The Body-Machine and Its Work 349 



ceiving countless messages from all parts of the body and direct- 

 ing our three hundred muscles to co-operate. It is entirely 

 1 automatic, yet no central telegraph station in the world is so busy 

 or so accurate. It also in some way maintains the tone of the 

 muscles. 



Below the cerebellum is the medulla, which, as we saw, is the 

 organ for controlling the muscles of the chest that cause breath- 

 ing. It has, however, much more work to do than this. It has 

 some control of the heart and blood-vessels, and it influences 

 movement in the alimentary canal from the salivary glands to the 

 small intestine. We must remember that these hind-parts of the 

 brain are the oldest. The cortex the nervous matter connected 

 with mental life is a later acquisition. 



And the oldest part of all is the long cord of nerve-cells 

 which is enclosed in the spinal column. Along this are the various 

 centres for working automatically the great muscles of the trunk 

 and limbs and abdomen. Pairs of nerves leave it at intervals, and 

 all day long these are receiving messages and issuing orders. It 

 has an extraordinary power of automatic learning. Watch the 

 baby learning to adjust its muscular actions to its desires or feel- 

 ings, or a girl learning tennis or typing. In a short time the 

 machinery will react promptly and perfectly to the stimulus. It 

 is through the spinal cord that the brain can influence movements 

 which are usually automatic. 



We cannot discuss here how far the bodily features may 

 serve as indices of mental character, whether the face, the eyes, 

 the shape of the head or the hands an interesting chapter on the 

 subject will be found in Sir Arthur Keith's little book, The 

 Human Body. There is no correspondence, he tells us, between 

 the functions of the various parts of the brain, so far as we yet 

 know them, and the overlying parts of the head to which "phre- 

 nologists" have assigned definite functions. Some day we may be 

 able to add to our knowledge of a man's character derived from 



