Illusions Part 3

Once more, it is a law of sensory stimulation that an impression persists for an appreciable time after the cessation of the action of the stimulus. This "after sensation" will clearly lead to illusion, in so far as we tend to think of the stimulus as still at work. It forms, indeed, as will be seen by-and-by, the simplest and lowest stage of hallucination. Sometimes this becomes the first stage of a palpable error. After listening to a child crying for some time the ear easily deceives itself into supposing that the noise is continued when it has actually ceased. Again, after taking a bandage from a finger, the tingling and other sensations due to the pressure sometimes persist for a good time, in which case they easily give rise to an illusion that the finger is still bound.

It follows from this fact of the reverberation of the nervous structures after the removal of a stimulus, that whenever two discontinuous stimulations follow one another rapidly enough, they will appear continuous. This fact is a fruitful source of optical illusion. The appearance of a blending of the stripes of colours on a rotating disc or top, of the formation of a ring of light by swinging round a piece of burning wood, and the illusion of the toy known as the thaumatrope, or wheel of life, all depend on this persistence of retinal impression.

Many of the startling effects of sleight of hand are undoubtedly due in part to this principle. If two successive actions or sets of circ.u.mstances to which the attention of the spectator is specially directed follow one another by a very narrow interval of time, they easily appear continuous, so that there seems absolutely no time for the introduction of an intermediate step.[24]

There is another limit to sensibility which is in a manner the opposite to the one just named. It is a law of nervous stimulation that a continued activity of any structure results in less and less psychic result, and that when a stimulus is always at work it ceases in time to have any appreciable effect. The common ill.u.s.tration of this law is drawn from the region of sound. A constant noise, as of a mill, ceases to produce any conscious sensation. This fact, it is plain, may easily become the commencement of an illusion. Not only may we mistake a measure of noise for perfect silence,[25] we may misconceive the real nature of external circ.u.mstances by overlooking some continuous impression.

Curious ill.u.s.trations of this effect are found in optical illusions, namely, the errors we make respecting the movement of stationary objects after continued movement of the eyes. When, for example, in a railway carriage we have for some time been following the (apparent) movement of objects, as trees, etc., and turn our eyes to an apparently stationary object, as the carpet of the compartment, this seems to move in the contrary direction to that of the trees. Helmholtz's explanation of this illusion is that when we suppose that we are fixing our eye on the carpet we are really continuing to move it over the surface by reason of the organic tendency, already spoken of, to go on doing anything that has been done. But since we are unaware of this prolonged series of ocular movements, the muscular feelings having become faint, we take the impression produced by the sliding of the picture over the retina to be the result of a movement of the object.[26]

Another limit to our sensibility, which needs to be just touched on here, is known by the name of the specific energy of the nerves. One and the same nerve-fibre always reacts in a precisely similar way, whatever the nature of the stimulus. Thus, when the optic nerve is stimulated in any manner, whether by light, mechanical pressure, or an electric current, the same effect, a sensation of light, follows.[27] In a usual way, a given cla.s.s of nerve-fibre is only stimulated by one kind of stimulus. Thus, the retina, in ordinary circ.u.mstances, is stimulated by light. Owing to this fact, there has arisen a deeply organized habit of translating the impression in one particular way. Thus, I instinctively regard a sensation received by means of the optic nerve as one caused by light.

Accordingly, whenever circ.u.mstances arise in which a like sensation is produced by another kind of stimulus, we fall into illusion. The phosphenes, or circles of light which are seen when the hinder part of the eyeball is pressed, may be said to be illusory in so far as we speak of them as perceptions of light, thus referring them to the external physical agency which usually causes them. The same remark applies to those "subjective sensations," as they are called, which are known to have as their physical cause subjective stimuli, consisting, in the case of sight, in varying conditions of the peripheral organ, as increased blood-pressure. Strictly speaking, such simple feelings as these appear to be, involve an ingredient of false perception: in saying that we _perceive_ light at all, we go beyond the pure sensation, interpreting this wrongly.

Very closely connected with this limitation of our sensibility is another which refers to the consciousness of the local seat, or origin of the impression. This has so far its basis in the sensation itself as it is well known that (within the limits of local discrimination, referred to above) sensations have a particular "local" colour, which varies in the case of each of the nervous fibres by the stimulation of which they arise.[28] But though this much is known through a difference in the sensibility, nothing more is known. Nothing can certainly be ascertained by a mere inspection of the sensation as to the distance the nervous process has travelled, whether from the peripheral termination of the fibre or from some intermediate point.

