Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/552

 THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. (IV.) 539 mean when we say that one of the colours is outside [beside] the other." 1 Whence does the extension come which gets so insepar- ably associated with these non-extended coloured sensations? From the " sweep and movements " of the eye from muscular feelings. But, as Prof. Bain says, if movement- feelings give us any property of things, " it would seem to be not space, but time". 2 And John Mill says that "the idea of space is, at bottom, one of time ". 3 Space then is not to be found in any elementary sensation, but, in Bain's words, " as a quality, it has no other origin and no other meaning than the association of these different [non-spatial] motor and sensitive effects ". 4 This phrase is mystical-sounding enough to one who understands association as producing nothing, but only as knitting together things already produced in separate ways. The truth is that the English Associationist school, in trying to show how much their principle can accomplish, have altogether overshot the mark and espoused a kind of theory in respect to space-perception which the general tenor of their philosophy should lead them to abhor. Really there are but three possible kinds of theory concerning space. Either (1) there is no spatial quality of sensation at all, and space is a mere symbol of succession ; or (2) there is a quality given immediately in certain particular sensations ; or, finally (3), there is a quality produced out of the inward resources of the mind, to envelop sensations which, as given originally, are not spatial, but which, on being cast into the spatial form, become united and orderly. This last is the Kantian view. Stumpf admirably designates it as the " psychic stimulus " theory, the crude sensations being con- sidered as goads to the mind to put forth its slumbering power. Brown, the Mills and Bain, amid these possibilities, seem to have gone astray like lost sheep. With the " mental chemistry " of which the Mills speak precisely the same thing as the " psychical synthesis " of Wundt, which, as we shall soon see, is a principle expressly intended to do what Association can never perform they hold the third view, but again in other places imply the first. And, between the impossibility of getting from mere association anything not 1 Examination of Hamilton, 3rd eel., p. 283. 2 Senses and Intellect, 3rd ed., p. 183. 3 Exam, of Hamilton, 3rd ed., p. 283. 4 Senses and Intellect, p. 372.