26 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
The use and value of consciousness as a mental element in running the machinery 
of mind do not lie in what it is in itself, but in what its separate and successive 
states may become. By continual repetition, these separate states may become 
organized into a consolidated whole, which,-like the individual cells in the animal 
organism, finally develops into a complex form of automatic mental action. 
Hence, the mental machinery does not consist in separate conscious states, but in 
organized forms of action into which the mind has grown by the force of repeti- 
tion. : 
The fact of mental automatism finds its explanation on the physical side of 
being in the relation which the cerebrum sustains to the lower sensory and motor 
centers. Impressions are made on the cerebrum by being propagated upward 
through the sensorium. These impressions, after being combined and co-ordinated, 
are reflected downward to the motor centers which execute the mandates of the | 
will in the form of muscular movements. By constant repetition, these motor cen- 
ters grow into the modes of action which have been consciously and artificially 
imposed upon them, so that the only conscious effort required to set them going 
is a mere initiative impulse of the will. In this way the mental and the physical 
organism may be made to take on themselves an artificial and secondary auto- 
matic action, as distinguished from that which is natural and primary. 
We should not pass over this part of the subject without calling attention to 
the important office which this form of action performs in the economy of human 
life. We should regard the spinal cord, together with the motor and sensory 
ganglia, in which it terminates, as charged with spontaneous force, and as conse- 
quently the seat from which emanate ‘‘ the lightning gleams of power”’ exerted 
for the well being of the organism. Man must have some provision in his consti- 
tution which shall serve as a guide and protection, before he can rise into the dig- 
nity of an intelligent and conscious being. Such are the dangers to which life is 
often exposed, that action must come before thought to save the organism, or some 
part of it, from destruction. 
Automatic mental action has a most important bearing on education, whether 
this looks to physical, intellectual, or moral and religious training. It is that, in 
fact, which makes man an educable being. It is only the new school of psychol- 
ogists who, as yet, fully recognize the great value of this form of action as one of 
the capacities of our physical and mental being. ‘It is,” says Huxley, ‘‘ because 
the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of 
habits, a superinducing of an artificial organization upon the natural organization 
of the body; so that acts, which at first required a conscious effort, eventually be- 
come unconscious and mechanical. If the act which primarily requires a dis- 
tinct consciousness and volition of its details, always needed the same effort, 
education would be an impossibility.” ‘*The acquired functions of the spinal 
cord,” says Dr. Maudsley, ‘‘and of the sensory ganglia, obviously imply the ex- 
istence of memory, which is indispensable to their formation and exercise. How 
else could these centers be educated? The impressions made upon them,and the 