In a general way, we refer our sensations to the peripheral endings of the nerves concerned, according to what physiologists have called "the law of eccentricity." Thus I am said to feel the pain caused by a bruise in the foot in the member itself. This applies also to some of the sensations of the special senses. Thus, impressions of taste are clearly localized in the corresponding peripheral terminations.

With respect to the sense of smell, and still more to those of hearing and sight, where the impression is usually caused by an object at a distance from the peripheral organ, our attention to this external cause leads us to overlook in part the "bodily seat" of the sensation. Yet even here we are dimly aware that the sensation is received by way of a particular part of the sensitive surface, that is to say, by a particular sense-organ. Thus, though referring an odour to a distant flower, we perceive that the sensation of odour has its bodily origin in the nose. And even in the case of hearing and sight, we vaguely refer the impressions, as such, to the appropriate sense-organ. There is, indeed, in these cases a double local reference, a faint one to the peripheral organ which is acted on, and a more distinct one to the object or the force in the environment which acts on this.

Now, it may be said that the act of localization is in itself distinctly illusory, since it is known that the sensation first arises in connection with the excitation of the sensory _centre_, and not of the peripheral fibre.[29] Yet it must at least be allowed that this localization of sensation answers to the important fact that, under usual circ.u.mstances, the agency producing the sensation is applied at this particular point of the organism, the knowledge of which point is supposed by modern psychologists to have been very slowly learnt by the individual and the race, through countless experiments with the moving organ of touch, a.s.sisted by the eye.

Similarly, the reference of the impression, in the case of hearing and sight, to an object in the environment, though, as we have seen, from one point of view illusory, clearly answers to a fact of our habitual experience; for in an immense preponderance of cases at least a visual or auditory impression does arise through the action on the sense-organ of a force (ether or air waves) proceeding from a distant object.

In some circ.u.mstances, however, even this element of practical truth disappears, and the localization of the impression, both within and without the organism, becomes altogether illusory. This result is involved in the illusions, already spoken of, which arise from the instinctive tendency to refer sensations to the ordinary kind of stimulus. Thus, when a feeling resulting from a disturbance in the optic nerve is interpreted as one of external light vaguely felt to be acting on the eye, or one resulting from some action set up in the auditory fibre as a sensation of external sound vaguely felt to be entering the ear, we see that the error of localization is a consequence of the other error already characterized.

As I have already observed, an excitation of a nerve at any other point than the peripheral termination, occurs but rarely in normal life. One familiar instance is the stimulation of the nerve running to the hand and fingers, by a sharp blow on the elbow over which it pa.s.ses. As everybody knows, this gives rise to a sense of pain at the _extremities_ of the nerve. The most common ill.u.s.tration of such errors of localization is found in subjective sensations, such as the impression we sometimes have of something creeping over the skin, of a disagreeable taste in the mouth, of luminous spots floating across the field of vision, and so on. The exact physiological seat of these is often a matter of conjecture only; yet it may safely be said that in many instances the nervous excitation originates at some point considerably short of its peripheral extremity: in which case there occurs the illusion of referring the impressions to the peripheral sense-organ, and to an external force acting on this.

The most striking instances of these errors of localization are found in abnormal circ.u.mstances. It is well known that a man who has lost a leg refers all sensations arising from a stimulation of the truncated fibres to his lost foot, and in some cases has even to convince himself of the non-existence of his lost member by sight or touch. Patients often describe these experiences in very odd language. "If," says one of Dr.

Weir Mitch.e.l.l's patients, "I should say I am more sure of the leg which ain't than the one which air, I guess I should be about correct."[30]

There is good reason for supposing that this source of error plays a prominent part in the illusions of the insane. Diseased centres may be accompanied by disordered peripheral structures, and so subjective sensation may frequently be the starting-point of the wildest illusions.

Thus, a patient's horror of poison may have its first origin in some subjective gustatory sensation. Similarly, subjective tactual sensations may give rise to gross illusions, as when a patient "feels" his body attacked by foul and destructive creatures.

