We have seen the importance of those 'internal changes' revealed to us
by our muscular sensations. They may serve to characterize the various
_attitudes_ of our body. Take arbitrarily as origin one of these
attitudes _A_. When we pass from this initial attitude to any other
attitude _B_, we feel a series of muscular sensations, and this series
_S_ will define _B_. Observe, however, that we shall often regard two
series _S_ and _S'_ as defining the same attitude _B_ (since the initial
and final attitudes _A_ and _B_ remaining the same, the intermediary
attitudes and the corresponding sensations may differ). How then shall
we recognize the equivalence of these two series? Because they may serve
to compensate the same external change, or more generally because, when
it is a question of compensating an external change, one of the series
can be replaced by the other. Among these series, we have distinguished
those which of themselves alone can compensate an external change, and
which we have called 'displacements.' As we can not discriminate between
two displacements which are too close together, the totality of these
displacements presents the characteristics of a physical continuum;
experience teaches us that they are those of a physical continuum of six
dimensions; but we do not yet know how many dimensions space itself has,
we must first solve another question.
What is a point of space? Everybody thinks he knows, but that is an
illusion. What we see when we try to represent to ourselves a point of
space is a black speck on white paper, a speck of chalk on a blackboard,
always an object. The question should therefore be understood as
follows:
What do I mean when I say the object _B_ is at the same point that the
object _A_ occupied just now? Or further, what criterion will enable me
to apprehend this?
I mean that, _although I have not budged_ (which my muscular sense tells
me), my first finger which just now touched the object _A_ touches at
present the object _B_. I could have used other criteria; for instance
another finger or the sense of sight. But the first criterion is
sufficient; I know that if it answers yes, all the other criteria will
give the same response. I know it _by experience_, I can not know it _a
priori_. For the same reason I say that touch can not be exercised at a
distance; this is another way of enunciating the same experimental fact.
And if, on the contrary, I say that sight acts at a distance, it means
that the criterion furnished by sight may respond yes while the others
reply no.
And in fact, the object, although moved away, may form its image at the
same point of the retina. Sight responds yes, the object has remained at
the same point and touch answers no, because my finger which just now
touched the object, at present touches it no longer. If experience had
shown us that one finger may respond no when the other says yes, we
should likewise say that touch acts at a distance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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