Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/148

136 so that already we can surmise that here also we have probably to deal with a multiplicity of vibrations, of exquisitely minute transformations of energy, of involved intercommunications, of deft though intricatc associations, of rapid yet permanent recordings and registrations.

We are now able to follow the undulations we term light, not only into the eye, but into the brain itself, locating their central station in the occipital lobe, whence their effects radiate all over the organism. And in the case of olfaction Pawlow has taught us that its chief vegetative function, the result of radiations from the olfactory central station in the brain, is the arousing of the digestive glands to activity. The first act of digestion is olfaction, But the routes which the olfactory stimuli follow in the central nervous system and their communications with other sensory paths are not yet known.

The secrets of the brain which have been dis- closed to us, however wonderful they may be, concern only, we must remember, the machinery of the nervous system, that part, namely, which is of the same nature and order as the objective world, of which indeed it is a member. Hitherto have we come, but no further :

“The traveller hails. The echoing walls respond. And there the matter ends. The wilds beyond Are broken rock and desert where no foot Can venture on to trace a further route,