The Principles of Psychology, Vols. 1-2

* conceptual * thought (published since the body of my text and my note were written) connotes conveniently the difference which I seek to point out. See also his Mental Evolution in Man, p. 197 ff., for proofs of the fact that in a receptual way brutes cognize the mental states of other brutes and men. * This matter of confusion is important and interesting. Since confusion is mistaking the wrong part of the phenomenon for the whole, whilst reasoning is, according to our definition, based on the substitution of the right part for the whole, it might be said that confusion and reasoning are generically the same process. I believe that they are so, and that the only difference between a muddle-head and a genius is that between extracting wrong characters and right ones. In other words, a muddle-head-

Thus, then, the characters extracted by animals are rery few, and always related to their immediate interests or emotions. That dissociation by varying concomitants, which in man is based so largely on association by similarity, hardly seems to take place at all in the mind of brutes. One total thought suggests to them another total thought, and they find themselves acting with propriety, they know not why. The great, the fundamental, defect of their minds seems to be the inability of their groups of ideas to break across in unaccustomed places. They are enslaved to routine, to cut-and-dried thinking ; and if the most prosaic of human beings could be transported into his dog's mind, he would be appalled at the utter absence of fancy which reigns there.* Thoughts will not be found to call up their similars, but only their habitual successors. Sunsets will not suggest heroes' deaths, but supper-time. This is why man is the only metaphysical animal. To wonder why the universe should be as it is presupposes the notion of its being different, and a brute, which never reduces the actual to fluidity by breaking up its literal sequences in his imagination, can never form such a notion. He takes the world simply for granted, and never wonders at it at all.

Professor Striimpell quotes a dog-story which is probably a type of many others. The feat performed looks like abstract reasoning; but an acquaintance with all the circumstances shows it to have been a random trick learned by habit. The story is as follows : '' I have two dogs, a small, long-legged pet dog and a rather large watch-dog. Immediately beyond the house-court is the garden, into which one enters through a low lattice-gate which is closed by a latch

ed person is a genius spoiled in the making. I think it will be admitted that all eminently muddle-headed persons have the temperament of genius. They are constantly breaking away from the usual consecutions of concretes. A common associator by contiguity is too closely tied to routine to get muddle-headed. * The horse is a densely stupid animal, as far as everything goes except contiguous association. We reckon him intelligent, partly because he looks so handsome, partly because he has such a wonderful faculty of contiguous association and can be so quickly moulded into a mass of set habits. Had he anything of reasoning intelligence, he would be a lew faithful slave than he is.

on the yard-side. This latch is opened by lifting it. Besides this, moreover, the gate is fastened on the gardenside by a string nailed to the gate-post Here, as often as one wished, could the following sight be observed. If the little dog was shut in the garden and he wished to get out, he placed himself before the gate and barked. Immediately the large dog in the court would hasten to him and raise the latch with his nose while the little dog on the garden-side leaped up and, catching the string in his teeth, bit it through ; whereupon the big one wedged his snout between the gate and the post, pushed the gate open, and the little dog slipped through. Certainly reasoning seems here to prevail. In face of it, however, and although the dogs arrived of themselves, and without human aid, at their solution of the gate question, I am able to point out that the complete action was pieced together out of accidental experiences which the dogs followed, I might say, unconsciously. While the large dog was young, he was allowed, like the little one, to go into the garden, and therefore the gate was usually not latched, but simply closed. Now if he saw anyone go in, he would follow by thrusting his snout between gate and post, and so pushing the gate open. When he was grown I forbade his being taken in, and had the gate kept latched. But he naturally still tried to follow when anyone entered and tried iii the old fashion to open it, which he could no longer do. Now it fell out that once, while making the attempt, he raised his nose higher than usual and hit the latch from below so as to lift it off its hook, and the gate unclosed. From thenceforth he made the same movement of the head when trying to open it, and, of course, with the same result. He now knew how to open the gate when it was latched.

