For the sake of future applications of the principle to
the various questions of philosophical criticism which must arise in
the course of this inquiry, it may be needful here to explain (as I
have already explained elsewhere) how the chief intellectual
operations--Perception, Inference, Reasoning, and Imagination--may be
viewed as so many forms of mental vision.
Perception, as distinguished from Sensation, is the presentation before
Consciousness of the details which once were present in conjunction
with the object at this moment affecting Sense. These details are
inferred to be still in conjunction with the object, although not
revealed to Sense. Thus when an apple is perceived by me, who merely
see it, all that Sense reports is of a certain coloured surface: the
roundness, the firmness, the fragrance, and the taste of the apple are
not present to Sense, but are made present to Consciousness by the act
of Perception. The eye sees a certain coloured surface; the mind sees
at the same instant many other co-existent but unapparent facts--it
reinstates in their due order these unapparent facts.
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