Illusions by James Sully (story reading txt) ๐
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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[121] I need hardly say that there is no sharp distinction between these two modes of subjective appreciation. Our estimate of an interval as it passes is really made up of a number of renewed anticipations and recollections of the successive experiences. Yet we can say broadly that this is a prospective estimate, while that which is formed when the period has quite expired must be altogether retrospective.
[122] See an interesting paper on "Consciousness of Time," by Mr. G. J. Romanes, in Mind (July, 1878).
[123] It is well known that there is, from the first, a gradual falling off in the strength of a sensation of light when a moderately bright object is looked at.
[124] Cf. Hartley, Observations on Man, Part I. ch. iii. sec. 4 (fifth edit., p. 391).
[125] See Dr. Carpenter's Mental Physiology, fourth edit, p. 456.
[126] This is, perhaps, what is meant by saying that people recall their past enjoyments more readily than their sufferings. Yet much seems to turn on temperament and emotional peculiarities. (For a fuller discussion of the point, see my Pessimism, p. 344.)
[127] The only exception to this that I can think of is to be found in the power which I, at least, possess, after looking at a new object, of representing it as a familiar one. Yet this may be explained by saying that in the case of every object which is clearly apprehended there must be vague revivals of similar objects perceived before. Oases in which recent experiences tend, owing to their peculiar nature, very rapidly to assume the appearance of old events, will be considered presently.
[128] Mental Physiology, p. 456.
[129] Mental Physiology, second edit., p. 172.
[130] Loc. cit., p. 390.
[131] This source of error has not escaped the notice of autobiographers themselves. See the remarks of Goethe in the opening passages of his Wahrheit und Dichtung.
[132] One wonders whether those persons who, in consequence of an injury to their brain, periodically pass from a normal into an abnormal condition of mind, in each of which there is little or no memory of the contents of the other state, complete their idea of personal continuity in each state by the same kind of process as that described in the text.
[133] The reader will remark that this condition of clear intellectual consciousness, namely, a certain degree of similarity and continuity of character in our successive mental states, is complementary to the other condition, constant change, already referred to. It may, perhaps, be said that all clear consciousness lies between two extremes of excessive sameness and excessive difference.
[134] It follows that any great transformation of our environment may lead to a partial confusion with respect to self. For not only do great and violent changes in our surroundings beget profound changes in our feelings and ideas, but since the idea of self is under one of its aspects essentially that of a relation to not-self, any great revolution in the one term, will confuse the recognition of the other. This fact is expressed in the common expression that we "lose ourselves" when in unfamiliar surroundings, and the process of orientation, or "taking our bearings," fails.
[135] On these disturbances of memory and self-recognition in insanity, see Griesinger, op. cit., pp. 49-51; also Ribot, "Des Dรฉsordres Gรฉnรฉraux de la Mรฉmoire," in the Revue Philosophique, August, 1880. It is related by Leuret (Fragments Psych. sur la Folie, p. 277) that a patient spoke of his former self as "la personne de moi-mรชme."
[136] In the following account of the process of belief and its errors, I am going over some of the ground traversed by my essay on Belief, its Varieties and Conditions ("Sensation and Intuition," ch. iv.). To this essay I must refer the reader for a fuller analysis of the subject.
[137] For an account of the difference of mechanism in memory and expectation, see Taine, De l'Intelligence, 2iรจme partie, livre premier, ch. ii. sec. 6.
[138] J.S. Mill distinguishes expectation as a radically distinct mode of belief from memory, but does not bring out the contrast with respect to activity here emphasized (James Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind, edited by J.S. Mill, p. 411, etc.). For a fuller statement of my view of the relation of belief to action, as compared with that of Professor Bain, see my earlier work.
[139] For some good remarks on the logical aspects of future events as matters of fact, see Mr. Venn's Logic of Chance, ch. x.
[140] James Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind, edited by J.S. Mill, vol. i p. 414, et seq.
[141] Principles of Geology, ch. iii.
[142] To make this rough analysis more complete, I ought, perhaps, to include the effect of all the errors of introspection, memory, and spontaneous belief, into which the person himself falls, in so far as they communicate themselves to others.
[143] In the case of a vain woman thinking herself much more pretty than others think her, the error is still more obviously one connected with a belief in objective fact.
[144] The Study of Sociology, ch. ix.
