A piece of lamp-black would produce no such effect in
most peoples minds. The difference is in the reception accorded to an
idea. The meaning and importance of an idea or event depend upon the
interpretation put upon it by our previous experience. "Many a weak,
obscure, and fleeting perception would pass almost unnoticed into
obscurity, did not the additional activity of apperception hold it fast
in consciousness. This sharpens the senses, _i.e._, it gives to the
organs of sense a greater degree of energy, so that the watching eye
now sees, and the listening ear now hears, that which ordinarily would
pass unnoticed. The events of apperception give to the senses a
peculiar keenness, which underlies the skill of the money-changer in
detecting a counterfeit among a thousand bank-notes, notwithstanding
its deceptive similarity; of the jeweler who marks the slightest,
apparently imperceptible, flaw in an ornament; of the physicist who
perceives distinctly the overtones of a vibrating string. According to
this we see and hear not only with the eye and ear, but quite as much
with the help of our present knowledge, with the apperceiving content
of the mind." (Apperception, Lange, De Garmo, p.
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