Sense of Touch

Touch is called the sensation which conveys to the soul through the body precise information about the existence of approaching bodies and provides a sure means toward self-knowledge; through touch the soul comes into communication with ourselves and with the external world; and touch has its psychological seat in the sensations of the fingers.

Touch follows the higher senses of sight and hearing in its functioning, and supplements what is lacking in those things relating to the activities of the rational soul in their relationship to the knowledge gained through matter. The value of touch is such that this sense alone, without the complete participation of the others, would suffice to provide the human person with the idea of the self; for through it a person feels the nearby individual bodies around him, and through it he grasps the idea of distance and extension and of the measure by which he proceeds in all measurement; through it he acquires the experience of the resistance of bodies, that is, of impenetrability, and of other such things. Sight and hearing supplement these same knowledge. The wise Buffon said about touch: “Through touch we are able to acquire complete and progressive knowledge; for this is the sensory organ that corrects every other sense, whose results would be mere dreams and would produce deception in our spirit, if it did not teach us to judge.”

Through these services this sense can be regarded as more psychological than physiological; through touch the soul finds the measure and the unit by which it proceeds to the precise determination of distances, understands the difference between itself and the other animals, actualizes through skillful invention the grasped ideas, is led through them to higher spheres, and separates itself from the dance of irrational animals. Writing, painting, and all the arts are works of touch.

Animals appear deprived of touch, except for the quadrupeds, in which we might suppose from the structure of the hand the existence of this sensory organ; but what animal has ever been seen to benefit from the advantages of touch? Or what animal has developed to such a degree as to make touch an interpreter of its psychical faculties? How, despite their useful nature, have apes not been able to understand the usefulness and value of touch? Certainly the lack of immanent reason prevented them, and nothing else; this is what makes touch a coarse organ serving only the exclusive needs of the animal’s sustenance.

The touch of the human person has, moreover, the particular quality of being capable of development and perfection far superior to the usual and known; in the blind, touch through practice becomes sharpened so much that through it they can distinguish fine variations of surfaces, the silver scratches of coins, and other objects and various colors of woolen fabrics, etc. How much has the wisdom of God preserved harmony between reason and the most necessary organs of it! How clearly the skill of touch testifies to the rational soul of the human person for which such structure of it has been made! Great, therefore, is the gap between human and animal! Let us see also the differences arising from the specific sense.