760 The Relations of Mind and Matter. (August, 
electric analogy, we have considered it as transformed into heat. 
Such is what must become of it in a purely reflex organism, 
whose whole duty is to let certain currents pass and to repress 
others. But only in general cases does the repressed electric 
current become heat. In particular cases it becomes magnetism, 
mass motion and other forms of energy. Such seems’to be also 
the case with the sensory current. As the checked electric cur- 
rent may be so employed as to produce a permanent condition or 
modification in certain matter, so is the checked sensory current. 
Memory results. That is to say that some substance contigu- 
ous to, or forming part of, the ganglion becomes permanently 
modified by the checked current of energy and assumes a condi- 
tion which is persistent. And the change thus produced is not 
identical in character for every condition of energy, but varies 
with every variation in the producing cause. Thus the special 
character of the sensation is indicated in the particular effect it 
has exerted on the modified substance. 
Such seems to be the character of memory. It is a condition 
we produced by a motor influence. But motion can act only upon 
substance. And wherever it yields a localized, permanent, inhe- 
rent effect this effect can only be an organizing one, exerted upon 
some substance. No motor effect can persist unchanged in any 
substance except it take part in the organization of that substance 
and produce in it some permanent modification. And it is quite 
within the limits of possibility that such a new condition may 
react on the current-bearing fibers and reproduce motor energy 
in the latter. Such seems to be the characteristic of memory. 
It is not necessarily conscious. Memory, as a rule, persists out- 
side the range of consciousness. But it is necessarily a definite 
and permanent condition in something, and the word something 
necessarily signifies some substance. 
Thus the current of motor energy which forces its way from 
external nature into the body, and is borne inward over the chan- 
nel of the nerves, yields two opposite effects. When it reaches 
the muscles its effect is disorganizing. It causes chemical. disin- 
_ tegration with an outflow of general energy, in which that of the 
oe nerves is merged and lost. When it is checked in the ganglion | 
a es it seems to exert an organizing effect, perhaps attended by chem- 
- ‘ion, or the formation of chemical molecules of a high 
: order. As to this, of course, nothing can be said, but that it 
