[6] Pillsbury, W.B.:  Amer.  Journ. of Psy., 1895, Vol.  VII., p.
   42.

The results from these two methods were practically the same.  But the second method, although it obviously permitted the determination of the displacements in one dimension only, was in the end regarded as the more reliable method.  With this apparatus I could be more certain that the contacts were made simultaneously, which was soon seen to be of the utmost importance for these particular experiments.  Then, too, by means of this aesthesiometer, all movement of the points after the contact was made was prevented.  This also was an advantage in the use of this apparatus, here and elsewhere, which can hardly be overestimated.  With any aesthesiometer that is operated directly by the hand, it is impossible to avoid imparting a slight motion to the points and thus changing altogether the character of the impression.  The importance of this consideration for my work was brought forcibly to my attention in this way.  One of the results of these tests was that when two simultaneous contacts are made differing in weight, if only one is recognized it is invariably located in the region of the contact with the heavier point.  But now if, while the points were in contact with the skin and before the judgment was pronounced, I gave the lighter point a slight jar, its presence and location were thereby revealed to the subject.  Then, too, it was found to be an advantage that the judgments were thus confined to the longitudinal displacement only; for, as I have before insisted, it was the relative, not the absolute position that I wished to determine, since my object in all these experiments in localization was to determine what connection, if any, exists between judgments upon cutaneous distances made indirectly by means of localization, and judgments that are pronounced directly upon the subjective experience of the distance.

In the first of these experiments, in which two points of different weight were used, the points were always taken safely outside of the threshold for the discrimination between two points in the particular region of the skin operated on.  An inspection of the results shown in Figs. 2 and 3 will indicate the marked tendency of the heavier point to attract the lighter.  In Figs. 2 and 3 the heavy curves were plotted from judgments where both heavy and light points were given together.  The dotted curve represents the localization of each point when given alone.  The height of the curves at any particular point is determined by the number of times a contact was judged to be directly under that point.  The fact that the curves are higher over the heavy points shows that, when two points were taken as one, this one was localized in the vicinity of the heavier point.  When points were near the threshold for any region, it will be observed that the two points were attracted to each other.  But when the points were altogether outside the threshold, they seemed strangely to have repelled each other.  As this problem lay somewhat away from my main interest here, I did not undertake to investigate this peculiar fluctuation exhaustively.  My chief purpose was satisfied when I found that the lighter point is displaced toward the heavier, in short distances.  A further explanation of these figures will be given in connection with similar figures in the next section.