As might be expected, those of my subjects to whom rhythm was not a conscious factor of the experience of repetition could not understand exactly what was meant by the distinction between rest-phase and emphasis of rhythm. In all the preceding cases where the temporal type gave the introspection I have described, the spatial subjects grouped the single lines, in Fig. 2, about the heavier pair as centre, and moved from the centre of one such group to the next. The experience then consisted of a succession of adjacent symmetrical groups, connected by movement from centre to centre. When asked if there was no pleasure in finding equal distances between their centres, i. e., any temporal element whatever, they all denied feeling any. They could not detect that they felt the distances between their centres as equal, although they knew them to be. They spent so much attention on the group that all feeling of the distance between its centre and the last was lost before going on to the next.
These two marked types of apperception of an alternating series seem varieties of emphasis, rather than of actual experience. It was evident that those in the spatial type must have some recollection of the amount of distance passed over between the various groups to feel the whole series as connected in any way; while those of the temporal type could not be wholly absorbed with the separate lines of the series as they traversed it, but were distinctly conscious of the space relations of those in the side of the field that they had just passed or were coming to.
Next, I tried to see what were the different factors which made up the value of the minor spaces. By varying both their size and filling, and doing the same to the major element, I could judge the relative value of these changes on the two, and their effect on the whole series.
The test was made in the following manner. The series as it stood consisted of a double line alternating with a single one.
With every temporal subject the double line was conceived to be the repeated thing, and the space between considered as an alternate, with a repeated line of its own, to be sure, but not felt in the same way as the other. With the spatial type, the single line was merely the limiting edge of the symmetrical figure, with a double line in the centre. One subject varied back and forth in his method of apperception, and considered the richness and variety of these different apperceptions as one of the chief sources of the pleasure therein.
Variation of alternating spaces: The minor spaces were varied by hanging two strings in one, and one in the other, and subject asked how such a change affected his feeling for them. The change was marked.
The spaces which had before been minor were so no longer. The alternate space in which two strings were hung with the boundary-line of the two double strings became the new element, and the alternate in which only one string was hung continued to be the alternate in the new series. The whole series shifted itself, and settled into a new equilibrium. Some of the subjects were able to feel all the former minor spaces still as such, but only by a definite effort, and not while taking any pleasure in it. The change in the alternates spoilt the whole scheme of the repetition as it already stood, and made a regrouping necessary. I next tried varying alternates by removing a string at intervals.
