582 PSYCHOLOGY. 



take place by secondary paths wliicli experience lias 

 formed. 



The diagram (Fig. 87) shows what happens in a nervous 

 system ideally reduced to the fewest possible terms. A 

 stimulus reaching the sense-organ awakens the sensory cell, 

 S ; this by the connate or instinctive path discharges the 

 motor cell, M, which makes the muscle contract; and 

 the contraction arouses the second sensory cell, K, which 



Motor Cell j. -^-(^ --^^( s]^ Sensory Cell 



— . Kinaesthetic Cell 



, Sense-organ 

 Muscle _^^\ 



Fig. 87.* 



may be the organ either of a * resident ' or ' kinsesthetic," 

 or of a 'remote,' sensation. (See above, p. 488.) This 

 cell K again discharges into M. If this were the entire 

 nervous mechanism, the movement, once begun, would 

 be self-maintaining, and would stop only when the parts were 

 exhausted. And this, according to M. Pierre Janet, is what 

 actually ha23pens in catalepsy. A cataleptic patient is an- 

 aesthetic, speechless, motionless. Consciousness, so far as 

 we can judge, is abolished. Nevertheless the limbs will 

 retain whatever jDosition is impressed upon them from 

 without, and retain it so long that if it be a strained and 

 unnatural position, the phenomenon is regarded by Char- 

 cot as one of the feAv conclusive tests against hypnotic 

 subjects shamming, since hypnotics can be made catalep- 



*Tljis figure and the following ones are purely schematic, and must 

 not be supposed to involve any theory about protoplasmatic and axis-cylin- 

 der processes. The latter, according to Golgi and others, emerge from the 

 base of the cell, and each cell has but one. They alone form a nervous 

 network. The reader will of course also understand that none of the 

 hypothetical constructions which I make from now to the end of the chap- 

 ter are proposed as detinite accounts of what happens. All I aim at is to 

 make it clear in some more or less symbolic fasliion that the formation of 

 new paths, the learning of habits, etc., is in some mechanical way con 

 ceivable. Compare what was said in Vol. I. p. 81, note. 



