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when a beam of white light is incident on any such medium, it will be found at its emergence deficient in some one or more of the elements of colour, and will therefore have a tint complementary to that of the absorbed portion. Supposing, as is most probable in itself, and agrees with the general tenor of the facts, that an equal percentage of the light of any specified colour which arrives at any depth within the medium is absorbed in traversing an equal additional thickness of it, the intensity of the coloured ray so circumstanced would diminish in geometrical, as the thickness traversed increases in arithmetical progression. The more absorbable any prismatic colour, then the more quickly will it become so much reduced in proportion to the rest as to exercise no perceptible colorific action on the eye. And thus it is found that in looking through different thicknesses of one and the same coloured glass or liquid, the tint does not merely become deeper and fuller, but changes its character."1

And as to the supposition that with the necessary changes in ourselves we might see things which we now judge to be beautiful as repulsively ugly, we have already replied to it in more ways than one, and we would only say of it now, it is simply a truism. If we were so made that we should see things as ugly, we would see them as ugly; there can be no doubt of it. But that does not alter the fact, nor in any way invalidate the supposition, that what we see as beautiful is beautiful as we see it. And who does not see that, when we say that with certain changes in ourselves we would see things which we now deem to be beautiful as repulsively ugly, we are supposing that then we would either have a false vision of things, or would 1 Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects, lect. vi.

not see the same things as we now see at all? "Bring a sentient being, with eyes a little different, with fingers ten times harder than mine; and to him that thing which I call tree shall be yellow and soft, as truly as to me it is green and hard. Form his nervous structure in all points the reverse of mine, and this same tree shall not be combustible or heat-producing, but dissoluble and cold-producing, not high and convex, but deep and concave; shall simply have all properties exactly the reverse of those I attribute to it." 1 Exactly so; for you are making that supposition. But is a tree as we know it any the less substantially a tree with height and convexity and hardness, etc., because we can suppose that it might be perceived as possessed of qualities the very reverse of these? And then there is a much more important and fundamental question following upon that. Can we indeed suppose a tree to be possessed of qualities the very reverse of those which we now perceive it to have? Can we think of a tree, that is, as having no height, no convexity, no hardness-none of the qualities which we now think of it as possessing, but "exactly the reverse"? Can we? Or would not that be to think of a tree as no tree? thus establishing an equation between something and nothing, as Cosmic philosophers would say, and squaring the circle. If we think of a tree at all, we must think of it as it has been given to us in experience; and to think of what might have been had we been constituted so and so does not help us in any way towards the settlement of the question either one way or the other as to the reality or phenomenality of the things we now perceive. And had we seventy-five senses instead of five we would be 1 Carlyle's Essay on Novalis.

THE QUESTION AT ISSUE.

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no nearer it than now. Nothing comes of such suppositions but confusion and evasion of the points at issue. They only serve to withdraw the mind from the consideration of the facts we have; they add nothing to them in the way of demonstration or proof of a theory of knowledge. Here are certain things before us—a table, a chair, a tree, a garden-are they in reality as we know them and perceive them to be, or are they not? Have they a permanent existence out there at such a distance from us? That is the point; and no amount of supposition as to what might, or might not, be on such and such other conditions can help us towards a correct judgment as to the existence of things as they are now.

But how are they now? and where are they? and what are they? for that is just what we want to know, it will be said. Well, to speak of things intelligibly and as best we can, There, see, is a table at some distance from us. It is square; it is solid; it has a persistence independently of our individual perceptions, as ten or fifteen or a hundred of us may see it at once, or others can see it, as they tell us, when we are away or have turned our backs upon it. It is not, then, a modification of my consciousness, nor of your consciousness, nor of any other man's consciousness; it is not a state of any individual man's mind, nor of any definite number of men's minds; it has an existence and persistence which distinguishes it from a phantom or a picture of anything as seen in a dream, and no one can reason us into the belief that it is not there, out there, and apart from us, as we see it. It is what we would call a real and solid, outwardly existing material object. It may not be perceived by other orders of intelligence, if there are such, as by us; but that does

Q

not detract from its reality, nor deprive it in any way of the qualities which we perceive belong to it. And for anyone to speak of "that fiction in the region of common sense by which I judge this writing-table to be solid while, for aught I know to the contrary, the empty spaces between its particles may be as much greater than the particles as the inter-stellar spaces are greater than the stars," is like making the not very wise suggestion that solidity may not be solidity. No matter how far its particles may be apart, a solid thing is solid; and though we may think of it as composed of innumerable particles or atoms lying side by side, we still perceive it to be one and know it as one. It is still a table, a chair, a drop of water, or a something else. It is not a mere aggregate of separately existing atoms; it has unity as well as multiplicity. And for anything that has been established to the contrary, there may be continuity in its structure, as there seems to be. Why not? To say that there is not might seem to some like saying that we do not see things as we see them. And to say that science teaches us better, or that there is any other mode of arriving at the truth of things visible than by our senses, is either to set up our guesses against experience, or to convict our senses of mendacity by what has no relation to them. For there is no way of arriving at the existence of matter save through our senses; and if we know so little about the constitution of it as we are said to do,2

1 Fiske's Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, vol. i., part i., c. 11.

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"Nothing is more preposterously unscientific than to assert (as is constantly done by the quasi-scientific writers of the present day) that with the utmost strides attempted by science, we should necessarily be sensibly nearer to a conception of the ultimate nature of matter. Only sheer ignorance could assert that there is any limit to the amount of information which human beings may in time acquire of the constitution of matter."-Tait's Recent Advances in Physical Science, lect. xii.

THINGS IN THEMSELVES.

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why may it not be continuous rather than atomic? And when we look through a glass and see an object, which seems continuous to the naked eye, as unconnected in its structure, why-as in the case of the nebulae, which are said to be "overlooked in very large telescopes, though obvious in much smaller ones" (Nature, vol. xix., pp. 221, 290)—may we not be overlooking something in it which we perceived by the naked eye? Are real things so few in this universe of ours that there must needs be illusions to give variety to them? Or may there not be more things in heaven and earth than have yet been dreamt of in philosophy? At all events, we do not need to await the discovery whether matter is atomic or not, or what are its constituent elements, or to think how this or that or the other thing might look through a microscope, or an opera-glass, or any other glass, to know that some of its forms and combinations are beautiful. And if they are beautiful as we see them (and how can we think of them as we do not see them ?), they are beautiful; we know them to be beautiful, and that is an end of it.

But can we know "things in themselves," then? it will be asked. Well, we do not know till we know what is meant by things-in-themselves. If by the

phrase is meant things out of all relation to our knowing, perceptive faculties, and which cannot be supposed to be known by us under any conditions, then we would say, if there be such things, they are by the very supposition of their existence out of the reach of knowledge, and so we can have nothing to do with them. But if by things-in-themselves be meant positively existing and persistent realities in the shape of men and women, stones and chairs and tables, trees