But, _secondly_, we have to consider the stage of the process in which
vision is in some way associated with an object which is _not_ any of
the things with which the visual sensations are connected. It is clear
that the process is not completed--that our task, which is to dissolve
the primary synthesis of vision and its phenomena, is but half executed,
unless such an object be found. For though we have associated the visual
sensations (colours) with something different from themselves, still
vision clings to them without a hair's-breadth of interval and pursues
them whithersoever they go. As far, then, as we have yet gone, it cannot
be said that our vision is felt or known to be distanced from the fixed
stars even by the diameter of a grain of sand. The synthesis of sight
and colour is not yet discriminated. How, then, is the interval
interposed? We answer, by the discovery of a tangible object in a
different place from any of the tangible objects associated with colour;
and then by associating, in some way or other, the operations of vision
with this object. Such an object is discovered in the eye. Now, as has
frequently been said, we cannot associate colours or the visual
sensations with this eye; for these have been already disposed of
otherwise. What, then, do we associate with it--and how? We find, upon
experiment, that our apprehension of the various visual sensations
depends on the presence and particular location of this small tangible
body. We find that the whole array of visual phenomena disappear when it
is tactually covered, that they reappear when it is reopened, and so
forth. Thus we come in some way to associate vision with it--not as
colour, however, not as visual sensation. We regard the organ and its
dispositions merely as a general condition regulating the apprehension
of the visual sensations, and no more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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