THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 237 



readiness with which the translocation of the field of view 

 becomes corrected and further errors avoided, to admit 

 that the precise space-import of the supposed sensation of 

 outgoing energy is as ambiguous and indeterminate as that of 

 any other of the eye-feelings we have considered hitherto. 



I have now given what no one will call an understate- 

 ment of the facts and arguments by which it is sought to 

 banish the credit of directly revealing space from each and 

 every kind of eye-sensation taken by itself. The reader 

 will confess that they make a very plausible show, and 

 most likely wonder whether my own theory of the matter 

 can rally from their damaging evidence. But the case is 

 far from being hopeless ; and the introduction of a discrimi- 

 nation hitherto unmade will, if I mistake not, easily vindi- 

 cate the view adopted in these pages, whilst at the same 

 time it makes ungrudging allowance for all the ambiguity 

 and illusion on which so much stress is laid by the advo- 

 cates of the intellectualist-theory. 



The Choice of the Visual Reality. 



We have native and fixed optical space-sensations ; hut 

 experience leads us to select certain ones from among them to be 

 the exclusive bearers of reality : the rest become mere signs and 

 suggesters of these. The factor of selection, on which we have 

 already laid so much stress, here as elsewhere is the solving 

 word of the enigma. If Helmholtz, Wundt, and the rest, 

 with an ambiguous retinal sensation before them, meaning 

 now one size and distance, and now another, had not con- 

 tented themselves with merely saying : — The size and dis- 

 tance are not this sensation, they are something beyond it 

 which it merely calls up, and whose own birthplace is afar 

 — in ' synthesis ' (Wundt) or in ' experience ' (Helmholtz) as 

 the case may be ; if they had gone on definitely to ask and 

 definitely to answer the question, What are the size and 

 distance in their proper selves ? they would not only have 

 escaped the present deplorable vagueness of their space- 

 theories, but they would have seen that the objective 

 spatial attributes * signified ' are simply and solely certain 



