The title of the subject upon which I am going to speak this evening might be—if I were asked to give it a title—"The Six Gateways of Knowledge." I feel that the subject I am about to bring before you is closely connected with the studies for which the several prizes have been given. The question I will ask you to think is: What are the means by which the human mind acquires knowledge of external matter?
John Bunyan likens the human soul to a citadel on a hill, self-contained, having no means of communication with the outer world, except by five gates—Eye Gate, Ear Gate, Mouth Gate, Nose Gate, and Feel Gate. Bunyan clearly was in want of a word here. He uses "feel" in the sense of "touch"; a designation which to this day is so commonly used, that I can scarcely accuse it of being incorrect. At the same time, the more correct and distinct designation undoubtedly is, the sense of touch. The late Dr. George Wilson, first Professor of Technology in the University of Edinburgh, published, some time before his death, a beautiful little book under the title of The Five Gateways of Knowledge; in which he quotes John Bunyan, in the manner I have indicated to you. But I have said six gateways of knowledge, and I must endeavour to justify this saying. I am going to try to prove to you, that we have six senses—that if we are to number the senses at all, we must make them six.
The only census of the senses, so far as I am aware, that ever before made them more than five, was the Irishman's reckoning of seven senses. I presume the Irishman's seventh sense was common sense; and I believe that the possession of that virtue by my countrymen—I speak as an Irishman—I say the large possession of the seventh sense which I believe Irishmen have, and the exercise of it, will do more to alleviate the woes of Ireland, than even the removal of the "melancholy ocean" which surrounds its shores. Still, I cannot scientifically see how we can make more than six senses. I shall, however, should time permit, return to this question of a seventh sense, and I shall endeavour to throw out suggestions towards answering the question—Is there, or is there not, a magnetic sense? It is possible that there is, but facts and observations, so far, give us no evidence that there is a magnetic sense.
The six senses that I intend to explain, so far as I can, this evening, are according to the ordinary enumeration, the sense of sight, the sense of hearing, the sense of smell, the sense of taste, and the sense of touch divided into two departments. A hundred years ago, Dr. Thomas Reid, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow, pointed out that there was a broad distinction between the sense of roughness or of resistance, which was possessed by the hand, and the sense of heat. Reid's idea has not I think been carried out so much as it deserves. We do not, I believe, find in any of the elementary treatises on Natural Philosophy, or in the physiologists' writings upon the senses, a distinct reckoning of six senses. We have a great deal of explanation about the muscular sense, and the tactile sense; but we have not a clear and broad distinction of the sense of touch into two departments, which seems to me to follow from Dr. Thomas Reid's way of explaining the sense of touch, although he does not himself distinctly formulate the distinction I am now going to explain.
The sense of touch, of which the organ commonly considered is the hand, but which is possessed by the whole sensitive surface of the body, is very distinctly a double quality. If I touch any object, I perceive a complication of sensations. I perceive a certain sense of roughness, but I also perceive a very distinct sensation, which is not of roughness, or of smoothness. There are two sensations here, let us try to analyse them. Let me dip my hand into this bowl of hot water. The moment I touch the water, I perceive a very distinct sensation, a sensation of heat. Is that a sensation of roughness, or of smoothness? No. Again, I dip my hand into this basin of iced water. I perceive a very distinct sensation. Is this a sensation of roughness, or of smoothness? No. Is this comparable with that former sensation of heat? I say yes. Although it is opposite, it is comparable with the sensation of heat. I am not going to say that we have two sensations in this department; a sensation of heat, and a sensation of cold. I shall endeavour to explain that the perceptions of heat and cold are perceptions of different degrees of one and the same quality, but that that quality is markedly different from the sense of roughness. Well now, what is this sense of roughness? It will take me some time to explain it fully. I shall therefore say in advance, that it is a sense of force; and I shall tell you in advance, before I justify completely what I have to say, that the six senses, regarding which I wish to give some explanation are, the sense of sight, the sense of hearing, the sense of taste, the sense of smell, the sense of heat, and the sense of force. The sense of force is the sixth sense; or the senses of heat and of force are the sense of touch divided into two, to complete the census of six senses that I am endeavouring to demonstrate.
Now I have hinted at a possible seventh sense—a magnetic sense— and though out of the line I propose to follow, and although time is precious, and does not permit much of digression, I wish just to remove the idea that I am in any way suggesting anything towards that wretched superstition of animal magnetism, and table-turning, and spiritualism, and mesmerism, and clairvoyance, and spirit-rapping, of which we have heard so much. There is no seventh sense of the mystic kind. Clairvoyance, and the like, are the result of bad observation chiefly; somewhat mixed up, however, with the effects of wilful imposture, acting on an innocent, trusting mind. But if there is not a distinct magnetic sense, I say it is a very great wonder that there is not.
