78 PSYCHOLOGY. 



spliereless pigeon is in the highest degree tame, and tears 

 man as little as cat or bird of prey." * 



Putting together now all the facts and reflections which 

 we have been through, it seems to me that ive can no longer 

 hold strictly to the Meynert scheme. If anywhere, it will 

 apply to the lowest animals ; but in them especially the 

 lower centres seem to have a degree of spontaneity and 

 choice. On the whole, I think that we are driven to sub- 

 stitute for it some such general conception as the following, 

 which allows for zoological difterences as we know them, 

 and is vague and elastic enough to receive any number of 

 future discoveries of detail. 



CONCLUSION. 



All the centres, in all animals, whilst they are in on© 

 aspect mechanisms, probably are, or at least once were, 

 organs of consciousness in another, although the conscious- 

 ness is doubtless much more developed in the hemispheres 

 than it is anywhere else. The consciousness must every- 

 where prefer some of the sensations which it gets to others ;. 

 and if it can remember these in their absence, however 

 diml}-, they must be its ends of desire. If, moreover, it can 

 identify in memory any motor discharges which may have 

 led to such ends, and associate the latter with them, then 

 these motor discharges themselves may in turn become 

 desired as means. This is the development of ivill ; and it» 

 realization must of course be proportional to the possible 

 complication of the consciousness. Even the spinal cord 

 may possibly have some little power of will in this sense, 

 and of efibrt towards modified behavior in consequence of 

 new experiences of sensibility, f 



* Pflilger's Archiv, vol. 44, p. 230-1. 



f Naturally, as Schiff long ago pointed out (Lehrb. d. ]\Iuskel-u. Ner- 

 venphysiologie, 1859, p. 213 flf.),tlie ' Riickenmarksseele,' if it now exist, 

 can have no higher sense-consciousness, for its incoming currents are 

 solely from the skin. But it may, in its dim way, both feel, prefer, and 

 dfcsire. See, for the view favorable to the text: G. H. Lewes, The Physiol- 

 ogy of Common Life (1860). chap, ix, Goltz (Nerveucentren des Frosches 

 1869, pp. 102-130) thinks that the frog's cord hasno adaptative power. This 

 liii*y b*^ the case in such experiments as his, because the beheaded frog's 



I 



