beyond the truth that matter is an excitant of our nervous system, and is only known in connection with the perception we have of this last.
If we open a work on physics or physiology we shall note with astonishment how the above considerations are misunderstood. Observers of nature who seek, and rightly, to give the maximum of exactness to their observations, show that they are obsessed by one constant prejudice: they mistrust sensation.
A great part of their efforts consists, by what they say, in reducing the rôle of sensation to its fitting part in science; and the invention of mechanical aids to observation is constantly held up as a means of remedying the imperfection of our senses. In physics the thermometer replaces the sensation of heat that our skin—our hand, for example—experiences by the measurable elevation of a column of mercury, and the scale-pan of a precise balance takes the place of the vague sensation of trifling weights; in physiology a registering apparatus replaces the sensation of the pulse which the doctor feels with the end of his forefinger by a line on paper traced with indelible ink, of which the duration and the intensity, as well as the varied combinations of these two elements, can be measured line by line.
Learned men who pride themselves on their
