Where did you "Slowly," said he,

questions, "Who are you? What are you? come from? What are you here for?" speaking in the Chinese language, “One question at a time; they will not only last longer, but will be more easily answered." This was said in a voice that was in perfect keeping with his general make-up, and not until it was repeated in his loudest tones was it perceptible to a dull human ear. It made us feel less doubtful of the theory that spiders, bees, and ants may have a method of oral communication which is imperceptible to any organs except those fashioned on the same diminutive pattern as the organs which utter the sound.

"My name," said he, in his loudest and most distinct tones, "is 'Ai Ti-ah,' though I am often called 'T'ung Jen-'rh'the pupil of the eye.' I am what my name implies, an idea. The young man who has just left the room caught a glimpse of me looking out of your eye, as you yourself would look out of a window; and I am here to answer some of the questions which you and that young man were discussing a few moments ago. The brain, as you know, is my home. I live there. You have seen ant hills not larger than a human brain, in which dwell millions of these little creatures, as you call them. They have their cities, their storehouses, their machinery, and their highways. But no ant hill that you have ever seen will in any way compare in the density of its population with an ordinary human brain; and with a well-developed brain nothing that you have ever seen could be used as a comparison. As one of the tendencies of a great city is to draw men and women from every neighborhood with which it is in touch, to increase its population, so we throng the ten thousand nerves which lead, like so many roads, from every square inch of territory on the surface of the body. The nerves are the roads we travel, and the clusters of nerve cells of which the brain is composed are the headquarters to which we all come and from which we are all sent out.

"You, of course," he went on, "are not so familiar with your own brain as I am. You often wonder how the knotty problems of thought are solved. Well, now, I can tell you. It is done by the clusters of brain cells which you call nerve

ganglia. These ganglia hold the same relation to thought which your hand holds to a knot in a string. With one hand, although you have on it five fingers, you cannot easily untie a knot in a string, and so you use both hands to do it. So these clusters of nerve cells are all united, and work together in unraveling the knotty problems of life. Whenever a sensation strikes the nerves-whether it be color, odor, sound, flavor, or solid-it is carried to these nerve clusters and they go to work on it. If it is something with which they are familiar they solve it in an instant and pass it on. For instance, suppose a dog should bite your hand. Your sensory nerve carries the matter to these brain clusters; they solve the matter, decide what to do, send one of us to pull the muscular ropes of your leg, and, in common parlance, you kick the dog. With such common affairs the brain cells have no trouble; but when matters with which they are not familiar come they have to work on them just as you work over the unraveling of a knotted string, the putting together of a puzzle, or the solving of a riddle—or, as a child puts together a block picture or builds a block house, they first find the parts that match. Such is the case in mathematical problems and all problems of reasoning. Part after part is tried, to see whether it fits, and this with you is called comparison, reasoning, and association; but with us it is merely a process of getting together the proper brain cells or combinations.

"Some brains are like some countries, certain parts of which are thickly populated and certain parts are as barren as deserts; or they are like some bodies, certain parts of which are well developed, while other parts are wholly undeveloped. You sometimes say of such heads that they have 'rooms to let unfurnished,' and the expression is more appropriate than is often supposed. I have been in a cluster—and I shudder to think of it-where I have been so crowded that I had neither breathing space nor elbow room, while just the next cluster was wholly untenanted, or so sparsely filled that I would have given half I was worth to have been there. And then, again, I have been in places where I would have given the other half I was worth to have some one to communicate with, where I was as lonesome as Robinson Crusoe;

and when, at last, I was sent out I was so poor and emaciated and poorly clad that I had a difficult task to find a place in respectable quarters."

"I am not sure that I understand just what you mean," we interposed.

"O, yes, you do," he answered. "You have heard people express good thoughts in such poor language that no one cared to entertain them. Now, language is our clothing, and what you call magnetism is our life; and, so, when we are sent out unmagnetized and half clad, no matter how beautiful we may be, we are often woefully neglected. Fine feathers make fine birds' with us, just as with you. We depend one half on clothing, and the other half on magnetism. Any of us are worth having, if only we are properly clothed, magnetized, and in proper company."

"I think I get your meaning," we said, "but I was just about to inquire whether all ideas are as small as you."

