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Last Suboctile. I am very rarely able to recall any object whatever with any sort of distinctness. Very occasionally an object or image will recall itself, but even then it is more like a generalised image than an individual one. I seem to be almost destitute of visualising power as under control.

Lowest.-My powers are zero. To my consciousness there is almost no association of memory with objective visual impressions. I recollect the table, but do not see it.

IN COLOUR REPRESENTATION

Highest.-Perfectly distinct, bright and natural.

First Suboctile.-White cloth, blue china, argand coffee-pot, buff stand with sienna drawing, toast-all clear.

First Octile. All details seen perfectly.

First Quartile.-Colours distinct and natural till I begin to puzzle over them.

Middlemost.-Fairly distinct, though not certain that they are accurately recalled.

Last Quartile.-Natural, but very indistinct.

Last Octile.-Faint; can only recall colours by a special effort for each.

Last Suboctile.-Power is nil.
Lowest.-Power is nil."

93-94-)

(Inquiries Into Human Faculty, pp.

First suboctile means the ability exceeded by one sixteenth of people; first octile means the ability exceeded by one eighth; first quartile means the ability exceeded by one fourth; last quartile means the ability exceeded by three fourths; last octile means the ability exceeded by seven eighths, last suboctile means the ability exceeded by fifteen sixteenths.

3. Compare the imagery of the author of the following statement with that of the individuals quoted in § 9.

"When I seek to represent a row of soldiers marching, all I catch is a view of stationary legs first in one phase of movement and then in another, and these views are extremely imperfect and momentary. Occasionally (especially when I try to stimulate my imagination as by repeating Victor Hugo's lines about the regiment,

'Leur pas est si correct, sans tarder ni courir,

Qu'on croit voir des ciseaux se fermer et s'ouvrir,')

I seem to get an instantaneous glimpse of an actual movement,

but it is to the last degree dim and uncertain. All these images seem at first to be purely retinal. I think, however, that rapid eye-movements accompany them, though these latter give rise to such slight feelings that they are almost impossible of detection. Absolutely no leg-movements of my own are there; in fact, to call such up arrests my imagination of the soldiers. My optical images are in general very dim, dark, fugitive and contracted. It would be utterly impossible to draw from them, and yet I perfectly well distinguish one from the other. My auditory images are excessively inadequate reproductions of their originals. I have no images of taste or smell. Touch-imagination is fairly distinct, but comes very little into play with most objects thought of. Neither is all my thought verbalized; for I have shadowy schemes of relation, as apt to terminate in a nod of the head or an expulsion of the breath as in a definite word. On the whole, vague images or sensations of movement inside of my head towards the various parts of space in which the terms I am thinking of either lie or are momentarily symbolized to lie together with movements of the breath through my pharynx and nostrils, form a by no means inconsiderable part of my thoughtstuff." (James, Principles of Psychology, vol. II., p. 65.)

Experiment 7. After Images and Recalled Images.—Cut out of a sheet of black paper, say 10 inches square, a cross with arms each an inch wide and two inches long. Fasten the sheet against the glass of a window so that a bright light comes through the cross shaped opening. Sitting at a distance of six or eight feet, look steadily at the center of the cross for a minute and a half or longer. Then look at a white screen (for instance a sheet or towel hung against the wall). A duplicate of the cross, but dark with a light background will be seen. How does this so-called after image differ from the visual image you call up in memory of a dark cross on a light background:-(a) in persistence, (b) in seeming a real object, (c) in location, (d) in modification by your will, (e) in intensity?

References

A. James, Briefer Course, XVIII. (287-288), XIX.

Stout, Manual, 393-417, 435-446.
Titchener, Outline, §§ 70-80.

B. Ebbinghaus, Grundzüge, §§ 48-50.

James, Principles, XVI. (643-652), XVIII.

Wundt, Physiologische Psychologie, XVI. (§6), XVII. (§5).

