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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880 Excerpt: ...and so discover that it has another quality that we call odor. I can look at it, and see its color; and I can even touch it with my tongue, and find out the taste either of the wood itself or of the varnish that covers it. That is, it reports itself as something different to every one of my senses. Now, suppose I had only the sense of touch: so far as my knowledge is concerned, a violin would be only something hard, having a particular shape. Suppose I had only the sense of sight: I should be able to perceive its outline and its color; and a violin would be only something having shape and color. Suppose I had only the sense of hearing: a violin would be something having no shape, color, or hardness at all, but only sound. Suppose I had only the sense of taste: then the violin would be only something that had about it a resinous taste, or a taste like varnish, or a taste like cedar or spruce, or whatever the wood of which it was composed. Thus we come at anything that you choose to select as an illustration, from stars down to street-dust. We reach them through the functions of these senses that are capable of perceiving their various qualities; and they are to us according to these perceptions which we bring to the investigation of them. Now, it is perfectly conceivable that we might have more than five senses, just as it is conceivable that we might have less than five, as we know a great many persons do. If we had six senses or seven or ten, the addition of these perceptive powers might give us a new universe. That is, the universe to us, to-day, is what it is because it is related thus to the different perceptive faculties and powers with which we come to its investigation. There is nothing that is such, in itself. Water of such a temperature as would fr...

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