532 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION I. 



conceivable that there is something of the kind, indeed, in humble uni-celhilar 

 organisms. But in man mind is associated with the brain. 



There is also the point that even in the case of the brain such phenomena 

 as sleep and deep anaesthesia familarise us with the fact that the mind is not 

 necessarily always associated with the brain, but only with this when in a certain 

 condition. 



Now there is no scientific evidence to support or to rebut the statement that 

 the brain is possibly affected by influences other than those which reach it by 

 the definite paths proceeding from the sense-organs and from the different recep- 

 tive surfaces of the body. It is still possible that the brain is an instrument 

 traversed freely as the ear by sound, by an unknown influence which finds 

 resonance within it. Possible, indeed, that the mind is a complex of such re- 

 sonances ; music for which the brain is no more than the instrument, individual 

 because the music of a single harp, rational because of the orderly structure of 

 the harp. Consider such a possibility, and the analogy which I have prepared 

 in dealing with the eyeball is seen to have some meaning, inasmuch as an instru- 

 ment shaped in the embryo by a certain set of conditions may in due course of 

 time become the play of some new influence which has taken no immediate part 

 in fashioning it. I will not dwell upon the point behind this statement, that I 

 find it difficult to refrain from using the word ' soul.' 



If, however, such a view is considered it must be said that there is no evi- 

 dence that any individual physico-chemical phenomenon is developed within the 

 brain that is not developed within other parts of the nervous system, and in a 

 more confused manner indeed within the limits of every living cell. It is some 

 special arrangement of dynamic states that must be held to form the special 

 characteristic of the waking brain, and it should be possible in time to define 

 the peculiarities of those special arrangements whereby we are assuming that 

 the mind is, so to speak, caught. 



It is true too that there are great difficulties offered to the expanded pre- 

 sentation of a statement which suggests a mysterious influence provocative of 

 mind as possessed apparently of something of the nature of a physical force, 

 since it is held to be constrained in certain peculiarities of physical environment 

 to behave in a special way. It is indeed almost clear that this influence must 

 be held to affect these physical surroundings since there is little doubt that mind, 

 per se, affects human conduct and animal behaviour, just as it is impossible to 

 conceive mind, where present, as exerting no influence in natural selection. 

 This, although the risks of the environment must always play the greater part 

 in natural selection, and the influence of the mind be conceived as only second- 

 arily affecting the organism through the intervention of the nervous system, or 

 through mechanisms that are substituted for that system. Admitting these 

 facts, we should in this case be obliged to regard mind resonating amongst the 

 distributed dynamic states of the brain as influencing them in a way that might 

 possibly be demonstrable in any physical apparatus closely imitating those states 

 and their distribution. 



Then, again, one of the main objections to a suggestion of this kind is that 

 the condition might involve a transformation of energy which should have been 

 discovered as an otherwise unexplainable quantity in the energy equations of 

 the body. There may, however, be no real necessity to conclude that any 

 transference of energy would be involved in such a process. The distribution 

 of dynamic states in the central nervous system which are suggested as playing 

 the part of resonators is, as I have already related, a distribution of opposite 

 states. If we consider how these opposite states, excitation and inhibition, are 

 arranged in any given 'case, it is seen that the installation of an equal number 

 of excitations where inhibitions were present, and of inhibitions where excita- 

 tions were present, will give rise to a new pattern of a very different meaning. 

 Now such a change in the distribution of states might entail either no more 

 than the transmission of nervous impulses, a process in which exceedingly small 

 quantities of energy are dissipated, or indeed an actual cessation in the trans- 

 mission of certain nervous impulses, since it is one of the curious features in these 

 states that the one tends to recoil into the other. We might, indeed, make the 

 assumption that an alteration in the setting of the instrument, such as was 

 attended with a change in consciousness, was always attended by this cessation 

 of nervous impulses, so that a brilliant display of mind might be associated with 



