Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/350

340 felt portions would become visible, were no limit put to these movements and muscular sensations. Very well. This point, which occupies an infinitely small space among the visual phenomena, continues its manipulating progress, until it at length happens to rest upon a very sensitive and orbed surface, about its own size, situated in the upper part of the bifurcated object. And now what ensues? Speaking out of the information and experience which we have as yet acquired, we should naturally say that merely this can ensue; that if the point (let us now call it our finger) and the orbed surface on which it rests are out of the sphere of sight, the seer has nothing to do with it—that it is simply a case of touch: or if the finger and the surface are within the sphere of sight, that then the finger will merely hide from our view a surface coextensive with itself, as it does in other similar instances; and that, in either case, all the other objects of sight will be left as visible and entire as ever. But no; neither of these two results is what ensues. What then does ensue? This astounding and almost inconceivable result ensues, that the whole visual phenomena are suddenly obliterated as completely as if they had never been. One very small visible point, performing certain operations within the eye, and coming in contact with a certain surface as small as itself, and which must also be conceived as lying within the eye, not only obliterates that small surface, but extinguishes a whole landscape which is visibly many million