Illusions : a psychological study / by James Sully.

James Sully

Date:: 1882

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Illusions : a psychological study / by James Sully. Source: Wellcome Collection.

376/398 page 356

underlie what is recognized by all as sense-illusion.1 Again, it may be said that our notions of force and of a causal nexus in the physical world imply the idea of conscious energy as known through our muscular sensations, and so have a suspicious resemblance to those anthropomorphic illusions of which I have spoken under Illusions of Insight. Once more, the conscious- ness of freedom may, as I have suggested, be viewed as analogous in its form and its mode of origin to illusions of introspection. As a last example, it may be said that the mind’s certain conviction of the in- nateness of some of its ideas resembles those illusions of memory which arise through an inability to think ourselves back into a remote past having a type of consciousness widely unlike that of the present. But now, mark the difference. In our scientific analysis of popularly known illusions, we had something by which to determine the illusory character of the presentation or belief. We had a popularly or scien- tifically accepted standard of certainty, by a reference to which we might test the particular soi-disant cogni- tion. But in the case of these fundamental beliefs we have no such criterion, except we adopt some particular philosophic theory, say that of the associationist him- self. Hence this similarity in structure and origin cannot in itself be said to amount to a proof of equality of logical or objective value. Here again it must be remarked that origin does not carry validity or in- validity with it.2 1 M. Taine frankly teaches that what is commonly called accurate perception is a “ true hallucination ” (Be VIntelligence, 2ieme partie, Livre I. ch. i. sec. 3). 2 It only seems to do so, apart from philosophic assumptions, ill

digitised image 1

digitised image 2

digitised image 3