occasion them. How can sensations be ex- 

 tended beyond the organ, which experiences and 

 limits it? 



" But, in considering the properties of touch, 

 it might have been perceived, that it is capable 

 of discovering this space, and of teaching the 

 other senses to refer their sensations to the bodies 

 which occupy it," 



" The sensations of touch," says Degerando, 

 " merit, from the philosopher, peculiar attention. 

 They are the first which affect the individual; 

 and if, before having received the instruction of 

 touch, the individual should hear a sound, or 

 find himself affected by an odor, he would per- 

 ceive nothing but the impression resulting from 

 it ; he would neither think of referring it to a 

 foreign cause, nor regarding it as a modification 

 of one, whatever philosophers may say. For, in 

 the first place, there is nothing in these sensa- 

 tions fitted to inform him of an object foreign to 

 himself; and so long as a man knows nothing 

 foreign to himself, how should he be led to notice 

 self?" (son moi). 



" A man deprived of touch," says Dumas, 

 with Lecat, " would have no sensation, but what 

 he would consider as confined to his own person, 

 and would be absolutely incapable of distinguish- 

 ing whatever was concerned in producing it. 

 But, with the faculty of touch, he can put 

 objects in their places, determine the extent of 

 space which he occupies, and ascertain the dis- 

 tance which separates him from each." 



If touch makes us know the external world 

 better than the other senses, for the sole reason 

 that it finds bounds and resistance to its action, 

 I will inquire whether the eye does not also meet 

 with limits and resistance? If we must deal with 

 metaphysical subtilties on the existence and non- 

 existence of external things, then touch, resist- 

 ance, repulsion, will not instruct us better than 

 any other sensation; for, just as all other sensa- 

 tions have their seat solely in the brain, so the 

 sense of touch, resistance, repulsion, has its seat 

 only in the brain. No one has yet placed these 

 sensations in external objects; and, consequently, 

 the pretended illusion may as well take place in 

 the touch as in any other sense. We must, then, 

 admit with Locke, that the ideas " which enter 

 the mind by more than one sense, are those of 

 extent or space, figure, motion, and rest:" and I 

 conclude with Tracy, that " the sensations per- 

 taining to touch, have not, in themselves, any 

 essential prerogative by nature which distin- 

 guishes them from all others. Whether a body 

 affects the nerves concealed under the skin of 

 my hand, or, whether it produces certain agita- 

 tions of those spread over the membranes of my 

 palate, nose, eye or ear, it is a pure impression 

 which I receive, a simple affection which I ex- 

 perience; and there seems no reason to believe, 

 that one is more instinctive than the other; that 

 one is more fitted than the other to lead me to 

 the conclusion, that it comes from a being foreign 

 to myself. Why should the simple sensation of 

 a puncture, of a burn, of tickling, of pressure, 

 give me more knowledge of the cause which 

 produces it, than that of a color, of a sound, or 

 of internal pain? * There is no reason for 

 thinking so." 



If philosophers, who, with Condillac, have re- 



duced man to the state of a statue, had had 

 the prudence to form this statue after the model 

 of man, and to make it out like him, they would 

 have presented principles wholly different with 

 regard to the functions and the influence of the 

 senses. I might, for example, remind them, that 

 man and animals are accustomed to transfer to 

 the external world, everything extraordinary 

 which passes within them, and to regard it as an 

 accident of the world without them. A blur on 

 the eye produces the impression of surrounding 

 flames ; the flow of blood to the ear, makes us 

 imagine that we hear the sound of bells; the sick 

 man wishes removed from him the imaginary fly 

 which he has before his eye,?, the odor which 

 offends his nose, and the ice-cold corpse which 

 lies at his side; in our dreams, we eat the most 

 delicious viands ; we walk in delicious gardens, 

 bathe in tepid waters, fly in the air ; the coward 

 is in the hand of robbers; the gamester draws 

 his prize from the wheel of fortune; the tender 

 mother throws herself into the flames to save her 

 child. Has not the illusion of the senses invented 

 apparitions, visions, spirits, and wizards? The 

 madman hears the celestial choirs; he fears the 

 devil who follows him with eager step ; he attacks 

 whole legions; dies a hundred times on the 

 wheel for imaginary crimes, finds his head on 

 the neck of another, and carefully repulses 

 everything which approaches him, in order not 

 to endanger his nose of many yards in length, 

 which he is forced to drag along the ground. 

 Ought we not infer, from all these phenomena, 

 that the nature of man is rather inclined to ex- 

 pand into a world exterior to its own creation, 

 than to transport to, and concentrate in itself, 

 the real external world, and in this manner to 

 excuse, in some sort, the reveries of the 

 idealists? 



Philosophers have not stopped at the period of 

 attributing exclusively to the touch, the know- 

 ledge of the external world. 



Condillac derives from touch, as from every 

 other sense, attention, memory, judgment, ima- 

 gination. He makes of it the corrector of all 

 the other senses, the source of curiosity, of 

 abstract ideas, and of all desires and passions. 

 But he has invented so romantic a fable in rela- 

 tion to pain and pleasure, which he presents as 

 the only motives of all the actions of man, that I 

 cannot undertake the tedious task of correcting 

 him. 



Ackermann thinks, that the touch represents 

 impressions in more distinct series ; he regards it 

 as the corrector of the other senses. According 

 to him, the imperfect hand of animals is con- 

 cealed in the nails or in the hoofs of the fore feet, 

 so that they want this sense, the slowest in truth, 

 but likewise the most sure. 



Buffon says, — It is by the touch alone, that we 

 can gain complete and real knowledge ; it is this 

 sense which rectifies all the others, whose effects 

 would be only illusions, and produce nothing 

 but error in our minds, if touch did not teach us 

 to judge. This naturalist is so much prejudiced 

 in favor of the advantages which result to us from 

 touch, that, while speaking of the custom of 

 swathing the arms of infants, he expresses him- 

 self thus : — One man has, perhaps, more mind 

 than another, only in consequence of having 



