Reticence

“ The FACT of past experience is essential in producing this filling-out of sensation, but not the RECOLLECTION of past experience. The non-sensational elements in perception can be wholly explained as the result of habit, produced by frequent correlations. Perception, according to our definition in Lecture VII, is no more a form of knowledge than sensation is, except in so far as it involves expectations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In order, therefore, to arrive at what really is sensation in an occurrence which, at first sight, seems to contain nothing else, we have to pare away all that is due to habit or expectation or interpretation. ”

“ From a momentary sensation of sight, or sound, or touch we infer reality that far exceeds anything actually given to us by the sensation.
Thinking is questioning experience. When our attention is suddenly attracted by something—a flash of light, or a sound, or a twinge of pain—consciously or unconsciously we say to ourself, What is that? ”

“ To give a brief summary, however, of the argument which I have urged;—in that state of acquired knowledge, long after the first elementary feelings of infancy, in which modified state alone, the phenomena of the mind can become to us objects of reflective analysis, certain feelings are referred by us to an external material cause. The feelings themselves, as primarily excited, are termed sensations, and, when followed by the reference to an external cause, receive the name of perceptions, which marks nothing more in addition to the primary sensations, than this very reference. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From resistance, or the sensation produced when something 'resists our attempts to grasp it,' we get the 'outness.' Then perception is 'nothing more than the association of this complex notion with our other sensations—the notion of something extended and resisting, suggested by these sensations, when the suggestions themselves have previously arisen, and suggested in the same manner and on the same principle as any other associate feeling suggests any other associate feeling.' [486] The odour or colour of a rose recalls the sensation of touching and of resistance to our grasp. ”

“ If we speak of a 'true' instinct, a 'sound' or 'healthy' feeling of distrust, a 'true' sense of beauty or of the divine, our use of such epithets is proleptic. The 'true' instinct is one which may be converted into a reasoned knowledge. ”

“ They can judge with astounding correctness from a shadow on one's face, a catch in one's breath, a movement of one's hands, how their words or deeds are affecting us. We cannot conceal our feelings from them. ”

“ If the external cause or object be absent, the consequent feeling, direct or indirect, which we term perception, will not be induced, precisely as any other feeling will not arise without its peculiar antecedent. The relation of cause and effect, in short, is exactly the same in perception as in all the other mental phenomena—a relation of invariable sequence of one change after another change. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He stood and gazed, then, with his arms folded on his chest, while the people walking to and fro passed and repassed him, and many a one commented as they went, and assigned him a history and a character from their own imagination. How seldom is it, in the busy world with which we mingle, that any of the conjectures regarding our thoughts, our feelings, our state of existence, are correct! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Perception is pent up and becomes, helped by emotion, conscious representation. Now it is, psychologists tell us, just in this interval, this space between perception and reaction, this momentary halt, that all our mental life, our images, our ideas, our consciousness, and assuredly our religion and our art, is built up. ”

“ It is not our business at present to inquire whether the impression made by means of sight be a pure sensation, or whether it may not rather be a middle term between sensation and intuition, and the bond by which they are united in our minds. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It implies, in short, that it is not the sense itself which has been revealed to us in the one case as coloured, and in the other case as hard, but that it is something else which has been thus revealed to us. But it may still be asked, How do we know that we are not deceiving ourselves? How can it be proved that it is the senses, and not something else, which have come before us under the guise of certain sensations? ”

“ The concept revelation in the sense that quite suddenly, with ineffable certainty and delicacy, something is seen, something is heard, something convulsing and breaking into one’s inmost self, does but describe the fact. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 very evident that perception, in Dr Reid's sense, is not the mere reference to a cause of some sort, for it would then be as comprehensive as all the feelings or changes of the mind,—our hope, fear, anger, pity,—which we ascribe to some cause or antecedent, as much as our tastes and smells ”

“ What we commonly mean, when we use the terms Sensation or phenomena of Sensation, are the feelings which we have by the five senses,—SMELL, TASTE, HEARING, TOUCH, and SIGHT. These are the feelings from which we derive our notions of what we denominate the external world;—the things by which we are surrounded: that is, the antecedents of the most interesting consequents, in the whole series of feelings, which constitute our mental train, or existence. ”

“ By the Sensation, we mean the whole state of consciousness, under an actual or present impression of sense, as in looking at the moon, in listening to music, in tasting wine. By the Idea is meant the state of mind that remains after the sensible agent is withdrawn, or that may be afterwards recovered by the force of recollection. ”

“ Extended things, large or small, refuse to be melted down into sensations or states of one’s private consciousness. Take this specimen of philosophical argument for accepting perceptions which cannot be logically demonstrated, but which the common sense of human nature refuses to reject:—
‘Suppose I am pricked with a pin, I ask, is the pain I feel a sensation? ”

“ 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. ”

“ By the cognitive element, which is equally necessary with emotions to the existence of a valuable appreciation, I mean merely the actual cognition or consciousness of any or all of an object’s beautiful qualities—that is to say, any or all of those elements in the object which possess any positive beauty. ”

“ But when we pass from consciousness of sensations to consciousness of objects of perception, certain further points arise which demand an addition to our definition. A judgment of perception, we may say, consists of a core of sensation, together with associated images, with belief in the present existence of an object to which sensation and images are referred in a way which is difficult to analyse. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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; ”

“ A representative judgment of perception, like that of sensation, has five elements. Instead of the consciousness of the sense impression we have the consciousness of a concept brought about by an act of choice arising from association or exercise of the will. ”

“ Sensations, or rather the stimuli to which we react with sensations, become then construable, as a part of the effect which some outside center of power makes upon us—it is a kind of signal that another power is there. By the sensations, the memories we keep of them, and the ordered picture of the world we draw up, we know a little better how to act in relation to these unseen friends or foes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As the inquiry proceeds, we are reminded of the obscurity or inaccuracy of language, in portraying the impressions upon and the functions, so to say, of the sentient organs even now the external object is, with us, in common parlance, a sensible object; sensation, besides its own sense, implies casual feelings from within; sight signifies both faculty and function ”

“ With her most surely the final effect and impression rest upon powers of revelation—upon the ability to realise and to interpret the simplest and the subtlest phases of emotion, far more than upon those artifices of deception that make for the more obvious triumphs of disguise. ”