Surprise

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• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  It takes but a moderate effort of observation to ascertain this fact; and from this we may conclude that we have been seeing the far greater part of the external world double all our lives, although numbers of persons are unaware of it, and are in the highest degree astonished when it is brought to their attention. As a matter of fact, we never have seen in this double fashion any particular object upon which our attention was directed at the time; for upon such objects we always converge both eyes. In the habitual use of our eyes, our attention is always withdrawn from such objects as give us double images at the time; this is the reason why we so seldom learn that these images exist. In order to find them we must set our attention a new and unusual task; we must make it explore the lateral parts of the field of vision, not, as usual, to find what objects are there, but to analyze our sensations. Then only do we notice this phenomenon. [428] "The same difficulty which is found in the observation of subjective sensations to which no external object corresponds is found also in the analysis of compound sensations which correspond to a single object. Of this sort are many of our sensations of sound. When the sound of a violin, no matter how often we hear it, excites over and over again in our ear the same sum of partial tones, the result is that our feeling of this sum of tones ends by becoming for our mind a mere sign for the voice of the violin. Another combination of partial tones becomes the sensible sign of the voice of a clarionet, etc. And the oftener any such combination is heard, the more accustomed we grow to perceiving it as an integral total, and the harder it becomes to analyze it by immediate observation. I believe that this is one of the principal reasons why the analysis of the notes of the human voice in singing is relatively so difficult. Such fusions of many sensations into what, to conscious perception, seems a simple whole, abound in all our senses. "Physiological optics affords other interesting examples.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Janet whispered to the secondary personage to make use of her eyes. The anæsthesias, paralyses, contractions and other irregularities from which hysterics suffer seem then to be due to the fact that their secondary personage has enriched itself by robbing the primary one of a function which the latter ought to have retained. The curative indication is evident: get at the secondary personage, by hypnotization or in whatever other way, and make her give up the eye, the skin, the arm, or whatever the affected part may be. The normal self thereupon regains possession, sees, feels, or is able to move again. In this way M. Jules Janet easily cured the well-known subject of the Salpétrière, Wit., of all sorts of afflictions which, until he discovered the secret of her deeper trance, it had been difficult to subdue. "Cessez cette mauvaise plaisanterie," he said to the secondary self—and the latter obeyed. The way in which the various personages share the stock of possible sensations between them seems to be amusingly illustrated in this young woman. When awake, her skin is insensible everywhere except on a zone about the arm where she habitually wears a gold bracelet. This zone has feeling; but in the deepest trance, when all the rest of her body feels, this particular zone becomes absolutely anæsthetic. Sometimes the mutual ignorance of the selves leads to incidents which are strange enough. The acts and movements performed by the sub-conscious self are withdrawn from the conscious one, and the subject will do all sorts of incongruous things of which he remains quite unaware. "I order Lucie [by the method of distraction] to make a pied de nez, and her hands go forthwith to the end of her nose. Asked what she is doing, she replies that she is doing nothing, and continues for a long time talking, with no apparent suspicion that her fingers are moving in front of her nose. I make her walk about the room; she continues to speak and believes herself sitting down." M. Janet observed similar acts in a man in alcoholic delirium. Whilst the doctor was questioning him, M. J. made him by whispered suggestion walk, sit, kneel, and even lie down on his face on the floor, he all the while believing himself to be standing beside his bed. Such bizarreries sound incredible, until one has seen their like. Long ago, without understanding it, I myself saw a small example of the way in which a person's knowledge may be shared by the two selves. A young woman who had been writing automatically was sitting with a pencil in her hand, trying to recall at my request the name of a gentleman whom she had once seen. She could only recollect the first syllable. Her hand meanwhile, without her knowledge, wrote down the last two syllables.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  In certain individuals there was found a still odder phenomenon, which reminds one of that curious idiosyncrasy of 'colored hearing' of which a few cases have been lately described with great care by foreign writers. These individuals, namely, saw the impression received by the hand, but could not feel it; and the thing seen appeared by no means associated with the hand, but more like an independent vision, which usually interested and surprised the patient. Her hand being hidden by a screen, she was ordered to look at another screen and to tell of any visual image which might project itself thereon. Numbers would then come, corresponding to the number of times the insensible member was raised, touched, etc. Colored lines and figures would come, corresponding to similar ones traced on the palm; the hand itself or its fingers would come when manipulated; and finally objects placed in it would come; but on the hand itself nothing would ever be felt. Of course simulation would not be hard here; but M. Binet disbelieves this (usually very shallow) explanation to be a probable one in cases in question. [202] The usual way in which doctors measure the delicacy of our touch is by the compass-points. Two points are normally felt as one whenever they are too close together for discrimination; but what is 'too close' on one part of the skin may seem very far apart on another. In the middle of the back or on the thigh, less than 3 inches may be too close; on the finger-tip a tenth of an inch is far enough apart. Now, as tested in this way, with the appeal made to the primary consciousness, which talks through the mouth and seems to hold the field alone, a certain person's skin may be entirely anæsthetic and not feel the compass-points at all; and yet this same skin will prove to have a perfectly normal sensibility if the appeal be made to that other secondary or sub-consciousness, which expresses itself automatically by writing or by movements of the hand. M. Binet, M. Pierre Janet, and M. Jules Janet have all found this. The subject, whenever touched, would signify 'one point' or 'two points,' as accurately as if she were a normal person. She would signify it only by these movements; and of the movements themselves her primary self would be as unconscious as of the facts they signified, for what the submerged consciousness makes the hand do automatically is unknown to the consciousness which uses the mouth.