Accordingly, we find that where this is wanting there is a manifest
disposition to translate internal feelings into terms of external
impressions. In this way there may arise a slight amount of habitual and
approximately constant error. Not that the process approaches to one of
hallucination; but only that the internal feelings are intuited as
having a cause or origin analogous to that of sense-impressions. Thus to
the uncultivated mind a sudden thought seems like an audible
announcement from without. The superstitious man talks of being led by
some good or evil spirit when new ideas arise in his mind or new
resolutions shape themselves. To the simple intelligence of the boor
every thought presents itself as an analogue of an audible voice, and he
commonly describes his rough musings as saying this and that to himself.
And this, mode of viewing the matter is reflected even, in the language
of cultivated persons. Thus we say, "The idea struck me," or "was borne
in on me," "I was forced to do so and so," and so on, and in this
manner we tend to assimilate internal to external mental phenomena.
Much the same thing shows itself in our customary modes of describing
our internal feelings of pleasure and pain. When a man in a state of
mental depression speaks of having "a load" on his mind it is evident
that he is interpreting a mental by help of an analogy to a bodily
feeling. Similarly, when we talk of the mind being torn by doubt or worn
by anxiety. It would seem as though we tended mechanically to translate
mental pleasures and pains into the language of bodily sensations.
The explanation of this deeply rooted tendency to a slightly illusory
view of our mental states is, I think, an easy one. For one thing, it
follows from the relation of the mental image to the sense-impression
that we should tend to assimilate the former to the latter as to its
nature and origin. This would account for the common habit of regarding
thoughts, which are of course accompanied by representatives of their
verbal symbols, as internal voices, a habit which is probably especially
characteristic of the child and the uncivilized man, as we have found it
to be characteristic of the insane.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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