EYE-MINDEDNESS AND EAR~MINDEDNESS. 601 



suggestion is very easily imposed ; to the "blind, hearing is decid- 

 edly the most valuable sense ; and illusions and hallucinations of 

 hearing are only slightly less frequent than those of sight. In 

 general, the intellectual nature of these two senses presents a simi- 

 lar scale of individual differences, and suggests the action of like 

 causes in their education as in their decay. 



Third in importance is the group of muscular and tactual sensa- 

 tions accompanying motion. The importance of these is shown 

 by the large factor of mere imitation in all training. The speak- 

 ing of a language, though guided by the ear, and lost when hear- 

 ing fails in childhood, is yet a separate acquisition, and deaf-mutes 

 can be taught to speak by the muscular feelings alone. This ave- 

 nue of knowledge was sufficient to bring to Laura Bridgman her 

 phenomenal education. In common experience the value of this 

 sense is illustrated by the tendency of many persons to speak to 

 themselves, to move their lips when reading, to go through the 

 motions of touching the keys of a piano when listening to a musi- 

 cal recitation. Many artists lay much stress on the teaching of 

 free-hand movements apart from pencil and paper ; singers often 

 state that they " feel " an aria in their throats when they go over 

 it to themselves ; actors and athletes are, perhaps, likely to develop 

 this kind of mental faculty, and among blind handicraftsmen it 

 is frequent ; while a certain school of psychologists define thinking 

 as restrained action. The difficulty in estimating the importance 

 of this sensory group to our intellectual fabric lies in the fact that 

 it acts almost entirely under the guidance of the eye or of the ear ; 

 but analogy makes it probable that its importance varies much in 

 different individuals. Such sensations enter into dreams, play a 

 prominent role in hypnotism, where the assumption of an attitude 

 will bring about the corresponding emotion, and have much to do 

 in developing a common type of illusions and hallucinations. (Here 

 belong the persecutions by crawling vermin, the feeling that the 

 body is made of glass, or that the walls of the chest touch one 

 another, and the like.) 



Smell and taste need only a bare mention. The intellectual 

 value of these senses reaches its climax in the lower animals.* 

 Smell is a richly suggestive sense (witness the associations with 

 the odor of funeral flowers, and the like), and taste gives us many 

 emotional epithets, such as a "sweet" disposition. But our men- 

 tality has developed in other directions, and these senses have 

 remained nearest to the consesthesic stage. 



Every normal-minded man uses each of the above avenues of 

 knowledge in his mental jjrocesses, as well in acquiring as in re- 

 taining and digesting mental food. Certain acquisitions depend 



* Perhaps the eccentric Dr. Jager, who finds the seat of the soul in smell, is an unusual 

 case of smell-mindedness — a highly developed " olfactaire." 



