considering his combined terrestrial and aquatic locomotion, and his adjustment of eye and tongue to insect-catching, his space co-ordinations must be very complex, and yet in the frog the cerebellum is comparatively rudimentary.

Again as to the cerebrum, it is said by Mr. Spencer (p. 62), to predominate "in creatures showing like ourselves the power of adapting, throughout long periods, concatenated compound actions to concatenated compound impressions." But it may well be asked what special relations to the past and future have whales and porpoises beyond other beasts that they should share with us a specially developed organ for such a function? Yet it is perhaps rather the lower than the higher animals which exhibit the most complex co-ordinations as to time. In the animal kingdom few more striking actions destined for ulterior efficiency can be met with than those of some insects, notably the wasp Sphex, which stings, collects and stores up with its eggs the stupefied, paralyzed living prey on which its young when hatched are to feed. Surely this is a case of "involved aggregate actions, simultaneous and successive, which, being adjusted to these involved impressions, achieve remote ends" (p. 60). Yet, however the so-called "cerebral convolutions" of any of the bee and wasp order may be developed, (and it should be recollected they are developed in the common blow-fly also) it cannot be maintained that their relative development is comparable with that of the higher beasts' cerebrum. This is not meant of course to imply that for such complex functions insects have not corresponding structures, but to show how much caution must be exercised in attributing definite functions to definite parts in the way Mr. Spencer attributes them. Even in this third chapter Mr. Spencer exhibits some of that want of refined distinction, and some of that misleading confusion of terms which will often have to be pointed out later.

Thus as to confusion: after speaking of the adjustment of actions to impressions, he adds (p. 60):-"The general truth of this definition may, I think, be safely assumed; since it is simply a statement in other terms of what, in ordinary language, is called intelligent action; which habitually characterizes vertebrate animals in proportion as these centres are largely developed." Now here is a statement which lends itself to the interpretation that true intelligent action (since whatever may be improperly so termed "in ordinary language," true action of the kind is, in such language, certainly termed intelligent) characterizes vertebrate animals. An interpretation which is contrary to the teaching of the highest philosophers, and which, if deliberately meant, ought not to be assumed or insinuated but proved.

As an example of want of refinement and analytic distinction, the following passage from the note on page 62 may be quoted:

"Mind, in its ordinary acceptation, means more especially a comparatively intricate co-ordination in time, the consciousness of a creature looking before and after,' and using past experiences to regulate future conduct." Now this is made to apply to man and to the higher vertebrata, and of course it does so apply if using past experiences to regulate future conduct" means such action as that by which dogs and horses learn to avoid pains and punishments, and acquire gratifications and rewards. But then that is not the sense in which "past experiences" are used by man when he is spoken of, par excellence, as the animal "looking before and after."The way in which such a being is said to use such experiences is by means of his self-consciousness, his recognition of himself as persisting, of the past experiences" as things now past, and of the "future conduct what is yet to come. Yet Mr. Spencer here confounds things so different as the indeliberate, direct acquisition of sensible experiences, the pleasurable and painful associations and emotions of a brute with the deliberate, reflex acquisition of intellectual experiences, the voluntarily formed associations and intelligent emotions of a man-under the common phrases "using experiences" and "looking," and he fails to notice the mode of "using" and the mode of "looking" though the "how," is so pregnant with far-reaching consequences and implications.

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A more important matter is Mr. Spencer's mode of defining the functions of the nervous system. He says (p. 65) it must be defined in terms of motion: "Only in these terms can there be given an adequate definition of fully-developed nervous functions. If we admit any subjective element, our definitions become inapplicable to all those nervous actions which have no subjective accompaniments, which go on without feelings; and a conception of nervous functions which excludes those of organic life cannot be a complete conception. On the other hand, the definition of nervous functions as consisting in the conveyance and multiplication of molecular motions, holds in all cases. It includes equally the conduction of an impression made on a nerve of sense, and the excitement of chemical metamorphoses in a gland.'

Now here there seems to be great confusion and great incompleteness. You cannot define a man by his bones, though his skeleton is a necessary condition to his continued life. The chemical composition of a flower will not define it, even though exactly the same composition exists in no other species, and though that particular composition may be indispensable to its existence. To call the assimilative, respiratory, and reproductive actions of a plant "motions," is like calling the art of the sculptor "stonebreaking." Such artistic action is of course a kind of stonebreaking, but it is vastly more. Similarly to

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speak of the sensitive faculties of animals as "motions" is an utterly inadequate mode of expression, unless the word "motion be used in another sense, as when we speak of a motion of the will or intellectual action in seeking to acquire knowledge. To call vegetation or sensitive actions "motions," conveys no real explanation, and cannot be construed in consciousness, however much "motions" may be the necessary conditions or the external signs of growth, reproduction, and sensation. If, as Mr. Spencer says, a definition of nervous functions, which definition excludes those of organic life, "cannot be a complete conception,' à fortiori, a definition which excludes or neglects sensation cannot certainly be a complete one. Mr. Spencer speaks (p. 65) of his definition as including "the conduction of an impression made on a nerve of sense,' but this is but a poor account of what we know as a sensation, and an account which only gives us the "beggarly elements" necessary for its production. What would be thought of the attempt to describe a battle (with all the changes of manœuvre induced by the receipt from time to time of news by the commander-in-chief) in terms of motion, including those of the larynx, optic apparatus, &c., of the commander and his assistants? Yet such an absurdity would follow if we were to act on Mr. Spencer's rule (p. 66) that "the common character of the changes in nervous centres must determine the definition of their common function." The common character of all the phenomenal changes of a battle is motion of one kind or another, but to try to define a battle in terms of motion would be an absurd attempt.

