15 



brain is decidedly larger than was that of the Parisian of 

 the Middle Ages. Moreover, degeneration of the brain 

 accompanies the declining mental powers of advanced life, 

 and is markedly noticeable in certain forms of insanity. 



Are we, from the fact that body corresponds to mind, to 

 conclude that we are mere mechanisms 'i For my part I 

 entirely fail to see any analogy between an organism and 

 a mechanism. If I make a clock I construct it to perform 

 certain definite and invariable movements. The clock has 

 no power of self-regulation or of development. Whereas 

 life has been defined as the adjustment of internal to 

 external relations. Mind and body grow and adapt them- 

 selves, and therefore cannot be regarded as automatic ; on 

 the other hand, mind and body fall strictly within the reign 

 of law. If it were otherwise we could count neither on 

 ourselves nor on others ; there co\ild be no such thing as 

 character ; our actions would be variable as the wind. If 

 similar antecedents were not invariably followed by similar 

 results, education would be an impossibility and respon- 

 sibility inconceivable. 



There is another interesting point to which I should like 

 to draw your attention. Not merely can I analyse my 

 mind into factors, strongly, fairly, or faintly conscious, but 

 my mind will work in an unconscious manner ; or to be 

 more precise, the mind will continue to reason and to direct 

 independently of personal consciousness. The judgment, 

 the expression of organised experience, often manifests 

 itself as the result of an unconscious development. More- 

 over the mechanical details of writing, talking, walking, 

 and playing musical instruments come to be performed 

 without conscious direction. If we forget a name it will 

 often subsequently recur without effort. This can only be 

 explained by the theory that a certain train of nervous 

 action having been started in the cortex, a series of organic 

 changes occurs, which eventually issues in the production 

 of the forgotten name in consciousness. There is good 

 evidence that by far the larger part of our mental opera- 

 tions take place outside of personal consciousness. 



Let us consider this point for a moment. Clearly we 

 must extend the term mind to cerebral activity even when 

 unaccompanied by personal consciousness. But cerebral 

 activity is nothing but the activity of a complicated system 

 of nerve-ceUs. Each separate nerve-ceU exhibits in itself 

 the essential activities of a system of nerve-cells. Nerve- 



