In your study of physiology in school you took up the organs of individual life. You studied the framework of the body, its machinery, its internal vital mechanism. You studied about digestion, nutrition, respiration, elimination, and in this you learned nothing of physical differences between individuals. All were considered as having the same organs, used in the same way. Girls have the same number of bones as boys, the same number of muscles, of vital organs. They sleep, breathe, eat, digest, grow, according to the same plan. So far there seems no reason why there should be any distinction of male and female. But as we come to study what is called special physiology we discover physical differences and reasons for their existence.
There are certain differences of form that are discernible at a glance. Men are usually larger than women. They have heavier bones and bigger muscles. They have broad shoulders and narrow hips, and have hair upon the face. Women have smooth faces, more rounded outlines, narrower shoulders and broader hips. In man the broadest part of the body is at the shoulders, in woman at the hips. This is significant of a great fact which will be manifest to you when you understand the functions of each s.e.x. Although each has the same general plan of individual life, there are special functions which determine the trend of their lives. The man"s broad shoulders are indicative that he is to bear the heavy burdens of life--struggles for material support--and woman"s broad hips indicate that she is to bear the heavier burden of the race.
When we come fully to understand the deep significance of s.e.x, we shall find in it a wonderful revelation of possibilities of development into a G.o.d-likeness that will stir our hearts to their very depths.
Humanity so weak, so lacking in appreciation of his possibilities, so groveling when he should soar, has been endowed with powers that give him control over the destiny of the race. We may well exclaim, with Young:
"How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, How complicate, how wonderful is man!
How pa.s.sing wonder He who made him such!
Who centred in his make such strange extremes!
From diff"rent natures, marvelously mix"d!
Connection exquisite of distant worlds!
Distinguish"d link in being"s endless chain!
Midway from nothing to the Deity!"
CHAPTER XI.
BUILDING BRAINS.
When you were born you were, as all babies are, deaf, dumb, blind, and helpless, but immediately the external world began to act upon you.
Then began the process of mind-building. You began to experience sensations of heat and cold, of hunger, of pain. The eyes began at once to recognize the light, the ears to become aware of sounds. After a time, objects were made clear to your sight and certain sounds were recognized. You learned your mother"s face and voice, and, little by little, became acquainted with all the objects in the world of home.
You began to use your limbs, and in this also you were at work building your mind. We do not sufficiently realize that every aimless movement of the baby has in reality a great purpose--that of creating brainpower sufficient to enable the baby to control itself in all its voluntary movements. We do not think that the fluttering hands and little kicking feet are really building brains, but this is so. And all of life"s experiences have been building brain for you ever since.
Professor Elmer Gates tells us that only about ten per cent. of our brains are cultivated, that there is a vast field of brain possibilities lying undeveloped in each one of us, and that these possibilities are to be developed through cultivation of the senses.
So while I have been talking to you of the care of your body, I have been advocating that which will in reality develop mind.
We have learned that certain areas of brain govern certain movements of body. For example, anatomists know not only where the general motor area is located, but they can indicate the very spot where any special motor-force is generated.
In the case of a mill girl who was subject to epilepsy and had pain in her right thumb at each attack, it was decided to remove the part of the brain which governed the motions of that thumb. This they could do because they knew just where that motor-center lies, and yet they were able to take out no more than that, for when the wound was healed she had full use of all of her hand except the thumb.
We may know that by exercising a certain organ we are building up a certain part of the brain. For example, the man who has cultivated his hearing until he can hear sounds inaudible to ordinary men, has made for himself more brain-cells in the hearing area. If he has cultivated his sight a.s.siduously, he has created more visual cells. If his touch has been cultivated, his brain has received new touch sensation-cells. And Professor Gates a.s.serts that his mental ability has been thereby increased. You will be interested in hearing of his experiments with animals and what he has learned therefrom.
He says he has demonstrated that it is possible to give to an animal or a human being more brains, and consequently a better use of the mental faculties. During twelve months, for five or six hours a day, he trained dogs to discriminate colors. He placed several hundred tin pans, painted different tints, in the yard with the dogs. At one time he put their food under pans of a certain tint. When they had learned to go at once to these pans for their food, he changed the color.
