like, of the member touching. Now, as during sleep the patient is
unconscious that both limbs are his own identical property, his mind is
apt to be much disturbed by the complication of sensations arising from
two parts of his person being at once acted upon, and from their
reciprocal action; and false impressions are thus received, which,
accurately enquired into, would afford a clew to many puzzling phenomena
in the theory of dreams. This peculiarity of the organ of touch, as also
that it is confined to no particular organ, but is diffused over the
whole person of the man, is noticed by Lucretius:--

"Ut si forte manu, quam vis jam corporis, ipse
Tute tibi partem ferias, reque experiare."

A remarkable instance of such an illusion was told me by a late
nobleman. He had fallen asleep, with some uneasy feelings arising from
indigestion. They operated in their usual course of visionary terrors.
At length they were all summed up in the apprehension that the phantom
of a dead man held the sleeper by the wrist, and endeavoured to drag him
out of bed. He awaked in horror, and still felt the cold dead grasp of a
corpse's hand on his right wrist. It was a minute before he discovered
that his own left hand was in a state of numbness, and with it he had
accidentally encircled his right arm.

The taste and the smell, like the touch, convey more direct intelligence
than the eye and the ear, and are less likely than those senses to aid
in misleading the imagination. We have seen the palate, in the case of
the porridge-fed lunatic, enter its protest against the acquiescence of
eyes, ears, and touch, in the gay visions which gilded the patient's
confinement. The palate, however, is subject to imposition as well as
the other senses. The best and most acute _bon vivant_ loses his power