ABSTRACT

The definition of the object is, as we have seen, that it exists partes extra partes1 and thus only admits of external and mechanical relations among its parts or between itself and other objects, either in the strict sense of a received and transmitted movement or in the larger sense of a relation of function to variable. In order to insert the organism into the universe of objects and to thereby seal off this universe, the functioning of the body had to be expressed in the language of the in-itself and the linear dependence between stimulus and receptor, or between receptor and Empfinder [the one sensing], had to be discovered beneath the level of behavior.2 Of course, it was conceded that new determinations emerge in the circuit of behavior. For example, the theory of specific nervous energy3 granted the organism the power to transform the physical world. But this theory in fact attributed to the nervous apparatus the occult power of creating the different structures of our experience, and although vision, touch, and hearing are so many ways of reaching the object, these structures were 76transformed into compact qualities and were derived from the local distinction between the organs in question. The relation between stimulus and perception could thus remain clear and objective; the psycho-physical event was of the same order as the relations of “worldly” causality.