190 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING
in the sense in which the word is used throughout this book it is not applicable in that realm. Can the life of the lowest forms of animal organisms be regarded as psychical? Is consciousness, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, found in those protoplasmic beings which are not killed when divided, but each of whose parts persists as an independent being? Here we are on debatable ground; but we may be sure that whatever consciousness may be there, if any, is of an exceedingly low order so dim, diffused and con fused as hardly to merit the name. In the higher species of animals consciousness is unquestionably present; but there is every reason to believe that it is still quite vague and indefinite, and plays a subordinate role in their history. Their activities are dominated by automatisms, reflexes and instincts, and whatever consciousness is connected with these activities is not, except in a very low degree, con trolling; but in the main is merely accompanying and ob servant. Angell remarks that " we shall find conscious ness at those points where there is incapacity on the part of the purely physiological mechanism to cope with the de mands of the surroundings. If the reflexes and automatic acts were wholly competent to steer the organism through out its course, there is no reason to suppose that conscious ness would ever put in its appearance." J As the autom atisms and reflexes prove inadequate to adjust the organism to a varied and changing environment there is developed the cortex of the brain, which in one of its important functions may be likened to a highly complicated switch-board. By means of this, an incoming stimulus, instead of running mechanically over a fixed path to predestined motor results, can be switched on to any one of a great number of motor tracks, or may be simultaneously connected with several systems of motor nerves commanding the activity of as many bodily organs. Or the stimulus may be totally in hibited, in which case it is dissipated in a general and more or less violent agitation or tension of the entire nervous 1 " Psychology," p. 58.
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