The Principles of Psychology, Volume 2 (of 2)James, William
Science
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 2 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
The relation of position of the two points _is_ the suggested interval
or line. Turn now to the simplest case, that of _a single excited spot.
How can it suggest its position?_ Not by recalling any particular
line unless experience have constantly been in the habit of marking
or tracing some one line from it towards some one neighboring point.
Now on the back, belly, viscera, etc., no such tracing habitually
occurs. The consequence is that the only suggestion is that of the
whole neighboring circle; i.e., _the spot simply recalls the general
region in which it happens to lie._ By a process of successive
construction, it is quite true that we can also get the feeling of
distance between the spot and some other particular spot. Attention,
by reinforcing the local sign of one part of the circle, can awaken a
new circle round this part, and so _de proche en proche_ we may slide
our feeling down from our cheek, say, to our foot. But when we first
touched our cheek we had no consciousness of the foot at all.[164] In
the extremities, the lips, the tongue and other mobile parts, the case
is different. We there have an instinctive tendency, when a part of
lesser discriminative sensibility is touched, to move the member so
that the touching object glides along it to the place where sensibility
is greatest. If a body touches our hand we move the hand over it
till the finger-tips are able to explore it. If the sole of our foot
touches anything we bring it towards the toes, and so forth. There
thus arise lines of habitual passage from all points of a member to
its sensitive tip. These are the lines most readily recalled when any
point is touched, and their recall is identical with the consciousness
of the distance of the touched point from the 'tip.' I think anyone
must be aware when he touches a point of his hand or wrist that it is
the relation to the finger-tips of which he is usually most conscious.
Points on the forearm suggest either the finger-tips or the elbow (the
latter being a spot of greater sensibility[165]). In the foot it is the
toes, and so on. A point can only be cognized in its relations to the
entire body at once by awakening a _visual_ image of the whole body.
Such awakening is even more obviously than the previously considered
cases a matter of pure association.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account