CHAPTER IV

FEELINGS OF FACTS: FEELINGS OF RELATIONSHIPS, MEANINGS AND JUDGMENTS

§ 11. Feelings of Relationships

Contrasted with Feelings of Things and Qualities. -As you look at this page you feel not only percepts of the words, 'Feelings of Relationships,' but also that these words are at the top of this page; you feel, that is, the 'aboveness' of these words. As you think of this chapter you feel also that it is a part of the whole book; you feel, that is, its relationship to the whole. You feel, too, the unlikeness of the black letters to the white page. As you read in the first sentence the not only, you feel the incompleteness of the idea immediately to come; and as you read the but also, you feel the belonging-together-ness or tobe-added-to-ness of the next coming idea with the idea, 'percepts of words.'

We may thus feel things and qualities and conditions, not as mere bare existences, but as related in space and time, as more than, less than, equal to, part of, whole containing, like, unlike, opposite to, derived from, superior to or inferior to some other fact. Amongst parts of speech, prepositions and conjunctions express feelings, not of things or qualities, but of relationships. There are feelings of in-ness, beside-ness, beyond-ness, with-ness, if-ness, but-ness and although-ness as truly as of the sun or moon, of black or white, of fatigue or pleasure.

These feelings are among the commonest features of mental life. Witness how much disappears from any statement,-e.g., the preamble to the United States Constitution,—when words expressing feelings of relationship are omitted from the text.

"We the people the States form perfect, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, the defense, the welfare, the blessings liberty ourselves posterity do ordain establish this Constitution States America."

Their Attributes. It is hard to describe feelings of relationships. Anyone knows that when he thinks, 'He is sick: nevertheless,' he feels a different expectation toward the coming thought than if he heard or thought, 'He is sick, therefore.' But it would be impossible to describe the feeling to one who had not felt it himself and it would take a rather long statement to describe it to oneself. Two characteristics feelings of relationships almost invariably possess. In the first place they are fleeting, evanescent, intangible mental states. No sooner does one try to examine them than they are gone. One can keep the same percept in mind for some time; can hold the same image constant for at least a number of seconds. But one rarely thinks nevertheless-ness or but-ness or above-ness for any appreciable time. Feelings of relationship are among those transitory states of mind which Professor James calls the fringes of thought; they are the almost unseen web of connections in which are set the obvious percepts and images and the somewhat less obvious feelings of meaning. In the second place they almost invariably occur, not by themselves alone, but in a

1 Some of the words retained are relational if we consider their real meaning. Form and establish, ordain and secure may thus be held to express a feeling of causing; domestic and posterity to express feelings of unlikeness.

context either as elements of complex mental states,— 'fringes' or 'tendencies' of percepts and images, or as transitive, intermediate feelings, joining two mental states. We feel, not more alone but more than some given thing; not merely and but John and James. We feel things as relative or as related rather than things and relations.1 To supplement this account of the nature of these elusive feelings, I quote from Professor William James, who first emphasized their importance.

"If there be such things as feelings at all, then so surely as relations between objects exist in rerum natura, so surely, and more surely, do feelings exist to which these relations are known. There is not a conjunction or a preposition, and hardly an adverbial phrase, syntactic form, or inflection of voice, in human speech, that does not express some shading or other of relation which we at some moment actually feel to exist between the larger objects of our thought......

We ought to say a feeling of and, a feeling of if, a feeling of but and a feeling of by, quite as readily as we say a feeling of blue or a feeling of cold."

"When we read such phrases as 'naught but,' 'either one or the other,' 'a is b,' 'but,' 'although it is, nevertheless,' 'it is an excluded middle, there is no tertium quid,' and a host of other verbal skeletons of logical relation, is it true that there is nothing more in our minds than the words themselves as they pass? What then is the meaning of the words which we think we understand as we read? What makes that meaning different in one phrase from what it is in the other? 'Who?' 'When?' 'Where?' Is the difference of felt meaning in these interrogatives nothing more than their difference of sound? And is it

Occasionally perhaps the pure feeling of a relationship holds the field by itself. The mere feeling of unity or of difference seems to enthrall us without our being able to say what is thus unified or similar. The following sentence, e. g., seems to represent nothing more than jumbled feelings of relationship. "There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.”

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