168 PSYCHOLOGY. 



it were which cries to us immediately and without further 

 ado, 'I am here,'' or 'I am there.' 



If, as may well be the case, we by this time find our- 

 selves tempted to accept the Local-sign theory in a general 

 way, we have to clear up several farther matters. If a sign 

 is to lead us to the thing it means, we must have some other 

 source of knowledge of that thing. Either the thing has 

 been given in a previous experience of which the sign also 

 formed part — the}' are associated ; or it is what lleid calls a 

 * natural ' sign, that is, a feeling which, the first time it 

 enters the mind, evokes from the native powers thei'eof a 

 •cognition of the thing that hitherto had lain dormant. In 

 both cases, however, the sign is one thing, and the thing 

 another. In the instance that now concerns us, the sign is 

 €1 qnality of feeling and the tiling is a position. Now we have 

 seen that the position of a point is not only revealed, but 

 created, by the existence of other points to which it stands 

 in determinate relations. If the sigyi can by any Machinery 

 tchich it sets in motion evoke a consciousness either of the other 

 points, or of the relations, or of both, it nvuld, seem to fnlfl its 

 function, and reveal to us the position we seek. 



But such a machinery is already familiar to us. It is 

 neither more nor less than the laAv of habit in the nervous 

 system. "When any point of the sensitive surface has been 

 frequently excited simultaneously with, or immediately 

 before or after, other points, and afterwards comes to be 

 excited alone, there will be a tendency for its perceptive 

 nerve-centre to irradiate into the nerve-centres of the other 

 points. Subjectively considered, this is the same as if we 

 said that the peculiar feeling of the frst point suggests the 

 feeling of the entire region loith whose stimulation its oion ex- 

 citement has been habitually associated. 



Take the case of the stomach. When the epigastrium 

 is heavily pressed, when certain muscles contract, etc., the 

 stomach is squeezed, and its peculiar local sign awakes in 

 consciousness simultaneously with the local signs of the 

 other squeezed parts. There is also a sensation of total 

 vastness aroused by the combined irritation, and someivhere 

 in this the stomach-feeling seems to lie. Suppose that 

 later a pain arises in the stomach from some non-mechani- 



