Manchester Memoirs, Vol xlii. (1898), No. \%. 



THE WILDE LECTURE. 



XI L " On the Physical Basis of Psychical Events." 



By Professor MICHAEL FOSTER, Sec.R.S. 



Delivered March 2gth, i8g8. 



I very much fear that the title of my lecture (though 

 I have found no better one) may have raised expectations 

 which I cannot fulfil. We all know that what we subjec- 

 tively recognise in ourselves and infer in others as 

 psychical life, willing, feeling, thinking, is dependent on 

 the integrity of that superficial layer of nervous material 

 which we call the cortex of the cerebral hemispheres ; by 

 integrity I mean the well-being not only of the layer itself 

 but of all its connections. We all know that physical 

 changes in the cortex and changes in psychical life may 

 be said, in a broad way, to accompany each other. I do 

 not propose, in what I now have to say, to discuss what is 

 sometimes spoken of as the connection of body and mind. 

 I do not wish to make any attempt at throwing a bridge 

 over the gap between the objective event and its subjective 

 correlative. The task I have in hand is the simple and 

 modest one of gathering together the fragments of know- 

 ledge which we at present possess as to what changes 

 capable of objective appreciation, changes which we may 

 accordingly speak of as physical, are going on in the 

 cortex, while psychical developments are taking place, 

 studying the parallelism between the one and the other, 

 without daring to lay hold of the bonds which tie the two 

 together. 



September ijth, i8g8. 



