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CH. II.] been specially distinguished by names, as sound and hearing, there are others for which one or other state is without appellation—the action of vision, for instance, is called sight, but the action of colour is unnamed; the action of the sapid sense is called taste, while that of savour is without appellation.

Since the action of the object of perception and that of the sentient being is one and the same, although different in mode of acting, it follows that hearing and sound, in this sense, must together be lost, or together be preserved; and this is true of taste and savour, and other senses and functions; but yet it does not hold good of those relations in potentiality.

The earlier physiologists have expressed themselves ill upon the subject, as they thought that there can be neither black nor white without sight, nor savour without Taste. And yet what they said was in part right and in part wrong; for as senses and sentient impressions have a twofold acceptation, according to their state of potentiality or activity, so what was advanced by them may be applicable to the one state, and inapplicable to the other. The fact is, those writers reasoned absolutely upon conditions, which do not admit of being so dealt with. If a voice of any kind is harmony, and if voice and hearing are, in one sense, the same, and, in another sense, not the same, then, as harmony is proportion, it follows that hearing must be proportion also. And hence it comes