21 BEING AND FACULTIES OF MAN. 



being, because a good deal of language with which we 

 have become familiar from childhood is apt to give false 

 impressions on this subject. Thus we hear frequently of 

 the SEAT OF SENSATION, and we would naturally like to 

 know precisely what it means. An idea has been created 

 by the use of this expression that our Consciousness resides 

 fixedly at some great centre of our physical organization, 

 toward which all our nerves tend, and where they enter 

 into subtle combination, forming a cumulative basis for 

 its highest powers of comparative perception and action. 

 But this must not be taken as an implicitly concluded 

 axiom because a certain amount of countenance is given 

 to it by our anatomical structure. It is true there are 

 nervous regions and nervous centres of our physical being, 

 but it is not necessarily true that these are the only Seats 

 of Sensation, or that Consciousness fixedly resides there. 

 It appears much more probable to our experience, and 

 judging from it, that when the sense of touch is exercised 

 the seat of sensation for the time being is at the point of 

 contact, and that the Consciousness is there also and 

 shares in the contact. In like manner, of seeing, the seat 

 of sensation is in the eye ; of hearing, in the ear ; of taste 

 and smell, in the organs of taste and smell ; and that the 

 Consciousness does not reside fixedly anywhere, but travels 

 from one sense and one point of touch to another along 

 the nerves, and that a nervous centre is necessary only to 

 enable it to do so, and to connect all the ways and means of 

 its passage for that purpose. And from hence it would 

 follow that Sensation does not travel along our nerves to 

 any seat or centre of Sensation, as has been supposed, but 

 that our Consciousness travels along our nerves in passing 

 from one point of perception or impression to another, 

 and that this is the reason why we are incapable of 

 simultaneous, and only capable of successive impressions. 

 Another peculiarity of our Consciousness is, that it must 



