1885.] The Relations of Mind and Matter. 765 
animals displayed much stronger reflex action than normal ones. 
In normal animals much of this distributed energy ascends to the 
cerebrum, where it becomes converted into consciousness and 
ideas. 
According to Luys the optic thalami are intermediary sensory 
organs interposed between the purely reflex phenomena of the 
spinal chord and the activities of psychical life. So the corpora 
striata are seated at the summit of the motor nerve system. Thus 
it becomes a question of gangliar discrimination whether a sen- 
sory impression, on reaching the optic thalamus, shall be at once 
transferred to the corpus striatum and thence through the motor 
nerves to the muscles, or shall proceed to the cerebrum and — 
motor impulses descend to the corpus striatum through that 
channel. In this latter case we venture to hypothesize that all 
reflex action vanishes, and that all sensory impressions that 
ascend to the cerebrum end there. If subsequent action take place 
it must be in response to new initial energy emanating from the 
mind and wholly governed by the intelligence. 
These considerations lead to the idea that the cerebral organ 
may be in an anatomical sense a secondary circuit. That is, that 
the nerve fibers of the body may not be in direct communication 
with the cerebrum. It may be possible that the sensory fibers 
that enter the basal ganglia are continuous through the nerve. 
cells only with the outgoing motor fibers, and that the cerebral 
fibers which enter these ganglia form a circuit of their own 
through fibrillz of the same cells. In sucha case the influence 
of the primary on the secondary nerve circuit could be inductive 
only, and we would have a mechanism similar to that of an elec- 
tric inductive system. This idea of course can have no warrant 
in experiment, but it is offered as a suggestion that the many 
close analogies between the nervous and the electric current may 
be completed by a condition like that of induction, which plays 
so prominent and important a part in electric phenomena. The 
sheathing of the nerve fibers by the medulla seems to be an insu- 
lating apparatus. Their naked condition in the ganglia must 
-favor induction, and renders it possible both that the transfer of 
a sensory current to two or more outgoing nerves may be through 
induction between the fibrillz, and that its transfer to a cerebral 
nerve may be through induction. It is not impossible, indeed, 
that the check to the sensory current in a ganglion may arise 
