THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS. 79 



Perception may then be defined, in Mr. Sully's words, as 

 that process by which the mind 



" supplements a sense-impression by an accompaniment or escort of re- 

 vived sensations, the whole aggregate of actual and revived sensations 

 being solidified or ' integrated ' into the form of a percept, that is, an 

 apparently immediate apprehension or cognition of an object now 

 present in a particular locality or region of space." * 



Every reader's mind will supply abundant examples of 

 the process here described ; and to write them down would 

 be therefore both unnecessary and tedious. In the chaj)ter 

 on Space Ave have already discussed some of the more inter- 

 esting ones ; for in our perceptions of shape and position it 

 is really dithcult to decide how much of our sense of the ob- 

 ject is due to reproductions of past experience, and how 

 much to the immediate sensations of tlie eye. I shall ac- 

 cordingly confine myself in the rest of this chapter to cer- 

 tain additional generalities connected with the perceptive 

 process. 



The first point is relative to that ' solidification ' or * in- 

 tegration,' whereof Mr. Sully speaks, of the present with 

 the absent and merely represented sensations. Cerebrally 

 taken, these words mean no more than this, that the pro- 

 cess aroused in the sense-organ has shot into various 

 paths which habit has already organized in the hemi- 

 spheres, and that instead of our having the sort of con- 

 sciousness which would be correlated with the simple sen- 

 sorial process, we have that which is correlated with this 

 more complex process. This, as it turns out, is the con- 

 sciousness of that more complex 'object,' the whole 'thing,' 

 instead of being the consciousness of that more simple 

 object, the few qualities or attributes which actually im- 

 press our peripheral nerves. This consciousness must have 

 the iinity which every ' section ' of our stream of thought 

 retains so long as its objective content does not sensibly 



house and street keep them iu coustant trepidation until such time as they 

 have either learned the objects which emit them, or have become blunted 

 to them by frequent experience of their iunocuity. 

 * Outlines, p. 153. 



