Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/253

COMPARISON OF SOME VIEWS OF SPENCER AND KANT. 239 occurring when it is not wanted. Or practice may effect much, just as by practice we see single with two eyes, and view objects the right way up, although the images are reversed on the retinas. The transfiguration (in the sense of inversion here) may quite pos- sibly be neutralised by a special adaptation in the brain-mechanism. In the end, one is even not hampered in a dissection under the microscope, although the image is again reversed here. The inversion is corrected by the faculty of touch, and one ceases to think of its existence. Possibly by lengthened practice (aided by touch) one could see correctly with a cylindrical cornea. It is astonishing what self-correction and self-adaptation can do, by practice, with the senses generally. But what it is ventured to contend for here is that while there is no proof that (where there is no demonstrated practical purpose) transfiguration in sense perception must have occurred : there is proof that transfiguration cannot have been passed through without the action of force. While the old Kealism is doubtless no longer sustainable as a whole : it appears probable that some investigators in the branch of natural knowledge called "psychology" go too much to the opposite extreme in assuming l that every perception on the brain-consciousness is the result of transfiguration. It would seem more likely that the truth is here represented by a compromise. S. TOLVBB PRESTON. 1 It appears that Kant assumed this also ; but it does not seem that he attempted to give any proof of the proposition, as Mr. Spencer has.