Page:Aristotelous peri psuxes.djvu/290

280 ==CHAPTER IX. ==

Note 1, p. 109. And there seems to be an analogy, &c.] Aristotle in thus making Touch superior to, and more influential than any other sense, (for it is the most perfect, he observes, of man's senses, although with respect to some others he is inferior to many animals,) is by Cuvier, who says, "that Touch is the most important of all the senses, and that its several degrees of perfection exercise a surprising influence over the nature of different animals; and that of all the vertebrata man has the most perfect Touch." It is difficult to attach a sense to the term hard or soft applied to flesh, which, by anatomical description, corresponds with the muscular substance of the body; but man is said to have softer flesh than any animal, and on this account, through the delicacy of his sense of Touch, to be of all creatures the most intelligent. It is presumable that Aristotle was led to suppose, from this sense being spread, so to say, like the muscular substance, over the surface of the body, that its organ lies somewhere in or beneath the flesh, and thus to have concluded that a relative hardness or density of that substance, by impeding tangible impressions, may be