MICROSCOPIC BRAINS. 5 



brains ; the nerve-substance in their heads 

 is a mere collection of ill-arranged ganglia, 

 directly connected with their organs of sense. 

 Whatever man may be, an earwig at least 

 is a conscious, or rather a semi-conscious, 

 automaton. He has just a few knots of 

 nerve-cells in his little pate, each of which 

 leads straight from his dim eye or his vague 

 ear or his indefinite organs of taste ; and his 

 muscles obey the promptings of external 

 sensations without possibility of hesitation or 

 consideration, as mechanically as the valve 

 of a steam-engine obeys the governor-balls. 

 You may say of him truly, ' Nihil est in in- 

 tellectu quod non fuerit in sensu ;' a'nd you 

 need not even add the Leibnitzian saving 

 clause, ' nisi ipse intellectus ; ' for the poor 

 soul's intellect is wholly deficient, and the 

 senses alone make up all that there is of him, 

 subjectively considered. But it is not so with 

 the highest insects. They have something 

 which truly answers to the real brain of men, 

 apes, and dogs, to the cerebral hemispheres 



