Illusions by James Sully (story reading txt) 📕
And here at once there forces itself on our attention the question, What exactly is to be understood by the term "illusion"? In scientific works treating of the pathology of the subject, the word is confined to what are specially known as illusions of the senses, that is to say, to false or illusory perceptions. And there is very good reason for this limitation, since such illusions of the senses are the most palpable and striking symptoms of mental disease. In addition to this,
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[75] For a very full, fair, and thoughtful discussion of this whole question, see Radestock, op. cit., ch. iv.
[76] This may be technically expressed by saying that the liminal intensity (Schwelle) is raised during sleep.
[77] See Wundt, Physiologische Psychologie, pp. 188-191.
[78] There is, indeed, sometimes an undertone of critical reflection, which is sufficient to produce a feeling of uncertainty and bewilderment, and in very rare cases to amount to a vague consciousness that the mental experience is a dream.
[79] Observations on Man, Part I. ch. iii, sec. 5.
[80] Quoted by Radestock, op. cit., p. 110.
[81] Le Sommeil et les Rêves, p. 132, et seq.
[82] Das Leben des Traumes, p. 369. Other instances are related by Beattie and Abercrombie.
[83] Le Sommeil et les Rêves, p. 42, et seq.
[84] Beiträge sur Physiognosie und Heautognosie, p. 256. For other cases see H. Meyer, Physiologie der Nervenfaser, p. 309; and Strümpell, Die Natur und Entstehung der Träume, p. 125.
[85] A very clear and full account of these organic sensations, or common sensations, has recently appeared from the pen of A. Horwicz in the Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, iv. Jahrgang 3tes Heft.
[86] Schopenhauer uses this hypothesis in order to account for the apparent reality of dream-illusions. He thinks these internal sensations may be transformed by the "intuitive function" of the brain (by means of the "forms" of space, time, etc.) into quasi-realities, just as well as the subjective sensations of light, sound, etc., which arise in the organs of sense in the absence of external stimuli. (See Versuch über das Geisterschen: Werke, vol. v. p. 244, et seq.)
[87] Das Alpdrücken, pp. 8, 9, 27.
[88] It is this fact which justifies writers in assigning a prognostic character to dreams.
[89] A part of the apparent exaggeration in our dream-experiences may be retrospective, and due to the effect of the impression of wonder which they leave behind them. (See Strümpell, Die Natur und Entstehung der Träume.)
[90] Cf. Radestock, op. cit., pp. 131, 132.
[91] I was on one occasion able to observe this process going on in the transition from waking to sleeping. I partly fell asleep when suffering from toothache. Instantly the successive throbs of pain transformed themselves into a sequence of visible movements, which I can only vaguely describe as the forward strides of some menacing adversary.
[92] Even the "unconscious impressions" of waking hours, that is to say, those impressions which are so fugitive as to leave no psychical trace behind, may thus rise into the clear light of consciousness during sleep. Maury relates a curious dream of his own, in which there appeared a figure that seemed quite strange to him, though he afterwards found that he must have been in the habit of meeting the original in a street through which he was accustomed to walk (loc. cit., p. 124).
[93] See p. 53.
[94] See Maury, loc. cit., p. 146.
[95] See what was said respecting the influence of a dominant emotional agitation on the interpretation of actual sense-impressions.
[96] It is proved experimentally that the ear has a much closer organic connection with the vocal organ than the eye has. Donders found that the period required for responding vocally to a sound-signal is less than that required for responding in the same way to a light-signal.
[97] On the nature of this impulse, as illustrated in waking and in sleep, see the article by Delbœuf, "Le Sommeil et les Rêves," in the Revue Philosophique, June, 1880, p. 636.
[98] Physiologische Psychologie, p. 660.
[99] I may, perhaps, observe, after giving two dreams which have to do with mathematical operations, that, though I was very fond of them in my college days, I have long ceased to occupy myself with these processes. I would add, by way of redeeming my dream-intelligence from a deserved charge of silliness, that I once performed a respectable intellectual feat when asleep. I put together the riddle, "What might a wooden ship say when her side was stove in? Tremendous!" (Tree-mend-us). I was aware of having tried to improve on the form of this pun. I am happy to say I am not given to punning during waking life, though I had a fit of it once. It strikes me that punning, consisting as it does essentially of overlooking sense and attending to sound, is just such a debased kind of intellectual activity as one might look for in sleep.
[100] See Radestock, op. cit., ch. ix.; Vergleichung des Traumes mit dem Wahnsinn.
[101] For Spinoza's experience, given in his own words, see Mr. F. Pollock's Spinoza, p. 57; cf. what Wundt says on his experience, Physiologische Psychologie, p. 648, footnote 2.