The confusion above referred to is the mixing up the "conditions" of events with the "events themselves.' The "incompleteness" is the non-emergence of the qualities and events really referred to from the terms used as the definition of such qualities and events.

The functions of the nervous system are animal functions: to attempt to define them in the terms of vegetative life, and still more in the terms of merely physical existence-as in employing the term "motion" for that purpose-must end in incompleteness —indeed, to make such an endeavour is to attempt an impossibility. And here again we find the want of that preliminary definition of "psychology," the absence of which has been pointed out with blame in the last chapter.

The phenomena of the inorganic world may, doubtless, be defined, sooner or later, in terms of motion. Those of the vegetable world require for their adequate presentation other terms. Fresh terms are similarly required adequately to portray the phenomena of the sentient life of animals, and yet others for the phenomena of the intellectual activities of man.

Nevertheless, as a material structure accompanies and is the area of all these four kinds of activities, physical modifications of that structure are requisite conditions (conditions sine qua non) of the occurrence of all these activities even the highest. Even the highest, because thought, as we experience it, requires sensations as preliminaries; these cannot exist save in a being possessing powers of vegetative life, and such a being of course depends on the physical laws common to all matter. Therefore physical modifications, definable in terms of motion, may be employed in describing all vital activities, but only as denoting the condition of such activities, which conditions serve as the material of which the soul (animal or vegetable, as the case may be) makes use.

Similarly vegetative activities may be employed in describing the activities of animal life, but only again as the conditions for, the materials made use of by, such animal activity.

Similarly again, animal, sentient activities may be employed in describing the activities of intellectual life, but only again as the conditions for, the materials made use of by, such intellectual activity.

All four kinds have physical activities in common.

The three highest have vegetative activities in common.

The two highest have animal, sentient activities in common. The highest of all has all these as the conditions and materials of the intellectual action of a rational animal.

Nervous functions, then, cannot be really defined in terms of motion; to attempt to define them in such terms is but to denote the conditions of such functions, not the functions themselves, in the only mode in which they are known to us, i. e. in act.

But the whole of this misconception, incompleteness, and confusion, springs from Mr. Spencer's adoption of a particular view as to physiology, and from his first principles of biology. He says (p. 48), "Physiology is an objective science, and is limited to such data as can be reached by observations made on sensible objects. It cannot, therefore, properly appropriate subjective data, wholly inaccessible to external observations." But if not, if physiology cannot take note of feelings, which we as animals can understand, so much the worse for physiology. Yet, in fact, a physiology which should take no note of seeing and hearing would be absurd, but seeing and hearing, however ministered to and conditioned by motion, cannot be described in terms of motion-if any one can so describe them let him. Here we find the root of Mr. Spencer's misconception of objective psychology; it lies in his misconception of physiology, of which such psychology is a branch.

CHAPTER IV.-THE CONDITIONS ESSENTIAL TO NERVOUS ACTION.

The sections of this chapter are:-§ 25. Non-solution of continuity is a necessary condition to nervous action. § 26. So is a due degree of pressure and no more. § 27. Also a due degree of heat. § 28. A proper quantity of blood nutrition. § 29. A proper state of the blood as to its qualities. § 30. It must not be charged with carbon or urea. § 31. Intermixture of effects.

Against this chapter there is nothing to be said, except that the term "pre-requisite," sometimes used (p. 76) by Mr. Spencer, is preferable to "conditions." The latter term better applying to what he names "functions" in Chapter III.

CHAPTER V.— NERVOUS STIMULATION AND NERVOUS DISCHARGE,

The following are the sections herein contained :-§ 32. Each nerve has its own action as to quality, though the quantity of its action increases with its length. § 33. Its action is intermittent.

34. And not very quick, sometimes thirty yards a second. § 35. The central effect lasts an appreciable time. § 36. The nervous centres become prostrated by excessive action. § 37. There are rhythmical alternations. § 38. And multitudinous reverberations passing in all directions. § 39. Hence there exist constant small general discharges constituting the "tonic state." § 40. These small discharges are parallel with blood-waves, and the smallest discharges depend on local gushes of nervous energy as of

blood.

This is a most ingenious hypothetical account of the way in which the stimulation, &c., of nervous tissue may be supposed to condition sensation and other organic actions in animals. Nothing in this chapter need be here contested.

CHAPTER VI.-ESTHO-PHYSIOLOGY.

The various sections which compose this chapter may be summarised as follows:-§ 41. Nervous phenomena may be compared with phenomena of consciousness. §42. The same physical conditions (such as non-solution of continuity, due pressure, heat, &c. &c.) conduce to the exhibition of both. 43. Some nervous phe§ nomena are felt and some are not at all felt, while there is every gradation between the two. § 44. Nervous phenomena and phenomena of consciousness have similar relations to "time." § 45. Both are similarly incapable of immediate repetition. § 46. Certain "feelings run parallel with dirigo-motor nerve actions. § 47. A quantitative parallelism between feelings and nervous actions exists only within narrow limits. § 48. The "emotions conform to the laws of "feelings." § 49. Some feelings are vivid