A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.
Interpretation
Hallucinations are real experiences, and judging them as mistakes is where the error lies.
Bertrand Russell's quote suggests that hallucinations, while perhaps not aligned with reality, are genuine experiences that should be recognized as such. The true error occurs when one makes erroneous judgments about these experiences, potentially dismissing significant insights they may offer or misunderstanding the nature of perception and reality.
In practice
In a lecture about the nature of reality and perception, this quote can illustrate how personal experiences shape our understanding.
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
And there were other rocks that were like animals, creeping, horrible animals, putting out their tongues, and others were like words I could not say, and others like dead people lying on the grass. I went on among them, though they frightened me, and my heart was full of wicked song they put into it; and I wanted to make faces and twist myself about the way they did, and I went on and on a long way till at last I liked the rocks and they didnβt frighten me any more
People are crying up the rich and variegated plumage of the peacock, and he is himself blushing at the sight of his ugly feet.
Reincarnation contains a most comforting explanation of reality by means of which Indian thought surmounts difficulties which baffle the thinkers of Europe.
No matter how much care we put into hiding our passions under the appearances of devotion and honor, they can always be seen to peer out through these covers.
The easiest rationalization for the refusal to seek the truth is the denial that truth exists.
The human soul needs actual beauty more than bread.
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