John Wesley Powell

“ We paint images and the art is coetaneous with human culture. What we do by art in painting it was supposed that nature does in light upon the retina, and this is true within certain limitations, but the picture upon the retina must be judged like the picture upon the canvas, and in both cases the arranged colors are but symbols of form which is primarily learned by touch.
In forming deductive judgments of perception, that is, judgments of form, we may find that our concepts are incongruous, that one judgment contradicts the other. ”

“ The human mind can discover any wonder the imagination can picture, however unreal or impossible it may be, if expectancy first be wrought to the requisite intensity. All perception is by interpretation, but the data by which we interpret are memories, and correct interpretation depends upon the right guessing in the first instance and ultimately on verification; once more we have verification necessary to cognition. ”

“ A strange confusion is found among some metaphysical writers in confounding the presentative judgment with image forming. Touch is the primal sense of form, but other senses perform the same task vicariously. As taste and odor are the senses by which we discover kind and the concept of form becomes the symbol of the kind, so on the other hand while touch gives us form the kind may become the symbol of the form. Now the sense of vision is highly adapted to the performance of this symbolic or vicarious function. ”

“ Like a judgment of sensation, a judgment of perception may be a certitude or a fallacy. If it is a fallacy it must be corrected, and if a certitude it must be verified. If the form were determined by consciousness there would be no need of verification, but as it is external, verification is necessary. A judgment of perception is imperfectly verified by repetition, for if the likeness is discovered a second time the judgment may be supposed valid, though the same conditions for error may still exist. ”

“ From the foot of the mountain on every side there seems to be a stretch of gray water. After a time a breeze starts up, and the water seems to be agitated in great waves, and at last the waves are driven away in tumultuous cloudlets. ”

“ A representative judgment of perception, like that of sensation, has five elements. Instead of the consciousness of the sense impression we have the consciousness of a concept brought about by an act of choice arising from association or exercise of the will. ”

“ Now the metaphysical doctrine which makes images and ideas to mean the same thing as presentative and representative judgments doubly confuses the subject, for thought is a succession of judgments of all kinds and image making is a presentative judgment of vision.
We more often make the form the symbol of the other properties of a body than any of its other properties. ”

“ While form is primordially cognized by touch, and touch is the final arbiter in verification of judgments of form, yet vision is more facile in making such judgments and multitudes of judgments of form are made through the sense of vision where one is made by the sense of touch; notwithstanding this the judgments of vision are greatly subject to error and often require verification.
It is due to facile cognition and recognition of form by vision that the forms of bodies become symbols of all their properties. ”

“ In presentative judgments we compare an impression consciousness with a memory consciousness. In a representative judgment we compare a memory consciousness with another memory consciousness. In both cases we judge of likeness or unlikeness between the terms compared. In presentative judgments we discover facts and classify them ”

“ It has been shown that there is a faculty of the mind, by which judgments and concepts of kind are produced, which has been called sensation. It is now proposed to demonstrate that there is a faculty of the mind by which judgments and concepts of form are produced which will be called perception. ”

“ Why is the voice of a crow mistaken for the voice of a man? Because I am expecting my friend who stopped by the way where blooming plants attracted his interest. A false interpretation of a consciousness often comes from expectancy. ”

“ Bodies through their forms subserve many purposes, but they also subserve many purposes through their kinds and through the other properties which inhere in them, as forces, causes, and concepts. But we seem often to cognize them first as form. We see the forms of a thousand apples, peaches, or pears, where we taste but one, and so we habitually know apples, peaches, and pears by their forms ”

“ The external world is thus coined into symbols, and of these symbols the foundations of mind are laid, and of these symbols the walls are constructed, and of these symbols the dome is reared, until the temple of the soul is perfected—a symbol structure built in every soul by the phenomena of the universe. ”

“ In the group of mental operations by which the crystal is recognized the particular feeling of pain is conspicuous; but in the operations by which the water is discovered, the beating of light does not cause a feeling as a pleasant or as an unpleasant effect. ”