Sirius, in Voltaire's exquisite satire; upon which the inhabitant of Saturn replied, "Seventy-two; but every day we live we lament we have so few."

'The European has been taught to be so well satisfied with five senses, that he is apt to regard as an absurdity the attempt to alter or enlarge that sacred number. ... "The division of our external senses," says Hutcheson, “into five common classes, is ridiculously imperfect." '1

Mr. Lewes thinks that this is a very difficult question, and that only a profound anatomist can determine how many distinct organs we have for the senses. He adopts however the

following division:

1. Sensations proceeding from the system, which comprehend, 1st, organic sensations; 2d, surface sensations, given to us by the skin.

2. Sensations proceeding from the senses properly so called, and which comprehend touch, taste, hearing, smell, and sight.

'Finally, I would call attention to the psychological importance of that vast class of sensations which has been termed Systemic consciousness, and which psychologists and physiologists have so strangely neglected. They have given to the Sense-Sensations an almost exclusive part in the formation of our sensational activity, and often spoken of the mind as a mere educt of the Five Senses. The most striking example of this is seen in Condillac's famous statue, which is endowed successively with each of the five senses, and with each endowment develops gradually a complete mind. Monstrous as this hypothetical statue is, it is only a logical development of the conception that mind is the combination of the five senses.

'In these pages an attempt has been made to show that Mind is the psychical aspect of Life-that it is as much the sum-total of the whole sensitive organism as life is the sum-total of the whole vital organism-that various organs may be set apart for the performance of various special functions, mental as well as vital, but that no one exclusive organ of Mind can be said to exist any more than one exclusive organ

1 Lewes, Physiology of Common Life, vol. ii. p. 273.

of Life can be said to exist. The reader may reject this view, which is submitted to him as the result of many years' meditation, and with that hesitation which naturally belongs to an opinion incapable of proof.'1

If we now wish to know (2.) 'under what principal divisions these psychical phenomena may be grouped, we shall find that the popular classification into feeling and thinking, or mind and heart, indicate roughly the first groups. We can divide them afterwards into 'six centres, three for each division.' In the first group we may place sensations, perceptions, and ideas, which represent intellectual activity. In the second group we may place sensations, instincts or appetites, and emotions which represent moral activity. Thus sensation forms the starting point of each series. But we have already seen that there are different species of sensations, forming two principal groups,-sensations of the senses, and sensations of the system.

The first have been almost always considered as impersonal, because they place us in conscious relation with external objects, with the non-ego. The second (sensations of the muscles and of the viscera) are on the contrary extremely personal, because they place us in conscious relation only with that which takes place in our body. The emotions are profoundly rooted in our personality.

The exteriority of the sensations of the senses, and the interiority of the sensations of the system, create a wide line of demarcation between the perceptions which are produced from the one, and the appetites or instincts which are supplied from the other; and the latter in their turn give birth to the various forms of sensibility, known under the names of thought and emotion.

It has never been doubted that our perceptions and ideas have their origin in sensation. The old adage nihil est in intellectu, etc., may be equivocal, but it shows this incontestable fact, that sensation is at the foundation of every intellectual operation.

'I feel myself justified, therefore, in considering ideation as the form of cerebral sensibility which is determined by the

1 Ibid. p. 344

cerebral connexions with the ganglia of special Sense. In like manner, emotion may be considered as the form of cerebral sensibility which is determined by connexions with the ganglia of visceral sensation.' 1

And thus the popular opinion which places in the 'bowels' the principal source of the emotions would be justified.

Sleep and hereditary transmission have been the object of such important and such numerous studies in France, that we cannot dwell upon them long, our object being above all to make known the newest results of English psychology.

