Illusions: A Psychological Study

by James Sully

Besides the perception of external objects, and the inspection of our internal mental states, there are other forms of quasi-presentative cognition which need to be touched on here, inasmuch as they are sometimes erroneous and illusory.

In the last chapter I alluded to the fact that emotion may arise as the immediate accompaniment of a sense-impression. When this is the case there is a disposition to read into the external object a quality answering to the emotion, just as there is a disposition to ascribe to objects qualities of heat and cold answering to the sensations thus called. And such a reference of an emotional result to an external exciting cause approximates in character to an immediate intuition. The cognition of the quality is instantaneous, and quite free from any admixture of conscious inference. Accordingly, we have to inquire into the illusory forms of such intuition, if such there be.

Æsthetic Intuition.

Conspicuous among these quasi-presentative emotional cognitions is æsthetic intuition, that is to say, the perception of an object as beautiful. It is not necessary here to raise the question whether there is, strictly speaking, any quality in things answering to the sentiment of beauty in our minds: this is a philosophical and not a psychological question, and turns on the further question, what we mean by object. All that we need to assume here is that there are certain aspects of external things, certain relations of form, together with a power of exciting certain pleasurable ideas in the spectator's mind, which are commonly recognized as the cause of the emotion of beauty, and indeed regarded as constituting the embodiments of the objective quality, beauty. Æsthetic intuition thus clearly implies the immediate assurance of the existence of a common source of æsthetic delight, a source bound up with an object of common sense-perception. And so we may say that to call a thing beautiful is more or less distinctly to recognize it as a cause of a present emotion, and to attribute to it a power of raising a kindred emotion in other minds.

Æsthetic Illusion.

According to this view of the matter, an illusion of æsthetic intuition would arise whenever this power of affecting a number of minds pleasurably is wrongly attributed, by an act of "intuition," to an object of sense-perception, on the ground of a present personal feeling.

Now, this error is by no means unfrequent. Our delight in viewing external things, though agreeing up to a certain point, does not agree throughout. It is a trite remark that there is a large individual factor, a considerable "personal equation," in matters of taste, as in other matters. Permanent differences of natural sensibility, of experience, of intellectual habits, and so on, make an object æsthetically impressive and valuable to one man and not to another. Yet these differences tend to be overlooked. The individual mind, filled with delight at some spectacle, automatically projects its feeling outwards in the shape of a cause of a common sentiment. And the force of this impulse cannot be altogether explained as the effect of past experiences and of association. It seems to involve, in addition, the play of social instincts, the impulse of the individual mind to connect itself in sympathy with the collective mind.

Here, as in the other varieties of illusion already treated of, we may distinguish between a passive and an active side; only in this case the passive side must not be taken as corresponding to any common suggestions of the object, as in the case of perception proper. So far as an illusion of æsthetic intuition may be considered as passive, it must be due to the effect of circumscribed individual associations with the object.

All agree that what is called beauty consists, to a considerable extent, of a power of awaking pleasant suggestions, but in order that these should constitute a ground of æsthetic value, they must be common, participated in by all, or at least by an indefinite number. This will be the case when the association rests on our common every-day experiences, and our common knowledge of things, as in the case of the peaceful beauty of an ascending curl of blue smoke in a woody landscape, or the awful beauty of a lofty precipice. On the other hand, when the experience and recollections, which are the source of the pleasure, are restricted and accidental, any attribution of objective worth is illusory. Thus, the ascription of beauty to one's native village, to one's beloved friends, and so on, in so far as it carries the conviction of objective worth, may imply a confusion of the individual with the common experience.

The active side of this species of illusions would be illustrated in every instance of ascribing beauty to objects which is due, in a considerable measure at least, to some pre-existing disposition in the mind, whether permanent or temporary. A man brings his peculiar habits of thought and feeling to the contemplation of objects, and the æsthetic impression produced is coloured by these predispositions. Thus, a person of a sad and gloomy cast of mind will be disposed to see a sombre beauty where other eyes see nothing of the kind. And then there are all the effects of temporary conditions of the imagination and the feelings. Thus, the individual mind may be focussed in a certain way through the suggestion of another. People not seldom see a thing to be beautiful because they are told that it is so. It might not be well to inquire too curiously how many of the frequenters of the annual art exhibitions use their own eyes in framing their æsthetic judgments. Or the temporary predisposition may reside in a purely personal feeling or desire uppermost at the time. Our enjoyment of nature or of art is coloured by our temporary mood. There are moments of exceptional mental exhilaration, when even a commonplace scene will excite an appreciable kind of admiration. Or there may be a strong wish to find a thing beautiful begotten of another feeling. Thus, a lover desires to find beauty in his mistress; or, having found it in her face and form, desires to find a harmonious beauty in her mind. In these different ways temporary accidents of personal feeling and imagination enter into and determine our æsthetic intuition, making it deviate from the common standard. This kind of error may even approximate in character to an hallucination of sense when there is nothing answering to a common source of æsthetic pleasure. Thus, the fond mother, through the very force of her affection, will construct a beauty in her child, which for others is altogether non-existent.