We all know a little about the mariner's compass, the needle pointing to the North, and so on; but not many of us have gone far into the subject, and not many of us understand all the recent discoveries in electromagnetism. I could wish, had I the apparatus here, and if you would allow me, to show you an experiment in magnetism. If we had before us a powerful magnet, or say the machine that is giving us this beautiful electric light by which the hall is illuminated, it, serving to excite an electromagnet, would be one part of our apparatus; the other part would be a piece of copper. Suppose then we had this apparatus, I would show you a very wonderful discovery made by Faraday, and worked out admirably by Foucault, an excellent French experimenter. I have said that one part of this apparatus would be a piece of copper, but silver would answer as well. Probably no other metal than copper or silver—certainly no other one, of all the metals that are well known, and obtainable for ordinary experiments—possesses, and no other metal or substance whether metallic or not, is known to possess, in anything like the same degree as copper and silver, the quality I am now going to call attention to.
The quality I refer to is "electric conductivity," and the result of that quality, in the experiment I am now going to describe, is that a piece of copper or a piece of silver, let fall between the poles of a magnet, will fall down slowly as if it were falling through mud. I take this body and let it fall. Many of you here will be able to calculate what fraction of a second it takes to fall one foot. If I took this piece of copper, placed it just above the space between the poles of a powerful electromagnet and let it go, you would see it fall slowly down before you; it would perhaps take a quarter of a minute to fall a few inches.
This experiment was carried out in a most powerful manner, by Lord Lindsay (now Lord Crawford), assisted by Mr. Cromwell F. Varley. Both of these eminent men desired to investigate the phenomena of mesmerism, which had been called animal magnetism; and they very earnestly set to work, to make a real physical experiment. They asked themselves, Is it conceivable, that if a piece of copper can scarcely move through the air between the poles of an electromagnet, a human being or other living creature placed there, would experience no effect? Lord Lindsay got an enormous electromagnet made, so large that the head of any person, wishing to try the experiment, could get well between the poles, in a region of excessively powerful magnetic force. What was the result of the experiment? If I were to say nothing! I should do it scant justice. The result was marvellous, and the marvel is that nothing was perceived. Your head, in a space through which a piece of copper falls as if through mud, perceives nothing. I say this is a very great wonder; but I do not admit, I do not feel, that the investigation of the subject is completed. I cannot think that that quality of matter in space—magnetisation—which produces such a prodigious effect upon a piece of metal, can be absolutely without any—it is certainly not without any—effect whatever on the matter of a living body; and that it can be absolutely without any perceptible effect whatever on the matter of a living body placed there, seems to me not proved even yet, although nothing has been found. It is so marvellous that there should be no effect at all, that I do believe and feel, that the experiment is worth repeating; and that it is worth examining, whether of not an exceedingly powerful magnetic force has any perceptible effect upon a living vegetable or animal body. I spoke then of a seventh sense. I think it just possible, that there may be a magnetic sense. I think it possible that an exceedingly powerful magnetic effect, may produce a sensation that we cannot compare with heat or force, or any other sensation.
Another question that often occurs is, "Is there an electric sense?" Has any human being a perception of electricity in the air? well, somewhat similar proposals for experiment might, perhaps, be made with reference to electricity; but there are certain reasons, that would take too long for me to explain, that prevent me from placing the electric force at all in the same category with magnetic force. There would be a surface action that would annul practically the action, due to the electric force, in the interior; and this surface action would be a definite sensation which we could distinctly trace to the sense of touch. Any one putting his hand, or his face, or his hair in the neighbourhood of an electric machine, perceives a sensation, and on examining it he finds that there is a current of air blowing and that his hair is attracted; and if he puts his hand too near, he finds that there are sparks passing between his hand or face, and the machine; so that before we come to any subtle question of a possible sense of electric force, we have distinct mechanical agencies, which give rise to senses of temperature and force. But that this mysterious wonderful magnetic force, due, as we now know, to rotations of the molecules, could be absolutely without effect—without perceptible effect—on animal economy, seems a very wonderful result, and at all events it is a subject deserving careful investigation. I hope no one will think that I am favouring the superstition of mesmerism in what I have said.
I intend to explain a little more fully our perceptions in connection with the double sense of touch—the sense of temperature, and the sense of force—should time permit before I conclude. But I must first say something of the other senses, because if I speak too much about the senses of force and heat, no time will be left for any of the others. Well now, let us think what it is we perceive in the sense of hearing. Acoustics is the science of hearing. And what is hearing? Hearing is perceiving something with the ear. What is it we perceive with the ear? It is something we can also perceive without the ear; something that the greatest master of sound, in the poetic and artistic sense of the word at all events, that ever lived—Beethoven—for a great part of his life could not perceive with his ear at all. He was deaf for a great part of his life, and during that period were composed some of his grandest musical compositions, and that without the possibility of his ever hearing them by ear himself; for his hearing by ear was gone from him for ever. But he used to stand with a stick pressed against the piano and touching his teeth, and thus he could hear the sounds that he called forth from the instrument. Hence, besides the Ear Gate of John Bunyan, there is another gate or access for the sense of hearing.
