SENSE ORGANS. gj 



we can hear. Beyond this the vibrations exist, but we 

 have no nerve specialized to perceive them. After a 

 long interval vibrations again appear in consciousness, 

 but in a new form — as light. This only takes place when 

 they reach a rapidity which can be taken on only by the 

 ethereal medium, viz., four hundred million millions in 

 a second. As they become still more rapid they appear 

 as different colors until they reach about eight hundred 

 million millions, when they again disappear from con- 

 sciousness. We know that they are there, for they show 

 themselves in other ways — e. g., by photography — but 

 we have no nerve specialized to perceive them. 



2. Kind of Contact. — Feeling takes cognizance of 

 any kind of direct material contact, but especially of 

 solid contact. Taste must have liquid contact, and un- 

 less a substance is soluble it can not be tasted. In the 

 case of smell the contact must be more refined ; it must 

 be gaseous, and unless a substance is volatile it can not 

 be smelled. In the case of hearing and sight there is no 

 direct contact at all of the sensible body, the impres- 

 sion being made by vibrations of a medium, the air in 

 case of hearing and the universal ether in case of sight. 

 All other senses are terrestrial ; sight alone is cosmical. 



3. Objectiveness. — In the three so-called lower 

 senses, viz., feeling, taste, and smell, we are conscious 

 that the sensation is in us — i. e., subjective — although in 

 smell we already refer the sensible body to a distance. 

 In hearing, the thing perceived no longer seems to be in 

 us, but in the sensible body — in yonder bell — though there 

 may be still a remnant of the subjective element. Final- 

 ly, in sight there is not a remnant of perception of any- 

 thing in us. The sensation, say of redness or blackness, 

 is completely externalized, objectified, referred outward 

 to the sensible body. To the untrained mind there is 

 not a suspicion of any change in the eye. 



