1885.] The Relations of Mind and Matter. 851 
consequence that if thought is nerve motion it must be some 
motion of elongated fibers. This motion enters the brain as a 
mode of vibration in these fibers, and we can conceive of its per- 
sistence in or on them in no way except as a vibration. 
Yet to theorize about a persistent vibration is to theorize on 
the impossible, and to set aside all the results of the science of 
acoustics. There is no such thing in nature as a vibration per- 
sistently active in a limited region. No limited chord can vibrate 
unceasingly. Its vibrations must be rapidly transmitted to the 
surrounding material, or be converted into some other mode of 
motion. Otherwise the chord would have to be surrounded by 
a perfect vacuum, and be utterly free from friction. No such 
conditions exist in the brain fibrilla. Thus a vibratory nerve 
current, even if transferred by induction to a closed cerebral cir- 
cuit, could not possibly retain its original condition. It must 
make its way onward, be transferred to surrounding. material, or 
be quickly transformed into some other mode of motion. The 
conditions of the mental organism require that this mode of 
motion shall be an organizing one, a persistent motor affection of 
some substance. The brain fibrille, which are essentially con- 
tinuations of the nerve fibers, cannot constitute such a definite 
and self-centered organism. Neither can the cell substance sur- 
rounding these fibrilla. It is to this granular or homogeneous 
protoplasm seemingly that the cerebral activity is due. The 
motor impulses conveyed inward by the fibers appear to instigate 
chemical changes in this substance precisely as they do in the 
muscle substance. It falls into a lower stage of integration and 
sets free the energies which arouse the mind to action. Thus 
the brain cells seem solely instruments of the mind. But for 
them the mind would remain dormant. They yield, under the 
influence of external impulses or of impulses derived from the 
mind itself, energies which call the mental organism into activity. 
But this very evident characteristic, and the constant cerebral 
changes which it occasions, strongly indicate that the mental 
organism is distinct from the cerebrum, though to all appearance 
very intimately connected with it. 
It may seem absurd to speak of the existence of an organism 
thus related to the cerebrum yet not evident to our senses. Yet the 
more we consider the brain as the organ of mind the less does it 
seem adapted to the duties thus imputed to it. It has of late 
VOL, XIX,—NO, IX, 56 
