THE KEY TO ANIMAL BEHAVIOR 



between reflex and instinctive actions will disappear. 

 The actions of both men and beasts will turn out to 

 be reactions to external stimuli. Probably, every- 

 thing in this world has its physics, has its genesis 

 and explanation somehow in matter, from chemical 

 affinity to human passion, from animal instincts to 

 the poetic frenzy. That marvelous invention, the 

 phonograph, has its physics as surely as the steam- 

 engine has. But how inadequate the mechanical 

 explanation of it seems. That the tone of a bell, the 

 peal of a bugle, the wail of a violin, the ring of an 

 anvil, and, above all, the soul of the singer, as re- 

 vealed in the human voice, can all be evoked from 

 these fine, wavy lines in the disk — how incredible ! 

 The soul of man certainly has its physics; our 

 thoughts, our emotions, all have their physical 

 basis in protoplasm. I do not think that the brain se- 

 cretes thought as the liver secretes bile, but I do be- 

 lieve our thoughts are as much the result of physio- 

 logical conditions as bile is. An analysis of the brain 

 and an account of all its chemical elements and prop- 

 erties would fail to reveal to us the secret of its 

 thoughts, or why one brain has thoughts of one kind 

 and another of another kind; yet, no doubt the 

 cause is there, the actual, material, physiological 

 cause, if our analysis were keen enough to find it. 

 Our search would be as futile as our search for the 

 complex music that slumbers in the records of the 

 phonograph. 



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