270 SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS. 



as safe from refutation, if as incapable of demonstration, 

 as the other two. 



In my own opinion, neither of these speculations can 

 be regarded seriously as anything but a more or less 

 convenient working hypothesis. But, if I must choose 

 among them, I take the "law of parcimony" for my 

 guide, and select the simplest namely, that the sensa- 

 tion is the direct effect of the mode of motion of the 

 sensorium. It may justly be said that this is not the 

 slightest explanation of sensation ; but then am I really 

 any the wiser, if I say that a sensation is an activity 

 (of which I know nothing) of a substance of mind (of 

 which also I know nothing) ? Or, if I say that the Deity 

 causes the sensation to arise in my mind immediately 

 after He has caused the particles of the sensorium to 

 move in a certain way, is anything gained ? In truth, a 

 sensation, as we have already seen, is an intuition^-a 

 part of immediate knowledge. As such, it is an ulti- 

 mate fact and inexplicable ; and all that we can hope to 

 find out about it, and that indeed is worth finding out, 

 is its relation to other natural facts. That relation ap- 

 pears to me to be sufficiently expressed, for all practical 

 purposes, by saying that sensation is the invariable con- 

 sequent of certain changes in the sensorium or, in other 

 words, that, so far as we know, the change in the sen- 

 sorium is the cause of the sensation. 



I permit myself to imagine that the untutored, if 

 noble, savage of " common sense " who has been misled 

 into reading thus far by the hope of getting positive 



