THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. 275 



of the external world is essentifilly an intellectual process, a work of the 

 Understanding, to ivhich sensation furnishes merely the occasion, and 

 the data to be interpreted in each particular case." * 



I call this view mythological, because I am conscious of 

 no such Kantian machine-shop in my mind, and feel no 

 call to disparage the poAvers of poor sensation in this merci- 

 less way. I have no introspective experience of mentally 

 producing or creating space. My space-intuitions occur 

 not in two times but in one. There is not one moment of 

 passive inextensive sensation, succeeded by another of ac- 

 tive extensive perception, but the form I see is as immedi- 

 ately felt as the color which fills it out. That the higher 

 parts of the mind come in, who can deny ? They add and 

 subtract, they compare and measure, they reproduce and 

 abstract. They inweave the space-sensations with intel- 

 lectual relations ; but ^7?ese relations are the same when they 

 obtain between the elements of the space-system as when 

 they obtain between any of the other elements of which the 

 world is made. 



The essence of the Kantian contention is that there are 

 not spaces, but Space — one infinite continuous Unit — and 

 that our knowledge of this cannot be a piecemeal sensa- 

 tional afi'air, jDroduced by summation and abstraction. To 

 which the obvious reply is that, if any known thing bears 

 on its front the appearance of piecemeal construction and 

 abstraction, it is this very notion of the infinite unitary 

 space of the woi'ld. It is a notion, if ever there was one ; 

 and no intuition. Most of us apprehend it in the barest 

 symbolic abridgment : and if perchance we ever do try to 

 make it more adequate, we just add one image of sensible 

 extension to another until we are tired. Most of us are 

 obliged to turn round and drop the thought of the space in 

 front of us when we think of that behind. And the space 

 represented as near to us seems more minutely subdivisible 

 than that we think of as lying far away. 



The other prominent German writers on space are also 

 ^ psychical stimulists.' Herbart, whose influence has been 

 widest, says ' the resting eye sees no space,'t and ascribes 



* Vieifache Wm-zel des Satzes vora zureichendea Grunde, pp. 52-7. 

 f Psychol, als Wissenschaft, g 111. 



