Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/31

18 PEOF. W. JAMES I feeling of any special ivhere-ness or thereness? Certainly not. Only when a second sentient point arises can the first acquire a determination of up, down, right or left, and these determinations are with respect to that second point. Each point, so far as it is a placed^ is then only by virtue of what it is not, namely, another point. This is as much as to say that position has nothing intrinsic about it ; and that, although a feeling of bigness may, a feeling of place cannot, possibly form an immanent element in any single separate sensation. The very writer we have quoted has given heed to this objection, for he continues (p. 335) by saying that the sensations thus originally localised, "are only so in themselves, but not in the representation of consciousness, which is not yet present. . . . They are, in the first instance, devoid of all mutual relations with each other." But such a localisa- tion of the sensation "in itself" would seem to mean nothing more than the susceptibility or potentiality of being distinctly localised when the time came and other conditions became fulfilled. Can we now discover anything about such susceptibility in itself before it has borne its ulterior fruits in the developed consciousness ? To begin with, every sensation of the skin and every visceral sensation seems to derive from its topographic seat a peculiar shade of feeling, which it would not have in another place. And this feeling per se seems quite another thing from the perception of the place. Says Wundt 1 : " If with the finger we touch first the cheek and then the palm, exert- ing each time precisely the same pressure, the sensation shows notwith- standing a distinctly marked difference in the two cases. Similarly, when we compare the palm with the back of the hand, the nape of the neck with its anterior surface, the breast with the back ; in short, any two distant parts of the skin with each other. And moreover, we easily remark, by attentively observing, that spots even tolerably close together differ in respect of the quality of their feeling. If we pass from one point of our cutaneous surface to another, we find a perfectly gradual and continuous alteration in our feeling, notwithstanding the objective nature of the contact has remained the same. Even the sensations of corresponding points on opposite sides of the body, though similar, are not identical. If, for instance, we touch first the back of one hand, and then of the other, we remark a qualitative unlikeness of sensation. It must not be thought that such differences are mere matters of imagination, and that we take the sensations to be different because we represent each of them to ourselves as occupying a different place. With sufficient sharpening of the attention, we may, confining ourselves to the quality of the feelings alone, entirely abstract from their locality, and yet notice the differences quite as markedly." Whether these local contrasts shade into each other with absolutely continuous gradations, we cannot say. But we know (continues Wundt) 1 Vorles. ii. Menschen- u. Thierseele, Leip., 1863, i. 214.