986 Dynamic Theory. 



the names of all the books in a librar} r after a single momentary glance 



over the titles on their backs. 



It is evident that the greater the number of stimuli which assail the 

 brain at the same time, the greater is the number of ganglia that are in- 

 volved ; and habit and practice being equal, the greater tho time em- 

 ployed, the greater the friction, the more vivid the consciousness of the 

 process and its results, and the more intense the pleasurable or painful 

 emotions which may happen to follow. In reflex actions where the 

 stimulation is simple, the friction is at a minimum and not sufficient to 

 arouse a consciousness, a certain amount of time is nevertheless essential 

 to produce the result. Where the stimulation creates perception and 

 arouses consciousness still more time is required. Where there are sev- 

 eral stimulations of diverse and perhaps antagonistical nature, 'the time 

 may run into hours or da} r s, during which the ganglia involved aro un- 

 dergoing constant readjustments, the attention is strained and (ordinarily) 

 consciousness is at a high tension. 



In what has gone before I have set forth what appears to me to be the 

 logical conclusions in regard to the nature of mental phenomena. It 

 will be profitable now to contrast these conclusions with radically differ- 

 ent ones reached by some of the most renowned thinkers. And first, I 

 shall quote from Prof. Huxley's lecture on Animal Automatism, de- 

 livered at Belfast, in 1874, and a lecture on Sensation, delivered March 

 7, 1879. Then I will quote the views of Prof. Bain. 



Prof. Huxley says in tl Animal Automatism:" "It is quite true that 

 to the best of my judgment the argumentation which applies to brutes 

 holds equally good of men ; and therefore that all states of conscious- 

 ness in us, as in them, are immediately caused by molecular changes of 

 the brain substance. It seems to me that in men as in brutes, there is 

 no proof that any state of consciousness is the cause of change in the 

 motion of the matter of the organism. If these positions are well 

 based, it follows that our mental conditions are simply the symbols in 

 consciousness of the changes which take place automatically in the or- 

 ganism ; and that to take an extreme illustration, the feeling we call 

 volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but the symbol of that 

 state of the brain which is the immediate cause of that act. We are 

 conscious automata endowed with free will in the only intelligible sense 

 of that much abused term, inasmuch as in many respects we are able to 

 do as we like, but none the less parts of the great series of causes and 

 effects which in unbroken continuity composes that which is, and has 

 been, and shall be, the sum of existence. " 



The italics in the forgoing are mine and mark the passage to which 

 exceptions must be taken. It is radically wrong itself and being a 

 fundamental proposition it leads to a brood of other errors. The nu- 



