SPECIAL ENDS IN CBEATION. 535 



only to beings organised as we are. We believe that this is true of 

 the typical forms of nature universally ; but we shall c n'i ie our 

 remarks to the instance of color, to which our authors refer, and 

 which may be most easily treated. The colors which excite our ad- 

 miration in the flowers of the field, in the bright plumage of the birds, 

 or in the rainbow spanning the sky, have no existence apart from 

 ourselves. It seems, therefore, a contradiction to say that the Divine 

 Being delights in such colors, as intrinsically suitable to his nature ; 

 and that their harmonies and melodious combinations would — even 

 had neither man, nor any similarly constituted beings, ever looked 

 out upon creation — have still rendered the flowers, the birds, 

 the rainbow, objects of grateful contemplation in his sight. Let 

 us for a moment assume that the doctrine of perception taught 

 in what is termed the Scottish school is correct. On that doctrine, 

 the sole connection between an external object — for example, a rose 

 — and the colors popularly supposed to be inherent in it, is, that it 

 acts as a stimulus, more or less remote, through means of which our 

 nervous organism is affected ; and it is the affection thus excited in 

 the living nerve, that determines the colors which we fancy ourselves 

 to see in the object.* Should the organism be similarly affected by 

 any other stimulus, however different — even by an extra-organic 

 stimulus — the same colors would appear to present themselves to our 

 view. Now we do not say that we agree altogether with this doctrine : 

 but supposing it to be correct, what then ? Color depends upon or- 

 ganization ; so that if we consider the face of nature, as it must 

 appear to the Creator, to whom no organization can be ascribed, it is 

 impossible to speak of it as colored at all ; without, at least, using 

 the word colored in some sense entirely different from that in which, 

 when describing our own perceptions, we speak of it as colored. No 

 doubt, the order of the universe, as regards the colors with which it 

 is invested, is, like its order in every other particular, perpetually 

 present to the Divine mind ; but the point to be observed, is, that 

 this is not an Order ivkich exists irrespectively of organized sensitive 

 creatures, or can he conceived apart from them. A doctrine of sensitive 

 perception, which should approximate more nearly than that of the 

 Scottish school, as above stated, to what we ourselves consider tfce 

 truth, would only render the conclusion which has been established, 

 more obvious. 



We are disposed, therefore, to be content with the explanation 



* Reid supposscs that the nervous affection is the arbitrarily constituted antecedent to the 

 sensation of color: Sir William Hamilton, that the sensation of color consists in the mind's 

 immediate apprehension of the nervous affection. 



