credentials by which its tenure is secured to him, are purely of an à posteriori character; and a certain course of experience must be gone through before the body can become his. The man acquires it, as he does originally all other property, in a certain formal and legalized manner. Originally, and in the strict legal as well as metaphysical idea of them, all bodies, living as well as dead, human no less than brute, are mere waifs—the property of the first finder. But the law, founding on sound metaphysical principles, very properly makes a distinction here between two kinds of finding. To entitle a person to claim a human body as his own, it is not enough that he should find it in the same way in which he finds his other sensations, namely, as impressions which interfere not with the manifestations of each other. This is not enough, even though, in the case supposed, the person should be the first finder. A subsequent finder would have the preference, if able to show that the particular sensations manifested es this human body were essential to his apprehension of all his other sensations whatsoever. It is this latter species of finding—the finding, namely, of certain sensations as the essential condition on which the apprehension of all other sensations depends; it is this finding alone which gives each man a paramount and indisputable title to that "treasure trove" which he calls his own body. Now, it is only after going through a considerable course of experience and experiment, that we can ascertain what the particular sensations are upon which all our other sensations are dependent. And therefore were we not right in saying, that a man's body is not given to him directly and at once, but that he takes a certain time, and must go through a certain process, to acquire it?
The conclusion which we would deduce from the whole of the foregoing remarks is, that the great law of living[1] sensation, the rationale of sensation as a living process, is this, that the senses are not merely presentative—i.e. they not only bring sensations before us, but that they are self-presentative—i.e. they, moreover, bring themselves before us as sensations. But for this law we should never get beyond our mere subjective modifications; but in virtue of it we necessarily get beyond them; for the results of the law are, 1st, that we, the subject, restrict ourselves to, or identify ourselves with, the senses, not as displayed in their primary sphere, (the large circle A,) but as falling within their own ken as sensations, in their secondary sphere, (the small circle A.) This smaller sphere is our own bodily frame; and does not each individual look upon himself as vested in his own bodily frame? And 2dly, it is a necessary consequence of this investment or restriction, that every sensation which lies beyond the sphere of the senses, viewed as sensations, (i.e. which lies beyond the body,) must be, in the most unequivocal sense of the words, a real independent object. If the reader wants a name to characterise this system, he may call it the system of Absolute or thorough-going presentationism.
- ↑ We say "living," because every attempt hitherto made to explain sensation, has been founded on certain appearances manifested in the "dead" subject. By inspecting a dead carcass we shall never discover the principle of life; by inspecting a dead eye, or a camera obscura, we shall never discover the principle of vision. Yet, though there is no seeing in a dead eye, or in a camera obscura, optics deal exclusively with such inanimate materials; and hence the student who studies them will do well to remember, that optics are the science of vision, with the "fact" of vision left entirely out of the consideration.
