THE SENSATION OF SIGHT. 2'.\7 



fruitless criticism the fair world presented to us by our sense?, 

 in order to annihilate the fragments. 



Woe! woe! 



Thou hast destroyed 



The beautiful world 



With powerful fist ; 



In ruin 'tis hurled, 



By the blow of a demigod shattered. 



The scattered 



Fragments into the void we carry, 



Deploring 



The beauty perished beyond restoring. 1 



and may feel determined to stick fast to the ' sound common 

 sense ' of mankind, and believe his own senses more than phy- 

 siology. 



But there is still a part of our investigation which we have 

 not touched that into our conceptions of space. Let us see 

 whether, after all, our natural reliance upon the accuracy of 

 what our senses teach us, will not be justified even before the 

 tribunal of Science. 



III. THE PERCEPTION OF SIGHT. 



THE colours which have been the subject of the last chapter 

 are not only an ornament we should be sorry to lose, but are 

 also a means of assisting us in the distinction and recognition 

 of external objects. But the importance of colour for this 

 purpose is far less than the means which the rapid and far- 

 reaching power of the eye gives us of distinguishing the various 



1 Bayard Taylor's translation of the passage in Faust : 

 Du hast sie zerstbrt 

 Die schbne Welt 

 Mit miichtiger Faust ; 

 Sie stUrzt, sie zerfallt, 

 Bin Halbgott liat sie zersohlagen. 

 Wir tragen 



Die Trttmmern ins Nichts hinUber, 

 TTnd klagen 

 Ueber die verlorne SchSne. 



