292 SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS 



"Inquiry," of seventeen years' later date. 1 Even 

 Sir William Hamilton, learned historian and 

 acute critic as he was, not only failed to appre- 

 hend the philosophical bearing of long-established 

 physiological truths ; but, when he affirmed that 

 there is no reason to deny that the mind feels at 

 the finger points, and none to assert that the 

 brain is the sole organ of thought, 2 he showed 

 that he had not apprehended the significance of 

 the revolution commenced, two hundred years 

 before his time, by Descartes, and effectively 

 followed up by Haller, Hartley, and Bonnet, in 

 the middle of the last century. 



In truth, the theory of sensation, except in one 



1 In justice to Reid, however, it should be stated that the 

 chapters on sensation in the Essays on the Intellectual Powers 

 (1785) exhibit a great improvement. He is, in fact, in advance 

 of his commentator, as the note to Essay II. chap. ii. p. 248 of 

 Hamilton's edition shows. 



2 Haller, amplifying Descartes, writes in the Primce Linece, 

 CCCLXVI. "Non est adeo obscurum sensum omnem oriri ab 

 objecti sensibilis impressione in nervum quemcumque corporis 

 humani, et eamdem per eum nervum ad cerebrum pervenientem 

 tune demum representari animae, quando cerebrum adtigit. Ut 

 etiam hoc falsum sit animam inproximo per sensoria nervor- 

 umque ramos sentire." . . . DLVII. "Dum ergo sentimus 

 quinque diversissima entia conjunguntur : corpus quod sentimus : 

 organi sensorii adfectio ab eo corpore : cerebri adfectio a sensorii 

 percussione nata : in anima nata mutatio : animae denique con- 

 scientia et sensationis adperceptio. " Nevertheless, Sir William 

 Hamilton gravely informs his hearers: "We have no more 

 right to deny that the mind feels at the finger points, as con- 

 sciousness assures us, than to assert that it thinks exclusively 

 in the brain." Lecture on Metaphysics and Logic, ii. p. 128. 

 " We have no reason whatever to doubt the report of conscious- 

 ness, that we actually perceive at the external point of sensa- 

 tion, and that we perceive the material reality." Ibid. p. 129. 