"The little dog had been the large one's teacher in many things, especially in the chasing of cats and the catching of mice and moles; so when the little one was heard barking eagerly, the other always hastened to him. If the barking came from the garden, he opened the gate to get inside. But meanwhile the little dog, who wanted to get out the moment the gate opened, slipped out between the big one's legs, and so the appearance of his having come with the intention of letting him out arose. And that it was simply an appearance transpired from the fact that when the little dog did not succeed at once in getting out, the large one ran in and nosed about the garden, plainly showing that he had expected to find something there. In order to stop this opening of the gate I fastened a string on the garden-side which, tightly drawn, held the gate firm against the post, so that if the yard dog raised the latch and let go, it would every time fall back on to the hook. And this device was successful for quite a time, until it happened one day that on my return from a walk upon which the little dog had accompanied me I crossed the garden, and in passing through the gate the dog remained behind, and refused to come to my whistle. As it was beginning to rain, and I knew how he disliked to get wet, I closed the gate in order to punish him in this manner. But I had hardly reached the house ere he was before the gate, whining and crying most piteously

for the rain was falling faster and faster. The big dog, to whom the rain was a matter of perfect indifference, was instantly on hand and tried his utmost to open the gate, but naturally without success. Al- most in despair the little dog bit at the gate, at the same time springing into the air in the attempt to jump over it, when he chanced to catch the string in his teeth ; it broke, and the gate flew open. Now he knew the secret and thenceforth bit the string whenever he wished to get out, so that I was obliged to change it.

" That the big dog in raising the latch did not in the least know i\\dit the latch closed the gate, that the raising of the same opened it, but that he merely repeated the automatic blow with his snout which had once had such happy consequences, transpires from the following : the gate leading to the barn is fastened with a latch precisely like the one on the garden-gate, only placed a little higher, still easily within the dog's reach. Here, too, occasionally the little dog is confined, and when he barks the big one makes every possible effort to open the gate, but it has never occurred to him to push the latch up. The brute cannot draw conclusions, that is, he cannot think." *

Other classical differentice of man besides that of being the only reasoning animal, also seem consequences of his unrivalled powers of similar association. He has, e.g., been called ' the laughing animal.' But humor has often been defined as the recognition of identities in things different. When the man in Coriolanus says of that hero that " there is no more mercy in him than there is milk in a male tiger," both the invention of the phrase and its enjoyment by the hearer depend on a peculiarly perplexing power to associate ideas by similarity.

* Th Schumann : Journal Daheim, No. 19, 1878. Quoted by Strilmpell : Die Geisteskrafte der Menschen verglichen mit denen der Thiere (Leipzig, 1878), p. 39. Cats are notorious for the skill with which they will open latches, locks, etc. Their feats are usually ascribed to their reasoning powers. But Dr. Romanes well remarks (Mental Evolution, etc., p. .351, note) that we ought first to be sure that the actions are not due to mere association. A cat is constantly playing with things with her paws ; a trick accidentally hit upon may be retained. Romanes notes the fact that the iinimals most skilled in this way need not be the most generally intelligent^ but those which have the best corporeal members for handling things, ijat's paws, horse's lips, elephant's trunk, cow's horns. The monkey has both the corporeal and the intellectual superiority. And my deprecatory remarks on animal reasoning in the text apply far less to the quadrumana than to quadrupeds. — On the possible fallacies in interpreting animals' minds, compare C. L. Morgan in Mind, xi. 174 (1886).

