154 COSMIC PHILOSOPHI. PT. u 



and while sundry special relations (as in the seizing of its 

 prey by the fly-catcher) will be extremely frequent, there are 

 many other special relations of which the experience will be 

 much less frequent. And accordingly, along with the per 

 fectly coherent psychical states generated by the former, there 

 will be a congeries of less coherent psychical states generated 

 by the latter. Or, to restate the case in physiological 

 language : While in the lower organism there will be a 

 number of transit-lines permanently established, and scarcely 

 any tendency toward the formation of new ones ; on the 

 other hand, in the higher organism, there will be a number 

 of permanent transit-lines and a number of such lines in 

 process of formation, along with a continual tendency toward 

 the establishment of new ones. The consequences oT this 

 are obvious. In becoming more and more complex, the 

 correspondences become less and less instantaneous and 

 decided. &quot; They gradually lose their distinctly automatic 

 character, and that which we call Instinct merges into some 

 thing higher.&quot; 



For as long as the psychical life consists solely in the 

 passage of nervous undulations along permanent pre-esta 

 blished channels, there is no consciousness. Consciousness, 

 as already shown, implies continual discrimination, or the 

 continual recognition of likenesses and differences ; and this 

 process implies a rapid succession of changes in the supreme 

 ganglia. Now this rapid succession of changes occurs when 

 a vast number of relations are brought together in a single 

 ganglion, or group of ganglia, as in the cerebrum, in order to 

 be compared with each other. Besides this, consciousness 

 implies a certain lapse of time during which impressions 

 persist ; and there is no such persistence in reflex action, or 

 in the lower forms of instinct, where the molecular disturbance 

 constituting a nervous impression is instantly drafted off 

 along the pre-established channels. Such persistence occurs 

 only when a number of impressions are brought together in 



