to ridicule, under the name of naïve realism. All which proves that the naïveté of some may be the excessive refinement of others.
To establish scientifically this opinion they batter down the theory of the specific energy of the nerves. I have recalled in a previous page[1] of what this theory consists. I have shown that if, by mechanical or electrical means, our different sensory nerves are excited, notwithstanding the identity of the excitant, a different sensation is provoked in each case—light when the optic nerve is stimulated, sound when the acoustic, and so on. It is now answered to this argument based on fact that the nature of these excitants must be complex. It is not impossible, it is thought, that the electric force contains within itself both luminous and sonorous actions; it is not impossible that a mechanical excitement should change the electric state of the nerve affected, and that, consequently, these subsidiary effects explain how one and the same agent may, according to the nerves employed, produce different effects.
3. After the spiritualists and the experimentalists, let us take the metaphysicians. Among them one has always met with the most varying specimens of opinions and with arguments for and against all possible theories.
Thus it is, for example, with the external percep-
- ↑ See p. 22, sup.—Ed.
