"Now, I think the Demonstration of Touching will be every whit as easie, if we conceive that out of all palpable Matter there is a perpetual Emission of little Bodies, and that the more we touch them, the more evaporates; because we press them out of the Subject it self, as Water out of a Sponge when we squeez it. The Hard make a report to the Organ of their Hardness; the Soft, of their Softness; the Rough, &c. And since this is so, we are not so quaint in Feeling with Hands used to Labour, because of the Thickness of the Skin, which being neither porous, nor animated, with difficulty transmits the Evaporations of Matter. Some, perhaps, may desire to know where the Organ of Touching has its Residence. For my part, I think it is spread over all the Surface of the Body, seeing in all parts it feels: Yet I imagine, that the nearer the Member, wherewith we touch, be to the Head, the sooner we distinguish; which Experience convinces us of, when with shut Eyes we handle any thing, for then we'll more easily guess what it is; and if on the contrary we feel it with our hinder Feet, it will be harder for us to know it: And the Reason is, because our Skin being all over perforated, our Nerves, which are of no compacter Matter, lose by the way a great many of those little Atomes through the little Holes of their Contexture, before they reach the Brain, which is their Journeys end: It remains, that I speak of the Smelling and Tasting. "Pray tell me, when I taste a Fruit, is it not because the Heat of my Mouth melts it? Confess to me then, that there being Salts in a Pear, and that they being separated by Dissolution into little Bodies of a different Figure from those which make the Taste of an Apple, they must needs pierce our Pallate in a very different manner: Just so as the thrust of a Pike, that passes through me, is not like the Wound which a Pistol-Bullet makes me feel with a sudden start; and as that Pistol Bullet makes me suffer another sort of Pain than that of a Slug of Steel. "I have nothing to say, as to the Smelling, seeing the Philosophers themselves confess, that it is performed by a continual Emission of little Bodies. "Now upon the same Principle will I explain to you the Creation, Harmony, and Influence of the Celestial Globes, with the immutable Variety of Meteors."