Illusions by James Sully (story reading txt) 📕

of the change. In other words, without our distinctly attending to time, a series of novel impressions might, by giving us the consciousness of change, make us dimly aware of the numerical richness of our experiences. But, however this be, there is no doubt that, in glancing back on such a succession of exciting transitions of mental condition, time appears to expand enormously, just as it does in looking back on our dream-experience, or that rapid series of intensified feelings which, according to De Quincey and others, is produced by certain narcotics.

The reason of this is plain. Such a type of successive experience offers to the retrospective imagination a large number of distinguishable points, and since this mode of estimating time depends, as we have seen, on the extent of the process of filling in, time will necessarily appear long in this case. On the other hand, when we have been engaged in very ordinary pursuits, in which few deeply interesting or exciting events have impressed themselves on memory, our retrospective picture will necessarily be very much of a blank, and consequently the duration of the period will seem to be short.

I observed that this retrospective appreciation of time depended on the degree of connection between the successive experiences. This condition is very much the same as the other just given, namely, the degree of uniformity of the experiences, since the more closely the successive stages of the experience are connected—as when, for example, we are going through our daily routine of work—the more quiet and unexciting will be the transition from each stage to its succeeding one. And on the other hand, all novelty of impression and exciting transition of experience clearly involves a want of connection. Wundt thinks the retrospective estimate of a connected series of experiences, such as those of our daily round of occupations, is defective just because the effort of attention, which precedes even an imaginative reproduction of an impression, so quickly accommodates itself in this case to each of the successive steps, whereas, when the experiences to be recalled are disconnected, the effort requires more time. In this way, the estimate of a past duration would be coloured by the sense of time accompanying the reproductive process itself. This may very likely be the case, yet I should be disposed to attach most importance to the number of distinguishable items of experience recalled.

Our representation of the position of a given event in the past is, as I have tried to show, determined by the movement of imagination in going back to it from the present. And this is the same thing as to say that it depends on our retrospective sense of the intervening space. That is to say, the sense of distance in time, as in space, is the recognition of a term to a movement. And just as the distance of an object will seem greater when there are many intervening objects affording points of measurement, than when there are none (as on the uniform surface of the sea), so the distance of an event will vary with the number of recognized intervening points.

The appreciation of the distance of an event in time does not, however, wholly depend on the character of this movement of imagination. Just as the apparent distance of a visible object depends inter alia on the distinctness of the retinal impression, so the apparent temporal remoteness of a past event depends in part on the degree of intensity and clearness of the mnemonic image. This is seen even in the case of those images which we are able distinctly to localize in the time-perspective. For a series of exciting experiences intervening between the present and a past event appears not only directly to add to our sense of distance by constituting an apparently long interval, but indirectly to add to it by giving an unusual degree of faintness to the recalled image. An event preceding some unusually stirring series of experiences gets thrust out of consciousness by the very engrossing nature of the new experiences, and so tends to grow more faint and ghost-like than it would otherwise have done.

The full force of this circumstance is best seen in the fact that a very recent event, bringing with it a deep mental shock and a rapid stirring of wide tracts of feeling and thought, may get to look old in a marvellously short space of time. An announcement of the loss of a dear friend, when sudden and deeply agitating, will seem remote even after an hour of such intense emotional experience. And the same twofold consideration probably explains the well-known fact that a year seems much shorter to the adult than to the child. The novel and comparatively exciting impressions of childhood tend to fill out time in retrospect, and also to throw back remote events into a dimly discernible region.

Now, this same circumstance, the degree of vividness or of faintness of the mnemonic image, is that which determines our idea of distance when the character of the intervening experiences produces no appreciable effect.[124] This is most strikingly illustrated in those imperfect kinds of recollection in which we are unable to definitely localize the mnemonic image. To the consideration of these we will now turn.

B. Indefinite Localization.

Speaking roughly and generally, we may say that the vividness of an image of memory decreases in proportion as the distance of the event increases. And this is the rule which we unconsciously apply in determining distance in time. Nevertheless, this rule gives us by no means an infallible criterion of distance. The very fact that different people so often dispute about the dates and the order of past events experienced in common, shows pretty plainly that images of the same age tend to arise in the mind with very unequal degrees of vividness.

