at first until a few
million more men have made similar practical observations in the
psychology and physiology of modern life when one comes to see what our
civilization is bringing us to--what it really is that almost any man one
knows, including the man of marked education--take him off his guard
almost any minute--is letting his body do to his mind.

A very large part of even quite intelligent conversation has no
origination in it and is just made up of phonograph records. You say a
thing to a man that calls up Record No. 999873 and he puts it in for you,
starts his motor and begins to make it go round and round for you. He
just tumtytums off some of his subconsciousness for you. Whether he is
selling you a carpet sweeper or converting your soul, it is his body that
is using his brain and not his brain that is using his body.

With the average man one meets, his body wags his brain when he talks, as
a dog wags his tail. The tongue sends its roots not into the brain but
into the stomach. (Probably this is why Saint Paul speaks of it so sadly
and respectfully as a mighty member--because of its roots.)

The main difficulty a man has in having a new brain track, or in being
original or plastic in a process of mind is the way his body tries to
bully him when he tries it. The body has certain tracks it has got used
to in a mind and that it wants to harden the mind down into and then
tumtytum along on comfortably and it does not propose--all this blessed
meat we carry around on us, to let us think any more than can be helped.

I saw some wooden flowers in a florist's window on The Avenue the other
day--four or five big blossoms six inches across--real flowers that had
been taken from the edge of a volcano in South America--real flowers that
had chemically turned to wood--(probably from having gas administered to
them by the volcano!)--and I stood there and looked at them thinking how
curious it was that spiritual and spirited things like flowers instead of
going out and fading away like a spirit, had died into solid wood in that
way. Then I turned and walked down the street, watching the souls and
bodies of the people and the people were not so different many of them as
one looked into their faces, from the wooden flowers, and I could not
help seeing, of course, no one can--what their bodies--thousands of
them--were apparently doing to their souls. After all the wooden flowers
were not really much queerer for flowers th