ecial impulses of the hands, that we select
the words of a hasty speech, if we have its aim in mind, without
consciously selecting the appropriate words--all that is by continuous
transitions connected with those simplest automatic reactions. And from
here again, we are led over gradually perhaps to the automatic writings
of the hysteric who writes complex messages without having any idea of
their content in consciousness. It is in such cases certainly a symptom
of disease that the activity of these lower brain centers can go over
into the motor impulse of writing without producing secondary effects in
the highest conscious brain centers; it is hysterical. But that the
message of the pencil can be brought about by such operation of lower
brain centers, or at least with imperfect cooeperation of the higher
brain centers, is certainly entirely within the limits of the same
physiological explanation.

On the other hand, nothing is changed in the theoretic principles of the
case if the effect of these automatic processes in the nervous system is
not an external muscle action at first, but an influence on other brain
centers which may furnish the consciousness with new contents. We try to
remember a name, that is, a large number of neuron processes are setting
in which normally lead to the excitement of that particular process
which furnishes us the memory image of the name. But those brain cells
may not respond, the channels may be blocked somehow or the excitability
of those cells may be lowered. Now new excitements engage our
psychophysical system. We are thinking of other problems. In the
meantime, by the new equilibrium in the brain the blockade in these
first paths may slowly disappear or the threshold of excitability may be
changed. The physiological excitement may now be carried effectively
into those tracts. The cell response sets in and suddenly the name comes
to our mind. This purely physiological operation in our brain paths must
thus have exactly the same result which it would have had, if more parts
of the process had been accompanied by conscious experience. And again
from mere remembering a forgotten name, we come by slow steps to the
solution of a problem, to the invention, and finally to the creation of
the genius.

Superficiality of thought is easily inclined to object to such a
physiological interpretation and perhaps to denounce it pathetically as
a crude materialism which lowers the dignity of mental w