the experience falling into a large number of aspects, each of which is abstracted, classed, named, etc., and all of which appear to be the elementary sensations into which the original 'lemonade flavor' is decomposed.It is argued from this that the latter never was the simple thing which it seemed.I have already criticised this sort of reasoning in ChapterVI(see pp.17ff.).The mind of the child enjoying the simple lemonade flavor and that of the same child grown up and analysing it are in two entirely different conditions.Subjectively considered, the two states of mind are two altogether distinct sorts of fact.The later mental state says 'this is the same flavor (or fluid ) which that earlier state perceived as simple, but that does not make the two states themselves identical.It is nothing but a case of learning more and more about the same topics of discourse or things.-- Many of these topics, however, must be confessed to resist all analysis, the various colors for example.He who sees blue and yellow 'in' a certain green means merely that when green is confronted with these other colors he sees relations of similarity.He who sees abstract 'color' in it means merely that he sees a similarity between it and all the other objects known as colors.(Similarity itself cannot ultimately be accounted for by an identical abstract element buried in all the similars, as has been already shown, p.492 ff.) He who sees abstract paleness, intensity, purity, in the green means other similarities still.These are all outward determinations of that special green, knowledges about it, züallige Anischten , as Herbart would say, not elements of its composition.
Compare the article by Meinong in the Vierteliahrschrift für wiss.
Phil., xii.324.
See above, p.221
Those who wish a fuller treatment than Martin's Human Body affords may be recommended to Bernstein's 'Five Senses of Man,' in the International Scientific Series, or to Ladd's or Wundt's Physiological Psychology.The completest compendium is L.Hermann's Handbuch der Physiologie, Vol.III.
"The sensations which we postulate, as the signs or occasions of our perceptions" (A.Seth: Scottish Philosophy, p.89)."Their existence is supposed only because, without them, it would be impossible to account for the complex phenomena which are directly present in consciousness" (J.Dewey: Psychology, p.34).Even as great an enemy of Sensation as T.H.Green has to allow it a sort of hypothetical existence under protest."Perception presupposes feeling"
(Contemp.Review, vol.xxxi.p.747).Cf.also sail passages as those in his Prolegomena to Ethics, §§ 48, 49.-- Physiologically, the sensory and the reproductive or associative processes may wax and wane independently of each other.Where the part directly due to stimulation of the sense-organ preponderates, the thought has a sensational character, and differs from other thoughts in the sensational direction.Those thoughts which lie farthest in that direction we call sensations , for practical convenience, just as we call conceptions those which lie nearer the opposite extreme.But we no more have conceptions pure than we have pure sensations.Our most rarefied intellectual states involve some bodily sensibility, just as our dullest feelings have some intellectual scope.
Common-sense and common psychology express this by saying that the mental state is composed of distinct fractional parts , one of which Is sensation, the other conception.We, however, who believe every mental state to be an integral thing (p.276) cannot talk thus, but must speak of the degree of sensational or intellectual character, or function, of the mental state.Professor Hering puts, as usual, his finger better upon the truth than any one else.Writing of visual perception, he says: "It is inadmissible in the present state of our knowledge to assert that first and last the same retinal picture arouses exactly the same pure sensation , but that this sensation, in consequence of practice and experience, is differently interpreted the last time, and elaborated into a different perception the first.For the only real data are, on the one hand, the physical picture on the retina, -- and that is both times the same; and, on the other hand, the resultant state of consciousness ( ausgelöste Empfindungscomplex ) -- and that is both times distinct.Of any third thing, namely, a pure sensation thrust between the retinal and the mental pictures, we know nothing.We can then, if we wish to avoid all hypothesis, only say that the nervous apparatus reacts upon the same stimulus differently the last time from the first, and that in consequence the consciouss is different too." (Hermann's Hdbch., iii.i.567-8.)
Yet even writers like Prof.Bain will deny, in the most gratuitous way, that sensations know anything."It is evident that the most restricted form of sensation does not contain an element edge.The mere state of mind called the sensation of scarlet is edge, although a necessary preparation for it." 'Is not know about scarlet' is all that Professor Bain can rightfully say.
By simple ideas of sensation Locke merely means sensations.
Essay c.H.U., bk.
ii.ch.xxiii.§ 29; ch.xxv.§ 9.
Classics editor's note: James' insertion.
Op.cit.Bk.
Ii ch.ii § 2.
"So far is it from being true that we necessarily have as many feelings in consciousness at one time as there are isles to the sense then played upon, that it is a fundamental law of pure sensation that each momentarily state of the organism yields but one feeling, however numerous may be Its parts and its exposures.
