Page:Russell - An outline of philosophy.pdf/33

Rh to our environment; it is therefore necessary first of all to consider the nature of these reactions as they appear in science.

Let us take some everyday situation. Suppose you are watching a race, and at the appropriate moment you say, "They're off". This exclamation is a reaction to the environment, and is taken to show knowledge if it is made at the same time as others make it. Now let us consider what has been really happening, according to science. The complication of what has happened is almost incredible. It may conveniently be divided into four stages: first, what happened in the outside world between the runners and your eyes; secondly, what happened in your body from your eyes to your brain; thirdly, what happened in your brain; fourthly, what happened in your body from your brain to the movements of your throat and tongue which constituted your exclamation. Of these four stages, the first belongs to physics, and is dealt with in the main by the theory of light; the second and fourth belong to physiology; the third, though it should theoretically also belong to physiology, belongs in fact rather to psychology, owing to our lack of knowledge as to the brain. The third stage embodies the results of experience and learning. It is responsible for the fact that you speak, which an animal would not do, and that you speak English, which a Frenchman would not do. This immensely complicated occurrence is, nevertheless, about the simplest example of knowledge that could possibly be given.

For the moment, let us leave on one side the part of this process which happens in the outside world and belongs to physics. I shall have much to say about it later, but what has to be said is not altogether easy, and we will take less abstruse matters first. I will merely observe that the event which we are said to perceive, namely, the runners starting, is separated by a longer or shorter chain of events from the event which happens at the surface of our eyes. It is this last that is what is called the "stimulus". Thus the event that we are said to perceive when we see is not the stimulus,