Freedom of Will Empirically Considered. 7 



connections; thus heat alters physical sequences, without 

 interrupting them. The change does not lie in the insertion 

 of alien terms, but in the control of congenital ones. 



Several empirical reasons are urged for the strict depend- 

 ence of thought on cerebral states. In insanity, it is said, 

 the mind is subverted in its action simply by disease of the 

 brain. But this it should be under either view. The mind 

 is dependent for its facts or supposed facts on a nervous 

 organism, and an abnormal state of the organism may 

 wholly alter the data of thought. The quickness, however, and 

 accuracy with which the patient reasons from his premises are 

 often very observable. If the sensor and active physical pow- 

 ers are broken down by disease, the mind on the one side loses 

 data, and on the other side the power of expression. Aphasia, 

 or the inability to utter or to write words, is often offered as 

 a proof of this dependence. This fact, however, seems to 

 look in the opposite direction, as the idea is still grasped by 

 the mind even when it cannot control the organs of utter- 

 ance. 



But the experience which looks most directly to a con- 

 stant and complete dependence of thought on cerebral 

 conditions is the sense of fatigue and the waste of nerve- 

 tissue which accompany the action of mind. This fact re- 

 quires careful consideration. Under all theories the brain is 

 the medium of impressions and expressions, and the action 

 of the mind lies between the two. The only question is 

 whether it lies as intervening cerebral links between cere- 

 bral states, to which connection thought is incidental; or as 

 a relatively independent spiritual power to which no cerebral 

 state need be set apart. In either case the action of mind 

 involves sensor activity and motor activity, and this, too, in 

 a much higher degree than is usually thought. It is this 

 incipient or complete ministration of sensor and motor 

 action of the brain to the mind that we would regard as a 

 sufficient explanation of the fatigue of mental activity. 



Things and words are the counters of mind, and without 

 them it can make only the feeblest advances in reflection. 

 But things involve sensor impressions, and our acts of atten- 

 tion, analysis, and arrangement involve sensor impressions 



