LOGIC OF RECEPTS, 49 



gather that all our visual perceptions are thus of the nature 

 of automatic inferences, based upon previous correspondencies 

 between them and perceptions of touch. From which, again, 

 we gather that perceptions of every kind depend upon 

 previous grouping, whether between those supplied by the 

 same sense only, or also in combination with those supplied 

 by other senses. 



Now, if this is so well known to be the case with percepts, 

 obviously it must also be the case with recepts. If we thus 

 find by experiment that all our perceptions are dependent on 

 sub-conscious co-ordination wholly automatic, much more 

 may we be prepared to find that the simplest of our ideas 

 are dependent on spontaneous co-ordinations almost equally 

 automatic. Accordingly, it requires but a slii^ht analysis of 

 our ordinary mental processes to prove that all our simpler 

 ideas are group-arrangements, which have been formed as 

 I say spontaneously, or without any of that intentionally 

 comparing, sifting, and combining process which is required 

 in the higher departments of ideational activity. The com- 

 paring, sifting, and combining is here done, as it were, for 

 the conscious agent ; not by him. Recepts are received: it is 

 only concepts that require to be conceived. For a recept is 

 that kind of idea the constituent parts of which — be they but 

 the memories of percepts, or already more or less elaborated 

 as recepts — unite spontaneously as soon as they are brought 

 together. It matters not whether this readiness to unite is 

 due to obvious similarity, or to frequent repetition : the point 

 is that there is so strong an affinity between the elementary 

 constituents, that the compound is formed as a consequence 



erroneously in perceiving the bowl as a sphere. In his work on IHusions, Mr. 

 Sully has shown that illusions of perception arise through the mental "application 

 of a rule, valid for the majority of cases, to an exceptional case." In other words, 

 an erroneous judgment is made by ihe non-conceptual faculties of perception — this 

 judgment being formed upon the analogies supplied by past experience. Of 

 course, such an act of merely perceptual inference is not a judgment, strictly 

 so called ; but it is clearly allied to judgment, and convenience is consulted by 

 following established custom in designating it " imconscious," " intuitive," 

 or '* perceptual judgment." 



