Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/365

352 w. JAMES : cognition of the outer world. Only so far as they serve this end have our sensations any importance for us in ordinary life. Subjective feelings are mostly interesting only to scientific investigators ; were they remarked in the ordinary use of the senses, they could only cause disturbance. Whilst, therefore, we reach an extraordinary degree of fineness and security in objective observation, we not only do not reach this where subjective phenomena are concerned, but we actually attain in a high degree the faculty of overlooking these altogether, and keeping ourselves inde- pendent of their influence in judging of objects, even in cases where their strength might lead them easily to attract our attention" (Physiol. Optik, pp. 431-2). Even where the sensation is not merely subjective, as in the cases of which Helmholtz speaks, but is a sign of something outward, we are also liable, as Reid says, to overlook its intrinsic quality and attend exclusively to the image of the ' thing ' it suggests. But here everyone can easily notice the sensation itself if he will. Usually we see a sheet of paper as uniformly white, although a part of it may be in shadow. But we can in an instant, if we please, notice the shadow as local colour. A man walking towards us does not usually seem to alter his size ; but we can by setting our attention in a peculiar way, make him appear to do so. The whole education of the artist consists in his learning to see the presented signs as well as the represented things. No matter what the field of view means, he sees it also as it feels that is, as a collection of patches of colour bounded by lines the whole forming an optical diagram of whose intrinsic proportions one who is not an artist has hardly a conscious inkling. The ordinary man's attention passes over them to their import ; the artist's turns back and dwells upon them for their own sake. ' Don't draw the thing as it is, but as it looks ! ' is the endless advice of every teacher to his pupil ; forgetting that what it ' is ' is what it would also * look,' provided it were placed in what we have called the 'normal ' situation for vision. In this situation the sensation as ' sign ' and the sensation as ' object ' coalesce into one, and there is no contrast between them. But a great difficulty has been made of certain peculiar cases which we must now turn to consider. They are cases in which a present sensation, whose existence is supposed to be proved by its outward conditions being there, seems absolutely suppressed or changed by the image of the 'thing' it suggests. This matter carries us back to what was said on p. 327. The passage there quoted from Helmholtz refers to these cases. He thinks they conclusively disprove the original and intrinsic spatiality of any of our retinal sensations ; for