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X. 



BODY AND MIND. 



PERHAPS no fact of scientific advance is fraught with deeper mean- 

 ing than that which demonstrates to us the large amount of know- 

 ledge which recent research has been the means of throwing upon 

 the functions of the brain. The domain of mind, it is true, must 

 ever remain in many of its aspects a veritable arcanum, whose 

 mysteries may never fall within the grasp of erudition and research. 

 But the modern investigator has, at the same time, passed beyond the 

 old boundaries which were wont to deter his predecessors from 

 inquiring into the manner in which mind and brain co-operated in 

 the regulation of the body, and has advanced materially our under- 

 standing of many facts of brain function, which, but a few years ago, 

 represented the fastnesses and inaccessible regions of knowledge. 

 Nor are these gains of science unimportant, when viewed from the 

 purely social side of things. Rescued from the domain of the 

 unknown, such facts as those to which we refer repel those beliefs in 

 the mysterious and occult which lie at the root of so much that is 

 ignorant and of a vast deal that is superstitious even in these matter- 

 of-fact days. When, for instance, "mesmerism," the "electro- 

 biology" (high-sounding title!), and the phrenologies of the modern 

 Cagliostros, with their " hocus-pocus science," as Macklin would 

 have termed it, are resolved into so many abnormal actions of 

 brain, and into so much pseudo-scientific jugglery, the world at large 

 is unquestionably the gainer in respect of the new and rational 

 light which has been thrown upon phases of mind. Or, when the 

 hallucinations of the ghost-seer are proved to be subjects of 

 physiological study, and when the production of his inverted mental 

 images is capable of being duly explained on known principles of 

 life-science, we may congratulate ourselves on having snatched 

 another mystery from the charlatanism of ignorance, and on having 

 expelled so much superstition from the world. Thus, judging even 

 the most recondite study of mind from a rigidly utilitarian point of 

 view, we may discover that its effects must leave their wholesome 

 mark on the social life of our day, and on that of succeeding genera- 

 tions as well. The gains of knowledge are in fact amongst the saving 

 clauses which are now and then added to the large and complex roll 

 of the constitution of man. 



It may be well to preface such a simple study of mind and body 



p 



