206 PSYCHOLOGY. 



pass and tlie direction of distant spots, in tlie blind as in 

 us. We start towards them by feelings of this sort ; and so 

 many directions, so many different-feeling starts.* 



The only point that offers any theoretic difficulty is the 

 prolongation into space of the direction, after the start. We 

 saw, ten pages back, that for extradition to occur beyond the 

 skin, the portion of skin in question and the space beyond 

 must form a common object for some other sensory surface. 

 The eyes are for most of us this sensory surface ; for the 

 blind it can only be other j^arts of the skin, coupled or not 

 with motion. But the mere gropings of the hands in every 

 direction must end by surrounding the wdiole body with a 

 sphere of felt space. And this sphere must become en- 

 larged with every movement of locomotiou, these move- 

 ments gaining their space-values from the semi-circular- 

 caual feelings which accomj^any them, and from the farther 

 and farther parts of large fixed objects (such as the bed» 

 the wainscoting, or a fence) which they bring wdthiu the 

 grasp. It might be supposed that a knowledge of sj^ace 

 acquired b}' so many successive discrete acts would always 

 retain a somewhat jointed and so to sjjeak, granulated char- 

 acter. When we who are gifted with sight think of a space 

 too large to come into a single field of view, we are apt to 

 imagine it as composite, and filled with more or less jerky 

 stoppings and startings (think, for instance, of the space 

 from here to San Francisco), or else we reduce the scale 

 symbolically and imagine how much larger on a map the 

 distance would look than others with whose totality we are 

 familiar. 



I am disposed to believe, after interrogating many blind 

 persons, iliat the use of imaginary maps on a reduced scale 

 is less frequent with them than with the rest of us Possi- 

 bly the extraordinary changeableness of the visual magni- 

 tudes of things makes this habit natural to us, while the 

 fixity of tactile magnitudes keeps them from falling into it. 

 (When the blind 3'oung man operated on by Dr. Franz was 



* "Whilst the memories wliich we seeing folks preserve of a man all 

 centre round a certain exterior form composed of his image, his height, 

 his gait, in the blind all these memories are i*eferi"ed to something quite 

 different, namely, the sound ofJds voice." (Dunan, Kev. Phil., xxv. 357.) 



