The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Summary: Wundt - Zur Frage des Bewusstseinsumfanges
Against the attack of F. Schumann (Zeitschrift für Psych, und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, II, 116), Wundt seeks to justify and strengthen his views in regard to the number of impressions which can be simultaneously held in consciousness. Wundt's position is that if a series of impressions a b c d . . . m is apprehended as equal to another series immediately preceding it, the series must be given in consciousness as a simultaneous whole. That is, if a is the first impression and m the last, m must arise in consciousness before a vanishes, Schumann maintains that the percepts of the series can exist only singly in consciousness: firstly, because he finds this to be the case by introspection; secondly, because from the principle that like successive impressions arouse nervous discharges in the same central organ, it follows that each psycho-physical process arising from the stimuli of the series would coalesce with the effects remaining over from the preceding stimulus. Hence, only single percepts could come into consciousness, and the process of comparison of the two series consists in the holding the first series in memory, while the recurring members of the second are checked off against those of the first — one after another.
As corroborative of his own view, Wundt recalls the fact that immediately after the ending of the first series, and just as the second begins, one has a perfectly clear feeling whether one will or will not be able to compare the two, and asserts that his introspection shows him that the series can exist as a whole, remarking, however, that it is a dubious business to dispute about results of self-observation when there is no objective test to decide the question. Wundt considers the comparisons of series of successive impressions as an especially pronounced case of the action of the feelings given in sudden acts of recognition.