Reflection (psychology)

“ Reflection, as an inward psychical fact, has certainly been observed by psychologists and philosophers in all civilized times, and instinctively by every one; nor could it be otherwise, since reflection is one of the facts most evident to human consciousness. ”

“ To reflect is to throw an atmosphere about what is in your mind,—an atmosphere which holds all the colors of your life. Reflection summons all associations, and they so throng and move that they dominate the mind’s stage at once. ”

“ 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. Whoever reflects on what passes in his own mind cannot miss it. And if he does not reflect, all the words in the world cannot make him have any notion of it.
3. Arises in sensation only when the mind notices the organic impression. ”

“ That which first connects man with the surrounding universe is the power of reflective contemplation. Whereas desire seizes at once its object, reflection removes it to a distance and renders it inalienably her own by saving it from the greed of passion. ”

“ Our chief aim in reflective behavior is to discover ways and means by which a harmony may be achieved, a harmony of Page 431 those very instincts which, left to themselves, would be in perpetual collision, frustrating and checking each other.
Reflection not only seeks to find a way of life in which no natural impulse shall be frustrated, but it is through reflection that desires are broadened, and that new desires arise. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The meaning is thus made clear. By observation through one or more of our senses we perceive things; mental impressions are secured; these are now to be bent or turned so that we can see them again, but the process is to be purely mental. Reflection in itself implies recognition or memory, for without memory there could be nothing upon which to reflect. Every normal human being has the power to bend again, to turn back, and over and over again the impressions he has received through observation. ”

“ The notice is the consciousness, and the consciousness is the notice.
Thus far, therefore, it appears, with abundant evidence that Reflection is nothing but Consciousness; and Consciousness is the having the sensations and ideas. But what will be objected is, that we not only have Ideas; but we are capable of forming the idea of that particular state of mind which exists when we have an idea. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Unless it does this, it does not think the sensation, it merely feels it. I conceive, then, that after careful reflection—and to understand what I am saying, you must reflect carefully on the operation of your own minds—after careful reflection you will be ready to concede that in thinking, the mind is, in point of fact, always really occupied with something more than that which is obtrusively and manifestly before it. ”

“ Every thing throws light upon every thing,—though the reflection,—which is, in many cases, so bright, as to force itself upon common eyes—may, in other cases, be so faint, as to be perceptible only to eyes of the nicest discernment. ”

“ As it is constituted, reflection recals what sense has once embodied; imagination weaves a thousand associations round it, time endears, regret, hope, fear, innumerable shapes of uncertain good still hover near it. I hear the sound of village bells—it ‘opens all the cells where memory slept’—I see a well-known prospect, my eyes are dim with manifold recollections. What say you? Am I only as a rational being to hear the sound, to see the object with my bodily sense? Is all the rest to be dissolved as an empty delusion, by the potent spell of unsparing philosophy? ”

“ Reflection as the modifier of instinct. Reflection is primarily a revealer of consequences. Instead of yielding to the first impulse that occurs to him, the thinking man considers where that impulse, if followed out, will lead. And since man is moved by more than one impulse at a time, reflection traces the consequences of each, and determines action on the basis of the relative satisfactions it can prophesy after careful inquiry into the situation. To reflect is primarily to query a stimulus, to find out what it means in terms of its consequences. ”

“ Reflect on your own thoughts, actions, circumstances, and—which will be of especial aid to you in forming a habit of reflection,—accustom yourself to reflect on the words you use, hear, or read, their birth, derivation and history. For if words are not things, they are living powers, by which the things of most importance to mankind are actuated, combined, and humanized. Finally, by reflection you may draw from the fleeting facts of your worldly trade, art, or profession, a science permanent as your immortal soul ”

“ Intuition of various grades is at the base of all mental development. Reflective thought goes to work on the material thus provided, and weaves certain portions of it into the structure of systematised knowledge. Much of it, however, never emerges into clear consciousness—it is felt rather than known—sometimes not even felt, though it influences the mind, affects its mood or tone, and largely moulds its character and the products of its more conscious processes. Intuition thus contains implicitly what reflection and reason strive to render explicit. ”

“ The immediate, in the sense which concerns us, is not at all, or at least is no longer for us the passive experience, the indefinable something which we should inevitably receive, provided we opened our eyes and abstained from reflection.
As a matter of fact, we cannot abstain from reflection: reflection is today part of our very vision; it comes into play as soon as we open our eyes. ”

“ 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’. ”

