EDITOR'S TABLE. 



267 



must be committed to specific centers 

 which act with automatic certainty and 

 never sleep. 



Pursuing this line of inquiry, a third 

 important step was taken by establish- 

 ing the separate and automatic func- 

 tions of the sensory ganglia at the base 

 of the brain and the summit of the 

 spinal column. Impressions from the 

 surface reaching the spinal centers are 

 passed upward to the sensory ganglia, 

 and there give rise to sensations and 

 emerge into consciousness, reflex action 

 being here extended to conscious move- 

 ments. Dr. Carpenter did much to un- 

 ravel this branch of the subject about 

 1850, and his work on " Mental Physi- 

 ology," published within a few years, 

 will be found full of interesting and im- 

 portant information in relation to it. 

 The problems entered upon were, of 

 course, of great complexity, obscurity, 

 and diflSculty. Dr. Laycock had car- 

 ried the doctrine of reflex action into 

 the cerebral hemispheres, and shown 

 its importance in the higher operations 

 of the mind; and it yet remains a 

 sharply debated question among nerv- 

 ous physiologists how far the principle 

 of automatism extends in the higher 

 realm of our psychical life. 



It was thus gradually established 

 that all mental operations, all thought, 

 feeling, instinct, and volition, are the 

 results, first, of the activity of the pri- 

 mary nervous elements, cells, and fibers, 

 by which nervous influence is accumu- 

 lated and discharged ; and, second, of 

 the interaction of numerous automatic 

 centers variously endowed, but com- 

 municating with each other solely by 

 the transmission of nervous force. The 

 gain thus secured to mental science on 

 its practical and progressive side was 

 very great. The subject took its place 

 among the definite and experimental 

 science of the natural world. Nothing 

 is so vague as the conception of mind 

 from the metaphysical point of view. 

 Quantitative results are unattainable 

 by that method, and all limitations are 



scorned by it as degrading to the dig- 

 nity of spiritual being. But in inquir- 

 ing into the functions of the nervous 

 system we are at once deeply involved 

 in the physiology of limitations. Mind- 

 force can not come from nothing, any 

 more than other forms of force, and 

 here as elsewhere one effect is at the 

 expense of another. Thinking and feel- 

 ing exhaust the mechanism, and we 

 are involved with practical questions 

 of waste and repair, exercise and rest, 

 food, blood, nutrition, and the heredi- 

 tary qualities of the nerve-centers. 



Here also the study of mind widens 

 out into the comprehensiveness of a 

 true science by including all the grades 

 of animal life as objects of psychologi- 

 cal study. For here as well as every- 

 where else the higher is to be inter- 

 preted by the lower, the complex by 

 the simple, and no animate creature is 

 so far down in the scale that it does 

 not illustrate some phase of mind which 

 has a bearing upon the mental problems 

 of higher beings. The introspective 

 method of course breaks down here. 

 Confined to the adult mind, it excludes 

 the minds of children, and therefore the 

 study of the laws of mental growth; 

 confined to the human mind, it ex- 

 cludes those of all inferior beings. Yet 

 when it becomes a question of deter- 

 mining the properties of nerve-centers, 

 the nature of reflex action, of instinctive 

 movements, and all forms of the laws 

 of intelligence, then comparative psy- 

 chology makes invaluable contributions 

 to mental science. 



And there is still another division 

 of the study of mind of supreme im- 

 portance, to which very little was or 

 could be contributed by the old meth- 

 od, but which is making marked prog- 

 ress by the more recent methods of in- 

 vestigation : we refer to the subject of 

 insanity. TVhen we come to mental de- 

 rangements, introversive study is ob- 

 viously fruitless, and so long as that 

 was pursued nothing was known of the 

 nature of insanity. Mental disease in 



