132 THE CREATION OF MATTER 



before, and now more clearly see, most evidently made. 

 But the other three elements have relations and nice 

 adjustments to it, which are necessary to the kindling 

 of its fires and the calling forth of its activities, and 

 therefore must also be made for it. Whatever part the 

 ether also may play, it requires adaptation for it, and the 

 same conclusion must be drawn as to it. 



But the perceiving nature is rather an element by 

 itself, a form of being of a higher kind than matter, of 

 a nature corresponding to its powers, and such as would 

 naturally possess them. The laws of light are widely 

 separated from those of ordinary matter, and scientists 

 do not hesitate to postulate the existence of an ether 

 capable of acting according to them. The laws and 

 action of the perceiving nature separate it by a gulf 

 wider far from the atoms of matter and from the ether, 

 and it is the only philosophic conclusion to which to 

 come, that it is a nature of a higher kind, an element 

 corresponding in its essence to the powers it exercises. In 

 light sensations it is motion that is created in the sun 

 and ether. Motions fly through the latter to the earth. 

 Motions rebound from the earth to the eye. Motions 

 pass through the eye to the retina, and along the nerve 

 fibres to the brain. Motions are excited in the brain. 

 But in whatever way they strike the perceiving nature, 

 they are to it not motions, but light and colour. It has no 

 consciousness of being stirred to activity of any kind, 

 but of experiencing these sensations. In like manner, 

 sound motions, those also of smell and taste and touch, 

 are so until they reach the brain, and in the brain, but 

 to the perceiving nature they are sounds, smells, tastes, 

 and the sensations of touch. The change is entire. 

 The transformation is complete. The effect produced on 

 the perceiving nature is altogether different from that on 



