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NERVOUS AND MENTAL FORCES.
223

and courage of character the best observer could not entertain above seven or eight varieties of gradation, while two different persons consulting together could hardly agree upon so minute a subdivision as that. The phrenologists, in their scale of qualities, had the advantage of an external indication of size, but they must have felt the uselessness of graduating this beyond the delicacy of discriminating the subjective side of character; and their extreme scale included twenty steps or interpolations.

Making allowance for this inevitable defect, I will endeavor to present a series of illustrations of the principle of correlation as applied to mind, in the manner explained. I deal not with mind directly, but with its material side, with whose activity, measured exactly as we measure the other physical forces, true mental activity has a definite correspondence.

Let us suppose, then, a human being with average physical constitution, in respect of nutritive vigor, and fairly supplied with food and with air, or oxygen. The result of the oxidation of the food is a definite total of force, which may be variously distributed. The demand made by the brain, to sustain the purely mental functions, may be below average, or above average; there will be a corresponding, but inverse, variation of the remainder available for the more strictly physical pro-