9 
smell, and tliat both are hearing, as to contend that a thought 
is a sensation or a sensation a thought. Mr. Huxley says in 
the same paper from which I have just quoted, that “no 
amount of sound constitutes an echo, hut for all that no one 
would pretend that an echo is something of totally different 
nature from sound/* I am disposed to ask what is an echo 
but a sound ? Because the vibrations in the atmosphere go 
off to a distance and return, they do not cease to be only 
vibrations. “ Ho amount of sound constitutes an echo " ! 
One can scarcely believe his own eyes when he sees such words 
from such a pen. It is amazing that one who can distinguish 
between an echo and a sound is unable to see the difference 
between a sensation and a. thought, and that too when the 
sensation is a mere first impression, and the thought is a long 
perfected abstraction ! 
We may look in passing at one or two other specimens of 
Mr. Huxley's philosophy. We do so, because of the vast 
influence of the man. He says, “It is wholly inconceivable 
that what we call extension should exist independently of 
such consciousness as our own. Whether, notwithstanding 
such inconceivability, it does exist, or not, is a point on which 
I offer no opinion." * I not only conceive, but perfectly 
understand and believe, that my bed is six feet and a half 
long when I am sound asleep as it is when I am awake. The 
same as to the breadth. The same as to everything that is 
extended. Mr. Huxley has got his mind so twisted, that he 
conceives of extension as only a state of mind, and he cannot 
both conceive this and its contradictory at the same time. 
That inconceivableness need neither puzzle him nor any reader 
of the Lay Sermons. It is only the very simple fact that 
one who believes an error cannot at the same moment believe 
the truth on the point on which he is in error. With such 
examples before us, we may safely hold that sensation is not 
thought, though Mr. Huxley should not be even able to con- 
ceive of the difference ! 
Mr. Herbert Spencer says, that “ to remember the colour 
red is to have, in a weak degree, that psychical state which 
the presentation of the colour red produces." f This is, per- 
haps, the foundation of Mr. Huxley's mistake. Is it strictly 
true ? For the first time a red object is presented to the 
eye of a child, the peculiar impression which that red object 
produces is the “ psychical state," as Mr. Spencer regards it, in 
its strong degree. Then, also, for the first time, a blue object 
* Lay Sermons , ed. 1871, p. 327. 
t Principles of Psychology , p. 559. 
B 
