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1872. ] 381 [Price. 
them all; with gathered experiences and forethought that make him 
largely prophetic of the future. So the poet’s vision has seen and de- 
scribed such an octogenarian ; or knew him, and sketched him from life : 
“Age had not tamed his eye: that, under brows 
Shaggy and grey, had meanings which it brought 
From years of youth; which, like a Being made 
Of many Beings, he had wondrous skill 
To blend with knowledge of the years to come: 
Human ; or such as lie beyond the grave.” 
— Wordsworth. 
As the visual picture entered not the brain, so will not the vibrations of 
sounds in the air. The speaker’s mind is filled with thoughts which he 
is earnest to inculcate upon his hearers, and vocally he gives them to his 
thousand listeners. I do not say transfers them, for he has not parted 
with one idea, though they have got all he has spoken. No phosphorus, 
or any other matter has left his to gointo their minds. His voice has but 
made vibrations in the elastic air, which otherwise has been unchanged. 
These vibrations have spread concentrically from their centre, with their 
ten thousand distinctions of modulated words. These sounds have reached 
the ears of the listeners, and their perceptive minds have reached forward 
through the auditory nerve, whose extension by delicate fibres floating in 
the water of the vestibule of the ear have been stirred, and given to the 
mind the perception of every variation of the voice of the speaker ; of its 
formed words, its inflections, cadences ; its tones of earnest pathos and its 
joyous or sad emotions ; and all its varied meanings. But no vibration 
of the air has reached the interior of the brain ; indeed, no material idea 
had traversed the air to reach the hearers, Air-borne wavélets of words, 
or conventional signs of ideas expressed only by distinctions in sounds, 
have reached the easily moved hairy fibres of the auditory nerve, and im- 
parted motion to them ; but there the material motion has ended, yet the 
perceptive mind has caught the many distinctive meanings. But no 
motion, no sound, no matter, has entered the brain by the auditory nerve ; 
for the nerve there embedded is constricted in passing through a narrow 
orifice in the skull ; is not itself floated, or tensioned, to transmit vibra- 
tory motion ; but cut off from the air, the vibrations of which have been 
spent upon the drum of the ear and the wonderful apparatus, and water 
within the vestibule ; and were this not so the vibrations of the air are not 
transmissions of matter ; but when the voice has sounded, the air and the 
ear are again as if no voice had spoken. The mind has taken the per- 
ception of the distinctions of sound from the fibrous extension of the 
auditory nerve. Had the same words, or conventional representations of 
thoughts, been written or printed, and then been read by others, these 
would have received their characters pictured on the retina, without the 
charms of vocal expression, and alike without the reception of any ma- 
terial element in the brain. 
It is obviously the same as to the sense of touch. The finger will give 
the perception of the shape, density, temperature, etc., of the object 
