John Wesley Powell

“ Most of the fallacies of sensation which we have cited in this discussion, most of those which appear in the general literature of the subject, and most of those which occur in experience are not only hallucinations of sensation, but they are also specters of perception, because the human mind rarely senses an object without at the same time perceiving the object. When I see the color of the rose, I see the rose as a form. When I see the color of the cloud, I see the cloud. ”

“ From the illustrations which have been given it will perhaps be made clear that perception is the interpretation of a symbol, and that the power of interpretation comes by experience. We are constantly perceiving with all our senses, but sounds and sights are the most abundant, coming in hosts with every minute of wakefulness, and a habit of interpretation is formed which is conjoined with an inherited aptness. External forms do not come to the eye or the ear as consciousness, but only to the mind as inferences. ”

“ If I am intently listening for a particular sound and hear another, I may interpret it for the one I was expecting; if I am intently gazing in expectation of seeing one object, and another falls upon the field of vision, I may see in it the one for which I was intently gazing. ”

“ To unverified perception the rainbow as a form with a surface has been established, because of the habit of interpreting color as a mark of surface; this fallacy is common, perhaps universal. The clouds often seem to be painted upon the sky, or to be moving along the sky, but the trained meteorologist in time learns to distinguish clouds as forms, and discovers fleeting figures in them, and he still further discovers the relative position of clouds by recognizing the near from the far, and yet, to the untrained observer, there still lingers an element of fallacy. ”

“ In the realm of ghosts there are five provinces—the land of dreams, the land of ecstasy, the land of suggestion, the land of intoxication, and the land of insanity. In tribal society ghosts of animals prevail, while in civilized society ghosts of men prevail. If you were talking to a savage about some unusual occurrence, he would tell you how he had been warned by a bear, that a hummingbird had appeared, that a rattlesnake had crossed his way, that an eagle came to him in his dreams. Homer’s ghosts all appear as deities in the guise of human beings. ”

“ Having already found how judgments of perception are considered and how such judgments are verified, we have now to exhibit in what manner there comes into existence a multitude of judgments of perception which are never verified, and yet are entertained in the mind as if they were veridical.
Fallacies of perceptions are errors of judgment respecting forms. Such judgments may occur through unverified judgments of sensation, and the fallacy is repeated in a higher state of mind. ”

“ We have thus as individuals and as a race in all generations habitually considered color to be a symbol of surface. That which is habit in the interpretation of a sense impression contradicts that which we have learned by various operations of reasoning from other sense data. Thus habitual illusions often contradict certitudes, as they may be discovered by the higher forms of reason, and we often entertain certitudes and fallacies as if co-existent, and the world seems to be contradictory. ”

“ Light and shade are interpreted as deftly as lines, and we can see forms without other colors, so that a portrait which you know is only light and shade, is a symbol of the form and expression of a human face. But there are other colors both in nature and in art, and we instinctively and habitually interpret all colors as forms; but sometimes we see colors without seeing forms. The illusions of inference by the interpretation of lines in vision have been the subject of much investigation in psycho-physics, which is one branch of scientific psychology. ”

“ When, however, the mind is diseased, the hallucinations of sane life take possession of the person. The poor soul possessed by hallucination becomes a prey to melancholia, hysteria, and dementia. But the mind of the superstitious man, who is ever recalling the phantasms born of hallucination, is exploiting upon the brink of the sea of hallucination into which he may plunge by insanity. While ghosts may be smelled, touched, or heard, yet they are more commonly seen for vision is the most idealistic sense. ”

“ Habitual judgments of the mind which are illusions because unverified, may occur again and again in millions of cases, and the repetition but confirms the illusion, and such intuitive illusions can hardly be dispelled even by overwhelming knowledge, but the truth and the error will appear side by side and be entertained as verities, and the mind will search for some metaphysical explanation of them. ”

“ We must know things as kinds before we know them as forms, and we must first judge of things as kinds before we judge of them as forms. But when we already know things as kinds, we can re-cognize them as kinds by instantaneous judgments, and at once go on to cognize them as forms, or to make judgments about them as forms. In a former chapter, fallacies of sensation were often described in terms of perception, for they seem always to produce fallacies of perception, and in the state of mind under which they are produced it is the forms, not the kinds, which are of chief interest to the subject. ”

“ Again, we see that in vision nothing but color as in a flat is given to consciousness, and that form comes by interpretation or inference. Deftness in inference is acquired by practice; that is, it is the result of experience. ”

“ Such maps cannot be read by the inexperienced man, but he can develop the power so that a contour map will seem to be a picture of mountains and valleys and of hills and dales. Experience has taught me that this power is more easily gained and greatly assisted by representing relief in one color and drainage in another, as in blue; for when the knowledge that water is blue is represented in the map as blue, it will carry the streams down and aid in the perception of the relief. ”

