Impression (epistemology)

“ We speak not from our own fixed impression, however deeply felt, but from what we have heard and observed everywhere, from the natural, incidental, unconscious remarks dropped from persons' mouths, and evidently showing what they thought and felt. ”

“ If a certain impression be strongly associated with the attributes of a certain thing, that thing is almost sure to be perceived when we get the impression. Examples of such things would be familiar people, places, etc., which we recognize and name at a glance. But where the impression is associated with more than one reality, so that either of two discrepant sets of residual properties may arise, the perception is doubtful and vacillating, and the most that can then be said of it is that it will be of a PROBABLE thing, of the thing which would most usually have given us that sensation. ”

“ Now, all things which are impressed and set in motion are so affected by something capable of making impression and existing in activity; so that impression is in one sense by like, and in another sense by unlike, as we have said—for the unlike is subject to impression, but, having been impressed, it is converted into like. ”

“ On the one hand, the agitation of the mind and its keen attention, prepare it in the most effectual manner for receiving a deep impression. On the other hand, the object by its sudden and unforeseen appearance, makes an impression, not gradually as expected objects do, but as at one stroke with its whole force. The circumstances are precisely similar, where the object is in itself disagreeable. ”

“ As an object is supposed to be different from an impression, we cannot be sure, that the circumstance, upon which we found our reasoning, is common to both, supposing we form the reasoning upon the impression. ”

“ Whatever it is, we shall call it the material impression; remembering carefully, that it is not an impression upon the mind, but upon the body; and that it is no sensation, nor can resemble sensation, any more than figure or motion can resemble thought. ”

“ The more faithfully he tries to render his impression of the object, the more does that impression gain in truth and strength; and in proportion as the impression becomes truer and stronger, so does the rendering of it become more masterly and more correct. ”

“ Here we have apparently a complex of sense-impressions, for the most part vague, which we are seldom able to analyse, even to ourselves. Still less can we put it into words capable of conveying our impression to other people. ”

“ The simplest thing is to say that a sense-impression is correct and implies reality when it remains identical under various circumstances, in various conditions, when connected with other senses, and observed{425} by different men, with different instruments. ”

“ For all true feeling is unconscious in proportion to its perfection." Building up knowledge without cultivating the power to use it is of small value. Impression should go hand in hand with expression. ”

“ The confusion in which impressions are sometimes involved proceeds only from their faintness and unsteadiness, not from any capacity in the mind to receive any impression, which in its real existence has no particular degree nor proportion. ”

“ To the first of these questions, I answer that we cannot speak of the immediate impression of sense as false, nor of its preference to others as mistaken, for no one can be deceived respecting the actual sensation he perceives or prefers. ”

“ The first conclusion arrived at was that I imperfectly possessed the power to read other people's thoughts; that at certain times and under certain conditions ideas were conveyed to me through no recognized organ of perception. I therefore decided for the time being to devote all my energy to following up this clue. It was not long before the truth of my idea was confirmed beyond any possibility of doubt; but the difficulty was, firstly, in being confident from whom the impression came; and secondly, in discerning truth from imagination. ”

“ There are, therefore, two kinds of perception that are very different from each other; sense-perception receives an impression, and applies itself to an exterior object; on the contrary, intellectual perception does not receive any impression. ”

“ But the impressions of reflection resolve themselves into our passions and emotions’. [2] From the polemic against abstract ideas we learn further that ‘the appearance of an object to the senses’ is the same thing as an ‘impression becoming present to the mind’. ”

“ They prove that the idea of even a single strong impression may be so powerfully associated with that of a certain time, as to originate a belief of which the contrary is inconceivable, and which may therefore be properly said to be necessary. ”

“ When a sense impression gives rise to a judgment of force it recalls many other judgments of force and thus becomes a symbol of other things. When a judgment of cause is formed it also becomes a symbol of other causes. Sense impressions are directly used by the mind in this manner in sensation, perception, apprehension, reflection, and ideation, and it is thus that ideas are primarily associated. ”

“ The tendency of our perceptions is to emphasise increasingly the objective elements in an impression, unless we have some special reason, as artists have, for doing the opposite. ”

“ Educated as we already are, we never get an experience that remains for us completely nondescript: it always reminds of something similar in quality, or of some context that might have surrounded it before, and which it now in some way suggests. This mental escort which the mind supplies is drawn, of course, from the mind's ready-made stock. We conceive the impression in some definite way. We dispose of it according to our acquired possibilities, be they few or many, in the way of 'ideas.' This way of taking in the object is the process of apperception. ”

“ It is evident from the manner in which this phrase is used by modern philosophers that they mean, not barely to express by it my perceiving an object, but to explain the manner of perception. They think that the object perceived acts upon the mind in some way similar to that in which one body acts upon another. The impression upon the mind is conceived to be something wherein the mind is altogether passive. ”

“ Demonstration they define to be a method by which one proceeds from that which is more known to that which is less. Perception, again, is an impression produced on the mind, its name being appropriately borrowed from impressions on wax made by a seal; and perception they divide into comprehensible and incomprehensible: Comprehensible, which they call the criterion of facts, and which is produced by a real object, and is, therefore, at the same time conformable to that object ”

“ You insist on his explaining himself, but since he must use words to explain the impression which words produce on him, he is either silent, or else he begins to talk nonsense, or lies, or deceives himself, trying to find something to satisfy you, or he invents some non-existent difficulty and struggles under it; the general impression produced by a book, the poetic sense which helps him to obtain a notion of it, is driven in and hidden. ”

