The Body-Machine and Its Work 34? 



branch of science; it will be referred to later when we come to 

 deal with Mental Science. 



"In some way that we do not understand, our personality is 

 more bound up with our nervous system than with the rest of our 

 body. Our quickness or slowness, alertness or dullness, cheerful- 

 ness or gloominess, reliability or fickleness, good-will or selfish- 

 ness, are wrapped up in our ordinary life inextricably with our 

 very wonderful nervous system. Some people believe that our 

 inmost self uses the nervous system as a musician uses a piano, 

 and compare the disorder of mind illustrated in the delirium of 

 fever, or the decay of mental vigour in the aged, to disturbances 

 or wear and tear in the instrument. Others think that the inner 

 life of consciousness feeling, thinking, and willing is one as- 

 pect of our mysterious living, and that the physico-chemical bustle 

 that goes on in the nervous system is the other aspect of the same 

 reality. The two aspects are inseparable, like the concave and 

 the convex surfaces of a dome ; but no metaphor is of any use, the 

 relation is quite unique. 



"This is one of the oldest of riddles, and Tennyson made 

 'The Ancient Sage' say: 



'Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone, 

 Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone, 

 Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one: 



For nothing worthy proving can be proven, 

 Nor yet disproven.' 



"Yet three things seem to us to be quite certain: (1) Our 

 nervous system is a scientific actuality that can be measured and 

 weighed; it is complex beyond our power of conception, if only 

 because of the millions of living units which it includes: it is the 

 seat of an extraordinary activity which baffles the imagination. 

 No theoretical view can stand that is subversive of the funda- 

 mental reality of our nervous system. (2) Even more real, 



