ly unlike that conception of it which is
based on our present terrestrial consciousness--a form of consciousness
suited to, and developed by, our temporary existence here, but not
necessarily more than a fraction of our total self.

Take an analogy: the eye is the organ of vision; by it we perceive
light. Stimulate the retina in any way, and we are conscious of the
sensation of light; injure or destroy the eye, and vision becomes
imperfect or impossible. If eyes did not exist we should probably know
nothing about light, and we might be tempted to say that light did not
exist. In a sense, to a blind race, light would not exist--that is to
say, there would be no sensation of light, there would be no sight; but
the underlying physical cause of that sensation--the ripples in the
ether--would be there all the time. And it is these ethereal ripples
which a physicist understands by the term "light." It is quite
conceivable that a race of blind physicists would be able to devise
experimental means whereby they could make experiments on what to us is
luminous radiation, just as we now make experiments on electric waves,
for which we have no sense organ. It would be absurd for a psychologist
to inform them that light did not exist because sight did not. The
_term_ might have to be reconsidered and redefined; indeed, most
likely a polysyllabic term would be employed, as is unfortunately usual
when a thing of which the race in general has no intimate knowledge
requires nomenclature. But the thing would be there, though its mode of
manifestation would be different; a term like "vision" might still be
employed, to signify our mode of perceiving and experiencing the agency
which now manifests itself to us through our eyes; and plants might
grow by the aid of that agency just as they do now.

So, also, brain is truly the organ of mind and consciousness, and to a
brainless race these terms, and all other terms, would be meaningless;
but no one is at liberty to assert, on the strength of that fact, that
the realities underlying our use of those terms have no existence apart
from terrestrial brains. Nor can we say with any security that the
stuff called "brain" is the only conceivable machinery which they are
able to utilise: though it is true that we know of no other. Yet it
would seem that such a proposition must be held by a materialist, or by
what can be implied by the term "monist," used in its narrowest and
most unphilosophic sense