53. These remarks show that we do not transfer our sensations to the exterior, that they are a medium whereby our soul is informed, but not images wherein it contemplates its objects. All sensations indicate an external cause; but some, like those of sight and touch, in an especial manner denote multiplicity and continuity, or extension. 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.