COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



deal of such automatic acting and thinking, we 

 could achieve but little in art or science. We 

 should never become good pianists if we had 

 to keep paying attention to all the requisite 

 muscular adjustments ; and science would ad- 

 vance but slowly if at each step of an intricate 

 inquiry in dynamics it were necessary to stop 

 and reflect upon the elementary laws of matter 

 and motion. 



The physical interpretation of these second- 

 ary automatic processes is not diflicult, according 

 to the hypothesis here expounded. During the 

 process of learning, there is an extensive for- 

 mation of new transit lines, and consequently an 

 appreciable interval between the accumulation 

 of molecular disturbance in the cerebral cells 

 and its discharge. Impressions persist long 

 enough to be compared together, and accord- 

 ingly there is reason and there is volition. 

 There is a maximum of consciousness, because 

 there is a maximum duration of the nutritive 

 changes, and hence weariness soon follows — 

 cerebral nutrition entailing greater waste than 

 occurs in any other part of the system. But 

 with constant repetition the resistance to the 

 passage of undulations along the new transit 

 lines disappears entirely. Nutrition has so 

 modified them that, as above explained, they 

 become lines of traction instead of lines of re- 

 sistance. As we say, nothing can prevent the 

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