y subjective, _i.e._ as merely _ours_, and consequently must not
real objective existence be still as far beyond our grasp as ever? We
answer. No, by no means. Such a query implies a total oversight of all
that experience proves to be the fact with regard to this matter. It
implies that the senses have not been reduced to the rank of
sensations--that they have _not_ been brought under our cognizance as
themselves sensations, and that they have yet to be brought there. It
implies that vision has not been revealed to us as a sensation of colour
in the phenomenon the eye--and that touch has not been revealed to us as a
sensation of hardness in the phenomenon the finger. It implies, in short,
that it is not the sense itself which has been revealed to us, in the one
case as coloured, and in the other case as hard, but that it is something
else which has been thus revealed to us. But it may still be asked, How do
we know that we are not deceiving ourselves? How can it be proved that it
is the senses, and not something else, which have come before us under the
guise of certain sensations? That these sensations are the senses
themselves, and nothing but the senses, may be proved in the following
manner.

We bring the matter to the test of actual experiment. We make certain
experiments, _seriatim_, upon each of the items that lie within the
sentient sphere, and we note the effect which each experiment has upon
that portion of the contents which is not meddled with. In the exercise of
vision, for example, we remove a book, and no change is produced in our
perception of a house; a cloud disappears, yet our apprehension of the sea
and the mountains, and all other visible things, is the same as ever. We
continue our experiments, until our test happens to be applied to one
particular phenomenon, which lies, if not directly, yet virtually, within
the sphere of vision. We remove or veil this small visual phenomenon, and
a totally different effect is produced from those that took place when any
of the other visual phenomena were removed or veiled. The whole landscape
is obliterated. We restore this phenomenon--the whole landscape reappears:
we adjust this phenomenon differently--the whole landscape becomes
differently adjusted. From these experiments we find, that this phenomenon
is by no means an ordinary sensation, but that it differs from all other
sensations in this, that it is the sense itself appearing in the form of a
sensation. T