bZ THE HUMAN BRAIN. 



V. If this fluid is quasi-\ik, or what is the same thing, physical 

 life, it may well be conceived that the nervous tubes will close 

 against it in the moment of dying; as the dying arteries contract, 

 and shed away the arterial blood. Death has no hold upon life, but 

 its chill grasp is its means of losing it. Hence, microscopic obser- 

 vations upon the nervous fibres never can give the negative to their 

 tubular form or fluid contents. The problem does not come within 

 the brains of necrology. Moreover, how if the tubes were spiral, 

 and not straight, which might be the case in a system where veloci- 

 ties are such, that distance forms no element in the calculation ? 

 In that case, even supposing the tubes were hollow, they might 

 never be seen as tubes, by reason of their insinuations and turnings. 

 For in the realms of mind and thought, the shortest distance between 

 any two points or ends, is that which leads through all the means, 

 no matter by what length of course. The zigzag of the lightning is 

 in the straight line of smiting. 



VI. The doctrine of a nervous fluid seems further to arise out of 

 the construction of the system from successive pieces, each higher 

 and broader than that preceding it. For this ladder takes us up to 

 regard the mind itself as supremely nervous. Now each part has 

 its centre in itself; but also is traversed by the part above it, on its 

 way to the surface; whither all the pieces, the high and the low, 

 arrive alike immediately, or are represented. Thus the mind comes 

 down through everything and its spirit glitters in the face. And 

 thus all the actions of man — automatic, sensual and animal — may 

 be shot and pierced from the quiver of life, until they are nothing 

 but rational and spiritual actions. It is to be remarked, however, 

 that the visible solids terminate with the brain. If, then, the mind 

 has fibres representing it in the brain, as the brain has fibres repre- 

 senting it in the spinal cord, the former fibres must lie in the fluids, 

 for the solids belong to the brain itself. Thus, while the brain or 

 organism terminates in its own centres, the cortical substances, or 

 supreme solids, the mind enters into these by a series of correspond- 

 ing fluid organisms, which represent the living or active portion, as 

 ihc solids represent the recipient or passive. This is but imagina- 

 tion; yet imagination is the youthful eye of science, and provided 

 it owns to its name, it is an innocent as well as a suggestive power. 



