Herrick, The Seat of Consciousness. 223 



vestiges and effects of previous cortical excitation as represented 

 in the brain structure. The results of a college course are 

 stored in the form of latent images and facilities for reproduc- 

 tion and coordination. All the experiences of a lifetime are thus 

 implicate in the cortex. Now a new stimulus is received and 

 the result is not so much dependent on the nature of the stimu- 

 lus as the complex condition of the receptive organs. All this 

 is intelligence, but while the coordinations are going on there is 

 awakened, no one knows how, a consciousness of part of these 

 results. This last act in the drama which is some how different 

 toto coelo from what precedes — a thing sui generis — must have 

 a seat, an organ. Since it is a product of coordination its seat 

 must be in an organ of coordination and such an organ is the 

 striatum. 



Now the present writer's position respecting these points is 

 somewhat as follows : 



Every neurosis may have its psychosis in the sense that it 

 registers impressions and is affected by previous states of the 

 tissue even far back in heredity. It would be correct to speak 

 in Dr. Carus' sense of intelligence of cells in the gray cornua of 

 the cord or even in sporadic visceral ganglia (not of course 

 of intelligence in the sense employed in the traditional psycho- 

 logy which connotes the idea of conscious availment of these 

 sources of psychical activity.) Nothing like consciousness is 

 possible under such circumstances for we believe with Dr. Carus 

 that consciousness involves a coordination and that in a very 

 high degree. Now when the cortex is studied by the modern 

 methods we find in it the most complete and complex coordi- 

 nating machine in the body. The silver impregnation and 

 Weigert methods in particular reveal a richness of anastomosis 

 and interpenetration unobserved elsewhere. On the other hand 

 the striatum is one of the most imperfect coordinating centres in 

 the body. We miss the interminable meshes of protoplasmic 

 and neural dendrites which occur in the thalamus. That which 

 has given it the spurious character of a coordinating centre is 

 the tremendous masses of fibres passing through in various di- 

 rections. The evidence of pathology may prove misleading 



