11 



the reproductive stimulus from the simple mating instincts 

 of the lower forms of life to the monkey who mourned his 

 lost mate for several days, until finally, associated with all 

 the faculties of the soid, it thrUls in the gentle melody of 

 Keats, inspires the divine genius of Dante, and ennobles 

 even the humanity of Shakspere. Interwoven with all the 

 faculties of emotion, it can at last express itself in the noble 

 words of Brutus to Portia : — 



" You are my true and honourable wife, 

 As dear to me as are the ruddy drops 

 That visit this sad heart." 



Or in a similar way we can trace the maternal stimulus 

 through various gi'ades up to its highest form, when it 

 irradiates and adds a glory to the powers of an Elizabeth 

 Barrett Browning. 



We have ceased to regard mind as an entity. It is the 

 commonest eiTOr of metaphysics to confound abstractions 

 of the hiunan mind with things in themselves. Thus the 

 concept "heat" was confounded with a suppositious sub- 

 stance, "caloric." The phenomena of nerve have been 

 confused into an entity called "mind." The term "mind" 

 is an abstraction, like the terms " electricity" and " life." 

 It is a mental symbol which stands for an infinite variety 

 and combination of states And Von Baer's law, that the 

 order of organic development is from the simple to the 

 complex, is nowhere more manifest than in the realms of 

 neurology and psychology. 



Even 8\ibjective psychology reveals the composite nature 

 of any single state of consciousness. While writing this 

 I am at once thinking of what I write, I am willing to 

 write ; I have more or less consciousness of varied mental 

 activity, of the room in which I sit, the objects and the 

 people around me, and a thousand sensations either con- 

 scious or subconscious, while my pen forms the words I 

 write with an automatic accuracy which is distinctly mental 

 in nature, though not conscious. And neurology still 

 further decomposes what at first would appear to be a 

 simple state of consciousness into an infinity of components. 



Unfortunately there is no time at my disposal to compare 

 the comparative anatomy and function of the nervous 

 system with comparative psychology. I must content my- 

 self with a rough sketch of the structure and functions of 

 the nervous organs in man. Like the body itself, the 

 nerves and nerve-centres are bilaterally symmetrical. The 



