by Corry Shores
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spatiality is only our form of apprehension, perhaps also a form belonging to every being that has a mind. (Lotze 481d)
come to our knowledge not by the mere fact of their existence, but only through a co-ordination of their effects upon us, a co-ordination which corresponds to the relative position of the points from which those effects proceeded. (482c)
all those geometrical relations which exist among the sense-stimuli and among the nervous excitations they occasion must completely disappear in the moment when they pass over into the soul: for in its point of unity there is no room for their expansion. Up to this point the single impressions may be conducted by isolated nerve-fibres which preserve the special nature of each impression; even in the central portions of the nervous system similar separations may still exist, although we do not know that they do so; but in the end, at the transition to consciousness, all walls of partition must disappear. In the unity of consciousness these spatial divisions no more exist than the rays of light which fall from various points on a converging lens continue to exist side by side in the focal points at which they intersect. (484-485)...This perception cannot be delivered to us ready-made. The single impressions exist together in the soul in a completely nonspatial way and are distinguished simply by their qualitative content, just as the simultaneous notes of a chord are heard apart from one another, and yet not side by side with one another, in space. From this non-spatial material the soul has to re-create entirely afresh the spatial image that has disappeared; and in order to do this it must be able to assign to each single impression the position it is to take up in this image relatively to the rest and side by side with them. (485b)
some clue will be needed, by the help of which it may find for each impression the place it must take, in order that the image that is to arise in idea may be like the spatial figure that has disappeared. (485c)
Let us suppose that a collection has to be arranged in some new place in exactly the same order that it has at present. There is no need to keep this order intact during the transport ; we do whatever is most convenient for the purposes of transport, and when it is finished we arrange the several pieces of the collection by following the numbers pasted on them. Just such a token of its former spatial position must be possessed by each impression, and retained throughout the time when that impression, together with all the rest, was present in a non-spatial way in the unity of the soul. (485d)
Where then does this token come from? It cannot be the point in external space from which the sense-stimulus starts, that gives to it this witness of its origin. A blue ray of light may come from above or from below, from the right or from the left, but it tells us nothing of all this; it itself is the same in all cases. It is not until these similar stimuli come in contact with our bodies that they are distinguished, and then they are distinguished according to the different points at which they meet the extended surface of our organs of sense. This accordingly may be the spot at which the token I am describing has its origin, a token which is given along with the stimulus in consequence of the effects produced by it at this spot, and which in the case of each single stimulus is distinct and different from that given along with any other stimulus. (485-486)
Each single fibre, at the spot where it receives the stimulus, can attach to it the extra-impression described, and can transmit it to consciousness, stamped with this character, and preserved by the isolation of the fibre from mixture with other physical excitations. (486d)
We must suppose that similar stimuli give rise in each nerve-fibre to a special extra-impression, an extra-impression which is different in the case of every single fibre, and which connects itself, in the manner of an association, with that main impression which depends on the quality of the stimulus,—connects itself, therefore, in such a way that neither of the two impressions, the main one and the extra one, interferes with the peculiar nature and tone of the other. (486-487)
the difference between these connected local signs p, k, r will be the clue by means of which the sensations falling upon p, q, r can be localised in separate places in our perception of space. (487d)
Bergson, Henri. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, Transl. F. L. Pogson, (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2001).
Available online at:
http://www.archive.org/details/timeandfreewill00pogsgoog
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