50 SENSATION AND REACTION 



such things as a red colour, the twang of a zither, 

 or the scent of honeysuckle. But generated as 

 they are in the brain within a portion of our 

 body which is secluded from the outside world 

 by a bony covering there is no possibility of 

 their being other than symbolic. And science 

 assures us that this is the case. The results of 

 its experiments, so far as they are discovered 

 by sight, are indeed misrepresented ; but they 

 exhibit certain relations in time and space, in 

 the nature of similarities, dimensions and se- 

 quences which conscious reason enables us to 

 appreciate, to group under heads and rules, and 

 to predict by calculation. Their occurrence in 

 accord with our predictions endorses the rule to 

 which calculation has led us. So it is demon- 

 strated by science that what we term light and 

 sound are merely vibrations of extreme rapidity ; 

 that our environment is really dark and silent, 

 does not give light to the eye or sound to the ear, 

 but owes to the brain its illumination and its 

 resonance. It seems, moreover, that the sub- 

 stances which appear to resist our touch in solidity 

 are also in energetic vibration, and that, in fact, 

 our surroundings may be likened to the whorls 

 and eddies which we see when we press hard upon 

 our closed eyelids. Out of this confusion our 

 brains conjure up for us shapes and colours, sounds 

 and solidity ; but these impressions resemble 

 actuality no more closely than the notes of a 

 musical box resemble its machinery. We live in 

 the midst of the Unknown. 



Moreover, our sensory impressions are in them- 

 selves so irregular that they would be useless were 

 they not corrected by a mental process of sensory 

 adjustment. We see what we pronounce to be a 

 circular table ; but we do not see it as circular 

 unless we are immediately above it. From any 



