Illusions Part 12

The effect of this active projection of personal feeling will, of course, be seen most strikingly when there is a certain variety of feeling actually excited at the time in the observer's mind. A man who is in a particularly happy mood tends to reflect his exuberant gladness on others. The lover, in the moment of exalted emotion, reads a response to all his aspirations in his mistress's eyes. Again, a man will tend to project his own present ideas into the minds of others, and so imagine that they know what he knows; and this sometimes leads to a comical kind of embarra.s.sment, and even to a betrayal of something which it was the interest of the person to keep to himself. Once more, in interpreting language, we may sometimes catch ourselves mistaking the meaning, owing to the presence of a certain idea in the mind at the time. Thus, if I have just been thinking of Comte, and overhear a person exclaim, "I'm positive," I irresistibly tend, for the moment, to ascribe to him an avowal of discipleship to the great positivist.

_Poetic Illusion._

The most remarkable example of this projection of feeling is undoubtedly ill.u.s.trated in the poetic interpretation of inanimate nature. The personification of tree, mountain, ocean, and so on, ill.u.s.trates, no doubt, the effect of a.s.sociation and external suggestion; for there are limits to such personification. But resemblance and suggestion commonly bear, in this case, but a small proportion to active constructive imagination. One might, perhaps, call this kind of projection the hallucination of insight, since there is nothing objective corresponding to the interpretative image.

The imaginative and poetic mind is continually on the look out for hints of life, consciousness, and emotion in nature. It finds a certain kind of satisfaction in this half-illusory, dream-like transformation of nature. The deepest ground of this tendency must probably be looked for in the primitive ideas of the race, and the transmission by inheritance of the effect of its firmly fixed habits of mind. The undisciplined mind of early man, incapable of distinguishing the object of perception from the product of spontaneous imagination, and taking his own double existence as the type of all existence, actually saw the stream, the ocean, and the mountain as living beings; and so firmly rooted is this way of regarding objects, that even our scientifically trained minds find it a relief to relapse occasionally into it.[110]

While there is this general imaginative disposition in the poetic mind to endow nature with life and consciousness, there are special tendencies to project the individual feelings into objects. Every imaginative mind looks for reflections of its own deepest feelings in the world about it. The lonely embittered heart, craving for sympathy, which he cannot meet with in his fellow-man, finds traces of it in the sighing of the trees or the moaning of the sad sea-wave. Our Poet Laureate, in his great elegy, has abundantly ill.u.s.trated this impulse of the imagination to reflect its own emotional colouring on to inanimate things: for example in the lines--

"The wild unrest that lives in woe Would dote and pore on yonder cloud That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a labouring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire."

So far I have been considering active illusions of insight as arising through the play of the impulse of the individual mind to project its feelings outwards, or to see their reflections in external things. I must now add that active illusion may be due to causes similar to those which we have seen to operate in the sphere of illusory perception and introspection. That is to say, there may be a disposition, permanent or temporary, to ascribe a certain kind of feeling to others in accordance with our wishes, fears, and so on.

To give an ill.u.s.tration of the permanent causes, it is well known that a conceited man will be disposed to attribute admiration of himself to others. On the other hand, a shy, timid person will be p.r.o.ne to read into other minds the opposite kind of feeling.

Coming to temporary forces, we find that any expectation to meet with a particular kind of mental trait in a new acquaintance will dispose the observer hastily and erroneously to attribute corresponding feelings to the person. And if this expectation springs out of a present feeling, the bias to illusory insight is still more powerful. For example, a child that fears its parent's displeasure will be p.r.o.ne to misinterpret the parent's words and actions, colouring them according to its fears.

So an angry man, strongly desirous of making out that a person has injured him, will be disposed to see signs of conscious guilt in this person's looks or words. Similarly, a lover will read fine thoughts or sentiments into the mind of his mistress under the influence of a strong wish to admire.

