Percept

“ This consciousness of sensation, then, is the other fact contained in perception; and it is an inquiry into the nature and origin of this fact, and of it alone, that forms the true and proper problem of psychology when we are busied with the phenomena of perception; because it is this fact, and not the fact of sensation, which constitutes man's peculiar and distinctive characteristic, and lies as the foundation-stone of all the grander structures of his moral and intellectual being. ”

“ Reflection alone can give us the idea of what perception is. What perception is, every one will know better by reflecting on what he does himself, when he sees, hears, feels, &c., or thinks, than by any discourse of mine. ”

“ It is obvious that the world is not the same for all of us; but that it is for each one of us simply the world of his individual perceptions.
As Many Worlds as Minds
The whole subject of sense-impressions, [Pg 53] sensation and perception may, therefore, be looked at from the standpoint of the mind as an active influence, as well as from the standpoint of outside objects as the exciting causes of sense-impressions. ”

“ The true answer is, No." "Perception, in its simplest form...—perception as the first sight or touch of an object in which nothing but what is seen or touched is recognized—neither is nor contains sensation" (Contemp. Rev., xxxi. pp. 746, 750.) "Mere sensation is in truth a phrase that represents no reality." "Mere feeling, then, as a matter unformed by thought, has no place in the world of facts, in the cosmos of possible experience." ”

“ What matter, in its relation to the percipient mind, can be, but the cause or occasion, direct or indirect, of that class of feelings which I term sensations or perceptions, it is absolutely impossible for me to conceive. ”

“ We have merely the desire of knowing the scene before us,—the selection of some prominent object, or rather the mere perception of it, as peculiarly prominent,—the desire of knowing it particularly,—and the contraction of a few muscles, in obedience to our volition. ”

“ In other words in sense-perception and conception we have already, as in self-conscious thought, the necessary distinction between the perceiving, conceiving and thinking Ego and the object of perception, conception, and thought. ”

“ But when such observation is ended or at fault, and the man retreats, as it were, into his inner self, then in the quiet all the senses merge and harmonize into a single perfect instrument of perception. ”

“ Calling to mind what has been said concerning the nature of perception—how the most complete and accurate perception of an object is gained by bringing it into all its possible relations with our different senses, and so receiving into the idea of it all the impressions which it was fitted to produce upon them—it will appear plainly how necessary to true perception, and to sound thought, which is founded on true perception, and to wise conduct, which is founded on sound thought, are thoroughness and sincerity of observation. ”

“ What, then, that we observe, can give us any reason for believing that anyone else has certain particular perceptions, thoughts or feelings? It has, I think, been very commonly assumed that the observation of my own perceptions, thoughts, and feelings, can, by itself, give me such a reason. ”

“ It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call 'something there,' more deep and more general than any of the special and particular 'senses' by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed. If this were so, we might suppose the senses to waken our attitudes and conduct as they so habitually do, by first exciting this sense of reality; ”

“ But if we take reason strictly, not for the faculty of mental perception in general, but for ratiocination, or a power of inferring by arguments; I say, if we take reason thus, the perceiving of spiritual beauty and excellency no more belongs to reason than it belongs to the sense of feeling to perceive colors, or to the power of seeing to perceive the sweetness of food. ”

“ From percepts have concepts arisen by analysis and abstract thought; to percepts must they conform in order to satisfy the final test of congruity. The constant demand of science for practical perceptual verification is justified by the essential unity of consciousness, the solidarity of mental symbolism, and the continuity of its development. ”

“ Such a conception would require that every specific state of consciousness, every idea, every thought, perception, sensation and feeling, after it had passed out of mind for the moment, should enter a great sea of ideas which would be the sum total of all our past experiences. ”

“ Then perception is distinguished from sensation, and the brain itself, as the subject of sensation, becomes the outward in contrast with the understanding as the subject of perception. [2] Then perception, from being simply a reception, is converted into an ‘operation,’ and thus into an efficient of ideas. The ‘understanding’ itself, as perceptive, is now the outward which makes on the ‘mind,’ as the inner ‘tablet,’ that impression of its own operation in perception which is called an idea of reflection. ”

“ Is psychology able to explain, or is any human being competent to know what these qualities are, apart from his perceptions of them? It is always our perceptions of the primary qualities, and not these qualities themselves, which come before the mind, just as it is always our sensations resulting from the secondary qualities, and not the secondary qualities themselves, that we are cognisant of. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What the subjectivist means when he says that in perception I am aware only of the states, or subjective modifications, of my own consciousness, is that the object of which each perceptive state is aware is simply itself as a perceptive state; the perception perceives itself and nothing else. ”

“ The realities, concrete and abstract, physical and ideal, whose permanent existence we believe in, seem to be constantly coming up again before our thought, and lead us, in our carelessness, to suppose that our 'ideas' of them are the same ideas. When we come, some time later, to the chapter on Perception, we shall see how inveterate is our habit of not attending to sensations as subjective facts, but of simply using them as stepping-stones to pass over to the recognition of the realities whose presence they reveal. ”

“ Perception and Sensation compared.—A pure sensation we saw above, p. 12, to be an abstraction never realized in adult life. Anything which affects our sense-organs does also more than that: it arouses processes in the hemispheres which are partly due to the organization of that organ by past experiences, and the results of which in consciousness are described as ideas which the sensation suggests. The first of these ideas is that of the thing to which the sensible quality belongs. The consciousness of particular material things present to sense is nowadays called perception. ”

