“The discovery to be made surpassed my hopes. I was not only pursuing the choice of a pleasing outward appearance--I had my hand on _the secret of_ IMMORTALITY! “The brain being the seat of the _ego_ (for you know that the spinal cord is only a transmitter, and a center of reflexes), the only question was ability to graft. “Certainly the ear is one thing and the brain another and yet this difference is only a question of the degrees which separate: “1. Cartilaginous matter from the nerve matter, and “2. The accessory from the principal organ. “Logic backed up my conviction, and my reasoning was based on famous premises officially verified. “1. Besides their grafts of mucous membrane, skin, etc., in 1861, Phillippeaux and Vulpian replaced the nerve matter in an optic nerve. “2. In 1880, Gluck exchanged a few centimeters of sciatic nerve in a hen for a rabbit’s nerves. “3. In 1890, Thompson removed a few cubic centimeters of brain from dogs and cats, and into the cavity thus obtained, introduced the same quantity of cerebral substance taken from dogs and cats, _or from different species_. Here we have passed from cartilage to nerve, and from ear to fragment of brain. “Let us now turn to the difficulty of the second order: “1. Gardeners often graft whole organisms. “2. Besides fingers, tails and paws, Phillippeaux and Mantegazza grafted rather important organs--spleens, stomachs and tongues. They made a hen into a cock as a joke, they even tried to graft the pancreas and the thyroid. “3. Carrel and Guthrey, in 1905, in New York, came to believe that they can substitute the veins of the arteries of animals for those of man. We have bridged the distance between the accessory and the principal. “4. Finally, Mantegazza maintained that he had grafted spinal cords and _brains_ of frogs! * * * * * “These examples were ample proof that my projects were realizable, so I said to myself I would realize them. “I began my task. An obstacle was in the way! “It being impracticable to employ an ‘attachment,’ it resulted that the body and the brain, once separated, perished, one or other, or both, before having been placed in contact with their new companions. “But here again facts gave me courage. So far as the body is concerned: “1. An animal can live quite well with one cerebral lobe. You saw a pigeon circling round, which has been deprived of three-fourths of its brain! “2. Often decapitated ducks fly for a hundred yards from the block on which their severed head remains. “3. A locust lived for fifteen days without a head--fifteen! “That is an experiment duly attested. “So far as the severed organ is concerned, there were these certified cases.