What is it that you perceive ordinarily by the ear—that a healthy person, without the loss of any of his natural organs of sense, perceives with his ear, but which can otherwise be perceived although not so satisfactorily or completely? It is distinctly a sense of varying pressure. When the barometer rises, the pressure on the ear increases; when the barometer falls, that is an indication that the pressure on the ear is diminishing. Well, if the pressure of air were suddenly to increase and diminish, say in the course of a quarter of a minute—suppose in a quarter of a minute the barometer rose one-tenth of an inch and fell again; would you perceive anything? I doubt it; I do not think you would. If the barometer were to rise two inches, or three inches, or four inches, in the course of half a minute, most people would perceive it. I say this as a result of observation, because people going down in a diving bell have exactly the same sensation as they would experience if from some unknown cause the barometer quickly, in the course of half a minute, were to rise five or six inches—far above the greatest height it ever stands at in the open air. Well now, we have a sense of barometric pressure, but we have not a continued indication that allows us to perceive the difference between the high and low barometer. People living at great altitudes—up several thousand feet above the level of the sea, where the barometer stands several inches lower than at sea level—feel very much as they would do at the surface of the sea. so far as any sensation of pressure is concerned. Keen mountain air feels different from air in lower places partly because it is colder and drier, but also because it is less dense, and you must breathe more of it to get the same quantity of oxygen into your lungs, to perform those functions which the students of the Institute who study animal physiology—and I understand there are a large number—will perfectly understand. The effect of the air in the lungs—the function it performs—depends chiefly on the oxygen taken in. If the air has only three quarters of the density it has in our ordinary atmosphere here, then one and one-third times as much must be inhaled, to produce the same oxidising effect on the blood, and the same general effect in the animal economy; and in that way undoubtedly mountain air has a very different effect on living creatures from the air of the plains. This effect is distinctly perceptible in its relation to health.
But I am wandering from my subject, which is the consideration of the changes of pressure comparable with those that produce sound. A diving bell allows us to perceive a sudden increase of pressure, but not by the ordinary sense of touch. The hand does not perceive the difference between 15lbs. per square inch pressing it all around, and 17 lbs, or 18 lbs., or 20 lbs., or even 30 lbs. per square inch, as is experienced when you go down in a diving bell. If you go down five and a half fathoms in a diving bell, your hand is pressed all round with a force of 30 lbs. to the square inch; but yet you do not perceive any difference in the sense of force, any perception of pressure. What you do perceive is this: behind the tympanum is a certain cavity filled with air, and a greater pressure on one side of the tympanum than on the other, gives rise to a painful sensation, and sometimes produces rupture of it in a person going down in a diving bell suddenly. The remedy for the painful sensation thus experienced, or rather I should say its prevention, is to keep chewing a piece of hard biscuit, or making believe to do so. If you are chewing a hard biscuit, the operation keeps open a certain passage, by which the air pressure getting access to the inside of the tympanum balances the outside pressure and thus prevents the painful effect. This painful effect on the ear experienced by going down in a diving bell, is simply because a certain piece of tissue is being pressed more on one side than on the other; and when we get such a tremendous force on a delicate thing like the tympanum, we may experience a great deal of pain, and it may be dangerous; indeed it is dangerous, and produces rupture or damage to the tympanum unless means be adopted for obviating the difference in the pressures: but the simple means I have indicated are, I believe, with all ordinary healthy persons, perfectly successful.
I am afraid we are no nearer, however, to understanding what it is we perceive when we hear. To be short then it is simply this: it is exceedingly sudden changes of pressure acting on the tympanum of the ear, through such a short time and with such moderate force as not to hurt it; but to give rise to a very distinct sensation, which is communicated through a train of bones to the auditory nerve. I must merely pass over this; the details are full of interest, but they would occupy us far more than an hour if I entered upon them at all. As soon as we get to the nerves and the bones, we have gone beyond the subject I proposed to speak upon. My subject belongs to physical science;—what is called in Scotland, Natural Philosophy. Physical science refers to dead matter, and I have gone beyond its range whenever I speak of a living body; but we must speak of a living body in dealing with the senses as the means of perceiving—as the means by which, in John Bunyan's language, the "soul in its citadel" acquires a knowledge of external matter. The physicist has to think of the organs of sense, merely as he thinks of the microscope; he has nothing to do with physiology. He has a great deal to do with his own eyes and hands, however, and must think of them, if he would understand what he is doing, and wishes to get a reasonable view of the subject, whatever it may be, which is before him in his own department.
