728 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XL VI 



visualization depends on sight. Is it without signifi- 

 cance in this connection that the eye begins in the embryo 

 earlier than any other receptor of special sense, or that 

 sight, except perhaps by a few poets and musicians, is 

 acclaimed the most priceless of all our senses? 



If we lived in a world of phantasms, the value of sight 

 would largely disappear, for, as Berkeley 8 has pointed 

 out, it is an organ of anticipatory touch upon which de- 

 pends our ability to avoid harmful collisions, and to 

 bring about desirable ones. From the very beginning 

 of our lives we see and deal with visible objects. Is it 

 strange then that we should attempt to express all our 

 experience in terms of the language which by our very 

 structure and history is the most used and hence the most 

 efficient medium of interpretation we possess? 



Modern energetics has indeed discarded solid mole- 

 cules and atoms, and has replaced these by constellations 

 of electrons, yet even if the electrons are nothing more 

 than electrical charges, they are believed to possess mass, 

 and to have certain properties in common with visible 

 things. Does not the physicist still draw pictures on the 

 wall to make clear what he means ? Is not a picture a vis- 

 ual symbol by the aid of which we understand a less fa- 

 miliar one? Escape is impossible, for mechanistic sym- 

 bolism is grounded in our very nature, and for this rea- 

 son its employment rises to the dignity of a moral act, for 

 it involves neither more nor less than the application of 

 our best capabilities to the best of all purposes— the in- 

 terpretation of nature. 



•Berkeley, George, "An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision." 