guage is assuredly a capital distinction between man and brute. But it may readily be shown how this distinction merely flows from those we have pointed out, easy dissociation of a representation into its ingredients, and association by similarity. Language is a system of sigm^ different from the things signified, but able to suggest them. No doubt brutes have a number of such signs. When a dog yelps in front of a door, and his master, understanding his desire, opens it, the dog may, after a certain number of repetitions, get to repeat in cold blood a yelp which was at first the involuntary interjectional expression of strong emotion. The same dog may be taught to ' beg ' for food, and afterwards come to do so deliberately when hungry. The dog also learns to understand the signs of men, and the word * rat * uttered to a terrier suggests exciting thoughts of the rat-hunt. If the dog had the varied impulse to vocal utterance which some other animals have, he would probably repeat the word * rat ' whenever he spontaneously happened to think of a rat-hunt — he no doubt does have it as an auditory image, just as a parrot calls out different words spontaneously from its repertory, and having learned the name of a given dog will utter it on the sight of a different dog. In each of these separate cases the particular sign may be consciously noticed by the animal, as distinct from the particular thing signified, and will thus, so far as it goes, be a true manifestation of language. But when we come to man we find a great difference. He has a ddiherate intention to apply a sign to everything. The linguistic impulse is with him generalized and systematic. For things hitherto unnoticed or unfelt, he desires a sign before he has one. Even though the dog should possess his * yelp ' for this thing, his * beg ' for that, and his auditory image * rat ' for a third thing, the matter with him rests there. If a fourth thing interests him for which no sign happens already to have been learned, he remains tranquilly without it and goes no further.

But the man postulates it, its absence irritates him, and he ends by inventing ii This GENERAL PURPOSE constitutes y I take it, the peculiarity of human speech, and explains its prodigious devdopm/ent How, then, does the general purpose arise ? It arises fts soon as the notion of a sign as snch, apart from any particular import, is born ; and this notion is bom by dissociation from the outstanding portions of a number of concrete cases of signification. The * yelp,' the * beg,' the * rat,' differ as to their several imports and natures. They agree only in so far as they have the same use — to be signs, to stand for something more important than themselves. The dog whom this similarity could strike would have grasped the sign per se as such, and would probably thereupon become a general sign-maker, or speaker in the human sense. But how can the similarity strike him? Not without the juxtaposition of the similars (in virtue of the law we have laid down (p. 506), that in order to be segregated an experience must be repeated with varying concomitants) — not unless the *yelp* of the dog at the moment it occurs recalls to him his * beg,' by the delicate bond of their subtle similarity of use — not till then can this thought flash through his mind : " Why, yelp and beg, in spite of all their unlikeness, are yet alike in this : that they are actions, signs, which lead to important boons. Other boons, any boons, may then be got by other signs !" This reflection made, the gulf is passed. Animals probably never make it, because the bond of similarity is not delicate enough. Each sign is drowned in its import, and never awakens other signs and other imports in juxtaposition. The rat-hunt idea is too absorbingly interesting in itself to be interrupted by anything so uncontiguous to it as the idea of the * beg for food,' or of * the door-open yelp,' nor in their turn do these awaken the rat-hunt idea.

In the human child, however, these ruptures of corttiguous association are very soon made ; far off cases of signusing arise when we make a sign now ; and soon language is launched. The child in each case makes the discovery for himself. No one can help him except by furnishing him with the conditions. But as he is constituted, the conditions will sooner or later shoot together into the result.* * There are two other conditions of language in the human being, additional to association by similarity, that assist its action, or rather pave the way for it. These are: first, the great natural loquacity; and, gecond, the

The exceedingly interesting account which Dr. Howe gives of the education of his various blind-deaf mutes illus* trates this point admirably. He began to teach Laura Bridgman by gumming raised letters on various familiar articles. The child was taught by mere contiguity to pick out a certain number of particular articles when made to feel the letters. But this was merely a collection of particular signs, out of the mass of which the general purpose of signification had not yet been extracted by the child's mind. Dr. Howe compares his situation at this moment to that of one lowering a line to the bottom of the deep sea in which Laura's soul lay, and waiting until she should spontaneously take hold of it and be raised into the light. The moment came, * accompanied by a radiant flash of intelligence and glow of joy '; she seemed suddenly to become aware of the general purpose imbedded in the different details of all these signs, and from that moment her education went on with extreme rapidity.

