278 The Animal Mind 



stimuli do not indicate direct contact of a beneficial or harm- 

 ful object with the body; while the closer and more direct 

 the stimulation, as for instance in touch and organic sensa- 

 tions, the obscurer the image. 1 



Many of the foregoing sentences are taken from an article 

 by the writer which appeared in 1904 (420). A very interest- 

 ing discussion of the significance from the neurological stand- 

 point of reaction to stimulation from a distance is to be found 

 in Sherrington's recently published book on "The Integrative 

 Action of the Nervous System" (382, pp. 324 ff.). Sher- 

 rington proposes the term "distance receptors" for those 

 receptive organs "which react to objects at a distance," and 

 declares that "the distance receptors contribute most\to the 

 uprearing of the cerebrum." The -most important signifi- 

 cance of the power to act in response to distant objects 

 Sherrington finds to be that it allows an interval for pre- 

 paratory adjustment, "for preparatory reactive steps which 

 can go far to influence the success of attempt either to obtain 

 actual contact or to avoid actual contact with the objec^." 

 That these preparatory steps may also involve the germ of 

 the memory image is clearly suggested by Sherrington. 

 "We may suppose," he says, "that in the time run through by 

 a course of action focussed upon a final consummatory event, 

 opportunity is given for instinct, with its germ of memory, 

 however rudimentary, and its germ of anticipation, however 

 slight, to evolve under selection that mental extension of the 

 present backward into the past and forward into the future 

 which in the highest animals forms the prerogative of more 

 developed mind. Nothing, it would seem, could better 



1 An exception may be taken to this statement so far as smells are con- 

 cerned. Some people seem to have difficulty in getting memory images of 

 odors. For the writer, such images are among the most vivid and most 

 readily controlled in her experience. 



