MENTAL FACULTIES 



makes the appropriate motions to wipe away the acid. If this 

 limb be cut off, the frog tries to remove the acid with the 

 limb of the other side. I cannot admit this to be reflex 

 action; it is evidently voluntary action set up by nerve- 

 cells of the spinal cord which possess the power of volition. 1 

 In Annelids and Arthropods voluntary action is much 

 more clearly exhibited by the posterior part of the ventral 

 nerve -cord, which corresponds to the spinal cord of verte- 

 brates ; and other lower vertebrates, e.g. tortoises, likewise 

 exhibit indications of voluntary action in the decapitated 

 condition. 



On the other hand, the contraction ot the fingers, which 

 follows upon stimulation of the nerves of the arm, and which 

 is generally subject to the will, is an instance of reflex action 

 which was originally dependent on the brain. Possibly the 

 involuntary winking of the eyelids is also a member of this 

 class, of reflexes which are fundamentally automatic, but not 

 the respiratory movements, although these can to a certain 

 extent be influenced by the will. A reflex action of this 

 second class is not necessarily adapted to an end, it may even 

 be very inappropriate ; in any case, it can only by accident 

 imply intelligent or reasonable motives. But the actions 

 which I call automatic are always purposeful, intelligent, or 

 reasonable. 



I have still a lively recollection of the circumstances in 

 which I was first in danger from a shell in the war of 1870-71. 

 We were at the beginning of the campaign before Strassburg 

 in one of the small forts on the right bank of the Khine at 

 Kehl, and I was standing with some comrades in a spacious, 

 room in the fort at a table, occupied at the moment in follow- 

 ing on a map according to the latest information the advance 

 of our troops upon Paris, when a shell came, through the 



1 Compare also Goltz, Beitrage zur Lehre von den Funktionen der Nervencentra, 

 Berlin, 1869. 