Sometimes pictures of very remote incidents may suddenly present themselves to our minds with a singular degree of brightness and force. And when this is the case, there is a disposition to think of them as near. If the relations of the event to other events preceding and succeeding it are not remembered, this momentary illusion will persist. We have all heard persons exclaim, "It seems only yesterday," under the sense of nearness which accompanies a recollection of a remote event when vividly excited. The most familiar instance of such lively reproduction is the feeling which we experience on revisiting the scene of some memorable event. At such a time the past may return with something of the insistence of a present perceived reality. In passing from place to place, in talking with others, and in reading, we are liable to the sudden return by hidden paths of association of images of incidents that had long seemed forgotten, and when they thus start up fresh and vigorous, away from their proper surroundings, they invariably induce a feeling of the propinquity of the events.

In many cases we cannot say why these particular images, long buried in oblivion, should thus suddenly regain so much vitality. There seems, indeed, to be almost as much that is arbitrary and capricious in the selection by memory of its vivid images as in the selection of its images as a whole; and, this being so, it is plain that we are greatly exposed to the risk of illusion from this source.

There is an opposite effect in the case of recent occurrences that, for some reason or another, have left but a faint impression on the memory; though this fact is not, perhaps, so familiar as the other. I met a friend, we will suppose, a few days since at my club, and we exchanged a few words. My mind was somewhat preoccupied at the time, and the occurrence did not stamp itself on my recollection. To-day I meet him again, and he reminds me of a promise I made him at the time. His reminder suffices to restore a dim image of the incident, but the fact of its dimness leads to the illusion that it really happened much longer ago, and it is only on my friend's strong assurances, and on reasoning from other data that it must have occurred the day he mentions, that I am able to dismiss the illusion.

The most striking examples of the illusory effect of mere vividness, involving a complete detachment of the event from the prominent landmarks of the past, are afforded by public events which lie outside the narrower circle of our personal life, and which do not in the natural course of things become linked to any definitely localized points in the field of memory. These events may be very stirring and engrossing for the time, but in many cases they pass out of the mind just as suddenly as they entered it. We have no occasion to revert to them, and if by chance we are afterwards reminded of them, they are pretty certain to look too near, just because the fact of their having greatly interested us has served to render their images particularly vivid.

A curious instance of this illusory effect was supplied not long since by the case of the ex-detectives, the expiration of whose term of punishment (three years) served as an occasion for the newspapers to recall the event of their trial and conviction. The news that three years had elapsed since this well-remembered occurrence proved very startling to myself, and to a number of my friends, all of us agreeing that the event did not seem to be at more than a third of its real distance. More than one newspaper commented on the apparent rapidity of the time, and this shows pretty plainly that there was some cause at work, such as I have suggested, producing a common illusion.

I have treated of these illusions connected with the estimate of past time and the dating of past events as passive illusions, not involving any active predisposition on the part of the imagination. At the same time, it is possible that error in these matters may occasionally depend on a present condition of the feelings and the imagination. It seems plain that since the apparent degree of remoteness of an event not distinctly localized in the past varies inversely as the degree of vividness of the mnemonic image, any conscious concentration of mind on a recollection will tend to bring it too near. In this way, then, an illusory propinquity may be given to a recalled event through a mere desire to dwell on it, or even a capricious wish to deceive one's self.

When, for example, old friends come together and talk over the days of yore, there is a gradual reinstatement of seemingly lost experiences, which often partakes of the character of a semi-voluntary process of self-delusion. Through the cumulative effect of mutual reminder, incident after incident returns, adding something to the whole picture till it acquires a degree of completeness, coherence, and vividness that render it hardly distinguishable from a very recent experience. The process is like looking at a distant object through a field-glass. Mistiness disappears, fresh details come into view, till we seem to ourselves to be almost within reach of the object.

Where the mind habitually goes back to some painful circumstance under the impulse of a morbid disposition to nurse regret, this momentary illusion may become recurring, and amount to a partial confusion of the near and the remote in our experience. An injury long brooded on seems at length a thing that continually moves forward as we move; it always presents itself to our memories as a very recent event. In states of insanity brought on by some great shock, we see this morbid tendency to resuscitate the dead past fully developed, and remote events and circumstances becoming confused