222 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



today that conduction is possible (in any sense which will assist Fechner- 

 ism) except through the neurofibrillae of Apathy, we undertake to decide 

 a question which according to the neurological literature of the present 

 time is perhaps being decided by experts in an opposite sense. Bethe 

 for example {Allgemeine Anatomie und Physiologie des Nervensy stems. 

 Leipzig 1903), says that "Die Leitung ist nervoser Natur," (p. 108), 

 On page 109, he says, "Nach alledem kann es keinem Zweifel unter- 

 liegen, dass bei den Medusen [which particularly favored Marshall's 

 view] die Reizleitung nervos und nicht muskular ist, und dass die Netze 

 im Epithel diese reizleitende Funktion ausiiben." In this work of over 

 450 pages, perhaps the most authoritative textbook of the neurofibrillae 

 school, this view is expressed repeatedly with convincing arguments, 

 and it seems as if we must lean to the opinions of those who declare 

 they have the most perfect scientific grounds for asserting that there is 

 absolutely no protoplasmic conduction, so long at least as expert histolo- 

 gists on all hands are finding these newest and finest conduction threads 

 all through the protoplasm where physiologists had overlooked them. 

 Will physiologists even make a stand against anatomists in this field? 



But now where does this doctrine leave the thoroughgoing cor- 

 respondences of Marshall ? Is there one atom of evidence of a scientific 

 nature that the energies of starry systems, or even of much smaller 

 systems, have noetic patterns corresponding to them ? 



The admirable effort to bring philosophy into some relation to a 

 scientific notation is only hampered by fantastic digressions of this kind. 

 What some of us should like to hear more about than about the alleged 

 modern biological basis for Nanna and Zend-Avesta (which, as pub- 

 lished, were justified by their poetry and absence of over-serious style), 

 is just how the field of inattention itself is limited, and why so much 

 insistence is put upon the reciprocity between the field of attention and 

 the field of inattention within the human skin, so to speak, while no 

 attempt is made to show that the air we breathe, and the food we eat, 

 and our whole environment are in "efficient relation" to the conscious 

 experience of the field of attention. 



