ut having material contact, by means of the air,
with the object; sight indeed appears to have to do with Space- and
sound with Time-perception. In examining Nature by means of our
senses we find we are so hemmed in by what we have always taken for
granted and so bound down by modes of reasoning derived from what we
have seen, heard, or felt in our daily life, that we are sadly
hampered in our search after the truth. It is difficult to sweep the
erroneous concepts aside and make a fresh start. In fact the great
difficulty in studying the Reality underlying Nature is analogous to
our inability to isolate and study the different sounds themselves
which fall upon the ear, if our own language is being uttered, without
being forced to consider the meaning we have always attached to those
sounds.

Let us now go back to the contention that it is not we who are looking
out upon Nature but that our senses are being bombarded from without;
we are living in a world of continuous and multitudinous changes, and
as our senses require change or motion for their excitation, without
those changes we could have no cognisance of our surroundings, we
should have no consciousness of living; but if we base our thought
entirely on sense perception, taking for granted that Time and Space
have reality instead of recognising that they are only modes or limits
under which those senses act, the Wall will ever remain opaque to us.
Let us try and make this clearer. If we analyse the impression we
receive from Motion, we find it is made up of the product of our two
limitations, it is the time that an object takes to go over a certain
space. We must come therefore to the conclusion also that Motion
itself has no existence in reality apart from our senses. The result
of not being able to appreciate this, is that the finiteness of our
sense, caused by its dependence on Motion for excitation, surrounds us
with illusions; one of these illusions is what we call solidity or
continuity of sensation. If you hold a cannon-ball in your hand,
perception by the sense of touch tells you that it is continuous, or
what is called solid and hard; but it is not so in reality except as a
concept limited by our finite senses. A fair analogy would be to liken
it to a swarm of bees, for we know that it is composed of an immense
number of independent atoms or molecules which are darting about, and
circling round each other at an enormous speed but never touching;
they are