Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/277

] looking at the wheels, the old reality-feeling returns—my train seems to move in spite of the fact that I know it does not. In other words, the reality-feeling, which alone distinguishes the ideas or images of memory from mere imagination, attaches itself to experiences which we know from other evidence do not represent reality.

This may seem to be a contradiction. When it is said that the reality-feeling, that alone distinguishes the ideas or images of memory from mere imagination, may attach itself to ideas or images that we know from other evidence do not represent reality, it seems very much like saying that we may believe what we know is not so.

The thorough discussion of this question would require ah essay in itself. Fortunately, however, that has been rendered unnecessary by Baldwin's able and very lucid treatment of the subject in the chapter from which I have already quoted. Here it will be sufficient to call attention to the fact that the feeling that my train is in motion is one thing; the feeling that my train is in motion, plus the saying to myself that it is,—the conscious affirmation of the fact,—is another; and the feeling that my train is in motion, plus the saying to myself that it does not move, nevertheless, is quite another. And the thesis which I maintain with reference to memory is this: What we know on the authority of what we call our memory has no other guarantee than a reality-feeling, which sometimes attaches itself to experiences that we know do not represent realities, but which we accept in the case of memory simply because it is not contradicted by other experiences. If I am asked how a reality-feeling can attach itself to ideas or images that we know are not in correspondence with reality, I decline to attempt to answer the question here because it is irrelevant. We are not concerned in this place with the how but the what. Whatever the explanation of the facts, it is true that we seem to see distance; that colors of material, extended objects seem to exist outside of us and independent of us; that things seen through an opera-glass seem to be farther away than we know them to be, etc. A large part of the advances of science