154 COSMIC PHILOSOPHI. rt. ii. 



and while sundry special relations (as in the seiziitg of its 

 prey by the fly-catcher) will be extremely frequent, there are 

 many other special relations of which the experience will be 

 much less frequent. And accordingly, along with the per- 

 fectly coherent psychical states generated by the former, there 

 will be a congeries of less coherent psychical states generated 

 ]by the latter. Or, to restate the case in physiological 

 language : — While in the lower organism there will be a 

 number of transit-lines permanently established, and scarcely 

 any tendency toward the formation of new ones ; on the 

 other hand, in the higher organism, there will be a number 

 of permanent transit-lines and a number of such lines in 

 process of formation, along with a continual tendency toward 

 the establishment of new ones. The consequences of this 

 are obvious. In becoming more and more complex, the 

 correspondences become less and less instantaneous and 

 decided. *' They gradually lose their distinctly automatic 

 character, and that which we call Instinct merges into some- 

 thing higher." 



For as long as the psychical life consists solely in the 

 passage of nervous undulations along permanent pre-esta- 

 blished channels, there is no consciousness. Consciousness, 

 as already shown, implies continual discrimination, or the 

 continual recognition of likenesses and differences ; and this 

 process implies a rapid succession of changes in the supreme 

 ganglia. Now this rapid succession of changes occurs when 

 a vast number of relations are brought together in a single 

 ganglion, or group of ganglia, as in the cerebrum, in order to 

 be compared with each other. Besides this, consciousness 

 implies a certain lapse of time during which impressions 

 persist ; and there is no such persistence in reflex action, or 

 in the lower forms of instinct, where the molecular disturbance 

 constituting a nervous impression is instantly drafted off 

 along the pre-established channels. Such persistence occurs 

 only when a number of impressions are brought together in 



