6o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



derivation from its original canis, and the habitual change of c before 

 a into ch in the passage of words into French from Latin. By this time, 

 I think the reader (with his usual acuteness) will begin to perceive into 

 what a hopeless network of cross connections and crooked combina- 

 tions we have managed to get ourselves in our search after the defi- 

 nitely localizable. 



How, then, does the mechanism of the brain really act ? I believe 

 the true answer to this question is the one most fully given by M. Ri- 

 bot and never yet completely accepted by English psychologists. It 

 acts, for the most part, as a whole ; or at least, even the simplest idea 

 or mental act of any sort is a complex of processes involving the most 

 enormously varied brain-elements. Instead of dog being located some- 

 where in one particular cell of the brain, dog is an idea, audible, visi- 

 ble, legible, pronounceable, requiring for different modes of its percep- 

 tion or production the co-ojDeration of an enormous number of separate 

 cells, fibers, and ganglia. 



Let us take an illustration from a kindred case. How clumsy and 

 awkward a supposition it would be if we were to imagine there was 

 a muscle of dancing, and a muscle of walking, and a muscle of rowing, 

 and a muscle of cricketing, and a muscle for the special practice of 

 the noble art of lawn-tennis ! Dancing is not a single act ; it is a com- 

 plex series of co-ordinated movements, implying for its proper per- 

 formance the action of almost all the muscles of the body in different 

 proportions, and in relatively fixed amounts and manners. Even a 

 waltz is complicated enough ; but when we come to a quadrille or a 

 set of lancers, everybody can see at once that the figure consists of so 

 many steps forward and so many back ; of a bow here, and a twirl 

 there ; of hands now extended both together, and now held out one 

 at a time in rapid succession ; and so forth, throughout all the long 

 and complicated series. A quadrille, in short, is not a name for one 

 act, for a single movement of a single muscle, but for many acts of 

 the whole organism, all arranged in a fixed sequence. 



It is just the sr.me with the simplest act of mental perception. 

 Orange, for example, is not the name of a single impression ; it is the 

 name of a vast complex of impressions, all or most of which are pres- 

 ent to consciousness in the actuality Avhenevcr we see an orange, and 

 a great many of which are present in the idea whenever we remember 

 or think of an orange. It is the name of a rather soft, yellow fruit, 

 round in shape, with a thick rind, white inside, and possessing a char- 

 acteristic taste and odor ; a fruit divisible into several angular, juicy 

 segments, with cells inside, and with pips of a recognized size and 

 shape — and so forth, adinfinitum. In the act of perceiving an orange 

 we exercise a number of separate nerves of sight, smell, taste, and 

 feeling, and their connected organs in the brain as well. In the act 

 of thinking about or remembering an orange we exercise more faintly 

 a considerable number of these nerves and central organs, though 



