ORGANIC MOVEMENTS 85 



but, of course, such an opinion would be very far from the 

 truth. 



Let us then try, in the first place, to connect our 

 analysis with a physiological problem which has been 

 discussed very often in the last century, and which can by 

 no means be said to be solved ; a problem that relates to 

 our concept of the " individuality of correspondence," in 

 so far as the process of the " individualisation " of the 

 stimuli comes into account. I refer to the problem of the 

 so-called " specific energy " of the sensory nerves, and you 

 will easily understand that this problem is not unconnected 

 with our analysis, if you remember that all stimulation to 

 acting is transmitted along the sensory nerves. 1 



According to Johannes Mueller, the father of the " law ' 

 of the specific energy, the meaning of this principle was 

 that the specificity of sensation, say of red or green, or heat 

 or a musical tone, was in some way a " property * of the 

 single nerve fibre under stimulation, and that it was quite 

 indifferent by what sort of an occurrence the stimulation 

 had happened. Later science has transferred the speci- 

 ficity from the nerve fibres to specific localities of the brain, 

 but the general view has remained almost the same, and 

 Eniil du Bois-Eeymond gave strange but clear expression 

 to the doctrine when he said that after an operation which 

 combined the ear with the optic nerve and the eye with the 

 acoustic nerve, we should hear lightning as a crack and 

 see the thunder as a line of sparks. 



Intentionally we shall put aside the whole epistemo- 



1 So-called " spontaneous " actions are intentionally left out of account here, 

 as they do not touch our most fundamental problems. No doubt something 

 affecting the brain, in some way, is concerned in these facts also, and there- 

 fore no special discussion is required. 



