COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



tablishment of new ones. The consequences of 

 this are obvious. In becoming more and more 

 complex, the correspondences become less and 

 less instantaneous and decided. " They gradu- 

 ally lose their distinctly automatic character, and 

 that which we call Instinct merges into some- 

 thing higher." 



For as long as the psychical life consists solely 

 in the passage of nervous undulations along 

 permanent preestablished channels, there is no 

 consciousness. Consciousness, as already shown, 

 implies continual discrimination, or the contin- 

 ual recognition of likeness and differences — 

 and this process implies a rapid succession of 

 changes in the supreme ganglia. Now this rapid 

 succession of changes occurs when a vast num- 

 ber of relations are brought together in a single 

 ganglion, or group of ganglia, as in the cere- 

 brum, in order to be compared with each other. 

 Besides this, consciousness implies a certain 

 lapse of time during which impressions persist ; 

 and there is no such persistence in reflex action, 

 or in the lower forms of instinct, where the 

 molecular disturbance constituting a nervous 

 impression is instantly drafted off along the 

 preestablished channels. Such persistence oc- 

 curs only when a number of impressions are 

 brought together in a single ganglion, where an 

 appreciable time must elapse before they are 

 carried oflF each along its own set of transit lines. 

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