Thomas Henry Huxley 
Science Primers, Introductory 

Contents
Nature and science — Material objects: (A) Mineral bodies. (B) Living bodies — Immaterial objects.

Excerpt from Book:

All the time that we are awake we are learning by means of our senses something about the world in which we live and of which we form a part; we are constantly aware of feeling, or hearing, or smelling, and, unless we happen to be in the dark, of seeing; at intervals we taste. We call the information thus obtained sensation.

When we have any of these sensations we commonly say that we feel, or hear, or smell, or see, or taste, something. A certain scent makes us say we smell onions; a certain flavour, that we taste apples; a certain sound, that we hear a carriage; a certain appearance before our eyes, that we see a tree; and we call that which we thus perceive by the aid of our senses a thing or an object.