CHAP. III.] THE EXTERNAL WORLD. 07 



Therein he also urges, in advocacy of the relativity of our 

 feelings, that certain oscillations produce an auditory feel 

 ing, but only in one organ, and that the same oscillations 

 produce other feelings in other organs; whence, he says, 

 we may become fully convinced that the form of objective 

 action we call &quot; sound &quot; has not the slightest kinship in 

 nature with the sensation of sound which it arouses in us. 

 He argues similarly with respect to the other senses, de 

 claring that &quot;the subjective state no more resembles&quot; its 

 objective cause &quot; than the pressure which moves the trigger 

 of a gun resembles the explosion which follows.&quot; So also, he 

 says, we may conclude with respect to tension and other sen 

 sations of mechanical force ; &quot; thus we are brought to the 

 conclusion that what we are conscious of as properties of 

 matter, even down to its weight and resistance, are but sub 

 jective affections produced by objective agencies that are 

 unknown and unknowable. All the sensations produced in 

 us by environing things are but symbols of actions out of 

 ourselves, the natures of which we cannot even conceive.&quot; 

 But here he is too hasty. Though all sensations would of 

 course vanish in an insentient universe, qualities these senses 

 make known might nevertheless be known by pure intellect, 

 and thus all the objectivity in sensations which the greatest 

 &quot; realist&quot; would desire will have existed in the world for all 

 time. It is the ego which perceives that the violet is sweet, 

 though it is the nose which smells it ; and though, of course, 

 we cannot conceive (because the elementary experience is 

 lacking) how such sweetness could become known without 

 a sense-organ, can we really understand how it is known 

 to us with one ? No one ever supposed a mechanical 

 force to resemble a sensation, but to become manifested to 

 us through sensations. The senses are inadequate to ex 

 haustively reveal all objectivity, but they are not menda 

 cious. Our sensations are, as Mr. Spencer says, &quot; symbols,&quot; 

 but they are symbols by and through which the intellect 

 comes to know objectivity being, substance, extension, 

 number, form, &c., things not to be expressed except in 



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