The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English: or, Medicine Simplified, 54th ed., One Million, Six Hundred; and Fifty Thousand
John Stuart Mill · en
In the preceding chapter, we attempted to illustrate the unique blending
of mind and body by means of the nervous system, and we now propose to
exemplify the physical conditions of the organism by certain
correspondences, observed in the development and conditions of that
system. If nature answer to mind in physical correspondences, she will
observe the same regularity in physical development. The simplest
classification of the temperaments is represented in Fig. 78. Not only
is mental activity dependent upon a vital activity in the brain, but the
development of the cerebrum is dependent upon the supply of blood. The
growth of the intellect requires the same conditions that aided in the
development of Vulcan's right arm: waste and supply; disintegration and
reparation of tissue. Our modern iron forges produce many an artisan
whose great right arm proclaims him to be a son of power as well as of
fire. Thus the fervid intellect, while forging out its thoughts,
increases in size and strength. The difference between the development
of the two is this; that the exercise of the blacksmith's right arm
quickens the activities of all the bodily functions, whereas the
employment of the intellect does not offer any healthy equivalent.
Physical exercise is a hygienic demand, but intellectual employment
exerts no salutary influence on the body, while it is constantly
expending the nutritive energies of the blood. The emotions, likewise,
make exhaustive draughts upon nutrition to supply the waste of brain
substance, just as certainly as physical labor causes muscular change,
and demands reparation. One expends cerebral, the other, muscular
substance. The one is healthful in its general tendencies, the other,
comparatively wasteful and destructive.
/ DISINTEGRATING,
The intellectual faculties are { EXPENDING,
\ DERIVING.
/ ENGROSSING,
The emotive faculties are { EXHAUSTING,
\ DEVITALIZING.
These nervous forces are transformed into spiritual products.