Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/103

Rh then it is quite possible that the particular mode of motion of the object is reproduced in the sensorium; exactly as the diaphragm of a telephone reproduces the mode of motion taken up at its receiving-end. In other words, the secondary "intentional species" may be, as the schoolmen thought the primary one was, the last link between matter and mind.

None the less, however, does it remain true that no similarity exists, nor indeed is conceivable, between the cause of the sensation and the sensation. Attend as closely to the sensations of muskiness, or any other odor, as we will, no trace of extension, resistance, or motion is discernible in them. They have no attribute in common with those which we ascribe to matter; they are, in the strictest sense of the words, immaterial entities.

Thus, the most elementary study of sensation justifies Descartes's position, that we know more of mind than we do of body; that the immaterial world is a firmer reality than the material. For the sensation "muskiness" is known immediately. So long as it persists, it is a part of what we call our thinking selves, and its existence lies beyond the possibility of doubt. The knowledge of an objective or material cause of the sensation, on the other hand, is mediate; it is a belief as contra-distinguished from an intuition; and it is a belief which, in any given instance of sensation, may, by possibility, be devoid of foundation. For odors, like other sensations, may arise from the occurrence of the appropriate molecular changes in the nerve or in the sensorium, by the operation of a cause distinct from the affection of the sense-organ by an odorous body. Such "subjective" sensations are as real existences as any others, and as distinctly suggest an external odorous object as their cause; but the belief thus generated is a delusion. And, if beliefs are properly termed "testimonies of consciousness," then undoubtedly the testimony of consciousness may be, and often is, untrustworthy.

Another very important consideration arises out of the facts as they are now known. That which, in the absence of a knowledge of the physiology of sensation, we call the cause of the smell, and term the odorous object, is only such, mediately, by reason of its emitting particles which give rise to a mode of motion in the sense-organ. The sense-organ, again, is only a mediate cause by reason of its producing a molecular change in the nerve-fiber; while this last change is also only a mediate cause of sensation, depending, as it does, upon the change which it excites in the sensorium.

The sense-organ, the nerve, and the sensorium, taken together, constitute the sensiferous apparatus. They make up the thickness of the wall between the mind, as represented by the sensation "muskiness," and the object, as represented by the particle of musk in contact with the olfactory epithelium.

It will be observed that the sensiferous wall and the external world are of the same nature; whatever it is that constitutes them both is expressible in terms of matter and motion. Whatever changes take place