e brain is far more important, for the quickest death is
produced by crushing the brain, or by cutting it off from the
body in the spinal cord of the neck, when heart, lungs, and
stomach are promptly arrested by losing the help of the brain.
If prior development in growth proved a superiority of rank, the
ganglionic system which accompanies the arteries and precedes
the evolution of the convoluted cerebrum would hold the highest
rank, although it is destitute of consciousness and volition,
which belong to the brain alone.]

But what is this power which emanates from the brain, and which guides
the organizing activity of the soul, but the power of life which is
transmitted to the brain from the heart, and which is modified in its
activity by the peculiar organization of the latter? Man in his
present state does not think with his heart, but with his brain;
nevertheless, the heart is superior to the brain, for the brain has
been built up by the power which came from the heart; and it is a
universal law of nature, that no thing can produce anything superior
to itself. During its foetal existence the brain of the child is built
up by the blood of the mother; after man is born his brain receives
its power of life through the heart, and in spiritually developed man
the thought-force created in the brain reacts again upon the will in
the heart, controlling its desires and entering into harmonious union
with the latter. The ancient alchemists say: "If the Sun (the heart)
enters in conjunction with the _Moon_ (the brain) then will Gold
(Wisdom) be produced."

We see, therefore, in man two centres of life, the heart and the
brain, and it may properly be said that the brain is the seat of life,
only it may perhaps be added, that it is the secondary seat, while the
principal seat is, or ought to be, in the heart. [Dr. H. identifies
will with life, yet every one knows that all acts of volition proceed
from the brain alone, and never from the heart; hence by his own
statement the brain is the seat of life.] According to the doctrines
of the Hermetic philosophers, God is the invisible central fire in the
universe from which the Light of the Logos (Christ or the celestial
Adam) emanated in the beginning. Man being a Microcosm, contains in
his heart the image of that internal and invisible central fire of
_Love_, which sends the light of thought to the brain and illuminates
the mind of the seer. We are