these sensations within one single and identical synthetic construction: for this they are too dissimilar. Thus, we should try in vain to unite in any kind of scheme a movement of molecules and an odour; these elements are so heterogeneous that there is no way of joining them together and combining them.
The physicists have more or less consciously perceived this, and, not being able to overcome by a frontal attack the difficulty created by the heterogeneity of our sensations, they have turned its flank. The ingenious artifice they have devised consists in retaining only some of these sensations, and in rejecting the remainder; the first being considered as really representing the essence of matter, and the latter as the effects of the former on our organs of sense; the first being reputed to be true, we may say, and the second being reputed false—that is subjective, that is not representing the of matter.[1] I have refuted this argument by showing that all our sensations without exception are subjective and equally false in regard to the of matter, and that no one of them, consequently, has any claim to explain the others.
Now, by a new interpretation, we are taught that all sensations are equally true, and that all faithfully represent the great . If they be all
- ↑ See p. 18, sup.—Ed.
