ychology,
but is implied in the very process of detecting and correcting errors of
introspection. I do not mean that in matters of feeling "authority" is
to override "private judgment." Our last resort with respect to things
of the mind is, as I have said, that of careful self-inspection. And the
progress of psychology and the correction of illusion proceed by means
of an ever-improving exercise of the introspective faculty. Yet such
individual inspection can at least be _guided_ by the results of others'
similar inspection, and should be so guided as soon as a general
consensus in matters of internal experience is fairly made out. In point
of fact, the preceding discussion of illusions of introspection has
plainly rested on the sufficiently verified assumption that the calmest
and most efficient kind of introspection, in bringing to light what is
permanent as compared with what is variable in the individual cognition,
points in the direction of a common body of introspected fact.

CHAPTER IX.

OTHER QUASI-PRESENTATIVE ILLUSIONS: ERRORS OF INSIGHT.

Besides the perception of external objects, and the inspection of our
internal mental states, there are other forms of quasi-presentative
cognition which need to be touched on here, inasmuch as they are
sometimes erroneous and illusory.

In the last chapter I alluded to the fact that emotion may arise as the
immediate accompaniment of a sense-impression. When this is the case
there is a disposition to read into the external object a quality
answering to the emotion, just as there is a disposition to ascribe to
objects qualities of heat and cold answering to the sensations thus
called. And such a reference of an emotional result to an external
exciting cause approximates in character to an immediate intuition. The
cognition of the quality is instantaneous, and quite free from any
admixture of conscious inference. Accordingly, we have to inquire into
the illusory forms of such intuition, if such there be.

_AEsthetic Intuition._

Conspicuous among these quasi-presentative emotional cognitions is
aesthetic intuition, that is to say, the perception of an object as
beautiful. It is not necessary here to raise the question whether there
is, strictly speaking, any quality in things answering to the sentiment
of beauty in our minds: this is a philosophical and not a psychological
question, and turns on the further question, what we mean by object. All
that we need t