The Principles of Psychology, Volume 2 (of 2)James, William
Science
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 2 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
I seem to get an instantaneous glimpse of an actual movement, but it is
to the last degree dim and uncertain. All these images seem at first as
if purely retinal. I think, however, that rapid eye-movements accompany
them, though these latter give rise to such slight feelings that they
are almost impossible of detection. Absolutely no leg-movements of my
own are there; in fact, to call such up arrests my imagination of the
soldiers. My optical images are in general very dim, dark, fugitive,
and contracted. It would be utterly impossible to _draw_ from them, and
yet I perfectly well distinguish one from the other. My auditory images
are excessively inadequate reproductions of their originals. I have
_no_ images of taste or smell. Touch-imagination is fairly distinct,
but comes very little into play with most objects thought of. Neither
is all my thought verbalized; for I have shadowy schemes of relation,
as apt to terminate in a nod of the head or an expulsion of the breath
as in a definite word. On the whole, vague images or sensations of
movement inside of my head towards the various parts of space in which
the terms I am thinking of either lie or are momentarily symbolized
to lie together with movements of the breath through my pharynx and
nostrils, form a by no means inconsiderable part of my _thought-stuff_.
I doubt whether my difficulty in giving a clearer account is wholly
a matter of inferior power of introspective attention, though that
doubtless plays its part. Attention, _ceteris paribus_, must always be
inferior in proportion to the feebleness of the internal images which
are offered it to hold on to.
[72] Geo. Herm. Meyer, Untersuchungen üb. d. Physiol. d. Nervenfaser
(1843), p. 233. For other cases see Tuke's Influence of Mind upon Body,
chaps. ii. and vii.
[73] Meyer, _op. cit._ p. 238.
[74] Meyer, _op. cit._ pp. 238-41.
[75] That of Dr. Ch. Féré in the Revue Philosophique, xx. 364. Johannes
Müller's account of hypnagogic hallucinations floating before the eyes
for a few moments after these had been opened, seems to belong more to
the category of spontaneous hallucinations (see his Physiology, London,
1843, p. 1394). It is impossible to tell whether the words in Wundt's
Vorlesungen, i. 387, refer to a personal experience of his own or not;
probably not. _Il va sans dire_ that an inferior visualizer like myself
can get no such after-images. Nor have I as yet succeeded in getting
report of any from my students.
[76] Senses and Intellect, p. 338.
[77] See above, note 55.
[78] V. Kandinsky (Kritische u. klinische Betrachtungen im Gebiete der
Sinnestäuschungen (Berlin, 1885), p. 135 ff.) insists that in even the
liveliest pseudo-hallucinations (see below, Chapter XX), which may be
regarded as the intensest possible results of the imaginative process,
there is no outward objectivity perceived in the thing represented, and
that a _ganzer Abgrund_ separates these 'ideas' from true hallucination
and objective perception.
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