SCIENCE 379 



It is indeed a very wonderful thing that we should be 

 able to know that any truths are " necessary " and 

 " universal " ; but if we think the matter all round and 

 consider some of our other faculties, it will not then 

 appear to be so exceptionally wonderful. For all our 

 knowledge is wonderful when we consider it deeply. It 

 is wonderful that objects about us, acting on our organs 

 of sense, should give us sensations such as those of 

 musical tones, sweetness, blueness, or what not. It is 

 wonderful, again, that by means of combinations of 

 sensations actually felt and others remembered, we 

 should be able to perceive surrounding objects.* It is 

 also wonderful that we should be able thus to know not 

 only our present circumstances, but also something of 

 our own past. In the same way it is wonderful we 

 perceive that if a thing "is" it cannot at the same time 

 " not be." But nevertheless we do most certainly per- 

 ceive that such is the case. We know some things and 

 we know that we know them,t and amongst them we 

 know this necessary truth and also other necessary truths. 

 But how we know them (or how we know anything) is a 

 problem to attempt to solve which is hopeless. 



The mystery of our power of intellectual perception is 

 parallel with that which attends our power of feeling. We 

 feel things savoury or odorous, or brilliant or melodious, as 

 the case may be ; and by dissections and the microscope we 

 may investigate the structure of the organs of sense and 

 of the brain. But how those anatomical conditions can 

 give rise to the feelings themselves, is a mystery which 

 defies our utmost efforts to penetrate. No one knows how 

 knowledge is possible, any more than how sensation or 

 how life is- possible, or how solid objects can have length, 



* See ante, p. 254. t See ante, p. 270. 



