ted by the sensations I had already experienced, I continued to pluck the fruit; nor did I consider any labour too great for the satisfaction of my taste. At length, however, an ageeable languor stealing upon my senses, my limbs became heavy, and my soul seemed to lose its activity. My sensations, no longer vivid and distinct, presented to me only feeble and irregular images. In the instant, as it were, my eyes became useless, closed; and my head, no longer borne up by the strength of the muscles, sunk back, and found a support upon the verdant turf beneath."

CHAPTER VII.

OF RELIANCE ON THE SENSES.

§ 87. By means of sensations we have a knowledge of outward things. In the third chapter of the Introduction it was remarked, that the states of mind to which operations upon or affections of our senses give rise, are, by our very constitution, the occasions or grounds of belief; and that it is by means of the senses we have a knowledge, in particular, of the external, material world. The new feelings, following an affection of the senses, are in some sense the occasions on which the active and curious mind moves out of the world of its own spiritual and immaterial existence, and becomes acquainted with matter. It is somewhat here as in the reading of a book. When we read a book, only certain coloured marks or lines, arranged in a particular order, are directly presented to our senses; but we find them connected with new states of mind, utterly distinct from the direct impression which they make. A piece of paper, written over with such coloured delineations, becomes to the soul a sign of the most various and exalted ideas; and in like manner, such is the constitution of our mental nature, it is found to be the case that certain new affections of the mind, provided they are caused by means of the senses, become the signs of various existences, which are wholly diverse from the feelings

themselves. We experience the feelings, which all admit to be in themselves neither archetypes nor resemblances of anything whatever which is external to the soul; and then at once we become acquainted with a vast multitude of outward objects. On the authority of such feelings as are immediately consequent on an affection of the senses, all mankind, if the evidence of their general conduct and of their express declarations is to be regarded, believe in outward objects, as having a distinct and real existence, as having forms, properties, and relations.

88. Objection to a reliance on the senses.

Nevertheless, without denying the fact of this general reliance on the senses as a ground of belief, an objection has been made to its being well placed. The objection, stated in a few words, is this; THAT OUR SENSES SOMETIMES DECEIVE US, AND LEAD US INTO MISTAKES.

In support of the objection, such instances as the following are brought forward.-The sun and moon appear to the spectator on the earth's surface to be a foot or two in diameter, and little more than half a mile high; a straight stick, thrust into the water, appears to us crooked, as seen by the eye in that position; a square tower at a distance is mistaken for a round one; a piece of ice for a stone; a brass coin for a gold one. Nor are such mistakes to be ascribed solely to the sense of sight; they are not unfrequently committed when we rely on the intimations of the taste and smell, the touch and hearing.-Various facts of the above kind have been brought forward to discredit the senses, and to prevent a reliance on them. It is not necessary to extend the enumeration of them, as these will serve for a specimen of the whole.

89. The senses circumscribed or limited rather than fallacious. That there are some apparent grounds for the objection which has been made to a full reliance on the testimony of the senses, it is not necessary to deny. It is nevertheless true, that the great mass of the alleged fallacies which have been brought forward in opposition to such reliance, are susceptible of a satisfactory explanation.-But before entering into particulars, it is requisite

to make the general remark, that the senses are more properly circumscribed or limited than fallacious; and that they lead us astray, not so much by their own direct action as in consequence of our expecting too much of them. Now if we keep this in view, and moderate and chasten our expectations by the evidently limited nature of the senses, we shall find less to complain of.

The imperfect examination of the senses which we have just gone through, evinces the truth of this remark. It is the business, the appropriate function of the sense of smelling, to give us a knowledge of the odours of bodies. When we have these sensations, we may be led, from some principle of the mind, to look for the cause of them, but nothing more; we do not learn from it what the cause is. It is not pretended that this sense alone can give us the notion of an external odoriferous body. The sense of taste is equally limited with that of smell; but both, as far as they go, are grounds of knowledge, and do not deceive. It might, no doubt, be said, that they may be diseased, and thus mislead us; but the remarks of this section go on the supposition that the senses are in a sound state.— When we come to the sense of hearing, we find that the perceptions of sound have, in part, an acquired character. The reference of a particular sound to a particular external cause always implies the previous exercise of the touch, also the exercises of that principle of the mind which is termed association, and of an act of the judgment. But hearing, when in a sound state, is always a ground of belief and knowledge, as far as the mere sensation of sound is concerned, and so far can be most certainly trusted.

