dle-state region of elemental energies between all bodies a sort of hades, a troubled sea between two continents, a pandemonium in the lower world of forces and relations-which is "the battle-field of life," wherein all storms and all perturbations originate, and where we must direct our remedies if we would hush the tempest and cure the abounding terrestrial insanity.

REGION OF DISCORD BETWEEN BRAIN AND BODY.

Let us carry this comparison into the "relation” which exists, externally, between the brain in the system of nerves running "downward." Here, physiologically, we find confirmation strong of positions taken in our philosophy. The brain is, in its superior centres, incapable of reaching the organs or nerves or muscles, save by and through its own subordinate part called the cerebellum; and this portion of the brain can exert no influence upon the dependent organism, except by and through the mediumship of its own subordinate agent called the medulla oblongata, and thence through the descending spinal cord; and this complex cord depends for its power over the system upon the existence of the sensory ganglia, and upon the systems of cells containing the nerve energy.

Now you know that the spinal cord is composed of

two great conductors of power: one, most interior, the nerve of motion and life; the other, posterior, the channel for the circulation of sensibility and instinct. From these two common cerebro-spinal roots grow all the systems of pairs of nerves. And thus, including the wonderful ganglia of the great sympathetic system, the Soul-principles are enabled to communicate with, and receive impressions and influences from, the organs and atoms and events which make up the constitution and experiences of the physical organization.

The grand beauties and secrets of health, and the chief sources of all known phases of insanity, may be found in "the relations" subsisting between these principles and the dependent material structures.

The mind, it is very true, can be disturbed to its foundations, and it can be driven permanently out of its own temple, simply by the chemical poison of a snake bite. Too much oxygen in the lungs intensely fires the blood, and rapidly inflames the organ of the mind-the brain is instantly oppressed and congested; or, on the contrary, too much carbon vitiates the respirable air, and the brain is rapidly overcome with languor, and the invisible energies, including the conscious will, cannot resist the disturbance. Upon this principle the optic nerve, if disordered, cannot permit to the soul the exercise of healthy vision. The same rule

will apply to the other senses, and equally to all the organs of the interior body. Any deep disturbance among the connecting links-the least radical jar in the region of the "relations" between the soul-principles and the legitimate field of their operations in the organism—is immediately succeeded by pain, disease, and insanities; and thus, although it is true that the appetites and passions of the soul poison and derange the body, it is equally manifest that the physical machinery is, with its multiform relationships to the soul, chargeable with originating many of the evils and distempers which afflict mankind.

CAUSES WHICH ULTIMATE IN A LOSS OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

THE human mind is naturally and justly proud in the conscious possession of great and indestructible powers. Therefore, a loss of the power of self-control, or a sudden loss of the great wealth of private consciousness, is regarded universally as a phenomenon to be dreaded, at once alarming and mysterious, suggestive of the possibility of personal helplessness and final annihilation.

Let us ask, first: What causes the condition called "consciousness"? It is produced by a harmonious coöperation, and a constant resistance, between the spiritual principles and the ethers, essences, and fluids which exist in the fibres and convolutions of the brain.

Now let us ask, second: What causes a suspension of this consciousness? A sudden arrest of the circulation between certain parts, or a breakage in one or more of the links between the elemental soul and the organized body; which happens in a fit of epilepsy, in concussion of the brain, fracture of the skull, in strangulation by hanging or drowning, and finally by death.

The brain, when the mind is deprived of its self

appearance.

control and consciousness, invariably presents the same The vessels in the anterior and upper regions of the brain, which convey the vitalizing blood, appear contracted at the base; they thus expel the bright current, leaving the superior parts destitute of blood and the correlative potencies.

This rule may be considered established: that the sudden prostration and the painful convulsions, which occur and concur in a fit of epilepsy, as in all cases of analogous afflictions, are caused immediately by the contraction of the vessels, and the expulsion of the blood from the thinking and moral organs; and that the accompanying convulsions in the chest and throat are Nature's efforts to restore the lost equilibrium; that she exerts every available energy to open the closed larynx, to start respiration in the paralyzed lungs, and thus strives to return the blood to the vessels which feed and fill with magnetismn all the superior parts of the brain.

What is true of all the anterior and coronal departments, may be also true of only a small section of the brain, or true of only a single group of nerve-cells, by which the moral feelings and intellectual convictions would be practically disturbed and impaired in a corresponding degree.

This is the fact in cases of partial insanity, where the