80 PSYCHOLOGY. 



alone. Tliej would be teudencies in the licniisplieres them* 

 selves, modifiable by education, unlike the reflexes of the 

 medulla oblongata, pons, optic lobes and spinal cord. Such 

 cerebral reliexes, if they exist, form a basis quite as good 

 as that which the Meynert scheme offers, for the acquisition 

 of memories and associations which may later result in all 

 sorts of ' changes of partners ' in the psychic world. The 

 diagram of the baby and the candle (see page 25) can be 

 re-edited, if need be, as an entirely cortical transaction. 

 The original tendency to touch will be a cortical instinct; 

 the burn will leave an image in another part of the cortex, 

 which, being recalled by association, will inhibit the touch- 

 ing tendency the next time the candle is joerceived, and 

 excite the tendency to withdraw — so that the retinal picture 

 will, upon that next time, be coupled Avitli the original 

 motor partner of the pain. We thus get whatever psycho- 

 logical truth the Meynert scheme possesses without en- 

 tangling ourselves on a dubious anatomy and physiology. 



Some such shadowy view of the ovolution of the centres, 

 of the relation of consciousness to them, and of the hemi- 

 spheres to the other lobes, is, it seems to me, that in which 

 it is safest to indulge. If it has no other advantage, it at 

 any rate makes us realize how enormous are the gaps in our 

 knowledge, the moment we try to cover the facts by any 

 one formula of a general kind. 



