A first book in psychology / by Mary Whiton Calkins.

  • Mary Whiton Calkins
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A first book in psychology / by Mary Whiton Calkins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    cisely similar touch consciousness. But he has not yet con¬ sciousness of his hand or of his body; that is to say, he does not connect the visual consciousness (the ‘look’) with the tactual consciousness (the ‘ feel ’) of his hand at rest; nor does he connect the tactual consciousness, due to excitation of joint and muscle, of his moving hand with the visual appear¬ ance of it. Indeed he does not realize the identity of hand at rest with moving hand; and still less is he conscious of any connection between hand, foot, and head. Not till the baby becomes conscious of all these experiences as related, and as relatively permanent, or reproducible, has he a consciousness of his hand; and in similar fashion he must gain the conscious¬ ness of other parts of the body, and of the body as a unified whole. An important condition of the depth consciousness is the occurrence of right and left eye images differing slightly. The experience of closing first one eye, then the other, when looking directly at a solid object, will convince every one that the right ‘sees’ slightly more to the right of a given object, the left eye rather more to the left of the object. The facts of stereoscopy 7 prove that the simultaneous occurrence of such images is followed by the depth consciousness; for in looking through a stereoscope with eyes unmoving and parallel, pictures drawn separately for right and for left eye fall upon the two retinas; and I see the pictured object as single and solid.* The occurrence of right and left images is not, however, an essential or invariable condition of the consciousness of tridimensional form, for experiment shows that, with one eye closed, I may perceive depth. In this case a muscular change in the accommodation, and thus in the * For experiments, cf. Sanford, 212 ft.; Seashore, p. 53; Titchener, §42*
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