Structure and functions of the brain and spinal cord.

  • Horsley, Victor.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Structure and functions of the brain and spinal cord. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    an instance of the want of appreciation of the difference between the complexity which precedes the evolution of even elementary movement in the higher animal, and the simplicity, on the other hand, which underlies very similar movements when performed by a lower organisation. This want of appreciation has led to the employment of the term psychic or psychical activity in speaking of the deeds (i.e., movements) of some of these latter. Thus the writer whom I have quoted obviously meant that, in his opinion, the causes of the objective phenomena observed were so similar in the two cases that we were to regard them both as iden- tical. The logical fallacy, however, in such a view is obvious when we extend the point in the manner I have just indicated. But it is moreover, physio- logically speaking, incorrect, because it implies that whatever difference there may be in the structure, the function remains the same, a conclusion which only has to be stated for its absurdity to be at once appreciated. When we therefore approach the study of the nervous system in the lower creatures, and note, while we observe what they do, that their acts, even the simplest, are very like what we see performed by the higher animal, we must never allow our judgment to carry us away, but we must always say at once to ourselves : Wha*