It is possible that in the ascidian the impulse which causes a reflex movement may be dimly perceived, and therefore awaken some sort of consciousness, but the man whose spinal cord is broken by accident or disease feels nothing below the injury, even if his feet be burnt to a crisp. It is plain that any faculty of consciousness which existed in the central nerve-mass of the polyp has been taken away from the spinal cord of the vertebrate, to be concentrated and perfected within the skull; or, in other words, that in the man, and also in the frog, consciousness and ordinary reflex movements have been separated, the one pertaining to the higher, the other to the lower, nerve-centres. These unconscious reflex movements are in man of prime importance and frequency. The machinery of conscious movement is far more complex than that of reflex action, and every new cog-wheel, so to speak, involves a loss of time as well as of motion. Most of us do not appreciate the period of time between the willing and the making of a movement, yet the astronomer has to take note of it, and, finding that it varies in individuals, allows for the "personal equation" of the observer. We all recognize that one man is slower than another--_i.e._ that his physical machinery of thinking and doing moves more slowly than does that of his fellow. Every sportsman must have paralleled a little personal experience of my own. Last fall I shot at a flying quail between which and myself at the time of firing a sturdy oak tree raised its trunk. The bird was put up, aimed at, and the impulse sent by the will to the trigger-finger: before the impulse reached the finger I distinctly recognized that the bird had dodged behind the tree, but the countermand sent by the conscious will to the finger could not overtake the first order, and so, in defiance of my wishes, the gun was discharged. There are many processes necessary to comfortable human life for which consciousness is far too slow in its operations. Had the eye to wait for conscious perception the dust which whirls in the air would soon blind it; but, as Nature has arranged the mechanism, when the speck approaches the eye the lid shuts instantly through a reflex act, even though the man be unconscious or sight has been lost. It will be noticed that in this movement of the eyelid a purpose is served: it is as though the man perceived the speck and willed to close the lid in order to protect the eye. An action done to serve an apparent end is spoken of by the physiologist as "purposive." It would seem at first that such an action implies consciousness, but it has just been shown that this--in regard to the eye, at least--is not the case, and before this paper is ended it will be demonstrated that adaptation for a useful end is no proof that an action is directed by consciousness.