And what applies to the illusory interpretation of others' feelings applies to the ascription of feelings to inanimate objects. This is due not simply to the impulse to expand one's conscious existence through far-reaching resonances of sympathy, but also to a permanent or temporary disposition to attribute a certain kind of feeling to an object. Thus, the poet personifies nature in part because his emotional cravings prompt him to construct the idea of something that can be admired or worshipped. Once more, the action of a momentary feeling when actually excited is seen in the "mechanical" impulse of a man to retaliate when he strikes his foot against an object, as a chair, which clearly involves a tendency to attribute an intention to hurt to the unoffending body, and the _rationale_ of which odd procedure is pretty correctly expressed in the popular phrase: "It relieves the feelings."

It is worth noting, perhaps, that these illusions of insight, like those of perception, may involve an inattention to the actual impression of the moment. To erroneously attribute a feeling to another through an excess of sympathetic eagerness is often to overlook what a perfectly dispa.s.sionate observer would see, as, for example, the immobility of the features or the signs of a deliberate effort to simulate. This inattention will, it is obvious, be greatest in the poetic attribution of life and personality to natural objects, in so far as this approximates to a complete momentary illusion. To see a dark overhanging rock as a grim sombre human presence, is for the moment to view it under this aspect only, abstracting from its many obvious unlikenesses.

In the same manner, a tendency to read a particular meaning into a word may lead to the misapprehension of the word. To give an ill.u.s.tration: I was lately reading the fifth volume of G. H. Lewes's _Problems of Life and Mind_. In reading the first sentence of one of the sections, I again and again fell into the error of taking "The great Lagrange," for "The great Language." On glancing back I saw that the section was headed "On Language," and I at once recognized the cause of my error in the pre-existence in my mind of the representative image of the word "language."

In concluding this short account of the errors of insight, I may observe that their range is obviously much greater than that of the previously considered cla.s.ses of presentative illusion. This is, indeed, involved in what has been said about the nature of the process. Insight, as we have seen, though here cla.s.sed with preservative cognition, occupies a kind of border-land between immediate knowledge or intuition and inference, shading off from the one to the other. And in the very nature of the case the scope for error must be great. Even overlooking human reticence, and, what is worse, human hypocrisy, the conditions of an accurate reading of others' minds are rarely realized. If, as has been remarked by a good authority, one rarely meets, even among intelligent people, with a fairly accurate observer of external things, what shall be said as to the commonly claimed power of "intuitive insight" into other people's thoughts and feelings, as though it were a process above suspicion? It is plain, indeed, on a little reflection, that, taking into account what is required in the way of large and varied experience (personal and social), a habit of careful introspection, as well as a habit of subtle discriminative attention to the external signs of mental life, and lastly, a freedom from prepossession and bias, only a very few can ever hope even to approximate to good readers of character.

And then we have to bear in mind that this large amount of error is apt to remain uncorrected. There is not, as in the case of external perception, an easy way of verification, by calling in another sense; a misapprehension, once formed, is apt to remain, and I need hardly say that errors in these matters of mutual comprehension have their palpable practical consequences. All social cohesion and co-operation rest on this comprehension, and are limited by its degree of perfection. Nay, more, all common knowledge itself, in so far as it depends on a mutual communication of impressions, ideas, and beliefs, is limited by the fact of this great liability to error in what at first seems to be one of the most certain kinds of knowledge.

In view of this depressing amount of error, our solace must be found in the reflection that this seemingly perfect instrument of intuitive insight is, in reality, like that of introspection, in process of being fashioned. Mutual comprehension has only become necessary since man entered the social state, and this, to judge by the evolutionist's measure of time, is not so long ago. A mental structure so complex and delicate requires for its development a proportionate degree of exercise, and it is not reasonable to look yet for perfect precision of action. Nevertheless, we may hope that, with the advance of social development, the faculty is continually gaining in precision and certainty. And, indeed, this hope is already a.s.sured to us in the fact that the faculty has begun to criticise itself, to distinguish between an erroneous and a true form of its-operation. In fact, all that has been here said about illusions of insight has involved the a.s.sumption that intellectual culture sharpens the power and makes it less liable to err.

CHAPTER X.

ILLUSIONS OF MEMORY.

