386 DARWINISM AND THE PROBLEMS OF LIFE 



whom one sense is missing have a totally different idea 

 of the world from ourselves. If the missing sense is 

 restored to them by an operation, they can hardly 

 recognise their world with it. A blind man whose sight 

 has been restored cannot recognise the bodies about him 

 until he has touched them. 



Sensations give us information of the external world 

 when they reach our consciousness. How often do we 

 not look at our watch without noticing the position of 

 the hands, or touch an object without perceiving its 

 existence ! When we are asleep the world has ceased 

 to exist for us. 



When other men tell me that the world continued to 

 exist while I was asleep, their movements and voices 

 create nothing in me but sensations, and of these I only 

 know what reaches my consciousness. Even my own 

 body is only known to me by processes of consciousness ; 

 when I am not conscious of it, it does not exist for me. 



There is no sense, no reality, in the world that we 

 can bring into opposition to consciousness. There 

 is nothing that is not a content of consciousness. That 

 is a truth that cannot be shaken ; in fact, it seems to be 

 the eternal immutable foundation of the clashing 

 structures of theories about knowledge. All that we 

 experience and live, all that we see and feel, consists 

 of conscious processes. 



Here we refer to ordinary, individual sensations, familiar to everyone 

 under this name. We shall not go into the question whether there are 

 conscious and unconscious sensations. When it is said that the sensa- 

 tions must reach our consciousness, we are merely following the usual 

 form of speech. 