Another of the great capacities in which man has been said to differ fundamentally from the animal is that of posgreat imitativeness of man. The first produces the original reflex interjectional sign; the second (as Bleek has well shown) fixes it, stamps it, and ends by multiplying the number of determinate specific signs which are a requisite preliminary to the general conscious purpose of sign-making, which I have called the characteristic human element in language. The way in which imitativeness fixes the meaning of signs is this: "When a pri« meval man has a given emotion, he utters his natural interjection; or when (to avoid supposing that the reflex sounds are exceedingly determinate by nature) a group of such men experience a common emotion, and one takes the lead in the cry, the others cry like him from sympathy or imitativeness. Now, let one of the group hear another, who is in presence of the experience, utter the cry; he, even without the experience, will repeat the cry from pure imitativeness. But, as he repeats the sign, he will be reminded by it of his own former experience. Thus, first, he has the sign with the emotion; then, without it; then, with it again. It is "dissociated by change of concomitants "; he feels it as a separate entity and yet as having a connection with the emotion. Immediately it becomes possible for him to couple it deliberately with the emotion, in cases where the latter would either have provoked no interjectional cry or not the same one. In a word, his mental procedure tends to fix this cry on that emotion; and when this occurs, in many instances, he is provided with a stock of signs, like the yelp, beg, rat of the dog, each of which suggests a determinate image. On this stock, then, similarity works in the way above explained.

sessing self-consciousness or reflective knowledge of himself as a thinker. But this capacity also flows from our criterion, for (without going into the matter very deeply) we may say that the brute never reflects on himself as a thinker, because he has never clearly dissociated, in the full concrete act of thought, the element of the thing thought of and the operation by which he thinks it. They remain always fused, conglomerated — just as the interjectional vocal sign of the brute almost invariably merges in his mind with the thing signified, and is not independently attended to in se.*

Now, the dissociation of these two elements probably occurs first in the child's mind on the occasion of some error or false expectation which would make him experience the shock of difference between merely imagining a thing and getting it. The thought experienced once with the concomitant reality, and then without it or with opposite concomitants, reminds the child of other cases in which the same provoking phenomenon occurred. Thus the general ingredient of error may be dissociated and noticed per se, and from the notion of his error or wrong thought to that of his thought in general the transition is easy. The brute, no doubt, has plenty of instances of error and disappointment in his life, but the similar shock is in him most likely always swallowed up in the accidents of the actual case. An expectation disappointed may breed dubiety as to the realization of that particular thing when the dog next expects it. But that disappointment, that dubiety, while they are present in the mind, will not call up other cases, in which the material details were different, but this feature of pos-

* See the * Evolution of Self-consciousness ' in * Philosophical Discussions,' by Chauncey Wright (New York: Henry Holt & Co. , 1877). Dr. Ro- manes, in the book from which I have already quoted, seeks to show that the ' consciousness of truth as truth ' and the deliberate intention to predicate (which are the characteristics of higher human reasoning) presuppose a consciousness of ideas as such, as things distinct from their objects ; and that this consciousness depends on our having made signs for them by language. My text seems to me to include Dr. Romanes's facts, and formulates them in what to me is a more elementary way, though the reader who wishes to understand the matter better should go to his clear and patient exposition also.

sible error was the same. The brute will, therefore, stop short of dissociating the general notion of error per se, and a fortiori will never attain the conception of Thought itself as such. We may then, we think, consider it proven that the most elementary single difference between the human mind and that oj brutes lies in this dejlciency on the brute's part to associate ideas by similarity — characters, the abstraction of which depends on this sort of association, must in the brute always remain drowned, swamped in the total phenomenon which they help constitute, and never used to reason from. If a character stands out alone, it is always some obvious sensible quality like a sound or a smell which is instinctively exciting and lies in the line of the animal's propensities ; or it is some obvious sign which experience has habitually coupled with a consequence, such as, for the dog, the sight of his master's hat on and the master's going out.

