i8a SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



for them is certainly not diminished by the fact that the views they express 

 closely resemble my own. But, fortunately, even if there are prejudices 

 observable in this paper they will but be additional illustrations of the 

 opinions expressed therein. Psychology should begin at home. 



The first of these papers is the impressive address by Prof. Rubin, 

 devoted to the ' ways of seeing.' Summing up his important contri- 

 butions to the psychology of perception, he demonstrated to us that 

 perceptual cognition is shot through with suggestions of movement and 

 direction which are not reducible to the geometry of the object. The 

 mind contributes structural principles to its own experience. Like many 

 scientific theories this was not new. Many besides Rubin, and many 

 earlier than he, have suggested that the mind, at least in part, makes its 

 own experience. The value of his contribution lies in the beauty of his 

 experimental development of the theme, and in the detailed application of 

 it. But at least one of his demonstrations at Norwich was so new to most 

 of us as to be thrilling. Those of you who were present will remember 

 vividly how we were brought to recognise that pictures in European art 

 have a definite left-to-right character, upon which their meaning and 

 aesthetic appeal largely depend. I reported this to Mr. Betts, the head 

 of the School of Art in my university. We went through his stock of 

 lantern slides, and found that in nearly every case Rubin was clearly 

 right. But our most exciting moment was that in which we discovered 

 a drawing in which Rembrandt had gone astray. My colleague suggests 

 that Rembrandt made his sketch from a mirror, a quite usual method, 

 so that having posed his model correctly — that is, as Rubin would have 

 had him do — and being absorbed by the technical problems of his sketch, 

 he overlooked the extraordinary and unpredictable effect of the lateral 

 inversion. 



It seems clear that there are pre-established manners of seeing, and we 

 must expect the same to hold in the other modalities of sense. This 

 implies that the patterns of our perceptual experience are dependent 

 upon the mind, in some cases, perhaps, upon its original endowment, 

 in others upon acquired factors. Thus Rubin suggested that the left- 

 to-right direction of European pictures was derived from reading left- 

 to-right script. Mentioning this to one well known in another section 

 of the British Association, Mr. Peake, I was advised to try out the theory 

 on cave drawings. I have not had the leisure to do so extensively, but 

 in some at least there appears to be the same suggestion, and I have not 

 yet observed the contrary direction in any case. So far as this evidence 

 goes, it tends to confirm my suspicion that right-handedness is among the 

 determinants of perceptual direction. But whether we accept Rubin's 

 view as sufficient, or add my own suggestion to it, it appears that perception 

 can be shaped by factors extrinsic to the material experienced. Under 

 their influence the mind is creating, is actively patterning its experience, 

 so that in some sense and to some degree (the limits being determinable 

 by experiment) the mind makes the world it knows. 



If controversy be good for science, we have reached a fruitful spot. 

 The objections raised by some philosophers that on our view no genuine 

 knowledge of reality is possible, need not trouble us. If the facts force 

 us to the conclusion that the perceived structure of the universe contains 



