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"In this particular case, we must either suppose, that the impressions, made by the stars on the retina, are suffocated and lost in those stronger ones made by the illuminated atmosphere, so as never to reach the sensorium in order to excite any idea in the mind, or that if they do reach the sensory, and create correspondent ideas, yet they are so drowned, as it were, in the stronger idea, as to escape our attention and memory, I am not insensible, that there is a real difficulty in this matter, and even some appearance of contradiction in the last supposition: for it may well be asked, what is an idea drowned in another, but a perception unperceived?"

— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)

Author

Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)

Work Title

An Essay on the Vital and Other Involuntary Motions of Animals

Place of Publication

Edinburgh

Publisher

Printed by Hamilton, Balfour, and Neill

Date

1751

Metaphor

"In this particular case, we must either suppose, that the impressions, made by the stars on the retina, are suffocated and lost in those stronger ones made by the illuminated atmosphere, so as never to reach the sensorium in order to excite any idea in the mind, or that if they do reach the sensory, and create correspondent ideas, yet they are so drowned, as it were, in the stronger idea, as to escape our attention and memory, I am not insensible, that there is a real difficulty in this matter, and even some appearance of contradiction in the last supposition: for it may well be asked, what is an idea drowned in another, but a perception unperceived?"

Metaphor in Context

In this particular case, we must either suppose, that the impressions, made by the stars on the retina, are suffocated and lost in those stronger ones made by the illuminated atmosphere, so as never to reach the sensorium in order to excite any idea in the mind, or that if they do reach the sensory, and create correspondent ideas, yet they are so drowned, as it were, in the stronger idea, as to escape our attention and memory, I am not insensible, that there is a real difficulty in this matter, and even some appearance of contradiction in the last supposition: for it may well be asked, what is an idea drowned in another, but a perception unperceived? Without pretending to decide, therefore, in this so very subtile a question, I shall only take notice of a fact, which, if duly weighed, would perhaps go as far towards clearing it up as any other consideration whatever. It is well known Sir Isaac Newton has proved, by a beautiful variety of experiments, that, from the union of simple coloured rays, are formed compound-coloured ones; for example, that a red and yellow ray mingled make an orange, blue and yellow a green one, and so of the rest; and that all the simple-coloured rays combined form a white one. But this discovery is by no means confined to colours as they exist out of the mind, either in the rays of light, or surfaces of bodies; but is equally true of the ideas of colours in the mind itself: for it appears, by experiments, that the idea of red and the idea of yellow, confounded in the mind by co-existence or rapid succession, make the idea of orange; the ideas of blue and yellow, that of green. &c. and those of the seven simple colours that of white.
(Sect. XI, p. 294n)