It is the appropriate business of the sense of sight, against the testimony of which so many objections have been made, to render us acquainted with the colours of bodies. To say, therefore, that it leads us into errors in respect to solidity, extension, size, direction, or distance, is but very little, or, rather, nothing to the purpose. These are acquired perceptions, and have their origin in another sense, that of touch. The visual sensations are in these cases mere signs of the knowledge which we have from another source. When, therefore, we separate what belongs to the sight from what belongs to the touch, and

distinguish between them, it is impossible to fix the charge of misrepresentation upon either.

And hence, on the question whether our senses mislead us, we are always to consider to which of the senses the particular things under review appropriately belong. And in many cases when we are searching after truth, it becomes us to call in the aid of all the senses, and not to consult one to the entire omission of the others. They all make parts of one great and wonderful system, and cannot be safely separated. When they are in a sound state; when the ideas, of which they are the origin, are properly discriminated; and, further, when the intimations of one sense are aided by those of another, and by the guidance of the reasoning power, which clearly ought not to be excluded, we may then confidently expect to be led by them into the truth, so far as our Creator designed that it should be made known to us.

§ 90. Some alleged mistakes of the senses owing to want of care. If the course indicated at the close of the last section were always followed, the mistakes to which we are occasionally exposed would be much less frequent. But even when we refer to all the senses, and combine with this reference the deductions of reasoning, we may still err from want of care. Beyond all question, some of the mistakes ascribed to the senses are owing to premature inferences from them; to a want of caution, discrimination, and full inquiry. This particular view of the subject is illustrated as follows by Dr. Reid.-"Many things called the deceptions of the senses are only conclusions rashly drawn from the testimony of the senses. In these cases the testimony of the senses is true, but we rashly draw a conclusion from it which does not necessarily follow. We are disposed to impute our errors rather to false information than to inconclusive reasoning, and to blame our senses for the wrong conclusions we draw from their testimony.

"Thus, when a man has taken a counterfeit guinea for a true one, he says his senses deceived him; but he lays the blame where it ought not to be laid: for we may ask him, Did your senses give a false testimony of the colour,

or of the figure, or of the impression? No. But this is all that they testified, and this they testified truly. From these premises you concluded that it was a true guinea, but this conclusion does not follow; you erred, therefore, not by relying upon the testimony of sense, but by judging rashly from its testimony. Not only are your senses innocent of this error, but it is only by their information that it can be discovered. If you consult them properly, they will inform you that what you took for a guinea is base metal, or is deficient in weight, and this can only ́be known by the testimony of sense.

"I remember to have met with a man who thought the argument used by Protestants against the Popish doctrine of transubstantiation, from the testimony of our senses, inconclusive; because, said he, instances may be given where several of our senses may deceive us; how do we know, then, that there may not be cases wherein they all deceive us, and no sense is left to detect the fallacy? I begged of him to know an instance wherein several of our senses deceive us. I take, said he, a piece of soft turf; I cut it into the shape of an apple; with the essence of apples I give it the smell of an apple; and with paint I can give it the skin and colour of an apple. Here, then, is a body, which, if you judge by your eye, by your touch, or by your smell, is an apple.

"To this I would answer, that no one of our senses deceives us in this case. My sight and touch testify that it has the shape and colour of an apple; this is true. The sense of smelling testifies that it has the smell of an apple: this is likewise true, and is no deception. Where, then, lies the deception? It is evident it lies in this, that because this body has some qualities belonging to the ple, I conclude that it is an apple. This is a fallacy, not of the senses, but of inconclusive reasoning."*

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There are other instances where the subject might be placed in a true light. It is well known (to take an illustration not unfrequently referred to by writers) that the vibrations of a pendulum are affected by its geographical position, the latitude where it is. Before this fact was ascertained, a person might have employed a pendulum

* Reid's Intellectual Powers of Man, Essay ii.