In the untrained observer,
the sense of time is highly variable. All these original weaknesses
are complicated by tricks of memory, and the incessant creative
quality of the imagination. _Cf_. also Sherrington, _The Integrative
Action of the Nervous System_, pp. 318-327.
The late Professor Hugo M?nsterberg wrote a popular book on this
subject called _On the Witness Stand_.] For experience seems to
show that he himself brings something to the scene which later he
takes away from it, that oftener than not what he imagines to be the
account of an event is really a transfiguration of it. Few facts in
consciousness seem to be merely given. Most facts in consciousness
seem to be partly made. A report is the joint product of the knower
and known, in which the role of the observer is always selective and
usually creative. The facts we see depend on where we are placed, and
the habits of our eyes.
An unfamiliar scene is like the baby's world, "one great, blooming,
buzzing confusion." [Footnote: Wm. James, _Principles of
Psychology_, Vol. I, p. 488.] This is the way, says Mr. John Dewey,
[Footnote: John Dewey, _How We Think_, pg 121.] that any new
thing strikes an adult, so far as the thing is really new and strange.
"Foreign languages that we do not understand always seem jibberings,
babblings, in which it is impossible to fix a definite, clear-cut,
individualized group of sounds.
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