ble of detecting, in the sensation, a non-sensible element; that is to say, as component part of the sensation, the perception, not merely of the mind's own operations on that sensation, but of an object, not sensible, actually perceived. We ourselves contend, as earnestly as Locke, that there is no cognition but through the medium of a sensation of an external object; but in every cognition the me takes cognizance of that which transcends the outward, sensible object. There is no sensation which is not integrally cognition, owing to the fact, that the me is essentially cognitive,. as well as sensitive. This is the fact Locke and his school have overlooked, and which has vitiated all their labors even as mere psychologists. But we are lingering too long on speculations of our own; we hasten back to the exposition of Berkeley's New Theory of Vision.

Ac

"The Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, Berkeley's first [second] published work, appeared in 1708 [1709?], twenty-eight [twenty-four?] years after the work of Locke. The author was only twenty-four [twenty-five?] years of age. What is the value of this Theory of Vision? Is it solid; or is it only an absurd romance? The question is yet to be decided. Aristotle had said in relation to sight and hearing, (Ethique à Nicomaque, liv. 11, c. 1.) 'It is not by virtue of seeing or of hearing, that we acquire these senses; instead of acquiring them by use, we use them because we have them.' The opinion of Berkeley is exactly the reverse of this. cording to the disciple of Locke, not merely all the ideas we acquire by sight are the result of a real education and of a series of experiments, but we owe them all directly to another sense, to the sense of touch. We perceive distances, magnitudes, and situations, only because we have hands to touch, and feet by which we move, and not because nature has given us eyes. If we had not the sense of touch, we should be incapable of seeing. Resuming the example proposed by Molineux, Berkeley stoutly maintains, that if a man born blind should come to receive his sight, he would not be able by that to form any notion of distances, but objects the most remote would appear to him as if placed on his eye. Figures would escape him not less than distances. Place before him a cube and a sphere, which he has learned to know by touch, far

from being able to distinguish immediately which is the cube, which the sphere, he could not comprehend what relation his new sensations would have with those previously experienced. Moreover, these objects would not appear to him distinct one from the other; for, according to Berkeley, the sight is, by itself, utterly incapable of suggesting to us any idea of extension. The man born blind, suddenly made able to see, having thus by sight no notion of extension, would not isolate, by his mind, the cube from the sphere; for the same reason he would not even distinguish them from the table, or from the room in which he should be placed. All would be limited for him to a sensation of colors, a general sensation, and without distinction of parts, which would come to cover his soul, so to speak, as a garment immediately applied to the sensitive surface. It would be, in this regard, another touch, but of a nature wholly different from ordinary touch, and so essentially different, that, between the objects of the sense of touch and those of sight, no secret harmony could advertise the patient, that there is any connexion or relation.

"How, then, is a relation established between the sensations furnished by sight, and those furnished by touch? In other words, how does sight enable us to know and distinguish objects? Berkeley, in his Treatise, refers all notions of extension, and consequently of figure, distance, and, in general, distinction of objects, to the sense of touch. It is in touching with our hands, and in moving, either our whole body, or its different parts, that we form to ourselves ideas of extension; afterwards, we refer to these ideas the sensations of color which we receive from sight. But this relation is purely arbitrary, inasmuch as no necessary connexion exists, for us, between these colors and those ideas of extension. Sight, once again, suggesting to us by itself no notion of figure, magnitude, or distance, all the colored appearances we receive are only concomitant signs with the ideas which touch gives us. Touch, then, according to Berkeley, is not merely, as has since been said, the educator of sight, and in general the monitor of the other senses, but the only source of all our perceptions of external things. Touch has a special privilege, which neither sight nor hearing shares, in any manner, with it. Sight and hearing have a different purpose; these two senses send us only a species of signs incapable of furnishing us, by themselves, with any other idea than the sensations of color and of sound; but, these sensations being different according to the nature and position of objects, we refer them by habit, that is, by experience, to our sensations, and to our ideas of touch.

"This manner of conceiving the uses of sight and hearing, evidently, makes of the results of these two senses only a sort of conventional language; since between the figures which these senses give us, and the nature of the perceptions which we can have, of the form, the magnitude, and the situation of things of the external world, there is no relation, no real and 'necessary connexion, at least, none which we feel to be necessary. Here is the conclusion of Berkeley, his favorite idea, that which continually recurs under his pen, in this Treatise of his youth, as in all his other works, that which we find has inspired his whole system on the non-reality of the exterior world.

