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sense of sight, which these multiplied points of touch are intruded to illustrate, at different parts of the retina then this simple experience of sensations, at diverse positions excluding each other, can only find apprehension by and through the comprehending idea of space. Only under this fact of space can the phenomena occur; only by it can they be understood for what they are, and there are no possible steps toward their solution, till this first idea is present, as an apprehension of the conditions of the problem. If the sensations are not known as in position, and in distinct positions, then there is not yet the germ of suggestion, the rudiments of inquiry; if they are so known, there is already present the initiatory knowledge of space.

Let us suppose, with Spencer, this notion to be wanting, that we have sensations at A and Z, and at such other intervening points as we choose, and yet have not any suggestion therein of position or extension. The mind remains perfectly quiet.

The sensations as sensations merely lie in consciousness, but in their space-relations no attention is directed to them, or evoked by them. Exactly the same mental state might remain when the sensations should change by becoming serial, by alternating backward and forward on successive finger-points, by furnishing in any way farther data of that exact knowledge which the first data had done nothing to call forth. The images in a mirror may lie still, or move among themselves, and in neither case is any comprehension of them made necessary to the mirror. No more would there be if the mirror were simply and permanently conscious of them as sensations. Suppose, however, the attention of the mind is awakened and directed to this movement. How alone can it begin to understand and explain the facts before it, except by applying the notion of space, now so strongly plucked at among its comprehensive solvents?