Page:Philosophical Review Volume 9.djvu/558

542 sometimes deeply tinged, with emotion. By the unconscious factor in creative imagination Professor Ribot means all that is meant by the popular term 'inspiration.' Inspiration has two outstanding characteristics, suddenness and impersonality. In order to explain these characteristics Professor Ribot accepts the theory of mediate association, first propounded by Hamilton, and which, among the experimental psychologists, has been accepted by Scripture and denied by Münsterberg. Not only may we have single unconscious mediating ideas, but we may have groups of them. The influence of these groups upon our conscious states make it impossible for us to previse at any one time what path our conscious association will next take. It is in this absence of prevision that the impersonal and sudden character of inspiration consists.

In these three factors, then, we have the analysis of the creative imagination. Their principle of unity is to be found in focalized attention, a state of relative monoideism, which on the intellectual side becomes the fixed idea, and on the affective side the fixed emotion, or passion.

This is a record of experiments upon eye movements in reading, reading pauses, word perception, and the extent of the reading field. In considering eye-movements, the researches of Javal, Lamare, Landolt, and Erdmann and Dodge are briefly reviewed. The author's own experiments aimed to supplement and check the findings of these earlier investigators by the aid of a more efficient technique. The results show that in nearly all cases the eye moves over the matter read line by line. The eye seldom moves along the whole extent of the line, and the first fixation is usually nearer the beginning of the line than the last is to the end. The forward movements of the eye occupy a tolerably constant time almost irrespective of the arc traversed. As a rule the return movements are without a break. There is nothing to indicate that the rate of movement is under the control of the will. Regarding movement pauses, passages read at a maximum speed show a decrease in the length of the reading pause, and, as speed of movement is not increased it would seem that increase in speed of reading is brought about chiefly by decreasing the number of reading pauses. In considering word perception and the extent of the visual field, brief reference is made to the earlier work of Cattell, Goldscheider and Mueller, Griffing and Franz, and Quantz. Huey's preliminary experiments show that the first half of the word is much more important for word perception than the last half. In his later work he attempted to determine the extent of the matter which can be read at one fixation. Cattell's fall-tachistoscope was used in these experiments, and the time of exposure was in the vicinity of 0.01 sec. The author proposes to outline a word and phrase perception theory as opposed to a letter perception theory in a subsequent paper.