The nervous system stands between consciousness and the external world, "as an interpreter who can talk with his fingers stands between a hidden speaker and a man who is stone deaf"
— Huxley, Thomas H. (1825-1895)
Date
1874
Metaphor
The nervous system stands between consciousness and the external world, "as an interpreter who can talk with his fingers stands between a hidden speaker and a man who is stone deaf"
Metaphor in Context
The nervous system stands between consciousness and the assumed external world, as an interpreter who can talk with his fingers stands between a hidden speaker and a man who is stone deaf--and Realism is equivalent to a belief on the part of the deaf man, that the speaker must also be talking with his fingers. "Les extrêmes se touchent;" the shibboleth of materialists that "thought is a secretion of the brain," is the Fichtean doctrine that "the phenomenal universe is the creation of the Ego," expressed in other language. (p. 211)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Originally published in Nature 10 (1874): 362-66. The essay also appears in Huxley's Collected Essays: pp. 199-250. Text available from "The Huxley File" <http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE1/AnAuto.html>.
Date of Entry
12/03/2003
Date of Review
05/19/2008
