The Sixth Sense: Its Cultivation and Use — John Shaqi
The Sixth Sense: Its Cultivation and UseBrent, Charles Henry
Religion
The Sixth Sense: Its Cultivation and Use
Brent, Charles Henry
New Thought
The five bodily senses originally, in the first stages of evolution,
were, and, in their ultimate aspect are, one sense—the sense of
touch. By means of it plant, mollusc and worm relate themselves to the
universe of which they are a part. By degrees the single sense, in the
evolutionary process, finds opportunity and occasion for specialization.
Sight is extraordinarily sensitized touch by means of which form and
color are perceived, and the distant object comes bowing to our feet; the
stars, leaping across space, are converted into intimate friends, and
earth’s farthest horizon lies at our door. Hearing is touch localized
and specialized so as to be capable of perceiving the vibrations caused
by the impact of one body upon another; its enlarged capacity classifies
sound in such a way as to offer its mutations and subtleties for our use
and pleasure as the weaver offers his threads to the loom. Smell is that
specialization of touch, uniquely delicate, supposed by Maeterlinck to be
still in its earlier stage of development in human kind, which responds
to the stimulus of those otherwise intangible exhalations called odor.
Lastly, taste is touch specialized so as to discern the inner properties
of food stuff; taste is the testing sense. Mere touch determines the
existence, specialized touch the character and niceties of matter of the
physical universe.
As indicative of the unity of the animal senses and the coöperative
sympathy between them, it is noteworthy that when one sense is impaired
or destroyed, the others diligently endeavor to supply its absence, the
entire body playing the part as far as possible of eye or ear or both,
and each remaining sense growing extraordinarily acute so as to take on
somewhat of the character of the most nearly affiliated or the neighbor
sense. The blind man can almost see with ears and hands, the deaf can
almost hear with eyes. The senses that are left strain, not without a
measure of success, to convey to the brain impressions for which they are
not congenitally adapted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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