( 5o ) 
[January 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
*.* The Editor does not hold himself responsible for statements of facts or 
opinions expressed in Correspondence, or in Articles bearing the signature 
of their respective authors. 
THE SENTIENT EYE THE ONLY COLOUR BOX, 
AND THE BRAIN ( ENCEPHALON ) THE ONLY 
“ KNOWLEDGE ” BOX. 
May I be permitted, with all due brevity, to diredt attention to a 
contribution of Mr. Cave Thomas, with the first part of the 
above title in <; Knowledge ” of this week (12th December) ? It 
entirely corroborates, so far as the pseudo external universe goes, 
the principles advocated in the fearless pages of the “ Journal of 
Science ” for some years back, under the terms Hylo-Idealism, 
Solipsism, Autopsism, Egoism, and alia multa. It conflicts, on 
the other hand, in toto with the theologistic article, quite on the 
lines of the defundt “ Bridgewater,” and Sir John Herschell’s, 
treatises by Mr. Prodtor, in the same number of his valuable 
serial, headed Science and Natural Religion. I quote below, 
with just economy of space, one or two of perhaps not the most 
salient sentences in Mr. Thomas’s most suggestive communi- 
cation : — 
1st. The eye is the real seat of Light and Colour, their ex- 
ternality being a false misleading fallacy, founded on the dead 
Newtonian theory. 
2nd. The light within us [he might have quoted Christ : “ The 
light of the body is the Eye ”] is not only a Bible metaphor, but 
a literal scientific truth. 
3rd. That which is perceived by our sensorium [therefore the 
whole “ objedtive ” universe] is merely a property or change of 
condition in our nerves. 
4th. Every fadt shows Light and Colour and Sound [and all 
other sensations] to be innate endowments of our nature 
[anatomy] , which merely require a stimulus for their excitation. 
5th. This admitted, the whole science of Chromatics [he 
might have said all human Agnosis whatever] requires recon- 
strudlion, — lingering now in the sloughs of error from false 
hypotheses. 
