TRAVELLING AND EXTENSION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 25 



be capable not only of travelling along our nerves, but 

 must also be capable of extension upon certain surfaces 

 of them; because in the eye and in the sense of touch, 

 more especially, it is capable of perceiving the extension 

 of length and breadth not as a successive detail merely, 

 but also as a united and present whole in the combination 

 of the many qualities which constitute form. Conscious- 

 ness therefore, whatever it may be, is something more, 

 and of greater dimensions, than a mere point if indeed 

 such a circumscribed amount of surface as a point can be 

 said to exist, for there is no point that we can conceive of 

 so minute that it may not be subdivided for a point, 

 however small, must have a circumference, and that cir- 

 cumference must have a centre with a still smaller cir- 

 cumference ; and there seems no reason to doubt of infini- 

 tesimal divisibility and diminution if we had means and 

 powers sufficiently fine to perceive them. So that, however 

 small the surface of concentrated consciousness of touch 

 may be, it must be something more than a point. But if 

 Consciousness be thus capable of extension on surfaces of 

 our nerves and tissues, why not also on any other physical 

 surface separate from them if free to reach it? It 

 certainly appears to be the fact that when the touch is 

 extended over any such surface the consciousness present 

 in the touch is also extended over and in contact with that 

 surface in the sense of touch. But while these facts 

 appear to justify us in ascribing extension of surface to 

 Consciousness, they do not afford us the slightest means of 

 ascertaining that Consciousness has any definite form. 

 We may be enabled to say that its size or extension of 

 surface is as great at least, and fully commensurate with the 

 size of any surface it is capable of appreciating by actual 

 contact, but that does not enable us to say that Consciousness 

 is of the shape of that surface, or that it is not still larger 

 than that surface, and capable of indefinite expansion. 



