CHAPTER XV. 



NASCENT EEASON, EMOTION, IMAGINATION AND VOLITION. 



THE views set forth in preceding chapters in regard to 

 Reflex and Instinctive Actions permit certain important 

 corollaries to be deduced therefrom. And should these be 

 found to harmonize with many known facts, such corre- 

 spondence of facts with theoretical deductions will prob- 

 ably be held to afford additional evidence in favour of 

 the views in question. 



In this chapter we shall refer to three such corollaries, 

 and see what evidence can be adduced in support of them. 



(1.) It would seem likely that, All the definite acts of 

 very low organisms would partake either of the nature of 

 Reflex Actions or of the Simple Instinctive Acts into 

 which these latter merge by almost insensible gradations. 



This proposition might be expected to hold good for all 

 the actions of Medusae, Worms, and Mollusks with the 

 exception, perhaps, among the latter, of some of those 

 manifested by the active and highly endowed Cephalopods. 



A rude unfamiliar touch of any kind evokes in a Snail, 

 on its travels, only one set of actions : its body and horns 

 contract, and the former is drawn by its retractor muscle 

 within the shell. No other actions are ever seen to follow 

 such a stimulus. In its daily walk, also, the various 

 movements of the Snail are of the simplest kind, largely 

 instigated, it would seem, by the visceral and general con- 

 dition known to us as * hunger/ and only more rarely 



