CHAPTER VIII

Our receptive apparatus. Sensation. Perception. Conception. Intuition. Art as the language of the future. To what extent does the threedimensionality of the world depend upon the properties of our receptive apparatus? What might prove this interdependence? Where may we find the real affirmation of this interdependence? The animal psyche. In what does it differ from the human? Reflex action. The irritability of the cell. Instinct. Pleasure-pain. Emotional thinking. The absence of concepts. Language of animals. Logic of animals. Different degrees of psychic development in animals. The goose, the cat, the dog and the monkey.

I

N order exactly to define the relation of our psyche to the external world, and to determine what, in our receptivity of

the world, belongs to it, and what belongs to ourselves, let us turn to elementary psychology and examine the mechanism of our receptive apparatus.

The fundamental unit of our receptivity is a sensation. This sensation is an elementary change in the state of our psyche, produced, as it seems to us, either by some change in the state of the external world in relation to our consciousness, or by a change in the state of our psyche in relation to the external world. Such is the teaching of physics and psycho-physics. Into the consideration of the correctness or incorrectness of the construction of these sciences I shall not enter. Suffice it to define a sensation as an elementary change in the state of the psyche—as the element, that is, as the fundamental unit of this change. Feeling the sensation we assume that it appears, so to speak, as the reflection of some change in the external world.

The sensations felt by us leave a certain trace in our memory. The accumulating memories of sensations begin to blend in consciousness into groups, and according to their similitude tend to associate, to sum up, to be opposed; the sensations which are usually felt in close connection with one another will arise in memory in the same connection. Gradually, out of the memories of sensa

SENSATIONS: PERCEPTIONS

81

tions, perceptions are compounded. Perceptions—these are so to speak the group memories of sensations. During the compounding of perceptions, sensations are polarizing in two clearly defined directions. The first direction of this grouping will be according to the character of sensations. (The sensations of a yellow color will combine with the sensations of a yellow color; sensations of a sour taste with those of a sour taste.) The second direction will be according to the time of the reception of sensations. When various sensations, constituting a single group, and compounding one perception, enter simultaneously, then the memory of this definite group of sensations is ascribed to a common cause. This "common cause" is projected into the outside world as the object, and it is assumed that the given perception itself reflects the real properties of this object. Such group remembrance constitutes perception, the perception, for example, of a tree that tree. Into this group enter the green color of the leaves, their smell, their shadows, their rustle in the wind, etc. All these things taken together form as it were a focus of rays coming out of the psyche, gradually concentrated upon the outside object and coinciding with it either well or ill.

In the further complication of the psychic life, the memories of perception proceed as with the memories of sensations. Mingling together, the memories of perceptions, or the "images of perceptions," combine in various ways: they sum up, they stand opposed, they form groups, and in the end give rise to concepts.

Thus out of various sensations, experienced (in groups) at different times, a child gets the perception of a tree (that tree), and afterwards, out of the images of perceptions of different trees there emerges the concept of a tree, i. e., not "that tree," but trees in general.

The formation of perceptions leads to the formation of words, and the appearance of speech.

The beginning of speech may appear on the lowest level of psychic life, during the period of living by sensations, and it will become more complex during the period of living by per

ceptions; but unless there be concepts it will not be speech in the true meaning of the word.

On the lower levels of psychic life certain sensations can be expressed by certain sounds. Therefore it is possible to express common impressions of horror, anger, pleasure. These sounds may serve as signals of danger, as commands, demands, threats, etc., but it is impossible to say much by means of them.

In the further development of speech, if words or sounds express perceptions, as in the case of children, this means that the given sound or the given word designates only that object to which it refers. For each new similar object must exist another new sound, or a new word. If the speaker designates different objects by one and the same sound or word, it means that in his opinion the objects are the same, or that knowingly he is calling different objects by the same name. In either case it will be difficult to understand him, and such speech cannot serve as an example of clear speech. For instance, if a child call a tree by a certain sound or word, having in view that tree only, and not knowing other trees at all, then any new tree which he may see he will call by a new word, or else he will take it for the same tree. The speech in which "words" correspond to perceptions is as it were made up of proper nouns. There are no appellative nouns; and not only substantives, but verbs, adjectives and adverbs have the character of "proper nouns"—that is, they apply to a given action, to a given quality, or to a given property.

