RECORDS OF MEETINGS OF 1909. 
295 
sensation altogether. There are the pathological eases, in which perception 
is lost, though sensation remains; there are the shock experiences, in 
which there is an interval between the first consciousness of the stimulus and 
the consciousness of its meaning, and there are ambiguous stimuli, like 
the staircase figure where, in spite of the alternating percepts, there persists 
throughout the experience an irreducible conscious minimum, which may 
best be called sensation. 
Professor T. L. Bolton inferred, from observations upon animals at 
certain moments, that they distinguish by their bodily attitudes and general 
conduct differences between the various objects of their environments that 
have practical bearings for their lives. The attitude assumed in the presence 
of the object is characteristic of the object. A similar phenomenon may be 
observed in human beings. This is the fundamental fact in perception, 
which becomes the feeling of these bodily attitudes that are evoked by an 
object’s presence. Again, we see both animals and human beings acting in 
the same manner upon objects alike in some respect but very different in 
others. This likeness is the objective stimulus for, let us say, a sensation of 
color. Here then is an activity that is characteristic of the objective stimulus 
of sensation. This resolves the sensation into essentially the same thing 
as the perception. In the case of the conventional sensation, the stimulus 
is merely a part of the objective thing which is present and which, in its 
totality, might elicit an attitude of the kind which we have called perceptual. 
The sensation and perception both become the feelings of bodily conduct. 
In perception the whole object is effective in evoking the attitude. The 
difference is, then, one not in the mental effect but rather in the part of the 
objective fact that is operative in exciting reactions. They are alike in being 
mental states of bodily changes, and neither is the effect directly of incoming 
afferent currents. 
The Section then adjourned. 
R. S. Woodworth, 
Secretary. 
BUSINESS MEETING. 
March 1 , 1909. 
The Academy met at 8:17 p. M. at the American Museum of Natural His¬ 
tory, President Cox presiding. 
The minutes of the meeting of February 1 were read and approved. 
