THE PERCEPTION OF 'THINGS.' "
Section PERCEPTION AND SENSATION COMPARED:
William James wrote:Perception may then be defined, in Mr. Sully's words, as that process by which the mind "supplements a sense-impression by an accompaniment or escort of revived sensations, the whole aggregate of actual and revived sensations being solidified or 'integrated' into the form of a percept, that is, an apparently immediate apprehension or cognition of an object now present in a particular locality or region of space." [Sully, "Outlines", p. 153]
Section: APPERCEPTION
For those interested, James devotes three more chapters to perception in Principles: The Perception of Time, The Perception of Space, The Perception of Reality.William James wrote:Most of us grow more and more enslaved to the stock conceptions with which we have once become familiar, and less and less capable of assimilating impressions in any but the old ways. Old-fogyism, in short, is the inevitable terminus to which life sweeps us on. Objects which violate our established habits of 'apperception' are simply not taken account of at all; or, if on some occasion we are forced by dint of argument to admit their existence, twenty-four hours later the admission is as if it were not, and every trace of the unassimilable truth has vanished from our thought. Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
Sources:
Principles (version 1)
Principles (version 2; a little more user friendly IMO)