This picture, fanciful though it may be, can nonetheless help us get a grip on the idea of the “inhibition-sum” (Hemmungssumme), which plays a key role in Herbart’s psycho-statics, but which he and his commentators treat in a very abstract, mathematical way. The idea is simply this: should two representations (to take the simplest case) oppose each other, then this opposition immediately causes them to squeeze and jostle each other, for they cannot both fully express themselves or be completely present to consciousness at the same time, as introspection readily confirms. Rather, they crowd (drängen) each other; indeed, each attempts to suppress or even completely crowd out (verdrängen) the other. As our picture suggests, this opposing and crowding is not a state but a movement, a “Conflict” or struggle to dominate, which takes time to reach a resolution (LPs, SW IV: 371 [§127]). The laws governing this movement are treated by mechanics (see following section), whereas statics deals with the end-state, i.e., the equilibrium that temporarily resolves the struggle, which Herbart terms the “static point” (der statische Punct) (cf. LPs, SW IV: 371 [§128]). This equilibrium is reached when each representation expresses itself to the greatest degree possible, given the countervailing pressure of the other. The two elastic balls reach a state, in other words, where each presses or inhibits the other, but neither can increase that pressure further. So they come to rest in a state of mutual inhibition, in which neither “shines” as brightly as it would if unimpeded by the other.[20] What Herbart calls the “inhibition-sum”, then, is the total of the opposed inhibitory forces, i.e., the total inhibiting exerted by the opposed representations upon each other, in a state of resting equilibrium. With this preliminary description in hand, let us turn to Herbart’s mathematical presentation.