214 A HISTORY OF 



delude us : U maj build castles in the air, and raise a thousand phau 

 toras before us ; bat we have every one of the senses alive to be;ir 

 testimony to its falsehood. Our eyes show us that the prospect is 

 not present ; our hearing and our touch depose against its reality ; 

 and our taste and smelling are equally vigilant in detecting the im- 

 postor. Reason, therefore, at once gives judgment upon the cause, 

 and the vagrant intruder, Imagination, is imprisoned, or banished from 

 the mind. But in sleep it is otherwise ; having, as much as possible, 

 put our senses from their duty, having closed the eyes from seeing, and 

 the ears, taste, and smelling, from their peculiar functions, and having 

 diminished even the touch itself, by all the arts of softness, the ima- 

 gination is then left to riot at large, and to lead the understanding 

 without an opposer. Every incursive idea then becomes a reality 

 and the mind, not having one power that can prove the illusion, takes 

 them for truths. As in madness, the senses, from struggling with the 

 imagination, are at length forced to submit ; so in sleep, they seem for 

 a while soothed into the like submission : the smallest violence exerted 

 upon any one of them, however, rouses all the rest in their mutual 

 defence ; and the imagination, that had for a while told its thousand 

 falsehoods, is totally driven away, or only permitted to pass under the 

 custody of such as are every moment ready to detect its impos?*on. 



CHAPTER VII. 



OP SEEING.* 



" HAVING mentioned the senses as correcting the errors of the ima 

 gination, and as forcing it, in some measure, to bring us just infor- 

 mation, it will naturally follow, that we should examine the nature ot 

 those senses themselves : we shall thus be enabled to see how far they 

 also impose on us, and how far they contribute to correct each other. 

 Let it be observed, however, that in this we are neither giving a trea- 

 tise of optics, or phonics, but an history of our own perceptions : and 

 to those we chiefly confine ourselves." 



The eyes very soon begin to be formed in the human embryo, and 

 in the chicken also. Of all the parts which the animal has double, 

 the eyes are produced the soonest, and appear the most prominent. 

 It is true, indeed, that in viviparous animals, and particularly in man, 

 they are not so large in proportion, at first, as in the oviparous kinds ; 

 nevertheless, they are more speedily developed, when they begin to 

 appear, than any other parts of the body. It is the same with the 

 organ of hearing; the little bones that compose the internal parts of 

 the ear are entirely formed before the other bones, though much 

 larger, have acquired any part of their growth or solidity. Hence it 

 appears, that those parts of the body which are furnished with the 



* This chapter is taken from M . tfuffon. I believe the reader will readily excuse anj 

 apology ; and, perhaps, may wish that I hal taken this liberty much moie frcqueu'Jr 

 What 1 add is marked, as in a former instance, whb inverted commas. 