"It is impossible to carry farther, or develope more rigidly, the idea of the fragmentation of being, which Locke had introduced. Here, indeed, is the severest and most logical analysis which can be made, in starting from Locke's inspiration and following his principles. If, in fact, the being we call animal is nothing but a subject of different sensations, if there are in this being no secret chords which establish, between the different orders of his sensations, mysterious, but hitherto unfathomed, and perhaps unfathomable, relations, then the sensations of sight, of hearing, of touch, of taste, of smell, must be examined apart, and as things as entirely distinct as if they pertained to different beings. An axiom of this sort, borrowed from the method of Locke, is Berkeley's point of departure. Now, in considering sight thus apart, it was natural to make much of a discovery, which had made a great noise in the seventeenth century, namely, the representation of external objects at the bottom, or retina, of the eye. It was imagined, and still is, that we see by a plane surface, precisely as we perceive the sensations of touch on the rigid parts of our bodies. This granted, how can it be imagined, that a colored and plane sensation can give us ideas of extension? Such a sensation must always want, at least, depth; and, moreover, wanting also mobility to run over and measure the plane picture represented on the retina, it follows, necessarily, that sight must appear to be unable to suggest to us any idea of extension. The being, thus affected in a manner purely passive by a representation painted on his retina, would resemble a picture, incapable of measuring itself as to its surface, and, for a still stronger reason, of divining, that, under its surface, there are horizons of many leagues in depth. In assuming Locke's method and the pretended vision on the retina, as our point of departure, we must necessarily arrive where Berkeley has arrived, and deny sight, in order, so to speak, the better to explain seeing.

"But Berkeley, in his explanation, remained, at least, faithful to his own analytic method; he showed himself a good logician, and pushed his reasoning to its last consequences. This reasoning leads him to believe, that we have by sight no idea of the magnitude, distance, or situation of objects, but merely a sort of colored apparition, as a painted canvass, without there being suggested to the mind any idea of the distinction between the parts of this canvass, or rather between its different colors. He concludes, and very justly, that, if, as is unquestionably the fact, we form ideas on the occasion of sight, it is because that to the most intimate notions we have formed of body by touch, we adapt the concomitant colors which we receive by sight, precisely as we give to objects names which have no necessary or exact relation with them. All this is logical and reasonable. But what say the metaphysicians who have come since, and adopted Berkeley's ideas, while mutilating them in the absurdest manner? Here, among others, is a curious example of the confusion, which, after him, has been introduced on this subject. Vision on the retina is subject to one mighty difficulty. Objects, as is known, are painted on the bottom of the eye inverted, the upper part of a given object being painted on the lower part of the eye, and the lower part of the object on the upper part of the eye, and so also as to right and left. This being so, whence is it, that we see objects in their natural position? Before Berkeley, they explained this, by conceiving a blind man holding in his hands two sticks that cross each other, and with them touching the extremities of an object. The lower hand of this man would feel the upper part of the object, and the upper hand the lower part. This explication of the erect appearance of the image, is wholly incompatible with Berkeley's reasonings. He, therefore, carefully refutes it. He shows, evidently, that we have no cognition of the intersection of the radius pencils, nor of the impulse of these pencils in right lines. He cannot conceive, he says, how the soul should judge of the situation of an object by things which it does not perceive, or how it can perceive them without knowing it. Add to this,' he continues, that the explaining the manner of vision by the example of cross sticks, and hunting for the object along the axes of the radius. pencils, doth suppose the proper objects of sight to be perceived at a distance from us, contrary to what hath been demonstrated.' The argument is solid and irrefragable. It is absolutely necessary to reject altogether Berkeley's hypothesis, or to renounce the cross sticks.

"There remains, then, if we accept this hypothesis, the

difficulty of the erect appearance of objects. This, however, is not a difficulty for him, who, I repeat it, does not admit that sight can of itself give us any idea of extension. Naturally, then, according to him, we see objects neither erect nor inverted; we see merely colors, without their suggesting to us any notion of situation, size, or distance. But what follows? The school of Locke, the sensualist school in France and England, while admitting Berkeley's analysis, was unable to resolve to admit the obvious induction from the inversion of objects on the retina. It did not comprehend the subtilty of Berkeley's metaphysics; it tended to materialism; it would see sensation everywhere, and could not resolve not to find in sensation all that it sought; it wished to be able to point to all things with the finger, and to stereotype, so to speak, the sublimest intelligence in a piece of matter. It saw objects inverted on the retina; then it concluded, that we naturally see objects inverted. In this respect it did not comprehend the subtile Berkeley, who ceases never to repeat, that we do not see objects at all, that we have only a general sensation of color. But Berkeley adding, afterwards, that we form all our ideas of extension by touch, the materialist school hastened to adopt this part of his argument. It united, therefore, things fundamentally contradictory and irreconcilable. It believed, that, primitively, we see objects inverted, and yet that sight is incapable of giving us any idea of extension,-two propositions logically contradictory. Then it proceeded to explain the erect appearance of images by the hypothesis of Berkeley. It is thus that is formed, by a monstrous amalgam, the absurdest opinion of which science has ever afforded an example. It was believed, repeated, taught, as a truth proved, and beyond question, that naturally we are incapable of seeing; that, if we see, it is by favor of the sense of touch and of locomotion ; that, primitively, we see bodies as if they were placed on our retina; that we see them inverted, the top at the bottom, the bottom at the top, the right at the left, and the left at the right; that we habituate ourselves, afterwards, to give to bodies their erect appearance; and that in this work the touch is our guide and our educator. Then was proclaimed louder than ever, sensation and experience. This was all as it should be. The sensation, which of all our sensations appears the most material, that of touch, had it not just obtained a brilliant triumph? So was understood, and still is understood, Berkeley's New Theory of Vision!

"Here is a strange paradox, which the eighteenth century accepts with so much favor, and which appears to complete so