The appearance of words of a common meaning in human speech signifies the appearance of concepts in consciousness.

Speech consists of words, each word expressing a concept. Concept and word are in substance one and the same thing; only the first (the concept) represents, so to speak, the inner side, and the second (the word) the outer side. Or, as says Dr. R. M. Bucke (the author of the book Cosmic Consciousness, about which I shall have much to say later on), "A word (i. e., concept) is the algebraical sign of a thing.'

It has been noticed thousands of times that the brain of a thinking man does not exceed in size the brain of a non-thinking wild man in anything like the proportion in which the mind of the thinker exceeds the mind of the savage. The reason is that the brain of a Herbert Spencer has very little more work to do than has the brain of a native Australian, for

CONCEPTS

83 this reason, that Spencer does all his characteristic mental work by signs or counters which stand for concepts, while the savage does all or nearly all his by means of cumbersome recepts. The savage is in a position comparable to that of the astronomer who makes his calculations by arithmetic, while Spencer is in the position of one who makes them by algebra. The first will fill many great sheets of paper with figures and go through immense labor; the other will make the same calculations on an envelope and with comparatively little mental work.*

In our speech words express concepts or ideas. By ideas are meant broader concepts, not representing the group sign of similar perceptions, but embracing various groups of perceptions, or even groups of concepts. Therefore an idea is a complex or an abstract concept.

In addition to the simple sensations of these sense organs (color, sound, touch, smell and taste), in addition to the simple emotions of pleasure, pain, joy, anger, surprise, wonder, curiosity and many others, there is passing through our consciousness a series of complex sensations and higher (complex) emotions (moral, esthetic, religious). The content of emotional feelings, even the simplest— to say nothing of the complex—can never be wholly confined to concepts or ideas, and therefore can never be correctly or exactly expressed in words. Words can only allude to it, point to it. The interpretation of emotional feelings and emotional understanding is the problem of art. In combinations of words, in their meaning, their rhythm, their music—the combination of meaning, rhythm and music; in sounds, colors, lines, forms—men are creating a new world, and are attempting therein to express and transmit that which they feel, but which they are unable to express and transmit simply in words, i. e., in concepts. The emotional tones of life, i. e., of "feelings," are best transmitted by music, but it cannot express concepts, i. e., thought. Poetry endeavors to express both music and thought together. The combination of feeling and thought of high tension leads to a higher form of psychic life. Thus in art we have already the first experiments in a language of the future. Art anticipates a psychic evolution and divines its future forms.

At the present time an average man, taken as a norm, has attained to three units of psychic life: sensation, perception, and conception. Furthermore, observation reveals the fact that some people at certain * R. M. Bucke. "Cosmic Consciousness," p. 12.

times acquire a new, fourth unit of psychic life, which different authors and different schools name differently, but in which an element of knowledge or ideas is always united with an emotional element.

If Kant's ideas are correct, if space with its characteristics is a property of our consciousness, and not of the external world, then the three-dimensionality of the world must in this or some other manner depend upon the constitution of our psychic apparatus. It is possible to put the question concretely in the following manner: What bearing upon the three-dimensional extension of the world has the fact that in our psychical apparatus we discover the categories above described—sensations, perceptions and concepts?

We possess such a psychical apparatus and the world is threedimensional. How is it possible to establish the fact that the three-dimensionality of the world depends upon such a constitution of our psychical apparatus?

This could be proven or disproven undeniably only with the aid of experiments.

If we could change our psychic apparatus and should then discover that the world around us was changing, this would constitute for us the proof of the dependence of the properties of space upon the properties of our consciousness.

For example if we could make the above-mentioned higher form of psychic life (which appears now accidentally as it were and depends upon insufficiently studied conditions) just as definite, exact, and subject to our will as is the concept; and if the number of characteristics of space increased, i. e., if space became four-dimensional instead of being three-dimensional, this would affirm our presupposition, and would prove Kant's contention that space with its properties is a form of our sensuous receptivity.

Or if we could diminish the number of units of our psychic life, and deprive ourselves or someone else of conceptions, leaving the psyche to act by perceptions and sensations only; and if by so doing the number of characteristics of the space surrounding us diminished; i. e., if for the person subjected to the test the world became two-dimensional instead of three-dimensional, and indeed