To secure this freedom we must know its habitat, its requirements, its
nourishment, and learn to allow it to recharge itself sufficiently and
to concentrate itself on its chosen usefulness without imposing upon it
also the drudgery of useless work. This must be done with the same idea
of economy that a _chef_ is relieved of the drudgery of washing dishes
and emptying slops.
According to Dr. Edward Hooker Dewey, a pharmacist, army surgeon
and tireless investigator of forty-five years' experience, whose
revelations have been before the medical profession of the world for
many years without a single challenge, the brain is a dynamo which
accumulates energy during sleep, and uses it during the waking hours of
its possessor.
The brain manages everything for man that he accomplishes. It brings
messages from the Creator, which are sometimes called intuition,
sometimes inspiration, and by various other names. Emerson calls
these messages the "Over-Soul." My own appreciation of the attribute
that distinguishes the Spiritual Man from the animal man is better
satisfied by the name "Spiritual Cerebration," which I have defined
in my book "Happiness" as: "Intelligence not derived from experience,
principally obtained during sleep, and, seemingly supernaturally clear
to consciousness on awaking in the natural manner."
The brain also directs all action, and, with encouragement, will take
up the messages from the Creator and analyse, arrange, and develop them
into useful accomplishments, and then file them away in the archives
of the memory as additions to the equipment which is necessary to
greatness in the pursuit of usefulness.
Dr. Dewey gives the bill of fare of the brain in seeking its own
nourishment, and also describes the work it performs in transforming
the fuel we supply it with into the tissues on which it feeds.
This is undoubtedly a very important discovery and locates the source
of strength and teaches how to conserve it.
I will not give the technical bill of fare of the brain, for you would
not remember it better than I do, but it is all composed of tissues
of the body, fat predominating to the quantity of ninety-seven per
cent, but the important announcement is that neither the brain itself
nor any of the nervous centres diminish during consumption of tissue,
neither do they lose any of their power, even in cases of what is
called starvation, up to the point of death, when all of the fatty and
muscular tissues of the body are wasted away, leaving the brain and
nerve centres to flicker and go out, as a candle does, brighter than
usual with the parting flash of their brilliancy.
Dr. Dewey gives President Garfield as an illustrious example of proof
of the accuracy of his deduction. The martyr President lived eighty
days without the addition of an ounce of nutriment to his life, carried
the usual clearness of mind to the last moment, and passed on only when
the last muscular tissue had been consumed by the brain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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