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  They steal my spoons, my silver spoons, that's what happened, Wunderlich, and I'm going to the Trave!'" "Well, I'm holding our friend, I say what is said in such cases, 'Courage,' I say, 'Darling!' and 'Everything will be fine!' conjure her, and let's go!' And I lead her up the street to her house. Upstairs in the dining-room we find the militia, as Madame is leaving them, about twenty men busy with the big chest where the silverware is.” “'Who of you can I consult with,' I ask politely, 'gentlemen?' Well, you start laughing and call out: 'All of us, Papa!' But then someone steps forward and introduces himself, a human being , who is as long as a tree, with a mustache waxed black and big red hands sticking out of the covered lapels. 'Lenoir,' he says and salutes with his left, for in his right he holds a bundle of five or six silver spoons, 'Lenoir, Sergeant. What does the Lord want?'” “'Mr. Officer!' I say, aiming for the point d'honneur . 'Should dealing with these things be compatible with your brilliant batch?... The city has not closed itself off to the Emperor...' - 'What do you want?' he replies. 'This is the war! People need crockery like that...'" “'You should be considerate,' I interrupted him, because a thought occurred to me. 'This lady,' I say, because what doesn't one say in such a situation, 'the lady of the house, she's not German, she's almost your compatriot, she's French...' - 'What, a French lady?' he repeats. And what do you think this long warhorse adds? – 'An emigrant, then?' he says. 'But then she is an enemy of philosophy!'" “I'm flabbergasted, but I'm choking back my laughter. 'You are,' I say, 'a man of brains, I see. I repeat that it does not seem worthy of you to concern yourself with these matters!' - He is silent for a moment; But then, suddenly, he blushes, he throws his six spoons into the chest and calls out: 'But who's to tell you that I intended anything else with these things than to look at them a little?! Pretty stuff that! If one or the other of the people should take a piece with them as a souvenir...'" "Well, they still took enough souvenirs with them, there was no appeal to human or divine justice... They probably knew no other god than this horrible little human..." Fifth Chapter "You saw him, Herr Pastor?" The plates were changed again. A colossal brick-red breaded ham appeared, smoked, boiled, with brown sour chalote sauce, and such quantities of vegetables that everyone could have eaten their fill from a single bowl. Lebrecht Kröger did the carving. Elbows casually raised, long forefingers stretched straight across the back of the knife and fork, he carefully sliced down the succulent chunks. Consul Buddenbrook's masterpiece, the »Russian pot«, a sparkling and spirited mixture of preserved fruits, was also served.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  "Who, besides, would believe without performing the appropriate experiments, that when one of his eyes is closed there is a great gap, the so-called 'blind spot,' not far from the middle of the field of the open eye, in which he sees nothing at all, but which he fills out with his imagination? Mariotte, who was led by theoretic speculations to discover this phenomenon, awakened no small surprise when he showed it at the court of Charles II. of England. The experiment was at that time repeated with many variations, and became a fashionable amusement. The gap is, in fact, so large that seven full moons alongside of each other would not cover its diameter, and that a man's face 6 or 7 feet off disappears within it. In our ordinary use of vision this great hole in the field fails utterly to be noticed; because our eyes are constantly wandering, and the moment an object interests us we turn them full upon it. So it follows that the object which at any actual moment excites our attention never happens to fall upon this gap, and thus it is that we never grow conscious of the blind spot in the field. In order to notice it, we must first purposely rivet our gaze upon one object and then move about a second object in the neighborhood of the blind spot, striving meanwhile to attend to this latter without moving the direction of our gaze from the first object. This runs counter to all our habits, and is therefore a difficult thing to accomplish. With some people it is even an impossibility. But only when it is accomplished do we see the second object vanish and convince ourselves of the existence of this gap. "Finally, let me refer to the double images of ordinary binocular vision. Whenever we look at a point with both eyes, all objects on this side of it or beyond appear double. It takes but a moderate effort of observation to ascertain this fact; and from this we may conclude that we have been seeing the far greater part of the external world double all our lives, although numbers of persons are unaware of it, and are in the highest degree astonished when it is brought to their attention. As a matter of fact, we never have seen in this double fashion any particular object upon which our attention was directed at the time; for upon such objects we always converge both eyes. In the habitual use of our eyes, our attention is always withdrawn from such objects as give us double images at the time; this is the reason why we so seldom learn that these images exist. In order to find them we must set our attention a new and unusual task; we must make it explore the lateral parts of the field of vision, not, as usual, to find what objects are there, but to analyze our sensations.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  A friend writes me: "We were driving back from——in a wagonette. The door flew open and X., alias 'Baldy,' fell out on the road. We pulled up at once, and then he said, 'Did anybody fall out?' or 'Who fell out?'