Now, what is the external object of this internal action of hearing and perceiving sound? The external object is a change of pressure of air. Well, but how are we to define a sound simply? It looks a little like a vicious circle, but is not really so, to say it is sound if we call it a sound—if we perceive it as sound, it is sound. Any change of pressure, which is so sudden as to let us perceive it as sound is a sound. There [giving a sudden clap of the hands]—that is a sound. There is no question about it—nobody will ever ask: Is it a sound or not? It is sound if you hear it. If you do not hear it, it is not to you a sound. That is all I can say to define sound. To explain what it is, I can say, it is change of pressure, and it differs from a gradual change of pressure as seen on the barometer only in being more rapid, so rapid that we perceive it as a sound. If you could perceive by the ear that the barometer has fallen two-tenths of an inch to-day that would be sound. But nobody perceives by his ear that the barometer has fallen, and so he does not hear the fall as a sound. But the same difference of pressure coming on us suddenly—a fall of the barometer, if by any means it could happen, amounting to a tenth of an inch, and taking place in a thousandth of a second,—would affect us quite like sound. A sudden rise of the barometer would produce a sound analogous to what happened when I clapped my hands. What is the difference between a noise and a musical sound? Musical sound is a regular and periodic change of pressure. It is an alternate augmentation and diminution of air pressure, occurring rapidly enough to be perceived as a sound, and taking place with perfect regularity, period after period. Noises and musical sounds merge into one another. Musical sounds have a possibility at least of sometimes ending in noise, or tending too much to a noise, to altogether please a fastidious musical ear. All roughness, irregularity, want of regular smooth periodicity, has the effect of playing out of tune, or of music that is so complicated that it is impossible to say whether it is in tune or not.
But now, with reference to this sense of sound, there is something I should like to say as to the practical lesson to be drawn from the great mathematical treatises which were placed before the British Association, in the addresses of its president, Professor Cayley, and of the president of the mathematical and physical section, Professor Henrici. Both of these professors dwelt on the importance of graphical illustration, and one graphical illustration of Professor Cayley's address may be adduced in respect of this very quality of sound. In the language of mathematics we have a function of just "one independent variable" to deal with in sound. Time is the independent variable, and air pressure is the function. We have not a complication of motions in various directions. We have not the complication that we shall have to think of presently, in connection with the sense of force; complication as to the place of application, and the direction, of the force. We have not the infinite complications we have in some of the other senses, notably smell and taste. We have distinctly only one thing to consider, and that is air pressure, or the variation of air pressure, as time advances. Do not imagine that mathematics is harsh and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealisation of common sense. The function of one independent variable that you have here to deal with is the pressure of air on the tympanum. Well now, in a thousand counting-houses and business offices in Birmingham and London, and Glasgow and Manchester, a curve, as Professor Cayley pointed out, is regularly used to show to the eye a function of one independent variable. The function of one independent variable most important in Liverpool perhaps may be the price of cotton. A curve showing the price of cotton, rising when the price of cotton is high, and sinking when the price of cotton is low, shows to the eye all the complicated changes of that function. And so in the Registrar-General's tables of mortality, we have curves showing the number of deaths from day to day—the painful history of an epidemic, shown in a rising branch; and the long gradual talus in a falling branch of the curve when the epidemic is overcome, and the normal state of health is again approached. All that is shown to the eye; and one of the most beautiful results of mathematics is the means of showing to the eye the law of variation, however complicated, of a function of one independent variable. But now for what really to me seems a marvel of marvels: think what a complicated thing is the result of an orchestra playing—a hundred instruments—and two hundred voices singing in chorus accompanied by the orchestra. Think of the condition of the air, how it is lacerated sometimes in a complicated effect. Think of the smooth gradual increase and diminution of pressure—smooth and gradual though taking place several hundred times in a second—when a piece of beautiful harmony is heard! Whether, however, it be the single note of the most delicate sound of a flute, or the purest piece of harmony of two voices singing perfectly in tune; or whether it be the crash of an orchestra, and the high notes, sometimes even screechings and tearings of the air, which you may hear fluttering above the sound of the chorus—think of all that, and yet that is not too complicated to be represented by Professor Cayley, with a piece of chalk in his hand, drawing on the blackboard a single line. A single curve, drawn in the manner of the curve of prices of cotton, describes all that the ear can possibly hear, as the result of the most complicated musical performance. How is one sound more complicated than another? It is simply that in the complicated sound the variations of our function of one independent variable, pressure of air, are more abrupt, more sudden, less smooth, and less distinctly periodic, than they are in the softer, and purer, and simpler sound. But the superposition of the different effects is really a marvel of marvels; and to think that all the different effects of all the different instruments can be so represented! Think of it in this way. I suppose everybody present knows what a musical score is—you know, at all events what the notes of a hymn tune look like, and can understand the like for a chorus of voices, and accompanying orchestra;—a "score" of a whole page with a line for each instrument, and with perhaps four different lines for four voice parts. Think of how much you have to put down on a page of manuscript or print, to show what the different performers are to do. Think, too, how much more there is to be done, than anything the composer can put on the page. Think of the expression which each player is able to give, and of the difference between a great player on the violin, and a person who simply grinds successfully through his part; think, too, of the difference in singing, and of all the expression put into a note or a sequence of notes in singing, that cannot be written down. There is, on the written or printed page, a little wedge showing a diminuendo, and a wedge turned the other way showing a crescendo, and that is all that the musician can put on paper to mark the difference of expression which is to be given. Well now, all that can be represented by a whole page or two pages of orchestral score, as the specification of the sound to be produced in, say ten seconds of time, is shown to the eye with perfect clearness by a single curve on a riband of paper a hundred inches long. That to my mind is a wonderful proof of the potency of mathematics. Do not let any student in this Institute be deterred for a moment from the pursuit of mathematical studies by thinking that the great mathematicians get into the realm of four dimensions where you cannot follow them. Take what Professor Cayley himself, in his admirable address which I have already referred to, told us of the beautiful and splendid power of mathematics for etherealising and illustrating common sense, and you need not be disheartened in your study of mathematics, but may rather be reinvigorated when you think of the power which mathematicians, devoting their whole lives to the study of mathematics, have succeeded in giving to that marvellous science.
