By the popular expression, "Evidence of the Senses," is universally
understood, the perception, or seeing external bodies by the organs of
sense: yet externals are invisible and the senses insentient. This
mistake, common among the fathers of every age, has corrupted the
prevalent false philosophy tenfold.
The eye is not possessed of sight; neither is colour a property
of matter, or it must be indestructible by fire and every other
means. The senses should be considered as but mechanical agents for
exciting the brain; by which means it is we have our knowledge, the
particulars of the whole of which are mental, confined to the brain,
and consist, solely, in the cerebral excited scenery of the sensorium.
We have no other kind or means of acquiring knowledge, that is,
mental information. By the mere organs of sense we know nothing. The
knowledge we have by means of the senses exciting the brain, consists
in sensations or sensible effects, and, _we know nothing but our
knowledge_, whatever may be thought of externals being objects and
immediate objects of our knowledge.
In describing what we know, it is imagined the description is of
external bodies, their appearance, qualities, and properties; which,
however harmless the mistake throughout busy-life affairs,--as all
abide, judge, and are directed by the same kind of evidence,--not so
is it in philosophy, which is a description of nature's own mode of
procedure; and although it is impossible to describe invisible things,
as they are really, they should not be philosophised and reasoned
on, _as they are not_; they are not according to what we know, and
can have no resemblance in any manner to sensations, which are all
we know by means of them. Instead of knowing by the senses what
bodies are, we know only what they _are not_; modern philosophy is
regardless, totally heedless of this most instructive most pointedly
directing information, instead of making the just allowance for mental
appearances, it materializes every sensation, and imputes the whole
to the bodies outside of our own, of which all we can possibly know
is but inferential knowledge: it considers our sensations as being
qualities of bodies or properties of matter, and maintains that some
are physical causes by which certain physical effects are produced.
Such may be considered some of the principal reasons why _clairvoyance_
is unintelligible to all the most learned; and so must it ever remain,
or until a truer philosophy arises and rescues the great subject from
the darkness and errors of a perverting philosophy, the whole of
which has to be abandoned before the mind is fitted for the reception
of natural truths. We must cease to identify sensations with their
unseen, unknown, and but _promoting_, material causes. In proof of the
foregoing, a short review of the senses, their physiology, function,
result of the function and use of the result, must prove satisfactory
and convincing.
The _physiology_ of a sense, consists in an external organ,--as the
eye or ear, its nerves of sensation which spread through the brain,
and, the nervous fluid. To each of the senses there belongs a distinct
cerebral organ, which, if deducted, leaves nothing to constitute the
physiology, but the external organ, the nerves, and nervous fluid;
such may be considered the physiology of all the senses, so far as the
exciting mental perception is concerned.
The _function of a sense_ is, to act on and excite the cerebral organ,
when the nervous fluid is put into an acting state through external
circumstances.
The _result of the function_, is a sensation, of which we have
immediate cognizance, by reason of a sensation being _a recent change
in consciousness_. The nervous fluid, not the tubular nervous _striæ_,
is that by which the brain is excited.
The _use of the sensation_ is manifold. Emanating from the wonderful
Economy, is the law, that, _the sensation which an external body
promotes, shall, to ourself, seem to belong to that body_.
The law is imperative. The sensation being apparently at, and belonging
to, the external object or body, it is imagined the body is visible,
seen by the eyes, and of the colour, flavour, or odour known by the
sensation. The apparent place of the sensation directs to where the
body is situated.
No person thinks, when a rose promotes the sensation of colour, that
the object perceived is within himself: without the sensation there
is no perception of red, and with it, nothing is perceived or seen of
colour or of the flower; so that, were the object coloured or not, it
is to the spectator invisible; and as the sensation would be useless
were the object coloured and seen, it is obvious that the flower is
uncoloured, therefore is not seen: the seeing an uncoloured object is a
physical absurdity. So is it with all sensations; they constitute the
only objects of perception with which we are acquainted; and, such as
they are in any respect, the outward objects are in no respect. Sound
is a sensation; a sense has been provided that we should have knowledge
of sound; there is nothing of sound or noise in the air; the function
of the sense is not to hear, but excite the auditory cerebral organ,
and the sensation, in which alone sound consists, _seems_ to be outside
of us, and _seems_ to come from a bell, but which has nothing of the
kind to part with; yet it is imagined that sound enters the ear. Thus
is it supposed that the sensation externally exists, and is sound heard
by the ear. The philosopher so instructed, calculates the velocity of
the physical nonentity sound.
