Page:Journal of Speculative Philosophy Volume 17.djvu/74

Rh feelings and that force have some transcendental existence entirely unrelated to ourselves and entirely unknown, it would not be by such unknowns that the relative character of our present feelings could be shown. To show or to explain is to bring the thing into relation with something known. Explanation of the unknown by the known, not of the known by the unknown, is the order of science.

An examination of the specific feelings which are said to be relative to the subject will both bring this point into clearer light, and reveal in what, positively, their relativity does consist. In a concrete case : Why is the feeling of color as given in immediate consciousness said to be relative? Is the knowledge that it is such obtained by reference to a known or an unknown object? The question thus put answers itself. The sensation of color is said to be relative to ourselves because it is known to be dependent upon vibrations of ether and the retinal structure of the eye. It is merely the relation between these two as given in consciousness. Unless I know that there is such a retinal structure and such waves, or something corresponding to them, it is absurd to speak of the feeling of color as relative. It is only because I may know what light is as objective that I may know that what it seisms to be in feeling is relative and subjective. And so with sound and taste. The subjectivity of taste, e. g., means that in the object unrelated to a nervous organism there is such and such a physical or chemical structure, and that the sensation of taste is the relation between that structure and a corresponding organic structure. Clearly, then, our knowledge of subjectivity or relativity depends upon knowledge of something objective. But it must be especially noticed that this something objective is not given in feeling, and, therefore, is not relative to sense. These objects — the waves of ether, the structure of the retina, etc. — are not themselves feelings, and never have been : were they feelings, there would be no reason to assert the relative character of the feelings following upon them. Consequently, if it should be said that these so-called objects, the vibrations, etc., although not themselves feelings, yet have meaning attached to them only in so far as they represent possibilities of feeling — and mean only that under certain conditions they would become feelings, and that even now they possess signification only as symbolized by actual sensations — the