all
sorts of mechanisms start working: nerves and muscles, of course, but
even in the blood-vessels there's a change of the corpuscles as per
order--you put an insult into the slot and they do the rest.
The levers of the machine--the brakes, clutches and the rest are in
the forebrain: that's where you change gear when you want to struggle
with suppressed emotion, run her slow or let her all out: and that's
what Jack means to do with us before he has finished. Does he want
us to love or to hate?--He'll press a button, and we shall do the
rest, automatically. He will call on a Foreign Minister or an
ambassador and make or avert a European War. He will dictate--"

"He's telling you the most atrocious rubbish," cut in Foe, addressing
Jimmy.

"I am suiting this explanation to the infant mind," said I, "and I'll
trouble you not to interrupt. . . . You may or may not have heard, my
dear child, either at Eton or Oxford, that the brain has two
hemispheres--"

"Just like the globe," said Jimmy brightly.

"Aptly observed," I congratulated him: "though that is perhaps no
more than a coincidence. Taking the illustration, however, if we can
only eliminate the Monroe Doctrine and work the clutch between these
two--Jack, you are reaching for the poker. Don't fire, Colonel: I'll
come down. . . . Reverting, then, to the forebrain, you have
doubtless observed that in man it is enormously larger than in the
lower animals, as in our arrogance we call them--"

"I hadn't," said Jimmy.

"It's a fact, nevertheless," said I. "I assure you. . . . Well,
Jack, so far, has dealt only with the lower animals. I don't say the
lowest. I doubt if he can do much with an oyster who has been
crossed in love. But by George! you should watch him whispering to a
horse! or, if you want something showier, see him walk into a lion's
cage with the tamer."

"I say, Professor! Have you _really?_--" I knew Jimmy would sit up
at this point.

"Of course he has," said I. "It began on a trip we took together in
Uganda, just after leaving Cambridge. I was after lions: Jack's game
was the mosquito and other bugs. One day--oh, well, Jack, we'll keep
that story for another occasion. . . . The long and short was, he
found he had a gift--uncanny to me--of dealing with animals in a
rage, and raising or lowering their angry passions at will.
He switched off bugs, their cause and cure, and on to this new track.
He started experimenting, made observations