372 GENERAL VIEW OF THE HUMAN FUNCTIONS. 



operations of Man, as forming part of his general vital actions, we perceive that 

 the proportion is completely reversed. So far from his Organic life exhibiting 

 a predominance, it appears entirely subordinate to his Animal functions, and 

 seems destined only to afford the conditions for their performance. If we could 

 imagine his nervo-muscular apparatus to be isolated from the remainder of his 

 corporeal structure, and to be endowed in itself with the power of maintaining 

 its integrity, we should have all that is essential to our idea of Man. But, as 

 at present constituted, this apparatus is dependent, for the conditions of its 

 functional activity, upon the nutritive apparatus; and the whole object of the 

 latter appears to be the supply of those conditions. That his mental activity 

 should be thus made dependent upon the due supply of his bodily wants, is a 

 part of the general scheme of his probationary existence; and the first excite- 

 ment of his intellectual powers is in a great degree dependent upon this arrange- 

 ment. 



390. The ministration of the Nervous System to purely Animal life, obviously 

 consists in its rendering the mind cognizant of that which is taking place around, 

 and in enabling it to act upon the material world, by the instruments with which 

 the body is provided for the purpose. It is important to observe, that every 

 method at present certainly known, by which Mind can communicate with Mind, 

 involves in the first place, a generation of nervous force, which excites muscular 

 contraction; secondly, a physical change determined by that contraction, the 

 medium of which may be sound, light, or motion; and thirdly, the operation of 

 this physical change as an "impression" upon the sensory nerves, and through 

 them upon the sensorial ganglia, of the other party. Such is the case, for ex- 

 ample, not only in that communication which takes place by language, whether 

 written or spoken ; but in the look, the touch, the gesture, which are so fre- 

 quently more expressive than any words can be; and thus we see that our 

 interchange of ideas and emotions which are most purely psychical in their 

 nature, can only be accomplished through the intermediation of physical forces. 

 That imperfections in such communication are thus involved in the very nature 

 of our present condition, and that all the higher operations of the mind are 

 trammelled and restricted by the limited powers of its corporeal instrument, is 

 a matter of constant and indubitable experience. On the other hand, that, in 

 a future state of being, the communion of mind with mind will be more inti- 

 mate, and that Man will be admitted into more immediate converse with the 

 Supreme Intelligence, appears to be alike the teaching of the most comprehen- 

 sive Philosophical inquiries, and of the most direct Revelation of the Divinity. 



391. The Organs of Sense are instruments, which are adapted to enable par- 

 ticular nerves to receive impressions from without; of a kind, and in a degree, 

 of which they would not otherwise be sensible. Thus, although the simple 

 mechanical impression produced by contact of a hard body, produces such a 

 change in it, as, being propagated to the central sensorium, excites sensation 

 there, it is evident that a nerve must be peculiarly modified at its peripheral 

 expansion to receive its impressions from the undulations of the air; still more, 

 to be susceptible of the impressions produced by those undulations to which 

 most Natural Philosophers now attribute the transmission of light. And, even 

 when this has been provided for, by some modification in the structure or ar- 

 rangements of the nerve-fibres themselves, or of the vesicular matter in con- 

 nection with them, a further provision is still required for giving to the mind a 

 distinct consciousness of external objects in all their variety of shapes, colors, 

 lights, and shadows, &c. ; or for enabling it to form ideas of the direction, pitch, 

 quality, &c., of sonorous undulations. There is reason to believe that many 

 among the lower Animals, which cannot see objects around them, are conscious of 

 the influence of light; and thus the distinction between the mere reception of the 



