elements of our own destruction: the bursting of a bloodvessel in the brain, a failure of the heart, a minute change in the nervous system, and all is over. What was a living, speaking, feeling, thinking mind becomes a mere mass of inanimate matter.

We are, indeed, "fearfully and wonderfully made," nor can we yet by any means realise our extraordinary complexity. Spinoza states it as an obvious truth that "the human mind must perceive everything which happens in the human body." This is, however, the very reverse of the case. As a matter of fact we are intensely ignorant-even the most learned physicians know little of what is passing within us. That something little-of must take place in the brain when we speak, or read, or think, is obvious; but what that is we have no idea. How do we see, or hear, or feel, or smell? The most advanced physiologist cannot tell us. We know, indeed, very little about our own bodies. Take, for instance, the mechanism of the senses.

As regards touch, there are in the skin, especially of the hands and tongue, certain minute corpuscles each connected with a nerve, some organs of touch, others and different ones for the transmission of the

sensations of heat and cold, which apparently are not opposite sensations of the same, but perceptions of different, organs; but how these impressions are transmitted to the brain, and how they are there transmuted into sensations, we are absolutely ignorant.

As regards taste, there are on the tongue many thousands of minute bud-like groups of special cells which are supposed to be the organs of taste; but how they are affected, and in what different manner, by different flavours, and how these are realised in the brain, we are again entirely ignorant.

As regards smell, the mucous membrane of the nose contains certain yellow or brownish cells differing from the rest, but showing no visible structure which throws any light on the problem; and how these convey to the brain the multiplicity of odours, and how the brain deals with them, we are again entirely ignorant.

The drum of the ear receives the vibrations of the atmosphere and transmits them through a complex chain of small bones-which are considered to intensify the vibrations-to the labyrinth, on which the final filaments of the auditory nerve are distributed. It has been suggested that the wonderful organ of Corti-a

series of some 4000 minute arches-are, as it were, the keys on which the sound-waves play, almost like the fingers of a performer on the keys of a musical instrument. This may be the case, but even so it affords no ultimate explanation. The ear is a complex and delicate organ, but it does not explain the sensation of sound or the differences of notes.

Consider, again, the eye.

Externally comes the

cornea, then the aqueous humor, the iris, the lens, the vitreous humor, and finally the retina, which is no thicker than a sheet of thin paper, and yet consists of no less than nine separate layers, the innermost being the rods and cones, which are the immediate recipients of the undulations of light. The number of rods and cones in the human eye is enormous. At a moderate computation the cones may be estimated at over 3,000,000, and the rods at 30,000,000.

All this constitutes a wonderful optical instrument. The landscape is focussed on the retina, as on a photographic plate; the image is constantly becoming visible, and the wonderful plate is continually being washed clean and prepared for another impression. But this does not carry us much further. What happens when

the image is focussed on the retina?

pressions conveyed to the brain?

How are the im

We have not merely

to deal with outlines, but with shades, and, still more wonderful, with colours. How these are transmitted to the brain, and how they are realised in the brain, we are again entirely ignorant.

We

Consider, again, the processes of digestion. partake of a meal and transmute our food into flesh and bone, and fat and blood, tendons and skin, miles of arteries and veins, lungs and liver, and a hundred other substances and fluids, each with different properties and uses. But how these wonderful chemical changes take place we know not.

In the same way I might analyse the other changes which are continually proceeding in our complex organisation-secretion, the formation and circulation of the blood, and many other functions; but each description would lead up in the end to a confession of ignorance!

How little, then, we know, and yet in another sense how much we know! The existence of memory is so familiar that we do not realise what a marvel it is. In

ne sense even the most ignorant of us have an almost

inexhaustible stock of knowledge.

What innumerable

facts are stored up in our brains-recollections of childhood, of friends and relations, sounds and tastes and smells, pictures of places and faces, poetry and song, names of friends and relations, of kings and heroes, of statesmen and poets, dates and quotations, facts and fancies, what innumerable details and memories! how are they perceived, where are they stored, and how are they restored when we choose to recall them?

But

Man is indeed a miracle, endowed with "the priceless gift of life, which he can have but once, for he waited a whole Eternity to be born, and now has a whole Eternity waiting to see what he will do when born, this priceless gift we see strangled out of him by innumerable packthreads; and there remains of the glorious possibility, which we fondly named Man, nothing but an inanimate mass of foul loss and disappointment, which we wrap in shrouds, and bury underground, -surely with well-merited tears. To the thinker here lies tragedy enough; the epitome and marrow of all tragedy whatsoever.”*

The complication, however, of our bodily structure

* Carlyle.