I spoke of the sense of sound being caused by rapid variations of pressure. I had better particularise, and say how rapid must be the alternations from greatest pressure to least, and back to greatest, and how frequently must that period occur, to give us the sound of a musical note. If the barometer varies once a minute you would not perceive that as a musical note. But suppose by any mechanical action in the air, you could cause the barometric pressure —the air pressure—to vary much more rapidly. That change of pressure which the barometer is not quick enough to show to the eye, the ear hears as a musical sound if the period recurs twenty times per second. If it recurs twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty times per second, you hear a low note. If the period is gradually accelerated you hear the low note gradually rising, becoming higher and higher, more and more acute, and if it gets up to 256 periods per second, we have a certain note called C in the ordinary musical notation. I believe I describe it correctly as the low note C, of the tenor voice—the gravest C that can be made by a flute. The note of a two-foot organ pipe open at both ends has 256 periods per second. Go on higher and higher to 512 periods per second, and you have the C above that—the chief C of the soprano voice. Go above that to 1,024, you get an octave higher. You get an octave higher always by doubling the number of vibrations per second, and if you go on till you get up to about 5,000 or 6,000 or 10,000 periods per second, the note becomes so shrill that it ceases to excite the human ear, and you do not hear it any longer. The highest note that can be perceived by the human ear seems to be something like 10,000 periods per second. I say "something like," because there is no very definite limit. Some ears cease to hear a note becoming shriller and shriller, before other ears cease to hear it; and therefore, I can only say in a very general way, that something like 10,000 periods per second is about the shrillest note the human ear is adapted to hear. We may define musical notes therefore as changes of pressure of the air, regularly alternating in periods which lie between twenty and 10,000 per second. Well now, are there vibrations of thirty, or forty, or fifty, or a hundred thousand or a million of periods per second in air, in elastic solids, or in any matter affecting our senses? We have no evidence of the existence in matter of vibrations of very much greater frequency than 10,000, or 20,000, or 30,000 per second, yet we have no reason to deny the possibility of such vibrations existing, and having a large function to perform in nature. But when we get to some degree of frequency that I cannot put figures upon, to something that may be measured in hundred-thousands, if not in millions, of vibrations per second, we have not merely passed the limits of the human ear to hear, but we have passed the limits of matter, as known to us, to vibrate. Vibrations transmitted as waves through steel, or air, or water, cannot be more frequent than a certain number, which I cannot now put a figure to, but which, I say, may be reckoned in hundred-thousands or a few millions per second.
