Page:Divine Selection or The Survival of the Useful.djvu/87

 object to form the subject, it would be an inevitable fact that creation made the Creator. Whatever service nature renders in forming the senses, which truly is great, there is yet something back of nature.

Before we can locate that something, it must be understood that the organ of sight is not the sense of sight. The organ of any sense is not the sense. The seat of sensation is admitted to be in the brain, which reaches to the eye by the optic nerve, to the ear by the auditory nerve, and throughout the body to all senses and parts by extension of telegraphic nerve-lines. If the external organ, as the eye or ear, is impaired, or the connecting nerve intercepted, the sense cannot operate, yet the faculty remains the same; for when the obstruction is removed, the sense again operates. The blind have in potency the mental faculty of sight, but not the organ of sight. The deaf have