334 THE SENSORIAL FUNCTIONS. 



organizations for vision, for hearing, and for the 

 perception of odours ; all of which senses establish 

 extensive relations between him and the external 

 world, and give him the command of various 

 objects which are necessary to supply his wants, or 

 procure him gratification ; and which also apprize 

 him of danger while it is yet remote, and may be 

 avoided. Endowed with the power of combining 

 all these perceptions, he commences his career of 

 sensitive and intellectual existence ; and though he 

 soon learns that he is dependent for most of his 

 sensations on the changes which take place in the 

 external world, he is also conscious of an internal 

 power, which gives him some kind of control over 

 many of those changed, and he knows that he 

 moves his limbs by his own voluntary act ; move- 

 ments which originally, and of themselves, appear, 

 in most animals, to be productive of great en- 

 joyment. 



To a person unused to reflection, the phenomena 

 of sensation and perception may appear to require 

 no elaborate investigation. That he may behold 

 external objects, nothing more seems necessary than 

 directing his eyes towards them. He feels as if the 

 sight of those objects were a necessary consequence 

 of the motion of his eye-balls, and he dreams not 

 that there can be any thing marvellous in the func- 

 tion of the eye, or that any other organ is concerned 

 in this simple act of vision. If he wishes to ascer- 

 tain the solidity of an object within his reach, he 

 knows that he has but to stretch forth his hand, 

 and to feel in what degree it resists the pressure he 

 gives to it. No exertion even of this kind is re- 

 quired for hearing the voices of his companions, or 