—I don't exactly remember the words. When told that Baldy fell out, he said, 'Did Baldy fall out? Poor Baldy!'" [245] Kant originated this view. I subjoin a few English statements of it. J. Ferrier, Institutes of Metaphysic, Proposition I: "Along with whatever any intelligence knows it must, as the ground or condition of its knowledge, have some knowledge of itself.: Sir Wm. Hamilton, Discussions, p. 47: "We know, and we know that we know,—these propositions, logically distinct, are really identical; each implies the other. . . . So true is the scholastic brocard: non sentimus nisi sentiamus nos sentire." H. L. Mansel, Metaphysics, p. 58: "Whatever variety of materials may exist within reach of my mind, I can become conscious of them only by recognizing them as mine. . . . Relation to the conscious self is thus the permanent and universal feature which every state of consciousness as such must exhibit." T. H. Green, Introduction to Hume, p. 12: "A consciousness by the man . . . of himself, in negative relation to the thing that is his object, and this consciousness must be taken to go along with the perceptive act itself. Not less than this indeed can be involved in any act that is to be the beginning of knowledge at all. It is the minimum of possible thought or intelligence." [246] Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Lecture 45. [247] Instead of saying to our feeling only, he should have said, to the object only. [248] "There can be no difficulty in admitting that association does form the ideas of an indefinite number of individuals into one complex idea; because it is an acknowledged fact. Have we not the idea of an army? And is not that precisely the ideas of an indefinite number of men formed into one idea?" (Jas. Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind (J. S. Mill's Edition, vol. I. p. 264) [249] For their arguments, see above pp. [158-162] [Classics Editor's Note: The page numbers do not appear in the Dover edition.] [250] I know there are readers whom nothing can convince that the thought of a complex object has not as many parts as are discriminated in the object itself. Well, then, let the word parts pass. Only observe that these parts are not the separate 'ideas' of traditional psychology. No one of them can live out of that particular thought, any more than my head can live off of my particular shoulders. In a sense a soap-bubble has parts; it is a sum of juxtaposed spherical triangles. But these triangles are not separate realities; neither are the 'parts' of the thought separate realities. Touch the bubble and the triangles are no more.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  In this way every idea takes a certain time to penetrate to the focus of consciousness. And during this time we always find in ourselves the peculiar feeling of attention. . . . The phenomena show that an adaptation of attention to the impression takes place. The surprise which unexpected impressions give us is due essentially to the fact that our attention, at the moment when the impression occurs, is not accommodated for it. The accommodation itself is of the double sort, relating as it does to the intensity as well as to the quality of the stimulus. Different qualities of impression require disparate adaptations. And we remark that our feeling of the strain of our inward attentiveness increases with every increase in the strength of the impressions of whose perceptions we are intent."[362] The natural way of conceiving all this is under the symbolic form of a brain-cell played upon from two directions. Whilst the object excites it from without, other brain-cells, or perhaps spiritual forces, arouse it from within. The latter influence is the 'adaptation of the attention.' The plenary energy of the brain-cell demands the co-operation of both factors : not when merely present, but when both present and attended to, is the object fully perceived. A few additional experiences will now be perfectly clear. Helmholtz, for instance, adds this observation to the passage we quoted a while ago concerning the stereoscopic pictures lit by the electric spark. "These experiments," he says, "are interesting as regards the part which attention plays in the matter of double images. . . . For in pictures so simple that it is relatively difficult for me to see them double, I can succeed in seeing them double, even when the illumination is only instantaneous, the moment I strive to imagine in a lively way how they ought then to look . The influence of attention is here pure; for all eye movements are shut out."[363] In another place[364] the same writer says: "When I have before my eyes a pair of stereoscopic drawings which are hard to combine, it is difficult to bring the lines and points that correspond, to cover each other, and with every little motion of the eyes they glide apart. But if I chance to gain a lively mental image (Anschauungsbild ) of the represented solid form (a thing that often occurs by lucky chance), I then move my two eyes with perfect certainty over the figure without the picture separating again."

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  As concentrated attention accelerates perception, so, conversely, perception of a stimulus is retarded by anything which either baffles or distracts the attention with which we await it. "If, e.g., we make reactions on a sound in such a way that weak and strong stimuli irregularly alternate so that the observer can never expect a determinate strength with any certainty, the reaction-time for all for various signals is increased,—and so is the average error. I append two examples. . . . In Series I a strong and a weak sound alternated regularly, so that the intensity was each time known in advance. In II they came irregularly. [image file=Image00038.jpg] "Still greater is the increase of the time when, unexpectedly into a series of strong impressions, a weak one is interpolated, or vice versâ . In this way I have seen the time of reaction upon a sound so weak as to be barely perceived rise to 0.4" or 0.5", and for a strong sound to 0.25". It is also matter of general experience that a stimulus expected in a general way, but for whose intensity attention cannot be adapted in advance, demands a longer reaction-time. In such cases . . . the reason for the difference can only lie in the fact that wherever a preparation of the attention is impossible, the time of both perception and volition is prolonged. Perhaps also the conspicuously large reaction-times which are got with stimuli so faint as to be just perceptible may be explained by the attention tending always to adapt itself for something