Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/400

 386 T. LOVEDAY: is easy, presentation A need not be present as a perception or memory-image simultaneously 1 with B. This is quite plain in ordinary life ; if one is shown first a cabinet photograph and then a life-size painting, the judgment of the latter as ' greater ' seems to 'go off of itself without the presence of a memory-image of the photograph. And on this point most experimenters are agreed. Schumann's verdict has been quoted by Dr. Stout; an equally decisive passage from Wundt may be found in the Phil. Stud., vii., 229, where after opposing Schumann's interpretation of the experiments on the span of consciousness (a difficult point that may be avoided here) he says, ' Bine unmittelbar anschau- liche, d.h. nicht durch successive Addition der Theile und dis- cursive Eeflexion vermittelte, Vergleichung ist moglich und wird in unzahligen Fallen von uns ausgefiihrt, wenn von zwei complexen Vorstellungen A und B nur jede fur sich als ein simultanes ganzes im Bewusstsein war,' and the condition that A and B should be present at once is ' nicht erforderlich '. The passage refers to complex ideas only, but the principle may be applied throughout. It would perhaps be better to avoid the word Comparison alto- gether in these cases, except that a term is not easy to find which shall cover not only the cases where we judge 'different' but those where we assign a position. (2) As decision grows more difficult the mental process grows more complex, and finally I at least find a memory-image very necessary. Only it is not always a memory-image of A itself, but of something that does duty for A. This is a possibility which Dr. Stout has not men- tioned. It can hardly be doubted that the mind does not always take the high road to its end ; very often a by-path is preferred, and that perhaps not always a short cut. For example, in com- paring two sound intensities A and B which are near the differ- ence-threshold and do not follow one another so rapidly as to fall within one apprehension, I generally make use of a memory-image, not of the sound A, but of what I can only describe as the total ' shock ' or impression produced on me by that sound. This shock is one of those experiences that are more easily verified by the reader in himself than analysed ; it is not a simple sensation nor a simple feeling (certainly not a feeling of the pleasure-unpleasure series), but as it is ascribed to the subject only and not at all to the object it should perhaps be called a complex feeling. It may be asked whether this shock is compared with B simply or with 1 It might be argued that A and B cannot be present in consciousness absolutely simultaneously and yet be recognisably two. But this is a confusion of consciousness with the ' Rlirkpunkt '. Attention is fully fixed only on A or B at once, but so far as may be it remains master of the other at the same time. Of. Stout, An. Psych., vol. ii., p. 165 ; Wundt, Logik, vol. i., p. 58. But it is curious to notice that in some comparisons of spatial figures or forms e.g., of lines there seenis to be something like superposition. In these cases attention is mainly fixed on the difference.