In this case the action of the brain was clearly automatic, _i. e._, reflex. The lawyer had worried his brain by his anxiety, and thus prevented his mind from doing its best. But it had received an impulse in a certain direction, and when left to itself, worked out the result. (See Appendix for other illustrations.)] Thus we wink involuntarily at a flash of light or a threatened blow. [Footnote: A very eminent chemist a few years ago was making an experiment upon some extremely explosive compound which he had discovered. He had a small quantity of this compound in a bottle, and was holding it up to the light, looking at it intently; and whether it was a shake of the bottle or the warmth of his hand, I do not know, but it exploded in his hand, and the bottle was shivered into a million of minute fragments, which were driven in every direction. His first impression was that they had penetrated his eyes, but to his intense relief he found presently that they had only struck the outside of his eyelids. You may conceive how infinitesimally short the interval was between the explosion of the bottle and the particles reaching his eyes; and yet in that interval the impression had been made upon his sight, the mandate of the reflex action, so to speak, had gone forth, the muscles of his eyelids had been called into action, and he had closed his eyelids before the particles had reached them, and in this manner his eyes were saved. You see what a wonderful proof this is of the way in which the automatic action of our nervous apparatus enters into the sustenance of our lives, and the protection of our most important organs from injury.-- DR. CARPENTER.] We start at a sudden sound. We jump back from a precipice before the mind has time to reason upon the danger. The spinal cord conducts certain impressions to the brain, but responds to others without troubling that organ. [Footnote: There is a story told of a man, who, having injured his spinal cord, had lost feeling and motion in his lower extremities. Dr. John Hunter experimented upon him. Tickling his feet, he asked him if he felt it; the man, pointing to his limbs, which were kicking vigorously about, answered, "No, but you see my legs do." Illustrations of this independent action of the spinal cord are common in animals. A headless wasp will ply its sting energetically. A fowl, after its head is cut off, will flap its wings and jump about as if in pain, although, of course, all sensation has ceased. "A water beetle, having had its head removed, remained motionless as long as it rested on a dry surface, but when cast into water, it executed the usual swimming motions with great energy and rapidity, striking all its comrades to one side by its violence, and persisting in these for more than half an hour."] The medulla oblongata carries on the process of respiration. The great sympathetic system binds together all the organs of the body.