It may be well to remark that this mistaken interpretation of the seat or origin of subjective sensation is closely related to hallucination.

In so far as the error involves the ascription of the sensation to a force external to the sense-organ, this part of the mental process must, when there is no such force present, be viewed as hallucinatory. Thus, the feeling of something creeping over the skin is an hallucination in the sense that it implies the idea of an object external to the skin.

Similarly, the projection of an ocular impression due to retinal disturbance into the external field of vision, may rightly be named an hallucination. But the case is not always so clear as this. Thus, for example, when a gustatory sensation is the result of an altered condition of the saliva, it may be said that the error is as much an illusion as an hallucination.[31]

In a wide sense, again, all errors connected with those subjective sensations which arise from a stimulation of the peripheral regions of the nerve may be called illusions rather than hallucinations. Or, if they must be called hallucinations, they may be distinguished as "peripheral" from those "central" hallucinations which arise through an internal automatic excitation of the sensory centre. It is plain from this that the region of subjective sensation is an ambiguous region, where illusion and hallucination mix and become confused. To this point I shall have occasion to return by-and-by.

I have now probably said enough respecting the illusions that arise through the fact of there being fixed limits to our sensibility. The _rationale_ of these illusions is that whenever the limit is reached, we tend to ignore it and to interpret the impression in the customary way.

_Variations of Sensibility._

We will now pa.s.s to a number of illusions which depend on something variable in the condition of our sensibility, or some more or less exceptional organic circ.u.mstance. These variations may be momentary and transient or comparatively permanent. The illusion arises in each case from our ignoring the variation, and treating a given sensation under all circ.u.mstances as answering to one objective cause.

First of all, the variation of organic state may affect our mental representation of the strength of the stimulus or external cause. Here the fluctuation may be a temporary or a permanent one. The first case is ill.u.s.trated in the familiar example of taking a room to be brighter than it is when emerging from a dark one. Another striking example is that of our sense of the temperature of objects, which is known to be strictly relative to a previous sensation, or more correctly to the momentary condition of the organ. Yet, though every intelligent person knows this, the deeply rooted habit of making sensation the measure of objective quality a.s.serts its sway, and frequently leads us into illusion. The well-known experiment of first plunging one hand in cold water, the other in hot, and then dipping them both in tepid, is a startling example of this organized tendency. For here we are strongly disposed to accept the palpable contradiction that the same water is at once warm and cool.

Far more important than these temporary fluctuations of sensibility are the permanent alterations. Excessive fatigue, want of proper nutrition, and certain poisons are well known to be causes of such changes. They appear most commonly under two forms, exalted sensibility, or hyperaesthesia, and depressed sensibility, or anaesthesia. In these conditions flagrant errors are made as to the real magnitude of the causes of the sensations. These variations may occur in normal life to some extent. In fairly good health we experience at times strange exaltations of tactual sensibility, so that a very slight stimulus, such as the contact of the bed-clothes, becomes greatly exaggerated.

In diseased states of the nervous system these variations of sensibility become much more striking. The patient who has hyperaesthesia fears to touch a perfectly smooth surface, or he takes a knock at the door to be a clap of thunder. The hypochondriac may, through an increase of organic sensibility, translate organic sensations as the effect of some living creature gnawing at his vitals. Again, states of anaesthesia lead to odd illusions among the insane. The common supposition that the body is dead, or made of wood or of gla.s.s, is clearly referable in part to lowered sensibility of the organism.[32]

It is worth adding, perhaps, that these variations in sensibility give rise not only to sensory but also to motor illusions. To take a homely instance, the last miles of a long walk seem much longer than the first, not only because the sense of fatigue leading us to dwell on the transition of time tends to magnify the apparent duration, but because the fatigued muscles and connected nerves yield a new set of sensations which const.i.tute an exaggerated standard of measurement. A number of optical illusions ill.u.s.trate the same thing. Our visual sense of direction is determined in part by the feelings accompanying the action of the ocular muscles, and so is closely connected with the perception of movement, which has already been touched on. If an ocular muscle is partially paralyzed it takes a much greater "effort" to effect a given extent of movement than when the muscle is sound. Hence any movement performed by the eye seems exaggerated. Hence, too, in this condition objects are seen in a wrong direction; for the patient reasons that they are where they would seem to be if he had executed a wider movement than he really has. This may easily be proved by asking him to try to seize the object with, his hand. The effect is exaggerated when complete paralysis sets in, and no actual movement occurs in obedience to the impulse from within.[33]

