Why Don’t the Scenery Appear to Move When I Am in a Street Car?
If you are in a street car in the country and moving along fast you will receive the same impression, especially in a closed car, because you are looking out of one hole or one window. In an open car you do not receive the same impression because your range of vision is broader. You can and do, although perhaps unconsciously, look out on both sides and the impression your mind gets through the eyes is not the same. If you were to pull down all the storm curtains in a moving open street car, and then look out of one little crack, you would think the outside was moving. But if you stop to remember that you are moving and not the things outside the car, then the impression vanishes. In the city, of course, your brain is so thoroughly impressed with the fact that houses and pavements do not move, and the cars move so much more slowly, that it is difficult to make yourself believe otherwise. The impression is more difficult always when you are moving through or past objects with which you are perfectly familiar. It is all, of course, a question of impressions.