THE METHODS AND SNARES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 191 



have never been misled into thinking we were not in doubt or in anger 

 when these conditions were really states of our consciousness. " * 



But sound as the reasoning here would be, were the 

 premises correct, I fear the latter cannot pass. However 

 it may be with such strong feelings as doubt or auger, 

 about weaker feelings, and about the 7'elations to each other 

 of all feelings, we find ourselves in continual error and 

 uncertainty so soon as we are called on to name and class, 

 and not merely to feel. Who can be sure of the exact order 

 of his feelings when they are excessively rapid ? Who can 

 be sure, in his sensible j)erception of a chair, how much 

 comes from the eye and how much is supplied out of the 

 previous knowledge of the mind? Who can compare with 

 precision the quantities of disparate feelings even where the 

 feelings are very much alike ? For instance, where an object 

 is felt now against the back and now against the cLeek, 

 which feeling is most extensive? Who can be sure that 

 two given feelings are or are not exactly the same ? Who 

 can tell which is briefer or longer than the other when 

 both occupy but an instant of time ? Who knows, of many 

 actions, for what motive they were done, or if for any motive 

 at all ? Who can enumerate all the distinct ingredients of 

 such a complicated feeling as anger ? and who can tell off- 

 hand whether or no a perception of distance be a compound 

 or a simple state of mind ? The whole mind-stuff contro- 

 versy would stop if we could decide conclusively by intro- 

 spection that what seem to us elementary feelings are 

 really elementary and not compound. 



Mr. Sully, in his work on Illusions, has a chapter on 

 those of Introspection from which we might now quote. 

 But, since the rest of this volume will be little more than a 

 collection of illustrations of the difficulty of discovering by 

 direct introspection exactly what our feelings and their 

 relations are, we need not anticipate our own future details, 

 but just state our general conclusion that introspection is 

 difficult and fallible; and that the difficulty is simply that 

 of all observation of whatever kind. Something is before 



* J. Mohr: Grundlage der Empirischen Psychologie (Leipzig, 1883), 

 p- 47. 



