If you inquire of a scientific man how we see, he gives you an elaborate lecture on the mechanism of the eye. This does not account for the faculty of sight. The cockchafer, with his six-sided prism, is probably endowed with a capacity of achromatic vision, compared to which Ross' finest instruments a small pool would be to his vision an ocean. Everything else proportionately enormous. A blue-bottle may enjoy, according to the laws of sound, a symphony of exquisite music, after it becomes inaudible to us.
This illustrates the self-conceit of the human sense in its habits of reasoning of its world as the only one. Brute instinct may be acquainted with a world of wonder just as real to them, of which we are entirely ignorant.
Things are not what they seem to sense. The mind is known to play tricks with the senses, seeing objects that had no physical existence. In that case, how are we to know that there is anything really existing, if the mind can see independently of the senses? This is what Mental Science is to prove. It shows that the mind can sometimes multiply some of these objects at pleasure. We have called this phantasy; but it is found to be nearer the reality.
