ILLUSIONS. 205 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



FLIPPY. 



I HAVE some doubt whether the readers of this book 

 will be easily convinced of the truth of what I am going 

 to show in this and the next chapter; but if they are not 

 convinced of it at once now, I am sure that they will be in 

 time, as they grow older and think more. 



There is nothing that we are more inclined to trust in 

 than the evidence of our senses, and, of all the others, there 

 is none that inspires us with more confidence than that of 

 sight; and yet there is no one of them all that is so falla- 

 cious, or that produces in us so many illusions. 



When we are little children we see a reflection in the 

 looking-glass. We think there is something behind the 

 glass. We look, and find nothing there. It is an illusion. 



As we grow older we know that there is nothing behind 

 the glass, but we are apt to imagine that there is an image 

 or picture somehow or other in it. It is an illusion just 

 like the other. There is no image or picture of any kind 

 in the glass; the image is in our eyes, and nowhere else. 



We look up at the sky at night or, in fact, in the day- 

 time when the sun is not too bright and think we see a 

 grand arch swelling above us. There is really no arch 

 there; it is all an illusion. 



We look at the dark cloud in the east, when a shower 

 is past and the sun shines out upon the cloud from the 

 west, and think we see a rainbow there. Illusion ! there 

 is no rainbow except in our eyes. There are causes in op- 

 eration in the cloud that produce the image of a rainbow 

 i:i our eyes, and that is all. 



