PHYSICAL SENSIBILITY 329 



makes us think. We shall never succeed in disentangUng the causes 

 of these organic phenomena, so long as we confuse the entirely dis- 

 tinct facts which constitute them, and fail to recognise that they 

 cannot both have a common origin. 



A special system of organs is certainly needed for producing the 

 phenomenon of feeling, since this is a faculty peculiar to certain animals 

 and not general for all. So too a special system of organs is necessary 

 for carrying out acts of the understanding ; for thought, comparison, 

 judgment, reasoning are organic acts of a very different character 

 from those producing feeling. Hence, when we think, we do not 

 feel any sensation, although our thoughts impress the inner feeling or 

 ego of which we are conscious. Now since all sensation arises from a 

 special sense, it follows that the consciousness of one's thoughts is not 

 a sensation, but differs radically from it, and must be kept distinct. 

 In the same way, when we feel a simple sensation that constitutes 

 perception, and thus passes unnoticed, no idea of it is formed and no 

 thought produced, so that the sensitive system alone is in action. We 

 may therefore think without feeUng, and feel without thinking. Hence 

 for each of these two faculties there is a separate system of organs ; 

 just as there is a separate system for movements which is independent 

 of the other two, although one or other of them is the remote cause 

 which sets the latter in action. 



Thus it is wrong to confuse the system of sensations with the 

 system that produces acts of the understanding, and to imagine 

 that the two kinds of organic phenomena arising from them can be 

 the result of a single system of organs. This is why men of the highest 

 capacity and knowledge have been mistaken in their arguments on 

 subjects of this nature. 



" A creature," says M. Richerand, " absolutely destitute of sen- 

 sitive organs would have a purely vegetative existence ; if it acquired 

 one sense it still would not possess any understanding, since, as Condillac 

 has shown, the impressions produced on this single sense could not be 

 compared ; it would have nothing more than an inner feeling of its 

 existence, and it would believe that all things which affect it are part of 

 itself." {Physiologie, vol. ii., p. 154.) 



We see from this quotation that the senses are considered, not merely 

 as sensitive organs, but also as organs of the understanding ; since, if 

 instead of a single sense the creature had several, then according to 

 the received opinion the mere existence of these senses would endow 

 it with intellectual faculties. 



There is even a contradiction in the passage above cited ; for it is 

 there stated that a creature which had only one sense would still not 

 possess understanding, and farther on it is said, with reference to the 



