156 Human Personality. 



Until very recently, however, no observer appears to 

 have fully comprehended the profound psychic significance 

 of this extraordinary web of living fibrils. 



Gehuchten, Obersteiner and His called attention to the 

 exti;aordinary length of the protoplasmic branches of brain 

 cells, and to the extended and intricate networks which 

 they form. Conjecture was attracted to them; but it 

 was not until the growth of our knowledge had embraced, 

 other discoveries that these marvelous networks of senti- 

 ent, protoplasmic threads were identified not only as a 

 means of association of cell with cell, but as the con- 

 sentient web of living matter by means of which self- 

 consciousness and personal identity exist and are possible. 

 In a word, that it is by means of this vast network of 

 interactive fibers, fibrils and filaments that the many 

 millions of cells of the brain are able to live as one 

 self-conscious entity and give rise to a personal intellect. 



Histologically, as the abode of the genus of intellectual 

 cells, the human brain must be conceived of as a vast 

 skein or congeries of nerve fibers, on the outer surface of 

 which, carefully roofed over by the cranium and tough 

 membranes, lie the moat important groups of cells. 



It is of these cell groups of the convoluted, outer sur- 

 face or cortex of the brain that we shall here speak 

 almost exclusively, scarcely more than referring to the 

 great nether group or groups, commonly described as the 

 nuclear and fusiform cells ; for it is in the cortex that 



