THE TRIPARTITE NATURE OF MAN. 



197 



on Mars' Hill in speaking of the Unknown God, where he gives us 

 in a few words the most compact summary of spirit, soul and body 

 he had met with, in the following words, For in Him we live, 

 and move, and have our being." Here we get spirit, soul and body, 

 and as the late great psychologist. Dr. Hughlings Jackson pointed 

 out to him long ago, the divisions of the brain roughly correspond 

 with the spheres of these three : In the upper brain or cortex, the 

 mid-brain and cerebellum, and the lower brain or medulla. 



The first is the region of consciousness and is dominated by and 

 is the instrument of the spirit. Here alone do we live in the fullest 

 sense both toward God and man. 



The mid-brain is the seat of soul in animal life ; and its essential 

 character is the control of all movements, subject of course to higher 

 impulses whose orders it is its business to carry out. It is in the 

 soul-life we raove. The third or mere physical existence is continued 

 when all soul-movement is absent, and consists in the action of the 

 life-centres only — the beating of the heart, and the breathing of the 

 lungs. It is in this region we physically exist. 



Here then is clearly distinguished the tripartite nature of man. 



The three can be clearly distinguished by the phenomena — alas ! 

 too familiar to us still — of drunkenness. 



Alcohol is a paralyser of the nervous system in proportion to 

 the size of the dose. 



When a man drinks a few glasses of wine or spirits, the first effect 

 is to paralyse the spirit's life. He becomes noisily drunk. The 

 mid-brain, released from the rational control of the spirit, gives full 

 play to his animal or soul-life. He sings, shouts, and moves about 

 all more or less irrationally. One-third of the brain is paralysed. 



If now he drinks more, he suddenly— as the soul-life in the mid- 

 brain ceases to act in the large and smaller brain — can no longer 

 stand, but falls down ; movements necessarily cease, and all speech 

 and song, and he is now dead-drunk. 



The paralysis is seldom carried so far as to cause death, from the 

 simple fact that the arm that has conveyed the poison to his lips 

 is now itself paralysed, and can no longer act. 



It is to this humiliating reason in the man, that thousands do not 

 die of drink every night, and not because the depraved appetite is 

 satisfied. One-third of the brain, the lower, is still acting, the heart 

 still beats, and the man still breathes. If someone else now pours 



