Illusions Part 17

But how is it, it may be asked, that this feeling shows itself instinctively as soon as the idea of self begins to arise in consciousness? The answer to this question is to be found, I imagine, in the general laws of mental development. All practical judgments like that of self-estimation are based on some feeling which is developed before it; and, again, the feeling itself is based on some instinctive action which, in like manner, is earlier than the feeling. Thus, for example, an Englishman's judgment that his native country is of paramount value springs out of a long-existent sentiment of patriotism, which sentiment again may be regarded as having slowly grown up about the half-blindly followed habit of defending and furthering the interests of one's nation or tribe. In a similar way, one suspects, the feeling of personal worth, with its accompanying judgment, is a product of a long process of instinctive action.

What this action is it is scarcely necessary to remind the reader. Every living organism strives, or acts as if it consciously strove, to maintain its life and promote its well-being. The actions of plants are clearly related to the needs of a prosperous existence, individual first and serial afterwards. The movements of the lower animals have the same end. Thus, on the supposition that man has been slowly evolved from lower forms, it is clear that the instinct of self-promotion must be the deepest and most ineradicable element of his nature, and it is this instinct which directly underlies the rudimentary sentiment of self-esteem of which we are now treating.

This instinct will appear, first of all, as the unreflecting organized habit of seeking individual good, of aiming at individual happiness, and so of pushing on the action of the individual will. This impulse shows itself in distinct form as soon as the individual is brought into compet.i.tion with another similarly const.i.tuted being. It is the force which displays itself in all opposition and hostility, and it tends to limit and counteract the gregarious instincts of the race. In the next place, as intelligence expands, this instinctive action becomes conscious pursuit of an end, and at this stage the thing pursued attracts to itself a sentiment. The individual now consciously desires his own happiness as contrasted with that of others, knowingly aims at enlarging his own sphere of action to the diminution of others' spheres.

Here we have the nascent sentiment of self-esteem, on which all later judgments respecting individual importance are, in part at least, founded.

Thus, we see that long before man had arrived at an idea of self there had been growing up an emotional predisposition to think well of self.

And in this way we may understand how it is that this sentiment of self-esteem shows itself immediately and instinctively in the child's mind as soon as its unfolding consciousness is strong enough to grasp the first rough idea of personal existence. Far down, so to speak, below the surface of distinct consciousness, in the intricate formation of ganglion-cell and nerve-fibre, the connections between the idea of self and this emotion of esteem have been slowly woven through long ages of animal development.

Here, then, we seem to have the key to the apparently paradoxical fact that a man, with all his superior means of studying his own feelings, commonly esteems himself, in certain respects at least, less accurately than a good external observer would be capable of doing. In forming an opinion of ourselves we are exposed to the full force of a powerful impulse of feeling. This impulse, acting as a bias, enters more or less distinctly into our single acts of introspection, into our attempts to recall our past doings, into our insights into the meaning of others'

words and actions as related to ourselves (forming the natural disposition to enjoy flattery), and finally into our wild dreams as to our future achievements. It is thus the princ.i.p.al root of that gigantic illusion of self-conceit, which has long been recognized by practical sense as one of the greatest obstacles to social action; and by art as one of the most ludicrous manifestations of human weakness.

If there are all these openings for error in the beliefs we go on entertaining respecting individual things, including ourselves, there must be a yet larger number of such openings in those still more compound beliefs which we habitually hold respecting collections or cla.s.ses of things. A single illusion of perception or of memory may suffice to give rise to a wholly illusory belief in a cla.s.s of objects, for example, ghosts. The superst.i.tious beliefs of mankind abundantly ill.u.s.trate this complexity of the sources of error. And in the case of our every-day beliefs respecting real cla.s.ses of objects, these sources contribute a considerable quota of error. We may again see this by examining our ordinary beliefs respecting our fellow-men.

A moment's consideration will show that our prevailing views respecting any section of mankind, say our fellow-countrymen, or mankind at large, correspond at best to a very loose process of reasoning. The accidents of our personal experience and opportunities of observation, the traditions which coloured our first ideas, the influence of our dominant feelings in selecting for attention and retention certain aspects of the complex object, and in idealizing this object,--these sources of pa.s.sive and active illusion, must, to say the least, have had as much to do with our present solidified and seemingly "intuitive" knowledge as anything that can be called the exercise of individual judgment and reasoning power.

