MENTAL SYMBOLISM 327 



of common sense, of everyday life, consider the sense of sight. 

 We are told that I see the paper because light, which is some sort 

 of vibration in the ether that surrounds us, passes from a luminous 

 object (e.g. the sun) to the paper, where some of it is absorbed, and 

 whence the remainder is reflected to the retina of my eye, where 

 it sets up chemical changes. These chemical changes set up other 

 chemical or molecular changes in my optic nerve. These, yet 

 again, set up other similar changes in my brain. Thereupon 

 there dawns within that dark box, my skull, a feeling which I 

 call a sight of the paper. In an analogous way my other 

 senses convey their items of information. Now, plainly, feeling, 

 which has neither extension, nor colour, nor weight, nor any 

 other of the properties which I am accustomed to ascribe to 

 material things, cannot in the remotest degree resemble the 

 chemical changes in my brain, optic nerve, or retina, or the 

 vibrations of the ether that lies between the retina and the paper. 

 Nor can it, an immaterial thing, resemble the material thing, the 

 paper. It can, at best, be only a sign and a symbol to me of the 

 real thing, the paper. 



552. I find that some of my feelings are so unlike that I can 

 institute no comparison between them. Thus the ' crisp ' sensation 

 of touch which I get when I indent the paper is quite unlike the crisp 

 look of it, or the crisp crackle I hear. I use the same word in each 

 instance, but the several sensations it describes are not at all 

 similar. I may say, indeed, that all these sensations are faint or 

 vivid, but then I indicate no essential likeness except the degree 

 in which they impress me. If feelings may be incomparable, how 

 much more incomparable must be feelings and material things? 

 Besides, how can light, undulations in the ether, passing between 

 the sheet of paper and my eye, convey anything at all like a real 

 sheet to my retina ? How can the series of changes in my 

 optic nerve convey anything of the sort to the brain ? How 

 can the series of changes in the latter create or accompany a 

 feeling which is remotely like the paper ? 



553. I write the word 'paper,' and it stands to me for a sign 

 and a symbol of the sound, the spoken word ' paper,' which it is 

 incomparably unlike. Similarly, the spoken word is only a symbol 

 of the seen, felt, heard, tasted, smelt, or weighed thing, ' paper.' 

 So also, in a sense even more thorough, my several feelings of paper 

 are only signs and symbols of the * real ' thing, which, as I suppose, 

 awakens them. That real thing is altogether outside the circle of 

 my consciousness, within which are nothing but feelings. By no 



