communicated for its own sake, not only rested in as an ultimate object, but it is made to commence at the very confines of life; it is interwoven with the thread of existence: it is secured in and by the actions that build up and that support the very framework, the material instrument of our being. But if the communication of sensibility to processes in their own nature incapable of exciting feeling, for the purpose of converting them into sources of pleasurable consciousness, indicate an express provision for the production of enjoyment, that provision is no less exemplified in the point at which this superadded sensibility is made to cease. Some of the consequences of a direct communication of consciousness to an organic process have been already adverted to. Had the eye, besides transmitting rays of light to the optic nerve, been rendered sensible of the successive passage of each ray through its substance, the impression excited by luminous bodies, which is indispensable to vision, the ultimate object of the instrument, if not wholly lost, must necessarily have become obscure, in direct proportion to the acuteness of this sensibility. The hand of the musician could scarcely have executed its varied and rapid movements upon his instrument, had his mind been occupied at one and the same instant with the process of muscular contraction in the finger, and the idea of music in the brain. Had the communication of such a twofold consciousness been possible, in no respect would it have been beneficial, in many it would have been highly pernicious; and the least of the evils resulting from it would have been, that the inferior would have interrupted the superior faculty, and the means deteriorated the end. But in some cases the evil would have been of a much more serious nature. Had we been rendered sensible of the flow of the vital current through the engine that propels it; were the distension of the delicate valves that direct the current ever present to our view; by some inward feeling were we reminded, minute by minute, of the progress of the aliment through the digestive apparatus, and were the mysterious operations of the organic nerves palpable to sight, the terror of the maniac, who conceived that his body was composed of unannealed glass, would be the ordinary feeling of life. Every movement would be a matter of anxious deliberation; and the approach of every body to our own would fill us with dismay. But adjusted as our consciousness actually is, invariably the point at which the organic process begins is that at which sensation ends. Had sensation been extended beyond this point, it would have been productive of pain: at this point it uniformly stops. Nevertheless, by the indirect connexion of sensation with the organic processes, a vast amount of pleasure might be created: a special apparatus is constructed for the express purpose of establishing the communication. There is thus the twofold proof, the positive and the