162 GLIMPSES OF NATURE. 



hearing-centres of the organ of mind. So much is 

 matter of ordinary physiological teaching. And what 

 of the impressions which fall upon eye and ear, nose 

 and tongue, and skin ? 



Everything in the way of sense, as Goethe put it 

 long ago, resolves itself into a matter of touch. Every 

 other sense is a modification of touch ; or, as it was 

 originally put, " touch is the mother of all the senses." 

 When we touch any object, that, of course, is ordinary 

 sensation, pure and simple. It is the contact of the 

 nerve-ends with the outer world, with which our 

 nervous system brings us into relation. When we 

 taste there is contact that is to say, " touch " of 

 the substance to be tasted with the nerves of tongue 

 and -palate. When we smell there must be contact of 

 nerve-ends again, with the odorous particles. When 

 we hear and see, there is the impinging of waves of 

 sound and of waves of light upon ear-drum and retina 

 (the nerve-network of the eye) respectively. 



Ethereal and delicate must ear-touch and eye-touch 

 be, yet it is a contact of something material from the 

 outside world with something material in eye and ear 

 nevertheless. All our sensations and impressions, then, 

 are reduced to the level of touch. It is only a ques- 

 tion of the degree of fineness of the touch which awaits 

 the comprehension of science whenever senses and 

 their methods are discussed at all. 



But certain clear facts lead us nigh to the compre- 

 hension of " Spotty," and his perception of cat pre- 

 sence, as well as to the understanding of the powers 

 of the bloodhound in tracking the criminal, or of those 

 of the St. Bernard in finding the frozen man beneath 

 the snow. 



It is provable, first of all, that any form of matter 



