138 THE CREATION OF MATTER 



refreshing odours delight the sense of smell, delicious 

 tastes the tongue and palate. Only in age are sensations 

 enfeebled, showing what might have been, and that it 

 might easily have been impossible for any sensation to 

 be developed. Everywhere in the ether and air which 

 carry light and sound, in the instruments of conveyance, 

 and in the perceptive power, the action is perfect. No- 

 where in the strong is there the least disorder, the least 

 intrusion of chaos. Vast multitudes of independent ele- 

 ments have part in every sensation, and yet the result 

 is the very ideal of work matchlessly devised, perfectly 

 achieved. 



6. The correspondences are many. There are in the 

 perceiving nature not one but five or more senses, and, 

 corresponding to them, an inexhaustible variety of 

 characteristics in matter. These senses are widely apart, 

 and as far separated are the material characteristics. No 

 faculties can less resemble each other than those which 

 operate through the eye, the ear, the nostrils, the palate. 

 Colours and sounds are wholly unlike, and both differ as 

 much from taste and smell. The perceiving powers are 

 so widely apart that there can be no absolute necessity 

 that they should be bound together in the same bundle, 

 that they should be conjoined in the same substratum. 

 The characteristics of matter are so separated from each 

 other that there can be no necessity that they should 

 exist side by side in the same molecules, that there should 

 be in them the power of acting in five different ways on 

 the perceiving nature. 



There might also have been perceiving natures differing 

 from those with which we are endowed. The range of 

 possibility is infinite. The number of might-have-beens 

 knows no limits. We cannot conceive any kinds save 

 those of which we have experience, but we cannot hesi- 



