WHAT IS PHYSICAL LIFE 



another of your contrivances, that Cano- 

 pus abounds in earthly materials. 



We must leave for the present, other 

 important lessons from the serious imper- 

 fections of this sense organ, to take up the 

 Ear, only mentioning what is the most im- 

 portant fact of all, viz., that it is not the 

 faculty of sight itself which is imperfect 

 in us, but solely the instrument of that 

 faculty which is so. If the faculty itself 

 were deficient, we could not ourselves 

 help it with anything, whether telescope or 

 microscope, any more than we could help 

 a man who had never learned to read, by 

 giving him a pair of spectacles. The 

 faculty belongs to us and not to our eyes, 

 nor to our brains either, as we shall find 

 further on. 



The Ear is worse off than the eye in the 



narrowness of the range of the medium 



through which it catches sounds. While 



the eye responds to the vibrations of light 



164. 



