Who knows if touch will not have its day, and if some fortuitous circumstance will not open to us thence some new enjoyments? This is especially probable as tactile sensitiveness exists every where in the body, and consequently can every where be excited.
We have seen that physical love has taken possession of all the sciences. In this respect it acts with its habitual tyranny.
The taste is a more prudent measure but not less active faculty. Taste, we say, has accomplished the same thing, with a slowness which ensures its success.
Elsewhere we will consider the march. We may, however, observe, that he who has enjoyed a sumptuous banquet in a hall decked with flowers, mirrors, paintings, and statues, embalmed in perfume, enriched with pretty women, filled with delicious harmony, will not require any great effort of thought to satisfy himself that all sciences have been put in requisition to exalt and to enhance the pleasures of taste.
OBJECT OF THE ACTION OF THE SENSES.
Let us now glance at the system of our senses, considered together, and we will see that the Author of creation had two objects, one of which is the consequence of the other,—the preservation of the individual and the duration of the species.
Such is the destiny of man, considered as a sensitive being; all his actions have reference to this double purpose.
The eye perceives external objects, reveals the wonders by which a man is surrounded, and tells him he is a portion of the great whole.
Hearing perceives sounds, not only as an agreeable sensation, but as warnings of the movement of bodies likely to endanger us.
The sense of touch watches to warn us by pain of any immediate lesion.