740 The American Naturalist. [September, 
ment nerve force is pretty well diffused throughout the body, 
and that no particular set of nerves isengaged. It would seem 
that in such instances there is excellent evidence of the 
absence of an emotional centre and the shaken up general nerv- 
ous system can find no special outlet for the feeling. 
When a rupture of a blood vessel in the motor centres of the 
brain causes paralysis, and in brain degenerative states, such 
as are induced by alcoholism and senility, there is an increase 
of emotionalism ; the patient may cry and laugh easily, but in 
such instances the higher control is lost, impressions are 
diverted from former channels in the brain to the more auto- 
matic ones lower down, but the emotionalism is the product of 
brain injury and is a debased condition, and hence has no 
centre in the brain. The fact that the brain base at its junc- 
tion with the spinal cord has laughing and crying reflex 
centres may warrant this area being named an emotional 
centre in a very limited sense, but strictly speaking, there can 
be no such thing as a centre for the emotions, for laughing and 
crying are but two among a great number of emotional exhibi- 
tions and they may occur independently of consciousness. 
Instinct AND Reason. A study of the construction of 
the *nervous system should convince anyone that the more 
definite the tracts that pass between nerve centres and 
muscles engaged in habitual performances, the more instinc- 
tively are motions enabled. Muscles are developed by exercise, 
and certain kinds of work give special peculiarities to those 
muscles, and it is reasonable to suppose that nerve bundles 
passing to such muscles, and the nerve centres in the cord and 
brain are, through: participating in the work, also developed, 
arranged, and adjusted, to enable harmonious adaptation of 
means to ends. When one becomes an adept at piano playing, 
a trade, etc., many complicated acts may be performed 
“instinctively,” automatically, and even unconsciously, as — 
luring somnambulism, some epileptic feats, or in the routine 
work of daily normal life. We would infer from this that the 
acts instinctively performed by animals, even when just born, 
are reflexes that depend upon a definite arrangement of nerve 
strands transmitted in many cases through ages. 
