Brain, n. The apparatus with which we think that we think. That which distinguishes the man who is content to be something from the man who wishes to do something. … In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, brain is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devilʼs Dictionary
hamiltonbeck 
UNDERSTANDING, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house. Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse.
His understanding was so keen
That all things which he’d felt, heard, seen,
He could interpret without fail
If he was in or out of jail.
He wrote at Inspiration’s call
Deep disquisitions on them all,
Then, pent at last in an asylum,
Performed the service to compile ’em.
So great a writer, all men swore,
They never had not read before.
Jorrock Wormley
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