Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/209

 196 w. JAMES : sentatives of one real one, through the intermediation of an object judged to be the same in all, so we shall now find that the continuity and identity of the different sense-spaces rest on the same objective judgment. This is what gives order to the chaos. Any group of different feelings always experienced (or at will to be experienced) together, are simplified by the mind's holding them for so many attributes or aspects of the same outer reality which reality is always held to be represented by one of them more truly and essentially than by the rest. Space-feelings follow this law. If two or more sensible spaces always do or alv:ays may occur at the same time or vary concomi- tantly, we take them for two modes of appearance of the same real space. That one whose content is most interesting is judged to be the truest representative of this, the others become its mere asso- ciates, properties or signs. 1 Thus, when a baby looks at its own moving hand, its retina gets a certain movement-feeling whilst its hand and arm become the seat of another movement-feeling. The baby holds the two movements to occupy the same space. The result is that the arm-space, more interesting than the retinal space by reason of the important skin-sensations to which it may lead, and therefore judged more real, is equated with a certain part of the retinal space, which, in becoming its sign, fixes to a certain extent the absolute space-values of the rest of the retinal field. Suppose the baby learning to locate the pain of a blister in his toe by exploring his leg with his finger-tip and feeling the pain shoot up sharply the instant the blister is touched. The experiment gives him four different kinds of sensation two of them protracted, two sudden. The first pair are the movement-feeling in the joints of the upper limb, and the movement-feeling on the skin of the leg and foot. These, as concomitantly experienced, are identified in their totalities as appearances of one objective space the hand is judged to move through the same space in which the leg lies. The second pair are the pain in the blister, and the peculiar feel- ing the blister gives to the finger. Both these can be -repro- duced at will by repeating the movement their spaces also fuse ; and as each marks the end of a peculiar movement- series (arm moved, leg stroked), the movement-spaces are emphatically identified with each other at that end. Were there other small blisters distributed down the leg, there would be a number of these emphatic points ; the movement- 1 Cp. Lipps on " Complication," Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens, p. 579.