Illusions by James Sully (story reading txt) 📕

Now, it is plain that such a composite idea must have been a very slow growth, involving, in certain stages of its formation, numerous processes of inference or quasi-inference from the past to the future. But in process of time these elements fuse inseparably: the directly known and the inferred no longer stand apart in my mind; my whole conception of the individual as he has been, is, and will be, seems one indivisible cognition; and this cognition is so firmly fixed and presents itself so instantaneously to the mind when I think of the object, that it has all the appearance of an intuitive conviction.

If this is a fairly accurate description of the structure of these compound representations and of their attendant beliefs, it is easy to see how many openings for error they cover. To begin with, my representation of so complex a thing as a concrete personality must always be exceedingly inadequate and fragmentary. I see only a few facets of the person's many-sided mind and character. And yet, in general, I am not aware of this, but habitually identify my representation with the totality of the object.

More than this, a little attention to the process by which these compound beliefs arise will disclose the fact that this apparently adequate representation of another has arisen in part by other than logical processes. If the blending of memory and expectation were simply a mingling of facts with correct inferences from these, it might not greatly matter; but it is something very different from this. Not only has our direct observation of the person been very limited, even that which we have been able to see has not been perfectly mirrored in our memory. It has already been remarked that recollection is a selective process, and this truth is strikingly illustrated in the growth of our enduring representations of things. What stamps itself on my memory is what surprised me or what deeply interested me at the moment. And then there are all the risks of mnemonic illusion to be taken into account as well. Thus, my idea of a person, so far even as it is built up on a basis of direct personal recollection, is essentially a fragmentary and to some extent a misleading representation.

Nor is this all. My habitual idea of a person is a resultant of forces of memory conjoined with other forces. Among these are to be reckoned the influence of illusory perception or insight, my own and that of others. The amount of misinterpretation of the words and actions of a single human being during the course of a long acquaintance must be very considerable. To these must be added the effect of erroneous single expectations and reconstructions of past experiences, in so far as these have not been distinctly contradicted and dissipated. All these errors, connected with single acts of observing or inferring the feelings and doings of another, have their effect in distorting the subsequent total representation of the person.

Finally, we must include a more distinct ingredient of active illusion, namely, all the complex effects of the activity of imagination as led, not by fact and experience, but by feeling and desire. Our permanent idea of another reflects all that we have fondly imagined the person capable of doing, and thus is made up of an ideal as well as a real actually known personality. And this result of spontaneous imagination must be taken to include the ideals entertained by others who are likely to have influenced us by their beliefs.[142]

Enough has probably been said to show how immensely improbable it is that our permanent cognition of so complex an object as a particular human being should be at all an accurate representation of the reality, how much of the erroneous is certain to get mixed up with the true. And this being so, we may say that our apparently simple direct cognition of a given person, our assurance of what he is and will continue to be, is to some extent illusory.

Illusion of Self-Esteem.

Let us now pass to another case of compound representation, where the illusory element is still more striking. I refer to the idea of self which each of us habitually carries about with him. Every man's opinion of himself, as a whole, is a very complex mental product, in which facts known by introspection no doubt play a part, but probably only a very subordinate part. It is obvious, from what has been said about the structure of our habitual representations of other individuals, that our ordinary representation of ourselves will be tinged with that mass of error which we have found to be connected with single acts of introspection, recollections of past personal experience, and illusory single expectations of future personal experiences. How large an opening for erroneous conviction here presents itself can only be understood by a reference to certain deeply fixed impulses and feelings connected with, the very consciousness of self, and favouring what I have marked off as active illusion. I shall try to show very briefly that each man's intuitive persuasion of his own powers, gifts, or importance—in brief, of his own particular value, contains, from the first, a palpable ingredient of active illusion.

