected 

 with another region B that every current which enters A 

 immediately drains off into B, we shall not be very strongly 

 conscious of the sort of object that A can make us feel. 

 If B, on the contrary, has no such copious channel of dis- 

 charge, the excitement will linger there longer ere it diffuses 

 itself elsewhere, and our consciousness of the sort of ob- 

 ject that B makes us feel will be strong. Carrying this to 

 an ideal maximum, we may say that if A offer no resistance 

 to the transmission forward of the current, and if the cur- 

 rent terminate in B, then, no matter what causes may initiate 

 the current, we shall get no consciousness of the object 

 peculiar to A, but on the contrary a vivid sensation of the 

 object peculiar to B. And this will be true though at other 

 times the connection between A and B might lie less open, 

 and every current then entering A might give us a strong con- 

 sciousness of A's peculiar object. In other words, just in 

 proportion as associations are habitual, will the qualities of 

 the suggested thing tend to substitute themselves in con- 

 sciousness for those of the thing immediately there ; or, 

 more briefly, just in proportion as an experience is probable 

 will it tend to be directly felt. In all such experiences the 

 paths lie wide open from the cells first affected to those 

 concerned with the suggested ideas. A circular after-image 

 on the receding wall or ceiling is actually seen as an ellipse, 

 a square after-image of a cross there is seen as slant-legged, 

 etc., because only in the process correlated with the vision 

 of the latter figures do the inward currents find a pause 

 (see the next chapter). 



We must remember this when, in dealing with the eye, 

 we come to point out the erroneousness of the principle laid 



