146 BRAINS OF RATS AND MEN 



the nervous processes concerned with the strictly af- 

 fective components of experience, but also those of 

 some of the simpler cognitive processes ("proto- 

 pathic*' sensibility, etc.). Winkler (191 1) cites a case 

 of a tumor of the thalamus which leads him to con- 

 clude that recognition of forms requires a thalamic 

 synthesis of tactual and visual nervous impulses. 



Before leaving the thalamus, further attention 

 should be directed to its peculiar function as a center 

 of integration for all those processes that co-operate 

 in the fabrication and maintenance of those enduring 

 attitudes and reaction types which give to the indi- 

 vidual his own peculiar character and personality and 

 perhaps his feeling of personal identity. These are 

 doubtless partly innate and partly acquired patterns 

 of synthesis of exteroceptive, proprioceptive, and 

 visceral experience, superposed upon the lower reflex 

 mechanisms but for the most part not intelligently 

 fabricated. The organization of these "intimate 

 senses" into the stable patterns which we call "per- 

 sonality" is at a very low level in forms below the 

 mammals (so far as we know) ; but within the mam- 

 mals there is progressive increase in the size and 

 structural complexity of the betweenbrain and par- 

 allel with this an elaboration of its intrinsic functions 

 in several directions. There is, first, a more closely 

 knit assembling of all those internal processes, both 

 inborn and acquired, which give the organism its 

 sense of well being or malaise, its awareness of per- 



