while of that reduced amount more goes to the nutritive functions than to the cerebral.
In listening to Dr. Frankland's lecture on "Muscular Power," delivered at the Royal Institution of London, I noticed that, in accounting for the various items of expenditure of the food, he gave "mental work" as one heading, but declined to make an entry thereinunder. I can imagine two reasons for this reserve, the statement of which will further illustrate the general position. In the first place, it might be supposed that mind is a phenomenon so anomalous, uncertain, so remote from the chain of material cause and effect, that it is not even to be mentioned in that connection.
To which I should say, that mind is indeed, as a phenomenon, widely different from the physical forces, but, nevertheless, rises and falls in strict numerical concomitance with these: so that it still enters, if not directly, at least indirectly, into the circle of the correlated forces. Or, secondly, the lecturer may have held that, though a definite amount of the mental manifestations accompanies a definite amount of oxidation in the special organs of mind, there is no means of reducing this to a measure, even in an approximate way. To this I answer, that the thing is difficult but not entirely impracticable. There is a possibility of giving, approximately at least, the amount of blood circulating in the brain, in the ordinary waking state; and, as during a