A Modern Zoroastrian

by S. Laing

It is a singular fact that the particular motor area which gives the faculty of articulate speech lies in a small patch of about one and a half square inches on the left side of the lower portion of the first brain. If this is injured, the disease called aphasia is produced, in which the patient loses the power of expressing ideas by connected words. The corresponding area on the right side cannot talk; but in left-handed persons this state of things is reversed, and the right side, which is generally aphasial, can be taught to speak in young people, though not in the aged.

Higher up in the cortex, or convoluted envelope of the brain, come the areas for hearing and seeing, the latter being the more extensive. These areas are filled mainly by a great number of sensory nerve-centres or cells, connected with one another in a very complicated network. These seem to be connected with the multitude of ideas which are excited in the brain by perceptions derived from the higher senses, especially that of sight. The simple movements are produced by a few large motor-centres, which have only one idea and do only one thing, whether it be to move the leg or the arm. But a sensation from sight often calls up a multitude of ideas. Suppose you see the face of one with whom some fifty years ago you may have had some youthful love passages, but your lives drifted apart, and you now meet for the first time after these long years, how many ideas will crowd on the mind, how many nerve-cells will be set vibrating, and how many nerve-currents set coursing along intricate paths! No wonder that the nerve-corpuscles are numerous and minute, and the nerve-channels many and complicated.

When we come to the seats of the intellectual faculties the question becomes still more obscure. They are probably situated in the hinder and front parts of the surface of the brain, and depend on the grey matter consisting of an immense number of minute sensory cells. It has been computed that there are millions in the area of a square inch, and they are all in a state of the most delicate equilibrium, vibrating with the slightest breath of nervous impression. They depend for their activity entirely on the sensory perceptive centres, for there is no consciousness in the absence of sensory stimulation, as in dreamless sleep. Perception, however caused, whether by outward stimulation of real objects, or by former perceptions revived by memory, sends a stream of energy through the sense-area, which expands, like a river divided into numerous channels, fertilising the intellectual area, where it is stored up by memory, giving us the idea of continual individual existence, and by some mysterious and unknown process becoming transformed into consciousness and deliberate thought. And conversely the process is reversed when what we call will is excited, and the small currents of the intellectual area are concentrated by an effort of attention and sent along the proper nerve-channels to the motor-centres, whose function it is to produce the desired movement. This mechanical explanation, it will be observed, leaves entirely untouched the question of the real essence and origin of these intellectual faculties, as to which we know nothing more than we do of the real essence and origin of life, of matter, and of energy.

A very curious light however is thrown on them by phenomena which occur in abnormal states of the brain, as in trance, somnambulism, and hypnotism. In the latter, by straining the attention on a given object or idea, such as a coin held in the hand or a black wafer on a white wall, the normal action of the brain is, in the case of many persons—perhaps one out of every three or four—thrown out of gear, and a state induced in which the will seems to be annihilated, and the thoughts and actions brought into subjection to the will of another person. In this state also a cataleptic condition of the muscles is often induced, in which they acquire enormous strength and rigidity. In somnambulism outward consciousness is in a great measure suspended, and the somnambulist lives for the time in a walking dream which he acts and mistakes for reality. In this state old perceptions, scarcely felt at the time, seem to revive, as in dreams, with such wonderful vividness and accuracy that the somnambulist in acting the dream does things altogether impossible in the waking state. Thus an ignorant Scotch servant-maid is said to have recited half a chapter of the Hebrew version of the Old Testament: the explanation being that she had been in the service of a Scotch minister, who was studying Hebrew, and who used to walk about his room reciting this identical passage. It would seem as if the brain were like a very delicate photograph plate, which takes accurate impressions of all perceptions, whether we notice them or not, and stores them up ready to be reproduced whenever stronger impressions are dormant and memory by some strange caprice breathes on the plate.

Most wonderful, however, are some of the phenomena of trance. In this case it really seems as if two distinct individuals might inhabit the same body. Jones falls into a trance and dreams that he is Smith. While the trance lasts he acts and talks as Smith, he really is Smith, and even addresses his former self Jones as a stranger. When he wakes from the trance he has no recollection of it, and takes up the thread of his own life, just as if he had dozed for a minute instead of being in a trance for hours. But if he falls into a second trance, days or weeks afterwards, he takes up his trance life exactly where he dropped it, absolutely forgetting his intermediate real life. And so he may go on alternating between two lives, with two separate personalities and consciousnesses, being to all intents and purposes now Jones and now Smith. If he died during a trance, which would he be, Jones or Smith? The question is more easily asked than answered; but it certainly appears as if with one mode of motion in the same brain you might have one mind and personal identity associated with it, and with another mode of motion different ones.

It would take me too far, and the facts are too doubtful, to investigate the large class of cases included under the terms thought-reading, telepathy, psychism, and spiritualism. It may suffice to say that there is a good deal of evidence for the reality of very curious phenomena, but none of any real weight for their being caused by any spiritualistic or supernatural agency. They all seem to resolve themselves into the assertion that under special conditions the perceptions of one brain can be reproduced in another otherwise than by the ordinary medium of the senses, and that in such conditions a special sort of cataleptic energy or psychic force may be developed. The amount of negative evidence is of course enormous, for it is certain that in millions upon millions of cases thought cannot be read, things are not seen beyond the range of vision, and coincidences do not occur between deaths and dreams or visions. Neither can tables be turned, nor heavy bodies lifted, without some known form of energy and a fulcrum at which to apply it.

This borderland of knowledge is, therefore, best left to time, which is the best test of truth. That which is real will survive, and be gradually brought within the domain of science and made to fit in with other facts and laws of nature. That which is unreal will pass away, as ghosts and goblins have done, and be forgotten as the fickle fashion changes of superstitious fancy. In the meantime we shall do better to confine ourselves to ascertained facts and normal conditions.

It is pretty certain that although the brain greatly preponderates as an organ of mind in man and the higher animals, the grey tissue in the spinal marrow and nervous ganglia exercises a limited amount of the same functions proportionate to its smaller quantity. The reflex or automatic actions, such as breathing, are carried on without reference to the brain, and the messages are received and transmitted through the local offices without going to the head office. This is the case with many complicated motions which originated in the brain, but have become habitual and automatic, as in walking, where thought and conscious effort only intervene when something unusual occurs which requires a reference to the head office; and in the still more complex case of the piano-player, who fingers difficult passages correctly while thinking of something else or even talking to a bystander.

Indeed, in extreme cases, where experiments on the brain have been tried on lower animals, it is found that it can be entirely removed without destroying life, or affecting many of the actions which require perception and volition. Thus, when the brain has been entirely removed from a pigeon, it smoothes its feathers with its bill when they have been ruffled, and places its head under its wing when it sleeps; and a frog under the same conditions, if held by one foot endeavours to draw it away, and if unsuccessful, places the other foot against an obstacle in order to get more purchase in the effort to liberate itself.