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to find in the occipital cortex cells possessing characters 

 which we might regard as conspicuously receptive. If 

 we examine the nature of the terminal organs in which 

 axons are definitely known to end, on which they work, 

 on which they spend their neural energies, producing 

 something unlike their own actions, we find these to 

 be either muscular fibres or epithelial glandular cells or 

 analogous elements. If there were between the neural 

 events of the axon in the optic radiations and the psy- 

 chical labours of the cortical cell some such a difference as 

 exists between the changes which constitute the nervous 

 impulses of a spinal efferent nerve fibre and the changes 

 which constitute contraction of a muscular fibre, or the 

 secreting activity of a gland cell, and the view of which I 

 am speaking seems to indicate such a difference, then, I 

 say, we should expect to find in the occipital cortex, cells 

 whose bodies, even if not of large dimensions, at all 

 events possessed characters indicating that they were 

 the seats of important specific activities. 



As a matter of fact, we find no such cells, no cells 

 whose bodies even suggest such specific characters. Indeed, 

 here, as elsewhere throughout the nervous system, the 

 cell body, the nucleus with its perikaryon exists, as I 

 insisted upon in the earlier general discussion, for the 

 good of the axon, and its characters seem to be deter- 

 mined by the work which the axon has to do. In 

 illustration of this I might quote the fact that large 

 conspicuous pyramidal cells, though scanfy in number, 

 are found in the occipital cortex. These, however, are 

 not receptive cells, the workshops of psychical sensations ; 

 they are motor cells, or, more exactly, they are cells whose 

 axons pass directly to motor mechanisms, and their 

 relatively large size is a feature which seems common to, at 

 least, most distinctly motor cells, and is probably connected 

 with the fact that the axons of these are usually of con- 



