234 WARFARE IN THE HUMAN BODY 



otherwise capable man of science to a view of my own, 

 which was afterwards proved by experiment to be correct, 

 on the ground that if it were true it would have been 

 found out before. 



The resistance or dislike to the analysis of conscious- 

 ness into combined conditioned reflexes seems particu- 

 larly strong where it deals with the emotions. To analyse 

 a religious attitude into reflex correspondence with an 

 imaginary or constructed environment, such construction 

 being in fact the co-ordination of rigid nervous tracts, 

 is regarded as "materialism," or a gross incapacity for 

 taking "spiritual" views. Such opinions, however, are 

 not worth combating, as they are usually held by those 

 without physiological knowledge. But those who merely 

 regard consciousness as a mystery, probably not capable 

 of solution, often find similar difficulties. They may say, 

 for instance, that though emotion and volition have their 

 concomitants in molecular changes in brain matter, no 

 material qualities, such as weight and occupancy of space, 

 can be predicated of them. An emotion, however, is 

 only a " mental " entity till it is discovered to be nervous 

 discharges over certain short circuits in the brain through 

 which the motor impulses of instincts have passed during 

 long stages of evolution, all such discharges being accom- 

 panied by vaso-motor phenomena. 



If this is so, and no physiologist will deny it, space 

 and position, vascular dilation and contraction, and the 

 possible measurement of nervous discharges across resist- 

 ing synapses can actually be predicated of the highest 

 emotions. An emotion is thus no entity, it is not a thing 

 properly to be described in a word, though it may be 

 designated by such a symbol and act as such in a reflex 

 chain of suggestion : it is, in fact a very complex bodily 



