CONSCIOUSNESS AND ITS POWERS. 13 



faculty of consciousness when in the eye ; it is not the ear 

 that hears, but only the faculty of consciousness when using 

 the ear ; and so of all our other physical senses it is not 

 they that perceive, but consciousness that perceives by 

 them. But consciousness is not a special organization 

 adapted specifically to seeing or hearing : it is a meta- 

 physical perceptive power, capable of realising in living 

 experience and knowledge any or all of the impressions of 

 our physical faculties, and more it is capable of using 

 these impressions and its knowledge of them as elements 

 of new creations, and new combinations, and climbing the 

 steps of logic and the heights of imagination and memory 

 with them into regions apart from matter, illimitable, and all 

 its own. The eye as an actual faculty, bearing upon the 

 outer world, is to the consciousness nothing more than a 

 mere camera with an image in it portrayed on the retina ; 

 but the retina, without the vital presence of consciousness, 

 is no more capable of seeing the image portrayed upon it 

 than a piece of photographic paper or a plain mirror are 

 capable of seeing because they have images upon them. 

 The retina merely mirrors the image ; it is the Conscious- 

 ness which perceives the image portrayed, and con- 

 sequently, 



9. The same faculty of Consciousness which is capable 

 of perceiving with all its details the illuminated surface of 

 the retina, or mirror of the eye, and the picture upon it, 

 must be equally capable of perceiving the images on any 

 other mirroring surface, or the details of any actual 

 surface whatever, were that faculty of Consciousness equally 

 free to come in contact with such mirroring or other 

 surface, and hence the present factitious, but not inherent 

 limitation of the faculty of Consciousness to our physical 

 and organic nature and its faculties is a restriction rather 

 than a full development of its perceptive powers. And 

 that, 



