the past. The part of pure perception in it is small, and immediately
covered and almost buried by the contribution of memory.

This infinitesimal part acts as a bait. It is a summons to recollection,
challenging us to extract from our previous experience, and construct with
our acquired wealth a system of images which permits us to read the
experience of the moment.

With our scheme of interpretation thus constituted we encounter the few
fugitive traits which we have actually perceived. If the theory we have
elaborated adapts itself, and succeeds in accounting for, connecting, and
making sense of these traits, we shall finally have a perception properly
so called.

Perception then, in the usual sense of the word, is the resolution of a
problem, the verification of a theory.

Thus are explained "errors of the senses," which are in reality errors of
interpretation. Thus too, and in the same manner, we have the explanation
of dreams.

Let us take a simple example. When you read a book, do you spell each
syllable, one by one, to group the syllables afterwards into words, and the
words into phrases, thus travelling from print to meaning? Not at all:
you grasp a few letters accurately, a few downstrokes in their graphical
outline; then you guess the remainder, travelling in the reverse direction,
from a probable meaning to the print which you are interpreting. This is
what causes mistakes in reading, and the well-known difficulty in seeing
printing errors.