were given, in a zigzag arrangement, he seemed to feel that he ought
to be able to judge the number but to find it hard to do so, and
knowing from experience that the larger the number the harder it is to
judge he seemed to reason conversely that the more effort it takes to
judge the more points there are, and hence he would overestimate the
number.

The comments of the subjects are of especial value. One subject (Mr.
Dunlap) reports that he easily loses the sense of location of his
fingers, and the spaces in between them seem to belong to him as much
as do his fingers themselves. When given one touch at a time and told
to raise the finger touched he can do so readily, but he says he does
not know which finger it is until he moves it. He feels as if he
willed to move the place touched without reference to the finger
occupying it. He sometimes hesitates in telling which finger it is,
and sometimes he finds out when he moves a finger that it is not the
one he thought it was.

Another subject (Dr. MacDougall) says that his fingers seem to him
like a continuous surface, the same as the back of his hand. He
usually named the outside points first. When asked about the order in
which he named them, he said he named the most distinct ones first.
Once he reported that he felt six things, but that two of them were in
the same places as two others, and hence he concluded there were but
four. This feeling in a less careful observer might lead to
overestimation of number and be called diffusion, but all cases of
overestimation cannot be explained that way, for it does not explain
why certain combinations are so much more likely to lead to it than
others.