_Sensational and reproductive brain-processes combined, then, are what
give us the content of our perceptions._ Every concrete particular
material thing is a conflux of sensible qualities, with which we have
become acquainted at various times. Some of these qualities, since they
are more constant, interesting, or practically important, we regard as
essential constituents of the thing. In a general way, such are the
tangible shape, size, mass, etc. Other properties, being more
fluctuating, we regard as more or less accidental or inessential. We
call the former qualities the reality, the latter its appearances. Thus,
I hear a sound, and say 'a horse-car'; but the sound is not the
horse-car, it is one of the horse-car's least important manifestations.
The real horse-car is a feelable, or at most a feelable and visible,
thing which in my imagination the sound calls up. So when I get, as now,
a brown eye-picture with lines not parallel, and with angles unlike, and
call it my big solid rectangular walnut library-table, that picture is
not the table. It is not even like the table as the table is for vision,
when rightly seen. It is a distorted perspective view of three of the
sides of what I mentally _perceive_ (more or less) in its totality and
undistorted shape. The back of the table, its square corners, its size,
its heaviness, are features of which I am conscious when I look, almost
as I am conscious of its name. The suggestion of the name is of course
due to mere custom. But no less is that of the back, the size, weight,
squareness, etc.
Nature, as Reid says, is frugal in her operations, and will not be at
the expense of a particular instinct to give us that knowledge which
experience and habit will soon produce. Reproduced attributes tied
together with presently felt attributes in the unity of a _thing_ with a
name, these are the materials out of which my actually perceived table
is made. Infants must go through a long education of the eye and ear
before they can perceive the realities which adults perceive. _Every
perception is an acquired perception._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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