THE HUMAN BODY 



CHAPTER I. 



THE HUMAN BRAIN. 



Our first conception of the human body is that of a living sub- 

 ject; life is the dim personality which animates it, as well as the 

 atmosphere in which it moves and breathes. Upon this lowest 

 floor of our existence there rises an edifice of many stories ; upon 

 simple life, which is the vegetable in the animal, there is founded 

 a life of life, which is mind. The mind is many-chambered and 

 many-storied. Life dwells in the body, but the mind, or superior 

 life, inhabits the head, or according to anatomy, the brain. The 

 brain, then, is presumably the body of the mind, and whatever is 

 wisdom or faculty in the mind, is furniture or machinery answering 

 to faculty, in the brain. And as the mind is the man, the brain is 

 his representative, or the man in another degree. 



This is the solid voice of the head, or the most general truth of 

 consciousness, which lies in the head, and speaks from the head. 

 And our plan is, to accept as oracles, these gifts of our instinctive 

 sense : to regard them as the elements of knowledge : and not to 

 question until we have accepted them. It is then the conscious- 

 ness, or instinctive natural history of the organs, from which we 

 commence : not what man says of the brain, but what the brain 

 says of itself in man. Thus we shall first endeavor to gain the 

 impressions which the organ under discussion makes upon the mind, 

 or begin from natural experience. We shall then briefly consider 

 its anatomy, or pass to scientific experience. Next we shall attempt 

 to give life to the part by considering it in motion and emotion, 

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