PHYSICAL ACCOMPANIMENTS 



may be made to contract by other than mental agencies. 

 There is, indeed, no closer connection between mental and 

 muscular action than there is between the latter and the 

 action of the liver and kidneys. 



Many remarks have been recently made concerning phy- 

 sical accompaniments of conscious states, sensations, and 

 feelings ; and mental phenomena have been discussed from 

 what has been termed, i, their physical side, and 2, their 

 mental side, but I cannot find that our ideas of the nature 

 and mode of action of mind have been rendered any 

 clearer or more exact by the proposed new methods of treat- 

 ment. Let us consider the case of muscular contraction. 

 What we particularly want to know about this change is 

 precisely what happens in the particles of the muscular 

 tissue when the shortening of the tissue takes place. A 

 review of the physical accompaniments of the change will 

 not necessarily add to the knowledge we possess any more 

 accurate information regarding the nature of the change 

 itself. We might consider the phenomenon i, from its 

 material side, and 2, from its psychical side, and might write 

 long speculative dissertations from these, and perhaps some 

 other points of view. But in spite of this having been done, 

 we might nevertheless leave the real question untouched, 

 and pass over the change which really takes place in the 

 muscular tissue when it passes into or out of the state of 

 contraction. Whether the physical accompaniments of un- 

 explained processes are the processes, or necessary to them, 

 or accidental, and unnecessary, is not clearly stated by those 

 who advocate this method of viewing the question. 



The incautious use of the phrase " automatic actions " has 

 also, as it seems to me, led to the introduction of some 



