THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 11 



Perception thus differs from sensation by the consciousness 

 of farther facts associated with the object of the sensation : 



" When I lift my eyes from the paper on which I am writing I se» 

 the chairs and tables and walls of my room, each of its proper shape 

 and at its proper distance. 1 see, from my window, trees and mead- 

 ows, and horses and oxen, and distant hills. I see each of its proper 

 size, of its proper form, and at its proper distance ; and these pai'ticu- 

 lars appear as immediate informations of the eye, as the colors which I 

 see by means of it. Yet philosophy has ascertained that we derive noth- 

 ing from the eye whatever but sensations of color. . . . How, then, is it 

 that we receive accurate information, by the eye, of size and shape and 

 distance ? By association merely. The colors upon a body are ditferent,. 

 according to its figure, its shape, and its size. But the sensations of 

 color and what we may here, for brevity, call the sensations of ex- 

 tension, of figure, of distance, have been so often united, felt in con- 

 junction, that the sensation of the color is never experienced without 

 raising the ideas of the extension, the figure, the distance, in such inti- 

 mate union with it, that they not only cannot be separated, but are ac- 

 tually supposed to be seen. Tlie sight, as it is called, of figure, cr dis- 

 tance, appearing as it does a simple sensation, is in reality a complex 

 state of consciousness— a sequence in which the antecedent, a sensation 

 of color, and the consequent, a number of ideas, are so closely com- 

 bined by association that they appear not one idea, but one sensation." 



This passage from James Mill * gives a clear statement 

 of the doctrine Avhich Berkeley in his Theory of Vision 

 made for the first time an integral part of Psychology. 

 Berkeley compared our visual sensations to the words of a. 

 language, which are but signs or occasions for our intel- 

 lects to pass to what the speaker means. As the sounds 

 called words have no inward affinity with the ideas they 

 signify, so neither have our visual sensations, according to 

 Berkeley, any inward afiinity with the things of whose 

 presence they make us aware. Those things are tangibles; 

 their real properties, such as shape, size, mass, consistency, 

 position, reveal themselves only to touch. But the visible 

 signs and the tangible significates are by long custom so 

 " closely twisted, blended, and incorporated together, and 

 the prejudice is so confirmed and riveted in our thoughts 

 by a long tract of time, by the use of language, and want of 

 reflection," f that we think we see the whole object, tangible 

 and visible alike, in one simple indivisible act. 



* Analysis, i. 97. 



f Theory of Vision, 51. 