“ Perception may be defined as the cognizance which the mind takes of impressions presented to it through the organs of sense, and possibly also by other means.
One class of perceptions is universally recognized and is in a measure understood, namely, perceptions arising from impressions made by recognized external objects or forces upon the organs of sense, sight, hearing, smell, taste, and also the general sense of touch. ”

“ In the time to come it will be necessary to support your statements in order to demonstrate that your perceptive faculties are now in a normal condition. Are you sure that your conceptions of these results are justified by normal perception? May you not be in an exalted state of mind that hinders clear perception, and compels you to imagine and accept as fact that which does not exist? ”

“ Each sensation or perception possesses, in fact, along with its objective quality or its intellectual content, a sort of subjective coefficient, springing from the 182roots which it sends down into our being, and from the peculiar way in which it impresses, pleases or displeases, excites or subdues us, in a word, makes our whole nature vibrate. ”

“ Our enumeration commenced with Feelings. These we scrupulously distinguished from the objects which excite them, and from the organs by which they are, or may be supposed to be, conveyed. Feelings are of four sorts: Sensations, Thoughts, Emotions, and Volitions. What are called Perceptions are merely a particular case of Belief, and Belief is a kind of thought. Actions are merely volitions followed by an effect. ”

“ Presentative-representative cognitions; or those in which consciousness is occupied with the relation between a sensation or group of sensations and the representations of those various other sensations that accompany it in experience. This is what we commonly call perception—an act in which, along with certain impressions presented to consciousness, there arise in consciousness the ideas of certain other impressions ordinarily connected with the presented ones: as when its visible form and colour, lead us to mentally endow an orange with all its other attributes. ”

“ But we can, by reflection, perceive this condition of all our thoughts; the idea of being, standing, as it does, involved with the others, is then presented purified to our eyes, and we conceive that general reason of being, or thing, which enters into all our perceptions, but which we had not previously distinguished with sufficient clearness. ”

“ At bottom the process is one of conception, and is everywhere, even in the sphere of simple sensible qualities, the same as that by which we are usually understood to attain to the notions of abstract goodness, perfect felicity, absolute power, and the like: the direct perception of a difference between compounds, and the imaginary prolongation of the direction of the difference to an ideal terminus, the notion of which we fix and keep as one of our permanent subjects of discourse. ”

“ You exhibit a predominance of the reflective intellect over the perceptive, and are characterized for thought, judgment, and the power to comprehend ideas, more than for your knowledge of things, facts, circumstances or conditions of things. ”

“ Perception's function, on the other hand, is that of knowing something about the fact. But we must know what fact we mean, all the while, and the various whats are what sensations give. Our earliest thoughts are almost exclusively sensational. ”

“ Thus we have a sensation of cold, of heat, of the pain of a wound, of the pleasure of a landscape, of music, of beauty, of propriety, of behaviour, &c. The consciousness we have of internal action, such as deliberation, resolution, choice, is{379} never termed either a perception or a sensation.
11. Conception ought to be distinguished from perception. External things and their attributes are objects of perception: relations among things are objects of conception. ”

“ It is customary to speak of a man, of accurate perceptions, and of another, who has grand and luminous conceptions of human nature. Perception, from per, and capio to take, seize, grasp, through the medium of the organs of sense, being implied. ”

“ In the chapter on Perception, there are some observations on the manner in which our judgments alter the impressions of sensible objects, which are well worth notice, and show that the author was well acquainted with what may be called the practical processes of the human mind. ”

“ Understanding is the faculty, or faculties, of the mind by means of which we intelligently examine and compare the various percepts, either separating them by analysis, or else combining them by synthesis, or both, and thus securing our general ideas, principles, laws, classes, etc. ”

“ Action, which is attended and assisted by the three preceding qualities of Perception, Sentiment, and Thought or Reflection. In other words, human beings perceive before they feel, perceive and feel before they think, perceive, feel, and think before they act, or at least before they act reasonably, though it may be but imperfectly, and though the later or higher stages may in many cases scarcely be reached at all. ”

“ It is about these impressions made on our senses by outward objects, that the mind seems first to employ itself in such operations as we call perception, remembering, consideration, reasoning, &c. In time the mind comes to reflect on its own operations about the ideas got by sensation, and thereby stores itself with a new set of ideas, which I call ideas of reflection. ”

“ In the first case, that of knowing things, the percepts are colors, sounds, resistances; in the case of persons the percepts are impulses, feelings, desires, passions, as well as images, purposes, and the reflective process itself. ”

“ The matter becomes very different when we set to work to investigate the more unusual cases of perception, and seek more completely to understand the conditions under which the above-mentioned distinction can or cannot be made, as is the case in the physiology of the senses. ”

“ If at a given moment a perception or representation arises and occupies alone the chief field of consciousness, ruling as a sovereign, making a space around it, and only permitting associations which are in direct relation with itself, we 21have a state of attention. ”

“ But, as this case illustrates, our evidence that some one else has perceived something always depends upon our own perceptions. And our own perceptions are known to us in a different way from that in which the perceptions of others are known to us. ”

“ Referring back to the statement that seeing is limited to the visible qualities of some object, hearing to its audible qualities, etc., while the faculty of thought has everything for its object, we now understand this to mean that all objects have certain innumerable, but concrete, qualities which are perceptible by our senses, and in addition thereto the general spiritual quality of being thought of, understood, in short, of being the object of our faculty of thought. ”