Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/418

A. BINET, LA PSYCHOLOQIE DU RAISONNEMENT. 417 We have the visual sensation of a book (A), and we find connected with it certain "images " of touch (C). We are enabled to have this, he says, because the sight of the book is associated by simi- larity with the image of previous sights of the book, A = B, and this image is identified with the sensation by a " law of fusion " which changes A = B into the synthesis (A = B), where the parentheses represent the fact of fusion. Now B or the image of the book has associated with it by contiguity certain tactile "images," B C (where the dash represents the fact of associa- tion), and thus we are enabled to perceive that the book is smooth, which is symbolised by (A = B) - C. Just at present we need only remark that it seems a question-begging use of the word " perception " to apply it to the result of this process, which is rather a judgment. The perception consists surely in the process symbolised by M. Binet as (A = B), which, if it resembles a judg- ment at all, resembles what Lotze calls the impersonal judgment. And indeed the chief value of M. Binet's theory consists rather in this recognition of a synthetic process, his " law of fusion," though he leaves out of account the consideration of the question : What is it that fuses? M. Binet then applies the same analysis and the same sym- bolism to the syllogism and is thus enabled to get an almost exact parallelism in the two processes thus : Perception. (A = B) B-C = B)-C Reasoning, B-C i.e. M-P A = B i.e. S = M (A = B)-C i.e. (S = M)-P. Our author goes on to point out that Mr Spencer has given reasons for transposing the premisses, and, accepting this, the formulae for perception apply in every way to those of reasoning. Three images succeeding one another, the first raising the second by resemblance and the second suggesting the third by contiguity : this is the type both of perception and of reasoning. The force of simplification could no further go : but at what a cost has it been obtained ! Much, if not most, of what is distinctive of the two processes has been ruthlessly lopped in order to procure the identification. Even waiving for the moment the point raised above, whether the pro- cess called " perception " by M. Binet has not been expanded into a judgment of which one term is a percept, all the objective re- ference in perception is left out of account. The localisation and projection of perception has nothing analogous in reasoning, and indeed the most marked difference between the two might be summed up in the externality of the one and the inwardness of the other. There must be a sensation in the former which should not be confused with image. Then again M. Binet owns that the middle term of the perceptive syllogism never enters into con- sciousness while it is explicit in logic. Language is necessary for reasoning ; it does not enter into perception : this is only of secon- 28