<)S PSYCHOLOGY. 



tion, for control of the sphiucters, etc., which couhl be 

 excited to activity by tactile stimuli aud as readily reiuhib- 

 sted by others sinuiltiineously ap})lied.* We may therefore 

 plausibly suppose that the rapid reappearance of motility, 

 vision, etc., after their first disappearance in consequence 

 of a cortical mutilation, is due to the passing off of 

 inhibitions exerted by the irritated surface of the wound. 

 The only question is whether all restorations of function 

 must be explained in this one simple way, or whether some 

 part of them may not be owing to the formation of entirely 

 new paths in the remaining centres, by which they become 

 ' educated ' to duties which they did not originally possess. 

 In favor of an indefinite extension of the inhibition theory 

 facts may be cited such as the following : In dogs whose dis- 

 turbances due to cortical lesion have disappeared, they may 

 in consequence of some inner or outer accident reappear in all 

 their intensity for 24 hours or so and then disappear again, f 

 In a dog made half blind by an operation, and then shut 

 up in the dark, vision comes back just as quickly as in 

 other similar dogs whose sight is exercised systematically 

 every day.:}: A dog which has learned to beg before the 

 operation recommences this practice quite spontaneously 

 a week after a double-sided ablation of the motor zone.§ 

 Occasionally, in a pigeon (or even, it is said, in a dog) 

 we see the disturbances less marked immediately after 

 the operation than they are half an hour later. || This 

 would be impossible were they due to the subtraction of the 

 organs which normally carried them on. Moreover the 

 entire drift of recent physiological and pathological specu- 

 lation is towards enthroning inhibition as an ever-present 

 and indispensable condition of orderly acti"\dty. We shall 

 see how great is its importance, in the chapter on the Will. 

 Mr. Charles Mercier considers that no muscular contraction, 

 once begun, would ever stop without it, short of exhaustion 



* Goltz : Pflilger's Archiv, vol. 8, p. 460; Freusberg: ibid.\o\. 10, p. 174 



f Goltz : Verrichtungen des Grosshims, p. 78. 



X Loeb : PflOger's Archiv, vol. 89, p. 276. 



§ Ibid. p. 289. 



( Schrader : ibid. vol. 44, p. 2ia 



