SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE ORIGIN AND SIG- 

 NIFICANCE OF THE CEREBRAL CORTEX 



C. JUDSON HERRICK 



University of Chicago 



Four figures 



What are the elements of consciousness? Psychologists used 

 to talk about simple sensations, elementary feelings and pure 

 volition, but most of us have difficulty in finding these things 

 introspectively. Our sensations and volitions are inextricably 

 interwoven with each other and with ideas of various grades of 

 complexity. The child is born with definite physiological capac- 

 ities for reflex response to stimuli and with certain impulses and 

 instinctive tendencies, none of which necessarily involve any 

 conscious element. On this foundation he builds up by slow 

 increment his mental life. 



The intellectual superstructure is not built up out of simple 

 sensations, which are first compounded into perceptions and 

 then disembodied as ideas; quite the contrary, the child's first 

 experiences are with completed physiological circuits, kicking, 

 sucking and the like, and these are soon elaborated in accord- 

 ance with his innate impulsive and instinctive endowment into 

 complex behavior types, which are rapidly modified by experi- 

 ence. The mental elements, from the genetic point of view, are 

 to be sought in these behavior complexes, rather than in any 

 abstractions derived by a process of logical analysis from philo- 

 sophical postulates or highly sophisticated adult introspection. 



What these first mental elements may be in the very young 

 child it is impossible for a man (even though he be a psychol- 

 ogist) to determine by any simple method; but many of our 

 adult mental processes arise apparently immediately from a 

 conflict of two or more instincts or automatisms no one of which 

 would necessarily by itself have any mental content. And these 

 mental processes in turn resolve themselves into action and run 

 down into automatism again. 



The plain man who is not versed in the subtleties of philo- 

 sophical dialectic or introspective analysis is apt to conclude that 



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