CONSCIOUSNESS AND SENSATION. 95 
massed together, derive their properties from their 
connections. 
This assumption has possibly never been stated 
in this form before, but it is one from which the 
received doctrine of sensation allows no escape, 
and surely it is an assumption sufficient to arouse 
some suspicion of the doctrine which demands it. 
If it be true, it seems strange that some of those 
termini are not often the seat of disease while 
others escape, that we do not meet with paralysis 
of the sensation of limited patches of the body 
occurring from limited cerebral lesions, and that 
nothing of the sort has been laid bare by the 
experiments of vivisectors. 
If we now contemplate the routes by which 
impressions from the periphery reach the brain, 
we meet with other difficulties. It is plain that if 
the mind is affected by the condition of cerebral 
elements as if they were situated at the parts from 
which they receive impressions, then the accuracy 
of the mind’s knowledge of the periphery is de- 
pendent on the number of such elements which 
receive impressions from distinct parts, and that 
each distinctly recognizable spot of the body must 
be joined by a separate tract with its own cerebral 
terminus. That tract may be interrupted by cor- 
puscles with branches in other directions, and must 