Luminousness, light, colour, sound, heat, cold, flavour, odour, are
sensations,--each of the entire is traceable from the function of the
senses to the sensorium: deduct these, there is nothing perceived or to
perceive; by means of the senses, respectively, we have knowledge of
each,--and by the senses exciting the brain are the whole produced, as
sensible effects. Outward bodies can have nothing the same or similar
to sensible effects; and therefore nothing of the whole belongs to
matter or bodies, or to physical philosophy. To mechanical nature the
whole would be useless; to sensitive beings only are they useful; to us
they are substitutes for Nature's deficiency in these respects; and the
whole present a convincing proof of the wise, the strict economy of the
Great Architect in his works.
The objection is unfounded, that the external object should be like
the sensation, in order to produce such sensation. But where is
there sound in musical string or in the metal of a bell to promote
the sensation; or yellow in the snowdrop to promote the sensation
of yellow, when the eyes are jaundiced or a stained lens is before
them: the sensation of pain is not the effect of pain; it and pain
are one. That which in health promotes the sensation known as sweet,
promotes that of bitter in sickness; the object is the same, the
sensation changeable. In reason it cannot be said that fire is like
the sensation, or the latter should be burning hot in the brain, where
it is excited; neither is any material thing outside of us like a
sensation of the brain; nor does the sensation inform us of anything
but itself, excepting that it has a remote external cause. The common
show-box exhibits the same landscape picture under the different
aspects of summer, autumn, winter, and spring, according to the stained
lens before the eyes; the picture has not all these colours, nor any,
it is a mere black and white print, in which the stained lenses make no
alteration. Nothing can be like a sensation but a sensation.
That the objects we perceive and their remote cause are distinct
things, is proved by the perception being that of a coin of the
half-crown size, when the eyes are directed to a shilling and a convex
lens before the face; if the lens be red, yellow, or blue, so is the
perceived object, which is not the white shilling. We are invisible to
each other; what is imagined to be a man's appearance, may be described
as, various sensations of different colours symmetrically arranged,
and constituting a single optically-excited mental effect. Neither
is it the likeness of the sitter that the canvass exhibits, but the
excited perception within the sensorium of the limner; for the renewal
of which it is that he directs his eyes so frequently to the sitter's
face, which is invisible to the limner, although he feels certain that
he sees every feature.
Those who imagine the eye-balls look and see, and that externals and
the perceptions they promote are the same, should, upon reflection,
attribute sight to their spectacles; for, as sight is nothing bettered
when the glasses are removed, so should the temporary improvement be
referred to the spectacles having sight as well as the eyes.
In consequence of all mankind being similarly organised, that which
seems coloured, sonorous, hot, acid, or aromatic to one person, is so
to every one else with sane eyes and senses; by which unanimity of
opinion, in these respects, prevails throughout the great family of
man, in the worldly concerns of active life, and the social compact is
maintained indissoluble.
The all-wise, benevolent dispensation of the senses, by which man's
existence is supplied with enjoyments not in all nature otherwise
to bestow; and his intellectual faculties provided with means of
contemplating the attributes of his Maker through his knowledge, such
as it is, of the creation, which makes known to us not only God's
regard for his creatures, but his supreme omniscience in the economy
made manifest throughout all his works. Were bodies coloured as we
imagine, there should be an element of each red, yellow, and blue
atoms; elements of sound, heat, and cold; elements of flavour and
odour innumerable: whereas, by the substitution of sensations, matter
without any such qualities, or any whatever, excepting that of being
everlasting, is made subservient to the formation of a universe of
worlds, teeming with beauty, harmony, and wonders; all contributing to
the comfort, enjoyment, happiness, edification, and future hope of its
sojourning inhabitants.
Now, when from the established philosophy we deduct gravitation,
attraction and repulsion, which are as foreign to inert matter as
vitality to the dead,--the host of chymicals, so repugnant to the
principle of _inertia_,--the imaginary living principles, erroneously
imputed to the mechanical organs of the animal system,--the sensations
of luminousness, light, colour, sound, heat, cold, acidity, and of
flavours and odours,--when the entire of these unphysical, mere
nominals, are deducted from modern philosophy, there remains nothing
whatever to produce action, physical change, or motion, excepting
_pressure_, which has been always looked upon as a mere adjunct to the
imagined numerous powers of nature. When common sense has rejected the
whole, then will the philosophy of the Fathers be valued by the world,
as would be a garment with more holes than threads.