Hence we also infer that the external world is not a pure illusion, but that it really exists with its great masses, its various motions, its unlimited geometry: but much of its beauty lies rather within ourselves than in it. The Creator of it has in an especial manner, shown his infinite wisdom and omnipotent hand in sensible beings, and above all in intelligences. What would the universe be were there no one to feel and to understand? The beauty, the harmony, the marvels of nature consist in the close relation, the continuous communication of objects and sensible beings. The rarest painting, were there no one to perceive and admire its beauty, would be only a collection of lineaments, a hieroglyphic of unintelligible characters; but so soon as it is seen by a feeling and knowing being, it is animated, is what it ought to be; and in this wonderful communication the object gains in beauty all that it imparts of pleasure.
Suppose a collection of instruments disposed by the proper mechanism to execute with admirable precision the highest conceptions of Bellini or Mozart: to what is it all reduced if there be no sensitive being? To vibrations in the air governed by some law, to mere movements of a fluid, subject to geometrical necessity. Introduce a man, and the geometry is changed into celestial harmony, then there is music, enchantment.
The symmetry of the walks of a garden, the elegance of its shrubbery, the color and beauty of its flowers, the fragrance of its odors, are, without a sensitive being, only geometrical figures, surfaces disposed according to some law, volumes of such or such a kind, columns of fluids springing from them and disappearing in space. Introduce man, and the geometrical figures are adorned with a thousand beauties, the flowers covered with gay colors, and the columns of fluids changed into exquisite perfumes.
[CHAPTER X.]
FORCE OF TOUCH TO MAKE SENSATIONS OBJECTIVE.
54. It has been said that touch is the surest, and perhaps the only witness of the existence of bodies; for without it, all sensations would be nothing more than simple modifications of our being, to which we could attribute no external object. But this I do not believe to be true. We receive by touch an impression, just as we do by the other senses; this impression is in all cases an affection of our being, and not something external. When, from the continuance of these impressions, their order, and their independence of our will, we judge them to proceed from objects without us, our judgment is true not only of impressions of the sense of touch, but also of those of the other senses.
55. One of the reasons whereon it has been attempted to base the superiority of touch to attest the existence of bodies, is that it gives us the idea or sensation of extension; for if we suppose a man to be deprived of all his senses but that of touch, and to pass his hand over the surface of a body, he will experience that continuity of the sensation which involves extension. This observation of those who maintain the supremacy of touch does not prove what they propose. If we pass our sight over various objects, or the different parts of one object, we shall experience the sensation of continuity just as clearly as by touch. We cannot conceive why the sensation of extension must be any clearer when the hand is passed along a balustrade than when it is seen by the eyes.
56. The advocates of this opinion assert that we acquire by the touch of our body a double sensation, which we do not by the other senses. If we pass our hand over our forehead, we feel with both our hand and our forehead, and so verify a continuity of sensations, all originating and terminating in ourselves. Thus we are conscious that both the sensations of our hand and our forehead belong to us.