Page:Principles of Psychology (1890) v1.djvu/211

191 THE METHODS AND SNARES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 191 have never been misled into thinking we were not in doubt or in anger when these conditions were really states of our consciousness." * But sound as the reasoning here would be, were the premises correct, I fear the latter cannot pass. However it may be with such strong feelings as doubt or anger, about weaker feelings, and about the relations to each other of all feelings, we find ourselves in continual error and uncertainty so soon as we are called on to name and class, and not merely to feel. "Who can be sure of the exact order of his feelings when they are excessively rapid ? Who can be sure, in his sensible perception of a chair, how much comes from the eye and how much is supplied out of the previous knowledge of the mind ? Who can compare with precision the quantities of disparate feelings even where the feelings are very much alike. For instance, where an object is felt now against the back and now against the cheek, which feeling is most extensive? Who can be sure that two given feelings are or are not exactly the same ? Who can tell which is briefer or longer than the other when both occupy but an instant of time ? Who knows, of many actions, for what motive they were done, or if for any motive at all ? Who can enumerate all the distinct ingredients of such a complicated feeling as anger ? and who can tell off- hand whether or no a perception of distance be a compound or a simple state of mind. The whole mind-stuff contro- versy would stop if we could decide conclusively by intro- spection that what seem to us elementary feelings are really elementary and not compound. Mr. Sully, in his work on Illusions, has a chapter on those of Introspection from which we might now quote. But, since the rest of this volume will be little more than a collection of illustrations of the difficulty of discovering by direct introspection exactly what our feelings and their relations are, we need not anticipate our own future details, but just state our general conclusion that introspection is difficult and fallible; and that the difficulty is simply that of all observation of whatever kind. Something is Ibefore p. 47.
 * J. Mohr : Grundlage der Empirischen Psychologic (Leipzig, 1882),