The force of this observation and the proof that such widely generalized beliefs are in part illusory, is seen in the fact that men of unlike experience and unlike temperament form such utterly dissimilar views of the same object. Thus, as Mr. Spencer has shown,[144] in looking at things national there may be not only a powerful patriotic bias at work in the case of the vulgar Philistine, but also a distinctly anti-patriotic bias in the case of the over-fastidious seeker after culture. And I need hardly add that the different estimates of mankind held with equal a.s.surance by the cynic, the misanthropist, and the philanthropic vindicator of his species, ill.u.s.trate a like diversity of the psychological conditions of belief.

Finally, illusion may enter into that still wider collection of beliefs which make up our ordinary views of life and the world as a whole. Here there reflect themselves in the plainest manner the accidents of our individual experience and the peculiar errors to which our intellectual and emotional conformation disposes us. The world is for us what we feel it to be; and we feel it to be the cause of our particular emotional experience. Just as we have found that our environment helps to determine our idea of self and personal continuity, so, conversely, our inner experience, our remembered or imagined joys and sorrows throw a reflection on the outer world, giving it its degree of worth. Hence the contradictory, and consequently to some extent at least illusory, views of the optimist and the pessimist, "intuitions" which, I have tried to show elsewhere, are connected with deeply rooted habits of feeling, and are antecedent to all reasoned philosophic systems.

If proof were yet wanted that these wide-embracing beliefs may to some extent be illusory, it would be found in the fact that they can be distinctly coloured by a temporary mood or mental tone. As I have more than once had occasion to remark, a feeling when present tends to colour all the ideas of the time. And when out of sorts, moody, and discontented, a man is p.r.o.ne to find a large objective cause of his dissatisfaction in a world out of joint and not moving to his mind.

It is evident that all the permanent beliefs touched on in this chapter must const.i.tute powerful predispositions with respect to any particular act of perception, insight, introspection, or recollection. In other words, these persistent beliefs, so far as individual or personal, are but another name for those fixed habits of mind which, in the case of each one of us, const.i.tute our intellectual bias, and the source of the error known as personal equation. And it may be added that, just as these erroneous beliefs existing in the shape of fixed prejudices const.i.tute a bias to new error, so they act as powerful resisting forces in relation to new truth and the correction of error.

In comparing these illusions of belief with those of perception and memory, we cannot fail to notice their greater compa.s.s or range, in other words, the greater extent of the region of fact misrepresented.

Even if they are less forcible and irresistible than these errors, they clearly make up for this by the area which they cover.

Another thing to be observed with respect to these comprehensive beliefs is that where, as here, so many co-operant conditions are at work, the whole amount of common objective agreement is greatly reduced. In other words, individual peculiarities of intellectual conformation, emotional temperament, and experience have a far wider scope for their influence in these beliefs than they have in the case of presentative cognitions.

At the same time, it is noteworthy that error much more rapidly propagates itself here than in the case of our perceptions or recollections. As we have seen, these beliefs all include much more than the results of the individual's own experience. They offer a large field for the influence of personal ascendency, of the contagion of sympathy, and of authority and tradition. As a consequence of this, the illusions of belief are likely to be far more persistent than those of perception or of memory; for not only do they lose that salutary process of correction which comparison with the experience of others affords, but they may even be strengthened and upheld to some extent by such social influences.

And here the question might seem to obtrude itself, whether, in relation to such a fluctuating ma.s.s of belief as that just reviewed, in which there appears to be so little common agreement, we can correctly speak of anything as objectively determinable. If illusion and error as a whole are defined by a reference to what is commonly held true and certain, what, it may be asked, becomes of the so-called illusions of belief?

This question will have to be fully dealt with in the following chapter.

Here it may be sufficient to remark that amid all this apparent deviation of belief from a common standard of truth, there is a clear tendency to a rational consensus. Thought, by disengaging what is really matter of permanent and common cognition, both in the individual and still more in the cla.s.s,[145] and fixing this quantum of common cognition in the shape of accurate definitions and universal propositions, is ever fighting against and restraining the impulses of individual imagination towards dissociation and isolation of belief. And this same process of scientific control of belief is ever tending to correct widespread traditional forms of error, and to erect a new and better standard of common cognition.

