22. SENSATION DEPENDS UPON MATTER.
However great the mystery of the relation of body to mind, it is quite true that the nervous system is the mechanism by and through which all sensation comes, and that in our experience in the absence of nerves there is neither sensation nor consciousness. The nerves themselves are but complex chemical structures; their molecular constitution is said to embrace as many as 20,000 atoms, chiefly carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. There must be continuity of this structure too, for to sever a nerve is to paralyze all beyond. If all knowledge comes through experience, and all experience comes through the nervous system, the possibilities depend upon the mechanism each one is provided with for absorbing from his environment, what energies there are that can act upon the nerves. Touch, taste, and smell imply contact, sound has greater range, and sight has the immensity of the universe for its field. The most distant but visible star acts through the optic nerve to present itself to consciousness. It is not the ego that looks out through the eyes, but it is the universe that pours in upon the ego.
Again, all the known agencies that act upon the nerves, whether for touch or sound or sight, imply matter in some of its forms and activities, to adapt
the energy to the nervous system. The mechanism for the perception of light is complicated. The light acts upon a sensitive surface where molecular structure is broken up, and this disturbance is in the presence of nerve terminals, and the sensation is not in the eye but in the sensorium. In like manner for all the rest; so one may fairly say that matter is the condition for sensation, and in its absence there would be nothing we call sensation.