Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/170

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LABOUR AND CHILDHOOD

changed into something new and strange. Here are united the tumultuous life from the lower centres, and the mysterious life above. The middle brain is the outposts of the realm of intellect, of judgment, of all the highest activities. Within its depths the impressions of every special sense are quickened, condensed, worked up, and launched forward to the higher centres. Where this laboratory is richly furnished, the mental life is apt to be rich also and fertile. Where it is scanty there is barrenness. The poor suffer much from hunger, from want of bread, but also from lack of stimulus. Monotony is starvation of the cerebrum. Monotony of work is a kind of privation. The majority to-day have, as we have seen, too small a range of work, of interest, and emotion. The winds of life do not reach the strings of the human instrument freely enough, and nature draws back the gift she was on the point of offering.

The middle brain is the motor brain. We could have guessed as much from the restlessness of childhood. But science has now put the matter beyond dispute. We might have guessed almost that here is the capital of the higher and finer movements—the movements that are willed, and learned. For it is a matter of common observation that there is a