Fig. 70.
To which the answer is that it is a datum of sensation, but a datum which, like many other data, must first be discriminated. As a rule, no sensible qualities are discriminated without a motive.[239] And those that later we learn to discriminate were originally felt confused. As well pretend that a voice, or an odor, which we have learned to pick out, is no sensation now. One may easily acquire skill in discriminating double images, though, as Hering somewhere says, it is an art of which one cannot become master in one year or in two. For masters like Hering himself, or Le Conte, the ordinary stereoscopic diagrams are of little use. Instead of combining into one solid appearance, they simply cross each other with their doubled lines. Volkmann has shown a great variety of ways in which the addition of secondary lines, differing in the two fields, helps us to see the primary lines double. The effect is analogous to that shown in the cases which we despatched a moment ago, where given lines have their space-value changed by the addition of new lines, without our being able to say why, except that a certain mutual adhesion of the lines and modification of the resultant feeling takes place by psychophysiological laws. Thus, if in Fig. 70, l and r be crossed by an horizontal line at the same level, and viewed stereoscopically, they appear as a single pair of lines, s, in space. But if the horizontal be at different levels, as in l', r', three lines appear, as in s''.[240]
Let us then say no more about double images. All that the facts prove is what Volkmann says,[241] that, although there may be sets of retinal fibres so organized as to give an impression of two separate spots, yet the excitement of other retinal fibres may inhibit the effect of the first excitement, and prevent us from actually making the discrimination. Still farther retinal processes may, however, bring the doubleness to the eye of attention; and, once there, it is as genuine a sensation as any that our life affords.[242]
(c) These groups of illusions being eliminated, either as cases of defective discrimination, or as changes of one space-sensation into another when the total retinal process changes, there remain but two other groups to puzzle us. The first is that of the after-images distorted by projection on to oblique planes; the second relates to the instability of our judgments of relative distance and size by the eye, and includes especially what are known as pseudoscopic illusions.
The phenomena of the first group were described on [page 232]. A. W. Volkmann has studied them with his accustomed clearness and care.[243] Even an imaginarily inclined wall, in a picture, will, if an after-image be thrown upon it, distort the shape thereof, and make us see a form of which our after-image would be the natural projection on the retina, were that form laid upon the wall. Thus a signboard is painted in perspective on a screen, and the eye, after steadily looking at a rectangular cross, is turned to the painted signboard. The after-image appears as an oblique-legged cross upon the signboard. It is the converse phenomenon of a perspective drawing like Fig. 71, in which really oblique-legged figures are seen as rectangular crosses.
Fig. 71.