THE BELFAST ADDRESS 177 



sooner than permit himself to run even the risk of yield- 

 ing to these base promptings he slew himseK. How could 

 the hand of Lucretius have been thus turned against him- 

 self if the real Lucretius remained as before? Can the 

 brain, or can it not, act in this distempered way without 

 the intervention of the immortal reason? If it can, then 

 it is a prime mover which requires only healthy regula- 

 tion to render it reasonably self-acting, and there is no 

 apparent need of your immortal reason at all. If it can- 

 not, then the immortal reason, by its mischievous activity 

 in operating upon a broken instrument, must have the 

 credit of committing every imaginable extravagance and 

 crime. I think, if you will allow me to say so, that the 

 gravest consequences are likely to flow from your esti- 

 mate of the body. To regard the brain as you would a 

 staff or an eyeglass — to shut your eyes to all its mystery, 

 to the perfect correlation of its condition and our con- 

 sciousness, to the fact that a slight excess or defect of 

 blood in it produces the very swoon to which you refer, 

 and that in relation to it our meat, and drink, and air, and 

 exercise, have a perfectly transcendental value and sig- 

 nificance — to forget all this does, I think, open a way to 

 innumerable errors in our habits of life, and may possibly, 

 in some cases, initiate and foster that very disease, and 

 consequent mental ruin, which a wiser appreciation of this 

 mysterious organ would have avoided." 



I can imagine the Bishop thoughtful after hearing this 

 argument. He was not the man to allow anger to mingle 

 with the consideration of a point of this kind. After due 

 reflection, and having strengthened himself by that hon- 

 est contemplation of the facts which was habitual with 

 him, and which includes the desire to give even adverse 



