Under the second supposition the mystery of life would be still more behind the veil than at present, natural causation would be even less understood; things would be fewer and farther away, the smaller non-existent, the larger more superficially appreciated. Would nature be the same under such different conceptions?—and yet the sense of sight has been alone considered. With a difference in the sensory organs or sensations of smell, a fetid stink might be appreciated as a sweet odour; touch may from a similar reason become an unknown and unimagined power, or an imperfectly realized sensation; from a like cause taste may be so varied as to be outside the nauseous or agreeable experiences; while the sense of hearing might develop a familiarity with sounds of which we are absolutely ignorant, or otherwise prove oblivious to some of our most common perceptions.[1] Without losing ourselves in metaphysical subtleties as to whether things really exist as cognizable by our sense organs, or whether much of our materialism is not only to a considerable degree a question of sensation, we must at least push that problem beyond ourselves, and estimate it throughout all animal life if we hope to gain any clear ideas of the phenomena of animal colouration, or the more complex conceptions of mimicry or protective resemblance. For instance, it has been proposed that the striped Tiger finds the protection of "aggressive mimicry" by the blending of its colours, or the assimilation of the same, with the reeds or bamboo clusters in which it hides. This is undoubtedly true so far as our own sense organs or powers of sight are concerned; but do the Antelopes or other animals on which it preys have the same sensations on the matter as ourselves? Increase the penetrating power of vision, and the differences will be so clearly seen and magnified that the theory falls to the ground; decrease the same, and the proposition becomes more capable of proof. And yet this is the crucial question; one we answer by inferences, but one to which we can give no absolute reply.
Again, what do we know as to the colour perceptions of
- ↑ Cases of atrophy following disease appear to be always attended by a corresponding increase of other organs; blind animals always possess very strongly developed organs of touch, hearing, and smell." Cf. Weismann, 'Lectures on Heredity,' &c., 2nd ed. vol. i. p. 88.
