Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/623

Rh an organism capable of very varied combinations of action, we can easily see, not only how memory becomes possible, but also how such infinite variations of association are rendered conceivable. For if every thought or perception is, as it were, an organized tremor in a vast group of diverse nerve-elements, often indeed in almost all together, it is simple enough to understand how these tremors may fall into regular rhythms, may excite one another in regular successions, may got habitual, just as the steps do in dancing, or the movements of the hand in writing a familiar and well-remembered formula—for example, in signing one's name. Here, in this immense and minutely organized workshop, we have a constant succession of motions in wheels and gearing, so arranged that each motion may be communicated in a thousand directions, and what is apparently a single impetus may call up the most diverse and extraordinary results. But, in reality, the impetus is not single: for, when we are thinking of horse in one way, we have a certain fixed form of movement called up; while, if we are thinking of it in another way, the form called up, though analogous in many respects, is far indeed from being identical. When I write "nice," you think of something or other vaguely pleasant; but, when I write "Nice," the very pronunciation is altered into something very like "niece," and the picture that rises before your mind is the very definite one of the Promenade des Anglais, with its long line of white villas and stunted palm-trees, bounded by the blue horizon of the Mediterranean and the beautiful slopes of. the coast toward Villefranche. It is just the same with the apples and the oranges. The elements of the picture vary incessantly; and while one combination now suggests one association, another combination another time suggests a second. The elements join together in an infinite variety of ways, and so a finite number of cells and fibers enable us to build up all the wealth of thought, just as twenty-six tiny symbols allow us to express all the wonderful conceptions of Milton and all the beautiful ideas of Shelley. There are only fifty-two cards in a pack, it is true, but no two games of whist ever yet played, in all probability, were absolutely identical.

To sum it all up: it is the brain as a whole that thinks, and feels, and desires, and imagines, just as it is the body as a whole that walks, and swims, and digs, and dances. To locate, say, the faculty of language in a particular convolution of a particular hemisphere is almost as absurd, it seems to me, as to locate, say, the faculty of writing in the last joint of the right forefinger. Convolution and forefinger may be absolutely essential or indispensable for the proper performance of speech or writing; but to say that is not to say that the function in question is there localized. The brain as a whole is the organ of mind, but there is no organ for the word Canonbury or for the proper perception of a Mrs. Pollock geranium.—Gentleman's Magazine.