152 THE SCOPE OF MIND. 



a similar order, wheresoever they may occur. In this 

 sense, therefore, almost the whole Nervous System would 

 have to be regarded as the * organ ' of Mind, while the 

 Brain should be regarded as merely its principal com- 

 ponent part. 



Views closely similar to those above set forth were 

 advanced by the writer in 1870, when he said :* " Let us 

 openly profess what has been tacitly implied by many. 

 Instead of supposing that Mind and Consciousness (in its 

 ordiuary acceptation) are co-extensive, let us make Mind 

 include all unconscious nerve actions as well as those which 

 are attended by Consciousness .... We must inevitably 

 come to this, and the doctrine of * unconscious cere- 

 bration * has served to pave the way for it See- 

 ing that Mind, even in its ordinary acceptation, is the 

 product of all ' potential ' as well as of all realized, 

 knowledge, the word cannot without the intervention of a 

 fundamental error be considered as a convertible term for 

 realized or realizable knowledge only. That which is 

 realizable now, or capable of being recalled to conscious- 

 ness, may, and often does, after a time cease to be so, and 

 yet the essential nerve actions themselves may still go on, 

 and none the less surely work their influence upon our 

 fleeting succession of conscious states. Thus has it been 

 with the race, and thus is it with the individual. And 

 shall we cease to call a given nerve action mental, when 

 by frequent repetition it has become so habitual that it no 

 longer arouses Consciousness ? " Transitions from con- 

 scious nerve actions to unconscious nerve actions are habitu- 

 ally taking place during the education of the individual, 

 and the development of the nervous system in each one of 

 us, and " the more fully such phenomena are recognized 

 as parts of an orderly succession by which alone, 

 * '* Journal of Mental Science," Jan., p. 622. 



