414 MENTAL FUNCTION 



which determine the habitual usage in the body remains to be discovered. 

 We have to think of them, however, as actual traces in the protoplasm 

 especially of the nervous system, but perhaps in part also of the muscles 

 and other tissues. This is witnessed by the larger size of the whole 

 right side in right-handed persons. The logical limit of this process of 

 habituation is to be seen in the so-called "automatic" organs: glandular 

 epithelium, the heart, the ureters, the musculature of the intestines, etc. 

 The lesser degrees of it are known to all in the thousand physiological 

 minor habits of every-day life. 



Of essentially the same nature, doubtless, are the so-called mental 

 habits of feeling, of willing, and of thinking. 



The function of habit is almost obvious. By means of this continually 

 greater ease in the performance of an action, "mental" or "bodily," 

 those movements which necessarily frequently recur become more and 

 more reflex or automatic. In this way the voluntary aspects of the 

 brain are relieved of directing a host of mechanical operations that are 

 biologically necessary but which would needlessly consume a large 

 amount of the time and attention "of the cortex." The central nervous 

 system is thus left free to learn new things, to progress in capability, and 

 to assist in the development of civilization and of culture. 



Knowing. The last of the three chief aspects of the mental process 

 is the faculty of knowing objects, qualities, relations, and so on, outside 

 or inside the organism. Synonyms for this process are cognition, 

 ideation, and intellection. In the most general sense this aspect of the 

 stream of consciousness may be called the formation of ideas. An 

 idea may be roughly defined as a mental image of any object whatever 

 outside or inside the mind. In this definition the expression "object" 

 is used in the very general sense which includes not only the so-called 

 material things but the qualities and relations of a purely abstract nature. 



The physical correspondents of this cognitive process are narrower in 

 bodily range' than are those of feeling and of willing. In general terms 

 we may denote them as chiefly the movements and reactions, nervous 

 and muscular, which are employed in any mode of expressing language. 

 The physical basis of cognition, in other words, is mainly the neuro- 

 muscular mechanism of psychical, spoken, written, pictured, and manual 

 speech. 



Analysis of the knowing aspect of mind gives us several steps in a 

 process which is continually some sort of fusion. We may distinguish 

 the fundamental process of sensation, and upon that as a basis "the 

 mind" conducts the various operations of perception, conception, under- 

 standing, and reason. The means by which this very complicated fusion 

 accomplishes the interaction and development of the original sensation- 

 mass is hidden from us in the largely unknown relations of the nerve- 

 paths especially of the brain. That these fuse in some way so as to 

 elaborate the higher products of the knowing faculty, there is little doubt. 



The things which are known in cognition are of two general sorts: 

 things "outside" and those "inside" the mind. A chair, for example, 