[145] As a matter of fact, the proportion of accurate knowledge to error is far larger in the case of classes than of individuals. Propositions with general terms for subject are less liable to be faulty than propositions with singular terms for subject.
[146] For a description of each of these extremes of boundless gaiety and utter despondency, see Griesinger, op. cit., Bk. III. ch. i. and ii. The relation of pessimism to pathological conditions is familiar enough; less familiar is the relation of unrestrained optimism. Yet Griesinger writes that among the insane "boundless hilarity," with "a feeling of good fortune," and a general contentment with everything, is as frequent as depression and repining (see especially p. 281, also pp. 64, 65).
[147] It has been seen that, from a purely psychological point of view, even what looks at first like pure presentative cognition, as, for example, the recognition of a present feeling of the mind, involves an ingredient of representation.
[148] See especially what was said about the rationale of illusions of perception, pp. 37, 38.
[149] I say "usually," because, as we have seen, there may sometimes be a permanent and even an inherited predisposition to active illusion in the individual temperament and nervous organization.
[150] See what was said on the nature of passive illusions of sense (pp. 44, 68, 70, etc.) The logical character of illusion might be brought out by saying that it resembles the fallacy which is due to reasoning from an approximate generalization as though it were a universal truth. In thus identifying illusion and fallacy, I must not be understood to say that there is, strictly speaking, any such thing as an unconscious reasoning process. On the contrary, I hold that it is a contradiction to talk of any mental operation as altogether unconscious. I simply wish to show that, by a kind of fiction, illusion may be described as the result of a series of steps which, if separately unfolded to consciousness (as they no longer are), would correspond to those of a process of inference. The fact that illusion arises by a process of contraction out of conscious inference seems to justify this use of language, even apart from the fact that the nervous processes in the two cases are pretty certainly the same.
[151] If we turn from the region of physical to that of moral ideas, we see this historical collision between common and individual conviction in a yet more impressive form. The teacher of a new moral truth has again and again been set down to be an illusionist by a society which was itself under the sway of a long-reigning error. As George Eliot observes, "What we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realitiesโa willing movement of a man's soul with the larger sweep of the world's forces."
[152] To make this account of the philosophic problem of the object-world complete, I ought to touch not only on the distinction between the vulgar and the scientific view of material things, but also on the distinction, within physical science, between the less and the more abstract view roughly represented by molar and molecular physics.
[153] For an excellent account of the distinction between the scientific and the philosophic point of view, see Mr. Shadworth Hodgson's Philosophy of Reflection, Bk. I. chs. i. and iii.; also Bk. III. chs. vii. and viii.
[154] I hold, in spite of Berkeley's endeavours to reconcile his position with that of common sense, that the popular view does at least tend in this direction. That is to say, the every-day habit, when considering the external world, of abstracting from particular minds, leads on insensibly to that complete detachment of it from mind in general which expresses itself in the first stage of philosophic reflection, crude realism. The physicist appears to me, both from the first essays in Greek "nature-philosophy," as also from the not infrequent confusion even to-day between a perfectly safe "scientific materialism" and a highly questionable philosophic materialism, to share in this tendency to take separate consideration for separate existence. Each new stage of abstraction in physical science gives birth to a new attempt to find an independent reality, a thing-in-itself, hidden further away from sense.
[155] See the interesting autobiographical record of the growth of philosophic doubt in the Premiรจre Mรฉditation of Descartes.
[156] The appeal is not, as we have seen, invariably from sight to touch, but may be in the reverse direction, as in the recognition of the duality of the points of a pair of compasses, which seem one to the tactual sense.
[157] I might further remark that this "collective experience" includes previously detected illusions of ourselves and of others.
[158] M. Taine frankly teaches that what is commonly called accurate perception is a "true hallucination" (De l'Intelligence, 2iรจme partie, Livre I. ch. i. sec. 3).
[159] It only seems to do so, apart from philosophic assumptions, in certain cases where experience testifies to a uniform untrustworthiness of the origin. For example, we may, on grounds of matter of fact and experience, be disposed to distrust any belief that we recognize as springing from an emotional source, from the mind's feelings and wishes.
I may add that a so-called intuitive belief may refer to a matter of fact which can be tested by the facts of experience and by scientific methods. Thus, for example, the old and now exploded form of the doctrine of innate ideas, which declared that children were born with certain ideas ready made, might be tested by observation of childhood, and reasoning from its
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