Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/99

Rh the natural state of the body; and on the other hand, by letting out, and dispersing into the contiguous atmosphere, collections of effluvia no longer serviceable to the body, together with perspirable matter formed from useless lymph, &c.

In contemplating then the natural and temporal uses of the organ of touch, we are not only to consider it as instrumental in producing the sensation of touch, and thus enabling us to judge of the roughness or smoothness, the hardness or softness, the figure, temperature, and other tangible properties of material substances, but also as a medium between the great world of outward nature and the little world of the human body, for the salutary purpose of secreting from the latter world whatsoever may be injurious to its health, and of introducing from the former whatsoever may be salubrious.

Yet these natural and temporal uses of the bodily organ of touch, wonderful and important as they are, admit of no comparison with the spiritual and eternal uses of the same organ, whether viewed as an instrument of producing the sensation of touch, or as a medium of communication between the great world of outward nature and the little world of the human body.

For viewing it, in the first place, as an instrument of producing the sensation of touch, how multiplied and