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XLVI. Notices respecting New Books. 



Common Sensibles. Die Gemein-Icleen cles Gesichts- unci Tastsinns 

 nach Locke unci Berkeley unci Experimenter*, an operirten Blind- 

 geborenen. Von Dr. Theodob Loewt. Leipzig : 1884. 



HPHIS work by Dr. Loewy is partly philosophical, partly physiolo- 

 -*• gical in its interest ; treating partly of the theoretical opinions 

 of Locke and Berkeley, partly of the experimental evidence for, or 

 rather against, an innate relation between the senses of sight and 

 touch. 



The question, Are there any ideas common to these two senses, 

 or is the coordination of the ideas obtained by them solely a matter 

 of experience? was raised by Locke before any experiments had even 

 been thought of as practicable; and the first part of our author's 

 work is occupied in the discussion of the views of philosophers upon 

 this, at that time, theoretical question. 



Locke taught that certain ideas were peculiar to one sense, as 

 light and colour to the sense of sight, so that it was absurd to try 

 to give a blind man any notion of light and colour ; but that the 

 ideas connected with space, as extension, figure, magnitude, were 

 common to the two senses, which are only two different ways of 

 getting at these ideas. It is strange that Locke passes so shortly 

 over the idea of motion, which introduces the conception of time, 

 and dwells so much on the ideas dependent on the conception of 

 space ; for if there be a common sensible, or idea common to the 

 different senses, it is surely that of interruption, or of rhythm, an 

 idea dependent purely on time. 



The most interesting part of the philosophical discussion is that 

 which turns on Locke's answer to the famous question of his friend 

 Molyneux. Molyneux asks, " Suppose a man born blind, and now 

 adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a 

 sphere of the same metal, and nighly of the same bigness, so as to 

 tell, when he felt the one, and the other, which is the cube, which 

 the sphere. Suppose, then, the cube and sphere placed on a table, 

 and the blind man be made to see : quaere, whether by his sight, 

 before he touched them, he could now distinguish and tell which is 

 the globe, which the cube ? " Prom the point of view of Locke the 

 answer would seem certain. The ideas involved are those of extension 

 and form, ideas common to the two senses ; therefore the blind man 

 made to see would recognize and distinguish the two bodies because 

 these ideas would not be new to him, he would only have acquired 

 a new way of getting at them. But this is not Molyneux's answer : 

 he says, " Not. For though he has obtained the experience of how a 

 globe affects his touch, yet he has not yet obtained the experience 

 that what affects his touch so or so must affect his sight so or so, 

 or that a protuberant angle in the cube, that pressed his hand un- 

 equally, shall appear to his eye as it does in the cube." 



As Dr. Loewy says, we see at once that Molyneux's solution of 

 his problem is not in harmony with Locke's principles. According 



