COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



resistance — are in any wise like the pheno- 

 mena. 



To any one accustomed to examine these 

 matters, such a conclusion seems much like a 

 truism ; amounting, indeed, merely to the state- 

 ment that we cannot get outside of our own 

 minds. Nevertheless, it will perhaps not be 

 considered a needless prolonging of the argu- 

 ment if I add a few concrete illustrations. 



In the first place, it is extremely probable 

 that the kinds of feeling awakened by the same 

 external cause are not quite alike in any two 

 species of animals. When Wieniawski plays his 

 violin in the Music Hall, his human auditors 

 have awakened in them those feelings which we 

 designate as the consciousness of musical sound ; 

 but if he were to play his violin over a tank 

 containing a number of those mollusks which 

 have no organs of hearing, the feelings awak- 

 ened In them would be wholly different. They 

 would feel a sort of nervous shiver or jar, like 

 that which our fingers experience when holding 

 a vibrating tuning-fork ; and they would very 

 likely all shrink into their shells. In like man- 

 ner, the same external agents which arouse well- 

 defined tactual feelings in us can arouse in a 

 lobster, whose feet and claws are encased in a 

 bony shell, nothing but that vague sort of tact- 

 ual feeling of which we are conscious when we 

 poke things with a stick. 

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