Illusions - James Sully (online e reader .txt) 📗

a mental state may fail to disclose its component parts to introspective attention. Thus, a motive may enter into our action which is so entangled with other feelings as to escape our notice. The fainter the feeling the greater the difficulty of detaching it and inspecting it in isolation. Again, an error of introspection may have its ground in the fugitive character of a feeling. If, for example, a man is asked whether a rapid action was a voluntary one, he may in retrospection easily imagine that it was not so, when as a matter of fact the action was preceded by a momentary volition. When a person exclaims, "I did a thing inadvertently or mechanically," it often means that he did not note the motive underlying the action. Such transitory feelings which cannot at the moment be seized by an act of attention are pretty certain to disappear at once, leaving not even a temporary trace in consciousness.

We will now pass to the consideration of other illusions of introspection more analogous to what I have called the active illusions of perception. In our examination of these we found that a pure representation may under certain circumstances simulate the appearance of a presentation, that a mental image may approximate to a sense-impression. In the case of the internal feelings this liability shows itself in a still more striking form.

The higher feelings or emotions are distinguished from the simple sense-feelings in being largely representative. Thus, a feeling of contentment at any moment, though no doubt conditioned by the bodily state and the character of the organic sensations or cœnæsthesis, commonly depends for the most part on intellectual representations of external circumstances or relations, and may be called an ideal foretaste of actual satisfactions, such as the pleasures of success, of companionship, and so on. This being so, it is easy for imagination to call up a semblance of these higher feelings. Since they depend largely on representation, a mere act of representation may suffice to excite a degree of the feeling hardly distinguishable from the actual one. Thus, to imagine myself as contented is really to see myself at the moment as actually contented. Again, the actor, though, as we shall see by-and-by, he does not feel all that the spectator is apt to attribute to him, tends, when vividly representing to himself a particular shade of feeling, to regard himself as actually feeling in this way. Thus, it is said of Garrick, that when acting Richard III., he felt himself for the moment to be a villain.

We should expect from all this that in the act of introspection the mind is apt, within certain limits, to find what it is prepared to find. And since there is in these acts often a distinct wish to detect some particular feeling, we can see how easy it must be for a man through bias and a wrong focussing of the attention to deceive himself up to a certain point with respect to the actual contents of his mind.

Let us examine one of these active illusions a little more fully. It would at first sight seem to be a perfectly simple thing to determine at any given moment whether we are enjoying ourselves, whether our emotional condition rises above the pleasure-threshold or point of indifference and takes on a positive hue of the agreeable or pleasurable. Yet there is good reason for supposing that people not unfrequently deceive themselves on this matter. It is, perhaps, hardly an exaggeration to say that most of us are capable of imagining that we are having enjoyment when we conform to the temporary fashion of social amusement. It has been cynically observed that people go into society less in order to be happy than to seem so, and one may add that in this semblance of enjoyment they may, provided they are not blasé, deceive themselves as well as others. The expectation of enjoyment, the knowledge that the occasion is intended to bring about this result, the recognition of the external signs of enjoyment in others—all this may serve to blind a man in the earlier stages of social amusement to his actual mental condition.

If we look closely into this variety of illusion, we shall see that it is very similar in its structure and origin to that kind of erroneous perception which arises from inattention to the actual impression of the moment under the influence of a strong expectation of something different. The representation of ourselves as entertained dislodges from our internal field of vision our actual condition, relegating this to the region of obscure consciousness. Could we for a moment get rid of this representation and look at the real feelings of the time, we should become aware of our error; and it is possible that the process of becoming blasé involves a waking up to a good deal of illusion of the kind.

Just as we can thus deceive ourselves within certain limits as to our emotional condition, so we can mistake the real nature of our intellectual condition. Thus, when an idea is particularly grateful to our minds, we may easily imagine that we believe it, when in point of fact all the time there is a sub-conscious process of criticism going on, which if we attended to it for a moment would amount to a distinct act of disbelief. Some persons appear to be capable of going on habitually practising this petty deceit on themselves, that is to say, imagining they believe what in fact they are strongly inclined to doubt. Indeed, this remark applies to all the grateful illusions respecting ourselves and others, which will have to be discussed by-and-by. The impulse to hold to the illusion in spite of critical reflection, involves the further introspective illusion of taking a state of doubt for one of assurance. Thus, the weak, flattered man or woman manages to keep up a sort of fictitious belief in the truth of the words which are so pleasant to the ear.

