Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/704

688 in landscape depends on the connection of self and not-self through the relation of nature to the maintenance of physical and psychical life. Whether the feeling is primary or due to association can be only probably determined, owing to our ignorance of the elements of psychical life. But it seems likely that it has no direct connection with particular sense-experiences in the past, except so far as similarity of colors, space-relations, etc., is necessary to preserve the continuity of presentations. If it were determined by association, the sense of the illimitable would be absent, and agreement of feeling between individuals merely accidental, since the state of each would depend on associations peculiar to himself. We must then suppose that not association but something primary in nerve-structure lies at the root of the sense of significance in landscape, and that the latter depends on a dim and diffused consciousness of the effect of light, air, color, space, in their favorable and unfavorable influences upon life. To the analysis of this state of consciousness our knowledge is, of course, inadequate. This suggests only the universal elements of landscape presentation, which is really the assemblage of sense-perceptions under selective direction of certain subjective factors. These factors are related not chiefly to particular elements of consciousness, as in association, though associative links of course have their part, but rather to the temperament and mood of the observer. Further, the process of landscape-presentation normally converges to a dominant aspect, in most cases connected with the observer's personal activity. This final phase of the scene, in which all the elements are resolved into harmony, may centre round an idea, an event, or a personality.

In the experiments considered, Wundt's question is whether disparate simultaneous impressions can be interpreted as simultaneous, and, if not, how errors should be explained. A bell is rung mechanically at adjustable positions of a pointer moving over a dial, and the subject fixes the location of the hand when the sound is heard. The results are called correct, positive displacements, or negative displacements according as the pointer is seen at, beyond, or before the correct position when the sound is heard. Wundt recorded least errors when the revolutions occurred once a second; faster rate giving a predominance of positive, slower rate, of negative errors. The variations he explains by the changing relation of the rate to the ripening of apperception peculiar to the subject. James interprets the results differently. The subject has to interrupt a continuous sensation of motion by a fleeting perception of