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from which with smack, pause and reiteration, we reach one or two uncertain conclusions.

The ear is akin to the eye, though considerably below it, in the number of judgments its habitual use involves. The direction, distance and source of sounds are plainly learned by experience; though in- most cases we hardly separate the mere phenomenal fact from the judgments on which our knowledge depends. To these are to be added all the variety of feelings expressed by intonation, and also that representative power of articulate sounds instituted in language yet through familiarity employed and interpreted without thought. Here again the under-play of the understanding is very great, exploding a single ictus of sound, like a thimble of powder, into a death-warrant, or opening the gates of blessedness by the key of a monosyllabic assent. Thus does the mind work up the crude material, the physical nutrition of an organic susceptibility into the daily food and the special feasts of the soul.

The point of most philosophical interest in these senses is the approach we make to a more exact answer to the inquiry: What do we perceive? Is it something external to the organ? or is it something subjective to it? or is it subjective to the mind itself? If, in the word perception, we include all the mind's action therein, its direct and its inferential knowing, then plainly we perceive something external to the eye and to the mind. If, however, by perception, we mean only the arriving at those simple intuitive data around which these judgments cluster, and which they construct into the well-ordered and complete vision of mature life, then the mind perceives that only which is subjective to itself, and knows directly no more about the intermediate organ it uses than it does of the external object which is the joint, final product of its perceptive and reflective powers. The first spontaneous answer of philosophy has been, the