Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/262

256 to hold that the live and healthy frog with its brain intact has a consciousness; and if this argument is worth anything at all it must surely lead you also to say that the frog's spinal cord activities have psychic correspondents. And if this is true of the frog why is it not true of man?

In my normal life these psychic correspondents of the spinal cord activities, if they exist, are minor psychic systems within the whole psychic system that I call consciousness. And these minor systems are usually unable to affect attention, although occasionally some of them do so when we are quiescent. We do not note the heart throb now, but we may as we are falling asleep.

We are clearly led thus to see that if disconnection of minor nervous systems from the broad nervous system as a whole can occur, then we may properly assume the existence of minor consciousnesses within the human body.

This view has been suggested long since, but is rejected, and often with derision, by many of our biologists. But in consideration of the facts above referred to it seems difficult to deny its validity, and in the opinion of the writer its rejection is due merely to an unwarranted hesitation to carry our every-day reasoning to its legitimate conclusion. The preeminent nervous system expresses itself by bodily activities of one kind or another, and notably by certain contractions of the throat and respiratory organs, and movements of the lips which produce speech. The sympathetic system, and other practically, or actually, separated minor nervous systems, express themselves by bodily activities of one kind or another exclusive of these activities of speech. While it is perfectly clear that the consciousness which expresses itself in speech, as well as in various other bodily activities, is the preeminent human consciousness, it seems equally clear that there must exist minor consciousnesses which correspond with the activities of minor nervous systems within our own bodies, provided these are, as is the case at times practically, or in some instances actually, disconnected from the main system of nervous systems.

Such disconnection as is necessary for the separate existence of such minor consciousnesses within our bodies may evidently result from pathological lesion, or may be due to the use of the surgeon's knife. But it seems probable that this disconnection may occur in a quite different way, and that if we appreciate this fact we are led to understand the nature of certain phenomena of consciousness which are usually thought to be most mysterious.

In the physical world we note disconnections between systems of activity due to the incommensurability of their rhythm. It is highly probable then that certain active minor nervous systems may become disconnected from others as the result of what we may also call an