There seems to be but one way. The attended-to idea does not exclude
every other idea, but it does exclude the opposite idea, and opposite to
each other is here again that pair of ideas which lead to opposite
actions, to opposite psychophysical attitudes. We must remember here the
psychomotor character of our brain processes which we so fully
discussed. We recognized the fundamental truth that there is no
sensorial state which is not at the same time the starting-point for
motor reaction. We recognized that the brain is by its whole
psychological development a great switchboard which transfers incoming
currents into outgoing ones and that its biological meaning lies in the
fact that it is the center piece of an arc which leads from the sense
organs to the muscles. We cannot conceive of those relations as complex
enough; we know, of course, that millions of nerve fibers lead from the
periphery to the highest psychophysical apparatus in the cortex of the
brain and that millions of fibers bring about the interrelation between
these central stations, but we must never forget that millions of fibers
also represent the outgoing paths and that they too lead down to lower
central motor instruments which are again in numberless corelations. Any
impression is thus a starting point for attitudes and reactions and it
is an empty abstraction to consider it otherwise. An idea is never,
psychophysically considered, the end of the process, it is always also a
beginning. No external action may follow, but the mental impulse to such
is nevertheless starting in the highest center.
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