NATURAL HISTORY - . 7 



Touch is probably the only sense that is cognizable by another sense 

 besides the immediate sensation ; and, indeed, taste may be supposed 

 to be the same ; but taste certainly goes a step further. 



If we see a body in motion before us, we are [led] from the habit of 

 combining this motion and the impression of its touching us, to act 

 accordingly, either by avoiding, meeting, &c. ; so that these two be- 

 come the great cause and guide of most of our actions : but all this is 

 no more than what is, probably, common to all animals endowed with 

 such senses [as ours]. Therefore Man goes further into the cause of 

 sensation : finding that sight only helps out touch, but touch not sight, 

 he inquires how sight is produced. The same in [regard to] sound : 

 for, although touch remotely and sight immediately help us to the 

 remote cause of sound, yet not to the immediate cause of the sensa- 

 tion. The same [may be said] of smell and taste. 



Man is not satisfied with the modes only of immediate impression, or 

 with the combination of sensation simply in the mind ; but he goes into 

 the investigation of such masses of matter as produce these effects, 

 comparing them with each other, and [investigating] the common pro- 

 perties of each as a whole, which gives us the principle of what is 

 called ' Experimental Philosophy.' Thus he considers solidity, fluidity, 

 and vapour, the difference in the attractions called weight, with all the 

 different properties of which it is composed. He then applies these 

 different properties to different purposes, which constitutes ' Mechanics ; ' 

 but that is taking matter only in the gross. But he takes any one 

 species of matter, separates it, and considers it abstracted from our sen- 

 sations ; and finds that it is, or may be, composed of a variety of such 

 matters as strike our different senses in common ; and then we say 

 that such is composed of such other species of matter, and we again 

 combine or unite. 



Observation carries him still further ; for he finds effects that are not 

 cognizable by any of our senses : therefore he reasons from analogy, 

 as in the case of that [ideal] substance [concerned in reducing] the calx 

 of metals to the metallic form, commonly called ' Phlogiston.' 



He even goes further, for he forms in the mind abstract data to 

 reason upon, which is the groundwork of ' Metaphysics.' 



Matter being endowed with properties which become the cause of our 

 sensations, and the modes of action of those properties being hardly 

 known, these properties become the foundation of the idea of spirit, viz. 

 a species of intelligent quality that presides over and directs the actions 

 of matter. But, as causes and effects of matter seem to be entirely 

 connected with matter itself, and to be a property inherent in and 

 inseparable from it, and as these are becoming better known, the < pre- 



