Page:Immanuel Kant - Dreams of a Spirit-Seer - tr. Emanuel Fedor Goerwitz (1900).djvu/97

 Rh is perceived to some extent, even if the sound is low and comes from the back, and although the lines drawn from such a position do not strike the opening of the ear, but other places of the head. This makes one believe that the soul continues the lines of vibration externally in imagination, and places the sounding object in their meeting-point. The same can, in my opinion, be predicated of the other three senses, differing from sight and hearing in this respect that the object of sensation is in immediate contact with the organs of these other senses, and the lines indicating the place of the organic stimulus find in the organs themselves their meeting-point.

In applying this to the pictures of imagination, permitme to take as basis the hypothesis of Cartesius, approved of by most of the philosophers after him, that all representations of the imagination are accompanied by certain movements in the nerve-tissue or nerve-spirit of the brain, which movements are called "ideae mateiiales"'; i.e., these representations are, perhaps, accompanied by the concussion or vibration of the fine element secreted by these nerve-tissues. This vibration is similar to the movements which the sense-impression might produce, and of which the nerve-vibration is a copy. But now I must ask that if it be granted that the principal difference between the nerve-movements in fantasies, and in sensations, consists in the fact that, with fantasies, the lines indicating the direction of the movement meet inside of the brain, while in sensation they meet outside; then, since the focus imaginarius in which the objects are