Anthropology as an Aid to Moral Science
Appendix 7. (428).
It is undeniable that, in feeling, a succession of acts often constitutes a single, simple sensation. We have to apply to this fact what was said about the sensation we have of anything extended, that is, the sensation is felt by a simple feeling principle. The two facts - that a simple principle feels space, which is extended, and time, which is successive - although wonderful and mysterious, are nevertheless equally necessary and certain. As we have said, space, which is extended and continuous, can exist only in that which is simple. Space presupposes the simultaneous presence, unity and contiguity of all its parts, none of which, however, taken individually can explain the unity and contiguity of the whole.
In the same way, the succession of facts (time), can exist only in that which in itself is one and simple. None of the facts taken separately provides sufficient explanation for the total succession. The explanation can be found only in a being to which all the facts can be simultaneously present, although it sees them as distinct by the way in which they exist antecedently to one another. The feeling principle, therefore, in uniting itself to what is felt, truly becomes the fount of space and time. We could accept Kant's affirmations if this were his sole meaning when he spoke of space as the form of the external sense and of time as the form of the internal sense, . But these forms are absurd when they are understood as proceeding from the soul alone (cf. 181), which certainly cannot possess them in itself. They arise rather from that which is felt when it comes in contact, as it were, with the soul.
But we must go back to the special fact indicated to us in succession itself, where several acts or facts are perceived by the feeling principle in a single, undivided feeling.
This marvellous truth offers a key to innumerable animal phenomena which would otherwise remain totally unexplained. For example, if every feeling has corresponding movements, and if several contemporaneous or successive acts can be felt with a single feeling, it follows: 1. that an animal which feels simultaneous acts in a single feeling will be able to produce with a single corresponding act many simultaneous movements; 2. that an animal which feels successive acts in a single feeling will be able to produce in a single, simple, corresponding act many successive movements.
This last corollary explains many complex acts which, although attributed to habit, depend in fact upon such a law.
Let us take memory as our first example. How is it possible to repeat with such ease something that has been learned by heart, and roll it off our tongue without paying scarcely any attention to what we are saying? Learning by heart means simply uniting in a single, internal feeling a succession of vocal sounds. Once the union has been established, one act alone from that individual feeling is sufficient to produce the successive movements of the speech organs, and to explain the ease with which a long discourse can be repeated without need for attention to its individual words or parts. These no longer exist separately, but in the whole. This can be ascertained by noting that the same words cannot be repeated if their order is inverted. The object of the memory, therefore, is not the parts or the individual words, but their succession. If the order is inverted, a new succession is produced which is as yet unformed in the spirit. Although the same words are used, they are not unified in feeling.
Single words are repeated as a result of single acts, but joined words form only one act. Each arrangement of words requires new unification in feeling, and a different, corresponding complex act when the arrangement is repeated out loud.
It may be objected that memory belongs to the intellective, not to the feeling, order. This is true, of course, but the law that we have indicated, to which memory is subject, depends on the imagination's suggesting sounds to the memory. And the imagination is a kind of animal feeling.
Similar acts are found in a pianist or a dancer, for example. Playing the piano or dancing is simply a succession of movements carried out by the hands or the legs easily and promptly, and without reflection. The pianist or the dancer could not possibly produce an individual act for every movement of hand or foot; renewed attention to every movement would destroy all hope of uninterrupted progress. A single act of the will, therefore, orders the whole series of the varied movements by directing the series as though it were a single movement. The will is not applied to each individual movement. But the unity of this single, internal act and command embracing the whole series of movements can only be imagined on the presupposition that all the movements have already been perceived together and united in a single feeling through the unitive force of the animal. This single feeling produces a single act of instinct which is then permitted by the will to operate. This is the source of the explanation of innumerable complex facts which animals manifest in their way of acting.