

THE SENSES, THEIR LIMITS AND THEIK 

 FALLACIES. 



THE present is not an inappropriate time for an exposition of 

 facts in relation to the title. The British public has, for some 

 years gone by, been complacently trying to deceive the senses. 

 Popular tastes go to extremes; probably, then, the season 

 may have come for the qualities, the fallacies, and the limits 

 of sensation to be temperately received. 



The senses whereby human beings are made cognisant 

 of external impressions are five ; and, most probably, though 

 undemonstrated and undemonstrable, no animal, whatever its 

 grade, is possessed of any other. 



Of these senses, one, touch, is exercised without a special 

 organ ; whereas the remaining four possess each an organism 

 fitted to its own purposes alone. This holds mostly good; 

 nevertheless the statement is not so absolute in all particulars 

 as at first it might seem. For example, the line is so ill 

 defined between smell and taste, that it is impossible to aver 

 where one begins and the other ends. 



The sense of touch is simplest of all. It is endowed with 

 no special organ, though in every animal certain parts exist 

 more highly endowed than others. Human beings feel best 

 with fingers, lips, and tongue ; the elephant with the extre- 

 mity of his trunk; grazing animals with their lips; whiskered 

 quadrupeds with the nervous papillae situated at the base of 

 their whiskers ; and, to summarise, that part of an animal to 

 which the exercise of the sense is most useful is always en- 

 dowed with the faculty of touch in the highest degree. 



