novelty. To the eye that can read aright there is an infinite variety
even in the most ordinary human being. But to the careless
indiscriminating eye all individuality is merged in a misty generality.
Nature and men yield nothing new to such a mind. Of what avail is it
for a man to walk out into the tremulous mists of morning, to watch the
slow sunset, and wait for the rising stars, if he can tell us nothing
about these but what others have already told us---if he feels nothing
but what others have already felt? Let a man look for himself and tell
truly what he sees. We will listen to that. We must listen to it, for
its very authenticity has a subtle power of compulsion. What others
have seen and felt we can learn better from their own lips.

II.

I have not yet explained in any formal manner what the nature of that
insight is which constitutes what I have named the Principle of Vision;
although doubtless the reader has gathered its meaning from the remarks
already made. For the sake of future applications of the principle to
the various questions of philosophical criticism which must arise in
the course of this inquiry, it may be needful here to explain (as I
have already explained elsewhere) how the chief intellectual
operations--Perception, Inference, Reasoning, and Imagination--may be
viewed as so many forms of mental vision.

Perception, as distinguished from Sensation, is the presentation before
Consciousness of the details which once were present in conjunction
with the object at this moment affecting Sense. These details are
inferred to be still in conjunction with the object, although not
revealed to Sense. Thus when an apple is perceived by me, who merely
see it, all that Sense reports is of a certain coloured surface: the