78 PSYCHOLOGY. 



Sensational and reproductive brain-processes combined, then, 

 are ivhat give us the content of our perceptions. Every con' 

 Crete particular material thing is a conflux of sensible 

 qualities, with which we have become acquainted at vari- 

 ous times. Some of these qualities, since they are more 

 constant, interesting, or practically important, we regard as 

 essential constituents of the thing. In a general way, such 

 are the tangible shape, size, mass, etc. Other properties, 

 being more fluctuating, we regard as more or less acciden- 

 tal or inessentiah We call the former qualities the reality, 

 the latter its appearances. Thus, I hear a sound, and say 

 * a horse-car ' ; but the sound is not the horse-car, it is 

 one of the horse-car's least important manifestations. The 

 real horse-car is a feelable, or at most a feel able and visi- 

 ble, thing which in my imagination the sound calls up. So 

 when I get, as now, a brown eye-picture with lines not 

 parallel, and with angles unlike, and call it my big solid 

 rectangular walnut library-table, that picture is not the 

 table. It is not even like the table as the table is for vision, 

 when rightly seen. It is a distorted perspective view of three 

 of the sides of what I mentally perceive (more or less) in its 

 totality and undistorted shape. The back of the table, its 

 square corners, its size, its heaviness, are features of which 

 I am conscious when I look, almost as I am conscious of 

 its name. The suggestion of the name is of course due to 

 mere custom. But no less is that of the back, the size, 

 weight, squareness, etc. 



Nature, as Keid says, is frugal in her operations, and 

 will not be at the expense of a particular instinct to give 

 us that knowledge which experience and habit will soon 

 produce. Reproduced sights and contacts tied together 

 with the present sensation in the unity of a thing with a 

 name, these are the complex objective stuflf out of which 

 my actually perceived table is made. Infants must go 

 through a long education of the eye and ear before they 

 can perceive the realities which adults perceive. Every 

 perception is an acquired perception.* 



* The educative process is particularly obvious in the case of the ear, 

 for all sudden sounds seem alarming to babies. The familiar noises of 



