flower, he would connect them together as parts of one whole. The odor, feel, taste, color, and solidity of an apple are all grouped together because they invariably occur together. When we have one of these experiences, the law of association by contiguity makes us think of the rest.

Summary. Summing up, then, (1) Attention to indefinite sensations makes them definite enables us to take the first step towards the formation of a percept. (2) As these sensations become definite, the mind gradually becomes conscious of local signs which some of them possess, and by a native, original power of interpretation refers the sensations possessing them to a certain place. (3) Through the laws of association the sensations which occur together are referred to the same place and regarded as qualities of the same thing.

QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.

1. Summarize the conclusions reached in the preceding lesson. 2. State and explain Sully's comparison.

3. What does the mind do to its sensations when it perceives? 4. What is the difference between a percept and an image?

5. Explain how the mind becomes conscious of definite sensations.

6. Explain how it comes to localize them.

7. What is a local sign, and how do you know our sensations have such signs?

8. How is it that the mind is able to interpret the local signs of sensation as signs of place?

9. How do we come to group our sensations together and regard them as qualities of external objects ?

10. Explain the case of the boy whose sight was restored by an operation performed by Cheselden.

QUESTIONS.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS.

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1. Show the identity of the two forms in which the problem of perception has been stated.

2. When you are in a car that is not moving and a train passes by, your own car seems to be in motion. Why?

3. The air of Italy is very clear, that of England very thick. What sort of mistakes would an Englishman make in judging of distance in Italy, and what sort would an Italian make in England, and why?

4. What evidences do young children show of mistakes in judging of distances ?

5. A child of three wanted her mother to go up stairs with her in order that she might get the stars. Account for her mistake.

LESSON XXIV.

PERCEPTION AND EDUCATION.

We Create our own Worlds. Professor Davidson says that to a very large extent every human being creates his own world. Careful reflection upon the conclusions reached in the two preceding lessons will convince us that this is true. We are all familiar with the ordinary assumption that the world exists outside of us, already made, and that the senses constitute a sort of transparent medium through which it impresses itself upon the mind. But we have learned that the material with which the senses originally furnish the mind is not a knowledge of the world, is not even a knowledge of definite sensations, but an indescribably confused and mixed-up mass of sentient experience, which Professor James has aptly described as one "blooming confusion."

The Material. Now, the gradual transformation of this blooming confusion into the world in which each of us lives is the mind's own work. This blooming confusion constitutes the bricks out of which the mind erects that imposing and stately structure which the senses now seem to directly present to us as the world.

Probably there is no sentence in this book which it will be more difficult for most of us cordially to assent to than

this. But, as it seems to me of the first importance that we should vividly realize it, I beg to call attention to some illustrations of its truth in addition to the arguments of the preceding lessons.

Illustrations. We all know that there is a difference between the world of the man blind from birth, and that of the man who can see; between that of the man deaf from birth, and that of the man who can hear. The world of the man blind from birth contains no colors; that of the deaf man, no sounds.

As the blind man is shut out from a whole world that is open to us, so a man whose sense of sight is highly cultivated lives in a world into which the ordinary man can not enter. He sees a thousand delicate colors, a thousand gradations of light and shade, that are as entirely beyond the range of the ordinary man's vision as though they came through a new sense. Read Ruskin's essay on the sky and then say if the sky he saw and the sky which we see are the same. "Clear" or "cloudy" satisfies us as a description of the sky. That would be as inadequate a description of the sky as it would be of a typical American to say that he is a human being!

The same kind of difference exists between the world of a man any of whose senses is well trained, and that of a man whose corresponding sense is untrained. Read Eve's description of Eden in Milton's Paradise Lost:

"Fragrant the fertile Earth

After soft showers; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful Evening mild; then silent Night,
With this her solemn bird, and this fair Moon
And these the gems of Heaven, her starry train;
But neither breath of Morn, when she ascends

With charm of earliest birds; nor rising Sun
On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower,
Glistering with dew; nor fragrance after showers;
Nor grateful Evening mild; nor silent Night,
With this her solemn bird, nor walk by moon,
Or glittering star-light, without thee is sweet"-

Read this and you will note how full Milton's world was of odors "fragrant the fertile Earth after soft showers" -and sounds "the silent Night," "charm of earliest birds" and delicate shades of color "and sweet the coming on of grateful Evening mild." For a man who has never noticed the fragrance of fertile fields after soft showers, who has never noted the gradual dying of the day as grateful evening comes on, who has never been charmed by songs of earliest birds, these things are as though they did not exist; they form no part of the world in which he consciously lives; they are without effect upon his mental life.

We Create our Moral Worlds. - We create in the same sense our moral world. We remember some of the charges that were brought against Washington in the fierce party struggles of his administration that he would not accept any office from 1783 to 1789 because there was none exalted enough to satisfy his ambition; that his professed wish, not to accept the presidency a second term, was a mere pretense made because he was afraid he could not be elected; that the fear that he could not be elected caused him to declare that he would not accept the presidency for a third term. It is altogether possible that many men believed these charges. Men who act from motives of self-interest alone can not realize the possibility of anything else.