more than this minimal amount of stimulus, so that a state ensues similar to that in the case of unexpected stimuli. . . . Still more than by previously unknown stimuli is the reaction-time prolonged by wholly unexpected impressions. This is sometimes accidentally brought about, when the observer's attention, instead of being concentrated on the coming signal, is dispersed. It can be realized purposely by suddenly thrusting into a long series of equidistant stimuli a much shorter interval which the observer does not expect. The mental effect here is like that of being startled;—often the startling is outwardly visible. The time of reaction may then easily be lengthened to one quarter of a second with strong signals, or with weak ones to a half-second. Slighter, but still very noticeable, is the retardation when the experiment is so arranged that the observer, ignorant whether the stimulus is to be an impression of light, sound, or touch, cannot keep his attention turned to any particular sense-organ in advance. One notices then at the same time a peculiar unrest, as the feeling of strain which accompanies the attention keeps vacillating between the several senses.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  One may state this abstractly thus: If an act require for its execution a chain, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc., of successive nervous events, then in the first performances of the action the conscious will must choose each of these events from a number of wrong alternatives that tend to present themselves; but habit soon brings it about that each event calls up its own appropriate successor without any alternative offering itself, and without any reference to the conscious will, until at last the whole chain, A , B , C , D , E , F , G , rattles itself off as soon as A occurs, just as if A and the rest of the chain were fused into a continuous stream. When we are learning to walk, to ride, to swim, skate, fence, write, play, or sing, we interrupt ourselves at every step by unnecessary movements and false notes. When we are proficients, on the contrary, the results not only follow with the very minimum of muscular action requisite to bring them forth, they also follow from a single instantaneous 'cue.' The marksman sees the bird, and, before he knows it, he has aimed and shot. A gleam in his adversary's eye, a momentary pressure from his rapier, and the fencer finds that he has instantly made the right parry and return. A glance at the musical hieroglyphics, and the pianist's fingers have ripped through a cataract of notes. And not only is it the right thing at the right time that we thus involuntarily do, but the wrong thing also, if it be an habitual thing. Who is there that has never wound up his watch on taking off his waistcoat in the daytime, or taken his latchkey out on arriving at the door-step of a friend? Very absent-minded persons in going to their bedroom to dress for dinner have been known to take off one garment after another and finally to get into bed, merely because that was the habitual issue of the first few movements when performed at a later hour. The writer well remembers how, on revisiting Paris after ten years' absence, and, finding himself in the street in which for one winter he had attended school, he lost himself in a brown study, from which he was awakened by finding himself upon the stairs which led to the apartment in a house many streets away in which he had lived during that earlier time, and to which his steps from the school had then habitually led. We all of us have a definite routine manner of performing certain daily offices connected with the toilet, with the opening and shutting of familiar cupboards, and the like. Our lower centres know the order of these movements, and show their knowledge by their 'surprise' if the objects are altered so as to oblige the movement to be made in a different way.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  He learned lists of meaningless syllables by heart, and tested his recollection of them from day to day. He could not remember more than 7 after a single reading. It took, however, 16 readings to remember 12, 44 readings to remember 24, and 55 readings to remember 26 syllables, the moment of 'remembering' being here reckoned as the first moment when the list could be recited without a fault. [592] When a 16-syllable list was read over a certain number of times on one day, and then studied on the day following until remembered, it was found that the number of seconds saved in the study on the second day was proportional to the number of readings on the first—proportional, that is, within certain rather narrow limits, for which see the text. [593] No amount of repetition spent on nonsense-verses over a certain length enabled Dr. Ebbinghaus to retain them without error for 24 hours. In forgetting such things as these lists of syllables, the loss goes on very much more rapidly at first than later on. He measured the loss by the number of seconds required to relearn the list after it had been once learned. Roughly speaking, if it took a thousand seconds to learn the list, and five hundred to relearn it, the loss between the two learnings would have been one half. Measured in this way, full half of the forgetting seems to occur within the first half-hour, whilst only four fifths is forgotten at the end of a month. The nature of this result might have been anticipated, but hardly its numerical proportions. Dr. Ebbinghaus says: "The initial rapidity, as well as the final slowness, as these were ascertained under certain experimental conditions and for a particular individual, . . . may well surprise us. An hour after the work of learning had ceased, forgetting was so far advanced that more than half of the original work had to be applied again before the series of syllables could once more be reproduced. Eight hours later two thirds of the original labor had to be applied. Gradually, however, the process of oblivion grew slower, so that even for considerable stretches of time the losses were but barely ascertainable. After 24 hours a third, after 6 days a fourth, and after a whole month a good fifth of the original labor remain in the shape of its after-effects, and made the relearning by so much the more speedy." [594] But the most interesting result of all those reached by this author relates to the question whether ideas are recalled only by those that previously came immediately before them, or whether an idea can possibly recall another idea with which it was never in immediate contact, without passing through the intermediate mental links. The question is of theoretic importance with regard to the way in which the process of 'association of ideas' must be conceived; and Dr.