BIOLOGY IN HUMAN AFFAIRS 



The first chair in Physiology was established as late as 



1833. 



Until mental functions, from low to high without 

 exception, are considered in their biological origins and 

 counterparts, a scientific psychology lacks central unity. 

 That is a fundamental relation confirmed by evolution; 

 for bodily and mental functions emerge and evolve by 

 the same set of forces. The mind's heredity and the body's 

 heredity are one. We are not thus curtly disposing of 

 the mystery of mind, not asserting that thoughts and 

 emotions may be reduced to patterns of behavior in the 

 nervous system. But since in many ways we know more 

 of mind than of body, the demonstration of the reality 

 of the connection between the two remains a guiding 

 principle throughout, though we can apply it but partially. 



The connection can be suggested in a paragraph; it can 

 be covered only in a volume such as C. Judson Herrick's 

 "The Thinking Machine." The advancement of physio- 

 logical psychology from the days of Wundt to those of 

 Herrick is equally striking. A machine the mind is, but 

 of its own type of organization, with only secondary 

 analogies to man-made mechanisms. There is no more 

 hesitation in speaking of one integration of "brain" areas 

 as the organ of consciousness than in speaking of another 

 as correlated with digestion, and another with sex; and 

 both these "physiological" functions may induce elaborate 

 and disturbing "conscious" representations. 



The hierarchy of the central nervous system conditions 

 fundamentally and throughout the hierarchy of the mental 

 activities. The simplest member of the series was termed a 

 reflex.^ Here lies the basic unit pattern of response. And 



^ It is as true of scientific as of personal names that their baptismal status gives 

 no indication of future career. "Reflex" arose from an outdated notion of actual 

 reflection — as of a ray of light from a mirror — but was physiologically conceived 

 with the appearance of the neurone theory and of neuronic integration. Sir Michael 



[62] 



