THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 271 



or at any distance off." By " proper visual ideas," 

 Berkeley denotes colours, and light, and shade; 

 and, therefore, he affirms that colours do not 

 appear to be at any distance from us. I confess 

 that this assertion appears to me to be utterly 

 unaccountable. I have made endless experiments 

 on this point, and by no effort of the imagination 

 can I persuade myself, when looking at a colour, 

 that the colour is in my mind, and not at a 

 " distance off," though of course I know perfectly 

 well, as a matter of reason, that colour is subjec- 

 tive. It is like looking at the sun setting, and 

 trying to persuade one's self that the earth appears 

 to move and not the sun, a feat I have never been 

 able to accomplish. Even when the eyes are 

 shut, the darkness of which one is conscious, carries 

 with it the notion of outness. One looks, so to 

 speak, into a dark space. Common language ex- 

 presses the common experience of mankind in this 

 matter. A man will say that a smell is in his nose, 

 a taste is in his mouth, a singing is in his ears, a 

 creeping or a warmth is in his skin ; but if he is 

 jaundiced, he does not say that he has yellow in 

 his eyes, but that everything looks yellow ; and if 

 he is troubled with muscce volitantes, he says, not 

 that he has specks in his eyes, but that he sees 

 specks dancing before his eyes. In fact, it appears 

 to me that it is the special peculiarity of visual 

 sensations, that they invariably give rise to the 

 idea of remoteness, and that Berkeley's dictum 



