274 BRAINS OF RATS AND MEN 



motionless; but by virtue of its construction it can so 

 record a movement of the earth as to enable its 

 designer to say that there was an earthquake of con- 

 siderable violence at 3:42 a.m. about two thousand 

 miles away to the southeastward. 



The previous experience of the seismographer with 

 earthquakes and with physical instruments has en- 

 abled him to construct a very simple machine with 

 these mystic powers, which to the uninitiated may 

 seem supernatural. But what is latent in the instru- 

 ment is not an earthquake, nor the image of an earth- 

 quake; it is merely certain tensions which have been 

 impressed upon elastic material in such a pattern that 

 when a particular form of external energy is applied 

 the tensions are released, the latent energy becomes 

 kinetic, and mass movement of a definite predeter- 

 mined character follows. 



In the human cerebral cortex the machine and its 

 designer are one. The past experience which is in- 

 voked in winding up and setting the machine is the 

 past experience of the machine itself. In short, the 

 automaticity of the seismograph is pushed a stage 

 farther backward and a stage farther forward. Look- 

 ing backward, the machine was not fabricated by an 

 outside designer; it fabricated itself during creative 

 evolution. Looking forward, the record is not inter- 

 preted by an intelligent observer who inspects it from 

 the outside; the intelligence is immanent within the 

 working of the mechanism itself. The operation of 



