Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/106

96 pardon me, you were ignorant, but you did not know it. On the contrary, you thought you knew a great deal, and were quite satisfied with the particularly absurd metaphysical notions which you were pleased to call the teachings of common sense. You thought that your sensations were properties of external things, and had an existence outside of yourself. You thought that you knew more about material than you do about immaterial existences. And if, as a wise man has assured us, the knowledge of what we don't know is the next best thing to the knowledge of what we do know, this brief excursion into the province of philosophy has been highly profitable.

Of all the dangerous mental habits, that which schoolboys call "cock-sureness" is probably the most perilous; and the inestimable value of metaphysical discipline is, that it furnishes an effectual counterpoise to this evil proclivity. Whoso has mastered the elements of philosophy knows that the attribute of unquestionable certainty appertains only to the existence of a state of consciousness so long as it exists; all other beliefs are mere probabilities of a higher or lower order. Sound metaphysic is an amulet which renders its possessor proof alike against the poison of superstition and the counter-poison of nihilism; by showing that the affirmations of the former and the denials of the latter alike deal with matters about which, for lack of evidence, nothing can be either affirmed or denied.

I have dwelt at length upon the nature and origin of our sensations of smell, on account of the comparative freedom of the olfactory sense from the complications which are met with in most of the other senses.

Sensations of taste, however, are generated in almost as simple a fashion as those of smell. In this case, the sense-organ is the epithelium which covers the tongue and the palate; and which sometimes, becoming modified, gives rise to peculiar organs termed "gustatory bulbs," in which the epithelial cells elongate and assume a somewhat rod-like form. Nerve-fibers connect the sensory organ with the sensorium, and tastes or flavors are states of consciousness caused by the change of molecular state of the latter. In the case of the sense of touch there is often no sense-organ distinct from the general epidermis. But many fishes and amphibia exhibit local modifications of the epidermic cells which are sometimes extraordinarily like the gustatory bulbs; more commonly, both in lower and higher animals, the effect of the contact of external bodies is intensified by the development of hair-like filaments, or of true hairs, the bases of which are in immediate relation with the ends of the sensory nerves. Every one must have noticed the extreme delicacy of the sensations produced by the contact of bodies with the ends of the hairs of the head; and the "whiskers" of cats owe their functional importance to the abundant supply of nerves to the follicles in which their bases are lodged. What part, if any, the so-called "tactile corpuscles," "end-bulbs," and "Pacinian bodies" play