Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 053.djvu/786

770 one place where they are felt, into the other place where the condition of their apprehension resides. The sight is, therefore, compelled to leave the sensations where they are, and the apprehension of them where it is; and to recognize the two as sundered from each other—the sensations as separated from the organ, which they truly are. Thus it is that we would explain the origin of the perception of distance by the eye; believing firmly that the sight would never have discerned this distance without the mediation of the touch.

Rightly to understand the foregoing reasoning—indeed to advance a single step in the true philosophy of sensation—we must divest ourselves of the prejudice instilled into us by a false physiology, that what we call our organism, or, in plain words, our body, is necessarily the seat of our sensations. That all our sensations come to be associated in some way with this body, and that some of them even come to be associated with it in place, is undeniable; but so far is it from being true, that they are all essentially implicated or incorporated with it, and cannot exist at a distance from it, that we have a direct proof to the contrary in our sensations of vision; and until the physiologist can prove (what has never yet been proven) an à priori necessity that our sensations must be where our bodies are, and an à priori absurdity in the contrary supposition, he must excuse us for resolutely standing by the fact as we find it.

This is a view which admits of much discussion, and we would gladly expatiate upon the subject, did time and space permit; but we must content ourselves with winding up the present observations with the accompanying diagram, which we think explains our view beyond the possibility of a mistake. Let A be the original synthesis, or indiscrimination of vision and its sensations—of light and colours. Let á be the visual sensations locally associated by means of the touch with the tangible bodies C before vision is in. any way associated with B—before, indeed, we have any knowledge of the existence of B. Then let a, the general condition on which the sensations, after a time, are found to depend, and in virtue of which they are apprehended, be locally associated with B—the eye discovered by means of the touch—and we have before us what we cannot help regarding as a complete rationale of the whole phenomena and mysteries of vision. Now, the great difference between this view of the subject and the views of it that have been taken by every other philosopher, consists in this, that whereas their explanations invariably implicated the visual sensations á with B from the very first, thereby rendering it either impossible for them to be afterwards associated with C, or possible only in virtue of some very extravagant hypothesis—our explanation, on the contrary, proceeding on a simple observation of the facts, and never implicating the sensations á with B at all, but associating them with C à primordiis, merely leaving to be associated with B, a, a certain general condition that must be complied with, in order that the sensations á may be apprehended,—in this way, we say, our explanation contrives to steer clear both of the impossibility and the hypothesis.

We would just add by way of postscript to this article—which, perhaps, ought itself to have been only a postscript—that with regard to Mr Bailey's allegation of our having plagiarised one of his arguments, merely turning the coat of it outside in, we can assure him that he is labouring under a mistake. In our former paper, we remarked that we could not see things to be out of the sight, because we could not see the sight itself. Mr Bailey alleges, that this argument is borrowed from him, being a mere reversal of bis reasoning, that we cannot see things to be in the sight, because we cannot see both the sight and the things.—That our argument might very naturally have been suggested by his, we admit. But it was not so. We had either overlooked the passage in his book, or it was clean out of our mind when we were pondering our own speculations. It did not suggest our argument, either nearly or remotely. Had it done so, we should certainly have noticed it, and should probably have handled both Mr Bailey's reasoning and our own to better purpose, in consequence. If, notwithstanding this disclaimer, he still thinks that appearances are against us, we cannot mend his faith, but can merely repeat, that the fact is as we have stated it.