Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/537

 524 W. JAMES : on to oblique planes ; the second relates to the instability of our judgments of relative distance and size by the eye, and includes especially what are known as pseudoscopic illusions. The phenomena of the first group were described on page 342. A. W. Volkmann has studied them with his accustomed clearness and care. 1 Even an imaginarily inclined wall, in a picture, will, if an after-image be thrown upon it, distort the shape thereof, and make us see a form of which our after-image would be the natural projection on the retina, were that form laid upon the wall. Thus a signboard is painted in perspective on a screen, and the eye, after steadily looking at a rectangular cross, is turned to the painted signboard. The after-image appears as an oblique-legged cross upon the signboard. It is the converse phenomenon of a perspective drawing like Fig. 16, in which really oblique-legged figures are seen as rectangular crosses. Fig. 16. The unstable judgments of relative distance and size were also mentioned on p. 342. Whatever the size may be of the retinal image which an object makes, the object is seen as of its own normal size. A man moving towards us is not sensibly perceived to grow, for example ; and my finger, of which a single joint may more than conceal him from my view, is nevertheless seen as a much smaller object than the man. As for distances, it is often possible to make the farther part of an object seem near and the nearer part far. An human profile in intaglio, looked at steadily with one eye, or even both, soon appears irresistibly as a bas-relief. The inside of a common pasteboard mask, painted like the outside, and viewed with one eye in a direct light, also looks convex instead of hollow. So strong is the illusion, after long fixation, that a friend who painted such a mask for ine 1 Physiologische Untersuchungen im Gebiete der Optik, v.