THE OBJECTS OF SCIENCE 69

even to the secondary qualities of bodies, and certainly even

the common belief on the subject is nearer the truth than its

negation can be.

We are sometimes told that were there no eyes or ears

darkness and silence would be universal. Now our notion

of light is quite inadequate to make its essential nature

known to us as it might be known by some intelligence of

a higher order than our own. But, nevertheless, if light

as we know it, and sound as we know it, are imperfect

cognitions because thus subjective, the very same objection

applies to our notions of "darkness" and "silence." They

are as much subjective as our sensations of colour or melody.

A world without eyes or ears would be neither light nor dark,

neither sonorous nor silent, but in a condition absolutely

unimaginable by us. Yet that world would be far more

like the brilliant one we know than it would resemble one

plunged in darkness. For since we suppose the physical

forces, sun, moon and stars, meteors, volcanoes and phosphor-

escent organisms, to exist in it as they do now, all the

objective conditions of light, save sense-organs, would, by

the hypothesis, be present, while the objective conditions of

what, to our senses, is darkness, would not be present.

Though all sensations of eye and ear would, of course,

vanish from such a world, yet the objective qualities those

sensations reveal to us would continue to exist. Other

persons, again, think that they get nearer to the absolute

truth of things by considering colours and sounds to be

really "modes of motion" different orders and different

degrees of " vibrations." But, as we have seen, the very

same cavils may be brought against the validity of our per-

ceptions of primary qualities as against our perceptions of

secondary ones. In that case "vibrations" would be nothing

but associated, vivid and faint, muscular and tactual feelings,

and such must at least be as unlike the objective causes of

even to the secondary qualities of bodies, and certainly even

the common belief on the subject is nearer the truth than its

negation can be.

We are sometimes told that were there no eyes or ears

darkness and silence would be universal. Now our notion

of light is quite inadequate to make its essential nature

known to us as it might be known by some intelligence of

a higher order than our own. But, nevertheless, if light

as we know it, and sound as we know it, are imperfect

cognitions because thus subjective, the very same objection

applies to our notions of "darkness" and "silence." They

are as much subjective as our sensations of colour or melody.

A world without eyes or ears would be neither light nor dark,

neither sonorous nor silent, but in a condition absolutely

unimaginable by us. Yet that world would be far more

like the brilliant one we know than it would resemble one

plunged in darkness. For since we suppose the physical

forces, sun, moon and stars, meteors, volcanoes and phosphor-

escent organisms, to exist in it as they do now, all the

objective conditions of light, save sense-organs, would, by

the hypothesis, be present, while the objective conditions of

what, to our senses, is darkness, would not be present.

Though all sensations of eye and ear would, of course,

vanish from such a world, yet the objective qualities those

sensations reveal to us would continue to exist. Other

persons, again, think that they get nearer to the absolute

truth of things by considering colours and sounds to be

really "modes of motion" different orders and different

degrees of " vibrations." But, as we have seen, the very

same cavils may be brought against the validity of our per-

ceptions of primary qualities as against our perceptions of

secondary ones. In that case "vibrations" would be nothing

but associated, vivid and faint, muscular and tactual feelings,

and such must at least be as unlike the objective causes of