SPIRITUAL SENSES 271 



each and everyone who likes it; or, in other words, 

 that we receive but what we give. 



Here the reader will perhaps remark mentally that 

 I am going beyond my last, seeing that this book 

 professes to be about the senses of animals, man 

 included. It is: and I take it that our senses of 

 beauty, wonder, reverence, of right and wrong, and 

 so on, are senses in the literal and restricted sense of 

 the word — senses, with their special organs, their 

 specialised nerves, that vibrate in response to special 

 stimuli, even as the other senses respond to stimuli 

 of another order, such as the sense of direction, of 

 polarity, of telepathy, of earth, air and water, and 

 many others we recognise vaguely or only surmise. 



Nor can anyone ever say that these higher faculties 

 and qualities of mind are developed exclusively in 

 the human brain. The more the psychologists dig 

 down to get at the roots of these faculties, the deeper 

 they find them — deeper far than the lowest level of 

 the human brain. What we call spirituality is not 

 ours by miracle; it was inherent in us from the 

 beginning: the seed germinated and the roots and 

 early leaves were formed before man, as man, 

 existed, and are ours by inheritance. It grows and 

 flourishes side by side with reason, but does not 

 flourish in the same degree. This plant, which is 

 to us the most beautiful of all that the mind produces, 

 is like a frail herbaceous plant growing in the shelter 

 and protection of a tough thorny shrub; and this 

 same shrub which enables it to exist, which safe- 

 guards it from outside assaults, yet deprives it of 