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  In certain cases this is evidently so; the throwing of certain functional brain-tracts out of gear with others, so as to dissociate their consciousness from that of the remaining brain, throws them out for both sensorial and ideational service. M. Janet proved in various ways that what his patients forgot when anæsthetic they remembered when the sensibility returned. For instance, he restored their tactile sense temporarily by means of electric currents, passes, etc., and then made them handle various objects, such as keys and pencils, or make particular movements, like the sign of the cross. The moment the anæsthesia returned they found it impossible to recollect the objects or the acts. 'They had had nothing in their hands, they had done nothing,' etc. The next day, however, sensibility being again restored by similar processes, they remembered perfectly the circumstance, and told what they had handled or had done. All these pathological facts are showing us that the sphere of possible recollection may be wider than we think, and that in certain matters apparent oblivion is no proof against possible recall under other conditions. They give no countenance, however, to the extravagant opinion that nothing we experience can be absolutely forgotten. In real life, in spite of occasional surprises, most of what happens actually is forgotten. The only reasons for supposing that if the conditions were forthcoming everything would revive are of a transcendental sort. Sir Wm. Hamilton quotes and adopts them from the German writer Schmid. Knowledge being a 'spontaneous self-energy' on the part of the mind, "this energy being once determined, it is natural that it should persist, until again annihilated by other causes. This [annihilation] would be the case, were the mind merely passive. . . . But the mental activity, the act of knowledge, of which I now speak, is more than this; it is an energy of the self-active power of a subject one and indivisible: consequently a part of the ego must be detached or annihilated, if a cognition once existent be again extinguished. Hence it is that the problem most difficult of solution is not, how a mental activity endures, but how it ever vanishes." [600] Those whom such an argument persuades may be left happy with their belief. Other positive argument there is none, none certainly of a physiological sort. [601] When memory begins to decay, proper names are what go first, and at all times proper names are harder to recollect than those of general properties and classes of things. This seems due to the fact that common qualities and names have contracted an infinitely greater number of associations in our mind than the names of most of the persons whom we know. Their memory is better organized.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  The curative indication is evident: get at the secondary personage, by hypnotization or in whatever other way, and make her give up the eye, the skin, the arm, or whatever the affected part may be. The normal self thereupon regains possession, sees, feels, or is able to move again. In this way M. Jules Janet easily cured the well-known subject of the Salpétrière, Wit., of all sorts of afflictions which, until he discovered the secret of her deeper trance, it had been difficult to subdue. "Cessez cette mauvaise plaisanterie ," he said to the secondary self—and the latter obeyed. The way in which the various personages share the stock of possible sensations between them seems to be amusingly illustrated in this young woman. When awake, her skin is insensible everywhere except on a zone about the arm where she habitually wears a gold bracelet. This zone has feeling; but in the deepest trance, when all the rest of her body feels, this particular zone becomes absolutely anæsthetic. Sometimes the mutual ignorance of the selves leads to incidents which are strange enough. The acts and movements performed by the sub-conscious self are withdrawn from the conscious one, and the subject will do all sorts of incongruous things of which he remains quite unaware. "I order Lucie [by the method of distraction ] to make a pied de nez , and her hands go forthwith to the end of her nose. Asked what she is doing, she replies that she is doing nothing, and continues for a long time talking, with no apparent suspicion that her fingers are moving in front of her nose. I make her walk about the room; she continues to speak and believes herself sitting down." M. Janet observed similar acts in a man in alcoholic delirium. Whilst the doctor was questioning him, M. J. made him by whispered suggestion walk, sit, kneel, and even lie down on his face on the floor, he all the while believing himself to be standing beside his bed. Such bizarreries sound incredible, until one has seen their like. Long ago, without understanding it, I myself saw a small example of the way in which a person's knowledge may be shared by the two selves. A young woman who had been writing automatically was sitting with a pencil in her hand, trying to recall at my request the name of a gentleman whom she had once seen. She could only recollect the first syllable. Her hand meanwhile, without her knowledge, wrote down the last two syllables. In a perfectly healthy young man who can write with the planchette, I lately found the hand to be entirely anæsthetic during the writing act; I could prick it severely without the Subject knowing the fact. The writing on the planchette , however, accused me in strong terms of hurting the hand.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  This added consciousness is an absolutely positive sort of feeling, transforming what would otherwise be mere noise or vision into something understood ; and determining the sequel of my thinking, the later words and images, in a perfectly definite way. We saw in Chapter IX that the image per se , the nucleus, is functionally the least important part of the thought. Our doctrine, therefore, of the 'fringe' leads to a perfectly satisfactory decision of the nominalistic and conceptualistic controversy , so far as it touches psychology. We must decide in favor of the conceptualists , and affirm that the power to think things, qualities, relations, or whatever other elements there may be, isolated and abstracted from the total experience in which they appear, is the most indisputable function of our thought. UNIVERSALS. After abstractions, universals! The 'fringe,' which lets us believe in the one, lets us believe in the other too. An individual conception is of something restricted, in its application, to a single case. A universal or general conception is of an entire class, or of something belonging to an entire class, of things. The conception of an abstract quality is, taken by itself, neither universal nor particular.