This scientific regulation of belief only fails where the experiences which underlie the conceptions are individual, variable, and subjective.

Hence there is no definite common conception of the value of life and of the world, just because the estimate of this value must vary with individual circ.u.mstances, temperament, etc. All that can be looked for here in the way of a common standard or norm is a rough average estimate. And this common-sense judgment serves practically as a sufficient criterion of truth, at least in relation to such extreme one-sidedness of view as approaches the abnormal, that is to say, one of the two poles of irrational exaltation, or "joy-madness," and abject melancholy, which, appear among the phenomena of mental disease.[146]

CHAPTER XII.

RESULTS.

The foregoing study of illusions may not improbably have had a bewildering effect on the mind of the reader. To keep the mental eye, like the bodily eye, for any time intently fixed on one object is apt to produce a feeling of giddiness. And in the case of a subject like illusion, the effect is enormously increased by the disturbing character of the object looked at. Indeed, the first feeling produced by our survey of the wide field of illusory error might be expressed pretty accurately by the despondent cry of the poet--

"Alas! it is delusion all: The future cheats us from afar, Nor can we be what we recall, Nor dare we think on what we are."

It must be confessed that our study has tended to bring home to the mind the wide range of the illusory and unreal in our intellectual life. In sense-perception, in the introspection of the mind's own feelings, in the reading of others' feelings, in memory, and finally in belief, we have found a large field for illusory cognition. And while illusion has thus so great a depth in the individual mind, it has a no less striking breadth or extent in the collective human mind. No doubt its grosser forms manifest themselves most conspicuously in the undisciplined mind of the savage and the rustic; yet even the cultivated mind is by no means free from its control. In truth, most of the illusions ill.u.s.trated in this work are such as can be shared in by all cla.s.ses of mind.

In view of this wide far-reaching area of ascertained error, the mind naturally asks, What are the real limits of illusory cognition, and how can we be ever sure of having got beyond them? This question leads us on to philosophical problems of the greatest consequence, problems which can only be very lightly touched in this place. Before approaching these, let us look back a little more carefully and gather up our results, reflect on the method which we have been unconsciously adopting, and inquire how far this scientific mode of procedure will take us in determining what is the whole range of illusory cognition.

We have found an ingredient of illusion mixed up with all the popularly recognized forms of immediate knowledge. Yet this ingredient is not equally conspicuous in all cases. First of all, illusion varies very considerably in its degree of force and persistence. Thus, in general, a presentative illusion is more coercive than a representative; an apparent reality present to the mind is naturally felt to be more indubitable than one absent and only represented. On the other hand, a representative illusion is often more enduring than a presentative, that is to say, less easily found out. It is to be added that a good deal of illusion is only partial, there being throughout an under-current of rational consciousness, a gentle play of self-criticism, which keeps the error from developing into a perfect self-delusion. This remark applies not only to the innocent illusions of art, but also to many of our every-day illusions, both presentative and representative. In many cases, indeed, as, for example, in looking at a reflection in a mirror, the illusion is very imperfect, remaining in the nascent stage.

Again, a little attention to the facts here brought together will show that the proportion of illusory to real knowledge is far from being the same in each cla.s.s of immediate or quasi-immediate cognition. Thus, with respect to the great distinction between presentative and representative knowledge, it is to be observed that, in so far as any act of cognition is, strictly speaking, presentative, it does not appear to admit of error. The illusions of perception are connected with the representative side of the process, and are numerous just because this is so extensive.

On the other hand, in introspection, where the scope of independent representation is so limited, the amount of illusion is very inconsiderable, and may in practice be disregarded. So again, to take a narrower group of illusions, we find that in the recalling of distant events the proportion of error is vastly greater than in the recalling of near events.

So much as to the extent of illusion as brought to light by our preceding study. Let us now glance at the conclusions obtained respecting its nature and its causes.

