where you had at first to make a conscious act of volition
for each movement, the whole group of movements has
now become automatic, and volition is only concerned
in setting the process going. As the delay involved
in the perception and the movement disappears, so does
the consciousness of the perception and the movement
tend to disappear. Consciousness implies perpetual
discrimination, or the recognition of likenesses and
differences, and this is impossible unless impressions
persist long enough to be compared with one another.
The physical organs in connection with whose activity
consciousness is manifested are the upper and outer
parts of the brain,—the cerebrum and cerebellum.
These organs never receive impressions directly from
the outside world, but only from lower nerve-centres,
such as the spinal cord, the medulla, the optic lobes,
and other special centres of sensation. The impressions
received by the cerebrum and cerebellum are waves of
molecular disturbance sent up along centripetal nerves
from the lower centres, and presently drafted off
along centrifugal nerves back to the lower centres,
thus causing the myriad movements which make up our
active life. Now there is no consciousness except
when molecular disturbance is generated in the cerebrum
and cerebellum faster than it can be drafted off to
the lower centres.[5] It is the surplus of molecular
disturbance remaining in the cerebrum and cerebellum,
and reflected back and forth among the cells and fibres
of which these highest centres are composed, that
affords the physical condition for the manifestation
of consciousness. Memory, emotion, reason, and
volition begin with this retention of a surplus of
molecular motion in the highest centres. As we
survey the vertebrate sub-kingdom of animals, we find
that as this surplus increases, the surface of the
highest centres increases in area. In the lowest
vertebrate animal, the amphioxus, the cerebrum and
cerebellum do not exist at all. In fishes we begin
to find them, but they are much smaller than the optic
lobes. In such a highly organized fish as the
halibut, which weighs about as much as an average-sized
man, the cerebrum is smaller than a melon-seed.
Continuing to grow by adding concentric layers at
the surface, the cerebrum and cerebellum become much
larger in birds and lower mammals, gradually covering
up the optic lobes. As we pass to higher mammalian
forms, the growth of the cerebrum becomes most conspicuous,
until it extends backwards so far as to cover up the
cerebellum, whose functions are limited to the conscious
adjustment of muscular movements. In the higher
apes the cerebrum begins to extend itself forwards,
and this goes on in the human race. The cranial
capacity of the European exceeds that of the Australian
by forty cubic inches, or nearly four times as much
as that by which the Australian exceeds the gorilla;
and the expansion is almost entirely in the upper
and anterior portions. But the increase of the