36 THE HUMAN BRAIN. 



a fresh use of parts, and a new architecture of materials. The 

 supreme superficiality of the cortex of the brain, its partition 

 into convolutions, the separate movableness of these, their brain- 

 embracing wholeness, show that a freedom is possible, and a univer- 

 sality conceded, to these parts, which neither the fibres per se, nor 

 the other groups of cineritious substances, can enjoy. These con- 

 ditions agree with the requirements of thought and will, both of 

 which are central and concentrative ; are seated at the top of the 

 mind j work by separation and decision, seizing upon main points 

 and governing provinces therefrom ; and both of which finally can 

 claim any portion of the domains of our animal nature, and control 

 it, until its animal essence is reduced to harmony with reason's will. 

 These cortical substances, in their distinct use, are the factories of men- 

 tal skill. It is their perfection to except neither temperaments, nor 

 weathers, nor the criminal influences of the stars, nor the imagina- 

 tions, sensations, or apparent relations of things, as their allotted 

 sphere ; but they shape and cultivate things and ideas afresh ; they 

 recast influences on their own principles, of truth or falsity : their 

 reception of outward nature is the philosophy of the man ; their 

 works are the creative arts of his mind; and their judgment is his 

 moral soul. All this, we remark, demands no second brain apart 

 from the general sensorium, but the command of this in its highest 

 parts, where it is free to obey, and the rcconstitution of those parts 

 by the usage and skill of the rational power. In this respect the 

 brain may be likened to the hand, which is a coarse, general and 

 animal tool in the savage, and for some operations, such as grub- 

 bing in the earth, disqualified by its division into fingers ; whilst in 

 the civilized man it is extemporized by his mind and education into 

 a running power of convolutions from which tools proceed and arts 

 radiate, until nature is subdued and home is built : the separate use 

 of the fingers being the sign and cause* of this new essence in the 

 hand. 



It is therefore in the mind and not in the brain, and in the ration- 

 al mind and not in the animal mind, and not in mere ends but in 

 moral ends, nor in mere determinations but in. moral determinations, 

 that man is different from animals. Or to keep within our present 



