Illusions by James Sully (story reading txt) 📕

source of error plays a prominent part in the illusions of the insane. Diseased centres may be accompanied by disordered peripheral structures, and so subjective sensation may frequently be the starting-point of the wildest illusions. Thus, a patient's horror of poison may have its first origin in some subjective gustatory sensation. Similarly, subjective tactual sensations may give rise to gross illusions, as when a patient "feels" his body attacked by foul and destructive creatures.

It may be well to remark that this mistaken interpretation of the seat or origin of subjective sensation is closely related to hallucination. In so far as the error involves the ascription of the sensation to a force external to the sense-organ, this part of the mental process must, when there is no such force present, be viewed as hallucinatory. Thus, the feeling of something creeping over the skin is an hallucination in the sense that it implies the idea of an object external to the skin. Similarly, the projection of an ocular impression due to retinal disturbance into the external field of vision, may rightly be named an hallucination. But the case is not always so clear as this. Thus, for example, when a gustatory sensation is the result of an altered condition of the saliva, it may be said that the error is as much an illusion as an hallucination.[31]

In a wide sense, again, all errors connected with those subjective sensations which arise from a stimulation of the peripheral regions of the nerve may be called illusions rather than hallucinations. Or, if they must be called hallucinations, they may be distinguished as "peripheral" from those "central" hallucinations which arise through an internal automatic excitation of the sensory centre. It is plain from this that the region of subjective sensation is an ambiguous region, where illusion and hallucination mix and become confused. To this point I shall have occasion to return by-and-by.

I have now probably said enough respecting the illusions that arise through the fact of there being fixed limits to our sensibility. The rationale of these illusions is that whenever the limit is reached, we tend to ignore it and to interpret the impression in the customary way.

Variations of Sensibility.

We will now pass to a number of illusions which depend on something variable in the condition of our sensibility, or some more or less exceptional organic circumstance. These variations may be momentary and transient or comparatively permanent. The illusion arises in each case from our ignoring the variation, and treating a given sensation under all circumstances as answering to one objective cause.

First of all, the variation of organic state may affect our mental representation of the strength of the stimulus or external cause. Here the fluctuation may be a temporary or a permanent one. The first case is illustrated in the familiar example of taking a room to be brighter than it is when emerging from a dark one. Another striking example is that of our sense of the temperature of objects, which is known to be strictly relative to a previous sensation, or more correctly to the momentary condition of the organ. Yet, though every intelligent person knows this, the deeply rooted habit of making sensation the measure of objective quality asserts its sway, and frequently leads us into illusion. The well-known experiment of first plunging one hand in cold water, the other in hot, and then dipping them both in tepid, is a startling example of this organized tendency. For here we are strongly disposed to accept the palpable contradiction that the same water is at once warm and cool.

Far more important than these temporary fluctuations of sensibility are the permanent alterations. Excessive fatigue, want of proper nutrition, and certain poisons are well known to be causes of such changes. They appear most commonly under two forms, exalted sensibility, or hyperæsthesia, and depressed sensibility, or anæsthesia. In these conditions flagrant errors are made as to the real magnitude of the causes of the sensations. These variations may occur in normal life to some extent. In fairly good health we experience at times strange exaltations of tactual sensibility, so that a very slight stimulus, such as the contact of the bed-clothes, becomes greatly exaggerated.

In diseased states of the nervous system these variations of sensibility become much more striking. The patient who has hyperæsthesia fears to touch a perfectly smooth surface, or he takes a knock at the door to be a clap of thunder. The hypochondriac may, through an increase of organic sensibility, translate organic sensations as the effect of some living creature gnawing at his vitals. Again, states of anæsthesia lead to odd illusions among the insane. The common supposition that the body is dead, or made of wood or of glass, is clearly referable in part to lowered sensibility of the organism.[32]

It is worth adding, perhaps, that these variations in sensibility give rise not only to sensory but also to motor illusions. To take a homely instance, the last miles of a long walk seem much longer than the first, not only because the sense of fatigue leading us to dwell on the transition of time tends to magnify the apparent duration, but because the fatigued muscles and connected nerves yield a new set of sensations which constitute an exaggerated standard of measurement. A number of optical illusions illustrate the same thing. Our visual sense of direction is determined in part by the feelings accompanying the action of the ocular muscles, and so is closely connected with the perception of movement, which has already been touched on. If an ocular muscle is partially paralyzed it takes a much greater "effort" to effect a given extent of movement than when the muscle is sound. Hence any movement performed by the eye seems exaggerated. Hence, too, in this condition objects are seen in a wrong direction; for the patient reasons that they are where they would seem to be if he had executed a wider movement than he really has. This may easily be proved by asking him to try to seize the object with, his hand. The effect is exaggerated when complete paralysis sets in, and no actual movement occurs in obedience to the impulse from within.[33]

