CHAPTER XXIII.
THE SOUL—WHAT IS IT?
Dry truth, real knowledge, hard facts, are less interesting, less entertaining, than a plausible fable or a fanciful story. While the latter is listened to, with eagerness and pleasure, the former barely receives ordinary civility and attention. The effort requisite to understand and to think, requires resolution, determination, and fixed attention. The senses are not stimulated, the emotions and feelings not aroused, by mathematical problems or astronomical calculations. The muscular tissues are much more easily trained, disciplined, and educated than the nervous tissues. In the former we see immediate results. There is a pleasure in the pursuit, a palpable satisfaction in watching the muscular action and physical development. The most agreeable part about that kind of exercise, training—or education if you choose—is that it is easily acquired and soon put in practice, and much admired. It has other advantages in addition. The fatigue and exhaustion in consequence of muscular exercise, add no small amount of enjoyment to that already experienced, by having to replenish the spent energies, to fill the demand for new material called for. The gustatory and olfactory nerves are stimulated by odor of the viands provided, and what is still more important, the glandular activity that is set in motion produces an amount of exhilaration, so satisfactory that it is recognized as one of the principal features for every and on all occasions. “A feast is made for laughter and wine maketh merry” ([Eccles. x, 19]).
Muscular action, however, cannot take place without nervous action. These two tissues are dependent one on the other. Yet the muscular tissue may be considered as subordinate to the nervous tissue. While the muscular tissue may become totally inactive or incapacitated, or even removed, the brain tissue may retain its activity and continue to perform its functions. The very reverse takes place when the brain is either injured or removed. We know by experience, experiments, that injuries or other pathological changes will cause impairment to muscular tissue.
It is hard to conceive, and harder still to understand, that an animal—man included—is nothing more than a vitalized machine, composed in the first place of two distinct working parts—muscular and nervous—while all the other portions have to perform duty in order to sustain them.
The word function is a term applied to all tissues in general, as kidneys, liver, stomach, etc.; each has its function. So have muscles and nerves. The former has for its function contraction, while the latter has for its function to control and regulate that contraction.
The first part of the machinery is governed and checked by the domination of the other. That dominion, that control, is termed Volition, in other words, will power!
1. Will power! What is it? It is a power which every animal possesses, and every animal exercises, in accordance with its particular organization and degree of organic development.
2. Every animal has the power, with the aid of its senses—five senses of sight, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling—to select substances from the vegetable and mineral kingdom, for its immediate want, for the sustenance of life.