Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/466

MR. JAMES WARD'S "PSYCHOLOGY". 465 accompanied with consciousness. Indeed his references to the physical side of mental facts seem somewhat capricious, his tendency, on the whole, being to discount it as an aid to psychical explanation. " Perception " introduces us to various subtle disquisitions. First, as to its meaning. For one thing, it is an advance upon differentiation, by supposing integration at work. For another thing, it connects sensations with movements in the way of purposive action. The presentation-continuum would not be knowledge but for the intervention of control- ling movements. This, however, is the problem of the will, and I must reserve it and take what belongs to perception in the more purely intellectual definition. Three meanings emerge. First, there is recognition, by assimilation, or the more or less definite revival of the residua of former resembling presentations. This is the first employment of the recovery of the past by similarity. We begin with difference ; repetition follows, and we assi- milate without at first knowing it. " Assimilation involves retentiveness and differentiation, and prepares the way for re-presentation ; but in itself there is no confronting the new with the old, no determination of likeness, and no sub- sequent classification." At this stage we are to beware of speaking of the reproduction of past sensations ; there is as yet no individuality, and therefore no reproduction. There is simply an unconscious fusion of the repeated impressions, by which their character is advanced above the first stage of mere differentiation ; which, however, is a step towards per- ception. The second meaning is something much higher. Percep- tion is the localisation of impressions, the referring of them to a part of the surface of the body or to some foreign body beyond. This is the problem of the origin of our notion of Space, and on that problem we must here enter, taking due care to separate space in the abstract from concrete spatial experience, what Hamilton called the empirical notion of .space, which the most thorough-going a priori philosopher must allow to be a matter for resolution or analysis. Empirical psychologists, by starting with the simultaneous plurality of sensations, first in touch, and afterwards in sight, and by a copious employment of the resources of movement and of muscular resistance and freedom, have hitherto supposed that they account for all that there is in our notion of space or extension. Mr. Ward says, No. If we had only these to depend upon, we should go down to our graves with our intellects spaceless. What then is lacking '? These two things :