26 BEING AND FACULTIES OF MAN. 



It has been said we have but one faculty of Conscious- 

 ness, and that it is capable of only successive, but not 

 of simultaneous sensations. It is not, however, correct 

 to draw this last conclusion quite so far without giving 

 a qualified effect to many considerations bearing on the 

 subject in our experience. Thus, if we lay the open hand 

 down flat on a table or other surface we feel the sense of 

 touch over the general surface of the open hand, but if 

 we raise the hollow of the hand, leaving only the points of 

 the fingers and the part toward the wrist in contact, there 

 will be touch, and consciousness of it, only in two parts of 

 the surface which was generally conscious of touch before, 

 and the sense of touch will be suspended in the inter- 

 mediate portion of the hand. But this division of the 

 sense of touch does not create two faculties of conscious- 

 ness for us, it merely occasions one consciousness of 

 touch in two portions of surface. In like manner our 

 volition is capable of double action : thus we may will to 

 raise both hands and bring them by mutual and simul- 

 taneous motion in contact with any external object or 

 with each other, yet there is but one volition exercised 

 though two members of the body are simultaneously 

 impelled and controlled by it. Indeed, in the experiment 

 with the hand touching a table, just mentioned, it is more 

 strictly true that the Consciousness is extended over the 

 points of contact and also over the part of the hand inter- 

 mediate between them, and that it is only the contact that 

 is suspended in the intermediate part, but not the Conscious- 

 ness, and that this may be looked upon as a case of the 

 extension of Consciousness to and between simultaneous points 

 of contact ; and a more extended illustration of the same 

 thing may be exemplified by the use of both hands in 

 touching an object, in which case the extension of the 

 Consciousness is as great as the distance between the two 

 hands, even to the extremest point of their possible separa- 



