THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 271 



be an extremely rapid or a reversible succession. Space- 

 perception thus emerges without being anywhere postulated. 

 The only things postulated are unextended feelings and time. 

 Says Thomas Brown (lecture xxiii.) : " I am inclined to re- 

 verse exactly the process commonl}'- supposed ; and instead 

 of deriving the measure of time from extension, to derive 

 the knowledge and original measure of extension from time." 

 Brown and both the Mills think that retinal sensations, 

 colors, in their primitive condition, are felt with no extension 

 and that the latter merely becomes inseparably associated 

 with them. John Mill says : " Whatever may be the retinal 

 impression convej^ed by a line wjiich bounds two colors, I 

 see no ground for thinking that by the eye alone we could 

 acquire the conception of what Ave now mean when we say 

 that one of the colors is outside [beside] the other." * 



Whence does the extension come which gets so insepa- 

 rably associated with these non-extended colored sensations ? 

 From the * sweep and movements ' of the eye — from mus- 

 cular feelings. But, as Prof, Bain says, if movement-feel- 

 ings give us any property of things, " it would seem to be 

 not space, but time." f And John Mill says that " the idea 

 of space is, at bottom, one of time." % Space, then, is not to 

 be found in any elementary sensation, but, in Bain's words, 

 " as a quality, it has no other origin and no other meaning 

 than the association of these different [non-spatial] motor 

 and sensitive effects." § 



This phrase is mystical-sounding enough to one who 

 understands association as producing nothing, but only as 

 knitting together things already produced in separate ways. 

 The truth is that the English Associationist school, in trying 

 to show how much their principle can accomplish, have 

 altogether overshot the mark and espoused a kind of theory 

 in respect to space-perception which the general tenor of 

 their philosophy should lead them to abhor. Really there 

 are but three possible kinds of theory concerning space. 

 Either (1) there is no spatial qualify of sensation at all, aud 



* Exaraiuatiou of Hamilton, 3cl ed. p. 283. 

 f Senses and Intellect, 3d ed. p. 183. 

 X Exam, of Hamilton, 3d ed. p. 283. 

 § Senses and Iiuellect, p. 372. 



