If all this that I have said is valid the difference between that which we call perception and that which we call meaning is one of complexity. The less complex we call perception, the more complex, meaning. Both are determined by past experiences the residua of which are the settings.
This may be illustrated by the following: We will suppose that three persons in imagination perceive a certain building used as a department store on a certain street I have in mind now, in a growing section of the city. One of these persons is an architect, another is an owner of property on this street, and the third is a woman who is in the habit of making purchases in the department store. When the architect thinks of the building he perceives it in his mind’s eye in an architectural setting, that is, its architectural style, proportions, features, and relations. His perception includes a number of secondary images of the neighboring buildings, of their styles of architecture, and of their relations from an æsthetic point of view. In the perception of the owner of property there are also a number of secondary images, but these are of the passing people and traffic, of neighboring buildings as shops and places of business. In the perception of the woman the secondary images are of the interior of the store, the articles for sale, clothes she would like to purchase and possibly bargains dear to every woman’s heart. Plainly each perceives the building from a different point of view. Each might perceive the building from the same point of view, but the point of view differs because of the differences in the past experiences of each.
In the case of the architect these experiences were those of previous observations on the architecture of the growing neighborhood. In the case of the property owner they were of thoughtful reflections on the future development of neighboring property, on the industrial relations of the building to business, and on the speculative future value of the property. In the case of the woman they were of purchases she had made, of articles she had seen and desired, of scenes inside the shop, etc. Out of these experiences respectively a complex was built and conserved in the mind of each. The idea of the building is set in these respective experiences which therefore may be called its setting. The imaginal perception of the building obviously has a different meaning for each of our three observers, and it is plainly the setting which governs the meaning, i.e., an architectural, industrial, or shopping meaning, as the case happens to be; and we may further say the setting determines the point of view or attitude of mind or interest. Either the perception proper of the building or the meaning may be in the focus of attention and the other recede into the background or the fringe of awareness.
Further, different affects may enter into each setting and, therefore, into the perception. With the architectural perception there may be linked an æsthetic joyful emotion; with the industrial perception a depressing emotion of anxiety; with the shopping perception perhaps one of anger. (This linking of an emotion, of course, has a great importance for psychopathic states.)
The dependence of perceptions upon their settings for meaning has been very beautifully expressed by Emerson in “Each and All”:
“Nothing is fair or good alone.
I thought the sparrow’s note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
He sings the song, but it cheers not now,