But, now, since nature never makes a jump, it is evident that we should find the lowest men occupying in this respect an intermediate position between the brutes and the highest men. And so we do. Beyond the analogies which their own minds suggest by breaking up the literal sequence of their experience, there is a whole world of analogies which they can appreciate when imparted to them by their betters, but which they could never excogitate alone. This answers the question why Darwin and Newton had to be waited for so long. The flash of similarity between an apple and the moon, between the rivalry for food in nature and the rivalry for man's selection, was too recondite to have occurred to any but exceptional minds. Genius, then, as has been already said, is identical tvith the possession of similar association to an extreme degree. Professor Bain says : " This I count the leading fact of genius. I consider it quite impossible to afford any explanation of intellectual originality except on the supposition of unusual energy on this point." Alike in the arts, in literature, in practical affairs, and in science, association by similarity is the prime condition of success.

But as, according to our view, there are two stages in reasoned thought, one where similarity merely operates to call up cognate thoughts, and another farther stage, where the bond of identity between the cognate thoughts is noticed ; so minds of genius may be divided into two main sorts f those who notice the bond and those who merely obey it. The first are the abstract reasoners, properly so called, the men of science, and philosophers — the analysts, in a word ; the latter are the poets, the critics — the artists, in a word, the men of intuitions. These judge rightly, classify cases, characterize them by the most striking analogic epithets, but go no further. At first sight it might seem that the analytic mind represented simply a higher intellectual stage, and that the intuitive mind represented an arrested stage of intellectual development ; but the difference is not so simple as this. Professor Bain has said that a man's advance to the scientific stage (the stage of noticing and abstracting the bond of similarity) may often be due to an absence of certain emotional sensibilities. The sense of color, he says, may no less determine a mind away from science than it determines it toward painting. There must be a penury in one's interest in the details of particular forms in order to permit the forces of the intellect to be concentrated on what is common to many forms.* In other words, supposing a mind fertile in the suggestion of analogies, but, at the same time, keenly interested in the particulars of each suggested image, that mind would be far less apt to single out the particular character which called up the analogy than one whose interests were less generally lively. A certain richness of the aesthetic nature may, therefore, easily keep one in the intuitive stage. All the poets are examples of this. Take Homer :

"Ulysses, too, spied round the house to see if any man were still alive and hiding, trying to get away from gloomy death. He found them all fallen in the blood and dirt, and in such number as the fish which the fishermen to the low shore, out of the foaming sea, drag with their meshy nets. These all, sick for the ocean water, are strewn around the sands, while the blazing sun takes their life from them. So there the suitors lay strewn round on one another." Or again :

"And aa when a Maeonian or a Carian woman stains ivory with purple to be a cheek-piece for horses, and it is kept in the chamber, and many horsemen have prayed to bear it off ; but it is kept a treasure for a king, both a trapping for his horse and a glory to the driver— in such wise were thy stout thighs, Menelaos, and legs and fair ankles stained with blood."* A man in whom all the accidents of an analogy rise up as vividly as this, may be excused for not attending to the ground of the analogy. But he need not on that account be deemed intellectually the inferior of a man of drier mind, in whom the ground is not as liable to be eclipsed by the general splendor. Earely are both sorts of intellect, the splendid and the analytic, found in conjunction, Plato among philosophers, and M. Taine, who cannot quote a child's saying without describing the * voix chantante^ etonnee, heureuse ' in which it is uttered, are only exceptions whose strangeness proves the rule.

An often-quoted writer has said that Shakespeare possessed more intellectual power than any one else that ever lived. If by this he meant the power to pass from given premises to right or congruous conclusions, it is no doubt true. The abrupt transitions in Shakespeare's thought astonish the reader by their unexpectedness no less than they delight him by their fitness. Why, for instance, does the death of Othello so stir the spectator's blood and leave him with a sense of reconcilement ? Shakespeare himself could very likely not say why ; for his invention, though rational, was not ratiocinative. Wishing the curtain to fall upon a reinstated Othello, that speech about the turbaned Turk suddenly simply flashed across him as the right end of all that went before. The dry critic who comes after can, however, point out the subtle bonds of identity that guided Shakespeare's pen through that speech to the death of the Moor. Othello is sunk in ignominy, lapsed from his height at the beginning of the play. What better way to rescue him at last from this abasement than to make him for an instant identify himself in memory with the old Othello of better days, and then execute justice on his present disowned body, as he used then to smite all enemies of

