Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/249

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No. 2.]
SUMMARIES OF ARTICLES.
235

ment in the estimation of an interval differs in different persons, and in the same at different times. What is the process in the representation of the playing of a melody? Henle said that the melodies ran their course "in an abstract way"; and this is true in some instances. The author's experience would rather say that they have a conglomerate clang-color (cf. Stumpf and Strieker). Taine speaks for a close resemblance of ideational image to original sensation. This may be a survival from the primitive condition.

All art took its origin from imitation. Hence the imitative talent of artists. The genius of the artist gives us normally what the ordinary man gives, if at all, only as the result of total arrest of his mentality in other directions (hypnosis, ecstasy, catalepsy, intoxication). The psychical law of artistic creation and of insanity is one and the same.

E. B. T.


Ueber die Grundformen der Vorstellungsverbindung. (Schluss.) M. Offner. Phil. Mon., XXVIII, 9 u. 10, pp. 513-547.

Association by contrast presupposes association by similarity, and at first appears as a secondary process. But on the return of a contrast-presentation, the chief weight inclines to the side of pure contiguous association or word association. The theory which explains contrast-association on the analogy of after images, is untenable from the fact that associations by contrast, always infrequent owing to the relatively few really contrasting presentations, do not appear in the flow of ideas where conditions are most favorable to reaction against a one-sided strain of attention, and do appear where, according to the theory, there is least reason to expect them. In the reproduction of the whole by a part, or vice versa, the psycho-physical process is quite the same as in so called 'association by similarity,' so that there is no need of involving a peculiar form as does Höffding. The difference lies within the relations of content in the separate presentations, and the union of the latter is rightly ascribed by Wundt to outer association. This outer association suffices as well for the explanation of associative subsumption, which Wundt reckons as a case of inner association. The consciousness that a particular presentation resembles countless others is built up through association by similarity. Finally, the memory-image blends after the manner of a composite photograph, or gains universality by the concentration of attention upon representative elements, or completely retires behind a mere symbol. The cumulative, representa-