recognition of our common nature, which gives the chief interest to scenes that have been occupied with the passions of beings like ourselves. The mountains, which the Titans were fabled to have heaped up in their war against Jupiter, must have excited even in the most devout believers of Grecian mythology, emotions far less ardent and immediate, than the sight of the humbler cliffs, at which the small Spartan host, and their gallant leader, devoted themselves in the defensive war against the Persian invader. The races of men may perish, but the remembrance of them still lives imperishable, and seems to claim kindred with us, as often as we tread the same soil, or merely think of those who have trod it. "Turn thy sight eastward, o'er the time-hush'd plains, Ask silent Tigris-Bid Euphrates tell Where is the grove-crown'd Baal, to whose stern frown The very gods of all these countries have perished, but the mortals who bent the knee before them still survive in the immortality of our common nature,-in that universal interest which gives to us a sort of intellectual existence in scenes and times the most remote, and makes the thoughts and emotions of others as it were a part of our own being,-uniting the past, the present, and the future, and blending man with man wherever he is to be found. 358 LECTURE XXIV. 1 THE SAME SUBJECT, CONTINUED. GENTLEMEN, having stated, in a former Lecture, the reasons which seem to show, that the origin of our notion of extension, and of the notions, which it involves, of figure, magnitude, divisibility, is not to be found in our sense of touch, I endeavoured, in my last Lecture, to trace these to their real source,—cautioning you at the same time, with respect to the great difficulty of the inquiry, and the very humble reliance, therefore, which we can have any title to put, on the results of our investigation of a subject so very obscure. In our present circumstances, when we attempt such an inves tigation, it is impossible for us to derive even the slightest aid, from remembrance of our original feelings; since memory,which afterwards can look back through so many long and busy years, and comprehend all of life, but the very commencement of it, sees yet, in this dawn of being, a darkness which it cannot penetrate. We have already formed, spontaneously, and without the aid of any one,-our little system of physical science, and have, in truth, enriched ourselves with acquisitions, far more important than any which we are afterwards to form, with all the mature vigour of our faculties, and all the splendid aids of tradi tionary philosophy, at a time, when we seem scarcely capable of more than of breathing and moving, and taking our aliment, and when the faculties, that leave us so much invaluable knowledge, are to leave us no knowledge of the means, by which we have acquired it. To the period of our first sensations, therefore, we cannot look back; and, hence, all which remains for us, in an inquiry of this kind, is to consider the circumstances in which the infant is placed, and to guess, as nearly as general analogy will allow us, FEELINGS ASCRIBED TO THE SENSE OF TOUCH. 359 the nature and the order of the feelings, which, in such circumstances, would arise, in a being possessing the powers and susceptibilities of man, but destitute of all the knowledge which man possesses. In these first circumstances of life, the infant, of course, cannot know that he has a bodily frame, or a single organ of that frame, more than he can know, that there are other bodies in nature, that act upon his own; and we are not entitled to suppose, -however difficult it may be for us to accommodate our supposition to the true circumstances of the case,-that because we, the inquirers, know, that external bodies are pressing on his organ of touch, the little sensitive being is to have any knowledge, but of the mental affections, which these external bodies excite. How the knowledge of any thing more than his own mind is acquired, is, in truth, the very difficulty, which it is our labour to solve. In conformity with this view, then, when we look on the infant,—one of the most remarkable circumstances, which strike us, is its tendency to use its muscles, with almost incessant exercise, particularly the muscles of those parts, which are afterwards its principal organs of measurement. Its little fingers are continually closing and opening, and its little arms extending and contracting. The feelings, therefore,-whatever these may be,-which attend the progressive contraction of those parts,-and some feeling unquestionably attends the contraction in all its stages,-must be continually arising in its mind, beginning and finishing, in regular series, and varying exactly, with the quantity of the contraction. A succession of feelings, however, when remembered by the mind, which looks back upon them, we found to involve, necessarily, the notion of divisibility into separate parts, and, therefore, of length, which is only another name for continued divisibility. Time, in short, is to our conception, a series in constant onward progress, and cannot be conceived by us, but as a progressive series, of which our separate feelings are parts; the remembrance of the events of our life, whenever we take any distant