movements which the maimed frog makes, as there is definite purpose in the movements of the anencephalic infant's lips, or in the respiratory movements of man or animal; but in all these instances the co-ordinate activity is the result of an innate nervous constitution, an original endowment of the nervous centres. Accordingly we see that the frog which has lost its legs acts as if the limbs were still there, which, were there intelligent consciousness, it plainly should not, and only employs other means when the irritating action of the stimulus continues unaffected by its efforts. As the movement which takes place in the sensitive plant-the Mimosa pudica-when it is irritated, is not limited to the spot where the irritation acts, but extends, if this be sufficiently intense, to the whole plant; or, as in certain morbid states of the human organism, the continuance of an irritation, which at first only causes slight reflex action, may produce a more general involuntary reaction, or convulsions; so in the frog, the enduring stimulus, which has not been affected by the customary reflex movement, now gives rise to those further physiological movements which would have been made use of had the creature still possessed its brain. In the constitution of the spinal cord are implanted the capabilities of such co-ordinate energies; and the degree of the irritation determines the extent of the activity. There takes place an irradiation of the stimulus. But this happens without consciousness; and all the design which there is in the movement is of the same kind as the design which there is in the formation of a crystal, or in the plan of growth of a tree. A crystal cannot overstep the laws of its form, nor can a tree grow up into heaven; the particles of the crystal aggregate after a certain definite plan, and thus strictly manifest design. Are we, then, to assume that, because of the design, there is consciousness in the forming crystal or the growing tree? Certainly not; and yet it is to such extreme conclusion that the arguments of those who look upon the so-called design of an act as testifying to consciousness logically lead. The design of an act is nothing else but the correlate in the mind of the observer of the law of

ex organismo et physicis legibus sensorio communi propriis fluunt, suntque prop. terea spontaneæ et automaticæ."—Commentatio de Functionibus Systematis Nervosi, p. 88. 1784. It must be remembered that Prochaska included th spinal cord under the sensorium comm cae,

the matter in nature; and each observer will see in any event exactly that amount of design which he brings with him the faculty of seeing.

Much fruitless theory would have been avoided if the real nature of design had been kept distinctly in mind. The notion that the soul works unconsciously in the building up of the organism, which has at different times been so much in fashion, rests entirely upon the assumption that an intelligent principle or agent must be immanent in organic matter which is going through certain definite changes. But if in the formation of an organ, why not also in the formation of a chemical compound with its definite properties? The function is the necessary result of a certain definite organic structure under certain conditions, and in that sense must needs minister to the furtherance of its well-being. But an organic action, with never so beautifully manifest a design, may, under changed conditions, become as disastrous as it is usually beneficial; the peristaltic movements of the intestines, which serve so essential a purpose in the economy, may, and actually do, in the case of some obstruction, become the cause of intolerable suffering and a painful death. Where, then, is the design of their disastrous continuance? The repair of a ruptured urethra will, instead of restoring the integrity of the canal and then ceasing, go on, with a final purpose singularly and obstinately mischievous, to produce an obliteration of the canal, unless human art come to the rescue. M. Bert has made many extremely interesting experiments on grafting parts cut from the body of one animal on that of another. For example, he cut off the paw of a young rat, and grafted it in the flank of another rat; it took root there, and went through its normal growth. Where was the design of its going through its regular development there? Or what, in the adoption and nutrition of this useless member, was the final purpose of the so-called intelligent vital principle of the rat on which the graft was made? Whatever design we recognise is really an idea that is gradually formed in our minds from repeated experiences of the law of the matter, a law which acts necessarily, fatally, blindly. Any other kind of design can exist only in the creative mind; and into the question of what exists there science cannot enter. Those who would rashly venture to do so might call to mind and weigh the

sagacious remark of Spinoza, that the idea of a perfect God is incompatible with the conception of such working after an aim, "because God would then desire something which He was without."

It will not be amiss to take note here of the very different way in which we are in the habit of regarding dead matter and living matter. In dead matter the form is looked upon as the attribute of the matter, whereas, on the other hand, in living bodies the matter is treated as the attribute of the form in inorganic nature the matter is the essential thing, in the organic creation the form is all in all. But to neglect the exact consideration of the conditions and combinations of matter, as determining organic form, is not less mischievous than it is to concentrate all attention upon the matter in inorganic nature.* What are inseparably joined together in nature let us not vainly attempt to put asunder. Mindful of this maxim we shall not be so much tempted to fall back upon that vague and shifting doctrine of final causes which has done so great harm in science, or, as Bacon has it, has strangely defiled philosophy, and which, though often rejected absolutely, and now banished from the more advanced sciences, still works injuriously in biology, where so much is yet recondite and obscure. (2) The human understanding can indeed best impose its own rules on nature there where the truth is most inaccessible and least known. Not only does it in biology look for a final cause answering to its own measure, but, having found this, or created it, proceeds straightway to superadd its own attribute of consciousness, so that wherever evidence of design is met with, be it only in the function of the spinal cord of a decapitated frog, there consciousness is assumed. Is it not a marvel that no teleologist has yet been found to maintain that the final cause of the moon is to act as a "tug" to the vessels on our tidal rivers?