[394] If I abstract white from the rest of the wintry landscape this morning, it is a perfectly definite conception, a self-identical quality which I may mean again; but, as I have not yet individualized it by expressly meaning to restrict it to this particular snow, nor thought at all of the possibility of other things to which it may be applicable, it is so far nothing but a 'that,' a 'floating adjective,' as Mr. Bradley calls it, or a topic broken out from the rest of the world. Properly it is, in this state, a singular—I have 'singled it out;' and when, later, I universalize or individualize its application, and my thought turns to mean either this white or all possible whites, I am in reality meaning two new things and forming two new conceptions.[395] Such an alteration of my meaning has nothing to do with any change in the image I may have in my mental eye, but solely with the vague consciousness that surrounds the image, of the sphere to which it is intended to apply. We can give no more definite account of this vague consciousness than has been given on pp. 166-176. But that is no reason for denying its presence.[396] But the nominalists and traditional conceptualists find matter for an inveterate quarrel in these simple facts. Full of their notion that an idea, feeling, or state of consciousness can at bottom only be aware of its own quality; and agreeing, as they both do, that such an idea or state of consciousness is a perfectly determinate, singular, and transitory thing; they find it impossible to conceive how it should become the vehicle of a knowledge of anything permanent or universal.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Now I say of these time-parts that we cannot take any one of them so short that it will not after some fashion or other be a thought of the whole object 'the pack of cards is on the table.' They melt into each other like dissolving views, and no two of them feel the object just alike, but each feels the total object in a unitary undivided way. This is what I mean by denying that in the thought any parts can be found corresponding to the object's parts. Time-parts are not such parts Now let the vertical dimensions of the figure stand for the objects or contents of the thoughts. A line vertical to any point of the horizontal, as 1-1', will then symbolize the object in the mind at the instant 1; a space above the horizontal, as 1-1'-2'-2, will symbolize all that passes through the mind during the time 1-2 whose line it covers. The entire diagram from 0 to 0' represents a finite length of thought's stream. Can we now define the psychic constitution of each vertical section of this segment? We can, though in a very rough way. Immediately after 0, even before we have opened our mouths to speak, the entire thought is present to our mind in the form of an intention to utter that sentence. This intention, though it has no simple name, and though it is a transitive state immediately displaced by the first word, is yet a perfectly determinate phase of thought, unlike anything else (see p. 168). Again, immediately before 0', after the last word of the sentence is spoken, all will admit that we again think its entire content as we inwardly realize its completed deliverance. All vertical sections made through any other parts of the diagram will be respectively filled with other ways of feeling the sentence's meaning. Through 2, for example, the cards will be the part of the object most emphatically present to the mind; through 4, the table. The stream is made higher in the drawing at its end than at its beginning, because the final way of feeling the content is fuller and richer than the initial way. As Joubert says, "we only know just what we meant to say, after we have said it." And as M. V. Egger remarks, "before speaking, one barely knows what one intends to say, but afterwards one is filled with admiration and surprise at having said and thought it so well." This latter author seems to me to have kept at much closer quarters with the facts than any other analyst of consciousness.[251] But even he does not quite hit the mark, for, as I understand him, he thinks that each word as it occupies the mind displaces the rest of the thought's content.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Dunlop, in his History of Fiction, says that the thirty-fifth novel of the second part of Bandello " is the same story with the plot of the Mysterious Mother of Horace Walpole, and the thirtieth tale of the Queen of Navarre. The first part of this story had already been told in the twenty-third novel of Massuccio. The second part, which relates to the marriage only, occurs in Bandello and the Queen of Navarre. It is not likely, however, that the French or Italian novelists borrowed from one another. The tales of Ban- dello were first published in 1554, and as the Queen of Navarre died in 1549, it is improbable that she had an opportunity of seeing them. On the other hand, the work of the queen was not printed till 1558, nine years after her death, so it is not likely that any part of it was copied by Bandello, whose tales had been edited soma years before. It may therefore be presumed that some current traditions furnished both with the horrible incident they report. Indeed, Bandello declares, in the introduction to the tale, that it happened in Navarre, and was told to him by a lady of that country. In Luther's Colloquia Mensalia, under the article Auricular Confes- 288 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE [Novel 30. Better were it to own their weakness, avoid exposure to temptation, and say to God, like David, " Lord I suffer force : answer for me." " It is impossible to imagine a stranger case," said Oisille. " Methinks there is no man or woman who ought not to humble himself and fear God, seeing hov/ the hope of doing a good thing was so productive of mischief." " Be assured," said Parlamente, "that the first step man takes in self-confidence, removes him so far from the confidence he ought to have ni God." " Man is wise," said Geburon, " when he recognizes no greater enemy than himself, and distrusts his own will and counsel, however good and holy they may seem in his eves." " For no apparent prospect of good to come of it, however great," said Longarine, " should a woman expose herself to share the same bed with a man, however

