[119] When not all M, but only some M, is A, when, in other words, M is 'undistributed' the conclusion is liable to error. Illusions would thus be _logical fallacies_, if true perceptions were valid syllogisms. They would draw false conclusions from undistributed middle terms.
[120] See Spencer, Psychol., ii. p. 250, note, for a physiological hypothesis to account for this fact.
[121] Here is another good example, taken from Helmholtz's Optics, p. 435: "The sight of a man walking is a familiar spectacle to us. We perceive it as a connected whole, and at most notice the most striking of its peculiarities. Strong attention is required, and a special choice of the point of view, in order to feel the perpendicular and lateral oscillations of such a walking figure. We must choose fitting points or lines in the background with which to compare the positions of its head, but if a distant walking man be looked at through an astronomical telescope (which inverts the object), what a singular hopping and rocking appearance he presents! No difficulty now in seeing the body's oscillations, and many other details of the gait.... But, on the other hand, its total character, whether light or clumsy, dignified or graceful, is harder to perceive than in the upright position."
[122] Illusions and hallucinations must both be distinguished from _delusions_. A delusion is a false opinion about a matter of fact, which need not necessarily involve, though it often does involve, false perceptions of sensible things. We may, for example, have religious delusions, medical delusions, delusions about our own importance, about other peoples' characters, etc., _ad libitum_. The delusions of the insane are apt to affect certain typical forms, often very hard to explain. But in many cases they are certainly theories which the patients invent to account for their abnormal bodily sensations. In other cases they are due to hallucinations of hearing and of sight. Dr. Clouston (Clinical Lectures on Mental Disease, lecture iii _ad fin._) gives the following special delusions as having been found in about a hundred melancholy female patients who were afflicted in this way. There were delusions of
general persecution; being destitute; general suspicion; being followed by the police; being poisoned; being very wicked; being killed; impending death; being conspired against; impending calamity; being defrauded; the soul being lost; being preached against in church; having no stomach; being pregnant; having no inside; having a bone in the throat; having neither stomach nor brains; having lost much money; being covered with vermin; being unfit to live; letters being written about her; that she will not recover; property being stolen; that she is to be murdered; her children being killed; that she is to be boiled alive; having committed theft; that she is to be starved; the legs being made of glass; that the flesh is boiling; having horns on the head; that the head is severed from being chloroformed; the body; having committed murder; that children are burning; fear of being hanged; that murders take place around; being called names by person; that it is wrong to take food; being acted on by spirits; being in hell; being a man; being tempted of the devil; the body being transformed; being possessed of the devil; insects coming from the body; having committed an rape being practised on her; unpardonable sin; having a venereal disease; unseen agencies working; being a fish; her own identity; being dead; being on fire; having committed suicide of the soul.