sciences is not less. When we look closer, we will find that all
that is most delicate and ingenious is due to the desire, to hope,
or to gratitude, in connexion with the union of the sexes.

Such is, indeed, the genealogy of the senses, even the most
abstract ones, all being the immediate result of continuous
efforts made to gratify our senses.

PERFECTNESS OF THE SENSES.

These senses, our favorites, are far from being perfect, and I
will not pause to prove it. I will only observe, that that
ethereal sense--sight, and touch, which is at the other extremity
of the scale, have from time acquired a very remarkable additional
power.

By means of spectacles the eye, so to say, escapes from the decay
of age, which troubles almost all the other organs.

The telescope has discovered stars hitherto unknown and
inaccessible to all our means of mensuration; it has penetrated
distances so great, that luminous and necessarily immense bodies
present themselves to us only like nebulous and almost
imperceptible spots.

The microscope has made us acquainted with the interior
configuration of bodies; or has shown the existence of a
vegetation and of plants, the existence of which we were ignorant
of.