Epidemics. 285 



priation and welding of which it is well to give a passing 

 notice. 



If '-through any peculiar telluric, geodic, and magnetic, or 

 any other condition of the earth, or the adoption of par- 

 ticular habits, dietary, customs, or social virtues or vices, 

 taken from a given centre, as Acre, we find, as ages roll on, 

 a continued series of alternations, and wider and yet wider 

 extensions and developments of social and dynastic empire, 

 till it threatens to envelop the whole world, and to culminate, 

 from its excellent geographical position, in making Acre its 

 grand central depot and great commercial market-placeit 

 is inferred, from some unknown or known influence, that the 

 organic functions and nerve-enduring powers of the great 

 central cerebral masses are adapted within certain areas, and 

 with races of men previously very differently fitted by 

 customs, habits, and natural advantages, both of climate, 

 soil, and geographical position, to be recipients of great 

 metamorphoses, and to undergo very marked and unmis- 

 takable changes in the functions and powers of the brain 

 hence we recognize the brain and nervous system as the 

 more immediate cause of successive changes of dynasties 

 and empires, from a physico-vital point of view. 



But with these changes in man's cerebral mass, which is 

 the great instrument of the mind, it is well to observe that 

 the pure physical power, or improved capacity and endur- 

 ance of the brain and nerve centres, is turned, in an endless 

 variety of forms, into a very widely destructive power by 

 the moral force which rules and guides the physical power. 

 For the physical power, which is the result of vital power 

 or force shown in instinct or identical successive courses 

 of action, under similar external conditions, is, for alien 

 purposes, exceedingly circumscribed ; whilst the moral 

 force is wide-spread in its alien manifestations, and its 

 aim in destruction is directed chiefly against accumulated 



