period of intense excitement we know that there is a general reduction, almost to paralysis, of the collective vital functions, we could not be far mistaken in saying that, in that case, perhaps one-half or one-third of all the oxidation of the body was expended in keeping up the cerebral fires.
It is a very serious drawback in any department of knowledge, where there are relations of quantity, to be unable to reduce them to numerical precision. This is the case with mind in a great degree, although not with it alone; many physical qualities are in the same state of unprecise measurement. We cannot reduce to numbers the statement of a man's constitutional vigor, so as to say how much he has lost by fatigue, by disease, by age, or how much he has gained by a certain healthy regimen. Undoubtedly, however, it is in mind that the difficulties of attaining the numerical statement are greatest if not nearly insuperable. When we say that one man is more courageous, more loving, more irascible than another, we apply a scale of degree, existing in our own mind, but so vague that we may apply it differently at different times, while we can hardly communicate it to others exactly as it stands to ourselves. The consequence is, that a great margin of allowance must always be made in those statements; we can never run a close argument, or contend for a nice shade of distinction. Between the extremes of timidity
