204 NO SPONTANEITY IN ACTION OF BRAIN PLASTIDS. 



afferent or commissural fibre, whereby tlie stimulus is conveyed to 

 the nerve cell for the purpose of exciting it to activity at the 

 right time, and if so there can be, in health, no other mode of 

 activity possible, for that would frustrate the very purpose of 

 the trgan. The intricacy of the nerve-cord connections of the 

 bioplasts of the brain and their extraordinary number are dwelt 

 on by Dr. Beale (" Protoplasm," 3rd edit.) : " A portion of the 

 gray matter upon the surface of a convolution not larger than 

 the head of a very small pin will contain portions of many 

 thousands of nerve fibres, the distal ramifications of which may 

 be in distant and different parts of the body." " The bioplasts 

 referred to are directly concerned in mental action. Movement 

 affecting the matter of many thousands of these minute bio- 

 plasts, probably at the same moment, is required for the initia- 

 tion of the simplest idea" (321). To produce, therefore, any- 

 thing like harmony and coherence in ideas and movements, all 

 these separate bioplasts or sources of energy must be rigidly 

 tied down, never to begin to act except on their appropriate 

 stimulus. Conceive the effect of any spontaneity ! It would be 

 incoherence and delirium, speedily followed by destruction of 

 the individual. 



The essentiality of stimuli for all vital action,"even in organic 

 life, is not so obvious at first sight because the stimuli co-exist 

 with pabulum and conditions in most instances, but it could be 

 shown if it did not take us too far from our present subject. 



For the same reasons as above, the spontaneity of the will 

 must also be denied. To allow it any initiating power not 

 derived from the transformation of pre-existing force, even to 

 the small extent required by J. Herschel, would be to create 

 force. I have no pretensions to attempt to unravel the intri- 

 cacies of this most delicate and complicated subject, so I will 

 only say that no doubt the perception of internal stimuli is here 

 the initiating agency.* 



* I mean, of course, the spontaneity of the will in its physiological 

 sense. I have no opinions on the subject of the moral freedom of the 

 will and moral responsibility different from those held by common consent 

 in the age and state of society in which we are living, and which admit 

 that qualified amount of freedom of the will which common sense shows 

 we are possessed of. 



