988 Dynamic Theory. 



or other body, as to suppose pain resides in a thorn bush when a thorn 

 pricks the finger. The same is true of other sensations. Lavender- 

 smell, clove-smell, garlic-smell have no existence except as states of 

 consciousness. It is then explained that smell is due to the exceed- 

 ingly attenuated particles of the odorous body that are thrown off into the 

 air and carried by it into the nasal passages, where it excites the organs 

 of the Schneiderian membrane, and sets up a nerve current into the 

 olfactory lobe and cerebral centers of smell. (See chap. 49. ) 



Following observations like the foregoing, the lecturer goes on to say: 

 "None the less however, does it remain true that no similarity exists 

 nor indeed is conceivable between the cause of sensation and the sen- 

 sation. Attend as closely to the sensations of muskiness or any other 

 odor as we will, no trace of extension, resistance or motion is discern- 

 ible in them. They have no attribute in common with those which we 

 ascribe to matter; they are in the strictest sense of the words immaterial 

 entities. " 



I agree that sensations are immaterial. All forms of motion are im- 

 material, whether they are movements of brain, or limbs, or cannon balls, 

 or planets. But they are not entities if that word means beings or 

 things. Of course none of the properties of matter are found in modes 

 of motion, whether we speak of the molecular motions of radiation 

 considered objectively, or the representatives of these motions in the 

 sensations light and heat. Both the objective and the subjective ways 

 of considering sensation were discussed in last chapter, and need only 

 to be mentioned here. Considered objectively we have the same cir- 

 cumstantial evidence that sensation is a mode of motion, that we have 

 that it is a mode of motion in a hot body that gives us the sensation 

 heat. That is, the oscillations of the hot body are entirely comparable 

 in principle, though not in species, with the vibrations they are instru- 

 mental in setting up in the brain, and for want of two names and a 

 keen appreciation of their distinctness, we commonly call them both heat. 



If we attempt to get any better insight into the machinery of sensa- 

 tion from the subjective side, and try as we do in objective cases to get two 

 or three different views of the same sensation for the purpose of compari- 

 son, we find after every effort, that we have simply revived in memory the 

 sensation we are trying to investigate, and so at last we get back to the 

 starting point and find that the sensation of a sensation is simpty a 

 repetition of the same sensation. As sensation is the only instrument 

 we possess for becoming acquainted with anything, even a sensation, all 

 our explications must be in terms of sensation at last. We can explain 

 one only by a comparison with another. (See chap. 83. ) Whether a 

 sensation feels to us like a motion of matter depends on circumstances, 

 and on what we should imagine a motion of matter should feel like, no 