the State ? But Shakespeare, whose mind supplied these means, could probably not have told why they were so effective. But though this is true, and though it would be absurd in an absolute way to say that a given analytic mind was superior to any intuitional one, yet it is none the less true that the former represents the higher stage. Men, taken historically, reason by analogy long before they have learned to reason by abstract characters. Association by similarity and true reasoning may have identical results. If a philosopher wishes to prove to you why you should do a certain thing, he may do so by using abstract considerations exclusively ; a savage will prove the same by reminding you of a similar case in which you notoriously do as he now prO" poses, and this with no ability to state the point in which the cases are similar. In all primitive literature, in all savage oratory, we find persuasion carried on exclusively by parables and similes, and travellers in savage countries readily adopt the native custom. Take, for example. Dr. Livingstone's argument with the negro conjuror. The missionary was trying to dissuade the savage from his f etichistic ways of invoking rain. "You see," said he, "that, after all your operations, sometimes it rains and sometimes it does not, exactly as when you have not operated at all." " But," replied the sorcerer, "it is just the same with you doctors; you give your remedies, and sometimes the patient gets well and sometimes he dies, just as when you do nothing at all." To that the pious missionary replied : " The doctor does his duty, after which God performs the cure if it pleases Him." " Well," rejoined the savage, " it is just so with me. I do what is necessary to procure rain, after which God sends it or withholds it according to His pleasure." "^

This is the stage in which proverbial philosophy reigns supreme. " An empty sack can't stand straight" will stand for the reason why a man with debts may lose his honesty ; and " a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" will serve to back up one's exhortations to prudence. Or we answer the question : " Why is snow white ?" by saying, " For the * Quoted by Renouvier, Critique Philosophique, October 19, 1879. same reason that soap-suds or whipped eggs are white"— in other words, instead of giving the reason for a fact, we give another example of the same fact. This offering a similar instance, instead of a reason, has often been criticised as one of the forms of logical depravity in men. But manifestly it is not a perverse act of thought, but only an incomplete one. Furnishing parallel cases is the necessary first step towards abstracting the reason imbedded in them all.

A.S it is with reasons, so it is with words. The first words are probably always names of entire things and en* tire actions, of extensive coherent groups. A new experience in the primitive man can only be talked about by him in terms of the old experiences which have received names. It reminds him of certain ones from among them, but the points in which it agrees with them are neither named nor dissociated. Pure similarity must work before the abstraction can work which is based upon it. The first adjectives will therefore probably be total nouns embodying the striking character. The primeval man will say, not * the bread is hard,' but * the bread is stone' ; not * the face is round,' but * the face is moon' ; not * the fruit is sweet,' but *the fruit is sugar-cane.' The first words are thus neither particular nor general, but vagvdy concrete ; just as we speak of an * oval ' face, a * velvet ' skin, or an *iron' will, without meaning to connote any other attributes of the adjective-noun than those in which it does resemble the noun it is used to qualify. After a while certain of these adjectively-used nouns come only to signify the particular quality for whose sake they are oftenest used ; the entire thing which they originally meant receives another name, and they become true abstract and general terms. Oval, for example, with us suggests orHy shape. The first abstract qualities thus formed are, no doubt, qualities of one and the same sense found in different objects — as big, sweet ; next analogies between different senses, as * sharp ' of taste, * high ' of sound, etc. ; then analogies of motor combinations, or form ol relation, as simple, confused, difficult, reciprocal, relative, spontaneous, etc. The extreme degree of subtlety in analogy is

