he can read it at once, without being prepared for it and without previous practice. With isolated elements he could at most grasp six, but here, under exactly the same conditions, the scope is extended to seventeen or more elements without the slightest difficulty. It is clear that this is essentially the same phenomenon that we encountered in our experiments on rhythm with the sense of hearing. The conditions of combination are, however, in so far different, as the stimuli for the sense of sight were simultaneous, whereas for the sense of hearing the whole was made up of simple impressions that followed each other. And with this another difference is connected. A word can only be recognised at a momentary glance, if it has been known to us before as a whole, or with compound words, if their chief parts have been familiar to us. Therefore a word of an absolutely unknown language appears as a complex of unarranged letters, and with such a complex our scope is again limited to six isolated elements. With a rhythmical row of beats, on the other hand, it is of no consequence what the form of rhythm is that binds them together, since we can think into such a row whatever rhythmical arrangement we choose, as long as it conforms to the general rhythmical disposition of consciousness, i.e. as long as it does not exceed the maximum of three different accents, as we have previously shown. At the same time this requirement shows us that the differences in apprehending a successive and a simultaneous whole, which appear in our experiments with sight and hearing, are in reality only apparent differences. A musical time that is adequate to our sense of rhythm behaves in exactly the same way as a word or sentence that is adequate to our sense of language. Therefore we may presuppose that in the reading, as in the rhythm experiments, it is not the whole of a complex consisting of many elements that is instantaneously grasped by the attention. Only a limited part of such a word falls within the scope of attention, and from this part the psychical power of combination goes over to those other elements that lie in the wider field of consciousness. In fact there is a well-known phenomenon that gives a striking proof for this combination of the parts of a word or sentence grasped by attention with unclearly perceived elements. It consists in the fact that misprints are so often unnoticed, especially in rapid reading. This would be impossible if we were forced to perceive with our attention equally clearly all the separate elements of a long word or of a sentence in order to be able to read. In fact, in each separate moment there are only a few elements within the focus of attention. From these the threads of psychical combination stretch to the elements unclearly perceived--yes, sometimes even to the impressions only physiologically seen that lie in the regions of indirect vision. Just as in hearing a rhythm, the sound impressions