But now let us think of light. The sense of sight may be compared to the sense of sound in this respect—that it also is a matter of vibration. Light we know to be an influence on the retina of the eye, and through the retina on the optic nerve; an influence dependent on vibrations, whose frequency is something between 400 million millions per second and 800 million millions per second. Now we have a vast gap between 400 per second, the sound of a rather high tenor voice, and 400 million millions per second, the number of vibrations corresponding to dull red light—the gravest red light of the prismatic spectrum. Take the middle of the spectrum—yellow light—the period of the vibrations there is in round numbers 500 million millions per second. In violet light we have 800 million millions per second. Beyond that we have something that the eye scarcely perceives—does not perceive at all perhaps—but which I believe it does perceive, though not vividly; we have the ultra-violet rays, known to us chiefly by their photographic effect, but known also by many other wonderful experiments which within the last thirty years have enlarged our knowledge of light to a most marvellous degree. We have invisible rays of light made visible by letting them fall on a certain kind of glass, glass tinged with uranium—that yellowish-green glass, sometimes called canary glass or chameleon glass. Uranium glass has a property of rendering visible to us invisible rays. You may hold a piece of uranium glass in your hand illuminated by this electric light or by a candle or by gas light, or hold it in the prismatic spectrum of white light, and you see it glowing according to the colour of the light which falls upon it; but place it in the spectrum beyond the visible violet end, where without it you see nothing, where a piece of chalk held up seems quite dark and the uranium glass glows with a mysterious altered colour of a beautiful tint, revealing the presence of invisible rays, by converting them into rays of lower period, and so rendering them visible to the eye. The discovery of this property of uranium glass was made by Professor Stokes, and the name of fluorescence from fluor spar, which he found to have the same property, was given to it. It has since been discovered that fluorescence and phosphorescence are continuous, being extremes of the same phenomenon. I suppose most persons here present know the luminous paint made from sulphides of calcium and other materials, which, after being steeped in light for a certain time, keep on for hours giving out light in the darkness. Persistence in emission of light after the removal of the source, which is the characteristic of those phosphorescent objects, is manifested also, as Edmund Becquerel has proved, by the uranium glass, and thus Stokes's discovery of fluorescence comes to be continuous with the old known phenomenon of phosphorescence, to which attention seems to have been first called scientifically by Robert Boyle about two hundred years ago.
There are other rays which we do not perceive in any of these ways, but which we do perceive by our sense of heat: heat rays as they are commonly called. But in truth all rays that we call light have heating effect. Radiant heat and light are one and indivisible. There are not two things, radiant heat and light: radiant heat is identical with light. Take a black hot kettle into a dark room, and look at it. You do not see it. Hold your face or your hand near it, and you perceive it by what Bunyan would have called Feel Gate; only now we apply the word feeling to other senses as well as Touch. You perceive it before you touch it. You perceive it with the back of your hand or the front of your hand; you perceive it with your face, yes, and with your eye, but you do not see it. You perceive it, even by your eye, and still you do not see it. Well, now, must I justify the assertion that it is not light? You say it is not light, and it is not so to you, if you do not see it. There has been a good deal of logic-chopping about the words here; we seem to define in a vicious circle. We may begin by defining light—"It is light if you see it as light; it is not light if you do not see it." To save circumlocution, we shall take things in that way. Radiant heat is light if we see it, it is not light if we do not see it. It is not that there are two things; it is that radiant heat has differences of quality. There are qualities of radiant heat that we can see, and if we see them we call them light; there are qualities of radiant heat we cannot see, and if we cannot see them we do not call them light, but still call them radiant heat: and that on the whole seems to me to be the best logic for this subject.
By the by, I don't see Logic among the studies of the Birmingham and Midland Institute. Logic is to language and grammar what mathematics is to common sense; logic is etherealised grammar. I hope the advanced student in grammar and Latin and Greek, who needs logic perhaps as much as, perhaps more than, most students of science and modern languages, will advance to logic, and consider logic as the science of using words, to lead him to know exactly what he means by them when he uses them. More ships have been wrecked through bad logic than by bad seamanship. When the captain writes down in his log—I don't mean a pun here, log has nothing to do with logic—the ship's place is so-and-so, he means that it is the most probable position—the position which, according to previous observations, he thinks is the most probable. After that, supposing no sights of sun or stars or land to be had, careful observation of speed and direction shows, by a simple reckoning (called technically the dead-reckoning), where the ship is next day. But sailors too often forget that what they put down in the log was not the ship's place, but what to their then knowledge was the most probable position of the ship, and they keep running on as if it was the true position. They forget the meaning of the very words in which they have made their entry in the log, and through that bad logic more ships have been run on the rocks than by any other carelessness or bad seamanship. It is bad logic that leads to trusting to the dead-reckoning, in running a course at sea; and it is that bad logic which is the cause of those terribly frequent wrecks; of steamers, otherwise well conducted, in cloudy but perfectly fine weather running on rocks at the end of a long voyage. To enable you to understand precisely the meaning of your result when you make a note of anything about your own experience or experiments, and to understand precisely the meaning of what you write down, is the province of logic. To arrange your record in such a manner that if you look at it afterwards it will tell you what it is worth, and neither more nor less is practical logic; and if you exercise that practical logic, you will find benefits that are too obvious if you only think of any scientific or practical subject with which you are familiar.
