OBSERVATION 



tives, attention is immediately attracted to the places where the 

 two do not exactly fit, that is, where there is a change in one 

 relative to the other. It is noteworthy that this remembered whole 

 cannot always be recalled to memory so as to enable details to 

 be described."*^ 



This analogy should not be taken too literally because the same 

 phenomenon is seen with memory of other things such as 

 stories or music. A child who is familiar with a story will often 

 call attention to slight variations when it is retold even though he 

 does not know it by heart himself George continues : 



" The perception of change seems to be a property of all of 

 the sense organs, for changes of sound, taste, smell and tempera- 

 ture are readily noticed. ... It might almost be said that a con- 

 tinuous sound is only ' heard ' when it stops or the sound 

 changes." ^^ 



If we consider that the comparison of the old and new images 

 takes place in the subconscious, we can draw an analogy with 

 the hypothesis as to how intuitions gain access to the conscious 

 mind. One would expect the person to become aware of the 

 notable facts, that is, the changes, even though he may be unable 

 to bring all the details into consciousness. 



It is important to realise that observation is much more than 

 merely seeing something; it also involves a mental process. In 

 all observations there are two elements : {a) the sense-perceptual 

 element (usually visual) and {b) the mental, which, as we have 

 seen, may be partly conscious and partly unconscious. Where 

 the sense-perceptual element is relatively unimportant, it is often 

 difficult to distinguish between an observation and an ordinary 

 intuition. For example, this sort of thing is usually referred to as 

 an observation : "I have noticed that I get hay fever whenever 

 I go near horses." The hay fever and the horses are perfectly 

 obvious, it is the connection between the two that may require 

 astuteness to notice at first, and this is a mental process not dis- 

 tinguishable from an intuition. Sometimes it is possible to draw 

 a line between the noticing and the intuition, e.g. Aristotle com- 

 mented that on observing that the bright side of the moon is al- 

 ways toward the sun, it may suddenly occur to the observer that 

 the explanation is that the moon shines by the light of the sun. 



lOI 



