Mandiester Memoirs, Vol xlii. (1898), No. \%, 41 



linked axon is thereby interrupted, and the activity of the 

 cell suspended, and that this is the basis of sleep. 



I am free to confess that, so far as I know, no adequate 

 proof has, as yet, been offered, that under ordinary, what 

 we may call natural, influences any such retraction does 

 take place. Moreover, while it is true that the power to 

 change its form, as seen in amoeboid movement and in 

 muscular contraction and relaxation, seems a fundamental 

 attribute of undifferentiated living matter or protoplasm, as 

 it is sometimes called, it is also true that the differentiation 

 of protoplasm means the exaltation of certain powers at 

 the expense of others ; and in that extreme differentiation 

 which protoplasm undergoes in being fashioned into 

 nervous material, especially into the nervous material 

 whose activity is manifested by psychical events, we 

 should have expected that the law of economy would have 

 extinguished, even to almost the last remnant, the 

 lower function of mere movement. Indeed, it seems 

 probable that the diminution or suspense of neural 

 changes, especially those manifesting themselves in 

 psychical events, would be achieved by diminishing the 

 molecular changes, to carry on which the material is so 

 exquisitely fashioned, rather than still burdening that 

 material with the grosser labour involved in a change of 

 form. We should expect a cessation of activity in a 

 unit to be brought about by dulness of the appendage 

 to a dendrite towards the influences exerted by the 

 terminal of an axon, a dulness which is a mere phase 

 of its normal molecular processes, rather than by bodily 

 retraction, which must call into play molecular processes 

 of a wholly different nature. 



Indeed, this hypothesis of gross change of form as an 

 explanation of psychical events may be objected to on 

 the very ground that it leads us away from a line of 

 thought which is probably far more fruitful, namely, that 



