THE NATURAL 



And from the popular speech, is not the sensible man 

 called "level-headed," has he not his "head well screwed 

 on" or "screwed on straight;" and are not lunatics and 

 cranks often recognizable from some peculiar carriage 

 or tilt of the head-piece; and is not the thinker always 

 pictured with his head bowed into his hand, yes, but 

 level so far as left to right is concerned? The upward- 

 " jaw, head-back pose has long been explained by the rela- 

 tive positions of the medulla and the more human parts 

 of the brain; this need not be dragged in here; nor do 

 I mean to assert that you can cure a lunatic merely by 

 holding his head level. 



Thought is a chemical process, the most interesting of 

 all transfusions in liquid solution. The mind is an up- 

 spurt of sperm, no, let me alter that; trying to watch the 

 process: the sperm, the form-creator, the substance which 

 compels the ovule to evolve in a given pattern, one mi- 

 croscopic, minuscule particle, entering the "castle" of 

 the ovule. 



"Thought is a vegetable" says a modern hermetic, 

 whom I have often contradicted, but whom I do not wish 

 to contradict at this point. Thought is a "chemical 

 process" in relation to the organ, the brain; creative 

 thought is an act like fecundation, like the male cast of 

 the human seed, but given that cast, that ejaculation, I 

 am perfectly willing to grant that the thought once born, 

 separated, in regard to itself, not in relation to the brain 

 that begat it, does lead an independent life much like a 

 member of the vegetable kingdom, blowing seeds, ideas 

 from the paradisal garden at the summit of Dante's 

 Mount Purgatory, capable of lodging and sprouting 

 210 



