The Principles of Psychology, Volume 2 (of 2)James, William
Science
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 2 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
has contained, but which they now firmly believe to have arisen since
their malady; the truth being that the latter has only made them
more observant of all their visual sensations. There are also cases
where one eye has gradually grown blind, and the patient lived for
an indefinite time without knowing it, until, through the accidental
closure of the healthy eye alone, the blindness of the other was
brought to attention.
"Most people, when first made aware of binocular double images, are
uncommonly astonished that they should never have noticed them before,
although all through their life they had been in the habit of seeing
singly only those few objects which were about equally distant with
the point of fixation, and the rest, those nearer and farther, which
constitute the great majority, had always been double.
"We must then _learn_ to turn our attention to our particular
sensations, and we learn this commonly only for such sensations
as are means of cognition of the outer world. Only so far as they
serve this end have our sensations any importance for us in ordinary
life. Subjective feelings are mostly interesting only to scientific
investigators; were they remarked in the ordinary use of the
senses, they could only cause disturbance. Whilst, therefore, we
reach an extraordinary degree of firmness and security in objective
observation, we not only do not reach this where subjective phenomena
are concerned, but we actually attain in a high degree the faculty
of overlooking these altogether, and keeping ourselves independent
of their influence in judging of objects, even in cases where their
strength might lead them easily to attract our attention." (Physiol.
Optik, pp. 431-2.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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