Page:ScienceAndHypothesis1905.djvu/89

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space. It is also just as impossible for us to represent to ourselves external objects in geometrical space, as it is impossible for a painter to paint on a flat surface objects with their three dimensions. Representative space is only an image of geometrical space, an image deformed by a kind of perspective, and we can only represent to ourselves objects by making them obey the laws of this perspective. Thus we do not represent to ourselves external bodies in geometrical space, but we reason about these bodies as if they were situated in geometrical space. When it is said, on the other hand, that we "localise" such an object in such a point of space, what does it mean? It simply means that we represent to ourselves the movements that must take place to reach that object. And it does not mean that to represent to ourselves these movements they must be projected into space, and that the concept of space must therefore pre-exist. When I say that we represent to ourselves these movements, I only mean that we represent to ourselves the muscular sensations which accompany them, and which have no geometrical character, and which therefore in no way imply the pre-existence of the concept of space.

Changes of State and Changes of Position.—But, it may be said, if the concept of geometrical space is not imposed upon our minds, and if, on the other hand, none of our sensations can furnish us with that concept, how then did it ever come into