Thus far we have been dealing with Presentative Illusions, that is to say, with the errors incident to the process of what may roughly be called presentative cognition. We have now to pa.s.s to the consideration of Representative Illusion, or that kind of error which attends representative cognition in so far as it is immediate or self-sufficient, and not consciously based on other cognition. Of such immediate representative cognition, memory forms the most conspicuous and most easily recognized variety. Accordingly, I proceed to take up the subject of the Illusions of Memory.[111]

The mystery of memory lies in the apparent immediateness of the mind's contact with the vanished past. In "looking back" on our life, we seem to ourselves for the moment to rise above the limitations of time, to undo its work of extinction, seizing again the realities which its on-rushing stream had borne far from us. Memory is a kind of resurrection of the buried past: as we fix our retrospective glance on it, it appears to start anew into life; forms arise within our minds which, we feel sure, must faithfully represent the things that were. We do not ask for any proof of the fidelity of this dramatic representation of our past history by memory. It is seen to be a faithful imitation, just because it is felt to be a revival of the past. To seek to make the immediate testimony of memory more sure seems absurd, since all our ways of describing and ill.u.s.trating this mental operation a.s.sume that in the very act of performing it we do recover a part of our seemingly "dead selves."

To challenge the veracity of a person's memory is one of the boldest things one can do in the way of attacking deep-seated conviction. Memory is the peculiar domain of the individual. In going back in recollection to the scenes of other years he is drawing on the secret store-house of his own consciousness, with which a stranger must not intermeddle. To cast doubt on a person's memory is commonly resented as an impertinence, hardly less rude than to question his reading of his own present mental state. Even if the challenger professedly bases his challenge on the testimony of his own memory, the challenged party is hardly likely to allow the right of comparing testimonies. He can in most cases boldly a.s.sert that those who differ from him are lacking in _his_ power of recollection. The past, in becoming the past, has, for most people, ceased to be a common object of reference; it has become a part of the individual's own inner self, and cannot be easily dislodged or shaken.

Yet, although people in general are naturally disposed to be very confident about matters of recollection, reflective persons are pretty sure to find out, sooner or later, that they occasionally fall into errors of memory. It is not the philosopher who first hints at the mendacity of memory, but the "plain man" who takes careful note of what really happens in the world of his personal experience. Thus, we hear persons, quite innocent of speculative doubt, qualifying an a.s.sertion made on personal recollection by the proviso, "unless my memory has played me false." And even less reflective persons, including many who pride themselves on their excellent memory, will, when sorely pressed, make a grudging admission that they may, after all, be in error. Perhaps the weakest degree of such an admission, and one which allows to the conceding party a semblance of victory, is ill.u.s.trated in the "last word" of one who has boldly maintained a proposition on the strength of individual recollection, but begins to recognize the instability of his position: "I either witnessed the occurrence or dreamt it." This is sufficient to prove that, with all people's boasting about the infallibility of memory, there are many who have a shrewd suspicion that some of its a.s.severations will not bear a very close scrutiny.

_Psychology of Memory._

In order to understand the errors of memory, we must proceed, as in the case of illusions of perception, by examining a little into the nature of the normal or correct process.

An act of recollection is said by the psychologist to be purely representative in character, whereas perception is partly representative, partly preservative. To recall an object to the mind is to reconstruct the percept in the absence of a sense-impression.[112]

An act of memory is obviously distinguished from one of simple imagination by the presence of a conscious reference to the past. Every recollection is an immediate reapprehension of some past object or event. However vague this reference may be, it must be there to const.i.tute the process one of recollection.

The every-day usages of language do not at first sight seem to consistently observe this distinction. When a boy says, "I remember my lesson," he appears to be thinking of the present only, and not referring to the past. In truth, however, there is a vague reference to the fact of retaining a piece of knowledge through a given interval of time.

Again, when a man says, "I recollect your face," this means, "Your face seems familiar to me." Here again, though there is no definite reference to the past, there is a vague and indefinite one.