Under the title of 'a new theory of dreaming,' Mr. Lewes explains this phenomenon as follows::

'If we reflect that the nervous centres must be incessantly called into activity, either through the imperfectly closed channels of the Five Senses, or through the Systemic Senses, and that these centres, once excited, must necessarily play on each other, and if we reflect further, that the sensational and ideational activities thus stimulated operate under very different conditions, and in very different conjunctions, during sleep, we shall be at no loss to understand both the incoherence and the coherence of dreams-the perfect congruity of certain trains of thought amid the most absurd incongruities. The coherence of dreams results from the succession of associated ideas; the train of thought follows very much the course it would follow in waking moments, at least when uncontrolled by reference to external things as in Reverie. The incoherence results from this train being interrupted or diverted from its course by the suggestion of some other train, either arising by the laws of association or from the stimulus of some new sensation. . . . That Law of Sensibility, which has been so fully expounded in previous pages, whereby every sensation discharges itself either in a reflex action or a reflex feeling (or in both together), and whereby every centre once stimulated must inevitably stimulate some other, gives us the explanation why subjective sensations may arise in sleep or waking, and why they must stimulate cerebral action. In our waking condition we are familiar with what has been styled

1 Lewes, Physiology of Common Life, vol. ii. p. 118.

subjective sensations; that is to say, we see objects very vividly where no such objects exist; we hear sounds of many kinds where none of their external causes exist; we taste flavours in an empty mouth; we smell odours where no volatile substance is present; and we feel prickings or pains in limbs which have been amputated. These are actual, not imaginary sensations. . . . And as it is the inevitable tendency of our nature to connect every sensation with an external cause-to project it outside of us, so to speak,,—we should never think of doubting that every one of these subjective sensations had a corresponding object, did not the suggestions of some other sense control this idea. A man feels prickings in his amputated fingers, but he sees that the fingers are not there, and consequently he knows that his sensation is deceptive. He smells the horrible stench of a sewer long after he has passed out of the reach of its volatile gases. He tastes the bitter flavour long after the bitter substance has been removed. But the sensations require constant confrontation with the reports of other senses, otherwise they would be credited as sensations, produced by actual objects. . . . If I sit in my study, and my thoughts wander to Bagdad or Bussora, the continual presence of my books, chairs, microscope, engravings, etc., infallibly brings me back again before long, and prevents my believing myself to be in the East. . . . In the state of cerebral excitement named Hallucination this confrontation is disregarded; in the state of cerebral isolation named Dreaming this confrontation is impossible. The first condition is one in which the cerebral activity completely domineers over the excitations from without; the second condition is one in which the cerebral activity, though feeble, is entirely isolated from external excitations, thus, in both cases, the cerebral reflexes are undisturbed, uncontrolled by reflexes from Sense.' 1

This doctrine, which agrees with that of the highest French writers, leads Mr. Lewes to answer the question, 'Do we always dream?' in the affirmative. Since the nervous centres are constantly excited by internal or external stimuli, and since this activity gives birth to a succession of ideas, induction leads us

1 Ibid. pp. 370-372.

to conclude that we always think, though we may lose the remembrance of our thoughts.

The chapter devoted to inheritance may perhaps seem rather meagre. But in a Physiology of Common Life, a subject still so full of obscurity and important problems could hardly be touched upon. Mr. Lewes, who is very severe upon the most important work which has appeared upon this question in France, recognises its importance and its difficulties. In our opinion, the studies upon hereditary transmission, considered from a psychological point of view, are destined one day to play a great part, when science shall have completely entered upon that path which it is now only attempting. We have seen that Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. Lewes2 demand from heredity an entirely novel solution of the origin of ideas. But those who may refuse to follow them to that point, and who admit that heredity may decide one of the most important and the most controverted questions of philosophy, even they may be obliged to agree that a large number of psychological facts have their source in hereditary transmission. As I think there is no spiritualist who would deny the influence of the organism upon our tendencies, our passions, our ideas, and our aptitudes, and as organism is inherited, it is a matter of course that the influence of heredity must make itself felt at least mediately upon our psychological constitution. Common experience made this discovery a long time ago; it remains for science to define and explain it. Certain monstrosities in the moral order, certain precocious depravities and extraordinary tastes, appear explicable only by heredity. Thus we, together with Mr. Lewes, may be astonished to find one of the most celebrated philosophical historians of England, Mr. Buckle, maintaining that in the quoted cases there is nothing but empirical coincidences, of which we may make what we can.3

1

Prosper Lucas, Traité physiologique et philosophique de l'hérédité naturelle. Mr. Lewes calls it an extensive but uncritical work.' See also Moreau de Tours, Psychologie morbide.

2 See on this point Moreau de Tours, p. 110 et seq. Buckle, Civilisation in England, vol. i. chap. ii.