it in the chalk or the snow; but this is not yet abstraction, for that demands a consideration of the common (attribute), separated from the particular (case), and consequently there enters into it the knowledge of universal truths, which is not given to the animals. It is well said also that the animals which speak do not use words to express general ideas, and that men deprived of the use of speech and of words do not cease to make use of other general signs. And I am pleased to see that you here and elsewhere so well observe the advantages of human nature.]

§ 11. Ph. If animals have some ideas, and are not pure machines, as some maintain, we cannot deny that they have reaons in a certain degree, and, for myself, it appears as evident that they reason as that they feel. But it is only upon particular ideas that they reason according as their senses represent these ideas to them. Th. [Animals pass from one idea to another by the connection which they sometimes feel; for example, when his master takes a stick, the dog fears a whipping. And in a multitude of instances children with the rest of mankind proceed nowise differently in their passages from thought to thought. One might call that consequence and reasoning in a very broad sense. But I prefer to conform to the received usages in consecrating these terms to man and in limiting them to the knowledge of some reason of the connection of perceptions, which sensations alone cannot give, their effect being only to cause you to attend at another time to this same connection which you have noticed before, although perhaps the reasons are no longer the same, which fact often deceives those who are governed only by the senses.]

§ 13. Ph. Idiots lack vivacity, activity, and movement in the intellectual faculties, whence they are deprived of the use of reason. Madmen seem to be at the opposite extreme, for it does not appear to me that these latter have lost the power to reason, but having wrongly united certain ideas, they take them for truths, and deceive themselves in the same way as those who reason justly upon false principles. Thus you will see a madman who thinks he is king maintaining by a just consequence that he should be served, honored, and obeyed according to his rank.

Th. Idiots do not exercise reason, and they differ from some stupid persons who have good judgment, but, not having prompt conception, they are despised and disturbed as he would be who

wished to play ombre with persons of distinction and thought too long and too often of the part he must take. I remember a learned man who, having lost his memory by the use of certain drugs, was reduced to this condition, but his judgment always appeared. A man wholly mad lacks judgment on nearly every occasion; but the vivacity of his imagination may make him agreeable. But there are particular madmen who make a false supposition at an important point in their lives, and reason justly thereupon, as you have well said. There is such a man, well known at a certain court, who believes himself destined to redress the affairs of the Protestants and to bring France to reason, for which purpose God caused the greatest personages to pass through his body in order to ennoble it; he desires to marry all the princesses which he sees to be marriageable, but, after having made them holy in order to have a holy progeny who should rule the land, he attributes all the misfortunes of war to the little deference he had for their advice. In speaking with a certain sovereign, he took every necessary measure not to lower his dignity. And when they began to reason with him, he defended himself so well that I have doubted more than once whether his madness is not a feint, for he is not uncomfortable on account of it. However, those who know him more intimately assure me that his madness is wholly genuine.]

THE SPECTRUM-SPREAD OF OUR SENSATIONS.

BY PAYTON SPENCE.

The white light of the sunbeam is apparently simple and homogeneous, although it is, in reality, a compound of many colors. Each color of which it is composed occupies the whole of the beam, and hence no one of them has position in the beam; and therefore the colors themselves have no relative positions to each other. Each color, occupying the whole of the beam, has a modifying effect upon all the others, and all the others have a modifying effect upon it; consequently they are all equally modified

giving us, as a result, homogeneous white light, in which no one of its separate colors is recognized or suspected. By means of a prism we decompose the sunbeam, so that the elementary colors which constitute it, and which, in it, have neither positions nor relative positions, are spread apart and given positions and relative positions in the solar spectrum upon the screen. This simple illustration is introduced here, in the outset, not as a proof of anything, but merely as an illustration which, if kept before the mind, will enable the reader to understand more readily than he might otherwise do the nature of those relations of sensations to each other and to external objects, which it is our purpose to try to explain in this article.

