Evolution of Mind. 269 



child, and with the stimuli to the sense organs repeated 

 times without number, that the child can even read or 

 understand the messages sent by the nerves to the brain. 

 In fact, it can only understand the products of its five 

 senses properly, when the sense organs, sensorium, 

 and body, are automatic in action. Why should our 

 thoughts, then, not be automatically thought? 



As an explanation of the processes of thought, we 

 may assume as a tentative hypothesis, that in every 

 message sent to the brain, certain cells in the one 

 cerebral hemisphere which receive the message 

 reciprocate with corresponding cells in the opposed 

 hemisphere. When a particular message is sent 

 numberless times, these particular cells always receive 

 the same message from the same sensory nerve until 

 they become automatic in their reception of these 

 particular sensations: whether we are asleep or awake, 

 or whether they have been naturally produced, or 

 artificially excited in the surgery with the aid of 

 electricity. 



When naturally produced, the sensation is accurate ; 

 but when artificially produced the sensation is in- 

 accurate. Showing that the mind or mind mechanism 

 is an automatic machine which, as we have said, can 

 be hoaxed, thus reducing it to the level of the plant's 

 intelligent mechanism, and degrading it from its 

 present high position as a " divine intuition." 



Human thought or consciousness may thus be 

 classed with the consciousness of the minerals and the 

 vegetals, viz., as automatic action or motion. Every 