It is plain from this definition that recollection is involved in all recognition or identification. Merely to be aware that I have seen a person before implies a minimum exercise of memory. Yet we may roughly distinguish the two actions of perception and recollection in the process of recognition. The mere recognition of an object does not imply the presence of a distinct representative or mnemonic image. In point of fact, in so far as recognition is a.s.similation, it cannot be said to imply a _distinct_ act of memory at all. It is only when similarity is perceived amid difference, only when the accompaniments or surroundings of the object as previously seen, differencing it from the object as now seen, are brought up to the mind that we may be said distinctly to recall the past. And our state of mind in recognizing an object or person is commonly an alternation between these two acts of separating the mnemonic image from the percept and so recalling or recollecting the past, and fusing the image and the percept in what is specifically marked off as recognition.[113]

Although I have spoken of memory as a reinstatement in representative form of external experience, the term must be understood to include every revival of a past experience, whether external or internal, which is recognized as a revival. In a general way, the recallings of our internal feelings take place in close connection with the recollection of external circ.u.mstances or events, and so they may be regarded as largely conditioned by the laws of this second kind of reproduction.

The old conceptions of mind, which regarded every mental phenomenon as a manifestation of an occult spiritual substance, naturally led to the supposition that an act of recollection involves the continued, unbroken existence of the reproductive or mnemonic image in the hidden regions of the mind. To recollect is, according to this view, to draw the image out of the dark vaults of unconscious mind into the upper chamber of illumined consciousness.

Modern psychology recognizes no such pigeonhole apparatus in unconscious mind. On the purely psychical side, memory is nothing but an occasional reappearance of a past mental experience. And the sole mental conditions of this reappearance are to be found in the circ.u.mstances of the moment of the original experience and in those of the moment of the reappearance.

Among these are to be specially noted, first of all, the degree of impressiveness of the original experience, that is to say, the amount of interest it awakened and of attention it excited. The more impressive any experience, the greater the chances of its subsequent revival.

Moreover, the absence of impressiveness in the original experience may be made good either by a repet.i.tion of the actual experience or, in the case of non-recurring experiences, by the fact of previous mnemonic revivals.

In the second place, the pre-existing mental states at the time of revival are essential conditions. It is now known that every recollection is determined by some link of a.s.sociation, that every mnemonic image presents itself in consciousness only when it has been preceded by some other mental state, presentative or representative, which is related to the image. This relation may be one of contiguity, that is to say, the original experiences may have occurred at the same time or in close succession; or one of similarity (partial and not amounting to ident.i.ty), as where the sight of one place or person recalls that of another place or person. Finally, it is to be observed that recollection is often an act, in the full sense of that term, involving an effort of voluntary attention at the moment of revival.

Modern physiology has done much towards helping us to understand the nervous conditions of memory. The biologist regards memory as a special phase of a universal property of organic structure, namely, modifiability by the exercise of function, or the survival after any particular kind of activity of a disposition to act again in that particular way. The revival of a mental impression in the weaker form of an image is thus, on its physical side, due in part to this remaining functional disposition in the central nervous tracts concerned. And so, while on the psychical or subjective side we are unable to find anything permanent in memory, on the physical or objective side we do find such a permanent substratum.

With respect to the special conditions of mnemonic revival at any time, physiology is less explicit. In a general way, it informs us that such a reinstatement of the past is determined by the existence of certain connections between the nervous structures concerned in the reviving and revived mental elements. Thus, it is said that when the sound of a name calls up in the mind a visual image of a person seen some time since, it is because connections have been formed between particular regions and modes of activity of the auditory and the visual centres. And it is supposed that the existence of such connections is somehow due to the fact that the two regions acted simultaneously in the first instance, when the sight of the person was accompanied by the hearing of his name.

In other words, the centres, as a whole, will tend to act at any future moment in the same complex way in which they have acted in past moments.

All this is valuable hypothesis so far as it goes, though it plainly leaves much unaccounted for. As to why this reinstatement of a total cerebral pulsation in consequence of the re-excitation of a portion of the same should be accompanied by the specific mode of consciousness which we call recollection of something past, it is perhaps unreasonable to ask of physiology any sort of explanation.[114]

Thus far as to the general or essential characteristics of memory on its mental and its bodily side. But what we commonly mean by memory is, on its psychical side at least, much more than this. We do not say that we properly recollect a thing unless we are able to refer it to some more or less clearly defined region of the past, and to localize it in the succession of experiences making up our mental image of the past. In other words, though we may speak of an imperfect kind of recollection where this definite reference is wanting, we mean by a perfect form of memory something which includes this reference.