Again he arranged it so that they would receive an electric shock if they touched pans of any color save the particular one. They soon learned to avoid all the pans except those of this tint. So, by many different methods, he trained them to recognize shades and tints until they could discriminate between seven shades of red and as many shades of green, and in many ways they manifested more mental ability than any untrained dog. While these dogs were being trained, another group of dogs were being deprived of the use of sight by being kept in a darkened room.
At the end of the year both groups of dogs were killed and their brains dissected. He found that the dogs kept in the darkness had less than the usual number of cells in the seeing areas, and the cells were smaller, while the dogs which had been trained to discriminate between tints and shades of color many times a day had a far greater number of larger and more complex brain-cells in the seeing areas than any dog of that age and species ever had before. "Therefore," says Professor Gates, "mind activity creates organic structure."
Prof. Gates discovered other things of equal importance. He carried his observations to successive generations, and found that the fifth generation was born with a far greater number of brain-cells than could be found in animals not descended from trained ancestors.
This is not only interesting, but of value. You will remember, in our talk concerning your value, we spoke of your value to the race, and learned that in cultivating yourself in any direction you were adding to the welfare of future generations. That was only a general statement, and now you can see how it can be. You see that if you can make more brains for yourself you are also making more brains for your posterity. Or if you fail to make brains for yourself, posterity will in like degree be defrauded.
Many people have the idea that we are obliged to be satisfied with our dower of mental ability, and so are excusable for failing to reach as high a level as some others. If we really believed that we could create brains we would not sit down and sigh over small mental capacity, but go to work at once in building minds for ourselves.
And first, we must learn to control our thoughts and make them go where we send them. In too many cases thoughts wander here and there, with no power governing and guiding them.
When we are sauntering in the wood we sometimes come upon pathways, and we know at once that many, many footsteps of men or animals have been needed to make the paths. If those who walked here had wandered each in his own way, no path would have been made. One pair of feet going often over the same ground will make a path. So the thoughts, traversing the same areas of brain, will make records on the brain-cells which we may call paths. Every time a thought follows the same line it creates a deeper impression, and makes it easier to go over the same territory again. In this way habits are formed. If the thoughts are good, the habits will be good; if evil, the habits will be bad.
It is not hard to understand how much easier it is to form a habit than to overcome it. The emotions, like the thoughts, create habits; but, more than this, they create actual physical conditions.
It was my pleasure and profit once to have a conversation with Professor Gates in his laboratory, and he showed me an instrument wherein he condenses the breath. He then subjects it to a chemical reagent, and by the precipitate formed he knows what was the mental condition of the individual, whether he were angry, sorrowful or remorseful. In five minutes after a fit of anger he finds the excretory organs beginning to throw out the poison which anger has created. Only five minutes suffice to create the poison, but half an hour is none too much to eliminate it.
Think what must be the bodily state of one who is constantly irritated or angry, who feels jealousy, hatred, or revenge. With body poisoned by these malevolent pa.s.sions he cannot feel well, for his physical organs cannot do good work unless fed by pure blood. Professor Gates finds that the benevolent emotions create life-giving germs in the body; so, to love others is not only helpful to them, but it also gives us new life.
Anger, worry, hatred, jealousy, are suicidal emotions. We cannot for our own sakes afford to indulge in them, while from selfish reasons alone we should be incited to kindness, generosity, sympathy, and love.
CHAPTER XII.
YOU ARE MORE THAN BODY OR MIND.
We have talked of your body and your mind, but as yet not of yourself.
You are not body; you are not mind; but you possess both. You are spirit, created by G.o.d, who is spirit; therefore you are His child.
You may not have thought much of this fact, but that has not changed the fact. No failure to recognize G.o.d as your father changes His relationship to you. No conduct of yours can make you any less His child.
