THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 145 



THE PERCEPTION OP SPATIAL ORDEB. 



So far, all we have established or sought to establish is 

 the existence of the vague form or quale of spatiality as an 

 inseparable element bound up with the other peculiarities 

 of each and every one of our sensations. The numerous 

 examples we have adduced of the variations of this extensive 

 element have only been meant to make clear its strictly 

 sensational character. In very few of them will the reader 

 have been able to explain the variation by an added intel- 

 lectual element, such as the suggestion of a recollected ex- 

 perience. In almost all it has seemed to be the immediate 

 psychic effect of a peculiar sort of nerve-process excited ; 

 and all the nerve-processes in question agree in yielding 

 what space they do yield, to the mind, in the shape of a 

 simple total vastness, in which, primitively at least, no order 

 of parts or of subdivisions reigns. 



Let no one be surprised at this notion of a space without 

 order. There may be a space without order just as there 

 may be an order without space.* And the primitive percep- 

 tions of space are certainly of an unordered kind. The 

 order which the spaces first perceived potentially include 

 must, before being distinctly apprehended by the mind, be 

 woven into those spaces by a rather complicated set of in- 

 tellectual acts. The primordial largenesses which the sen- 

 sations yield must be measured and subdivided by conscious- 

 ness, and added together, before they can form by their 

 synthesis what we know as the real Space of the objective 

 world. In these operations, imagination, association, at- 

 tention, and selection play a decisive part ; and although 

 they nowhere add any new material to the space-data of 

 sense, they so shuffle and manipulate these data and hide 



alone were necessary, we should have square inches and half inches, and 

 various other forms, rectilinear and curvilinear, of fragance and sound." 

 (Lectures, xxii.) 



* Musical tones, e.g., have an order of quality independent either of 

 their space- or time-order. Music comes from the time-order of the notes 

 upsetting their quality- order. In general, if abcdefgh ij k, etc., stand 

 for an arrangement of feelings in the order of their quality, they may as- 

 sume any space-order or time-order, as def a hg, etc., and still the order 

 of quality will remain fixed and unchanged. 



