Braine

“ The Luck of the Eardleys. By Sheila E. Braine.
“One of the cleverest books we have read for a long time. The authoress combines wit, humour, and pathos in a delightful manner, and understands how to portray character, for all her men, women, boys and girls glow with life and colour”—The Record.
Picked up at Sea: or, The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek. By John C. Hutcheson.
The Search for the Talisman: A Story of Labrador. By Henry Frith.
“We pity the boy who cannot read every page of this capital story.”—School Guardian. ”

“ These ideas are nearly the same with those that afterward prevailed among many philosophers and some naturalists; the brain, in which the most important functions of the nervous system are performed, was for them not the real organ of thought, but simply the substratum of intelligence. Indeed, the objection was often enough expressed, that the brain forms a physiological exception to all the other organs of the body, in that it is the seat of metaphysical manifestations, which the physiologist has no concern with. ”

“ When the brain is said to be essential, as the organ or instrument of the mind in its relations with the external world, not only to the [Pg 171] perception of sensations, but to the subsequent intellectual acts, and especially to the memory, of things which have been the objects of sense—it is asked, how can the brain be the organ of memory when you suppose its substance to be ever changing? ”

“ From a physiological point of view, those metaphysical phenomena of thought, consciousness, and intelligence, which serve for the various manifestations of the human soul, are nothing but ordinary vital phenomena, and can result from nothing but the action of the organ that expresses them. We shall show that, in fact, the physiology of the brain, like that of all the other bodily organs, is deduced from anatomical observations, from experiments conducted physiologically, and from the teachings of pathological anatomy. ”

“ Every one has long known that, without the brain, intelligence is not possible, but experiment has discovered exactly the part that is played by each portion of the organ. It teaches us that consciousness, or intelligence properly so called, resides in the cerebral lobes, while the lower portions of the brain contain nervous centres destined for organic functions of a lower kind. ”

“ Surely no one who is cognisant of the facts of the case, nowadays, doubts that the roots of psychology lie in the physiology of the nervous system. What we call the operations of the mind are the functions of the brain, and the materials of consciousness are products of cerebral activity. ”

“ The scalpel of the anatomist can nowhere discover in the full-grown brain an organ of veneration, or of hope, or of language, or of destructiveness, or of any other mental feature: nor can his microscope detect in nature's wondrous process of fashioning the brain any reason for the belief that the organ of mind is a collection of parts each devoted to the exercise of a special quality of mind. The arrangement which appears so clear on the phrenologist's bust is nowhere represented in the brain itself. ”

“ When we emerge from this necessary field of labor, we come to those functions peculiar to the proper brain. Here all is continual action. Thought, imagination, will, the conflicting passions, language, and even articulation, claim their first impulse from the nervous centre. The idlest reverie, as well as the most profound study, taxes the brain. ”

“ Go on!” implored the artists, writers, lawyers, and physicians.
“I suppose,” my friend continued, “that every one of us will concede that the human brain has always been made of the same material, that ages ago it was composed of the same parts, that its actions were governed by the same laws, that its surface was composed of the same convolutions, and that ages ago even there was deposited in these convolutions that wonderful gray matter, surrounded with white matter and composed of nerve-cells, which modern physiologists designate as the seat of thought, reason, judgment, and talent. ”

“ As the brain is the seat of the soul, its action is essentially and primarily psychic; but as it is the commander of the body, and the source of its spiritual vitality, all its conditions or actions affect the body; and hence every organ has its dual action, psychic and physiological. Cerebral physiology and sarcognomy explain in detail how the brain and the mental conditions affect the body; cerebral psychology shows how the brain and soul are correlated. ”

“ What is the lord of the creation, compared with the antelope for fleetness, or with the elephant and many other animals for strength?
As we ascend the scale of animal life we find a more perfectly developed nervous system; and the relative size of the brain, compared with that of the brute, is found progressively to increase, until it arrives at the [Pg 391] utmost perfection in man. On the system of nerves depends sensation, and there can be no doubt that the more exalted the order of intelligence displayed, the more exquisitely delicate is the nervous system. ”

“ It is not even correct to say that thought goes on in the brain. What goes on in the brain is an amazingly complex series of molecular movements, with which thought and feeling are in some unknown way correlated, not as effects or as causes, but as concomitants. So much is clear, but cerebral physiology says nothing about another life. Indeed, why should it? The last place in the world to which I should go for information about a state of things in which 110thought and feeling can exist in the absence of a cerebrum would be cerebral physiology! ”

“ In ordinary discourse we use the words brain and mind as interchangeable terms, because it is quite evident that where there is lack of intelligence there is deficiency in the brain and where there is a high degree of intelligence there is a correspondingly high development of brain. The immense advance in recent times in our knowledge of the physiology of cerebral process serves more and more to emphasize the entire and absolute dependence of mind on brain, and particularly of the higher processes of mind on the development of the cells and fibres of the cerebral cortex. ”

“ If you say the Brain immits and directs these Spirits, how can that so freely and spontaneously move it self or another that has no Muscles? besides, Anatomists tell us, that though the Brain be the instrument of sense, yet it has no sense at all of it self; how then can that that has no sense direct thus spontaneously and arbitrariously the Animal Spirits into any part of the Body? an act that plainly requires determinate sense and perception. ”

