sible body, and all visible things, into the eye, we must turn the eye
of the visible body also into the eye; a process which, of course, again
turns the visible body, and all visible things, _out_ of the eye. And thus
the procedure eternally defeats itself. Thus the very law which appears to
annihilate, or render impossible, the objective existence of visible
things, as creations independent of the eye--this very law, when carried
into effect with a thorough-going consistency, vindicates and establishes
that objective existence, with a logical force, an iron necessity, which
no physiological paradox can countervail.

We have now probably said enough to convince the attentive reader, that
the sense of sight, when brought under its own notice as a sensation,
either directly, or through the ministry of the touch or of the
imagination, (as it is when revealed to us in its organ,) falls very
far--falls almost infinitely within its own sphere. Sight, revealing
itself as a sense, spreads over a span commensurate with the diameter of
the whole visible space; sight, revealing itself as a Sensation, dwindles
to a speck of almost unappreciable insignificance, when compared with the
other phenomena which fall within the visual ken. This speck is the organ,
and the organ is the sentient circumference drawn inwards, far within
itself, according to a law which (however unconscious we may be of its
operation) presides over every act and exercise of vision--a law which,
while it contracts the sentient sphere, throws, at the same time, into
necessary objectivity every phenomenon that falls external to the
diminished circle. This is the law in virtue of which subjective visual
sensations are real visible objects. The moment the sight becomes one of
its own sensations, it is restricted, in a peculiar manner, to that
particular sensation. It now falls, as we have said, within its own sphere.
Now, nothing more was wanting to make the other visual sensations real
independent existences; for, _qua_ sensations, they are all originally
independent of each other, and the sense itself being now a sensation,
they must now also be independent of it.

We now pass on to the consideration of the sense of touch.

Here precisely the same process is gone through which was observed to take
place in the case of vision. The same law manifests itself here, and the
same inevitable consequence follows, namely--that sensations are
things--that subjective affec