176 PSYCHOLOGY. 



stuff theory, however, though scotched, is, we may be sure^ 

 not killed. If we ascribe consciousness to unicellular 

 animalcules, then single cells can have it, and analogy 

 should make us ascribe it to the several cells of the brain, 

 each individually taken. And what a convenience would it 

 not be f ( )r the psychologist if, by the adding together of vari- 

 ous doses of this separate-cell-consciousness, he could treat 

 thought as a kind of stuff or material, to be measured out 

 in great or small amount, increased and subtracted from, 

 and baled about at will ! He feels an imperious craving 

 to be allowed to construct synthetically the successive 

 mental states which he describes. The mind-stuff theory 

 so easily admits of the construction being made, that it 

 seems certain that 'man's unconquerable mind ' will devote 

 much future pertinacity and ingenuity to setting it on its 

 legs again and getting it into some sort of plausible work- 

 ing-order. I will therefore conclude the chapter with some 

 consideration of the remaining difficulties which beset the 

 matter as it at present stands. 



DIFFICULTY OF STATING THE CONNECTION BETWEEN MINi> 



AND BRAIN. 



It will be remembered that in our criticism of the theory 

 of the integration of successive conscious units into a feel- 

 ing of musical pitch, we decided that whatever integration 

 there was was that of the air-pulses into a simjDler and sim- 

 pler sort of physical effect, as the propagations of material 

 change got higher and higher in the nervous system. At 

 last, we said (p. 23), there results some simple and massive 

 process in the auditory centres of the hemispherical cortex, 

 to which, as a ichole, the feeling of musical pitch directly 

 corresponds. Already, in discussing the localization of 

 functions in the brain, I had said (pp. 158-9) that conscious- 

 ness accompanies the stream of innervation through that 

 organ and varies in quality with the character of the cur- 

 rents, being mainly of things seen if the occipital lobes are 

 much involved, of things heard if the action is focalized in 

 the temporal lobes, etc., etc.; and I had added that a vague 

 formula like this was as much as one could safely venture 

 on in the actual state of physiology. The facts of mental 