Variations in the condition of the nerve affect not only the degree, but also the quality of the sensation, and this fact gives rise to a new kind of illusion. The curious phenomena of colour-contrast illustrate momentary alterations of sensibility. When, after looking at a green colour for a time, I turn my eye to a grey surface and see this of the complementary rose-red hue, the effect is supposed to be due to a temporary fatigue of the retina in relation to those ingredients of the total light in the second case which answer to the partial light in the first (the green rays).[34]

These momentary modifications of sensibility are of no practical significance, being almost instantly corrected. Other modifications are more permanent. It was found by Himly that when the retina is overexcitable every stimulus is raised in the spectrum scale of colours. Thus, violet becomes red. An exactly opposite effect is observed when the retina is torpid.[35] Certain poisons are known to affect the quality of the colour-impression. Thus, santonin, when taken in any quantity, makes all colourless objects look yellow. Severe pathological disturbances are known to involve, in addition to hyperæsthesia and anæsthesia, what, has been called paræsthesia, that is to say, that condition in which the quality of sensation is greatly changed. Thus, for example, to one in this state all food appears to have a metallic taste, and so on.

If we now glance back at the various groups of illusions just illustrated, we find that they all have this feature in common: they depend on the general mental law that when we have to do with the unfrequent, the unimportant, and therefore unattended to, and the exceptional, we employ the ordinary, the familiar, and the well-known as our standard. Thus, whether we are dealing with sensations that fall below the ordinary limits of our mental experience, or with those which arise in some exceptional state of the organism, we carry the habits formed in the much wider region of average every-day perception with us. In a word, illusion in these cases always arises through what may, figuratively at least, be described as the application of a rule, valid for the majority of cases, to an exceptional case.

In the varieties of illusion just considered, the circumstance that gives the peculiarity to the case thus wrongly interpreted has been referred to the organism. In the illusions to which we now pass, it will be referred to the environment. At the same time, it is plain that there is no very sharp distinction between the two classes. Thus, the visual illusion produced by pressing the eyeball might be regarded not only as the result of the organic law of the "specific energy" of the nerves, but, with almost equal appropriateness, as the consequence of an exceptional state of things in the environment, namely, the pressure of a body on the retina. As I have already observed, the classification here adopted is to be viewed simply as a rough expedient for securing something like a systematic review of the phenomena.

CHAPTER V. ILLUSIONS OF PERCEPTION—continued.

A. Passive Illusions (b) as determined by the
Environment.

In the following groups of illusion we may look away from nervous processes and organic disturbances, regarding the effect of any external stimulus as characteristic, that is, as clearly marked off from the effects of other stimuli, and as constant for the same stimulus. The source of the illusion will be looked for in something exceptional in the external circumstances, whereby one object or condition of an object imitates the effect of another object or condition, to which, owing to a large preponderance of experience, we at once refer it.

Exceptional Relation of Stimulus to Organ.

A transition from the preceding to the following class of illusions is to be met with in those errors which arise from a very exceptional relation between the stimulus and the organ of sense. Such a state of things is naturally interpreted by help of more common and familiar relations, and so error arises.

For example, we may grossly misinterpret the intensity of a stimulus under certain circumstances. Thus, when a man crunches a biscuit, he has an uncomfortable feeling that the noise as of all the structures of his head being violently smashed is the same to other ears, and he may even act on his illusory perception, by keeping at a respectful distance from all observers. And even though he be a physiologist, and knows that the force of sensation in this case is due to the propagation of vibrations to the auditory centre by other channels than the usual one of the ear, the deeply organized impulse to measure the strength of an external stimulus by the intensity of the sensation asserts its force.

Again, if we turn to the process of perceptional construction properly so called, the reference of the sensation to a material object lying in a certain direction, etc., we find a similar transitional form of illusion. The most interesting case of this in visual perception is that of a disturbance or displacement of the organ by external force. For example, an illusory sense of direction arises by the simple action of closing one eye, say the left, and pressing the other eyeball with one of the fingers a little outwards, that is to the right. The result of this movement is, of course, to transfer the retinal picture to new nervous elements further