COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



senses are modifications of touch/' From a sin- 

 gle sense, more or less diffused over the surface 

 of the body, and capable of establishing corre- 

 spondences only with agencies in direct contact 

 with the body, there have arisen, by slow differ- 

 entiations, such localized senses as sight and 

 hearing, which serve to enlarge the environment 

 and establish correspondences with agencies 

 more and more remote. Let us briefly consider 

 the sense of sight, omitting hearing, as well as 

 smell and taste, since our space is too limited to 

 deal with them properly. 



In such lowly organized creatures as the hy- 

 dra the ability to distinguish between light and 

 darkness, or between sunshine and shadow, is 

 possessed in a slight degree by the entire sur- 

 face of the body. But vision can hardly be said 

 to exist, even in its most rudimentary aspect, 

 until this sensibility is " concentrated in a par- 

 ticular spot. The rudimentary eye consisting, 

 as in a planaria, of some pigment grains, may be 

 considered as simply a part of the surface more 

 irritable by light than the rest. Some idea of 

 the impression it is fitted to receive may be 

 formed by turning our closed eyes towards the 

 light, and passing the hand backwards and for- 

 wards before them." But while this localization 

 of sensibility enables the creature to adapt it- 

 self to the movements of neighbouring opaque 

 bodies, the extension of the correspondence is 

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