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62 THE FOURFOLD BOOT. [CHAP. IV.
Objective perception makes use, properly speaking, of
only two senses ; touch and sight. These alone supply the
data upon which, as its basis, the Understanding constructs
the objective world by the process just described. The
three other senses remain on the whole subjective; for
their sensations, while pointing to an external cause, still
contain no data by which its relations in Space can be de
termined. Now Space is the form of all perception, i.e. of
that apprehension, in which alone objects can, properly
speaking, present themselves. Therefore those other three
senses can no doubt serve to announce the presence of
objects we already know in some other way ;
but no con
struction in Space, consequently no objective perception, can
possibly be founded on their data. A rose cannot be con
structed from its perfume, and a blind man may hear
music all his life without having the slightest objective
representation either of the musicians, or of the instru
ments, or of the vibrations of the air. On the other hand, the
teense of hearing is of great value as a medium for language,
this it is the sense of Reason. It is also valu
and through
able as a medium for music, which is the only way in
which we comprehend numerical relations not only in
abstracto, but directly, in concreto. A musical sound or
tone, however, gives no clue to spacial relations, therefore
it never helps to bring the nature of its cause nearer to us ;
we stop short at it, so that it is no datum for the Under
standing in its construction of the objective
world. The
sensations of touch and sight alone are such data ; there
fore a blind man without either hands or feet, while able
to construct Space for himself a priori in all its regularity,
would nevertheless acquire but a very vague representation
of the objective world. Yet what is supplied by touch and
sight is not by any means perception, but merely the raw
material for it, For perception is so far from being con
tained in the sensations of touch and sight, that these sen-