FUNCTIONS AND ANALOGUES OF TIIE CEREBRUM. 413 



Besides being comparable in their duties, these great di 

 rective centres, social and individual, arc comparable in the 

 processes by which their duties are discharged. 



It is now an acknowledged truth in psychology, that 

 the cerebrum is not occupied with direct impressions from 

 without, but with the ideas of such impressions : instead of 

 the actual sensations produced in the body, and directly 

 appreciated by the sensory ganglia or primitive nervous 

 centres, the cerebrum receives only the representations of 

 these sensations ; and its consciousness is called representa 

 tive consciousness, to distinguish it from the original or 



o o 



prescntative consciousness. Is it not significant that we 

 have hit on the same word to distinguish the function of 

 our House of Commons ? }Vo call it a representative body, 

 because the interests with which it deals the pains and 

 pleasures about which it consults are not directly pre 

 sented to it, but represented to it by its various members ; 

 and a debate is a conflict of representations of the evils or 

 benefits likely to follow from a proposed course a descrip 

 tion which applies with equal truth to a debate in the indi 

 vidual consciousness. In both cases, too, these great gov 

 erning masses take no part in the executive functions. As, 

 after a conflict in the cerebrum, those desires which finally 

 predominate, act on the subjacent ganglia, and through 

 their instrumentality determine the bodily actions ; so the 

 parties which, after a parliamentary struggle, gain the vic 

 tory, do not themselves carry out their wishes, but get 

 them carried out by the executive divisions of the Govern 

 ment. The fulfilment of all legislative decisions still de 

 volves on the original directive centres the impulse pass 

 ing from the Parliament to the Ministers, and from the 

 Ministers to the King, in whose name everything is done ; 

 just as those smaller, first-developed ganglia, which in the 

 lowest vertebrata are the chief controlling agents, are still, 

 m the brains of the higher vertebrata, the agents through 

 which the dictates of the cerebrum are Avorked out. 