"By no means," he hastened to reply, "though I am a fair size at present. Some are larger, some smaller. Then we vary at different times, according to the quarters we occupy. For instance, what we call a foreign idea shrivels up greatly when it gets into the head of a Chinaman, simply from lack of appreciation and attention, and an opportunity to develop and propagate itself. It is a stranger, and receives only a cold shoulder from all other ideas with which it comes in contact, for it seldom comes in contact with any but enemies, and only gets out by being drawn out. Have you ever tried to introduce foreign inventions into China?" he asked, suddenly. "If you haven't, just try it. Give your carpenter a foreign saw, and see what he does with it." Now, as it happens, we had given our carpenter a good foreign saw, and he hung it up to rust. We gave him a saw-set, which would set the teeth of a saw regularly, and he laid it away, and continued to set his saws with a nick in a file. And so we answered, "Yes, the carpenters do not take to our foreign saws well; probably be cause they cannot use them so well." "It is the same with all kinds of foreign inventions," he retorted. "Axes, hatchets, chisels, hammers, lathes, plows, cars, ships, guns, and everything that takes thought and reason to make, or that takes

thought and reason to understand and manipulate, shares the same fate as a saw. No matter how noble or useful the thought may have originally been, it shrivels up to almost nothing in the Chinese mind."

"You spoke a moment ago about propagating yourself; what did you mean by it?"

"Just what I said," he answered.

"I have never yet been in a brain in which I did not leave a family. But you know this as well as I do. It has long been a proverb with you that 'you never know a thing yourself until you have taught it to some one else.' If we have any attention whatever we begin to propagate as soon as we enter the brain, and nothing that you know of increases with anything like the ratio with which we increase in a fertile brain, if we have half a chance. Then there are times when we wither away to a shadow in a brain into which we happen to have been forced and where we have to remain until some one rescues us. In such a brain we only leave a sort of a shadow of ourselves, which will probably never appear on this side the grave. Tell a Westerner something new, or show him some new invention that makes labor more easy or more effective, and at once he copies and improves it. No product of thought is too difficult for him to understand, too intricate for him to work out, or too complicated for him to use. As soon as an idea enters his head he furnishes it with good quarters, gives it all his attention, and it is almost no time till he has more ideas on that one subject than the man from whom he got it. What about the Chinaman? He looks at it with open-mouthed wonder or self-satisfied indifference, but he is without either the ability or desire to appreciate, improve, understand, or use it. Nor is this confined to foreign inventions. His 'harps and lutes' are little if any better than those invented by Fu-hsi; his wagons little better than those of Huang-ti; his compass no better than that of Chou Kung; his money no better than that of two thousand years ago; his medical science little in advance of Hua T'o; and his official gazette is printed from blocks no better, if as good, as they were a thousand years ago. Indeed, in all experimental and practical science, where anything like attention, reason, imagination, or invention is required, he is

little if any in advance of the men of the age which gave him what he possesses. Yes, we propagate ourselves, but we cannot propagate in a Chinese mind, for his mind is like his field, worth but little unless fertilized, and the Chinese pay little attention to mental fertilizing."

"You were talking a few moments ago about habit, and you simply regarded it as the ordinary course of conduct of a person.' Now, as you see conduct, which is about your best method of judging, that seems to be a fairly good definition; but it does not explain what habit is. Habit," he repeated— and he heaved the tiniest little sigh—"habit is the bane of our existence. Your highest idea of rapidity is a flash of lightning, but that is nothing to the rapidity with which we travel through people's fingers and brains in some classical music. Habit—habit is a path through the brain, a well-worn path, a path that is so well worn through those nerve clusters that we never have to stop for direction or turn the switch from a sensory to a motor nerve. Why, if it makes your head swim to watch the fingers of a pianist when he is keyed up to his highest pitch in his fastest music, what would it do if you had to go from the music to his eye, from his eye through his brain, down into his spinal cord, and out to the tip of his finger with every separate key he strikes, without making the mistake of getting into the wrong finger? That is what we call rapid transit, and it can only be done where there is a path worn through the brain. Now you can easily see that a brain which is crossed and recrossed by habit paths is not a good place for generating ideas-no better than a field crossed and recrossed by donkey paths is for growing wheat. The paths must be dug up and the donkeys kept out if one expects a crop of grain from such a field; and it is just so with habit. Your old proverb says, 'Man is a bundle of habits;' but I say, Alas for such a man!"

"You do not mean to say," we objected, "that all which we study so thoroughly as to make it a part of our mental store by this fact of its familiarity becomes useless because it is habitual?"

"By no means," he hastened to answer. "Usable knowledge is usable knowledge; habit is habit. Matters must be familiar be