132 Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



are, however, some important differences : first, there is the 

 clerk in the central office who attends to the connexions at the 

 request of the person at the mouthpiece who announces a mes- 

 sage for some one at the other end, while there is no such 

 being in the soul of man ; there is no ego-entity who manages 

 the interconnexions among memory-images. Secondly, the 

 person who speaks at the receiver is the willing agent, while the 

 various numbers of the wires which at the central office are 

 interconnected are as dead as door nails. In the soul the mes- 

 sage received by the sense-organs comes from the surrounding 

 world and need not be the voice of a sentient being. It may 

 be a ray of light or the noise of rolling thunder, or the smell 

 of a dangerous gas, or any kind of impression which need not 

 represent the will of a purpose-pursuing creature. On the 

 other hand the wires and numbered keys of the mind are all 

 aglow with life ; they are sentient memory pictures, mostly 

 fused into composite images, thus representing generic concepts 

 and if a call is made upon them through any one of the senses, 

 they feel themselves appealed to, according to the nature of the 

 call and their own nature, and the kinship that obtains between 

 both and are always ready to start the action of the muscles 

 attached to them. They are automata in the original sense 

 of the word automaton; viz., they are "self-acting." Every 

 one of them is attuned to a certain kind of irritations and re- 

 sponds automatically to its correspondent appeal. There is a 

 third difference, and it is of importance, as here the difficulty 

 of the physiological condition of consciousness appears. In the 

 mind as well as in the telephone system, many intercommunica- 

 tions may take place at the same time. A person attends to a 

 number of little and great things simultaneously in response to 

 various sense-impressions, but one only rises into clear con- 

 sciousness. Two men may be absorbed in an interesting dis- 

 cussion. But while their whole attention is concentrated upon 

 the subject of their talk, they may walk together, they may re- 

 spond to the recognition of passing friends, and avoid obstacles 

 in the road. They may attend to hundreds of little things 

 which remain unheeded, for unity is a law of our psychical or- 



