70 INTRODUCTION. 



attention is due. The human hand, in every age, has excited the atten- 

 tion of the reflecting and the wise, and has been often and forcibly 

 referred to, as direct proof of consummate art, and design, in the 

 creation of our frame. Let us contemplate, for a moment, the uses to 

 which it is applied, and the extent of its power, as a means of acquiring 

 knowledge, in order that its vast importance may be properly estimated. 

 In the first place, then, it is the grand organ of touch, or tact ; the in- 

 strument, by means of which we gain an acquaintance with more of the 

 physical properties of matter than through any other organ of sense. 

 Without it, the eye would never, perhaps, duly learn to appreciate, 

 correctly, many of the external properties of matter, the forms, the 

 relative size, the distance, or the position of bodies ; and it is the touch 

 which aids, regulates, and corrects the conclusions deduced from the 

 ideas gained through the medium of sight. It is a coadjutor to the eye, 

 though the eye, in its turn, aids the hand : for example, touch will not 

 inform us of the colour of any object colour is an impression upon the 

 organ of vision alone ; but touch gives us its hardness or softness, its 

 lightness or weight, its warmth and texture, its smoothness or rough- 

 ness ; thus, one organ aiding the other, we gain a knowledge which 

 neither, alone, would communicate ; and the one, taught, as it were, 

 by the other, will, independently, communicate a degree of information 

 respecting qualities, which the other can alone appreciate. Such is 

 the association of ideas, that the sight of a feather brings to mind its 

 softness, its lightness, its warmth, and elasticity, though the sight only 

 recognises colour and form ; but experience has taught, that, with such 

 a form and colour, these properties, cognizable by touch alone, are 

 always conjoined. 



The faculty which we commonly denominate the sense of touch, and 

 which, though generally diffused over the whole surface of the body, is 

 refined to a keener perceptibility, a more exquisite delicacy, in the 

 hand, depends upon the mesh of nerves, with which this organ is 

 abundantly supplied : it is upon the pulpy tips of the fingers that this 

 tissue of nervous papillae especially prevails, and that the highest degree 

 of tact resides. Hence it is by the application of the tips to bodies, 

 that the most distinct impressions are received. The discriminating 

 sensibility which resides in the human hand, and in that alone con- 

 stituting an important sense which ministers to the mind, being a 

 faculty not needed, at least in high perfection, by the lower orders in 

 the scale, is wisely denied where its possession would be out of harmony. 

 In fact, the brute can hardly be said to possess it at all ; for even those 

 tribes, the Simiae, for example, which, as far as external configuration 

 goes, approach the nearest to Man, resort but little to its aid ; they 

 evidently do not possess it as Man does ; and, if they did, it would be 



