Illusions : a psychological study.

  • Sully, James, 1842-1923.
Date:
1905
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Illusions : a psychological study. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    surround us through their relations one to another. Sometimes the adjacent circumstances and events suggest a definite expectation of the new impression. Thus, for example, the sound of a gun heard during a walk in the country is instantly interpreted by help of suggestions due to the previous appearance of the sportsman, and the act of raising the gun to his shoulder. It may be added that the verbal suggestions of others act very much like the suggestions of ex- ternal circumstances. If I am told that a gun is going to be fired, my mind is prepared for it just as though I saw the sportsman.1 More frequently the effect of such surrounding circumstances is to give an air of familiarity to the new impression, to shorten the interval in which the re- quired interpretative image is forthcoming. Thus, when travelling in Italy, the visual impression answer- ing to a ruined temple or a bareheaded friar is con- strued much more rapidly than it would be elsewhere, because of the attitude of mind due to the surrounding circumstances. In all such cases the process of pre- perception connected with a given impression is effected more or less completely by the suggestions of other and related impressions. It follows from all that has been just said that our minds are never in exactly the same state of readiness with respect to a particular process of perceptional interpretation. Sometimes the meaning of an im- pression flashes on us at once, and the stage of pre- 1 Such verbal suggestion, moreover, acting through a sense- impression, has something of that vividness of effect which belongs to all excitation of mental images by external stimuli.