We have said it is long before an infant is in the full use of its bodily senses: now with regard to feeling the infant is acutely sensitive; but who ever saw a child of a few months old examine the qualities of objects by the touch? it cannot even manipulate; it cannot use its hands; it has to learn the art of touch, and to improve by practice and the exercise of the mind. For example, some persons will pass a piece of silk or cloth between their fingers, and tell you its quality; and so with respect to other things; this is the result of attention and exercise. No one is born without the organization necessary for the development of the sense of touch, for if the arms and hands be deficient, some other part, as the lips or tongue, will take up the function, and this alone shows what education effects; but if a person be born deaf, or blind, or incapable of taste and smell, (which latter appears to be very rare, if, indeed, the case ever occur,) no other part can supply the loss; but the loss, as far as the sight at least is concerned, is partly compensated for by the elevation of the sense of touch; and in this we see the immediate bearing of these two senses on each other. The boy born blind, upon whom Cheselden so successfully operated, believed, when first he saw, that the objects touched his eyes, as the things which he felt touched his skin; consequently he had no idea of distance. "He did not know the form of any object, nor could he distinguish one object from another, however different their figure or size might be; when objects were shown to him which he had known formerly by the touch, he looked at them with attention, and observed them carefully, in order to know them again; but as he had too many objects to retain at once, he forgot the greater part of them, and when he first learned, as he said, to see and to know objects, he forgot a thousand for one that he recollected. It was two months before he discovered that pictures represented solid bodies; until that time he had considered them as planes and surfaces differently coloured, and diversified by a variety of shades; but when he began to conceive that these pictures represented solid bodies, in touching the canvass of a picture with his hand he expected to find something in reality solid upon it, and he was much astonished when, on touching those parts which seemed round and unequal, he found them flat and smooth like the rest. He asked which was the sense that deceived him--the sight or the touch. There was shown to him a little portrait of his father, which was in the case of his mother's watch; he said that he knew very well that it was the resemblance of his father, but he asked with great astonishment how it was possible for so large a visage to be kept in so small a space, as that appeared to him as impossible as that a bushel could be contained in a pint."[22] [22] Phil. Trans., 1728.