268 From Matter to Man. 



action or reciprocation between the cerebral hemis- 

 pheres as the two main poles, or between the 

 thousands or millions of minute nerves or poles 

 there meeting. 



Not only so, but, as all the senses and other 

 organs of the body are connected with the brain, 

 every message received, say, by the eye, is trans- 

 mitted to the brain and there read or interpreted 

 and acted upon by the reciprocating sight-poles in 

 the sensorium. If we thus say that the reciprocating 

 motions between the nerves or cells in the two 

 cerebral hemispheres are thoughts, we virtually imply 

 that man is but a telegraphic machine, different only 

 from those which he himself constructs in that he is 

 conscious of, and able to read, the messages from 

 within and without which pass through him,* the 

 messages or motions being themselves consciousness. 



But how can this reciprocal intercourse in the brain 

 be consciousness or thought ? 



Like everything else in the universe, the evolution 

 of thought as well as the explanation of thought is 

 progressive, hence, we may have to revolutionise our 

 conceptions of thought. The child cannot think like 

 the man, because its brain is neither so large, so com- 

 plex, nor so well exercised as a man's. It is only by 

 laborious effort on the part of others as well as the 



* Even the telegraphic machine acts accordingly as the messages 

 pass through it, and may thus in a sense be said to be conscious of them 

 by so acting. The action and the consciousness truly are automatic, 

 but is our consciousness or our conscious actions in any way different, 

 save in their greater complexity and subtlety ? We think not. 



