existent. Even the first weeks after birth are passed in almost unbroken sleep by human infants. It takes a strong message from the sense-organs to break this slumber. In a new-born brain this gives rise to an absolutely pure sensation. But the experience leaves its unimaginable touch' on the matter of the convolutions, and the next impression which a sense-organ transmits produces a cerebral reaction in which the awakened vestige of the last impression plays its part. Another sort of feeling and a higher grade of cognition are the consequence. Ideas' about the object mingle with the awareness of its mere sensible presence, we name it, class it, compare it, utter propositions concerning it, and the complication of the possible consciousness which an incoming current may arouse, goes on increasing to the end of life. In general, this higher consciousness about things is called Perception, the mere inarticulate feeling of their presence is Sensation, so far as we have it at all. To some degree we seem able to lapse into this inarticulate feeling at moments when our attention is entirely dispersed.

Sensations are cognitive. A sensation is thus an abstraction seldom realized by itself; and the object which a sensation knows is an abstract object which cannot exist alone. 'Sensible qualities' are the objects of sensation. The sensations of the eye are aware of the colors of things, those of the ear are acquainted with their sounds; those of the skin feel their tangible heaviness, sharpness, warmth or coldness, etc., etc. From all the organs of the body currents may come which reveal to us the quality of pain, and to a certain extent that of pleasure.

Such qualities as stickiness, roughness, etc., are supposed to be felt through the coöperation of muscular sensations with those of the skin. The geometrical qualities of things, on the other hand, their shapes, bignesses, distances, etc. (so far as we discriminate and identify them), are by most psychologists supposed to be impossible without the evocation of memories from the past; and the

cognition of these attributes is thus considered to exceed the power of sensation pure and simple.

'Knowledge of Acquaintance' and 'Knowledge about.'Sensation, thus considered, differs from perception only in the extreme simplicity of its object or content. Its object, being a simple quality, is sensibly homogeneous; and its function is that of mere acquaintance with this homogeneous seeming fact. Perception's function, on the other hand, is that of knowing something about the fact. But we must know what fact we mean, all the while, and the various whats are what sensations give. Our earliest thoughts are almost exclusively sensational. They give us a set of whats, or thats, or its; of subjects of discourse in other words, with their relations not yet brought out. The first time we see light, in Condillac's phrase we are it rather than see it. But all our later optical knowledge is about what this experience gives. And though we were struck blind from that first moment, our scholarship in the subject would lack no essential feature so long as our memory remained. In training-institutions for the blind they teach the pupils as much about light as in ordinary schools. Reflection, refraction, the spectrum, the ether-theory, etc., are all studied. But the best taught born-blind pupil of such an establishment yet lacks a knowledge which the least instructed seeing baby has. They can never show him what light is in its first intention'; and the loss of that sensible knowledge no book-learning can replace. All this is so obvious that we usually find sensation 'postulated' as an element of experience, even by those philosophers who are least inclined to make much of its importance, or to pay respect to the knowledge which it brings.

Sensations distinguished from Images.-Both sensation and perception, for all their difference, are yet alike in that their objects appear vivid, lively, and present. Objects merely thought of, recollected, or imagined, on the contrary, are relatively faint and devoid of this pungency, or tang, this quality of real presence which the objects of sensation

possess. Now the cortical brain-processes to which sensations are attached are due to incoming currents from the periphery of the body-an external object must excite the eye, ear, etc., before the sensation comes. Those cortical processes, on the other hand, to which mere ideas or images are attached are due in all probability to currents from other convolutions. It would seem, then, that the currents from the periphery normally awaken a kind of brainactivity which the currents from other convolutions are inadequate to arouse. To this sort of activity-a profounder degree of disintegration, perhaps the quality of vividness, presence, or reality in the object of the resultant consciousness seems correlated.

The Exteriority of Objects of Sensation.-Every thing or quality felt is felt in outer space. It is impossible to conceive a brightness or a color otherwise than as extended and outside of the body. Sounds also appear in space. Contacts are against the body's surface; and pains always occupy some organ. An opinion which has had much currency in psychology is that sensible qualities are first apprehended as in the mind itself, and then 'projected' from it, or 'extradited,' by a secondary intellectual or super-sensational mental act. There is no ground whatever for this opinion. The only facts which even seem to make for it. can be much better explained in another way, as we shall see later on. The very first sensation which an infant gets is for him the outer universe. And the universe which he comes to know in later life is nothing but an amplification of that first simple germ which, by accretion on the one hand and intussusception on the other, has grown so big and complex and articulate that its first estate is unrememberable. In his dumb awakening to the consciousness of something there, a mere this as yet (or something for which even the term this would perhaps be too discriminative, and the intellectual acknowledgment of which would be better expressed by the bare interjection 'lo!'), the infant encounters an object in which (though it

be given in a pure sensation) all the categories of the understanding' are contained. It has externality, objectivity, unity, substantiality, causality, in the full sense in which any later object or system of objects has these things. Here the young knower meets and greets his world; and the miracle of knowledge bursts forth, as Voltaire says, as much in the infant's lowest sensation as in the highest achievement of a Newton's brain.

The physiological condition of this first sensible experience is probably many nerve-currents coming in from various peripheral organs at once; but this multitude of organic conditions does not prevent the consciousness from being one consciousness. We shall see as we go on that it can be one consciousness, even though it be due to the coöperation of numerous organs and be a consciousness of many things together. The Object which the numerous inpouring currents of the baby bring to his consciousness is one big blooming buzzing Confusion. That Confusion is the baby's universe; and the universe of all of us is still to a great extent such a Confusion, potentially resolvable, and demanding to be resolved, but not yet actually resolved, into parts. It appears from first to last as a space-occupying thing. So far as it is unanalyzed and unresolved we may be said to know it sensationally; but as fast as parts are distinguished in it and we become aware of their relations, our knowledge becomes perceptual or even conceptual, and as such need not concern us in the present chapter.

The Intensity of Sensations.-A light may be so weak as not sensibly to dispel the darkness, a sound so low as not to be heard, a contact so faint that we fail to notice it. In other words, a certain finite amount of the outward stimulus is required to produce any sensation of its presence at all. This is called by Fechner the law of the thresholdsomething must be stepped over before the object can gain entrance to the mind. An impression just above the threshold is called the minimum visibile, audibile, etc.

From this point onwards, as the impressing force increases, the sensation increases also, though at a slower rate, until at last an acme of the sensation is reached which no increase in the stimulus can make sensibly more great. Usually, before the acme, pain begins to mix with the specific character of the sensation. This is definitely observable in the cases of great pressure, intense heat, cold, light, and sound; and in those of smell and taste less definitely so only from the fact that we can less easily increase the force of the stimuli here. On the other hand, all sensations, however unpleasant when more intense, are rather agreeable than otherwise in their very lowest degrees. A faintly bitter taste, or putrid smell, may at least be interesting.

Weber's Law. I said that the intensity of the sensation increases by slower steps than those by which its exciting

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2

FIG. 1.

cause increases. If there were no threshold, and if every equal increment in the outer stimulus produced an equal increment in the sensation's intensity, a simple straight line would represent graphically the curve' of the relation between the two things. Let the horizontal line stand for the scale of intensities of the objective stimulus, so that at O it has no intensity, at 1 intensity 1, and so forth. Let the verticals dropped from the slanting line stand for the sensations aroused. At 0 there will be no sensation; at 1 there will be a sensation represented by the length of the vertical S-1, at 2 the sensation will be represented by