"sense" and that of "senses" is very closely allied. They consider all
knowledge and wisdom as "sense;" and all such sense as being derived
directly from their ordinary five senses. They ignore almost completely
the intuitional phases of the mind, and are unaware of many of the higher
processes of reasoning.

Such persons accept as undoubted anything that their senses report to
them. They consider it heresy to question a report of the senses. One of
their favorite remarks is that "it almost makes me doubt my senses." They
fail to perceive that their senses, at the best, are very imperfect
instruments, and that the mind is constantly employed in correcting the
mistaken report of the ordinary five senses.

Not to speak of the common phenomenon of color-blindness, in which one
color seems to be another, our senses are far from being exact. We may,
by suggestion, be made to imagine that we smell or taste certain things
which do not exist, and hypnotic subjects may be caused to see things that
have no existence save in the imagination of the person. The familiar
experiment of the person crossing his first two fingers, and placing them
on a small object, such as a pea or the top of a lead-pencil, shows us how
"mixed" the sense of feeling becomes at times. The many familiar instances
of optical delusions show us that even our sharp eyes may deceive
us--every conjuror knows how easy it is to deceive the eye by suggestion
and false movements.

Perhaps the most familiar example of mistaken sense-reports is that of the
movement of the earth. The senses of every person report to him that the
earth is a fixed, immovable body, and that the sun, moon, planets, and
stars move around the earth every twenty-four hours. It is only when one
accepts the reports of the reasoning faculties, that he knows that the