VII.
The difficulty described is especially felt in the following considerations. In the complex A B C … which we have designated as the material world, we find as part, not only our own body K L M …, but also the bodies of other persons (or animals) K' L' M' …, K" L" M" …, annexed to which, after the analogy of the complex α β γ …, we conceive similar α' β' γ' …, α" β" γ". As long as we deal with K' L' M' …, we find ourselves in a thoroughly familiar province, at every point sensorially accessible to us. But when we inquire after the sensations or feelings that belong to the body K' L' M' …, we no longer find in the province of sense the elements we seek: but we add them in thought. Not only is the domain into which we now enter much less familiar to us, but also the transition to it is relatively unsafe. We are possessed of a feeling as if we were about to plunge into an abyss. They that always pursue this direction of thought and this direction only, will never get completely rid of the feeling of insecurity that is very productive as a source of apparent problems.
But we are not limited to this way of reasoning. Let us consider first the reciprocal relation of the elements of the complex A B C …, without regarding K L M … (our body). Every physical investigation is of this kind. A white bullet falls upon a bell; a sound is heard. The bullet turns yellow before a sodium lamp, red before a lithium lamp. Here the elements (A B C …) appear to be connected only among each other and to be independent of our body (K L M …). But if we take santonine the bullet turns yellow again. If we turn one eye sidewise we see two bullets. If we close our eyes entirely we see no bullet at all. If we sever our auditory nerve no sound is heard. The elements A B C …, therefore, are not only connected among each other, but also with K L M. To this extent and to this extent only do we call A B C … sensations, and regard A B C … as belonging to the ego. In this way, accordingly, we do not meet with the gap between bodies and sensations before described, between that which is without and that which is within, between the material and the spiritual world.[19] All elements A B C … K L M … constitute but one single coherent mass, which when any one element in it is disturbed all is put in motion; except that a disturbance has a more extensive and profound action in K L M …, than in A B C. A magnet in our neighborhood disturbs the particles of iron near it; a falling boulder shakes the earth; but the severing of a nerve sets in motion the entire system of elements. Quite involuntarily does this relation of things suggest the picture of a viscous mass, at certain places (as in the ego) more firmly coherent than at others.
[19] Compare my Grundlinien der Lehre von den Bewegungsempfindungen. Leipsic, Engelmann, 1875, p. 54.
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When I first came to Vienna from the country, as a boy four or five years of age, and was taken by my father upon the walls of the city's fortifications, I was very much surprised to see people below in the moat and could not understand how, regarded from my point of view, they could have gotten down there; for the thought of another possible way never occurred to me. I remarked the same amazement, once afterwards in life, in the case of a three-year old boy of mine, while taking a walk with him upon the walls about Prague. I recall this feeling to mind every time I engage myself with the reflection above referred to, and I frankly confess that this accidental experience of mine greatly helped to strengthen the opinion upon this point that I adopted a long time ago. The habit of pursuing the same ways in material and psychical things operates to confuse greatly our field of survey. A child forcing its way through a wall in a house in which it has long dwelt, can experience an actual enlargement of its view of the world, and a slight scientific hint can bring much enlightenment.