It is plain that the external conditions of life impose on the individual certain habits of feeling which often conflict with his personal propensities. As a member of society he has a powerful motive to attribute certain feelings to himself, and this motive acts as a bias in disturbing his vision of what is actually in his mind. While this holds good of lighter matters, as that of enjoyment just referred to, it applies still more to graver matters. Thus, for example, a man may easily persuade himself that he feels a proper sentiment of indignation against a perpetrator of some mean or cruel act, when as a matter of fact his feeling is much more one of compassion for the previously liked offender. In this way we impose on ourselves, disguising our real sentiments by a thin veil of make-believe.

So far I have spoken of an illusion of introspection as analogous to the slight misapprehensions of sense-impression which were touched on in connection with illusions of sense (Chapter III.). It is to be observed, however, that the confusing of elements of consciousness, which is so prominent a factor in introspective illusion, involves a species of error closely analogous to a complete illusion of perception, that is to say, one which involves a misinterpretation of a sense-impression.

This variety of illusion is illustrated in the case in which a present feeling or thought is confounded with some inference based on it. For example, a present thought may, through forgetfulness, be regarded as a new discovery. Its originality appears to be immediately made known in the very freshness which characterizes it. Every author probably has undergone the experience of finding that ideas which started up to his mind as fresh creations, were unconscious reminiscences of his own or of somebody else's ideas.

In the case of present emotional states this liability to confuse the present and the past is far greater. Here there is something hardly distinguishable from an active illusion of sense-perception. In this condition of mind a man often says that he has an "intuition" of something supposed to be immediately given in the feeling itself. For instance, one whose mind is thrilled by the pulsation of a new joy exclaims, "This is the happiest moment of my life," and the assurance seems to be contained in the very intensity of the feeling itself. Of course, cool reflection will tell him that what he affirms is merely a belief, the accuracy of which presupposes processes of recollection and judgment, but to the man's mind at the moment the supremacy of this particular joy is immediately intuited. And so with the assurance that the present feeling, for example of love, is undying, that it is equal to the most severe trials, and so on. A man is said to feel at the moment that it is so, though as the facts believed have reference to absent circumstances and events, it is plain that the knowledge is by no means intuitive.

At such times our minds are in a state of pure feeling: intellectual discrimination and comparison are no longer possible. In this way our emotions in the moments of their greatest intensity carry away our intellects with them, confusing the region of pure imagination with that of truth and certainty, and even the narrow domain of the present with the vast domain of the past and future. In this condition differences of present and future may be said to disappear and the energy of the emotion to constitute an immediate assurance of its existence absolutely.[104]

The great region for the illustration of these active illusions is that of the moral and religious life. With respect to our real motives, our dominant aspirations, and our highest emotional experiences, we are greatly liable to deceive ourselves. The moralist and the theologian have clearly recognized the possibilities of self-deception in matters of feeling and impulse. To them it is no mystery that the human heart should mistake the fictitious for the real, the momentary and evanescent for the abiding. And they have recognized, too, the double bias in these errors, namely, the powerful disposition to exaggerate the intensity and persistence of a present feeling on the one hand, and on the other hand to take a mere wish to feel in a particular way for the actual possession of the feeling.

Philosophic Illusions.

The opinion of theologians respecting the nature of moral introspection presents a singular contrast to that entertained by some philosophers as to the nature of self-consciousness. It is supposed by many of these that in interrogating their internal consciousness they are lifted above all risk of error. The "deliverance of consciousness" is to them something bearing the seal of a supreme authority, and must not be called in question. And so they make an appeal to individual consciousness a final resort in all matters of philosophical dispute.

Now, on the face of it, it does not seem probable that this operation should have an immunity from all liability to error. For the matters respecting which we are directed to introspect ourselves, are the most subtle and complex things of our intellectual and emotional life. And some of these philosophers even go so far as to affirm that the plain man is quite equal to the niceties of this process.

It has been brought as a charge against some of these same philosophers that they have based certain of their doctrines on errors of introspection. This charge must, of course, be received with some sort of suspicion here, since it has been brought forward by avowed disciples of an opposite philosophic school. Nevertheless, as there is from our present disinterested and purely scientific point of view a presumption that philosophers like other men are fallible, and since