Excerpt from Lecture, Introductory to a Course on the Institutes of Medicine, in the University of Pennsylvania: Delivered Nov. 5, 1844 The mind in Which truth dwells, acquires knowledge only through the senses. It is abstracted from the outer and grosser world with which it is incapable of any direct relation. The senses are the media establishing the communication between the intel lectual faculties enshrined ill the interior recesses of the brain, and the exterior world. Without the senses the human intellect lies dormant and inactive. It gives no sign. Each sense endowed with its especial attributes, is placed in direct relation with external mat ter in some of its especial qualities. The one acts on the other, and an especial sensation is produced according to the sense acted on -as sight for the eye, and hearing for the ear. The senses in their Operations are merely passive agents. They translate and report to the intellect, the phenomenal qualities they discover in the things of the outer material world. But the senses are limited: they pene trate neither deep nor far. They are restricted to gross external Obvious appearances. Their testimony is correct as far as it goes, but it is partial; it is not the whole truth; there is, as it were, Sup pression of truth, and the intellect is liable to be deceived by the fallacies of the senses. What fact is more positive to the sense than the rising and the setting of the sun? What more false in reality?

The earth to the sense is a plane around which the heavenly bodies move. It was the doctrine of the ancients; is the language of scripture; is the belief of the ignorant now. The sphericity of the earth is a philosophical theory. It cannot be known by the senses. It is evolved by the intellect from the combination and analysis of a number of dissimilar facts.

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