938 Dynamic Theory. 



manner. Although the other avenues from the outer world to her brain 

 were closed, the stimulations which it became possible, under Dr. Howe's 

 admirable system, to project upon her brain through the sense of touch 

 alone, were enough to form there ideas of a vast variety. It is not, in- 

 deed, possible that her ideas were like those of other people upon most 

 subjects. But neither can we suppose that the ideas of people with 

 like senses are precisely alike, even when they are supposed to agree. 

 As Locke long ago observed, we have no means of knowing that the 

 color two people agree in calling yellow, appears anything like the same 

 to each. All we can say is that as it appears to one to-day, it will ap- 

 pear to-morrow, and he will continue to call it by the name taught him 

 at first, and the two persons will agree upon the name without the 

 slightest means of knowing that it appears alike to each. If this is 

 true of a simple sensation, it is still more so of ideas made up from 

 many sensations. And to a still greater degree is it true when the ideas 

 of a person with five senses are compared with those of a person having 

 but one. In fact, it is nearly impossible for two people to get precisely 

 the same idea of a thing even when both are supposed to see it under the 

 same light, and from the same point of view. 



The sense of touch shown in Laura Bridgman's case to be of so com- 

 prehensive a nature, is one which can least be spared consistently with 

 the integrity of the ideas which go to make up our personality. Luys 

 mentions the effect of anesthesia, or failure of the sense of feeling, in 

 a number of cases. " An anesthetic patient, described by Michea, said 

 that his body had been changed, and that he had been transformed into 

 a machine. ' You see,' he said, ' that I no longer have a body. ' An- 

 other insisted that he was dead from head to feet. " " The elder Foville 

 reports the case of an old anesthetic soldier, who said he had been long 

 dead. " His name was Pere Lambert. He claimed he had been killed, 

 and that a machine had been made to resemble him. He spoke of him- 

 self as that. Another, a lady, said she felt nothing surrounding her, 

 that she was in space, and her body had no weight. < ' The surgeon 

 Bandologue, at the last period of his life had lost consciousness of the 

 existence of his body. " He claimed he had no head, and did not know 

 where his hands were. He could feel his own pulse when his right 

 hand was placed over his left wrist, but did not know it was his unless 

 told. These cases depend on partial or total anesthesia, or insensibility 

 of the skin to touch. 



The knowledge a person afflicted with such a disease gets of himself, 

 is through the sense of sight, and he sees his own parts as he would 

 see those of another person. It requires a train of reasoning to con- 

 vince himself they belong to him, and it is a matter of inference, not 

 of feeling, that they do. This indicates that the sense of personality 