_Causes of Illusion._

Looking at illusion as a whole, and abstracting from the differences of mental mechanism in the processes of perception, memory, etc., we may say that the _rationale_ or mode of genesis of illusion is very much the same throughout. Speaking broadly, one may describe all knowledge as a correspondence of representation with fact or experience, or as a stable condition of the representation which cannot be disturbed by new experiences. It does not matter, for our present purpose, whether the fact represented is supposed to be directly present, as in presentative cognition; or to be absent, either as something past or future, or finally as a "general fact," that is to say, the group of facts (past and future) embodied in a universal proposition.[147]

In general this accordance between our representations and facts is secured by the laws of our intellectual mechanism. It follows from the principles of a.s.sociation that our simple experiences, external and internal, will tend to reflect themselves in perception, memory, expectation, and general belief, in the very time-connections in which they actually occur. To put it briefly, facts which occur together will in general be represented together, and they will be the more perfectly co-represented in proportion to the frequency of this concurrence.

Illusion, as distinguished from correct knowledge, is, to put it broadly, deviation of representation from fact. This is due in part to limitations and defects in the intellectual mechanism itself, such as the imperfections of the activities of attention, discrimination, and comparison, in relation to what is present. Still more is it due to the control of our mental processes by a.s.sociation and habit. These forces, which are at the very root of intelligence, are also, in a sense, the originators of error. Through the accidents of our experience or the momentary condition of our reproductive power, representations get wrongly grouped with presentations and with one another; wrongly grouped, that is to say, according to a perfect or ideal standard, namely, that the grouping should always exactly agree with the order of experience as a whole, and the force of cohesion be proportionate to the number of the conjunctions of this experience.

This great source of error has been so abundantly ill.u.s.trated under the head of Pa.s.sive Illusions that I need not dwell on it further. It is plain that a pa.s.sive error of perception, or of expectation, is due in general to a defective grouping of elements, to a grouping which answers, perhaps, to the run of the individual's actual experience, but not to a large and complete common experience.[148] Similarly, an illusory general belief is plainly a welding together of elements (here concepts, answering to innumerable representative images) in disagreement with the permanent connections of experience. Even a pa.s.sive illusion of memory, in so far as it involves a rearrangement of successive representations, shows the same kind of defect.

In the second place, this incorrect grouping maybe due, not to defects in attention and discrimination, combined with insufficiently grounded a.s.sociation, but to the independent play of constructive imagination and the caprices of feeling. This is ill.u.s.trated in what I have called Active Illusions, whether the excited perceptions and the hallucinations of sense, or the fanciful projections of memory or of expectation. Here we have a force directly opposed to that of experience. Active illusion arises, not through the imperfections of the intellectual mechanism, but through a palpable interference with this mechanism. It is a regrouping of elements which simulates the form of a suggestion by experience, but is, in reality, the outcome of the individual mind's extra-intellectual impulses.

We see, then, that, in spite of obvious differences in the form, the process in all kinds of immediate cognition is fundamentally identical.

It is essentially a bringing together of elements, whether similar or dissimilar and a.s.sociated by a link of contiguity, and a viewing of these as connected parts, of a whole; it is a process of synthesis. And illusion, in all its forms, is bad grouping or carelessly performed synthesis. This holds good even of the simplest kinds of error in which a presentative element is wrongly cla.s.sed; and it holds good of those more conspicuous errors of perception, memory, expectation, and compound belief, in which representations connect themselves in an order not perfectly answering to the objective order.

This view of the nature and causes of illusion is clearly capable of being expressed in physical language. Bad grouping of psychical elements is equivalent to imperfect co-ordination of their physical, that is to say, nervous, conditions, imperfect in the evolutionist's sense, as not exactly according with external relations. So far as illusions of suggestion (pa.s.sive illusions) are concerned, the error is connected with organized tendencies, due to a limited action of experience. On the other hand, illusions of preconception (active illusions) usually involve no such deeply fixed or permanent organic connections, but merely a temporary confluence of nerve-processes.[149] The nature of the physical process is best studied in the case of errors of sense-perception. Yet we may hypothetically argue that even in the case of the most complex errors, as those of memory and of belief, there is implied a deviation in the mode of connection of nervous structures (whether the connection be permanent or temporary) from the external order of facts.

And now we are in a position to see whether illusion is ultimately distinguishable from other modes of error, namely, those incident to conscious processes of reasoning. It must have been plain to an attentive reader throughout our exposition that, in spite of our provisional distinction, no sharp line can be drawn between much of what, on the surface, looks like immediate knowledge, and consciously derived or inferred knowledge. On its objective side, reasoning may be roughly defined as a conscious transition of mind from certain facts or relations of facts to other facts or relations recognized as similar.

