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If the extreme generality, and remoteness not so much from sense as from the visual and tactual imagination, of the laws of number, renders it a somewhat difficult effort of abstraction to conceive those laws as being in reality physical truths obtained by observation; the same difficulty does not exist with regard to the laws of extension.
Though the laws of Extension are not, like those of Number, remote from visual and tactual imagination, Geometry has not commonly been recognised as a strictly physical science.
Mach indeed claims to distinguish physiological Space, geometrical Space, visual Space, tactual Space as all different and yet apparently harmoniously blended in our Experience. He is, however, sadly wanting in clearness of statement. He never tells us when and where exactly we do have a sensation of Space.
He sees what, as we said once before, all great thinkers, the rude Scandinavians themselves, in one way or other, have contrived to see: That this so solid-looking material world is, at bottom, in very deed, Nothing; is a visual and tactual Manifestation of God's-power and presence, a shadow hung-out by Him on the bosom of the void Infinite; nothing more.
It is wholly characteristic that the experimenter in every field of sensations, visual or acoustical or tactual, often finds himself before the experience of having noticed a movement while he is unable to say in which direction the movement occurred. We are familiar with the illusions in which we believe that we see something which only our imagination supplies.
The dominant part has been played by tactual, muscular and organic sensations, placing me as one of the "tactual motor" type, with strong "verbal motor" and "organic" tendencies. When telling of any event I have a strong impulse to make the movements described and to gesticulate.
He had to hold his two forearms close in front of his eyes and stare at them, giving his full attention to the visual impression of the smooth, uninjured skin of the wrist. If during this process, the tactual counter-sensations were vivid, he had to go on with the staring at both arms, both held near together until the perception had crowded out the rival touch sensation.
Indeed, her presence gave the house what none other of the houses that he visited seemed to possess: a sort of tactual sense, a nervous system which ramified into each of its rooms and sent a constant stimulus to his heart.
The table, for instance, has form for him and he may find that these form perceptions involve the sensations of the eye movements which he makes from one corner of the table to the other; he may find that if the idea lasts in him, he becomes aware of the time by sensations of tension; he finds that in his perception of the table lies an idea of its use, and he discovers that that is made up of elements which are partly memory reproductions of earlier impressions, partly sensations of movement impulses; he also finds that the table feels smooth, and he discovers by his analysis that this impression of smoothness results from a special combination of tactual sensations and movement sensations; and again those movement sensations he analyzes further into sensations of muscle contraction and sensations of pressure in the joints and sensations of tension in the tendons.
As the wrist can be easily made accessible to sight and as I anticipated that the visual sensations would be more forceful than the tactual ones, I told him to look straight at his own wrists for ten minutes three times a day after waking, after luncheon, and before going to bed.
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