should acquire, in a short time, those which it is 

 desired to impart to him." 



Cuvier, also, thinks that the touch serves to 

 verify and complete impressions, especially those 

 of the sight ; and as it is, he says the most im • 

 portant of all senses, its degrees of perfection 

 have a prodigious influence on the nature of 

 various animals. 



Herder asserts that the touch has given us the 

 comforts of life, inventions and arts, and that it 

 contributes, perhaps, more than we suppose, to 

 the nature of our ideas. 



According to Richerand, the perfection of the 

 organ of touch gives to elephants and to beavers 

 a degree of intelligence which is not granted to 

 any other quadruped, and which becomes, 

 perhaps, the principle of their social character. 

 If birds, notwithstanding the prodigious activity 

 of their nutritive life, have, nevertheless, an in- 

 telligence so limited, are so little susceptible of 

 durable attachment, and show themselves so 

 little capable of education, do not we find the 

 cause of it in the imperfections of their touch? 



According to Vicq d'Azyr, and several pro- 

 fessors now living, the difference between the 

 intellectual faculties of man and the monkey, is 

 explained by the difference in their hands , 

 because the hand of the monkey has neither ex- 

 tensor nor flexor; and moreover, the thumb is 

 shorter, and cannot be opposed to the other 

 fingers. 



It is thus that, thanks to credulity, and the 

 propensities for imitation, the old doctrine of 

 Anaxagoras, which taught that the hand was the 

 cause of human reason, has propagated itself 

 without alteration to our age, which styles itself 

 so enlightened. Why, then, ye philosophers, 

 have ye not raised a temple to your idol? Where 

 would have been the enjoyments and the wisdom 

 of your life, without the hands of a Homer, a 

 Solon, a Euclid, a Raphael, &c. ? What would 

 your libraries have been without the hands of 

 copyists and compilers? Whatever is marvellous 

 in the history of animals, it is to their trunks, 

 their tails, their antennae, that you are indebted 

 for it. It only remains for you to place their souls 

 at the extremity of all these hands, these trunks, 

 these tails, and to make them act according to the 

 instructions of Lecat, Buffon, Condillac, &c. Then 

 will you have established the principle of the 

 wisdom of animals and of men; and you will 

 have reason to maintain, that to seek other organs 

 to form a physiology of the brain, can only be the 

 futile amusement of idle men, a most unphi- 

 losophic design, a sort of scientific phrensy, 

 which has hitherto escaped being sent to the 

 madhouse. 



But, let us return to serious considerations, to 

 determine the real services of touch. 



We may, with the aid of attention, exercise 

 the sense of touch, more or less, by means of all 

 parts of the body. Still, this faculty is most 

 perfect in the hand, because the fingers are so 

 many separate instruments, supple and move- 

 able ; but it is not correct to say that they are 

 endowed with the most delicate touch. The 

 feet, toes, tongue, and especially the lips in the 

 horse, for example, also serve for touch in many 

 animals. Tne tail of a large number of monkeys, 

 of the beaver, the ant-bear, &c, the trunk of 



the elephant, the snout of the hog and the mole, 

 the beak of birds, the antennae of insects, the 

 barbillons of fishes, the whiskers of the mammi- 

 fera, serve the same use. By means of these 

 instruments, men and animals can acquire ideas, 

 more or less distinct, of distance, form, size, 

 rest, or motion, solidity, heat, and cold, mois- 

 ture and dryness, the weight and resistance of 

 objects, &c. 



But, are the ideas acquired by means of touch, 

 sufficient of themselves to establish better order 

 in thought? Can they rectify the errors of the 

 mind, give birth to industry, to the arts and 

 invention? Is the degree of perfection of the 

 nature of animals a consequence of greater 

 delicacy of touch? Are our intellectual faculties 

 and those of animals, as much more numerous, 

 as the organs of touch are more in number, and 

 more delicate? Does a more perfect touch afford 

 more precise and more extended knowledge? 

 And do animals choose things proper to their 

 preservation, with so much the more certainty 

 as their organs of touch are more supple? Can 

 touch produce attention, memory, judgment, 

 imagination, abstract ideas, curiosity, desire of 

 instruction, the appetites, and the passions? 

 Can we regard it as the first origin of all these 

 faculties? Or, must we rather consider it as an 

 instrument, as a means, which have been created 

 for the service of faculties of a superior order, 

 and put in reciprocal relation with them? 



By a natural consequence of the opinions of 

 the various writers I have quoted, should we not 

 be tempted to believe, that the polypi, who, fol - 

 lowing the expression of some naturalists, touch 

 the light, must have the most precise and the 

 most extensive knowledge ? Their organs of 

 touch, so numerous and flexible, should they not 

 lead us to hope, that we shall one day witness 

 their geometrical discoveries? The crab, the but- 

 terfly, the Capricorn (beetle), which have antennae 

 so complicated — is it through philosophic mo- 

 desty that they conceal their wisdom from us ? 

 It is unlucky, that the greater part of insects 

 exercise their faculties at the period when they 

 are still imperfect, and when their antennae are 

 not yet developed, and that those who make use 

 of their faculties in their state of complete de- 

 velopment, such as bees and wasps, are inferior 

 to the others in the beauty of their antennae. Is 

 it true, that the more perfect the organs of touch 

 that animals possess, the more surely they can 

 provide for the security of their existence ? Why 

 do not naturalists take advantage of this lumi- 

 nous observation, to explain the extinction of 

 several species of animals of the primitive world? 

 We are, probably, indebted for the existence of 

 oysters, fishes, and horses, as they exist at 

 present, to the care which nature has taken in 

 the present world, to change its march, by im- 

 posing on the whole animal kingdom the con- 

 dition of consulting the smell in their choice of 

 aliments. If the tail of the beaver, and the trunk 

 of the elephant, are the cause of their social 

 character and of their disposition to be tamed; 

 if the imperfect touch of birds is the cause of 

 their inaptitude to receive education, and their 

 want of attachment, we may doubt whether dogs, 

 sheep, and domestic fowls are tame and sociable 

 animals; we may, likewise, doubt whether the 



