Page:Principles of Psychology (1890) v1.djvu/100

80 PSYCHOLOGY. alone. They would be tendencies in the hemispheres them- selves, modifiable by education, unlike the reflexes of the medulla oblongata, pons, optic lobes and spinal cord. Such cerebral reflexes, if they exist, form a basis quite as good as that which the Meynert scheme offers, for the acquisition of memories and associations which may later result in all sorts of ' changes of partners ' in the psychic world. The diagram of the baby and the candle (see page 25) can be re-edited, if seed be, as an entirely cortical transaction. The original tendency to touch will be a cortical instinct ; the burn will leave an image in another part of the cortex, which, being recalled by association, will inhibit the touch- ing tendency the next time the candle is perceived, and excite the tendency to withdraw — so that the retinal picture will, upon that next time, be coupled with the original motor partner of the pain. We thus get whatever psycho- logical truth the Meynert scheme possesses without en- tangling ourselves on a dubious anatomy and physiology. Some such shadowy view of the evolution of the centres, of the relation of consciousness to them, and of the hemi- spheres to the other lobes, is, it seems to me, that in which it is safest to indulge. If it has no other advantage, it at any rate makes us realize how enormous are the gaps in our knowledge, the moment we try to cover the facts by any one formula of a general kind.