156 COSMIC PEILOSOPHT. [ft. a 



comparison of present with past impressions, dependent on 

 memory, implies classification, and is the germ of what we 

 call Perception and Eeasoning. Fourthly, there is, in the case 

 of many kinds of impressions, a period of tension during 

 which it becomes determined along what set of centrifugal 

 fibres the surplus disturbance shall be drafted off, and here 

 we have the primitive form of Volition. Thus the various 

 phases of conscious psychical life — which we call emotion, 

 memory, reason, and volition — arise as soon as there begins 

 to elapse an appreciable time between the accumulation of 

 molecular disturbance in a group of cephalic nerve-cells, and 

 its discharge along the proper transit- fibres. And this state of 

 things, which is not possible in simple nervous systems which 

 only respond instinctively or by reflex action to a few general 

 relations in the environment, becomes possible in those com- 

 pound nervous systems which respond to a great number of 

 infrequent and special relations. For the establishment of 

 inner relations, answering to these infrequent and special 

 outer relations, involves a lapse of time during which numer- 

 ous diverse impressions are getting distributed through various 

 transit-lines hitherto little used. When, as in the fully- 

 developed human cerebrum, a vast number of infrequent and 

 special relations are continually set up, there is a maximum 

 of nutritive change, there is a maximum of time duripg 

 which impressions simultaneously coming in may be com- 

 pared and classified, and there is a maximum of con- 

 Bciousness. 



This exj^lanation of the v/ay in which the various phases 

 of conscious psychical life arise, is fully confirmed by the 

 way in which they disappear when actions at first con- 

 yciously performed become instinctive. The confirmation 

 is so complete as to afford a very strong proof of the truth 

 of the hypothesis. Many of the actions performed by 

 civilized man are designated by psychologists as ** second- 

 arily automatic." That is, they are at first performed with 



