CHAPTER XXVII 

 THE NERVOUS SYSTEM ITS HIGHER WORK 



" Our wills are ours, we know not how. ..." 



IN the last chapter emphasis was constantly placed on 

 the subconscious nature of the multifarious adjustments 

 which are each moment secured through the action of the 

 central nervous system. We are accustomed to think 

 that the use of our sense-organs and the employment of 

 our skeletal muscles are activities with which consciousness 

 is far more closely concerned. While this is broadly 

 true, we need to recognize that a great part of these re- 

 actions also goes on without our notice and beyond the 

 reach of our intervention. This is readily admitted of the 

 breathing. It will be found almost equally characteristic 

 of the maintenance of the balance at rest and during 

 locomotion. 



The ability to stand is dependent on the occurrence of 

 inconspicuous but indispensable reflexes which check each 

 swaying movement of the body as it threatens a fall. 

 When one walks the attention seems for the most part to 

 be detached from the elaborate muscular performance and 

 to be given to other matters. The contact of the feet 

 with the ground, the gliding of one joint surface on another, 

 the shifting of stresses from one muscle or tendon to a 

 neighbor these local changes become in a regular se- 

 quence the source of impulses which ascend to the brain 

 and evoke appropriate responses. It has been generally 

 believed that the division known as the cerebellum has a 

 peculiar importance in this connection. 



The position of the thinker himself with reference to the 

 great afferent and efferent departments of his nervous 



255 



