THE PJGHT WAY TN PSYCHOLOGY. 



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body can he stretched so as to touch at one moment two points 

 that it would otherwise not extend to — for example, by spreading 

 apart one's two arms or two legs ; but the mind cannot thus be 

 stretched, since it is impossible by any efforts to think of two objects 

 at the same itistant — they must be thought of by turns. 



Also the mind can work quite independently of the body, 

 dispensing with the bodily organs through which it usually works 

 altogether. Children who were born blind learn to weave baskets and 

 bird-cages, preserving the shapes round and true, which it is 

 impossible they should do without having images of them in their 

 minds ; while men who have become blind (like the poet Milton) 

 can conjure up with the keenest vividness images of all the scenes 

 and incidents that their eyes have witnessed, representing them 

 anew upon the mirror or illumined screen of memory and even 

 reflecting fresh forms upon the kaleidoscope of the imagination. 

 Again, before children are able to speak, they certainly think, as 

 can be proved by many instances ; and conversely, when men have 

 ceased to be able to speak upon their dying beds, their signs prove 

 that they think still, while an instance is on record of a Christian 

 man writing a dying exhortation after speech had thus left him.* 

 And lastly, whereas they who are dumb through having been born 

 deaf can actually be taught to speak with lips and tongue ; some 

 who have become stone-deaf through old age (like the late Sir 

 Arthur Cotton) have shown themselves to possess memories as clear 

 and intellects as vivacious as the ablest of their contemporaries, 

 who have every organ of sense perfect. 



Now, if the absence of each of these faculties separately leaves 

 the mind intact, the absence of any two or all three of them must 

 equally leave it so ; — an inference confirmed by the recent case of a 

 girl born both deaf, dumb and blind, and yet rising to scholarly 

 attainments through the unwearied patience of her teachers. And it 

 is further evident that if the absence of bodily sight, speech, and 

 hearing does not cause the mind to lose any of its soundness or 

 wholeness, the superadded absence of the inferior faculties of smell, 

 taste, and touch cannot possibly make it less sound or whole. The 

 mind is therefore a unity independent of the body. 



* Mr. Edward Read of Tasmania, father-in-law of Dr. Harry Guinness. 



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