Without entering just now upon a full a.n.a.lysis of what this reference to a particular region of the past means, I may observe that it takes place by help of an habitual retracing of the past, or certain portions of it, that is to say, a regressive movement of the imagination along the lines of our actual experience. Setting out from the present moment, I can move regressively to the preceding state of consciousness, to the penultimate, and so on. The fact that each distinct mental state is continuous with the preceding and the succeeding, and in a certain sense overlaps these, makes any portion of our experience essentially a succession of states of consciousness, involving some rudimentary idea of time. And thus, whether I antic.i.p.ate a future event or recall a past one, my imagination, setting out from the present moment, constructs a sequence of experiences of which the one particularly dwelt on is the other term or boundary. And our idea of the position of this last in time, like that of an object in s.p.a.ce, is one of a relation to our present position, and is determined by the length of the sequence of experiences thus run over by the imagination.[115] It may be added that since the imagination can much more easily follow the actual order of experience than conceive it as reversed, the retrospective act of memory naturally tends to complete itself by a return movement forwards from the remembered event to the present moment.

In practice this detailed retracing of successive moments of mental life is confined to very recent experiences. If I try to localize in time a remote event, I am content with placing it in relation to a series of prominent events or landmarks which serves me as a rough scheme of the past. The formation of such a mnemonic framework is largely due to the needs of social converse, which proceeds by help of a common standard of reference. This standard is supplied by those objective, that is to say, commonly experienced regularities of succession which const.i.tute the natural and artificial divisions of the years, seasons, months, weeks, etc. The habit of recurring to these fixed divisional points of the past renders a return of imagination to any one of them more and more easy. A man has a definite idea of "a year ago" which the child wants, just because he has had so frequently to execute that vague regressive movement by which the idea arises. And though, as our actual point in time moves forward, the relative position of any given landmark is continually changing, the change easily adapts itself to that scheme of time-divisions which holds good for any present point.

Few of our recollections of remote events involve a definite reference to this system of landmarks. The recollections of early life are, in the case of most people, so far as they depend on individual memory, very vaguely and imperfectly localized. And many recent experiences which are said to be half forgotten, are not referred to any clearly a.s.signable position in time. One may say that in average cases definite localization characterizes only such supremely interesting personal experiences as spontaneously recur again and again to the mind. For the rest it is confined to those facts and events of general interest to which our social habits lead us repeatedly to go back.[116]

The consciousness of personal ident.i.ty is said to be bound up with memory. That is to say, I am conscious of a continuous permanent self under all the varying surface-play of the stream of consciousness, just because I can, by an act of recollection, bring together any two portions of this stream of experience, and so recognize the unbroken continuity of the whole. If this is so, it would seem to follow from the very fragmentary character of our recollections that our sense of ident.i.ty is very incomplete. As we shall see presently, there is good reason to look upon, this consciousness of continuous personal existence as resting only in part on memory, and mainly on our independently formed representation of what has happened in the numberless and often huge lacunae of the past left by memory.

Having thus a rough idea of the mechanism of memory to guide us, we may be able to investigate the illusions incident to the process.

_Illusions of Memory._

By an illusion of memory we are to understand a false recollection or a wrong reference of an idea to some region of the past. It might, perhaps, be roughly described as a wrong interpretation of a special kind of mental image, namely, what I have called a mnemonic image.

Mnemonic illusion is thus distinct from mere forgetfulness or imperfect memory. To forget or be doubtful about a past event is one thing; to seem to ourselves to remember it when we afterwards find that the fact was otherwise than we represented it in the apparent act of recollection is another thing. Indistinctness of recollection, or the decay of memory, is, as we shall soon see, an important co-operant condition of mnemonic illusion, but does not const.i.tute it, any more than haziness of vision or disease of the visual organ, though highly favourable to optical illusion, can be said to const.i.tute it.