Mental Philosophy: Including the Intellect, Sensibilities, and WillHaven, Joseph
Philosophy
Mental Philosophy: Including the Intellect, Sensibilities, and Will
Haven, Joseph
Psychology
_Further Argument in the Negative._--It is further contended that facts
show that the impressions of sight alone, uncorrected by experience, do
not convey the idea of distance at all, but that what we see seems to
be in connection with the eye itself, until we learn the contrary by
the aid of other senses. This, it is said, is the experience of persons
who have been operated upon for cataract, particularly of a patient
whose case is described by Cheselden, and who thought every thing which
he saw, touched his eyes. It is said also to have been the same with
Caspar Hauser, when first liberated from the long confinement of his
dungeon, and permitted to look out upon the external world. The goodly
landscape seemed to him to be a group of figures, drawn upon the window.
_Force of this Argument._--This, however, is not inconsistent with
the perception of externality by vision, since even what seems to be
in contact with the eye, nay, what is known to be so, may still be
known as external. Contact implies externality. It is very much to be
doubted, moreover, whether the cases now referred to, coincide with
the usual experience of those who are learning to see. The little
child seems to recognize the externality and remoteness from his own
person of the objects which attract his attention, as soon as he learns
to observe surrounding objects at all, and, though he may not judge
correctly of their relative distance from himself, never seems by his
movements to suppose that they are in contact with his eye or with any
part of his person. The young of animals, also, as soon as they are
born, seem to perceive by the eye, the externality, the direction, and
the distance of objects, and govern their movements accordingly. It is
not, in these cases, a matter of experience, but of direct perception.
These facts render it doubtful, to say the least, whether the common
impression--that which in spite of all arguments to the contrary, is,
and always will be made upon the mind in the act of vision, viz., that
we see objects as external, as having locality, and as more or less
remote from us--is not, after all, the correct impression.
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