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it may in the absence of the higher senses of sight, of hearing, become so far intellectual as scarcely to direct attention to the sensation. It thus becomes the unobserved medium of knowledge, the matter revealed being the only object obviously before the mind. Any sensation may be the occasion of a judgment, bearing the mind outward to a particular object; the peculiarity of touch is, that often by habitual use for this end, the sensational element is lost sight of, sinks from observation, and the perceptive element rises in its place, making this ordinarily over-shadowed sense a not inefficient substitute for sight.

These special senses, all of them, stand closely connected with the intellect, and have thus been more frequently united with the organs of perception, and fallen into the first class of mental powers. The distinction now made seems, however, fore-shadowed in the physical fact, that the senses of sight and hearing are so immediately connected with the cerebrum, the seat and instrument of thought, that a removal of this destroys them, though leaving the other senses unimpaired. Touch, taste and smell, however, while primarily feelings, are used constantly as means of discrimination and guides to action. They very frequently draw after them conclusions, set in motion the judgment, and thus return on the will through the mediation of the mind. This is the ordinary action of a pure, well-defined, special sensation. Taste may be so pungent or so nauseating as to produce a direct, involuntary action of ejection; but odors and flavors are usually, in their effects on action, simply grounds of discrimination by which we are guided in accepting or rejecting the object before us, in assigning it a definite position among the things used by us. Our sensations thus start from the central, the perceptive, the indicative point, and then become either stimulative or repressive, according to their nature.