HUMAN LIFE 



a few weeks he was as strong a boy as he 

 had been before but he was no longer a 

 genius. There was no longer any soul in 

 his music. Was it his soul that struck 

 against the stone? In that great gray 

 building, the hospital called Salpetriere, 

 in Paris, there are a thousand human 

 beings whose brains and nervous systems 

 do not work in orderly fashion; they are 

 not hopelessly insane: they are tempora 

 rily, some perhaps permanently, mentally 

 unbalanced, hysterical. For the time 

 being they show little sign of soul; but 

 when they are cured they will have soul 

 again. Soul seems to mean, or at least 

 to require, continuing mental balance. 



The brain is a wonderful instrument 

 in some human beings: in others, whole 

 communities or tribes of others, it now 

 enables its possessors to count no more 

 than five. Human reason does wonders: 

 so does the instinct of the social wasps and 

 the fungus-farming ants. The Brooklyn 

 Bridge is a triumph of engineering: so is 

 the orb-web of the garden spider. I do 



