portion to the real magnitude of objects—all this is the work of the touch, and of the touch alone.[1]
Perhaps the following consideration may help the reader to understand how the sight becomes instructed by the touch. Our natural visual judgment undoubtedly is, as we have said, that the eye and the landscape which it sees are precisely coextensive with each other; and the natural conclusion must be, that whatever surface is sufficient to cover the one, must be sufficient to cover the other also. But is this found to be the case? By no means. You lay your finger on your eye, and it completely covers it. You then lay the same finger on the landscape, and it does not cover, perhaps, the hundred millionth part of its surface. Thus are the judgments and conclusions of the eye corrected and refuted by the experience of the finger, until, at length, the eye actually believes that it sees things to be larger than itself; a total mistake, however, on its part, as Berkeley was the first to show; for the object which it seems to see as greatly larger than itself, is only suggested by another object which is always smaller than itself. The small visible object suggests the thought of a large tangible object, and the latter it is which chiefly occupies the mind; but
- ↑ It may, perhaps, be thought that all this information might be acquired by the simple act of closing our eyelids. But here the tactual sensations are so faint that we might be doubtful whether the veil was drawn over our eye or over the face of things. Our limits prevent us from stating other objections to which this explanation is exposed.
