CH. XIV.] LJFE AND MIND. 87 



the animal, besides maintaining such general correspondences 

 as characterize vegetal life, exhibits in a slight degree the 

 irritability and contractility which in higher creatures are 

 specialized in those tissues which form the relational organs, 

 In the molluscoida, the property of irritability being localized 

 in a few nerve-threads uniting in ganglionic masses, and the 

 property of contractility being specialized in a parallel 

 manner, there is rendered possible that more special mode of 

 response to environing agencies, known as reflex action. In 

 the lower vertebrata, the integration of numerous adjacent 

 ganglia into a medulla, having connections with various parts 

 of the organism, renders possible a much more perfectly 

 coordinated series of responses to external stimuli. And at 

 the same time the development of a pair of pedunculated 

 ganglia from the upper portion of the medulla, is attended 

 by the ability to compound the impressions which the medulla 

 receives ; so that it becomes possible for the correspondences 

 to extend in space and time. As we ascend through the 

 vertebrate sub-kingdom, the growth of these pedunculated 

 ganglia — the cerebrum and cerebellum — becomes more and 

 more the predominant characteristic of the nervous system ; 

 and at the same time the power of adjusting inner relations 

 to remote, special, and complex relations increases, finally 

 when we come to man, in whom the correspondences have 

 reached a marvellous degree of heterogeneity, extent, and de- 

 finiteness, we find not only that the relational system of organs 

 is the dominant fact in his organization, but also that the system 

 of pedunculated cephalic ganglia is the dominant fact in the 

 relational system of organs. Not only is the nutritive life 

 quite subordinated to the specially relational life, but the 

 lower modes of the relational life, such as reflex action and 

 instinct, are quite subordinated to those higher modes, such 

 as thought and emotion, which are made possible by the 

 great extent to which the cerebrum and cerebellum carry the 

 compounding of impressions received in the medulla. In 