Most persons, one supposes, have with more or less distinct consciousness framed a notion of their own value, if not to the world generally, at least to themselves. And this notion, however undefined it may be, is held to with a singular tenacity of belief. The greater part of mankind, indeed, seem never to entertain the question whether they really possess points of excellence. They assume it as a matter perfectly self-evident, and appear to believe in their vaguely conceived worth on the same immediate testimony of consciousness by which they assure themselves of their personal existence. Indeed, the conviction of personal consequence may be said to be a constant factor in most men's consciousness. However restrained by the rules of polite intercourse, it betrays its existence and its energy in innumerable ways. It displays itself most triumphantly when the mind is suddenly isolated from other minds, when other men unite in heaping neglect and contempt on the believer's head. In these moments he proves an almost heroic strength of confidence, believing in himself and in his claims to careful consideration when all his acquaintance are practically avowing their disbelief.

The intensity of this belief in personal value may be observed in very different forms. The young woman who, quite independently of others' opinion, and even in defiance of it, cherishes a conviction that her external attractions have a considerable value; the young man who, in the face of general indifference, persists in his habit of voluble talk on the supposition that he is conferring on his fellow-creatures the fruits of profound wisdom; and the man of years whose opinion of his own social importance and moral worth is quite disproportionate to the estimation which others form of his claims—these alike illustrate the force and pertinacity of the belief.

There are, no doubt, many exceptions to this form of self-appreciation. In certain robust minds, but little given to self-reflection, the idea of personal value rarely occurs. And then there are timid, sensitive natures that betray a tendency to self-distrust of all kinds, and to an undue depreciation of personal merit. Yet even here traces of an impulse to think well of self will appear to the attentive eye, and one can generally recognize that this impulse is only kept down by some other stronger force, as, for example, extreme sensitiveness to the judgment of others, great conscientiousness, and so on. And however this be, it will be allowed that the average man rates himself highly.

It is to be noticed that this persuasion of personal value or excellence is, in common, very vague. A man may have a general sense of his own importance without in the least being able to say wherein exactly his superiority lies. Or, to put it another way, he may have a strong conviction that he stands high in the scale of morally deserving persons, and yet be unable to define his position more nearly. Commonly, the conviction seems to be only definable as an assurance of a superlative of which the positive and comparative are suppressed. At most, his idea of his moral altitude resolves itself into the proposition, "I am a good deal better than Mr. A. or Mr. B." Now, it is plain that in these intuitive judgments on his own excellence, the man is making an assertion with respect, not only to inner subjective feelings which he only can be supposed to know immediately, but also to external objective facts which are patent to others, namely, to certain active tendencies and capabilities, to the direction of external conduct in certain lines.[143] Hence, if the assertion is erroneous, it will be in plain contradiction to others' perceptions of his powers or moral endowments. And this is what we actually find. A man's self-esteem, in a large preponderance of cases, is plainly in excess of others' esteem of him. What the man conceives himself to be differs widely from what others conceive him to be.

"Oh wad some power the giftie gie us,
To see oursels as others see us!"

Now, whence comes this large and approximately uniform discrepancy between our self-esteem and others' esteem of us? By trying to answer this question we shall come to understand still better the processes by which the most powerful forms of illusion are generated.

It is, I think, a matter of every-day observation that children manifest an apparently instinctive disposition to magnify self as soon as the vaguest idea of self is reached. It is very hard to define this feeling more precisely than by terming it a rudimentary sense of personal importance. It may show itself in very different ways, taking now a more active form, as an impulse of self-assertion, and a desire to enforce one's own will to the suppression of others' wills, and at another time wearing the appearance of a passive emotion, an elementary form of amour propre. And it is this feeling which forms the germ of the self-estimation of adults. For in truth all attribution of value involves an element of feeling, as respect, and of active desire, and the ascription of value to one's self is in its simplest form merely the expression of this state of mind.

But how is it, it may be asked, that this feeling shows itself instinctively as soon as the idea of self begins to arise in consciousness? The answer to this question is to be found, I imagine, in the general laws of mental development. All practical judgments like that of self-estimation are based on some feeling which is developed before it; and, again, the feeling itself is based on some instinctive action which, in like manner, is earlier than the feeling. Thus, for example, an Englishman's judgment that his native country is of paramount value springs out of a long-existent sentiment of patriotism, which sentiment again may be regarded as having slowly grown up about the half-blindly followed habit of defending and furthering the interests of one's nation or tribe. In a similar way, one suspects, the feeling of personal worth, with its accompanying judgment, is