When, trying to see what reading consisted in, I read a written
sentence, let
it || the reading of it impress itself upon me,
and said that
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I had a particular impression,
one could have asked me such a question as
whether my impression was not
due to the particular handwriting || whether it was
not, say, the handwriting which had given me the particular
impression.
This would be asking me whether my impression would not be a
different one if the writing had been a different one, or say, if each
word of the sentence were written in a different handwriting.
In this sense we could also ask whether that impression
wasn't due after all to the
sense of the particular
sentence which I read.
One might suggest: Read a different sentence (or the same
one in a different handwriting) and see if you would still say that
you had the same impression.
And the answer might be: “Yes, the impression I
had was really due to the handwriting.” ‒ ‒
But this would
not imply that when I first said the sentence
gave me a particular impression I had contrasted one impression with
another, or that my statement had not been of the kind,
“This sentence has
its own
expression || character.”
This will get clearer by considering the following example:
Suppose we have three faces drawn side by side:
a)
, b)
, c)
.
They should be absolutely iden
tical, but for an additional
stroke in b) and two dots in c).
I contemplate the first one, saying to myself,
“This face has a peculiar expression.”
Then I am shewn the second one and asked whether it has the same
expression.
I answer “Yes”.
Then the third one is shewn to me and I say, “It has a
different expression.”
In my two answers I might be said to have distinguished the face and
its expression: for b) is different from a) and
still I say they have the same expression, whereas the difference
between c) and a) corresponds to a
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difference of expression; and
this may make us think that also in my first utterance I distinguished
between the face and its expression.