Читать книгу The Mind and Its Education - George Herbert Betts - Страница 8

I—the conscious self—dwell somewhere in this body, but where? When my finger tips touch the object I wish to examine, I seem to be in them. When the brain grows weary from overstudy, I seem to be in it. When the heart throbs, the breath comes quick, and the muscles grow tense from noble resolve or strong emotion, I seem to be in them all. When, filled with the buoyant life of vigorous youth, every fiber and nerve is a-tingle with health and enthusiasm, I live in every part of my marvelous body. Small wonder that the ancients located the soul at one time in the heart, at another in the pineal gland of the brain, and at another made it coextensive with the body!

Consciousness Works through the Nervous System.—Later science has taught that the mind resides in and works through the nervous system, which has its central office in the brain. And the reason why I seem to be in every part of my body is because the nervous system extends to every part, carrying messages of sight or sound or touch to the brain, and bearing in return orders for movements, which set the feet a-dancing or the fingers a-tingling. But more of this later.

This partnership between mind and body is very close. Just how it happens that spirit may inhabit matter we may not know. But certain it is that they interact on each other. What will hinder the growth of one will handicap the other, and what favors the development of either will help both. The methods of their coöperation and the laws that govern their relationship will develop as our study goes on.