CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION. 95 



massed together, derive their properties from their 

 connections. 



This assumption has possibly never been stated 

 in this form before, but it is one from which the 

 received doctrine of sensation allows no escape, 

 and surely it is an assumption sufficient to arouse 

 some suspicion of the doctrine which demands it. 

 If it be true, it seems strange that some of those 

 termini are not often the seat of disease while 

 others escape, that we do not meet with paralysis 

 of the sensation of limited patches of the body 

 occurring from limited cerebral lesions, and that 

 nothing of the sort has been laid bare by the 

 experiments of vivisectors. 



If we now contemplate the routes by which 

 impressions from the periphery reach the brain, 

 we meet with other difficulties. It is plain that if 

 the mind is affected by the condition of cerebral 

 elements as if they were situated at the parts from 

 which they receive impressions, then the accuracy 

 of the mind's knowledge of the periphery is de- 

 pendent on the number of such elements which 

 receive impressions from distinct parts, and that 

 each distinctly recognizable spot of the body must 

 be joined by a separate tract with its own cerebral 

 terminus. That tract may be interrupted by cor- 

 puscles with branches in other directions, and must 



