ii USELESS KNOWLEDGE 31 



I don t see why I need suppose them to be merely 

 human. 



I don t see how you can show them to be anything 

 more. How do you know that your fishes see white as 

 you do? And even if they did, that would only show 

 that their senses were constructed like yours, and fitted 

 to see and avoid you when you dangle a worm before 

 their eyes with evil intent. And, generally, how do you 

 fancy you can refute Protagoras great maxim &quot; that which 

 appears to each, is ? &quot; It is literally true, so soon as we 

 look more exactly. Each being in the universe from 

 your God (if indeed He be in the universe) down to the 

 humblest blackbeetle, has his own individual way of 

 perceiving his experience, and when we say that several 

 perceive the same things what we really mean is that they 

 act in a corresponding manner towards them. When you 

 and I both see &quot; red,&quot; that means that we agree in the 

 arranging of colours, but leaves inscrutable (and indeed 

 unmeaning} the question whether your experience in seeing 

 &quot; red &quot; is the same as mine. 



And this agreement is both difficult, partial, and 

 derivative. It is the fruit of much effort and of a long 

 struggle, and not an original endowment. It has had to 

 be carried to a certain pitch in order that it might be 

 possible for men to live together at all. It has grown 

 because it was useful and advantageous and those who 

 could manage to perceive things in practically the same 

 way prospered at the expense of those who could not. 

 Thus the objectivity of our perceptions is essentially 

 practical and useful and teleologicaL How then can you 

 venture to ascribe to the gods, with whom you do not live, 

 the perceptions which have come to exist as &quot; the same &quot; 

 for your senses, only in order that you might be able to 

 live with your fellow-creatures ? 



Even though our senses are different may we not 

 perceive by their means the divine order of the same 

 universe which higher beings perceive by such modes of 

 cognition as are worthy of them ? 



Really, Aristotle, it astonishes me that you, living in 



