Part 1 (2/2)

The impressions you receive in this way may be true or they e or they may be merely mistaken impressions Yet, such as they are, they constitute all the infor the world about you

[Sidenote: _Does Matter Exist?_]

Philosophers have been wrangling for some thousands of years as to whether we have any real and absolute knowledge, as to whether matter actually does or does not exist, as to the reliability or unreliability of the ih the senses

But there is one thing that all scientific e as we do possess coans of sense

If you have never given ht to this subject, you have naturally assus that you _seem_ to perceive about you It has never occurred to you that there are intervening physical agencies that you ought to take into account

[Sidenote: _First-Hand Knowledge_]

When you look up at the clock, you instinctively feel that there is nothing interposed between it and your mind that is conscious of it

You seem to feel that your mind reaches out and envelops it

As a matter of fact, your sense ireat nuencies before you can become conscious of it

Direct perception of an outside reality is ie_]

Before you can become aware of any object there must first arise between it and your mind a chain of countless distinct physical events

Modern science tells us that light is due to undulations or wave-like vibrations of the ether, sound to those of the air, etc

These vibrations are transmitted from one particle of ether or air to another, and so fro perceived to the body of man

Think, then, what crisscross of air currents and confusion of ether vibrations, what myriad of physical events, must intervene between any distant object and your own body before sensations co a consciousness of that object's existence!

Nor can you be sure, even after any particular vibration has reached the surface of your body, that it will reach your mind unaltered and intact!

[Sidenote: _Etheric Vibrations as Causing Sensations_]

What goes on in the body itself is e of the cellular structure ofin the brain and with countless rahout the structural tissues of the body

You know that part of these nerves are sensory nerves and part of them are motor nerves You know that the sensory nerves convey to the brain the impressions received from the outer world and that the motor nerves relay this information to the rest of the body coupled with commands for appropriate muscular action

[Illustration: DIAGRAM SHOWING THE FOUR CHIEF assOCIATION CENTERS OF THE HUMAN BRAIN]

[Sidenote: _The Road to Perception_]

The outer end of every sensory nerve exposes a sensitive bit of grayends constitute together what is called the ”sensoriue upon the sensorium, they are relayed from nerve cell to nerve cell until they reach the central brain Then it is, and not until then, that sensations and perceptions occur

Consider, now, the infinitesimal size of a nerve cell and you will have soe must pass before it is received by the central office