According to this definition, a fallacy would be a hasty, unwarranted transition to new cases not identical with the old. And a good part of immediate knowledge is fundamentally the same, only that here, through the exceptional force of a.s.sociation and habit, the transition is too rapid to be consciously recognized. Consequently, illusion becomes identified at bottom with fallacious inference: it may be briefly described as collapsed inference. Thus, illusory perception and expectation are plainly a hasty transition of mind from old to new, from past to present, conjunctions of experience.[150] And, as we have seen, an illusory general belief owes its existence to a coalescence of representations of known facts or connections with products of imagination which simulate the appearance of inferences from these facts.

In the case of memory, in so far as it is not aided by reasoning from present signs, there seems to be nothing like a movement of inference.

It is evident, indeed, that memory is involved in and underlies every such transition of thought. Illusions of memory ill.u.s.trate rather a process of wrong cla.s.sing, that is to say, of wrongly identifying the present mental image with past fact, which is the initial step in all inference. In this way they closely resemble those slight errors of perception which are due to erroneous cla.s.sing of sense-impressions. But since the intellectual process involved in a.s.similating mental elements is very similar to that implied in a.s.similating complex groups of such elements, we may say that even in these simple kinds of error there is something which resembles a wrong cla.s.sing of relations, something, therefore, which approximates in character to a fallacy.

By help of this brief review of the nature and causes of illusion, we see that in general it may be spoken of as deviation of individual from common experience. This applies to pa.s.sive illusion in so far as it follows from the accidents of individual experience, and it still more obviously applies to active illusion as due to the vagaries of individual feeling and constructive imagination. We might, perhaps, characterize all illusion as partial view, partial both in the sense of being incomplete, and in the other sense of being that to which the mind by its peculiar predispositions inclines. This being so, we may very roughly describe all illusion as abnormal. Just as hallucination, the most signal instance of illusion, is distinctly on the border-land of healthy and unhealthy mental life; just as dreams are in the direction of such unhealthy mental action; so the lesser illusions of memory and so on are abnormal in the sense that they imply a departure from a common typical mode of intellectual action.

It is plain, indeed, that this is the position we have been, taking up throughout our discussion of illusion. We have a.s.sumed that what is common and normal is true, or answers to what is objectively real. Thus, in dealing with errors of perception, we took for granted that the common percept--meaning by this what is permanent in the individual and the general experience--is at the same time the true percept. So in discussing the illusions of memory we estimated objective time by the judgment of the average man, free from individual bias, and apart from special circ.u.mstances favourable to error. Similarly, in the case of belief, true belief was held to be that which men in general, or in the long run, or on the average, hold true, as distinguished from what the individual under variable and accidental influences holds true. And even in the case of introspection we found that true cognition resolved itself into a consensus or agreement as to certain psychical facts.

_Criterion of Illusion._

Now, it behoves us here to examine this a.s.sumption, with the view of seeing how far it is perfectly sound. For it may be that what is commonly held true does not in all cases strictly answer to the real, in which case our idea of illusion would have to be extended so as to include certain common beliefs. This question was partly opened up at the close of the last chapter. It will be found that the full discussion of it carries us beyond the scientific point of view altogether. For the present, however, let us see what can be said about it from that standpoint of positive science to which we have hitherto been keeping.

Now, if by common be meant what has been shared by all minds or the majority of minds up to a particular time, a moment's inspection of the process of correcting illusion will show that science a.s.sumes the possibility of a common illusion. In the history of discovery, the first a.s.sault on an error was the setting up of the individual against the society. The men who first dared to say that the sun did not move round the earth found to their cost what it was to fly in the face of a common, though illusory, perception of the senses.[151]

If, however, by common be understood what is permanently and unshakably held true by men in proportion as their minds become enlightened, then science certainly does a.s.sume the truth of common perception and belief.

Thus, the progress of the physical sciences may be described as a movement towards a new, higher, and more stable consensus of ideas and beliefs. In point of fact, the truths accepted by men of science already form a body of common belief for those who are supposed by all to have the means of testing the value of their convictions. And the same applies to the successive improvements in the conceptions of the moral sciences, for example, history and psychology. Indeed, the very meaning of science appears to be a body of common cognition to which all minds converge in proportion to their capabilities and opportunities of studying the particular subject-matter concerned.