Excerpt from Space Perception of the Blind Things? In reality to the blind, time serves instead of space. N ear ness and distance mean to them nothing more, than the shorter or longer time, the smaller or greater number of feelings [sensations], which he requires, in order to get from one feeling [sensation] to another. The fact that the blind person employs the language of sight, may very well deceive, and did deceive me when I first began my investigations but in reality he knows nothing of things as outside one another, and (this especially I have observed very plainly), if the objects and. The difi'erent parts of the body with which they come in contact did not make dz'fl'rent kinds of im pressions on the sensory-nerves, he would regard everything ex ternal as one thing, that acts successively upon him, e.g., more strongly when he places his hand on a surface than when he lays a finger on it, more faintly still when he strokes a surface with his hand or passes the foot over it. In his own body he distinguishes between head and feet not in the least by distance, but merely by the incredible fineness with which he can recognize differences in the feelings [sensations] experienced in the one or the Other of these parts, and alsq by time. In the same way he distinguishes the form of other bodies purely by the kinds of the feelings [impressions on the sense of touch], since, e.g., a cube.

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