“ Next to sensibility, which is necessary for the perception of facts, come reflection and memory, which are necessary for the retention of them, and recognition of their resemblances. For a man may receive impression after impression, and that vividly and with delight, and yet, if he take no care to reason upon those impressions and trace them to their sources, he may remain totally ignorant of the facts that produced them ”

“ Even when a word or two might have served to correct a mistaken impression, he has preferred to leave the obvious task to the reader's judgment to obtrusively making himself the means of interpretation. ”

“ But the term impression is not absolute in signification, as sometimes it implies a kind of destruction by a contrary, and sometimes it signifies rather preservation of something being in potentiality by something which is in reality and like, in the relation that potentiality bears to reality. ”

“ The impression each receives depends upon his character, intelligence, temperament, and education. This being admitted, it is in the highest degree difficult to assert with assurance, "I understand and can express the fact better than you." ”

“ What is there which will bear comparison as a recreating means, with the free and unstudied interchange of thought, of knowledge, of impression about men and things, and all that varied medley of fact, criticism and conclusion so continually fermenting in the active brain? ”

“ As we have seen, we receive impressions of things in two ways, viz., a sense impression and a mental impression, the one practical, the other theoretical. Practice furnishes us with the sense impression, theory with the mental nature of things. ”

“ We should leave a very wrong impression on the reader’s mind if we permitted him to suppose that the value of that work depends wholly on the ultimate justification of the theoretical views which it contains. ”

“ Now, in order to a deep impression, it is wisely contrived, that things should be introduced to our acquaintance, with a certain pomp and solemnity productive of a vivid emotion. When the impression is once fairly made, the emotion of novelty, being no longer necessary, vanisheth almost instantaneously ”

“ But it is little less than sheer nonsense to maintain, while outward impressions 178are said to be every thing, and the mind alike indifferent to all, that one single unconscious impression shall decide upon a man’s whole character, genius, and pursuits in life,—and all the rest thenceforward go for nothing. ”

“ And because the end, by the greatness of the impression, comes often to mind, in case our thoughts begin to wander, they are quickly again reduced into the way: which observed by one of the seven wise men, made him give men this precept, which is now worn out, Respite finem ”

“ But, to begin with, be not swept off your feet, I beseech you, by the vividness of the impression, but say, "Wait for me a little, O impression; ”

“ Shakspeare’s language and versification are like the rest of him. He has a magic power over words: they come winged at his bidding; and seem to know their places. They are struck out at a heat, on the spur of the occasion, and have all the truth and vividness which arise from an actual impression of the objects. His epithets and single phrases are like sparkles, thrown off from an imagination, fired by the whirling rapidity of its own motion. ”

“ Dear, perhaps the deepest impression I've got since I've been in Germany is that made on me by the indefatigable beavers of old wrinkled peasant women, striding like men through the streets, dragging their carts or lugging their baskets, minding their business, seeming to notice nothing, in the stream of luxury and vice, but belonging far away, to something better and purer. ”

“ But I magnified, as usual, the impression any word or deed of mine could produce on others; ”

“ I know no better way of coming at the truth than by observing and recording faithfully the impressions made by objects and characters on my own mind—or, rather, the impress they receive from my own mind—shadowed by the clouds which pass over its horizon, taking each tincture of its varying mood—until they emerge into light, to be corrected, or at least modified, by observation and comparison. ”

“ By these two intellectual processes, which in one way or another are familiar to our experience, but which seem strange when we reflect upon them, and try to understand them, we make human-shaped Impersonations of inanimate things, and of abstract notions! ”

“ That is what we mean here by the object’s being ‘in mind.’ Of any deeper more real way of being in mind we have no positive conception, and we have no right to discredit our actual experience by talking of such a way at all. ”

“ How he supports a character which, perhaps, no man ever assumed without repentance, may be easily conjectured. Wit, you know, is the unexpected copulation of ideas, the discovery of some occult relation between images in appearance remote from each other; an effusion of wit, therefore, presupposes an accumulation of knowledge; a memory stored with notions, which the imagination may cull out to compose, new assemblages. Whatever may be the native vigour of the mind, she can never form many combinations from few ideas, as many changes can never be rung upon a few bells. ”

“ If you agree that the perceptual object is not an idea within me, but that percept and thing, as indistinguishably one, are really experienced there, outside, you ought not to believe that the merely thought-of object is hid away inside of the thinking subject. ”

“ And again, in all persuasions that are wrought by eloquence, and other impressions of like nature, which do paint and disguise the true appearance of things, the chief recommendation unto reason is from the imagination. ”

“ It seems reasonable to me—upon the hypothesis that it is a person using another's mind or brain—that there must be more or less of that other's style or tone incorporated in the message, and that to the unseen personality, i.e., the power which impresses, the thought, the fact, or the philosophy, and not the style or tone, belongs. ”

“ A little thought will convince us that, without the reflective agency of our minds on the impressions received by the senses, and the power of conceiving abstract ideas, the simple impressions of colour, solidity, weight, sound, flavour, or odour, would be but meagre sources of knowledge. As it is, they are the broad inlets of knowledge. ”

“ For if you maintain that the knowledge acquired by perception has a certain form impressed upon it, you are met by the impossibility of explaining how a momentary perception can possess the power of impressing a form ”