80 THE HUMAN BRAIN. 



struct upon his own wants and ideals. By this means, for example, 

 the inanimate ground is covered with waving vegetations ; the vege- 

 table kingdom is compressed by the animal, which browses down its 

 increase, and serves as a partial end to arrest its exaggerations ; and 

 all together are braced round by man in girths and limbs of muscu- 

 lar arts, upon which sciences and volitions directly play for tighten- 

 ing the world to human aims, and carrying it through those revolu- 

 tions of culture which are its aspects towards our wants. In this 

 respect the trees are not inanimate, nor the beasts without progress ) 

 but they breathe and walk after man down the line of ages as after 

 Orpheus in the days of old. Their proper brain, the genus homo, 

 takes them along with him, and they become what he makes them, 

 or are as he leaves them; as God has ordained. 



The last part of our theme has yet to be written, or the compara- 

 tives and affinities of the brain. And here we may state, that we 

 extend the province of comparative reasoning, and if the reader 

 pleases, of comparative anatomy, above the human brain as well as 

 beneath it. And we hold that the brains of the creatures larger 

 than individual man are truly illustrative of his little brain, whereas 

 animal cerebra are but falsely or negatively illustrative. By the 

 creatures larger than man we designate societies, nations, races, or 

 the individuals who cultivate the globe of history. The bodies of 

 these are definite, fibrous, and individual, like animal bodies : they 

 are mechanical also, though in a higher range of mechanics. 



In the second consideration of the individual man, the brain is 

 his genius — that which fills him with spirit, makes a truth or aim 

 into his virtual intellect and will, and pours luminous rivers of these 

 over his works. This punctum vivens of his mind animates the rest, 

 and radiating its ideals far and near, irritates his apathies to death 

 under hot arrows of zeal. This genius creates and then concurs 

 with his wants; and the two together, or his life and his necessity, 

 animate up to the shape and point at which determination can have 

 actions done. These brain attributes, absent in none, are brilliant 

 in some men, who take the name of geniuses on that account, and 

 their deeds, by a fated fortuity, are treasured by their fellows as a 

 common interest, though of no more than individual growth, These 



