Note 452 — Chapter XXVI · [430]

Professor G. E. Müller (Zur Grundlegung der Psychophysik (1878), p. 318,) was the first to explain the phenomenon after the manner advocated in the text. Still unacquainted with his book, I published my own similar explanation two years later.

Professor Mach in his wonderfully original little work 'Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen,' p. 57, describes an artificial way of getting translocation, and explains the effect likewise by the feeling of innervation. "Turn your eyes," he says, "as far as possible towards the left and press against the right sides of the orbits two large lumps of putty. If you then try to look as quickly as possible towards the right, this succeeds, on account of the incompletely spherical form of the eyes, only imperfectly, and the objects consequently appear translocated very considerably towards the right. The bare will to look rightwards gives to all images on the retina a greater rightwards value, to express it shortly. The experiment is at first surprising."—I regret to say that I cannot myself make it succeed—I know not for what reason. But even where it does succeed it seems to me that the conditions are much too complicated for Professor Mach's theoretic conclusions to be safely drawn. The putty squeezed into the orbit, and the pressure of the eyeball against it must give rise to peripheral sensations strong enough, at any rate (if only of the right kind), to justify any amount of false perception of our eyeball's position, quite apart from the innervation feelings which Professor Mach supposes to coexist.