MIND IS FUNCTION 175 



isomeric molecular motion of the units of matter com- 

 posing the brain. All mental phenomena, however 

 obscure, and however valuable, are simply the product, 

 so far as experience teaches, of the interchange of 

 matter and motion, going on in the nervous structure 

 of the body. Particles of matter therein are constantly 

 disintegrating, and other particles forming new units. 

 This activity accompanies every thought. 



"When movement ceases, consciousness dies away." 

 That is the reason why parasites, both vegetable and 

 animal, lose their power, become inert. The plant is 

 unconscious, but still some plants approach it very 

 close. A plant shows it when it "bends the energy of 

 the solar light, to aid it, in absorbing the carbon away 

 from the oxygen in carbonic acid." "The same im- 

 petus that has led the animal to give itself nerves, and 

 nerve centers, must have ended in the plant, in the 

 chlorophylian function." (Bergson). 



The more rapid and intense' the mental action, the 

 quicker becomes the integration and disintegration of 

 the molecules of the nervous system. When the matter 

 ceases to act, the differentiated energy called mental 

 process stops. No one has ever been able to show by 

 induction that any human mental phenomena have 

 been produced, except in the neural centers of the 

 organisms, following and seemingly the result of 

 physical pulsations. The same motion of molecules, 

 precisely, characterizes every chemical phenomenon 

 in the organic. There is little doubt that if the two 

 movements of the production of thought in the brain ; 

 and the formation of a crystal in inorganic matter, 

 could be minutely compared by the mieroscopist, the 

 only methodological difference observable would be in 

 the time of the movements. 



