EXCESSIVE RAPIDITY OF MOTIONS ARISING 



agency ; it is immaterial whether that agency consist of undulations of an ethereal me- 

 dium, or spend itself in producing a chemical change of the retina. The portio mollis 

 of the seventh pair, also, exposes itself in the cochlea of the ear, and having the func- 

 tion of audition committed to it, vibrates correspondingly to those oscillatory move- 

 ments in the atmosphere which constitute sound. So, too, with the olfactory nerve, 

 which, pushing its way through the cribriform plate of the ethmoid bone, expands in a 

 million of ramified branches on the Schniderian membrane, and is ready to be impress- 

 ed by odours or smells. There is no such thing as a mutual convertibility of the offi- 

 ces of these different machines ; no vicarious interchange of action ; each one has its 

 own duty to perform, each has to discharge its proper task, and the construction of 

 each is suitably arranged. In human contrivances, the same necessity of result arises ; 

 the telescope will not answer for a piano, nor the piano for a telescope. 



390. While thus the different senses of sight, of smell, of hearing, of taste, and of touch, 

 and all the different functions which occur in animal frames, are carried on by their own 

 appropriate enginery, and resort had to optic, auditory, olfactory, and respiratory cords, 

 these several contrivances are so arranged that the final result of their operation con- 

 verges inward, and is at last expended on the same point from which also spring all 

 the various acts of thought and intellectuality. Of that central point which is thus in 

 incessant agitation during the continuance of animal life, perpetually receiving impres- 

 sions from outward objects or the external world, perpetually, also, reflecting back 

 again the various determinations of the mind, how rapid and how constant must be the 

 movement ! We cannot comprehend how it is possible that an ethereal particle, vibra- 

 ting so as to produce violet light, oscillates backward and forward seven hundred and 

 twenty-seven millions of times in the millionth part of a second ; yet this is a fact as 

 well established as any other fact in the domain of science. What, then, shall we say 

 of that central point of reception which is within the brain, which stands ready to ex- 

 ecute at once all the synchronous movements impressed upon it by the various colours 

 of light, all the vibrations of simultaneously occurring and harmonious sounds, all the 

 impressions which are brought to it by the apparatus of the senses ! During the time 

 of wakefulness, how is it agitated by these various movements ! and during the time 

 of sleep, its activity is still expressed by those phantoms which we see in dreams. As, 

 at a telegraphic station, the observer watches the various signals through his telescope, 

 and reports to his government the intelligence which is arriving, so that central vibra- 

 ting point reports to the MIND the telegraphic despatches that are coming along the dif- 

 ferent nerves. Nor is it impossible that one material atom, or even a small congeries 

 of atoms, should be able to be thus affected at once in a thousand different ways ; a 

 particle of water on the surface of the ocean may be simultaneously affected by mill- 

 ions of waves, which may go forth from it and separate without disturbing the move- 

 ments of each other ; a particle of ether may be acted upon by every possible ray of 

 light that can reach it it will be affected by the general action of all, and each one 

 will go forth and separate from all the others, undisturbed by, and undisturbing them. 

 But even were it not a single physical point a physical point in our ordinary idea of 

 that term even were it the whole brain which is thus agitated and acted on, what but 