There is danger then of a bad use of words, and hence of bad reasoning upon them, in speaking of light and radiant heat; but if we distinctly define light as that which we consciously perceive as light—without attempting to define consciousness, because we cannot define consciousness any more than we can define free will—we shall be safe. There is no question that you see the thing: if you see it, it is light. Well now, when is radiant heat light? Radiant heat is light when its frequency of vibration is between 400 million millions per second and 800 million millions per second. When its frequency is less than 400 million millions per second it is not light; it is invisible "infra-red" radiant heat. When its frequency is more than 800 million millions per second it is not light since we cannot see it; it is invisible ultra-violet radiation, truly radiant heat, but it is not so commonly called radiant heat because its heating effect is known rather theoretically than by sensory perception, or thermometric or thermoscopic indications. Observations which have been actually made by Langley and by Abney on radiant heat take us down about three octaves below violet, and we may hope to be brought considerably lower still by future observation. We know at present in all about four octaves—that is from one to two, two to four, four to eight, eight to sixteen, hundred million millions per second—of radiant heat. One octave of radiant heat is perceptible to the eye as light, the octave from 400 million millions to 800 million millions. I borrow the word octave from music, not in any mystic sense, nor as indicating any relation between harmony of colours and harmony of sound. No relation exists between harmony of sound and harmony of colours. I merely use the word "octave" as a brief expression for any range of frequencies lying within the ratio of one to two. If you double the frequency of a musical note, you raise it an octave: in that sense I use the word for the moment in respect to light, and in no other sense. Well now, think what a tremendous chasm there is between the 100 million millions per second, which is about the gravest note, hitherto discovered, of invisible radiant heat, and the 10,000 per second, the greatest number of vibrations perceptible as sound. This is an unknown province of science:—the investigation of vibrations between those two limits is, perhaps, one of the most promising provinces of science for the future investigator.
In conclusion, I wish to bring before you the idea that all the senses are related to force. The sense of sound we have seen is merely a sense of very rapid changes of air-pressure (which is force) on the drum of the ear. I have passed merely by name over the senses of taste and smell. I may say they are chemical senses. Taste common salt and taste sugar—you tell in a moment the difference, and the perception of that difference is a perception of chemical quality. There is in this perception a subtle molecular influence, due to the touch of the object on the tongue or the palate, and producing a sensation very different from the ordinarily reckoned sense of touch, which, as we have just seen, tells us only of roughness and of temperature. The most subtle of our senses perhaps is sight; next come smell and taste. Professor Stokes recently told me that he would rather look upon taste and smell and sight as being continuous because they are all molecular—they all deal with properties of matter, not in the gross, but in their molecular actions—he would rather group those three together, than he would couple any one of them with any of the other senses. It is not necessary, however, for us to reduce all the six senses to one, but I would just point out that they are all related to force. Chemical action is a force, tearing molecules apart, throwing or pushing them together: and our chemical sense or senses may, therefore, so far at least, be regarded as concerned with force. That the senses of smell and taste are related to one another, seems obvious; and if physiologists would pardon me, I would suggest that they might, without impropriety, be regarded as extremes of one sense. This at all events can be said of them, they can be compared—which cannot be said of any other two senses. You cannot say that the shape of a cube, or the roughness of a piece of loaf sugar or sandstone, is comparable with the temperature of hot water, or is like the sound of a trumpet; or that the sound of a trumpet is like scarlet, or like a rocket, or like a blue-light signal. There is no comparability between any of these perceptions. But if any one says, "That piece of cinnamon tastes like its smell," I think he will express something of general experience. The smell and the taste of pepper, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, vanilla, apples, strawberries, and other articles of food, particularly spices and fruits, have very marked qualities, in which the taste and the smell seem essentially comparable. It does seem to me, although anatomists distinguish between them because the sensory organs concerned are different, and because they have not discovered a continuity between these organs, that we should not be philosophically wrong in saying that smell and taste are extremes of one sense—one kind of perceptivity—a sense of chemical quality materially presented to us.
Now sense of light, and sense of heat, are very different though we cannot define the difference. You perceive the heat of a hot kettle—how? By its radiant heat against the face—that is one way. But there is another way, not by radiant heat, of which I shall speak later. You perceive by vision, but still in virtue of radiant heat, a hot body; if illuminated by light, or if hot enough to be self-luminous, red-hot or white-hot, you see it: you can both see a hot body, and perceive it by its heat, otherwise than by seeing it. Take a piece of red-hot cinder with the tongs, or a red-hot poker, and study it; carry it into a dark room, and look at it. You see it for a certain time; after a certain time you cease to see it, but you still perceive radiant heat from it. Well now, there is radiant heat perceived by the eye and the face and the hands all the time; but it is perceived only by the sense of temperature, when the hot body ceases to be red-hot. There is then, to our senses, an absolute distinction in modes of perception between that which is continuous in the external nature of the thing, namely, radiant heat in its visible and invisible varieties. It operates upon our senses in a way that I cannot ask anatomists to admit to be one and the same in both cases. They cannot now at all events, say that there is an absolute continuity between the retina of the eye in its perception of radiant heat as light, and the skin of the hand in its perception of radiant heat as heat. We may come to know more; it may yet appear that there is a continuity. Some of Darwin's sublime speculations, may become realities to us; and we may come to recognise a cultivable retina all over the body. We have not done that yet, but Darwin's grand idea occurs as suggesting that there may be an absolute continuity, between the perception of radiant heat by the retina of the eye and its perception by the tissues and nerves concerned in the mere sense of heat. We must be content in the meantime, however, to make a distinction between the senses of light and heat. And indeed it must be remarked that our sense of heat is not excited by radiant heat only, while it is only and essentially radiant heat that gives to the retina the sense of light. Hold your hand under a red-hot poker in a dark room: you perceive it to be hot solely by its radiant heat, and you see it also by its radiant heat. Now place the hand over it: you feel more of heat. Now, in fact, you perceive its heat in three ways—by contact with the heated air which has ascended from the poker, and by radiant heat felt by your sense of heat, and by radiant heat seen as light (the iron being still red-hot). But the sense of heat is the same throughout, and is a certain effect experienced by the tissue, whether it be caused by radiant heat, or by contact with heated particles of the air.
