FUNCTIONS AND ANALOGUES OF THE CEREBRUM. 413 



Besides being comparable in their duties, these great di- 

 rective centres, social and individual, are comparable in the 

 processes by which their duties are discharged. 



It is now an acknowledged truth in psychology, that 

 the cerebrum is not occupied with direct impressions from 

 without, but with the ideas of such impressions : instead of 

 the actual sensations produced in the body, and directly 

 appreciated by the sensory ganglia or primitive nervous 

 centres, the cerebrum receives only the representations of 

 these sensations ; and its consciousness is called representa- 

 tive consciousness, to distinguish it from the original or 

 presentative consciousness. Is it not significant that we 

 have hit on the same w^ord to distinguish the function of 

 our House of Commons ? We call it a representative body, 

 because the interests with which it deals — the pains and 

 pleasures about which it consults — are not directly pre- 

 sented to it, but represented to it by its various members ; 

 and a debate is a conflict of representations of the evils or 

 benefits likely to follow from a proposed course — a descrip- 

 tion which applies with equal truth to a debate in the indi- 

 vidual consciousness. In both cases, too, these great gov- 

 erning masses take no part in the executive functions. As, 

 after a conflict in the cerebrum, those desires which finally 

 predominate, act on the subjacent ganglia, and through 

 their instrumentality determine the bodily actions ; so the 

 parties which, after a parliamentary struggle, gain the vic- 

 tory, do not themselves carry out their wishes, but get 

 them carried out by the executive divisions of the Govern- 

 ment. The fulfilment of all legislative decisions still de- 

 volves on the original directive centres — the impulse pass- 

 ing from the Parliament to the Ministers, and from the 

 Ministers to the King, in whose name everything is done ; 

 iust as those smaller, first-developed ganglia, which in the 

 lowest vertebrata are the chief controlling agents, are still, 

 in the brains of the higher vertebrata, the agents through 

 which the dictates of the cerebrum are worked out. 