[102] See an interesting account of "Recent Researches on Hypnotism," by G. Stanley Hall, in Mind, January, 1881.
[103] I need hardly observe that physiology shows that there is no separation of different elementary colour-sensations which are locally identical.
[104] This kind of error is, of course, common to all kinds of cognition, in so far as they involve comparison. Thus, the presence of the excitement of the emotion of wonder at the sight of an unusually large object, say a mountain, disposes the mind to look on it as the largest of its class. Such illusions come midway between presentative and representative illusions. They might, perhaps, be specially marked off as illusions of "judgment."
[105] So far as any mental state, though originating in a fusion of elements, is now unanalyzable by the best effort of attention, we must of course regard it in its present form as simple. This distinction between what is simple or complex in its present nature, and what is originally so, is sometimes overlooked by psychologists. Whether the feelings and ideas here referred to are now simple or complex, cannot, I think, yet be very certainly determined. To take the idea of space, I find that after practice I recognize the ingredient of muscular feeling much better than I did at first. And this exactly answers to Helmholtz's contention that elementary sensations as partial tones can be detected after practice. Such separate recognition may be said to depend on correct representation. On the other hand, it must be allowed that there is room for the intuitionist to say that the associationist is here reading something into the idea which does not belong to it. It is to be added that the illusion which the associationist commonly seeks to fasten on his opponent is that of confusing final with original simplicity. Thus, he says that, though the idea of space may now to all intents and purposes be simple, it was really built up out of many distinct elements. More will be said on the relation of questions of nature and genesis further on.
[106] I may as well be frank and say that I myself, assuming free-will to be an illusion, have tried to trace the various threads of influence which have contributed to its remarkable vitality. (See Sensation and Intuition, ch. v., "The Genesis of the Free-Will Doctrine.")
[107] I purposely leave aside here the philosophical question, whether the knowledge of others' feelings is intuitive in the sense of being altogether independent of experience, and the manifestation of a fundamental belief. The inherited power referred to in the text might, of course, be viewed as a transmitted result of ancestral experience.
[108] I here assume, along with G.H. Lewes and other competent dramatic critics, that the actor does not and dares not feel what he expresses, at least not in the perfectly spontaneous way, and in the same measure in which he appears to feel it.
[109] The illusory nature of much of this emotional interpretation of music has been ably exposed by Mr. Gurney. (See The Power of Sound, p. 345, et seq.)
[110] The reader will note that this impulse is complementary to the other impulse to view all mental states as analogous to impressions produced by external things, on which I touched in the last chapter.
[111] Errors of memory have sometimes been called "fallacies," as, for example, by Dr. Carpenter (Human Physiology, ch. x.). While preferring the term "illusion," I would not forget to acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr. Carpenter, who first set me seriously to consider the subject of mnemonic error.
[112] From this it would appear to follow that, so far as a percept is representative, recollection must be re-representative.
[113] The relation of memory to recognition is very well discussed by M. Delbœuf, in connection with a definition of memory given by Descartes. (See the article "Le Sommeil et les Rêves," in the Revue Philosophique, April, 1880, p. 428, et seq.)
[114] A very interesting account of the most recent physiological theory of memory is to be found in a series of articles, bearing the title, "La Mémoire comme fait biologique," published in the Revue Philosophique, from the pen of the editor, M. Th. Ribot. (See especially the Revue of May, 1880, pp. 516, et seq.) M. Ribot speaks of the modification of particular nerve-elements as "the static base" of memory, and of the formation of nerve-connections by means of which the modified element may be re-excited to activity as "the dynamic base of memory" (p. 535).
[115] What constitutes the difference between such a progressive and a retrogressive movement is a point that will be considered by-and-by.
[116] It is not easy to say how far exceptional conditions may serve to reinstate the seemingly forgotten past. Yet the experiences of dreamers and of those who have been recalled to consciousness after partial drowning, whatever they may prove with respect to the revivability of remote experiences, do not lead us to imagine that the range of our definitely localizing memory is a wide one.
[117] Der Zeitsinn nach Versuchen, p. 36, et seq.
[118] Physiologische Psychologie, p. 782.
[119] Wundt refers these errors to variations in the state of preadjustment of the attention to impressions and representations, according as they succeed one another slowly or rapidly. There is little doubt that the effects of the state of tension of the apparatus of attention, are involved here, though I am disposed to think that Wundt makes too much of this circumstance. (See Physiologische Psychologie, pp. 782, 783. I have given a fuller account of Wundt's theory in Mind, No. i.)
[120] Strictly speaking, it would occupy more time, since the effort of recalling each successive link in the chain would involve a greater interval between any two
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