strings of the violin be injured, or if they be smeared
with grease, the result is discords and crazy sounds. If the brain be
physically injured or disordered the result is what we call mental
derangement.

To say, then, that the brain is the _seat_ of thought is not at all to
say that it is the _source_ of thought. Everything involved in my
conscious personality is _related_ to the brain, but it is not
_originated_ by the brain. The mysterious spiritual "I" is behind the
brain, using the brain--nay further--actually educating and fitting the
brain for its work. The brain of a little child with its plastic gray
matter is smooth and unformed. It is the "I" behind that is steadily
creasing and moulding and training it for its purpose. I don't know of
anything more impressive than the study of the human brain in its
activities, and how "I" am continually changing and modifying and
educating my brain. You feel sometimes as if you could almost lay
hands on that mysterious spiritual being that is behind it, like a
spider in his web--feeling and interpreting every quiver of it, sending
messages out into the world by means of it. But he always eludes you.
You have no instrument that can touch him. You only know that he is
there, enshrouded in mystery, a supernatural being not only using the
brain but educating it for use. The brain itself has no knowledge or
thought, and no power of itself to originate knowledge or thought. The
brain of a baboon differs very little from the brain of a man. The
difference is in the being who is behind it. I read lately the
statement of a great scientist: "As far as I can see, if the soul of a
man could get behind the brain of an ape he could probably use it
almost as well as his own."

I have never known a really thoughtful student of science satisfied
with the foolish notion that the brain is what thinks and remembers and
wills. He looks upon a human brain, on the dissecting table, a mere
mass of cells and nerve centres suffused with blood, and he thinks of
the glorious poems and the mighty intellectual efforts and the noble
thoughts of God and Righteousness, and perforce he laughs at the
thought that that poor bleeding thing originated them. Something
within him indignantly replies: "Nay, 'I' am not the brain. I possess
it. I use it. It is mine, but it is not me!"

Section 3

We have not yet gone deep enough to discover this "I." It is hardly
necessary to ask the nex