50. In order that the truth of what we have just advanced may be perfectly understood, and strongly felt, we would offer the reader a picture whence determinate sensations may be successively eliminated, and made to mark the degree of elimination which it is possible to reach, but not pass. Let us suppose all animals at once to lose the sense of taste, or all bodies to be by nature destitute of the property of causing by their contact with an organ the sensation called taste. The external world, nevertheless, continues to exist as before; the same bodies that caused in us the sensations now lost, continue to exist, and may be applied to the very organ they before affected, and cause in it sensations of touch, as of soft or hard, warm or cold. Either savory bodies, or the organs of animals, have undergone some change, which has interrupted their previous relations; a cause which before produced an effect is now seen to be impotent to produce it. This may be owing to a modification of the bodies without changing their nature, so far as we know it; and it is also possible that they have not been changed, but that this difference arises solely from an alteration of the organs. But in any case, the disappearance of this sensation has not made anything resembling it disappear from the universe; if the change has been only in the organs, external bodies remain untouched; and if it has taken place in bodies, it has made them lose a _causing_ property of the sensation, but not a property _represented_ by the sensation. We have taken all taste from food, and the universe exists as before; let us now take away all odors, by changing odoriferous bodies, or the organ of smell. The same follows as in the case of taste. Odoriferous bodies will continue to exist, and even transmit to our organ the effluvia that before produced the sensation of smell; and the only novelty will be the non-existence of that sensation. Either the disposition to receive the necessary impression will be wanting in our organs, or a causality will have disappeared from the universe, but not a thing represented by the sensation. Gardens will not be despoiled of their beauty, nor the fields of their luxuriant verdure; the tree will still display its leafy bower, and the fair fruit hang from its boughs, and be shaken by the wind.