70 PSYCHOLOGY. 



cortex surrounding the wound without exciting the limb 

 to movement, and abhite it, without bringing back the 

 vanished palsy.* It would accordingly seem that the cere- 

 bral centres below the cortex must be the seat of the regained 

 activities. But Goltz destroyed a dog's entire left liemi- 

 ephere, together with the co'^yus striatum and the thalamus 

 on that side, and kejjt him alive until a surprisingly small 

 amount of motor and tactile disturbance remained.t These 

 centres cannot here have accounted for the restitution. He 

 has even, as it would appear,:}: ablated both the hemispheres 

 of a dog, and kept him alive 51 days, able to walk and stand. 

 The corpora striata and thalami in this dog were also prac- 

 tically gone. In view of such results we seem driven, with 

 M. Fran5ois-rranck,§ to fall back on the ganglia lower still, 

 or even on the spinal cord as the ' vicarious ' organ of which 

 we are in quest. If the abeyance of function between the 

 operation and the restoration was due exclusively to inhibi- 

 tion, then we must suppose these lowest centres to be in 

 reality extremely- accomplished organs. They must always 

 have done what we now find them doing after function is 

 restored, even when the hemispheres were intact. Of 

 course this is conceivably the case ; yet it does not seem 

 very plausible. And the a priori considerations wdiich a 

 moment since I said I should urge, make it less plausible 

 still. 



For, in the first place, the brain is essentially a place of 

 currents, which run in organized paths. Loss of function 

 can only mean one of two things, either that a current can 

 no longer run in, or that if it runs in, it can no longer run 

 out, by its old path. Either of these inabilities may come 

 from a local ablation; and ' restitution ' can then only mean 

 that, in spite of a temporary block, an inrunning current has 

 at last become enabled to flow out by its old path again — 

 e.g., the sound of ' give your paw ' discharges after some 



* Fran^ois-Frauck : op. cit. p. 382. Results are somewhat contradictory. 



f Pflilger's Archiv, vol. 42. p. 419. 



X Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1889, p. 372. 



§ Op. cit. p. 387. See pp. 378 to 388 for a discussion of the whole 

 question. Compare also Wundt's Physiol. Psych., 3d ed., i. 225 flf., and 

 Luciani u. Seppili, pp. 243, 293. 



