Considerations on Flechsig's "Gehirn und Seele."

  • Jacobi, Mary Putnam, 1842-1906.
Date:
[1897?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Considerations on Flechsig's "Gehirn und Seele.". 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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    supplies the metaphor of storage. As a working hypo- thesis, and as a substitute for the earlier metaphor of the daguerreotype sensitive plate, we imagine a series of chem- ical changes, of molecular movements effected in the pro- toplasm of the ganglionic cells, or of their prolongations, which movements, having once occurred, may be revived by a recurrence of the original excitations, or of secondary excitations which traverse the same lines as the first. According to Meynert. the brain cortex records all the events, of whatever nature, winch transpire within the sphere of existence of the individual. The record is voluminous in proportion to the complexity of the experience acquired. The brain cortex of the new-born infant represents inherited ancestral experience, both phylogenetic and personal. The existence of the record at this time shows that such experi- ence is separable from the brain, because transmissible by the infinitesimal speck of matter which constitutes the germ cell. The more voluminous the inherited mass of cortex, the greater the facilities afforded for recording the events of the new life which are about to transpire. Among the millions of cortical cells we are almost compelled to imagine infinitely complex series of secondary excitations duplicating, reduplicating, endlessly refining upon the original excitation. So that, even when this has arisen in a sensory centre, the sensory impression drops out of con- sciousness, and only its remote memory, shadow, symbol remains, based upon the series of mental events it was sug- gested or started. As the complication of the secondary excitations depends upon the number of nerve elements which can be excited, and this number is an inheritance from antecedent circumstance we may say in a general and metaphorical sense, that the new experience of the indi- vidual blends with the recorded experience of his family and race, to constitute the total experience of conscious- ness at any given moment. No space or material combi- nation can be imagined, but a blending in time of an in-