"Another evidence that the soul acts through this fluid is afforded in the circumstance, that by strongly directing the attention to any part, as, for instance, the eye, a new sensation is perceived in the organ; and if this kind of attention be persisted in, or frequently repeated, the eye becomes inflamed and painful. It is also evident, that those nerves which belong to parts, the natural functions of which latter are carried on without our consciousness, such as the stomach, may be rendered sensitive by a strong action of the will; and the operation of all the reflex, or ordinary involuntary system, is modified by mental emotion. In fact, every thought changes the nerve current. Moreover, the brain itself, and all the nerves connected with it, are so far influenced by the will of the individual, as to be not only directed into new modes, so as to effect an entire alteration in the habit of mental and muscular action, but also to such a degree, that the completely organized brain is partly a creation of self-directing and self-repeating mental activity. It is, so to say, developed by the habits of the soul. How necessary, then, is early training! as we bend the twig so is the tree inclined--a trite axiom, but, nevertheless, very true. "The rapidity of the mental processes seems to require an electric, or some similar medium, by which they may be effected in connexion with the body, since they result so instantaneously, that the will to move, for instance, and the motion, are simultaneous. Professor Wheatstone has proved, that electricity, like light, travels at the rate of 192,000 miles in a second, and this appears to be an agency sufficiently subtle to answer all the purposes of the soul as an active being. Probably electricity and light are but one agent, acting under different relations. It is interesting to consider ourselves, by each act of our will, as operating upon embodied light; but whatever be the immediate agency between mind and muscle, it is vastly more interesting to know, that willing being is something as really and distinctly existing as the light itself, but in its nature infinitely more subtilely and exquisitely constituted, since it is indivisably and inscrutinably associated with the Being who said, Let light be, and light was!"