Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

another spot, or simultaneously to different spots in the space intuited by it."1

MURRAY makes sensations "elementary facts of mind” that cannot be defined, yet that can be consciously felt and distinguished. The following is his own statement: "For sensations, being the simple elementary facts of mind, cannot be defined or described by anything more simple or elementary. The only way in which a sensation can be known is by being felt."?

SULLY agrees with Murray that a sensation is an "elementary mental phenomenon" indefinable as it appears in consciousness, but definable as related to the physical conditions involved in its stimulation. He says: "A sensation being an elementary mental phenomenon cannot be defined in terms of anything more simple. Its meaning can only be indicated by a reference to the nervous process on which it is known to depend. Accordingly a sensation may be defined as a simple méntal state resulting from the stimulation of the outer extremity of an incarrying nerve, when this stimulation has been transmitted to the brain centers."

§ 3. Sensation as Incipient Sense-Perception.—FICHTE originated this view of sensation, and, according to the following quotation from Erdmann, makes sensation an incipient stage of sense-perception: "Fichte has often confessed his 'boundless' respect for Maimon's genius, which gave the first impulse towards his theory of sensation." "The development begins with the very lowest step of that unconscious act of creation, that state in which intelligence first discovers what is already, it is true, in itself, viz., sensation. This is taken as the state in which no distinction is as yet made between external and internal sensation, and just as little between that which feels sensation and that which is felt as such. Inasmuch as the (centrifugal) ego transcends sensation, it dis

1 "Outlines of Psychology," Ladd's Translation, pp. 50-3.

2 "Hand-book of Psychology," p. 30.

3 "Teachers' Hand-Book of Psychology," p. 86.

4 'History of Philosophy," vol ii, p, 483.

tinguishes itself from it, and the latter thereby acquires a reference to something beyond itself."'1

DR. WARD identifies sensation with an incipient stage of presentation, in which "we are able to distinguish the conscious subject and the 'affection' of which it is conscious." He also assigns to sensation "two aspects,' the one a 'sensible or intellectual' or 'qualitative,' the other an 'affective' or 'emotive."" His own statements are as follows: "The ordinary conception of a sensation coincides, no doubt, with the definition given by Hamilton and Mansel: 'Sensation proper is the consciousness of certain affections of our body as an animated organism;' and it is because in ordinary thinking we reckon the body as a part of self that we come to think of sensations as subjective modifications. But when considerations of method compel us to eliminate physiological implications from the ordinary conception of a sensation, we are able here to distinguish the conscious subject and the affections' of which it is conscious, as clearly as we can distinguish subject and object in other cases of presentation. * Thus the further we go back the nearer we approach to a total presentation having the character of one general continuum in which differences are latent, a certain objective continuum forming the background or basis to the several relatively distinct presentations that are elaborated out of it." "Accordingly all the more recent psychologists have been driven by one means or another to recognize two ‘aspects' (Bain), or 'properties' (Wundt), in what they call a sensation, the one a 'sensible or intellectual' or 'qualitative,' the other an 'affective' or 'emotive,' aspect or property."

* * *

* *

*

PROF. JAMES gives the latest, fullest and most definite account of this view, as the following quotations will show: "Sensation, then, so long as we take the analytic point of view, differs from Perception only in the extreme

1 op. cit. p. 505.

2 Ency. Brit., vol. xx., pp, 41–2.

3 id. p. 40.

[ocr errors]

*

* *

simplicity of its object or content. "Some persons will say that we never have a really simple object or content. My definition of sensation does not require the simplicity to be absolutely, but only relatively, extreme."2 "As we can only think or talk about the relations of objects with which we have acquaintance already, we are forced to postulate a function in our thought whereby we first become aware of the bare immediate natures by which our several objects are distinguished. This function is sensation." "Sensations are the stable rock, the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem of thought. To find such termini is our aim with all our theories-to conceive first when and where a certain sensation may be had, and then to have it. Finding it, stops discussion. Failure to find it kills the false conceit of knowledge. Pure sensations can only be realized in the earliest days of life. They are all but impossible to adults with memories and stores of associations acquired. Prior to all impressions on sense-organs the brain is plunged in deep sleep and consciousness is practically non-existent. Even the first weeks after birth are passed in almost unbroken sleep by human infants. It takes a strong message from the senseorgans to break this slumber. In a new born brain this gives rise to an absolutely pure sensation. * The first sensation which an infant gets is for him the universe. And the universe which he later comes to know is nothing but an amplification and an implication of that first simple germ which, by accretion on the one hand and intussusception on the other, has grown so big and complex and articulate that its first estate is unrememberable. In his dumb awakening to the consciousness of something there, a mere this as yet (or something for which even the term this would perhaps be too discriminative, and the intellectual acknowledgement of which would be better expressed by the bare interjection 'lo!'), the infant encounters an object in which (though it be given in a pure

1 "Principles of Psychology," vol. ii., pp. 1-2.

2 id. p. 2, foot-note.

3 id. p. 3.

*

sensation) all the 'categories of the understanding' are contained. It has objectivity, unity, substantiality, causality, in the full sense in which any later object or system of objects has these things."1

1 op. cit. pp. 7-8.

CHAPTER IV.

THE COMPONENT THEORY OF SENSATION.

* * *

§1. Sensation as Formless Matter.-KANT'S ideas, in which this view of sensation originated, are fairly set forth in the following quotations:-"Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of our soul; the first receives representations (receptivity of impressions), the second is the power of knowing an object by these representations (spontaneity of concepts). By the first an object is given us, by the second the object is thought, in relation to that representation which is a mere determination of the soul. We call sensibility the receptivity of our soul, or its power of receiving representations whenever it is in any wise affected, while the understanding, on the contrary, is with us the power of producing representations, or the spontaniety of knowledge." "Both are either pure or empirical. They are empirical when sensation, presupposing the actual presence of the object, is contained in it. They are pure when no sensation is mixed up with the representation. The latter may be called the material of sensuous knowledge." "In a phenomenon I call that which corresponds to the sensation its matter; but that which causes the manifold matter of the phenomenon to be perceived as arranged in a certain order, I call its form. Now it is clear that it cannot be sensation again through which sensations are arranged and placed in certain forms. The matter only of all phenomena is given us a posteriori; but their form must be ready for them in the mind a priori, and must therefore be capable of being considered as separate from

1 "Critique of Pure Reason," Max Mueller's Translation, pp. 44-5.

d. p. 44.

« PredošláPokračovať »