COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



what must happen. In thefrst place, the per- 

 sistence of the impressions enables them to be 

 consciously felt, either pleasurably or painfully ; 

 so that there is the germ of Emotion. Secondly, 

 the disturbance tends to propagate itself along 

 various permeable transit lines, so that there is 

 a revived association of ideas, or what we call 

 Memory. Thirdly, there is an integration of the 

 present impressions with such past ones as they 

 resemble, and a differentiation of them from 

 such past ones as they do not resemble ; and 

 this comparison of present with past impres- 

 sions, dependent on memory, implies classifica- 

 tion, and is the germ of what we call Perception 

 and Reasoning. Fourthly, there is, in the case 

 of many kinds of impressions, a period of ten- 

 sion during which it becomes determined along 

 what set of centrifugal fibres the surplus dis- 

 turbance shall be drafted off, and here we have 

 the primitive form of Volition. Thus the vari- 

 ous phases of conscious psychical life — which 

 we call emotion, memory, reason, and volition 

 — arise as soon as there begins to elapse an 

 appreciable time between the accumulation of 

 molecular disturbance in a group of cephalic 

 nerve cells, and its discharge along the proper 

 transit fibres. And this state of things, which 

 is not possible in simple nervous systems which 

 only respond instinctively or by reflex action 

 to a few general relations in the environment, 

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