Lastly, there remains—and I am afraid I have already taxed your patience too long—the sense of force. I have been vehemently attacked for asserting this sixth sense. I need not go into the controversy, nor try to explain to you the ground on which I have been attacked; I could not in fact, because in reading the attack I have not been able to understand it myself. The only tangible ground of objection, perhaps, was that a writer in New York published this theory in 1880. I had quoted Dr. Thomas Reid, without giving a date; his date chances to be 1780 or thereabouts!! But physiologists have very strenuously resisted admitting that the sense of roughness is the same as that muscular sense, which the metaphysicians who followed Dr. Thomas Reid in the University of Glasgow, taught. It was in the University of Glasgow that I learned about the muscular sense, and I have not seen it very distinctly stated elsewhere. What is this "muscular sense"? I press upon the desk before me with my right hand, or I walk forward holding out my hand in the dark and using this means to feel my way, as a blind man does constantly who finds where he is, and guides himself, by the sense of touch. I walk on until I perceive an obstruction by a sense of force in the palm of the hand. How and where do I perceive this sensation? Anatomists will tell you it is felt in the muscles of the arm. Here, then, is a force which I perceive in the muscles of the arm, and the corresponding perceptivity is properly enough called a muscular sense. But now take the tip of your finger and rub a piece of sandstone, or a piece of loaf sugar, or a smooth table. Take a piece of loaf sugar between your finger and thumb, and take a piece of smooth glass between your finger and thumb. You perceive a difference. What is the difference? It is the sense of roughness as distinguished from smoothness. Physiologists and anatomists have used the word "tactile" sense, to designate it. I confess that this does not convey much to my mind. "Tactile" is merely "of or belonging to touch," and in saying we perceive roughness and smoothness by a tactile sense, we are where we were. We are not enlightened by being told that there is a tactile sense as a department of our sense of touch. But I say the thing thought of is a sense of force. We cannot away with it; it is a sense of force, of directions of forces, and of places of application of forces. If the places of application of the forces are the palms of the two hands, we perceive accordingly, and know that we perceive, in the muscles of the arms, effects of large pressures on the palms of the hands. But if the places of application are a hundred little areas on one finger, we still perceive the effect as force. We distinguish between a uniformly distributed force like the force of a piece of smooth glass, and forces distributed over ten or a hundred little areas. And this is the sense of smoothness and roughness. The sense of roughness is therefore a sense of forces, and of places of application of forces, just as the sense of forces in your two hands stretched out is the sense of forces in places at a distance of six feet apart. Whether the places be at a distance of six feet or at a distance of one-hundredth of an inch, it is the sense of force, and of places of application of forces, and of directions of forces, that we deal with in the sense of touch as differing from the sense of heat. Now anatomists and physiologists have a good right to distinguish between the kind of excitement of tissue in the finger and in the minute nerves of the skin and sub-skin of the finger, by which you perceive roughness and smoothness, in the one case; and of the muscles, by which you perceive places of application very distant, in the other. But whether the forces be so near that anatomists cannot distinguish muscles—cannot point out muscles resisting forces and balancing them—because, remember, when you take a piece of glass in your fingers every bit of pressure at every ten-thousandth of an inch pressed by the glass against the finger is a balanced force—or whether they be far asunder and obviously balanced by the muscles of the two arms, the tiling perceived is the same in kind. Anatomists do not show us muscles balancing the individual forces experienced by the small areas of the finger itself when we touch a piece of smooth glass, or the individual forces in the scores or hundreds of little areas experienced when we touch a piece of rough sugar or rough sandstone; and perhaps it is not by muscles smaller than the muscles of the finger as a whole that the multitudinousness is dealt with; or perhaps, on the other hand, these nerves and tissues are continuous in their qualities with muscles. I go beyond the range of my subject whenever I speak of muscles and nerves; but externally the sense of touch other than heat is the same in all cases—it is a sense of forces and of places of application of forces and of directions of forces. I hope now I have justified the sixth sense; and that I have not taxed your patience unduly in not having done it in fewer words.