The science of life : fully illustrated in tone and line and including many diagrams, page 817

HUMAN BEHAVIOUR AND THE HUMAN MIND

“that, when I perceive the orange, there is somehow operative in the act of perception not only my previous experience of oranges, constituting the act one of recognition, but also a vast amount of other experience, experience of material objects of many kinds—experiences of seeing, of handling, of tasting, of hearing, and so forth. And all this mass of past experience contributes to determine the ‘meaning’ of the object, or, more strictly, my ‘ meaning’ as I perceive the orange. I know it, not merely as something that may yield me sensory experiences of taste and odour and touch, but also as a solid object out there in space, with all the Properties that I have learned to expect of solid objects. If I put out my hand to raise it to my lips the strength of my innervation of my muscles is nicely adjusted to its weight, without my reflecting on, or being explicitly aware of, its weight ; as I realize, if the object proves to be a mere hollow shell, of less weight than a normal orange ; for it flies up in the air in a way which surprises me.

“ Similarly, if you push it off the edge of the table and it remains suspended in the air instead of falling to the ground, I realize that its gravitational property was implicit in my perception. Or if I take a knife to cut it, and the knife meets with no resistance ; or if I throw it forcibly against the wall, and it is not shattered. In a multitude of such ways I may be brought to realize the extreme complexity of my act of. perception, to understand how much is implicit in my recognition of the orange, and how much previous experience has gone to the formation of this mass of knowledge of material things which is implicitly operative in my act of perception, guiding my behaviour in relation to the object.”

Whatever one may think of this minute analysis of orange-taking, there can be little dispute about the complexity of the process by which I have conveyed this orange. of mine—which, by-the-by, is a quite imaginary orange—into the mind of the reader. _ Seeing, sniffing, recognizing, and eating an orange is a thing, any lemur or gibbon might do. But this orange we are discussing and imagining was never grown on earthly tree. It was evolved originally by Professor McDougall out of his private. wealth of orange-impressions some time ago to body forth certain ideas about. perception, and I (one of a trinity of authors) have received it with its intimations of colour, shape, scent, and so forth, by reason of an extract from the professor’s book, which

one of my collaborators has had typed for my information. I have written these words with that orange rolling quite vividly through my mental being. I have transferred it to an imaginary moment when I sat after dinner and ate it as I meditated on this section. And now the reader has it in mind quite distinctly.

I will not elaborate the picture of my communion with the professor’s thoughtorange which is going on as I write this passage. I will not dwell on the printing, proof-reading, publishing, selling, nor on the buying and sitting down to read, that has intervened before that same imaginary orange has been evoked in the present reader’s mental being. There you have this orange now in your mind, and so far as you are concerned it was conjured up by the sight of a group of certain little black shapes on the white page that need the most subtle discrimination on your part to know them for what they are. The key to it all is these shapes which make the word “ orange.” In the act of recognizing them you are, as we have learnt from Pavlov, actively inhibiting the associations of quite a multitude of kindred words, Orange (with a capital O and a Roman arch), orage (the French word), Orage (the Yorkshire writer,» who is now in America), orang (utang), and so on. The impression started by the impact of this group of shapes arises very rapidly, so rapidly as to be scarcely perceptible, and passes through a-similarly- grouped, similarly etched out and defined -sound record, the sound ‘“ orange’? reverberates faintly in-your mind, very probably your vocal cords and mouth make a faint intimation of an approach to vocalizing it, and that sets going a carefully and definitely selected and associated group of impressions of shape, scent and other qualities, and so to your general orange revival. - From this momentarily excited agglomeration which is your idea of orange, associations radiate in every direction ; you might. have gone on to marmalade, Seville, Florida, orangegroves or the Hesperides, but until these have appeared before you here, you have probably ignored these associations in favour of those to which the trend of our argument has directed you, a trend giving you the supposedly tangible ripe orange produced for dessert and used as an instance of perception.

If indeed those threatened elaborations of this process were pursued as Professor McDougall has pursued the mere recognition of his orange as orange—it would fill a large

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