ABSTRACT
The term perception, is commonly applied to states of consciousness infinitely varied, and even widely different in nature. Between the consciousness of a vast landscape, and the consciousness of a minute dot on the surface of the paper, there exist countless gradations which pass insensibly one into another; and which yet unite extremes almost too strongly contrasted to be classed together. A perception may vary indefinitely in complexity, in degree of directness, and in degree of continuity. As in one of the primitive cognitions of resistance lately treated of, it may rise but a step above simple sensation. By a continued process of decomposition we have found that our intellectual operations severally consist in the establishment of relations, and groups of relations, among the primitive undecomposable states of consciousness, produced in us by our own actions and the actions of surrounding things.
