The movement is in these cases not really seen from without,
but is superadded, by the action of the mind, to motionless pictures.
The statement that our impression of movement does not result simply
from the seeing of successive stages but includes a higher mental act
into which the successive visual impressions enter merely as factors is
in itself not really an explanation. We have not settled by it the
nature of that higher central process. But it is enough for us to see
that the impression of the continuity of the motion results from a
complex mental process by which the various pictures are held together
in the unity of a higher act. Nothing can characterize the situation
more clearly than the fact which has been demonstrated by many
experiments, namely, that this feeling of movement is in no way
interfered with by the distinct consciousness that important phases of
the movement are lacking. On the contrary, under certain circumstances
we become still more fully aware of this apparent motion created by our
inner activity when we are conscious of the interruptions between the
various phases of movement.
We come to the consequences. What is then the difference between seeing
motion in the photoplay and seeing it on the real stage? There on the
stage where the actors move the eye really receives a continuous series.
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