It demands a great effort to clear our minds of these familiar conceptions which, it is plain are nothing but naïve realism. Yes! the mechanical conception of the universe is nothing but naïve realism.

To recapitulate our idea, and, to make it more plain by an illustration, here is a tuning-fork on the table before me. With a vigorous stroke of the bow I set it vibrating. The two prongs separate, oscillate rapidly, and a sound of a certain tone is heard. I connect this tuning-fork, by means of electric wires, with a Déprez recording apparatus which records the vibrations on the blackened surface of a revolving cylinder; and we can thus, by an examination of the trace made under our eyes, ascertain all the details of the movement which animates it. We see, parallel to each other, two different orders of phenomena; the visual phenomena which show us that the tuning-fork is vibrating, and the auditory phenomena which convey to us the fact that it is making a sound.

The physicist, asked for an explanation of all this, will answer: "It is the vibration of the tuning-fork which, transmitted by the air, is carried to our auditory apparatus, causes a vibra[38]tion in the tympanum, the movements of which are communicated to the small bones of the middle ear, thence (abridging details) to the terminations of the auditory nerve, and so produces in us the subjective sensation of sound." Well, in so saying, the physicist commits an error of interpretation; outside our ears there exists something we do not know which excites them; this something cannot be the vibratory movement of the tuning-fork, for this vibratory movement which we can see is likewise a subjective sensation; it no more exists outside our sight than sound exists outside our ears. In any case, it