v.] "Modern Symposium." 71 



combined into molecular movements in tissue — in 

 muscular tissue, in adipose, in cellular, and in nerve- 

 tissue, and so on. Every undulation that takes place 

 among the molecules of a nerve represents some simpler 

 form of molecular motion contained in food that has 

 been assimilated ; and, for every given quantity of 

 the former kind of motion that appears, an equiva- 

 lent quantity of the latter kind disappears in produc- 

 ing it. And so we may go on, keeping the account 

 strictly balanced, until we reach the peculiar discharge 

 of undulatory motion between cerebral ganglia that 

 uniformly accompanies a feeling or state of conscious- 

 ness. 



What now occurs ? Along with this peculiar form 

 of undulatory motion there occurs a feeling — the pri- 

 mary element of a thought or of an emotion. But 

 does the motion produce the feeling, in the same sense 

 that heat produces light .-' Does a given quantity of 

 motion disappear, to be replaced by an equivalent 

 quantity of feeling ? By no means. The nerve-mo- 

 tion, in disappearing, is simply distributed into other 

 nerve-motions in various parts of the body, and these 

 other nerve-motions, in their turn, become variously 

 metamorphosed into motions of contraction in muscles, 

 motions of secretion in glands, motions of assimila- 

 tion in tissues generally, or into yet other nerve- 



