84 SENSATION IS 



. 



" First Fear, his hand. Its skill to try, 

 Amid the chords bewilderM 1am ; 

 Then back recoil'd, he knew not why, 

 E'en at the souiul himself had made." 



The same principle carries us a great deal further ; 

 and it is worth following for at least part of the 

 way, because, being always collected and ready, is 

 the very soul of observation. Now just as we are 

 never in the least surprised at our own thoughts, 

 however extraordinary they might appear if they were 

 told to others, and never have the least doubt of the 

 truth of even the most absurd and practically impos- 

 sible of them ; and not only so, but we stand up 

 manfully for them, and resist with all our might and 

 as long as ever we can the external evidence which, 

 in the end, convinces us that we are wrong; so, 

 also, we are never frightened or alarmed at any one 

 of our single sensations, be its subject or its conse- 

 quences what they may. The soldier who, in ad- 

 vancing to the charge, receives his death wound, 

 continues to rush on a few steps, and falls painless 

 and dead ; and if that extreme case can be met with- 

 out any thing that causes unhappiness, surely Jill the 

 inferior cases may. 



Everybody must have felt the truth of the mind's 

 satisfaction and confidence in its own thoughts, from 

 what occurs in dreams. A man who dreams that 

 he is flying, or standing on the cross of St. Paul's, 

 or walking on the bottom of the sea, never has at 

 the time any more doubt of the fact than he has of 

 the fact of being himself. That is the mind acting 

 with little more co-operation of the senses than suf- 

 fices to bring the dream back in waking suggestion ; 

 but still the dream is mentally possible, and certain 

 truth, up to the moment when he awakens, and finds, 

 by actual observation, that he is snugly in his bed. 

 The body takes part in matters at that stage, and thus 

 the mind loses its wings, and is clogged so that it 

 cannot soar. But we are startled at the thoughts 