“ When a word is pronounced in my hearing I hear the sound as a sound, perceive the person in the other room represented vicariously by the voice, and at the same time hear the word as a word and as a symbol of meaning. In general, the description of a sensation is best accomplished in terms of perception. ”

“ A sound may be obscure by reason of its faintness, or by reason of diverted attention. Sight may be obscure by reason of the twilight, or it may be obscure because attention is elsewhere directed. All such impressions may be veridical or may be fallacious. If I am intently listening for a sound I may interpret a sight for a sound ”

“ Judgments of perception still employ the same sense impressions in the construction of new concepts of form, while concepts of form are recalled when a judgment of form is made. A new concept of form is constituted by the increment of a new judgment of form. Therefore concepts of sensation are concepts of kind, while concepts of perception are concepts of form. As a judgment of sensation must always precede a judgment of perception, the same sense impression which gives rise to a judgment of sensation will, in the maturer mind of the infant, also give rise to a judgment of perception ”

“ Now will be understood the statement when it is affirmed that only color is manifested to the eye by the object, and that when such a judgment is formed it may or may not be valid, but that the color is interpreted as a symbol of the object in a judgment of perception. ”

“ It was long believed that the earth has ends, corners, foundation, and a flat upper surface. When it was discovered that the earth is a spheroid, the illusion of up and down as components of direction at right angles to a flat plane was dispelled, and a concept substituted of down toward the center and up from the center. While a few grasped the idea, the many still held to the old, and now, after more than two thousand years, there are people who have not mastered the concept. ”

“ If a person will observe his own thoughts from moment to moment, he will be surprised at the number of fallacious perceptions which he makes, some of which are immediately corrected, others are corrected after lapse of time, and probably many others that are never corrected, because of their insignificance in the practical affairs of life. These errors of judgment are especially common in audition and vision, the two senses most highly vicarious. ”

“ Such ghosts can be summoned readily by those phenomena which we have classified under the general designation of crystal vision, for the mind seems able by an effort of will to abstract attention from sense impressions in a fixed gaze upon a bright object, and then to be deluded with false judgments about such bright objects, seeing in the bright object itself many strange forms which are recalled from memory and projected into many incongruous relations of space. ”

“ In tribal society intoxicants are used for the purpose of producing hallucinations; in modern society alcohol is used as a beverage to produce gustatory pleasure; but in whatever way intoxicants are used hallucinations are produced. The hallucinations of obscure vision, reinforced by the hallucinations of dreaming, reinforced by the hallucinations of hypnotism, are still reinforced by the hallucinations of intoxication, until ghosts are the common property of mankind, and only through scientific training is the mind able to banish them. ”

“ I have found also that the power of interpreting light and shade is great in the savage for natural objects, but must be cultivated for unknown objects of art. And, again, I have found that the power of interpreting the miscellaneous colors of pictures is well developed when they represent things with which they are already familiar, but that it is necessary to familiarize them with things to develop the power of interpreting unknown forms. ”

“ If the primeval judgments are held to be veridical, and scientific judgments also to be veridical, then the world is contradictory. Metaphysicians formulate these erroneous judgments and scientific judgments as antinomies. ”

“ The spectral person may be the self, or it may be another or a congress of others. When the voices of others are falsely perceived as persons, these others are specters.
Specters may be classified by senses deceived, and subclassified by the agencies through which they are produced. The class of specters derived from hallucinations of vision we will treat as thus subclassified, for the purpose of illustrating the doctrine. ”

“ We come to interpret lines in this manner as meaning form by the experience of every moment of waking life, and inherit the skill from a long line of ancestors, so that our powers of perceiving formed in this manner are both inherited and habitual, or, as I prefer to say, both instinctive and habitual, and that which is both inherited and habitual is intuitive. ”

“ When the nervous system is relaxed in slumber so that sense impressions carried by the fibrous nerves are directed by the ganglionic nerves at random to different portions of the cortex of the brain, sense impressions are produced upon that organ which result in dreams, and the imagination of the sleeper revels in wonderland. As these are of nightly occurrence, and all men dream, the ghosts of dreamland that fill the sleeping life are remembered in many a revery of the waking life. ”

“ It was believed to be a solid which presented a surface toward us, and this misconception is universal among barbaric and savage people. By the Indian the sky is supposed to be ice, or some other crystalline solid, and it does appear to be a surface, in spite of our knowing that it is not. This arises from the fact that we always discover color on surfaces, and when surfaces are removed usually colors are changed. ”