76 THE HUMAN BRAIN. 



of this system is the unselfishness of our organization, and its re- 

 cognition of a hierarchy which has no top save in that which is 

 more than body, and of supernatural endowments. And in the 

 downward series, running from wills to motions, the prime movers 

 are as much above us as the original feelers in sensation : a super- 

 incumbent organism to be called spiritual, and which makes itself 

 away to God with treble velocity of unselfishness, must be suppli- 

 cated as at once the original arbitrator of will, and the last receiver 

 of the thoughts which come from the world under the dresses of 

 sensations. 



This system, however, whilst we think of the body, is a land of 

 mountains, from which the whole microcosm is visible. It rises 

 white, with its pillars of alabaster, from the blood-lands of limb, 

 heart and liver, and comprehends wider scenes as steep after steep 

 is surmounted. Its elevation is measured by function, which gives 

 the altitude over the level of the rolling juices and their shores. 

 The representation of life by the spinal chain is already a summit 

 towering above the flesh. The streams from this, falling upon the 

 machinery of organization, give powers corresponding to the height 

 and force of the descent. The rivers of sensation and impulse, again, 

 descending from loftier tables, have the force of their greater fall, 

 and press sense into paits and functions, into which no weaker tor- 

 rents could gain way. And finally, the mental streams, each in- 

 stinct with the view of the whole commanded from the top, have a 

 power of descent and penetration which belongs to such intellectual 

 rivers, whose sources are as the beads that the sun engenders on the 

 needles of the supreme hills, heaven-kissing. We say nothing of 

 the cloudy ranges beyond, or the spiritual temple, excepting that it 

 too is of a new mountain order, though built out of the firmament, 

 whose waters are above us as below us, and all the rest but currents 

 in their eternal sea. 



We may here assign two reasons why the brain is at the top ) in 

 the first place, because nature herself is the worship of rank and 

 station, under their other names of excellence and power; and 

 secondly, because the soul is the top of the top, and the brain by 

 its place meets the soul. And as the arts and industries flow down 

 from the brain, and the spiritual waters tend to find their level, so 



