words. We may as well be surprised when we cannot transmute sunbeams into gold, as when we cannot transmute whiteness into words. Whiteness is a sight, and words possess no affinity to it-words are sounds, and they cannot be converted into whiteness.

§ 11.-Every existence is its own best interpreter, and its only physical revealer.

This asking what is whiteness, what is thought, &c., proceeds on the supposition that whiteness, &c., is not itself, but something else. Now, in all cases, whiteness or thought, &c., is itself. Words can refer us to the existences which we name whiteness, but words can effect no more :-they cannot become whiteness.

§ 12.-The verbal meaning of a word is usually founded on some theory.

What is magnetism, aurora borealis, attraction, gravity, &c.? To answer these questions sensibly is to refer us to what our senses reveal; but such answers are rarely given and rarely expected. The querist seeks usually the verbal meaning of magnetism, attraction, &c., and without the slighest suspicion that his investigations are verbal. The verbal answer is a definition founded on some theory. I object not to it, and it may be useful; but I wish to discriminate between the verbal answer and the sensible, that men may not seem to disagree, where perhaps they merely misunderstand each other:—that they may not waste their efforts on verbal disquisitions, when they wish to obtain knowledge of the external universe.

§ 13.-The process which deems words the ultimate objects of inquiry, may, like all other verbal processes, be continued without end.

What is conscience, hope, faith, courage? The natural meaning is what we can discover by our consciousness, while the verbal meaning is such a definition as approved authority

shall have imposed: for instance, "conscience is the monitor within us,—the internal man,—the principle which regulates our moral conduct, &c." Like every other verbal process, this, also, may be continued in infinitum: thus, What is conscience? The moral sense. What is the moral sense? A. And what is A? B. What is B? The process admits of no end, for the last answer is as questionable as the first.

LECTURE XXIII.

IN ALL INQUIRIES WHICH RELATE TO THE SENSIBLE UNIVERSE, WE MUST DISCRIMINATE THE SENSE TO WHOSE INFORMATION THE INQUIRY REFERS.

§ 1.—Distance names a sight and a feel; hence the duplicity of asking whether seeing can inform us of distance.

CAN seeing inform us of distance? Do you mean the sight distance, or the feel? The moment we thus discriminate the information to which we refer, the question about distance loses its interest. Seeing cannot inform us of the feel distance, any more than feeling can inform us of the sight distance. We are playing a game of bo-peep when we discourse of distance, without discriminating the sense to which we refer.

§ 2. When we know that the word external is restricted to the §2.information of feeling, we shall not wonder that hearing, tasting, smelling, and seeing, cannot reveal what we mean by the word external.

A French philosopher attempted to elucidate human knowledge by a statue which is successively endued with the five senses. When it possesses no sense but smelling, its consciousness consists in the perception of odours, without any knowledge that the odours proceed from an external existence. The statue acquires hearing next, but still it obtains no consciousness that any thing external of itself exists. It acquires tasting and vision:-the tastes seem to be nothing but such as we occasionally experience when we complain of having a bitter taste in our mouths. They are accompanied with no extrinsick connexions. Vision also presented nothing but a succession of sights which passed internally before the mind,

like images painted on it. Finally, the statue obtained the sense of feeling. Then, for the first time, it learnt the existence of external objects. It found that its pedestal was external, the floor was external, &c.

§ 3. The mystery vanishes when we discriminate the sense to whose phenomena the philosopher refers for a signification of the word external. External names feels, hence the statue possessed no acquaintance with external till he acquired the sense of feeling. The statue possessed no acquaintance with heat also, and pain, till it acquired the sense of feeling; but this intelligence is not enumerated among the mysteries of the case, because heat and pain are known to name feels only. External seems different. The word names usually sights as well as feels. The French philosopher restricted its signification to the phenomena of feeling. When we know this, we need no statues to teach us that if we possess no sense of feeling, we shall be acquainted with none of its information

§ 4.-Above and below name sights; hence, hearing cannot inform us in relation to either above or below.

Another philosopher tells us that though we believe hearing can designate the place from which a sound proceeds, yet the ear is indebted for this intelligence to experience, without which hearing cannot tell whether a sound proceeds from above us or below, &c.

§ 5.—I agree with this philosopher, but his doctrine is but little mysterious if you discriminate the senses to whose phenomena we refer by the words above us and below. Above is the name of a sight and a feel. Below is also a sight and a feel; hence, hearing cannot inform us of either above or below. Hearing cannot perform the office of seeing or feeling.

§ 6. Before we can answer whether colour is connected with external objects, we must know the sense to which the word connected is intended to refer.

Professor Stewart says, a few moments' reflection must satisfy any one that the sensation of colour can reside in the mind only; yet our constant bias is to connect colour with external objects."

§ 7. Before we altercate, we must discriminate the sense to whose information we refer for the meaning of the word connected. If we mean the feel connected, (the feel produced by the links of a chain,) nothing is more puerile than to assert that colour is not connected with external objects. Colour is a sight; hence, it cannot produce the feel to which we refer by the word connected. Colour exhibits the sight connected, which is the only connexion that is applicable to colours.

§ 8.-Colour is not spread over the surface of bodies when we refer to feeling for the signification of the phrase; but colour is spread over the surface of bodies when we refer to seeing for the signification of the phrase.

"But," continues Mr. Stewart, our natural bias is to conceive white, blue, and yellow, which exist in the mind only, as something spread over the surface of bodies."

Let Mr. Stewart tell us to what sense he refers. He will admit that oil and paint can be spread over the surface of bodies, and this elucidates the whole matter. He is referring to the feel "spread over the surface." But when we say colour is spread over the surface of bodies, we allude to the sight spread and the sight bodies. To say colour is not spread over bodies, (meaning thereby the information of feeling,) is to quibble-though such a use of language was not intended by Professor Stewart. He was misled by not knowing the chameleon character of words.