what has been felt at the other end of the line. Sever the nerves leading
to the eye, and though the eye will continue to register perfectly, still
no message will reach the brain. And render the brain unconscious, and no
message will reach it from the nerves connecting with eye, ear, nose,
tongue, or surface of the body. There is much more to the receiving of
sense messages than you would think at first, you see.

Now all this means that the ego, or soul, or mind, if you prefer the
term--is the real Knower who becomes aware of the outside world by means
of the messages of the senses. Cut off from these messages the mind would
be almost a blank, so far as outside objects are concerned. Every one of
the senses so cut off would mean a diminishing or cutting-off of a part of
the world of the ego. And, likewise, each new sense added to the list
tends to widen and increase the world of the ego. We do not realize this,
as a rule. Instead, we are in the habit of thinking that the world
consists of just so many things and facts, and that we know every possible
one of them. This is the reasoning of a child. Think how very much smaller
than the world of the average person is the world of the person born
blind, or the person born deaf! Likewise, think how very much greater and
wider, and more wonderful this world of ours would seem were each of us to
find ourselves suddenly endowed with a new sense! How much more we would
perceive. How much more we would feel. How much more we would know. How
much more we would have to talk about. Why, we are really in about the
same position as the poor girl, born blind, who said that she thought that
the color of scarlet must be something like the sound of a trumpet. Poor
thing, she could form no conception of color, never having seen a ray of
light--she could think and speak only in the terms of touch, sound, taste
and smell. Had she also been deaf, she would have been robbed of a still
greater share of her world. Think over these things a little.