370 HisroKf OK 



capable it is oi' making comoiiiatioii.- , and is, consequently, the 

 more improveable. Refined imaginations, and men of strong 

 minds, take more pleasure, therefore, in improving the delights 

 of the distant senses, than in enjoying such as are scarce capable 

 of improvement. 



By combining the objects of the extensive senses, all the arts 

 of poetry, painting, and harmony, have been discovered ; but the 

 closer senses, if I may so call them, such as smelling, tasting, 

 and touching, are, in some measm-e, as simple as they are limited, 

 and admit of little variety. The man of imagination makes a 

 great and an artificial happiness by the pleasure of altering and 

 combining ; the sensualist just stops where he began, and culti- 

 vates only those pleasures which he cannot improve. The sen- 

 sualist is contented with those enjoyments that are already made 

 to his hand ; but the man of pleasme is best pleased with grow- 

 ing happiness. 



it has happened, that the cure and education of the deaf and blind, besides 

 their higher character among the triumphs of civilized benevolence, acquire 

 a considerable though subordinate value, as almost the only great experi- 

 ments which metaphysical philosophy can perform. Even these experiments 

 are incomplete. Knowledge, opinion, and prejudice, are infused into the 

 blind through the ear ; and wheu they are accustomed to employ the nie- 

 chanisni of language, they learn the use of words as signs of things unknown, 

 and speak with coherence and propriety on subjects where they may have 

 no ideas. To fix the limits of the thoughts of a blind man who hears and 

 speaks, is a problem beyond the reach of our present attainments in philo- 

 Bophy. That Sanderson and Biacklock could use words correctly and 

 consistently, without correspondent ideas, seems to be certain ; but how (ar 

 their privation of thought extended beyond the province of light and colours 

 we do not seem yet to possess the means of determining. On the other hand, 

 the deaf employ the sense of sight, the most rapid and comprehensive of the 

 Bubordinate faculties, of the highest importance for the direct original inform 

 ation which it conveys, as well for the great variety of natural signs of which 

 it takes cognizance, and for the conventional signs which the abbreviation of 

 its natural language supplies. Miissieu, evidently a mind of a far higher order 

 than that of the poet or the mathematician whom vi'e have mentioned, la 

 also exi'luded from less knowledge ; and if he were to reason on the theory 

 of sound, there appears no ground for expecting that he might not employ 

 his words with as much exactness as Sanderson displayed In the employment 

 of algebraic signs- The information conveyed by the ear respecting the con- 

 dition of outward objects, is comparatively small. But its great importance 

 consists in being the organ which renders it possible to use a conventional 

 language on an extensive scale, and under almost all circumstances. The 

 eye is the grand interpreter of natural signs. A being almost entirely de. 

 prived of both, was a now object of philosophical examination ; and the case 

 could not have fallen into better hands tha'' Dugald Stewart, 



