G6 THE HUMAN BRAIN. 



The quantity, colors and kinds of the animal spirit thus inflowing, 

 measuring what it is by what it does, are greater than those of all 

 the other fluids; for it not only fills the brain and nerves, but occu- 

 pies the interstices and the posts of difficulty throughout the body. 

 The good things which seem to be so scarce that they are almost 

 invisible, are yet at the last the only things — are all in all ; and 

 this which is the least and most hidden element, is in its volume 

 necessarily the greatest, and the all-embracing. Whatever is more 

 than gravity and rest comes forth from its active lightness. It is 

 the life of the blood; the strength of the arm, the fire of the eye, 

 and the bloom of the skin. Each intellectual city, each convolu- 

 tion of the brain, nay every spherule, sends forth its characteristic 

 emissaries, possessing the body with the varied spirits of the head. 

 Dryads and naiads, muses and furies, gods, goddesses, and heroes in 

 endless populations, throng the columns of this old pantheon, whose 

 last mythology is yet to come. The starry dance, the music of the 

 spheres, the astrologic influences, the experiences of the superna- 

 tural, are but aims to express the perceptions and properties of this 

 immortal nature which lives on the seeds of the sun. By this liquid 

 flesh it is that the soul sees its face in the rushing river of creations, 

 and feels the issuing universe, and the finest tremble of the stars. 

 In this wisest vest of nature, it sits at the feast of nature's wisdom. 

 This is the panic element of man in unison with the panic of the 

 world. Could we see an apparition of the nervous spirit, waving 

 and sweeping with luminous shoots into the curves of the body, we 

 should behold a form complete in its details; a design exceeding the 

 mortal building; solid as flesh to the eye of the mind; perpetually 

 springing into life; yet though plastic, stable to its ends, and quicker 

 than thought to execute them : shadowy, or terrible, to the senses, 

 but safe reality to the soul. Then should we see, but according to 

 our insight, that there are motions and mechanics which are the 

 likeness and habitation of life, sense, passion, understanding ; and 

 we should know by solemn experiment, that our organization is an 

 imperishable truth which derides the grave of the body. 



But if the brain is not shut but open, not empty but full, and if 

 the organ of thought and will is not stationary, but moving ; if this 

 is the first nature by which it answers to those ever-moving crea- 



