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人类的大脑的功能

　　What do we think with? Only the brain? Hardly. The brain is like a telephone exchange. It is the swi

　　What do we think with? Only the brain? Hardly. The brain is like a telephone exchange. It is the switchboard, but not the whole system. Its function is to receive incoming signals, make proper connection, and send the messages through to their destination. For efficient service, the body must function as a whole.

　　But where is the mind ? Is it in the brain? Or perhaps in the nervous system? After all, can we say that the mind is in any particular place? It is not a thing, like a leg, or even the brain. It is a function, an activity. Aristotle, twenty-three hundred years ago, observed that the mind was to the body what cutting was to the ax. When the ax is not in use, there is no cutting. So with the mind. Mind, said Charles H. Woolbert, is what the body is doing.

　　If this activity is necessary for thinking, it is also necessary for carrying thought from one person to another. Observe how people go about the business of ordinary conversation. If you have never done this painstakingly, you have a surprise in store, for good conversationalists are almost constantly in motion. Their heads are continually nodding and shaking sometimes so vigorously that you wonder how their necks can stand the strain.