"Well," you may say, "if that is so, what does it matter, then, what I do? If disobedience or sin cannot make me less G.o.d"s child, why should I be good and obedient?" Because, dear heart, your conduct changes your att.i.tude towards Him. You might not know that I am your mother; you might know it and choose to disobey my wishes; yet in both cases I should still be your mother, and no more or less in one case than in the other. But you will have no difficulty in understanding that in one case you would be a loving, helpful, obedient daughter, a comfort and delight to me; in the other, a disobedient, willful, unloving daughter, a care and trouble.
We are G.o.d"s children, each of us, dependent on His love and bounty for protection, food, friends, intellect, even life. Is it dignified and n.o.ble in us to ignore and disobey Him? Indeed the most worthy and dignified thing we can do is to recognize ourselves as G.o.d"s children and be obedient. It is a wonderful glory to be a child of G.o.d. It means that we have G.o.dlike powers. The children of human parents are like them in their capacities. Children of G.o.d must have capacities that are G.o.dlike.
This is true even of the most ignorant or degraded. They have in themselves divine possibilities.
If you can get this thought fully engrafted into your consciousness, it seems to me you can never willfully do wrong, can never condescend to a mean or ign.o.ble deed, because you recognize your divine inheritance, and feel compelled by it to live truly, n.o.bly.
Being children of G.o.d puts on us certain obligations towards Him, but it also puts on G.o.d certain obligations towards us. "What!" you say; "G.o.d the Infinite under obligations to man, the finite? The Creator under obligations to the created?" Oh, yes.
We recognize the fact that human parents are under obligations to care for their children, to protect them, to educate them, to give them opportunities. Even such are the obligations of G.o.d towards His human children, and He fulfills them. All our earthly blessings are from His hand. Home, friends, shelter, food, are gifts of His love. He takes such minute care of us that if for one second of time He would forget us, we should be annihilated. He educates us. He does not send us away to a boarding-school where we hear from Him but seldom, but He has a home-school where He is both Father and Teacher, and His methods of instruction are divinely wise.
The injudicious love of earthly parents often induces them to do for their children things it would be far better to let the children do for themselves. I once knew a boy of seven years, as intelligent as the ordinary child, who had never been allowed to go down stairs alone in his life for fear he would fall. This unwise care of the parents had resulted in the child"s being timid, fearful, and unable to care for himself. He would cry if he fell, and would lie still sobbing until some one came to pick him up and quiet him with caresses. At the same time I saw a boy of four who could run up and down stairs, go to the store alone to make purchases, and who, if he fell, would jump up quickly, saying, "O, that didn"t hurt." Which child had been better protected--the one who had been cared for by an overindulgent parent, or the one who, by judicious stimulation to self-help, had learned to care for himself?
G.o.d teaches us how to help ourselves, and circ.u.mstances of life which we so often think hard and cruel are only the means by which we are being trained to be strong. The things we call failure, worriment, and hardship, are only the little tumbles by which we are learning to walk.
The heathen philosopher, Seneca, says: "G.o.d gives His best scholars the hardest lessons." We know how proud we would feel if our school-teacher would say, "This is a hard problem, but I believe you can solve it." We would be stimulated to work night and day to justify his confidence in our ability. But when a little trial comes in life we are quite apt to say, "G.o.d is so hard in His dealings with me. Why should He be so unkind?" instead of saying: "These hard things of life are a test of my scholarship, and are an evidence of my Teacher"s confidence in my ability."
I would like you to get this thought fixed in your mind so firmly that you will feel sure that all circ.u.mstances of life are but lessons in G.o.d"s great school, and, rightly used, will be the means of promoting you to higher grades.
No scholar wants to stay always in the primary department because it is easy there. He welcomes each promotion, although he knows it means harder lessons and new difficulties. He looks forward to college or university with pride, even though lessons grow harder and harder.
G.o.d"s school of earthly life has in it all grades of advancement. Will you be a studious, courageous scholar and try to learn life"s lessons well? It is such a wonderful thing to be a child of G.o.d, for that means to be an heir of G.o.d, an heir of His wisdom, His strength, His glory, His powers. "All things are yours," says Paul; "life, death, things present and things to come, all are yours, and ye are Christ"s, and Christ is G.o.d"s."
CHAPTER XIII.