SELF AND WORLDS.

If you could touch the outer rim
Of life's huge wheel of being,
Lo, knowledge still would seem but dim,
As now, forever fleeing.

And if your thought could penetrate
Below the last existence,

Still, ignorance would be your fate,-
In vain all such insistence.

The primrose by the river's brim,
This is the wheel of being's rim;

Love it: all life you penetrate;

Love's boundless knowledge then your fate.

You touch in self the farthest bound
Of matter and of spirit:

When the last glory here you've found,

Self only shall insphere it.

For Mind's below the self, you see,
And Mind's below the flower;
And in Love's touch of harmony
All knowing finds its power.

Great Nature is the outer rim,
But self the deepest centre dim;
If you will farther penetrate,

Knowledge your goal, but love your fate.

-THE AUTHOR.

CHAPTER XIII.

EXERCISES IN TOUCH.

HE sense of touch is the most positive of all the senses in the character of its sensations. In many respects it is worthy to be called the leading sense."-Noah Porter.

"All the senses are modifications of the sense of touch." -Demosthenes.

THEORY OF THIS CHAPTER.

Mind thrown into or abstracted from physical feeling at Will;

Will-attention making Will-action deliberative and second-nature;

cost.

Will prohibitions rendering mind supreme at least

PRELIMINARY.

"The sensations of contact and temperature," says Royce, "are due to the excitation of points on the skin which differ for the various special sorts of experiences in question. Experiment shows that certain points of the skin are especially sensitive to stimulations given by cold objects, while other points are sensitive to disturbances due to hot objects. Our ordinary sensory experience of warmth or of cold is due to a complex excitement of many points of both these types. Still other points on the skin very wealthily interspersed among the others, give us, if excited in isolation, sensations of contact or of pressure.

Complex sensory excitations, due to the disturbances of the skin, sometimes with and sometimes without, notable accompanying organic disturbances, give us our experiences of hard and soft, of rough and smooth, of dry and moist objects."

There are many very curious facts to be observed in connection with touch. The degree of feeling arising from touch is usually dependent to a great extent upon attention. We do not, for example, ordinarily feel our clothing, but when thought turns to the matter it becomes very apparent. If garments do not fit well, the nerves are likely to take on some habit of twitching or other unnatural movement. Such habits in children are often due to this fact. For the same reason tickling sensations plague sleep away at night. That wise fool who calls himself a "business man "bolts his dinner in eight minutes, and tastes and feels nothing until dyspepsia makes taste and feeling perennial dominators of an unhappy existence. Another fool consumes alcohol in winter for warmth and in summer for coolness; the secret of its "beneficent" ministry is its paralyzing power over physical consciousness. In latter days this man feels heat and cold with the keenness of a skeleton veiled in the rotten gauze of ruined nerves. The orator who is absorbed in his flights regards not the busy fly upon his nose nor the physical pain which was insistent before his soul afire took mastery of sense. The epicure, every sense to the fore, lingers while he dines, and nourishes delighted boon fellowship with kindred spirits. When the orator has it before him to listen to another man's lucubrations, his fly becomes a Dante for torture, and his pains possess the power of a Spanish Inquisition. So, too, when Xantippe appears at the philosophers' board, the world must lose in Socratic wisdom.

To attend or not to attend is always with feeling an

important question. The end nerves may be brought under large control of the Will. The soldier frequently fails to note that his arm has been shot off in the onslaught of a charge. Your tooth will cease aching if your house is afire or your horse is running away with you. If feeling may be thus dissipated, it may, as well, be called in and controlled by the exercise of Will. Exercises in touch are therefore suggested for development of Will.

RÉGIMES.

Exercise No. 1. Pass the ends of each finger of the right hand in turn very lightly over any flat uncovered surface. Try first a surface which is rough; then one which is smooth. Note the difference in "feel" between a rough surface and a smooth. This will require a good deal of attention, for the difference is manifold. Repeat these exercises with several rough and smooth surfaces. Repeat as above with the fingers of the left hand. Note whether the feeling is greater with one hand than with the other. Now repeat the experiments with cloth — of linen, cotton, woolen, silk. The "feel" of each material is peculiar. Compare, by act, the sense of touch as given by one piece of cloth with that given by another. Continue these exercises with several pieces of cloth in pairs. Repeat with one hand, then with the other. What is the main "feel" of silk? Of cotton? Of woolen? Of linen? Have you any sensation other than touch with any of these kinds of cloth? If so, is it disagreeable? Then resolve to handle that variety of cloth until the aversion has been mastered. This can be done, as clerks in great department stores will testify. Repeat all the exercises here given every day for ten days, and on the tenth day note improvement in touch - delicacy, kinds of sensations produced, etc.

Exercise No. 2.

Practise touching lightly the surface

of an uncovered table, with the separate fingers, one after the other, of each hand. Note the degree of steadiness with which this is done. Now repeat the experiment with strong pressure upon each finger of the hands separately applied. What is the difference in sensation between the light touch and the strong pressure? Repeat the exercise every day for ten days, with rest, and on the tenth day note improvement in discrimination.

Exercise No. 3. Grasp a small object, say, a paperweight or a rubber ball, very lightly, just an instant, dropping it immediately. Then grasp it firmly, and instantly drop. Did you feel the object with each finger in the first instance? In the second? Make no mistake. What, if any, difference in sensation did you observe? This requires that the Will command great attention. Hence it cannot be done carelessly. Repeat every day for ten days, with rest, and on the tenth day note improvement in touch and power of discrimination and attention.

Exercise No. 4. Look at the back of either hand. Now twist the second finger toward you and cross the first finger behind it. While the fingers are so crossed, press the unsharpened end of a lead-pencil between the finger ends. Look sharp! Do you seem to feel one pencil or two? Shut the eyes and repeat the experiment. Again, is the sensation of one pencil or two? Is the deception stronger with eyes closed or open? When the pressure of the pencil between the crossed fingers is light, or when it is strong? Explain the fact that there are

apparently two pencils.

Repeat the experiment with three

pairs of fingers. Repeat every day for ten days, with rest, and on the tenth day note improvements in the various respects suggested.