ANIMALS. 369 



bear upon them ; his sense of smelling assists the other two, at 

 its own distance ; and of such objects, as a man, he may be said 

 to be in perfect possession. 



Each sense, however, the more it acts at a distance, the more 



body, he did not attempt, in any of these cases, to touch that of others. To 

 say that he addressed these signs to their sight would be incorreit ; but he 

 must have been conscii,us tliat they were endowed with some means of inter- 

 preting signs, without contact, by an incomprehensible faculty which nature 

 had refused to him. 



He seems to have had no conception of any beings superior to human, and 

 was consequently without any appearance of those religious feelings which 

 are among the most general characteristics of our species. His only at- 

 tempts at utterance were the uncouth bellowings by which he sometin es la- 

 boured to vent that violent anger to which his situation rendered hira prone. 

 His tears were most commonly shed from disappointment in his wishes ; but 

 they sometimes flowed from affectionate sorrow. No account of any being, 

 doomed from birth to a privation so nearly complete both of sight and hear- 

 ing, has hitherto been discovered iu the records of science. The case of 

 Mitchell must therefore be regarded as among the most interesting ano- 

 malies in the natural history of tlie human species. 



As the materials of all human thought and reasoning enter the mind, or 

 arise in it at a period which is prior to the operation of memory, and under 

 the simultaneous action of all the senses, it is extremely difficult to ascertain 

 what perceptions belong originally and exclusively to each of the organs of 

 external sense. Our notion of every object is made up of the impressions 

 which it makes on ail the organs. Whatever may be thought of tlie mental act 

 which originally unites these various impressions, it seems evident, that, in 

 the actual state of every human understanding, the labour is to disunite them. 

 Every common man thinks of them, and employs them in their compound 

 state. To analyze them is an operation suggested by philosophy ; and which, 

 in the usual state of things, must always be most imperfectly performed. A 

 man who, from the beginning, had all his senses complete, must have had all 

 these impressions ; and never can banish any of them from his mind. He 

 can indeed attend to some of them so much more than to others, that he may 

 eeem to himself to exclude altogether that which he neglects. But to the 

 perceptions of which he is conscious much will adhere, composed of ingre 

 dicnts so minute and subtle, as to elude the power of will, and to escape the 

 grasp of consciousness. He can approach analysis only by efforts of atten- 

 tion very imperfectly successful, and by suppositions often precarious ; auo 

 when pressed to their ultimate consequences, often also repugnant and iu. 

 conceivable. For such purposes some philosophers have imagined intelli- 

 gent beings with no other sense than that t)f vision ; and otliers have repre- 

 sented their own hypothesis respecting the origin and progress of perception 

 under the history of a statue ruccessively endowed with the various organs 

 of sense- It is evident, however, that such suppositions can do no more 

 than illustrate the peculiar opinions of the supposer, and cannot prove that 

 which, in the nature of tilings, they presuppose. But when one inlet of per- 

 ception is entirely blocked up, we then really see the variation in the state o' 

 the compound, produced hy the abceuce of part of its ingredients ; and heuoe 