“ Reflection is voluntary, spontaneity is involuntary; reflection is personal, spontaneity is impersonal; reflection is analytic, spontaneity is synthetic; reflection begins with doubt, spontaneity with affirmation; reflection belongs to certain ones, spontaneity belongs to all; reflection produces science, spontaneity gives truth. ”

“ The origin and nature of reflection. Reflection, it must be noted in the first place, is not a thing, but a process. It is a process whereby human beings adjust themselves to a continuously changing environment. Our instincts and habits suffice to adapt us to that large number of recurrent similar situations of which our experience in no small measure exists. In such cases the habitual response will bring the usual satisfaction. ”

“ Reflection, indeed, must move within certain limits; it must take certain things for granted. We have already seen that reflection arises in a crisis of greater or lesser degree; it settles ambiguities, resolves the obscure and doubtful phases of situations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Is it not also evident, that we do not begin by reflection, that reflection supposes an anterior operation, and that this operation, in order not to be one of reflection, and not to suppose another before it, must be entirely spontaneous; that thus the spontaneous and instinctive intuition of truth precedes its reflection and necessary conception?
Reflection is a progress more or less tardy in the individual and in the race. It is, par excellence, the philosophic faculty; it sometimes engenders doubt and skepticism, sometimes convictions that, for being rational, are only the more profound. ”

“ Which of us has not often known what it is to think of some futile thing and be led on to some serious reflection through the ideas or memories it brings in its train? Not unfrequently, after speaking about some trifle, the simple starting-point of a rapid train of reflections, a thinker may forget or be silent as to the abstract connection of ideas leading to his conclusion, and speak again only to utter the last link in the chain of his meditations. ”

“ It is only at a later stage, when reflection goes back over the many cases in which such thought and such action occurred, and collects and compares them together, that there is found for the secret motives by which we have been guided an expression through which they now become, for the first time, objects to our consciousness. ”

“ When reflection—that is, the active element in mind—is applied to the acquisition and combination of sensations, those abstract ideas are formed which, though generally distinguished from, are thus merely sensations in combination only. ”

“ In this sense, reflection must be the source of all our ideas, whether of external objects, or the operations of our own minds, for in the same sense it may be argued, that the first impression of a sensible object is not the source of the idea we have of it, till the soul comes to reflect on and consider that original impression. But it might be said with equal propriety, that we have one source of ideas, viz., sensation, and another source of ideas, viz. ”

“ But when reflection leads us to the causes of this universal sentiment, we cannot but be struck by the power which mind exercises over mind, even while we are individually separated by time, space, and other conditions of our present being. ”

“ The limits of reflection as a modifier of instinct and habit. While our impulses and habits may be subjected to the criticism of reflection in the light of the consequences which it can forecast, reflection is itself seriously limited by our original impulses and our acquired habitual ones. On reflection, we may not follow our first impulse, but to act at all is to act on some original or acquired impulse or a combination of them. Which original tendency we shall follow reflection can tell us; it cannot tell us to follow none. ”

“ Reflection underlines in the chaotic continuum of sense and longing those aspects that have practical significance; it selects the efficacious ingredients in the world. The trustworthy object which is thus retained in thought, the complex of connected events, is nature, and though so intelligible an object is not soon nor vulgarly recognised, because human reflection is perturbed and halting, yet every forward step in scientific and practical knowledge is a step toward its clearer definition. ”

“ 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." ”

“ It is only a reflecting mind that sees reflections. I am aware often that I have been occupied with shallow and commonplace thoughts, looking for something superficial, when I did not see the most glorious reflections, though exactly in the line of my vision. ”

“ I ask the doubters of my vision to penetrate a little into the mystery of their own thoughts and dreams before they cry out against me, who for many years travelled far and came upon lovely and inhabited regions to which I would also lead them. I know that my brain is a court where many living creatures throng, and I am never alone in it. You, too, can know that if you heighten the imagination and intensify the will. ”

“ This was the experience, then, of ‘distinct pre-eminence’ in whose recollection his mind was ‘nourished and invisibly repaired.’ It is in such a moment that the soul’s strength is shown; when common objects evoke what he calls the imagination, the reality, of which they are a suggestion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Was it that our eyes reveal all they are capable of revealing at a glance, in an instant; that at a glance we see all that we wish to see; but that they do not and cannot reveal our inner self, the hidden things of the soul ”

“ While we think we are imagining a character we may, so marvellous are the hidden ways, be really interpreting a being actually existing, brought into psychic contact with us by some affinity of sentiment or soul. ”

“ 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. ”