THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 163 



The bringing of subdivisions to consciousness ! This, then, 

 is our next topic. They may be brought to consciousness 

 under three aspects in respect of their locality, in respect 

 of their size, in respect of their shape. 



The Meaning of Localization. 



Confining ourselves to the problem of locality for the pres- 

 ent, let us begin with the simple case of a sensitive surface, 

 only two points of which receive stimulation from without. 

 How, first, are these two points felt as alongside of each 

 other with an interval of space between them ? We must 

 be conscious of two things for this : of the duality of the ex- 

 cited points, and of the extensiveness of the unexcited 

 interval. The duality alone, although a necessary, is not a 

 sufficient condition of the spatial separation. We may, 

 for instance, discern two sounds in the same place, sweet 

 and sour in the same lemonade, warm and cold, round and 

 pointed contact in the same place on the skin, etc.* In all 

 discrimination the recognition of the duality of two feelings 

 by the mind is the easier the more strongly the feelings are 



tions by drawing or representing new lines, and so on. But all this 

 further industry has naught to do with onr acquaintance with the relation 

 itself, in its first intention. So cognized, the relation is the line and nothing 

 more. It would indeed be fair to call it something less; and in fact it is 

 easy to understand how most of us come to feel as if the line were a much 

 grosser thing than the relation. The line is broad or narrow, blue or red, 

 made by this object or by that alternately, in the course of our experience; 

 it is therefore independent of any one of these accidents; and so, from 

 viewing it as no one of such sensible qualities, we may end by thinking of 

 it as something which cannot be defined except as the negation of all sen- 

 sible quality whatever, and which needs to be put into the sensations by a 

 mysterious act of 'relating thought.' 



Another reason why we get to feel as if a space-relation must be some- 

 thing other than the mere feeling of a line or angle is that between two 

 positions we can potentially make any number of lines and angles, or find, 

 to suit our purposes, endlessly numerous relations. The sense of this indefi- 

 nite potentiality cleaves to onr words when we speak in a general way of 

 'relations of place,' and misleads us into supposing that not even any 

 single one of them can be exhaustively equated bj' a single angle or a 

 single line. 



* This often happens when the warm and cold points, or the round and 

 pointed ones, are applied to the skin within the limits of a single 'Em- 

 pfindungskreis.' 