retrospect of them, being like the remembrance of the space, which we have traversed in a journey,-an indistinct continuity of length, as truly divisible, in our conception, into the separate events which we remember, as the space, which we remember to have traversed, into its separate variety of scenes. Time, then, or remembered succession, we found to involve, not metaphorically, as is commonly said, but truly and strictly, in its very essence, the notions of length and divisibility, the great elements of extension; and whatever other feelings may be habitually and uniformly associated with these, will involve, of course, these elementary notions. The series of muscular feelings, of which the infant is conscious, -in incessantly closing and opening his little hand,-must, on these principles, be accompanied with the notion,-not, indeed, of the existence of his hand, or of any thing external,—but of a certain length of succession; and each stage of the contraction, by frequent renewal, gradually becomes significant of a particular length, corresponding with the portion of the series. When any hard body, therefore, is placed in the infant's hand, though he cannot, indeed, have any knowledge of the object, or of the hand, -he yet feels, that he can no longer perform the accustomed contraction, or, to speak more accurately, since he is unacquainted with any parts that are contracted, he feels, that he can no longer produce his accustomed series of feelings; and he knows the quantity of contraction, which remained to be performed, or rather the length of the series, which remained to be felt. The place of this remaining length is now supplied by a new feeling, partly muscular, and partly the result of the affection of the compressed organ of touch,-and is supplied by the same feeling, at the same point of the series, as often, as he attempts to renew the contraction, while the body remains within his hand. The tactual feeling, therefore, whatever it may be, becomes, by this frequent repetition, associated with the notion of that particular progressive series, or length, of which it thus uniformly supplies the place; and at last becomes representative of this particular length, precisely in the same manner, as, in the acquired perceptions of vision, certain shades of colour become representative of distance, to which they have, of themselves, no resemblance or analogy, whatever; and we thus learn to feel length, as we learn to see length, -not directly by the mere affections of our tactual or visual organs, but by the associated notions which they suggest. If time, as perceived by us in the continued series of our feelings, do involve conceptual length and divisibility, it seems, indeed, scarcely possible, that, in the circumstances supposed, the notions supposed should not arise,—that the infant should be conscious of a regular series of feelings, in the contraction of its fingers and arms, and yet that portions of this series should not become significant of various proportional lengths;-and, if the notion of certain proportional lengths do truly accompany certain degrees of progressive contraction, it seems equally impossible, according to the general principles of our mental constitution, that the compound tactual and muscular feeling, which must arise in every case, in which any one of these degrees of contraction is impeded, should not become associated with the notion of that particular length, of which it supplies the place, so as at last to become truly representative of it. In this manner, I endeavoured to explain to you, how our knowledge of the mere length of bodies may have been acquired, from varieties of length that are recognized as coexisting and proximate, and are felt to unite, as it were, and terminate in our sensation of resistance, which interrupts them equally, and interrupts always a greater number of the coexisting truths, in proportion to the size of the body compressed; and, in a similar manner, our notions of the other dimensions of bodies, which are only these varieties of length in different directions. I cannot conclude this summary, however, without recalling to your attention, a very simple experiment, which I requested you to make for yourselves, -an experiment, that, even in the unfavourable circumstances in which it must now be tried, is yet, I conceive, demonstrative of the influence of mere time, as an element of that complex notion, which we have been examining, when the more rapid measurements of vision,-which are confessedly not original but acquired, -are excluded. If, in passing our finger, with different degrees of slowness or rapidity, along the same surface, with our eyes shut, -even though we should previously know the exact boundaries of the extent of surface, we feel it almost impossible not to believe, and but for the contrary evidence of vision, could not have hesitated a single moment in believing,—that this extent is greater or less, according as the time employed in performing exactly the same quantity of motion, with exactly the same force of pressure, on the same quantity of our organ of touch, may have been greater or less, it must surely be admitted, that the notion of the length, which thus uniformly varies with the time, when all other |