78 
For the establishment of this view, so weighty in its conse- 
quences, the comparative observation of the nerve systems of 
different classes of animals is of the greatest importance. The 
simply constructed brain of the worm, with the few nerve-threads 
streaming out from it, has become the starting point of a number 
of variously constructed and very complicated arrangements in the 
nerve-system of the higher animals. This last bears the same 
relation to the former that the great telegraphic system of the present 
German kingdom, with its hundreds of stations and thousands of 
offices, bears to the first simple model of an electric telegraph, by 
means of which, forty years ago, the inventor of the same introduced 
into the world one of the most important means of exchange of 
thoughts. The more highly developed the faculties of perception, 
will, and thought are in an animal, so much the more developed 
and centralised is the constitution of the soul-apparatus which 
performs the physical work, so much the more does controlling 
power rest in the nerve-centre, on which the guidance of the whole, 
as a unit, depends. 
It is therefore customary to call the centre of the nerve-system 
(the brain, as we may say speaking broadly), the “seat of the soul.” 
In reality however this customary expression is inexact, and we 
can only accord to tt a metaphorical meaning in the same sense 
as we call a clever house-wife the ‘‘soul of the house,” or an all- 
powerful minister the “‘soul of the state.” As little, in fact, as we arc 
willing to deny their individual souls to the other persons connected 
with the central power in a state, just so little dare we disown the 
last in the millions of cells in the soul apparatus of those higher 
animals whose brain we style the “seat of the soul. When in the 
Franco-German war of 1871, Paris, which is in fact the soul of the 
centralized kingdom of France, and according to Victor Hugo 
the soul also of the world, was entirely surrounded by our victorious 
armies, when telegraphic communications with the rest of France 
was entirely cut off, then nevertheless incessantly in its severed 
limbs the many complicated telegraph-network kept on working, 
though the course of the development is indicated, it may be disputed whether 
the cause is adequately accounted for, 
ee 
—— es 
