72 BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HUMAN PROBLEMS 



and thus becomes able to adapt itself to the outer 

 world. In the case of the headless frog the organism, 

 though devoid of the higher forms of consciousness, 

 is still in a measure able to adapt itself to its sur- 

 roundings in an apparently purposive way. This 

 it does through the agency of muscular contractions 

 coordinated by impulses arising from the spinal 

 cord. Doubtless it is true that in the headless frog 

 functional pathways exist which have been educated 

 in the cord by the action of the brain, and that 

 these pathways are utilized in the absence of the 

 brain. And it would be unfair to deny that the 

 muscular contractions give to the headless frog a 

 property of adaptation to external conditions which 

 if not strictly constituting consciousness, neverthe- 

 less shades gradually into states which must be 

 admitted as states of consciousness. 



When we come to consider the relation of nervous 

 activity to consciousness, the rational view is aban- 

 doned. The rational view as to the nature of con- 

 sciousness is that sensory impulses, carried into 

 an extremely elaborate cerebral mechanism, liberate 

 there, through chemical changes in the ganglion 

 cells, a kind of energy which manifests itself by giving 

 to the individual the property of awareness of self. 

 It is likely that this quality of awareness of self 

 (which makes intelligent action and thought possible 

 by permitting the distinction between self and not- 

 self) depends on the simultaneous, coordinated 

 discharge of energy from an enormous number of 



