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make a sad anticlimax 1 do we not daily experience that 

 even the light distraction of cheerful conversation, or 

 luck at cards, are as good as colchicum in twinges of a 

 second-rate gout. * 



In order, then, to sensation, an impression (the material, 

 so to speak, out of which the sensation is to be forged) is 

 transmitted to the brain, (more or less vividly, according 

 to the perfection and delicacy of the organism,) and the 

 mind, receiving its intimation from the organ of sense, 

 rejoices or is pained according to the perception it thus 

 obtains. The acuteness, however, of the mind's per- 

 ceptivity of its full co-operation with that organ, will 

 vary according to the nature, the force, and the duration 

 of the impression itself ; according to the fidelity with 

 which the material instrument, the nerve, may have 

 transmitted the impression; and according as attention 

 has been concentrated, divided, or withdrawn. Thus 

 that some persons bear surgical operations better than 

 others, may indeed involve several circumstances ; of these 

 however it is probably one, to possess a mind capable of 

 considerable effort in forcing the attention elsewhere ; 

 though it cannot be denied that a more obtuse constitu- 

 tion of the nervous system may materially assist. Such, 

 then, seems to be the nature of sensibility, and such the 

 organs it employs ; but as those organs are so scantily, or 

 not at all, developed in insects, if the above statement be 

 correct, the popular and poetical opinion of their high 

 sensibility cannot possibly be just. 

 But these views by no means exhaust the objections that 



* " And how 's your pain ?" inquired the gentle maid, 

 (For that was asking if with luck she play'd ;) 

 And this she answer' d, as the cards decreed, 

 " O Biddy 1 ask not very bad indeed ;" 

 Or, in more cheerful lone, from spirit light, 

 ** Why, thank you, Biddy, pretty well to-night." 



CKAKUK. 

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