Impression (psychology)

“ Attention being the condition of analysis, and separate imagination being the condition of attention, it follows also that separate imagination is the condition of analysis. Only such elements as we are acquainted with, and can imagine, separately, can be discriminated within a total [Pg 504] sense-impression. The image seems to welcome its own mate from out of the compound, and to heighten the feeling thereof; whereas it dampens and opposes the feeling of the other constituents; and thus the compound becomes broken for our consciousness into parts. ”

“ Or perhaps we see some mineral substance we have met before; the impression awakens the memory-image, which again more or less completely melts with the impression itself. In this way every idea takes a certain time to penetrate to the focus of consciousness. And during this time we always find in ourselves the peculiar feeling of attention.... The phenomena show that an adaptation of attention to the impression takes place. The surprise which unexpected impressions give us is due essentially to the fact that our attention, at the moment when the impression occurs, is not accommodated for it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No person and no incident, perhaps, takes a very strong hold upon the imagination; but the general impression is one of a sphere of exalted feeling into which it is good to enter, and which ennobles as much as the photography of ugliness degrades. ”

“ Yet a singular opinion that impressions are the only objects of perception, has been espoused by some philosophers of no mean rank; not attending to the foregoing peculiarity in the senses of seeing and hearing, that we perceive objects without being conscious of an organic impression or of any impression. ”

“ To carry on even a train of abstract reasoning, sense-impressions either present or repeated seem necessary as supports. But when sense-impressions come to us, what transforms them into thought?
The answer is, First of all, attention, an active mental process. The sense-impression is itself not yet knowledge. A sense-impression to which we give no attention slips through consciousness as a man’s hand through water. ”

“ 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 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’. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Impressions then—unlike ideas—have no associates to whose presence their own is accommodated and on whose intensity their own depends. Each bids independently for attention, so that often a state of distraction ensues, such as the train of ideas left to itself never occasions. The better to hear we listen; the better to see we look; to smell better we dilate the nostrils and sniff; and so with all the special senses: each sensory impression sets up nascent movements for its better reception. ”

“ To recognize this, therefore,--as we have elsewhere endeavoured to show,--supposes in the recipient something akin to it. And, though it be in reality but a sign of life, it is still a sign of which we no sooner receive the impress, than, by a law of our mind, we feel it to be acting upon our thoughts and sympathies, without our knowing how or wherefore. Admitting, therefore, the corresponding instinct, or whatever else it may be called, to vary in men,--which there is no reason to doubt,--the solution of their unequal impression appears at once. ”

“ The first impression which, through an instinct of the soul, attracts one towards, or repels one from, another, becomes, after a time, more dim, and is weakened, either through his appearing other than at first, or through our becoming accustomed to him. ”

“ Then if we go to others, that is, to the subjects of influence, we find every man endowed with two inlets of impression; the ear and the understanding for the reception of speech, and the sympathetic powers, the sensibilities or affections, for tinder to those sparks of emotion revealed by looks, tones, manners and general conduct. And these sympathetic powers, tho not immediately rational, are yet inlets, open on all sides, to the understanding and character. ”

“ That impression, which at this moment makes all your pleasure or all your pain, will, it may be, slip off in an instant, being the mere drapery of an impression still more profound, will disappear before something older and higher. Thus our impressions grave themselves deeper and deeper on our souls, being ever unique, incomparable, unspeakably young, swift as the instant that brought them. ”

“ I do not mean that we talk thus; we could not indeed, if we would, explain ourselves in detail on this head; we can neither account for Impressions and passions, nor communicate them to others by words: Tones and looks will sometimes convey the passion strangely, but the Impression is incommunicable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For how can consciousness be wholly resolved into impressions and ideas, when an impression of necessity implies something impressed? Or again, how can the sceptic who has decomposed his consciousness into impressions and ideas, explain the fact that he considers them as his impressions and ideas? Or once more, if, as he must, he admits that he has an impression of his personal existence, what warrant can he show for rejecting this impression as unreal while he accepts all his other impressions as real? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every Reader with any habit of self-observation knows how poignant an impression of beauty may be got, as through the window of an express train, in the intermittence of practical business or abstract thinking, nay even in what I have called the off-beat of deepest personal emotion, the very stress of the practical, intellectual or personal instant (for the great happenings of life are measured in seconds!) ”

“ 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. ”

“ And the strength of the mental image which impresses and moves them comes either from the magnitude or the number of the preceding perceptions. For often a strong impression produces all at once the same effect as a long-formed habit, or as many and oft-repeated ordinary perceptions. ”

“ But though such emotions are frequently excited, and seem familiar, they are of all our mental phenomena least understood, and most difficult to analyze. Some of our most common experiences are, on examination, found the most inexplicable. All, in a general way, know that beauty of form, proportion and color, wherever seen, excites pleasurable emotions. But our knowledge of sensations and emotions is generally, though direct and immediate, imperfect, and can become thorough only when the first impression is retained, and the higher faculties employed in studying its character and its cause. ”

“ Sensation, therefore, produces concepts of kind, and the correlates of likeness and unlikeness are involved. We may define sensation as the cognition of properties as kinds in their effects, and it is a compound of judgments; and a judgment is a combination of a sense impression, a consciousness, a choice, a concept, and a comparison. ”

“ When we know, we take up an active attitude, and our attention is directed to an object, to a relation between different representations. When we feel, we have a passive attitude, and our attention—if we may call that so, which is no conscious operation of the mind—is only directed to our own condition, as far as it is modified by the impression received. Now, as we only feel and do not know the beautiful, we do not distinguish any relation between it and other objects, we do not refer its representation to other representations, but to ourselves who have experienced the impression. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One is rarely at a loss to trace the antecedents of a sharp impression, and I can remember clearly that I was conscious of a man and woman who stood talking in low tones as I passed, and who disappeared that moment into an open passage. ”

“ First: how an aesthetic impression, intentionally or accidentally conveyed in the course of wholly different interests, can become a constant accompaniment to the shifting preoccupations of existence, like the remembered songs which sing themselves silently in our mind and the remembered landscapes becoming an intangible background to our ever-varying thoughts. ”

“ An impression first strikes upon the senses, and makes us perceive heat or cold, thirst or hunger, pleasure or pain of some kind or other. Of this impression there is a copy taken by the mind, which remains after the impression ceases ”

“ Impression Limited to Experience.+—If we attempt to write a description for the sake of giving an impression, it must be an impression that we have ourselves experienced. If the sight of the gorge of Niagara has filled us with a feeling of sublimity and awe, we shall find it hard to write a humorous account of it. If we see the humorous elements of a situation, we cannot easily make our description give the impression of grief. Neither can we successfully imitate the impressions of others. No two persons are affected in the same way by the same thing. ”

“ The problem before it is to find an adequate cause, not for the actual impression, but for the transformed and enlarged impression. Under these circumstances symbolism is quite inevitable. Even when the nature of an excitation is rightly perceived its quality cannot be rightly perceived. ”

“ Action or intent arise from a change in consciousness. Some experience awakens an imagination, what we call an impression. The remedy (ch. 18) is to discover what the thing which prompts the impression is in reality. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”