CHAP. VIII.] ESSAYS AT CAMBRIDGE. 227 



by saying that pilosity is incident to moist places ; (3) (and 

 worst) applying an argument from final causes to wrongly 

 asserted phenomena : ' Because water is incompressible, it 

 cannot transmit sound, and therefore fishes have no ears.' 

 Every fact here stated is erroneous." 



In the course of this paper in which are discernible 

 the traces of early impressions derived through the poetry 

 of Milton there occurs also incidentally a statement of the 

 Hamiltonian doctrine of Perception, 1 with the following 

 significant corollary : - 



"Perception is the ultimate consciousness of self and 

 thing together. 



" If we admit, as we must, that this ultimate phenomenon 

 is incapable of further analysis, and that subject and object 

 alone are immediately concerned in it, it follows that the 

 fact is strictly private and incommunicable. One only can 

 know it, therefore two cannot agree in a name for it. And 

 since the fact is simple it cannot be thought of by itself nor 

 compared alone with any other equally simple fact. We may 

 therefore dismiss all questions about the absolute nature of 

 perception, and all theories of their resemblances and differ- 

 ences. We, may next refuse to turn our attention to percep- 

 tion in general, as all perceptions are particular." 



3. Idiotic Imps. Summer Term, 1853. 



Starting from Isaac Taylor's Physical Theory of another 

 Life, which Maxwell at this time seems to have regarded as 

 in itself an innocent and rather attractive piece of fancy, 

 " the perusal of it has a tendency rather to excite specula- 

 tion than to satisfy curiosity, and the author obtains the 

 approbation of the reader, while he fails to convince him of 

 the soundness of his views," he takes occasion from it to 



1 This statement concludes as follows : " The late superfluity of 

 assertions might have been avoided by simply, unintelligibly and there- 

 fore unanswerably, proclaiming myself a natural dualist, uncontam- 

 inated with the heresy of unitarianism or the pollution of cosmothetic 

 idealism." 



