A skilful executant on our harp can assuage the passions of a multitude,--nay, he can excite many of the aspirations and sensibilities ascribed in your legends to Orpheus and other mythical personages.
It is thought in Montalluyah,--though it was never demonstrated,--that a modification of concentrated light forms the point of union between the immortal soul and the perishable portions of man.
There is concentrated light--the very essence of light--within ourselves, particularly in the brain, to which the light, having travelled about the body, is conveyed, through the instrumentality of the blood, to the nerves and other organs.
In speaking of the brain, we often use words belonging to vision. Until the discovery of "concentrated light," we did not know how truthful were these expressions, one of which in our language answers to the "mind's eye." The eye as well as the brain contains concentrated light, and physical impressions received through the visual organs are by this electricity immediately conveyed to the sympathetic "light" of the brain.
By the application of concentrated light we can even increase for a time the intellectual powers, or, rather, we can strengthen the instrument through which the intellectual powers are manifested.
The possession of concentrated light led to the discovery of the exact mode in which the brain acts in the living man. By experiments on transparent fish of the zoophyte class, and on the eyes of animals, we discovered the means of making a living body for a time transparent. The skull was rendered transparent accordingly, and by the aid of concentrated light and of an instrument called an "electric viewer," the currents of electricity in the brain were made visible.
These currents include myriads of electrical lines--literally composed of electricity--lines the nearest approach to your definition of a mathematical line, that which hath length without breadth.
The filaments, as we may truly call them, are of different forms, straight, spiral, and otherwise curved, and of varied length and colours. They are set in motion by the impulsion of thought. When we talked to the patient on a particular subject, one series of lines would be set in motion with indescribable rapidity; other topics would call into play other series of straight or curved lines. They can also be set in motion under the influence of certain electricities.