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Cattell studied the time for various associations to be performed, the termini (i.e., cue and answer) being words. A word in one language was to call up its equivalent in another, the name of an author the tongue in which he wrote, that of a city the country in which it lay, that of a writer one of his works, etc. The mean variation from the average is very great in all these experiments; and the interesting feature which they show is the existence of certain constant differences between associations of different sorts. Thus: The average time of two observers, experimenting on eight different types of association, was 0.420 and 0.436 sec. respectively. [468] The very wide range of variation is undoubtedly a consequence of the fact that the words used as cues, and the different types of association studied, differ much in their degree of familiarity. "For example, B is a teacher of mathematics; C has busied himself more with literature. C knows quite as well as B that 7 + 5 = 12, yet he needs 1/10 of a second longer to call it to mind; B knows quite as well as C that Dante was a poet, but needs 1/20 of a second longer to think of it. Such experiments lay bare the mental life in a way that is startling and not always gratifying." [469] THE LAW OF CONTIGUITY. Time-determinations apart, the facts we have run over can all be summed up in the simple statement that objects once experienced together tend to become associated in the imagination, so that when any one of them is thought of, the others are likely to be thought of also, in the same order of sequence or coexistence as before. This statement we may name the law of mental association by contiguity. [470] I preserve this name in order to depart as little as possible from tradition, although Mr. Ward's designation of the process as that of association by continuity [471] or Wundt's as that of external association (to distinguish it from the internal association which we shall presently learn to know under the name of association by similarity) [472] are perhaps better terms. Whatever we name the law, since it expresses merely a phenomenon of mental habit, the most natural way of accounting for it is to conceive it as a result of the laws of habit in the nervous system; in other words, it is to ascribe it to a physiological cause. If it be truly a law of those nerve-centres which co-ordinate sensory and motor processes together that paths once used for coupling any pair of them are thereby made more permeable, there appears no reason why the same law should not hold good of ideational centres and their coupling-paths as well. [473] Parts of these centres which have once been in action together will thus grow so linked that excitement at one point will irradiate through the system.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Krishaber's book (La Névropathie Cérébro-cardiaque, 1873) is full of similar observations. [305] Sudden alterations in outward fortune often produce such a change in the empirical me as almost to amount to a pathological disturbance of self-consciousness. When a poor man draws the big prize in a lottery, or unexpectedly inherits an estate; when a man high in fame is publicly disgraced, a millionaire becomes a pauper, or a loving husband and father sees his family perish at one fell swoop, there is temporarily such a rupture between all past habits, whether of an active or a passive kind, and the exigencies and possibilities of the new situation, that the individual may find no medium of continuity or association to carry him over from the one phase to the other of his life. Under these conditions mental derangement is no unfrequent result. [306] The number of subjects who can do this with any fertility and exuberance is relatively quite small. [307] First in the Revue Scientifique for May 26, 1876, then in his book, Hypnotisme, Double Conscience, et Altérations de la Personnalité (Paris, 1887). [308] Der Hypnotismus (1884), pp. 109-15. [309] Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, April 4, 1888. Also, less complete, in Harper's Magazine, May 1860. [310] Cf. Ribot's Diseases of Memory for cases. See also a large number of them in Forbes Winslow's Obscure Diseases of the Brain and Mind, chapters XIII—XVII. [311] See the interesting account by M. J. Janet in the Revue Scientifique, May 19, 1888. [312] Variations de la Personnalité (Paris, 1888). [313] Op. cit . p. 84. In this work and in Dr. Azam's (cited on a previous page), as well as in Prof. Th. Ribot's Maladies de la Personnalité (1885), the reader will find information and references relative to the other known cases of the kind. [314] His own brother's subject Wit. . . . , although in her anæsthetic waking state she recollected nothing of either of her trances, yet remembered her deeper trance (in which her sensibilities became perfect—see above, p. 140) when she was in her lighter trance. Nevertheless in the latter she was as anæsthetic as when awake. (Loc. cit. p. 619.)—It does not appear that there was an important difference in the sensibility of Félida X. between her two states—as far as one can judge from M. Azam's account she was to some degree anæsthetic in both (op. cit . pp. 71, 96).—In the case of double personality reported by M. Dufay (Revue Scientifique, vol. XVIII. p. 69), the memory seems to have been best in the more anæsthetic condition.—Hypnotic subjects made blind do not necessarily lose their visual ideas. It appears, then, both that amnesias may occur without anæsthesias, and anæsthesias without amnesias, though they may also occur in combination.