Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/37

24 PEOF. W. JAMES : image of the whole body. Such awakening is even more obviously than the previously considered cases a matter of pure association. This leads us to the eye. On the retina the fovea and the yellow spot about it form a focus of exquisite sensibility, towards which every impression falling on an outlying por- tion of the field is moved by an instinctive action of the muscles of the eyeball. Few persons, until their atten- tion is called to the fact, are aware how almost impos- sible it is to keep a conspicuous visible object in the margin of the field of view. The moment volition is relaxed we find that without our knowing it our eyes have turned so as to bring it to the centre. This is why most persons are unable to keep the eyes steadily converged upon a point in space with nothing in it. The objects against the walls of the room invincibly attract the fovese to themselves. If we contemplate a blank wall or sheet of paper, we always observe in a moment that we are directly looking at some speck upon it which, unnoticed at first, ended by ' catching our eye ' . Thus whenever an image falling on the point P of the retina excites attention, it more habitually moves from that point towards the fovea than in any one other direction. The line traced by this motion is not always a straight line. When the direction of the point from the fovea is neither vertical nor horizontal but oblique, the line traced is often a curve, with its concavity directed upwards if the direction is upwards, downwards if the direction is downwards. This may be verified by anyone who will take the trouble to make a simple experiment with a luminous body like a candle-flame in a dark enclosure, or a star. Gazing first at some point remote from the source of light, let the eye be suddenly turned full upon the latter. The luminous image will necessarily fall in succession upon a con- tinuous series of points, reaching from the one first affected to the fovea. But by virtue of the slowness with which retinal excitements die away, the entire series of points will for an instant be visible as an after-image, displaying the above peculiarity of form according to its situation. 1 These radiating lines are neither regular nor invariable in the same person, nor, probably, equally curved in different individuals. We are incessantly drawing them between the fovea and every point of the field of view. Objects remain in their peripheral indistinctness only so long as they are unnoticed. 3 These facts were first noticed by Wundt ; see his Beitrage, p. 140, 202. See also Lamansky, Pflwjer's Archir, xi. 418.