Persons who first see a play, unless they be of exceptional imagination and have thought much about the theatre--as Charlotte Bronte, for instance--hardly feel the illusion at all.

At least, this is true of the opera, where the departure from reality is so striking that the impression can hardly fail to be a ludicrous one, till the habit of taking the performance for what it is intended to be is fully formed.[51] A similar effect of intellectual preadjustment is observable in the fainter degrees of illusion produced by pictorial art.

Here the undeceiving circumstances, the flat surface, the surroundings, and so on, would sometimes be quite sufficient to prevent the least degree of illusion, were it not that the spectator comes prepared to see a representation of some real object.

This is our state of mind when we enter a picture gallery or approach what we recognize as a picture on the wall of a room.

A savage would not "realize" a slight sketch as soon as one accustomed to pictorial representation, and ready to perform the required interpretative act.[52] So much as to the effect of an indefinite state of sub-expectation in misleading our perceptions.