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If "numberless repetitions" are requisite, that is, if an entire series of movements can be closed and the mind still remain without the idea, remain quiescent, dead, mirror-like, holding distinct sensations in distinct special relations without knowing them as distinct, reaching no judgment then a second, a third, a fiftieth repetition, as mere repetition, having the light of no new idea cast upon it, may leave the mind, nay, must leave the mind, unless at some point it be awakened to a new method, as quiescent and dark as at the outset.

The only ground on which any other conclusion is possible is, that space is not an idea, but literally a series of sensations; or at least a sensational fact or quality generalized from a series of experiences, as sweetness is a quality separated clearly by repetition from other qualities, red, a color distinguished by repeated observation from other colors. In these cases the reiterated sensation enables us to distinguish and abstract its peculiar quality.

Absurd and impossible as this view of space, that it is a quality of sensation, seems to us to be, we believe that it lurks in the arguments and statements of the sensational school. Thus, in the passage given above, it is " the serial excitations," which are identified with the notion of space, and are made by association to underlie and explain " the simultaneous excitations." In fact, however, the one set of phenomena no more requires the explanation of the idea than the other, no more contains it than the other. It is merely because there is in the first a variation of the sensations, that they give or rather seem to give, a foothold to explanation not found in the second. Yet this change must be observed in the very quality of the sensations and not in the relation of the sensations, or no ground of exposition is afforded by Spencer. Relations are intellectually seen, the qualities alone are a matter of perception. Elsewhere Spencer