There can be no difficulty in admitting that the spinal cord is an independent centre of so-called aim-working acts that are not attended with consciousness. It is the centre, however, not only of co-ordinate action the capability of which has been implanted in its original constitution, but also of co-ordinate action the

• It. ved, the chemists are now discovering how much the qualities of substances are determined by different molecular arrangements of the same atoms.

power of which has been gradually acquired and matured through individual experience. Like the brain, the spinal cord has, so to speak, its memory, and must be educated; the reaction. which it displays, in consequence of a particular impression conveyed to it from without, does not vanish issueless, leaving the ganglionic cells unmodified after its force has been expended. With the display of energy there is a coincident change or waste of nerve element; and, although a subsequent regeneration or restoration of the statical equilibrium takes place by the quiet process of nutrition, yet the nutritive repair, filling up the loss which has been made, must plainly take the form made by the energy and coincident material change. Thereby the definite activity is to some extent realized or embodied in the structure of the spinal cord, existing there for the future as a motor residuum, or as, so to speak, a potential or abstract movement; accordingly there is thenceforth a tendency to the recurrence of the particular activity-a tendency which becomes stronger with every repetition of it. Every impression which is made leaves behind it, therefore, its trace or residuum, which is again quickened into activity on the occasion of an appropriate stimulus; the faculties of the spinal cord are thus gradually formed and matured. When a series or group of movements are, after many voluntary efforts, associated, they notably become more and more easy, and less and less separable, with every repetition, until at last they are firmly fixed in the constitution of the cord, become a part of the faculty of it, and may be accomplished without effort or even without consciousness: they are the secondary or acquired automatic acts, as described by Hartley. (3) In this way walking becomes so far a reflex or automatic act that a man in a profound abstraction may continue to walk without being conscious where he is going, and find himself, when he is aroused from his reverie, in a different place from that which he intended to visit. In that form of epilepsy known as the petit mal, an individual sometimes continues automatically, whilst consciousness is quite abolished, the act which he was engaged in when the attack seized him a shoemaker used frequently to wound his fingers with the awl as he went on with his work during the attack, and on one occasion walked into a pond of water during the suspension of consciousness; and a woman whom Schroeder

van der Kolk knew, continued eating or drinking, or the occupation she was about, being quite unconscious on recovery of what had happened. Trousseau mentions a young amateur musician subject to epileptic vertigo, who sometimes had a fit lasting for ten or fifteen seconds whilst playing the violin. Though he was perfectly unconscious of everything around him, and neither heard nor saw those whom he was accompanying, he still went on playing in time during the attack. The same author also mentions an architect who had long been subject to epilepsy, and did not fear to go up the highest scaffoldings, though perfectly aware that he had often had fits while walking across narrow planks at a pretty considerable height. He had never met with an accident, although, when in a fit, he ran rapidly over scaffoldings, shrieking out his own name in a loud and abrupt voice. A quarter of a minute afterwards he resumed his occupation and gave his orders to the workmen; but unless he was told of it, he had no idea of the singular act which he had been committing. In fact, if any one attends to his ordinary actions during the day, it will be surprising how small a proportion of them are consciously willed, how large a proportion of them are the results of the acquired automatic action of the organism. It is sufficiently evident that the faculties of the spinal cord are, for the most part, not inborn in man, but gradually built up by virtue of experience and education; in their formation they illustrate the progress of human adaptation to external nature.

Certainly the capability of certain associated voluntary movements, or the germ of such capability, does appear to exist as an innate endowment of the spinal cord even in man, whilst in the lower animals it is very evident. As the young animal, directly it is born, can sometimes use its limbs with complete effect, or as the infant, previous to any experience, is capable of that association or catenation of movements necessary to crying, breathing, or coughing, so likewise does there appear to be, as Mr. Bain argues, the germ of a locomotive harmony in the

• "The condition of such persons may be compared to somnan ulism, or to what happens in the case of certain persons who answer questions during sleep, but do not recollect anything when they wake up."-TROUSSEAU, (inical Lectures, vol i. p. 59.

+ The uses and 1 Intellect, 2d ed. It has long been distinctly recognised as a general law that when a moderate stimulus excites severd motor nerves,