Let us carefully note the consequence at which we should arrive, if, while admitting, on the one hand, that our consciousness lights up and reveals the objects without creating them, we were, on the other hand, to admit that it makes up for this passivity by creating relations between objects. We dare not go so far as to say that this creation of relations is arbitrary and corresponds in no way to reality; or that, when we judge two neighbouring or similar objects, the relations of contiguity and resemblance are pure inventions of our consciousness, and that these objects are really neither contiguous nor similar. It must therefore be supposed that the relation is already, in some manner, attracted into the objects; it must be admitted that our intelligence does not apply its categories haphazard or from the caprice of the moment; and it must be admitted that it is led to apply them because it has perceived in the objects themselves a sign and a reason which are an invitation to this application, and its justification. On this hypothesis, therefore, contiguity and resemblance must exist in the things themselves, and must be perceived; for without this we should run the risk of finding similar that which is different, and contiguous that which has no relation of time or space. Whence it results, evidently, that our consciousness cannot create the connection completely, and then we are greatly tempted to conclude that it only possesses the faculty of perceiving it when it exists in the objects.[27] According to this conception, the role of the consciousness in the perception of a connection is that of a witness, as in the perception of objects. The consciousness does not create, but it verifies. Resemblance is a physical property of objects, like colour; and contiguity is a physical property of objects, like form. The connections between the objects form part of the group object and not of the group consciousness, and they are just as independent of consciousness as are the objects themselves. Against this conclusion we must anticipate several objections. One of them will probably consist in accentuating the difference existing between the object and the connection from the dynamical point of view. That the object may be passively contemplated by the consciousness can be understood, it will be said; but the relation is not only an object of perception--it is, further, a principle of action, a power of suggestion, and an agent of change.