nd out of my reader's. But to get that done, they must be
explained.

The word 'Blue', say certain philosophers, means the sensation of
colour which the human eye receives in looking at the open sky, or at
a bell gentian.

Now, say they farther, as this sensation can only be felt when the eye
is turned to the object, and as, therefore, no such sensation is
produced by the object when nobody looks at it, therefore the thing,
when it is not looked at, is not blue; and thus (say they) there are
many qualities of things which depend as much on something else as on
themselves. To be sweet, a thing must have a taster; it is only sweet
while it is being tasted, and if the tongue had not the capacity of
taste, then the sugar would not have the quality of sweetness.

And then they agree that the qualities of things which thus depend
upon our perception of them, and upon our human nature as affected by
them, shall be called Subjective; and the qualities of things which
they always have, irrespective of any other nature, as roundness or
squareness, shall be called Objective.

From these ingenious views the step is very easy to a farther opinion,
that it does not much matter what things are in themselves, but only
what they are to us; and that the only real truth of them is their
appearance to, or effect upon, us. From which position, with a hearty
desire for mystification, and much egotism, selfishness, shallowness,
and impertinence, a philosopher may easily go so far as to believe,
and say, that everything in the world depends upon his seeing or
thinking of it, and that nothing, therefore, exists, but what he sees
or thinks of.

Sec. 2. Now, to get rid of all these ambiguities and troublesome words at
once, be it observed that the word 'Blue' does _not_ mean the
_sensation_ caused by a gentian on the human eye; but it means the
_power_ of producing that sensation; and this power is always there,
in the thing, whether we are there to experience it or not, and would
remain there though there were not left a man on the face of the
earth. Precisely in the same way gunpowder has a power of exploding.
It will not explode if you put no match to it. But it has always the
power of so exploding, and is therefore called an explosive compound,
which it very positively and assuredly is, whatever philosophy may say
to the contrary.

In like manner, a gentian does not produce the sensation of blueness
if you don't look at it. But it has