ence of an animal like the Tasmanian Devil (Sarcophilus ursinus). The Common Earthworm must possess little cognition of a material world external to its very limited sense perceptions. As remarked by Darwin:—"Worms are poorly provided with sense organs, for they cannot be said to see, although they can just distinguish between light and darkness: they are completely deaf, and only have a feeble power of smell: the sense of touch alone is well developed."[1] The world as we know it is therefore actually non-existent to these simply organised animals.
The microscope reveals the existence of living beings of which by our unaided eyesight we should have scarcely dreamed; or, if the scientific imagination had been compelled to predicate their being to account for physical and evolutionary results, we should still have been in profound ignorance as to their structure, life, or habits.[2] So we may readily imagine some animals as possessing a sense of vision unfolding the details of nature around us in a manner far beyond our ken, while others may have the sensations of sight so blunted and obtuse that only the mighty things of the world come under their individual notice. If we allow our reason to run riot with the first reflection, we can conceive a sky and earth very dissimilar to those of our experience. Through an atmosphere clouded with dust and germs such beings should gaze upon a sun by day as only known at present by our telescopes; at night the story told by astronomers would be exhibited to their unaided eyes: all ideas of dimension would be increased; the hidden things of natural life would be exposed; animal and vegetable tissues would appear transformed, and our ideas as to assimilation in colour and structure be in many cases destroyed, and others created of a fuller and more comprehensive type.
- ↑ 'The Formation of Vegetable Mould,' &c. p. 315.—In the words of G.H. Lewes, "Light, colour, sound, pain, taste, smell are all states of consciousness, and nothing more. Light with its myriad forms and colours—sound with its thousandfold like—make nature what nature appears to us; but they are only the investitures of the mind. Nature is an eternal Darkness—an eternal Silence."
- ↑ "Beyond the reach of the microscope, there are still worlds of events in nature which we can never see, although we may infer the existence of some of them in other ways."—G.J. Storey (Sci. Proc. R. Dubl. Soc. n.s, vol. viii. p. 230).
