THE NERVE SPIRIT. 47 



little given up to sight -and sense as the live brain and nervous 

 system. No part is so much alarmed, or presumably so much 

 altered, by exposure. Nay, there is no part in which there is less 

 to see than in this supreme organization. Detail and structure and 

 the broad lines of design begin to be inappreciable, as a preparation 

 for the indwelling and shadowing forth of something which is abso- 

 lutely invisible to the senses. Per contra there is no part in which 

 there is so much left to fancy, to imagination, and to the inner eye 

 of reason. Tempered thoughts seem to be the only steel that can 

 open the viscera of thought. The method d priori appears to be as 

 much prescribed by nature for investigating organs that work & pri- 

 ori, or from life downwards, as, they say, it is proscribed from those 

 where the senses give immediate information. The truths that we 

 can see, we do not discern by reason ; but conversely reason must 

 discern those which the eye cannot see. If all truth is a posteriori, 

 then the physiologist can see the living brain in vision. But as he 

 has lost this faculty, reason in the meantime must have place. 



Now neither of the parties in the above controversy has ever seen, 

 still less dissected, the living brain, meaning thereby the brain in 

 the exercise of its functions, thinking and reasoning in its peaceful 

 head. On both hands, then, imagination has been active in all that 

 has been said. The question therefore is, as in several other cases, 

 Which party has the best set of imaginations? measuring the ex- 

 cellence on cither side by the fruits that it produces in its department. 

 Which set of conceptions — the affirmative or the negative — comes 

 nearest to life, and to those attributes which will fit the highest organ 

 of man's body, and one which receives the influences of his mind? 

 For reasons of analogy, necessity and experience, we adhere to those 

 imaginations and thoughts that postulate a nervous spirit. 



Be it observed, however, that we do not dogmatize respecting the 

 physical properties of this which we term a fluid. In reasoning by 

 analogy, we are forced to take with us the garb of the known sphere, 

 and to talk of a fluid, because the body furnishes the word. We 

 desire, however, to hold the term loosely, and no longer than until 

 a better analogy, or the real name, arises. 



It is well known that influences mount from the body to the head 

 in sensation, and descend from the head to the body in voluntary 