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Even today, since the vast majority of wire messages consisted of mere congratulations, every telegram during business hours had to be delivered immediately and under all circumstances. At the entrance to the second floor, the corridor formed a knee, in order to continue in the direction of the length of the hall up to the servants' staircase, where there was a side entrance to the hall. Opposite the stairway to the second floor was the opening to the shaft of the winch, by which the food was brought up from the kitchen, and against the wall stood a larger table, at which the maid used to polish silverware. Here the senator stopped, his back to the hunchbacked apprentice, and vomited the despatch. Suddenly his eyes widened so much that anyone who saw him would have flinched in horror, and with one short, spasmodic jerk he sucked in his breath so violently that in an instant it dried his throat and made him cough. He was able to say, "It's good." But the sound of voices behind him made him unintelligible. "It is good," he repeated; but only the first two words had sound; the last was a whisper. As the senator did not move, did not turn, did not even hint at a backward movement, the hunchbacked apprentice rocked unsteadily and hesitantly from one foot to the other for a moment. Then he performed his bizarre stoop again and went down the servants' staircase. Senator Buddenbrook remained standing at the table. His hands, in which he was holding the unfolded dispatch, hung limp in front of him, and while he was still breathing short, laboriously and rapidly with his mouth half open, his upper body moving back and forth as he worked, he shook, uncomprehendingly and how moved by the stroke, incessantly shaking his head and back. "The little hail... the little hail..." he repeated meaninglessly. But then his breathing became deeper and calmer, the movement of his body slower; his half-closed eyes veiled in a weary and almost broken expression, and with a heavy nod he turned to the side. He opened the door to the hall and entered. Slowly, head bowed, he strode across the wide, reflective floor room and settled down at the back of the window on one of the dark red corner sofas. It was quiet and cool here. The splashing of the fountain in the garden could be heard, a fly buzzed against the window pane, and only a muffled sound reached him from the forecourt. Exhausted, he laid his head on the cushion and closed his eyes. "It's a good thing, it's a good thing," he murmured under his breath; and then, breathing out, satisfied, freed, he repeated again: "It's quite good that way!" With limbs loose and a peaceful expression on his face, he rested for five minutes. Then he sat up, folded the telegram, put it in the breast pocket of his coat, and got up to go to his guests.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life. But now there appears, even within the limits of the same self, and between thoughts all of which alike have this same sense of belonging together, a kind of jointing and separateness among the parts, of which this statement seems to take no account. I refer to the breaks that are produced by sudden contrasts in the quality of the successive segments of the stream of thought. If the words 'chain' and 'train' had no natural fitness in them, how came such words to be used at all? Does not a loud explosion rend the consciousness upon which it abruptly breaks, in twain? Does not every sudden shock, appearance of a new object, or change in a sensation, create a real interruption, sensibly felt as such, which cuts the conscious stream across at the moment at which it appears? Do not such interruptions smite us every hour of our lives, and have we the right, in their presence, still to call our consciousness a continuous stream? This objection is based partly on a confusion and partly on a superficial introspective view. The confusion is between the thoughts themselves, taken as subjective facts, and the things of which they are aware. It is natural to make this confusion, but easy to avoid it when once put on one's guard. The things are discrete and discontinuous; they do pass before us in a train or chain, making often explosive appearances and rending each other in twain. But their comings and goings and contrasts no more break the flow of the thought that thinks them than they break the time and the space in which they lie. A silence may be broken by a thunder-clap, and we may be so stunned and confused for a moment by the shock as to give no instant account to ourselves of what has happened. But that very confusion is a mental state, and a state that passes us straight over from the silence to the sound. The transition between the thought of one object and the thought of another is no more a break in the thought than a joint in a bamboo is a break in the wood.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  An ingenious friend of mine was long puzzled to know why each day of the week had such a characteristic physiognomy to him. That of Sunday was soon noticed to be due to the cessation of the city's rumbling, and the sound of people's feet shuffling on the sidewalk; of Monday, to come from the clothes drying in the yard and casting a white reflection on the ceiling; of Tuesday, to a cause which I forget; and I think my friend did not get beyond Wednesday. Probably each hour in the day has for most of us some outer or inner sign associated with it as closely as these signs with the days of the week. It must be admitted, after all, however, that the great improvement of the time-perception during sleep and trance is a mystery not as yet cleared up. All my life I have been struck by the accuracy with which I will wake at the same exact minute night after night and morning after morning, if only the habit fortuitously begins. The organic registration in me is independent of sleep. After lying in bed a long time awake I suddenly rise without knowing the time, and for days and weeks together will do so at an identical minute by the clock, as if some inward physiological process caused the act by punctually running down.—Idiots are said sometimes to possess the time-measuring faculty in a marked degree. I have an interesting manuscript account of an idiot girl which says: "She was punctual almost to a minute in her demand for food and other regular attentions. Her dinner was generally furnished her at 12.30 P.M., and at that hour she would begin to scream if it were not forthcoming. If on Fast-day or Thanksgiving it were delayed, in accordance with the New England custom, she screamed from her usual dinner-hour until the food was carried to her. On the next day, however, she again made known her wants promptly at 12.30. Any slight attention shown her on one day was demanded on the next at the corresponding hour. If an orange were given her at 4 P.M. on Wednesday, at the same hour on Thursday she made known her expectation, and if the fruit were not given her she continued to call for it at intervals for two or three hours. At four on Friday the process would be repeated but would last less long; and so on for two or three days. If one of her sisters visited her accidentally at a certain hour, the sharp piercing scream was sure to summon her at the same hour the next day," etc., etc.—For these obscure matters consult C. Du Prel: The Philosophy of Mysticism, chap. III. § 1. [539] Ideale Fragen (1878). p. 219 (Essay, 'Zeit und Weile'). [540] Revue Philosophique, vol. III. p. 496. [541] "Empty time is most strongly perceived when it comes as a pause in music or in speech.