Variations in the condition of the nerve affect not only the degree, but also the quality of the sensation, and this fact gives rise to a new kind of illusion. The curious phenomena of colour-contrast ill.u.s.trate momentary alterations of sensibility. When, after looking at a green colour for a time, I turn my eye to a grey surface and see this of the complementary rose-red hue, the effect is supposed to be due to a temporary fatigue of the retina in relation to those ingredients of the total light in the second case which answer to the partial light in the first (the green rays).[34]

These momentary modifications of sensibility are of no practical significance, being almost instantly corrected. Other modifications are more permanent. It was found by Himly that when the retina is overexcitable every stimulus is raised in the spectrum scale of colours.

Thus, violet becomes red. An exactly opposite effect is observed when the retina is torpid.[35] Certain poisons are known to affect the quality of the colour-impression. Thus, santonin, when taken in any quant.i.ty, makes all colourless objects look yellow. Severe pathological disturbances are known to involve, in addition to hyperaesthesia and anaesthesia, what, has been called paraesthesia, that is to say, that condition in which the quality of sensation is greatly changed. Thus, for example, to one in this state all food appears to have a metallic taste, and so on.

If we now glance back at the various groups of illusions just ill.u.s.trated, we find that they all have this feature in common: they depend on the general mental law that when we have to do with the unfrequent, the unimportant, and therefore unattended to, and the exceptional, we employ the ordinary, the familiar, and the well-known as our standard. Thus, whether we are dealing with sensations that fall below the ordinary limits of our mental experience, or with those which arise in some exceptional state of the organism, we carry the habits formed in the much wider region of average every-day perception with us.

In a word, illusion in these cases always arises through what may, figuratively at least, be described as the application of a rule, valid for the majority of cases, to an exceptional case.

In the varieties of illusion just considered, the circ.u.mstance that gives the peculiarity to the case thus wrongly interpreted has been referred to the organism. In the illusions to which we now pa.s.s, it will be referred to the environment. At the same time, it is plain that there is no very sharp distinction between the two cla.s.ses. Thus, the visual illusion produced by pressing the eyeball might be regarded not only as the result of the organic law of the "specific energy" of the nerves, but, with almost equal appropriateness, as the consequence of an exceptional state of things in the environment, namely, the pressure of a body on the retina. As I have already observed, the cla.s.sification here adopted is to be viewed simply as a rough expedient for securing something like a systematic review of the phenomena.

CHAPTER V.

ILLUSIONS OF PERCEPTION--_continued_.

A. _Pa.s.sive Illusions (b) as determined by the Environment._

In the following groups of illusion we may look away from nervous processes and organic disturbances, regarding the effect of any external stimulus as characteristic, that is, as clearly marked off from the effects of other stimuli, and as constant for the same stimulus. The source of the illusion will be looked for in something exceptional in the external circ.u.mstances, whereby one object or condition of an object imitates the effect of another object or condition, to which, owing to a large preponderance of experience, we at once refer it.

_Exceptional Relation of Stimulus to Organ._

A transition from the preceding to the following cla.s.s of illusions is to be met with in those errors which arise from a very exceptional relation between the stimulus and the organ of sense. Such a state of things is naturally interpreted by help of more common and familiar relations, and so error arises.

For example, we may grossly misinterpret the intensity of a stimulus under certain circ.u.mstances. Thus, when a man crunches a biscuit, he has an uncomfortable feeling that the noise as of all the structures of his head being violently smashed is the same to other ears, and he may even act on his illusory perception, by keeping at a respectful distance from all observers. And even though he be a physiologist, and knows that the force of sensation in this case is due to the propagation of vibrations to the auditory centre by other channels than the usual one of the ear, the deeply organized impulse to measure the strength of an external stimulus by the intensity of the sensation a.s.serts its force.

Again, if we turn to the process of perceptional construction properly so called, the reference of the sensation to a material object lying in a certain direction, etc., we find a similar transitional form of illusion. The most interesting case of this in visual perception is that of a disturbance or displacement of the organ by external force. For example, an illusory sense of direction arises by the simple action of closing one eye, say the left, and pressing the other eyeball with one of the fingers a little outwards, that is to the right. The result of this movement is, of course, to transfer the retinal picture to new nervous elements further to the right. And since, in this instance, the displacement is not produced in the ordinary way by the activity of the ocular muscle making itself known by certain feelings of movement, it is disregarded altogether, and the direction of the objects is judged as though the eye were stationary.