Consciousness is non-extended; and as every state of consciousness occupies the whole of consciousness just as every color of the sunbeam occupies the whole of the beam, it has therefore neither position nor extension in consciousness. Now, if a state of consciousness has no position in consciousness, states of consciousness can have no relative positions to each other, for their mere relation to each other cannot give them that which, in their essential nature, they have not-namely, position. Hence, in speaking of states of consciousness, we cannot say that one is to the right or to the left of another, above or below another, or that one is in the centre and another in the circumference. All that we can say of related states of consciousness is that each one occupies the whole of consciousness either simultaneously or in succession with the others. But succession must somehow become converted into, or be interpreted by, simultaneousness, or else it has no meaning to the mind. In simple succession, when one state has come the other has gone; and consciousness holding only one at a time, they are in no way consciously related to each other even as being in succession. For instance, if two states of consciousness arise one after the other, and if the first one has wholly vanished (so that it cannot be recalled or reproduced) before the second one appears, they can have no effect upon each other; they cannot modify each other; they are as nothing to each other, the second simply existing as though the first had not existed, and vice versa. But if the second one appears before the first one has entirely vanished, or if the first one is reproduced while the second one endures, then to that extent they are simultaneous, and

overlap, or rather interpenetrate, each other; and only by such mutual, simultaneous interpenetration can they at all modify each other, and to that extent be consciously related to each other even as being in succession the one to the other.'

It is no part of my present purpose, however, to explain how successive states of consciousness are known to us as successive only by being made simultaneous. I simply call attention to the very obvious fact that such is the case; and that, therefore, to that extent, all related states of consciousness are simultaneous so far as related; and, as the relation of states of consciousness is but another name for their mutual, simultaneous interpenetration, such interpenetration is seen to be the very sine qua non of the connected continuity of all conscious life and of personal identity, the interpreter of that unity of apperception over which the illustrious Kant so writhes and agonizes, and a clew to the labyrinths of memory and the intricacies of the association of ideas.

Now, suppose that two sensations are somehow awakened simultaneously in my consciousness, what must happen to them. if we consider them, in their essential nature, as simple states of consciousness, disregarding or abstracting from all the effects of our past experience upon them, and the intrusion (by spontaneous reproduction or otherwise) of foreign elements that would confuse and complicate a result which otherwise might be quite simple? My two sensations, being simultaneous, and each one occupying the whole of consciousness, cannot appear to me as two distinct states; but the two are blended into one, and seem to be a single, simple, homogeneous sensation-as simple and as homogeneous as the white light of the sunbeam. Let this state endure ever so long, it cannot analyze itself or sort out the different elements that compose it. And this must be the case even if the two sensations are ever so different from each other-as, for instance, those of a color and a sound. Of course, what is true of two simultaneous sensations must be equally true of any number. Were there a hundred such, they would be known to consciousness only as an apparently single, homogeneous sensation-the result of the

1 The conclusion which I here reach-that states of consciousness can only be related to each other by mutually interpenetrating each other-I also reached by a somewhat different process of reasoning in my "New Theory of Consciousness." See "Journal of Spec. Phil.," July, 1880.

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modification of each one upon all the rest, and all the rest upon each one. So much for mere sensations and merely related sensations. They can do nothing more for us. They can modify each other, but they can never lift us out of the sphere of mere sensation-feeling-into that of perception.

On the other hand, I look out upon the external world, and what do I perceive? Did I perceive nothing but my sensations, nothing but colors, sounds, tastes, smells, feels, I could not be said to perceive at all, for I would still only be able to feel related, simultaneous sensations; and that very simultaneous relation would, as already shown, fuse them into an apparently single, homogeneous sensation, varying in character according to the variety of the actual and reproduced impressions that are simultaneously made upon me. I have but to open my senses, however, to perceive all around, above, and beneath me this vast spectrum-spread of my sensations, seemingly projected, painted, and panoramaed everywhere upon the whole external world, like the rainbow colors that are spread by the prism upon the screen, which is there expressly to receive and reveal them, and without which they could neither be received nor revealed.

Then, on the one hand, we have consciousness whose sensations-feelings-can have neither positions nor relative positions, and in which, consequently, one color, one feel, one sound cannot be either to the right or to the left of another, above or below another, in front of or behind another, or in the centre of another which occupies the circumference. On the other hand, we have before us that vast panorama called the external world, in which those very sensations-colors, feels, sounds, etc.-seem to occupy the very positions and relative positions which, as we have seen, consciousness alone cannot give them, any more than the sunbeam can unfold itself from a state of unity and homogeneous whiteness and spread its component colors-red, blue, green, etc.-in positions and relative positions upon the screen. In the case of the sunbeam, however, we know that it is a foreign element-the prism-which decomposes its white light, throws its elements apart, and gives them their spectrum-spread upon the screen. But, in the case of a compound though homogeneous sensation, what element is there, or can there be, which can at all be related to it, and so related to it as to decompose it into its elements, throw them