Its Composite and Dissoluble Nature. 153 



should assume a higher function of intelligence, the func- 

 tion of determining the relative strength and value of the 

 conveyed impulses which pass through them, and of acting 

 for the common good by judging of them, neutralizing 

 some of the least important, or intensifying others, and, in 

 general, regulating and administering for all. And in 

 these cells at the crossings, or midway the incipient nerve, 

 we find a nerve ganglion developed, that is to say, a little 

 brain for that tract of cells and nerve lines. These cells 

 of ganglia have the magisterial office thrust upon them by 

 the importunity of their fellow cells in the multicellular 

 union. They find themselves the recipients of confided 

 feeling from the others, on all sides ; they are stimulated 

 by it and led to respond as judges of such feeling. From 

 their situation and the necessity incident to it, the faculty 

 of discrimination and of judgment as to the nature, char- 

 acter and motive of these incoming currents of sensation 

 is in time developed. 



The neurons of the brain have thus been made the 

 repositories and agents for the estimation of a thousand 

 simultaneous currents of these partly-interpreted sensa- 

 tions, transmitted to it from all portions of the organism, 

 and particularly from the organs of special sense, the 

 eye, the, ear, the olfactory and the gustatory tracts. 



Thus impressed into the service of the organism, the 

 neurons have developed in numbers adequate to that 

 service. Instead of a tiny ganglion for the receipt of 



