The senses perceive each other's special objects incidentally; not
because the percipient sense is this or that special sense, but
because all form a unity: this incidental perception takes place
whenever sense is directed at one and the same moment to two disparate
qualities in one and the same object, e.g. to the bitterness and the
yellowness of bile, the assertion of the identity of both cannot be
the act of either of the senses; hence the illusion of sense, e.g. the
belief that if a thing is yellow it is bile.
It might be asked why we have more senses than one. Is it to prevent
a failure to apprehend the common sensibles, e.g. movement, magnitude,
and number, which go along with the special sensibles? Had we no sense
but sight, and that sense no object but white, they would have
tended to escape our notice and everything would have merged for us
into an indistinguishable identity because of the concomitance of
colour and magnitude. As it is, the fact that the common sensibles are
given in the objects of more than one sense reveals their
distinction from each and all of the special sensibles.
2
Since it is through sense that we are aware that we are seeing or
hearing, it must be either by sight that we are aware of seeing, or by
some sense other than sight. But the sense that gives us this new
sensation must perceive both sight and its object, viz. colour: so
that either (1) there will be two senses both percipient of the same
sensible object, or (2) the sense must be percipient of itself.
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