A somewhat similar illusion as to direction occurs in auditory perception. The sense of direction by the ear is known to be due in part to the action of the auricle, or projecting part of the ear. This collects the air-waves, and so adds to the intensity of the sounds, especially those coming from in front, and thus a.s.sists in the estimation of direction. This being so, if an artificial auricle is placed in front of the ears; if, for example, the two hands are each bent into a sort of auricle, and placed in front of the ears, the back of the hand being in front, the sense of direction (as well as of distance) is confused. Thus, sounds really travelling from a point in front of the head will appear to come from behind it.

Again, the perception of the unity of an object is liable to be falsified by the introduction of exceptional circ.u.mstances into the sense-organ. This is ill.u.s.trated in the well-known experiment of crossing two fingers, say the third and fourth, and placing a marble or other small round object between them. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances, the two lateral surfaces (that is, the outer surfaces of the two fingers) now pressed by the marble, can only be acted on simultaneously by _two_ objects having convex surfaces. Consequently, we cannot help feeling the presence of two objects in this exceptional instance. The illusion is a.n.a.logous to that of the stereoscope, to be spoken of presently.

_Exceptional External Arrangements._

Pa.s.sing now to those cases where the exceptional circ.u.mstance is altogether exterior to the organ, we find a familiar example in the illusions connected with the action of well-known physical forces, as the refraction of light, and the reflection of light and sound. A stick half-immersed in water always _looks_ broken, however well we may know that the appearance is due to the bending of the rays of light.

Similarly, an echo always sounds as though it came from some object in the direction in which the air-waves finally travel to the ear, though we are perfectly sure that these undulations have taken a circuitous course. It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that the deeply organized tendency to mistake the direction of the visible or audible object in these cases has from remote ages been made use of as a means of popular delusion. Thus, we are told by Sir D. Brewster, in his entertaining _Letters on Natural Magic_ (letter iv.), that the concave mirror was probably used as the instrument for bringing the G.o.ds before the people. The throwing of the images formed by such mirrors upon smoke or against fire, so as to make them more distinct, seems to have been a favourite device in the ancient art of necromancy.

Closely connected with these illusions of direction with respect to resting objects, are those into which we are apt to fall respecting the movements of objects. What looks like the movement of something across the field of vision is made known to us either by the feeling of the ocular muscles, if the eye follows the object, or through the sequence of locally distinct retinal impressions, if the eye is stationary. Now, either of these effects may result, not only from the actual movement of the object in a particular direction, but from our own movement in an opposite direction; or, again, from our both moving in the first direction, the object more rapidly than ourselves; or, finally, from our both moving in an opposite direction to this, ourselves more rapidly than the object. There is thus always a variety of conceivable explanations, and the action of past experience and a.s.sociation shows itself very plainly in the determination of the direction of interpretation. Thus, it is our instinctive tendency to take apparent movement for real movement, except when the fact of our own movement is clearly present to consciousness, as when we are walking, or when we are sitting behind a horse whose movement we see. And so when the sense of our own movement becomes indistinct, as in a railway carriage, we naturally drift into the illusion that objects, such as trees, telegraph posts, and so on, are moving, when they are perfectly still. Under the same circ.u.mstances, we are apt to suppose that a train which is just shooting ahead of us is moving slowly.

Similar uncertainties arise with respect to the relative movement of two objects, the eye being supposed to be fixed in s.p.a.ce. When two objects seem to pa.s.s one another, it may be that they are both moving in contrary directions, or that one only is moving, or finally, that both are moving in the same direction, the one faster than the other.

Experience and habit here again suggest the interpretation which is most easy, and not unfrequently produce illusion. Thus, when we watch clouds scudding over the face of the moon, the latter seems moving rather than the former, and the illusion only disappears when we fix the eye on the moon and recognize that it is really stationary. The probable reason of this is, as Wundt suggests, that experience has made it far easier for us to think of small objects like the moon moving rapidly, than of large ma.s.ses like the clouds.[36]