6 ANTS AND SOME OTHER INSECTS. 



impossibility. The contents of our superconsciousness are con- 

 tinually influenced and conditioned by subconscious brain-activi- 

 ties. Without these latter it can never be understood. On the 

 other hand, we understand the full value and the ground of the 

 complex organisation of our brain only when we observe it in the 

 inner light of consciousness, and when this observation is supple- 

 mented by a comparison of the consciousness of our fellow-men as 

 this is rendered possible for us through spoken and written lan- 

 guage by means of very detailed inferences from analogy. The 

 mind must therefore be studied simultaneously from within and 

 from without. Outside ourselves the mind can, to be sure, be 

 studied only through analogy, but we are compelled to make use of 

 this the only method which we possess. 



Some one has said that language was given to man not so 

 much for the expression as for the concealment of his thoughts. It 

 is also well known that different men in all honesty attribute very 

 different meanings to the same words. A savant, an artist, a 

 peasant, a woman, a wild Wedda from Ceylon, interpret the same 

 words very differently. Even the same individual interprets them 

 differently according to his moods and their context. Hence it 

 follows that to the psychologist and especially to the psychiatrist 

 and as such I am here speaking the mimetic expression, glances 

 and acts of a man often betray his true inner being better than his 

 spoken language. Hence also the attitudes and behavior of ani- 

 mals have for us the value of a "language," the psychological im- 

 portance of which must not be underestimated. Moreover, the 

 anatomy, physiology and pathology of the animal and human brain 

 have yielded irrefutable proof that our mental faculties depend on 

 the quality, quantity, and integrity of the living brain and are one 

 with the same. It is just as impossible that there should exist a 

 human brain without a mind, as a mind without a brain, and to 

 every normal or pathological change in the mental activity, there 

 corresponds a normal or pathological change of the neurocymic ac- 

 tivity of the brain, i. e., of its nervous elements. Hence what we 

 perceive introspectively in consciousness is cerebral activity. 



As regards the relation of pure psychology (introspection") to 