“ The brain is regarded by physiologists and philosophers as the organ of the mind. Most writers consider it as an aggregate of parts, each charged with specific functions, and that these functions are the highest and most important in the animal economy. To the large brain, or cerebral lobes, they ascribe the seat of the faculties of thinking, memory, and the will. In man, this lobe extends so far backward as to cover the whole of the cerebellum. To the cerebellum, or little brain, is ascribed the seat of the animal, or lower propensities. ”

“ By means of the nerves all impressions are conveyed to the brain and spinal cord; all impulses from this, whether conscious or unconscious, are conveyed to the muscles and other parts. The brain is the sole organ of psychical life; by means of its activity the impressions of the external world conveyed to it through the sense organs are converted into consciousness. ”

“ One thing is absolutely certain; that the mind resides in the brain; that in it inheres what constitutes us human; and that the conscious point resides in the centre of the encephalon, at that spot where all three brains meet, viz., cerebrum, cerebellum and medulla, or spinal marrow, which is an elongated brain, is a clear fact, the proof of which can be found by consulting any good anatomical and physiological atlas. ”

“ The function of the brain—which must be regarded as the bulbous root of a nervous plant whose branches grow downwards—is twofold; to affect, and to be affected. In its active or positive condition it affects the whole of the vital and muscular processes in the man, finding expression in vital action. ”

“ We have seen that the nervous system not only regulates most of the existing functions of the body, but that it has indirectly influenced the development of various bodily structures and certain mental qualities, and that these powers of mind depend on the development of the brain. ”

“ Every impression of sense upon the brain, every current of molecular activity from one to another part of the brain, every cerebral action which passes into muscular movement, leaves behind it some modification of the nerve elements concerned in its function, some after-effect, or, so to speak, memory of itself in them which renders its reproduction an easier matter, the more easy the more often it has been repeated, and makes it impossible to say that, however trivial, it shall not under some circumstances recur. ”

“ So the brain in man is “the one immediate bodily condition of the mental operations.” Take away all the brain and man’s body is a useless mass of protoplasm.
The brain’s varied and intricate nerve connections with all parts of the body, through nerves branching from the main trunks in the spinal cord, we shall not discuss, for you know them through your study of anatomy. For the purpose of our psychology we need consider only two of the main divisions of the brain—the cerebrum, which includes what we call the right and left hemispheres, and the cerebellum. ”

“ All life force concentrates in death; all cells function as one; all lower organs take over functions of higher ones; every blood vessel becomes a heart; every nerve a brain. Center of lifeforce: pineal gland. You, Lee, man of little knowledge—low-level intelligence: Why did you kill The Brain? ”

“ Man has no soul, nor has any other animal, except that power that is produced by the nervous material. The brain has a function to perform, like every other tissue in the body. The muscular tissue, the liver tissue, etc., each perform their function. The great nervous [339] centers and the special senses, being intimately connected, carry all impressions direct to the brain; the retention of impressions, the memorizing, the recollection, the formation of ideas, of thought, imagination, are the immediate functions of the nervous substance. ”

“ It is the lower or vegetative brain that may still exist and keep life intact when the functions of the cerebrum are destroyed. We can say, then, of the brain as a whole that it is the organ of the mind, the sine qua non of the mind, the apparatus for the registration of sense impressions. ”

“ Modern mental physiologists differ among themselves as regards the presence of the mind throughout the entire nervous system; some maintaining the view here presented, and others making the brain to be the seat of sensation, and the nerves telegraphic lines, so to speak, for the communication of impressions from the various parts of the body to the brain. ”

“ The brain is an organ. The student will acquire a solid principle if he grasps this idea firmly: that the nervous organism is homogeneous in its center and in its ramifications, and that its function is simply such as its mechanical efficiency determines. ”

“ Authorities differ as to how far it is possible to localise the functions of the brain; but this at least seems pretty clear--that none of the functions of mind are performed without real activity in the mass of grey and white nervous matter named 'the brain.' Now, this is not a matter for the physiologist alone, but for every mother and father of a family ”

“ Once we recognise that in the thinking of a thought there is as distinct motion set up in some tract of the brain as there is in the muscles of the hand employed in writing a sentence, we shall see that the behaviour of the grey nerve-substance of the cerebrum should afford the one possible key to certitude and system in our attempts at education, using the word in the most worthy sense—as its concern is the formation of character. ”

“ But intellect in the largest sense is not identical with the retentive or plastic operation. The laws of this peculiar phase of our intelligence are best obtained by studying it as a purely mental fact. Yet there is a physiological way of looking at it that is strongly confirmative of our psychological observations. On the physical or physiological side, memory or acquisition is a series of new nervous growths, the establishment of a number of beaten tracks in certain lines of the cerebral substance. ”

“ The physiology, however, of the brain and nervous system is in a state of such rapid advance, and is continually bringing forth such new and interesting results, that if there be really a connection between mental peculiarities and any varieties cognizable by our senses in the structure of the cerebral and nervous apparatus, the nature of that connection is now in a fair way of being found out. ”

“ But more wonderful, a thousand fold, is their ability to follow the course of thought in a living cerebrum after the brain has been made visible by a light more potent than the X ray. After this exposure the operator, with his wizard magnifying lens, watches the tiny tremulous brain cells in their infinitesimal quivering, as they carry messages from the soul to the world of sense and being. ”

“ And it seems impossible to doubt that it is the brain that produces the mind and not the mind that produces the brain, because the brain is an organ that develops continually throughout life and performs a multitude of other functions besides that of turning the excitation of its cells and fibres into sensations and perceptions, a function that seems to be intermittent and only called into activity at definite times and in special circumstances. ”