202 PSYCHOLOGY. 



a limb about a joint v/as no less when the movement was 

 * active ' or produced by muscular contraction than wdien it 

 was * passively ' impressed.* The consciousness of active 

 movement became so blunt when the joint (alone!) was 

 made anaesthetic by faradization, that it became evident 

 that the feeling of contraction could never be used for 

 fne discrimination of extents. And that it was not used 

 for coarse discriminations appeared clear to Goldscheider 

 from certain other results which are too circumstantial 

 for me to quote in detail, f His general conclusion is that 

 we feel our movements exclusively in our articular sur- 

 faces, and that our muscular contractions in all probability 

 hardly occasion this sort of perception at all. | 



My conclusion is that the * muscular sense ' must fall 

 back to the humble position from which Charles Bell raised 

 it, and no longer figure in Psychology as the leading organ 

 in space-perception which it has been so long * cracked up ' 

 to be. 



Before making a minuter study of Space as apprehended 

 by the eye, we must turn to see what we can discover of 

 space as known to the blind. But as we do so, let us cast 

 a glance upon the results of the last pages, and ask our- 

 selves once more whether the building up of orderly 

 space-perceptions out of primitive iucoherency requires 

 any mental pow^ers beyond those displayed in ordinary in- 

 tellectual operations. I think it is obvious — granting the 

 spacial qiiale to exist in the primitive sensations — that dis- 

 crimination, association, addition, multiplication, and divi- 

 sion, blending into generic images, substitution of similars, 

 selective emphasis, and abstraction from uninteresting de- 

 tails, are quite capable of giving us all the space-percep- 



the bigness gained is that of tlie retinal image after all. If I understand 

 Miinsterberg's meaning, it is quite different from this : the bigness be- 

 longs to the muscular feelings, as such, and is merely associated with those 

 of the retina. This is what I deny. 



* Archivf. (Anat. u.) Physiol. (1889), p. 543. 



t JMd. p. 496. 



i Hid. p. 497. Goldscheider thinks that our muscles do not even give 

 us the feeling cfrmstawce, that being also due to the articular surfaces: 

 whilst weight is due to the tendons. Jbid. p. 541. 



