Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/464

 MR. JAMES WARD'S " PSYCHOLOGY ". 463 numerous everyday requirements. While many of them serve the purposes of the hour and pass out of view for ever, some are on the way to become permanent possessions of the mind : all our fixed recollections must needs pass through this stage. Next follows the thorny subject of the Law of Relativity, against which in its unqualified sense Mr. Ward advances various objections, some of them exceedingly cogent. That transition or difference is a commanding element of our con- sciousness is shown in numerous instances : passing from cold to heat, dark to light, down to up, weakness to power, fear to security, poverty to wealth, familiarity to surprise. The practical bearing of such cases is this : a present state affects us only with reference to a prior ; the hand immersed in w r ater at 60 may have a very different actual sensation according to its previous contact. Taken out of water at 40 the sensation will be warmth, out of 90 it will be cold- ness. So with light : going out of a bright light into a comparative shade we at first consider ourselves in total darkness ; as the previous impression dies away, we begin to see objects more and more clearly. Animals living in an even temperature never have any sensation of heat or cold. The pressure of the air is unfelt by us until we change its degree. Mr. Ward remarks, what will not be denied, that the transition may be from a neutral temperature ; but that makes no difference to the principle of change. The obstacle to the universality of the principle arises when we pass from difference of intensity to difference of quality in the same class of sensations, as sweet and bitter in taste, or red and blue in colour. Taking degrees of sweetness, a present sweet might seem different according to its preceding sensa- tion, but it has a certain fixity of character under every possible antecedent ; there is a limitation to the changes that relativity can induce. The previous state does not entirely make it, and yet operates to modify it. So with colours. Red has an absolute character, whether pre- ceded by light, dark, blue, yellow. Nevertheless there is a certain slight variation of quality, according to the previous state, as might be shown in the judgment of the exact shade. Probably the permanent image of a given red is altered by a large experience of colours, with which it has to be brought into contrast from time to time, while logically its meaning is increased by the number of exclusions or negations corresponding to its affirmation. Mr. Ward further puts the case of sensations of different senses, where the relativity is still more remote, although doubt-