Page:Our knowledge of the external world.djvu/95

 But we have still not reduced our statement completely to what is actually given in sense. We have fallen into the assumption that the object of which we are conscious when we touch the blue spectacles still exists after we have ceased to touch them. So long as we are touching them, nothing except our finger can be seen through the part touched, which is the only part where we immediately know that there is something. If we are to account for the blue appearance of objects other than the spectacles, when seen through them, it might seem as if we must assume that the spectacles still exist when we are not touching them; and if this assumption really is necessary, our main problem is answered: we have means of knowing of the present existence of objects not given in sense, though of the same kind as objects formerly given in sense.

It may be questioned, however, whether this assumption is actually unavoidable, though it is unquestionably the most natural one to make. We may say that the object of which we become aware when we touch the spectacles continues to have effects afterwards, though perhaps it no longer exists. In this view, the supposed continued existence of sensible objects after they have ceased to be sensible will be a fallacious inference from the fact that they still have effects. It is often supposed that nothing which has ceased to exist can continue to have effects, but this is a mere prejudice, due to a wrong conception of causality. We cannot, therefore, dismiss our present hypothesis on the ground of a priori impossibility, but must examine further whether it can really account for the facts.

It may be said that our hypothesis is useless in the case when the blue glass is never touched at all. How, in that case, are we to account for the blue appearance of