20S 



as it swept around in a circle, each time sliding past the support after 

 being pressed against it for some time; and adds that "this movement 

 of the shoot had a very odd appearance, as if it were disgusted with its 

 failure, but was resolved to try again." la summing up his studies on the 

 root tip in his volume on the power of movement in plants, the same 

 author states that the tip of the root " acts like the brain of one of the 

 lower animals." But we are not supposed to interpret these expressions 

 to mean that a climbing plant has feeling or that a root thinks. 



As our knowledge of nature is dependent primarily upon our powers of 

 cognition, it is not strange that students of subjective phenomena should, 

 like Descartes and Leibnitz, in the earlier days of the science of mind, and 

 Hegel and Locke in more recent times, refuse to entertain any connection 

 betweeh mind and matter, except that of association. With the gradual 

 unfolding of a knowledge of physiology, and the adoption of its revela- 

 tions and methods, a gradual extension, overlapping and fusion of the 

 spiritual and material, the subjective and objective, manifestations of 

 living nature have taken place. But if we examine the writings of Bain, 

 Carpenter or Herbert Spencer, of the English school, or Herbart, Lotze or 

 Wundt, of the German school, or other representatives of the present 

 liberal movement, we shall find that activity has only been transferred 

 from the cerebral hemispheres to the ramification of the nerves, and from 

 a search for the seat of conciousness to a study of the transmission of im- 

 pulses. But it is to be remembered that the brain and nerves are the 

 telegraphic lines and relay stations for communicating intelligence of the 

 condition of the outside world to the sensient organism, and furthermore 

 that many of the lower animals and all the world of plants are without 

 nerves ; they are like society before the advent of the telegraph, telephone 

 and postal system. This large part of animate nature is, for the most 

 part, ignored by the psychologists, and treated by the physiologists only 

 objectively. In fact, subjective, that is obverse, physiology is in need of 

 devotees. 



There is great diversity in the use of the terms sensitiveness, sensibility 

 and sensation, when applied outside the domain of human psychology. 

 We are inclined to accept for our present purpose the usage adopted by 

 Maudsley, who makes the term "sensibility" generic, and divides it into 

 irritability, reflex action, sensorial action, and idealistic perception. In 

 this classification organisms without nerves, which are the only ones we 

 are now interested in, are only capable of sensations due to irritability. 



