Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 2.djvu/200

190 again, if something feels cold we ask ourselves whether it may not be that we have very warm hands. When we hear a sound we sometimes doubt whether it was really an affection of our sense of hearing from without or merely an inner affection of it; then whether it sounded near and weak or far off and strong, then from what direction it came, and finally whether it was the voice of a man or of a brute, or the sound of an instrument; thus we investigate the cause of each effect we experience. In the case of smell and taste uncertainty as to the objective nature of the cause of the effect felt is of the commonest occurrence, so distinctly are the two separated here. The fact that in sight the transition from the effect to the cause occurs quite unconsciously, and hence the illusion arises that this kind of perception is perfectly direct, and consists simply in the sensation alone without any operation of the understanding – this has its explanation partly in the great perfection of the organ of vision, and partly in the exclusively rectilineal action of light. On account of the latter circumstance the impression itself leads directly to the place of the cause, and since the eye is capable of perceiving with the greatest exactness and at a glance all the fine distinctions of light and shade, colour and outline, and also the data in accordance with which the understanding estimates distance, it thus happens that in the case of impressions of this sense the operation of the understanding takes place with such rapidity and certainty that we are just as little conscious of it as of spelling when we read. Hence arises the delusion that the sensation itself presents us directly with the objects. Yet it is just in sight that the operation of the understanding, consisting in the knowledge of the cause from the effect, is most significant. By means of it what is felt doubly, with two eyes, is perceived as single; by means of it the impression which strikes the retina upside down, in consequence of the crossing of the rays in the pupils, is put right by following back the cause of this in the same