266 Habit and Instinct. 



which is accompanied by consciousness. How the physical 

 processes and the conscious states are associated need not 

 concern us here. This is a philosophical problem which 

 lies beyond our present scope. The point on which we 

 have here to fix our attention is that the organic mechanism, 

 somehow associated with choice and control, is dependent 

 on, and yet, in some degree, independent of, the merely 

 organic system concerned in automatic response. Just as 

 the cerebral hemispheres are dependent on the nervous 

 system as a whole, and yet, as Prof. Michael Foster has 

 said, seem to stand apart from the rest of the brain, 

 playing down upon the lower brain centres and those of 

 the spinal cord through the pyramidal tract or its equiva- 

 lent ; so does conscious choice and control stand apart 

 from the involuntary and automatic activities; so is it 

 independent of them in the sense that its sphere is not 

 necessarily restricted to that of merely organic ends. It 

 is, of course, a limited independence. From the organism 

 the controlling system receives its support; and to the 

 organism it affords, in return, effective guidance in the 

 business of organic life; but these conditions being ful- 

 filled, it is for the rest free to develop on its own lines. 

 The body places itself under the control of the cerebral 

 hemispheres; so long as that control is exercised with 

 efficiency they may utilize their surplus energy in any way 

 consistent with the laws of their own development. 



It was long, however, in the history of life on our earth, 

 ere consciousness succeeded in creating for itself a suitable 

 environment under which this surplus energy could run 

 into lines of effective development — not indeed, as is pro- 

 bable, until the human phase of development was reached. 

 Between the first beginnings of choice and control, and 

 this later phase when mental predominates over organic 

 development, lie the several stages of mental evolution in 



