Boris Sidis

“ The perception is one state of mind."
We thus see that most of the psychologists regard the percept somewhat in Spencerian terms as being made up of presentations and representations, or as Spencer puts it as being 'partly presentative and partly representative.' In other words, the percept is a compound of sensations and images, a synthesis of peripherally induced sensations and of images, or of ideas centrally excited. One principle underlies the current theory of perception, variously phrased by different psychologists, and that is the identification of ideational and sensory processes. ”

“ Our observation employed either about external sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves is that which supplies our understanding with all the materials of thinking. These two are the fountains of knowledge from whence all the ideas we have or can naturally have, do spring." Perception is used by Locke in a broader sense than what it is understood at present, as he uses perception for sensory experience as well as for the introspection of higher mental processes. ”

“ James Mill in discussing perception tells us: "The colors upon a body are different, according to its figure, its shape, and its size. But the sensations of color and the sensations of extension, of figure, of distance have been so often united, felt in conjunction that the sensations of the color are never experienced without raising the ideas of the extension ”

“ Hume does not burden himself with Hartley's vibrations and vibratiuncles, but still at the basis of his system we find the same fallacious psychological principle. "All our ideas" he says "are copies of our lively perceptions or impressions." In other words, our sensations are lively impressions, while the ideas are only weakened perceptions,―the idea differs from the sensation only in intensity. There is no qualitative difference between sensation and idea. Ideas belong to sensory processes and do not differ as such from sensations. ”

“ We have daily experiences of such a state of things in dreams." The images, according to Spinoza, are equivalent to sensations and percepts, unless counteracted by the more intense peripheral sensations which thus become the 'reductives' of the image, a doctrine afterwards fully developed by Taine. I may add that Spinoza's view of dreams is repeated almost verbatim by the greatest psychological authorities, all uncritically giving their assent to the current fallacy that the image is but a weakened sensation and that the sensation is an intensified image. ”