98 P8YCH0L0OT. 



and at last perceive more and more distinctly that it is the perfume of 

 roses — until after all he discovers a bouquet of violets. Then suddenly 

 he recognizes the violet-smell, and wonders how he could possibly have 

 hit upon the roses.— Just so it is with taste. Try some meat whose 

 visible characteristics are disguised by the mode of cooking, and you 

 will perhaps begin by taking it for venison, and end by being quite 

 certain that it is venison, until you are told that it is mutton ; where- 

 upon you get distinctly the mutton flavor. — In this wise one may make 

 a person taste or smell what one will, if one only makes sure that he 

 shall conceive it beforehand as we wish, by saying to him : ' Doesn't 

 that taste just like, etc.?' or 'Doesn't it smell just like, etc.?' One 

 can cheat whole companies in this way ; announce, for instance, at a 

 meal, that the meat tastes ' high,' and almost every one who is not 

 animated by a spirit of opposition will discover a flavor of putrescence 

 which in reality is not there at all. 



"■ In the sense of feeling this phenomenon is less prominent, because 

 we get so close to the object that our sensation of it is never incomplete. 

 Still, examples may be adduced from this sense. On superficially feel- 

 ing of a cloth, one may confidently declare it for velvet, whilst it is 

 perhaps a long-haired cloth ; or a person may perhaps not be able to 

 decide whether he has put on woolen or cotton stockings, and, trying 

 to ascertain this by the feeling on the skin of the feet, he may become 

 aware that he gets the feeling of cotton or wool according as be thinks 

 of the one or the other. When the feeling in our fingers is somewhat 

 blunted by cold, we notice many such phenomena, being then more ex- 

 posed to confound objects of touch with one another." * 



High authorities have doubted this power of imagination 

 to falsify present impressions of sense. t Yet it unquestion- 

 ably exists. Within the past fortnight I have been annoyed 

 by a smell, faint but unpleasant, in my library. My annoy- 

 ance began by an escape of gas from the furnace below 

 stairs. This seemed to get lodged in my imagination as a 

 sort of standard of perception; for, several iays after the 

 furnace had been rectified, I perceived the 'same smell' 

 again. It was traced this time to a new pair of India rubber 

 shoes which had been brought in from the shop and laid on 

 a table. It persisted in coming to me for several days, 

 however, in spite of the fact that no other member of the 

 family or visitor noticed anything unpleasant. My impres- 

 sion during part of this time was one of uncertainty whether 



* G. H. Meyer, Untersuchungen, etc., pp. 242-3. 



f Helmholtz, P. O. 438. The question will soon come before us again 

 in the chapter on the Perception of Space. 



