VISION. 75 



as to give the appearance of feeling, you would be 

 quite insensible to every injury of it. The change 

 which began in the nerve must run up the spinal 

 marrow and into the brain before you can feel the 

 pin-point. And although science can tell you that 

 when an animal's brain is removed it loses con- 

 sciousness, and can tell you that intelligence is in 

 proportion to complexity of brain structure, science 

 cannot tell you why it should be so, nor why any 

 commotion of particles of matter, the only change of 

 which brain is capable, should be associated with 

 operations of the mind, and even with the knowledge 

 that the pin-point touches your finger. Thus we 

 see that there is not only a long and difficult journey 

 between the touch with the pin and our knowledge 

 of it, but that there is a gap between our conceptions 

 of mind and matter, utterly bridgeless in our present 

 state of being ; although all our ideas are shaped 

 from that world of matter, our connection with which 

 is so incomprehensible. Let us even believe, as I 

 do, that the mind reaches more or less thoroughly 

 at different times to the finger ends, and is 

 actually present there so long as the connection 

 with the brain is undivided, we do not by that 

 supposition bring the mind into immediate con- 

 tact with the external world ; for you will admit 

 that not one of you is conscious of the brain and 



