SENSORY, MOTOR & PSYCHIC NEURONS 405 



in which to grow and unfold itself, and to lay the founda- 

 tion of a spiritual being, or existence, which will ultimately 

 outgrow and overshadow its material environment, and 

 on the dissolution of which it will be absolutely capable 

 of a separate existence, and continued development. The 

 certainty of this is absolute, and incapable of disproof, 

 being founded on dynamic law, which is as absolutely 

 unalterable and inexorable in its operation as any of the 

 eternal laws of nature, or of truth, known to science, or 

 to revelation, so far as the human intellect can realise 

 them. The material basis, or cerebral matrix, in which 

 the higher intellectual operations of the brain are carried 

 on, may, roughly speaking, be taken as composed of those 

 neurons which arise from, and end in, the grey matter of 

 the brain, cortical and central, and which do not, there- 

 fore, directly subserve the materio-dynamic purposes of 

 the peripherally related cerebro-spinal, or central, nervous 

 system. It is thus a region of cerebral structure which 

 does not lend itself well experimentally to the exact 

 psychological disentanglement of its local histological 

 elements into their various functional areas according to 

 the character of their respective mental roles in the 

 working of the material and immaterial organisms, so 

 to speak, of the mind ; or, in other words, the experi- 

 mental methods of physiological interpretation, to which 

 our present knowledge of the nervous system and its 

 working owes so much for its advancement, cannot be 

 made serviceable when applied to the elucidation of the 

 laws of the genesis and evolution of mental phenomena 

 from brain matrix and mental dynamics. 



The vast congeries of cerebral neurons situated above 

 and beyond the points of origin and the " spheres of 

 influence " of the histologically connected, and functionally 

 co-related, systemic nerve centres, represent the areas of 

 cerebral matrix whose functions are purely or peculiarly 

 intellectual, and therefore entirely occupied with the 

 highest ranges of human work and destiny. Within 

 this uppermost and innermost cerebral region there can 

 be no doubt that the same physiological laws of meta- 

 bolism, the same reign of material law and order, but a 

 much higher range of dynamic work or activity, prevails, 