reached in such cases as when we say certain English art critics' writing reminds us of a close room in which pastilles have been burning, or that the mind of certain Frenchmen is like old Roquefort cheese. Here language utterly fails to hit upon the basis of resemblance. Over immense departments of our thought we are still, all of us, in the savage state. Similarity operates in us, but abstraction has not taken place. We know what the present case is like, we know what it reminds us of, we have an intuition of the right course to take, if it be a practical matter. But analytic thought has made no tracks, and we cannot justify ourselves to others. In ethical, psychological, and aesthetic matters, to give a clear reason for one's judgment is universally recognized as a mark of rare genius. The helplessness of uneducated people to account for their likes and dislikes is often ludicrous. Ask the first Irish girl why she likes this country better or worse than her home, and see how much she can tell you. But if you ask your most educated friend why he prefers Titian to Paul Veronese, you will hardly get more of a reply ; and you will probably get absolutely none if you inquire why Beethoven reminds him of Michael Angelo, or how it comes that a bare figure with unduly flexed joints, by the latter, can so suggest the moral tragedy of life. His thought obeys a nexus J but cannot name it. And so it is with all those judgments of experts, which even though unmotived are so valuable. Saturated with experience of a particular class of materials, an expert intuitively feels whether a newly-reported fact is probable or not, whether a proposed hypothesis is worthless or the reverse. He instinctively knows that, in a novel case, this and not that will be the promising course of action. The well-known story of the old judge advising the new one never to give reasons for his decisions, " the decisions will probably be right, the reasons will surely be wrong," illustrates this.

The doctor will feel that the patient is doomed, the dentist will have a premonition that the tooth will break, though neither can articulate a reason for his foreboding. The reason lies imbedded, but not yet laid bare, in all the countless previous cases dimly suggested by the actual one, all calling up the same conclusion. which the adept thus finds himself swept on to, he knows not how or why. A physiological conclusion remains to he dratvn. If the principles laid down in Chapter XIY are true, then it follows that the great cerebral difference between habitual and reasoned thinking must be this : that in the former an entire system of cells vibrating at any one moment discharges in its totality into another entire system, and that the order of the discharges tends to be a constant one in time ; whilst in the latter a part of the prior system still keeps vibrating in the midst of the subsequent system, and the order — which part this shall be, and what shall be its concomitants in the subsequent system — has little tendency to fixedness in time. This physical selection, so to call it, of one part to vibrate persistently whilst the others rise and subside, we found, in the chapter in question, to be the basis of similar association. (See especially pp. 578-81.) It would seem to be but a minor degree of that still more urgent and importunate localized vibration which we can easiest conceive to underlie the mental fact of interest, attention, or dissociation. In terms of the brain-process, then, all these mental facts resolve themselves into a single peculiarity: that of indeterminateness of connection between the different tracts, and tendency of action to focalize itself, so to speak, in small localities which vary infinitely at different times, and from which irradiation may pro^ ceed in countless shifting ways. (Compare figure 80, p, 347.) To discover, or (what more befits the present stage of nerve-physiology) to adumbrate by some possible guess, on what chemical or molecular-mechanical fact this instable equilibrium of the human brain may depend, should be the next task of the physiologist who ponders over the passage from brute to man.

Whatever the physical peculiarity in question may be, it is the cause why a man, whose brain has it, reasons so much, whilst his horse, whose brain lacks it, reasons so little. We can but bequeath the problem to abler hands than our own. But, meanwhile, this mode of stating the matter suggesta a couple of other inferences. The first is brief. If /ocali^ nation of brain-activity be the fundamental fact of reasonable thought, we see why intense interest or concentrated passion makes us think so much more truly and profoundly. The persistent focalization of motion in certain tracts is the cerebral fact corresponding to the persistent domination in consciousness of the important feature of the subject. When not * focalized,' we are scatter-brained; but when thoroughly impassioned, we never wander from the poini None but congruous and relevant images arise. When roused by indignation or moral enthusiasm, how trenchant are our reflections, how smiting are our words ! The whole network of petty scruples and by-considerations which, ask ordinary languid times, surrounded the matter like a cobweb, holding back our thought, as Gulliver was pinned to the earth by the myriad Lilliputian threads, are dashed through at a blow, and the subject stands with its essential and vital lines revealed.