WHY THE BRAIN HAS TWO HALVES. 75 



home, from which the man sallies, and to which he reverts, as his 

 centre of operations. The one brain holds the object of thought, 

 while the other brain works upon it with active power. This func- 

 tion of the two sides is a peculiar repetition of that of the cerebrum 

 and cerebellum, without which consciousness would not hold, just 

 as the male sex without the female would be a power without a ful- 

 crum, a wanderer without the strength of home. Principles cannot 

 be applied without a special envoy of their own, and the cerebel- 

 lum must have the weaker sex or better half of the cerebrum in its 

 interest in order to manage the cerebrum aright. If the reader 

 consults his mind, he will find that in one and the same operation 

 the process of steadying the grasp of thought concurs with that of 

 exercising its active movements; that his soul has two hands; and 

 these two processes or hands, widely different but united, are suited 

 in the twofoldness of the cerebral lobes. But what is more, the 

 two brains decussate or copulate, and the right head is married to 

 the left body, and the left head to the right body ; and this cross- 

 ing of powers, whereby active and passive are not only collateral, 

 but embrace, not only symmetrical, but one superposed upon the 

 other, is a necessity for action and thought, considered as mental 

 fruitfulness. The delights of harmony would not be felt if the two 

 brains did not thus combine, nor would the brain have a circle in 

 itself, unless each half had the support of contact with its partner 

 before going forth into the body. 



Furthermore, we have noticed in the nervous system a reference 

 to something beyond and above, which soon lands us in the mind, 

 as the first permanent station. Thus the feeling of the fingers con- 

 ducts us anatomically to the spinal cord, in the centres of which, 

 and not in the fingers, the sensation lodges. The cord at once re- 

 fers us to the base of the brain, where sensation has its proper 

 home. "We know, however, that it is in the cortical centres that 

 that attention lives, which is the inner sense, or the owner of sen- 

 sation. These cortices, however, arc dead and material per se, and 

 thence the reference is straight to the mind, as the first organism 

 that appropriates sensation, and calls it really its own. TVe stop 

 here, not because the journey is done, but because the day of 

 thought is spent, and our science wants a rest. Thus one lesson 



