JANUARY] The Journal of Leo Tolstoi
same, no matter to what changes you submit it. The form of a crystal will only then be changed when chemical changes occur in it, inner ones; the same with society.
5) It would be good to write a preface to Spier 169 containing the following :
The world is such as we see it, only if there do not exist any other beings differently built from us and endowed with other senses than ours. If we see not only the possibility, but the necessity, of the existence of other beings endowed with other senses than ours, then the world is in no case, merely such as we see it. Our imagination of the world shows only our attitude to the world, just as the visual picture which we form for our- selves from what we see as far as the horizon and the sky represents in no way the actual outlines of the objects seen. The other senses, hearing, smell, principally touch, in verifying our visual impressions give us a more definite conception of the seen objects; but that which we know as broad, thick, hard or soft or how the things seen by us sound or smell, do not prove that we know these things fully and that if a new sense (above the five) were given us, it would not disclose to us that our conception of things formed by our five senses was not just as deceptive as that conception of the flatness of objects and their diminishing
in perspective which sight only gives us.
