274 THE METAPHYSICS OF SENSATION 



him, would be altogether geometrical and devoid 

 of body. 



And here another curious consideration arises, 

 what likeness, if any, would there be between the 

 visual space of the one man, and the tangible 

 space of the other ? 



Berkeley, as we have seen (in the eighth pro- 

 position), declares that there is no likeness 

 between the ideas given by sight and those given 

 by touch ; and one cannot but agree with him, so 

 long as the term ideas is restricted to mere sensa- 

 tions. Obviously, there is no more likeness be- 

 tween the feel of a surface and the colour of it, 

 than there is between its colour and its smell. 

 All simple sensations, derived from different 

 senses, are incommensurable with one another, 

 and only gradations of their own intensity are 

 comparable. And thus, so far as the primary 

 facts of sensation go, visual figure and tactile 

 figure, visual magnitude and tactile magnitude, 

 visual motion and tactile motion, are truly unlike, 

 and have no common term. But when Berkeley 

 goes further than this, and declares that there are 

 no " ideas " common to the " ideas " of touch and 

 those of sight, it appears to me that he has fallen 

 into a great error, and one which is the chief 

 source of his paradoxes about geometry. 



Berkeley in fact employs the word " idea," in 

 this instance, to denote two totally different classes 

 of feelings, or states of consciousness. For these 



