k at or smell a rose, or eat a beefsteak, or listen to a piano, the
sensations which thereupon arise within me, whether immediately or
subsequently, either are the results of my seeing, smelling, eating, or
hearing, or they are not. To say that they are not is equivalent to
saying that an object need not be within reach of the perceptive
faculties in order to be perceived; that I may see or smell a rose,
though there be no rose to be seen or smelt; may dine sumptuously off
empty dishes, and be raised to the seventh heaven of delight by the
audible strains of a music which is not being executed. _Fortunati
nimium_--only too lucky would mankind be, did this turn out to be a
correct theory, affording as it would a solution of every social
problem, and serving as a panacea for every social evil. Psychology
would then be the only science worth attention, for of whatever things
proficiency in that branch of study had qualified any one to form mental
images, of those same things would he simultaneously become possessor in
full property. Whoever had succeeded in training himself to imagine
vigorously might at once have, do, or be whatever it pleased him to
imagine, becoming _ipso facto_, as the Stoics used to say an acquirer of
virtue does, 'rich, beautiful, a king.' Woe betide any one, however,
who, as long as the cosmical constitution remains what it is, shall
attempt to put the theory into practice, and desisting from all those
animal functions, involving intercourse with a real or imaginary
external world, which are vulgarly supposed essential to animal
existence, shall obstinately restrict himself to the sensations which he
believes the mind to be, without any such intercourse, capable of
creating for the body's sustenance and delectation. The physical
extinction inevitably consequent on such devotion to principle would
speedily render all the devotees physically incapable of testifying in
behalf of their peculiar opinion, and, clearing them away, would leave
no witnesses surviving but such as were signifying by deeds if not in
words their hearty adherence to the popular belief. Practically, then,
there may be assumed to be entire unanimity of assent to the truism that
for our senses to be affected by the presence of external objects, the
objects must needs be present to affect them. On all hands it is in
effect admitted that in some mode or other external objects exist, but
if so, and if the sensations resulting from operat