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peripheral portion of a neurite from a sensory ganglion cell. It seems to me rather that in these networks of nerve cells and fibers we have to do with primitive nervous structures more or less independent of the central nervous system, structures which, as BETHE points out, correspond to the diffuse nervous system of many invertebrates, and which are connected, on the one hand with the integument, and on the other hand with the nonstriated musculature.

SUMMARY.

1. The palatine branch of the seventh cranial nerve forms a plexus of medullated fibers in the palate of the frog; from this plexus fibers pass, to end by branching in the sensory organs of the epithelium.

2. The innervation of the sensory organs of the palate is not as diagrammatic as has been asserted; a diffuse network of neurofibrillae connects different sensory neurones, and puts the sensory organs into communication.

3. A network of cells and non-medullated fibers extends throughout the deeper layers of the palate and forms a close meshwork about the walls of the vessels.

4. Immediately beneath the epithelium is found another network of cells and fibers; sensory fibrils from it end in the epithelium, and it is also connected with the perivascular network.

5. The fibers of the networks are nervous structures for (a) they are not demonstrated by specific stains for elastic and connective tissue; (b) they are composed of neurofibrillae; (c) they are often directly continuous with medullated nerves.

6.

Neurofibrillae are present in the cells of the networks, but most of them pass through without forming a basketwork about the nucleus.

7. When the nerves of the palate are isolated from their ganglion cells the medullated fibers which end in the epithelium degenerate at the expiration of 25 to 35 days; the myelin sheaths disintegrate, and the axis cylinders fail to stain.

8. Under the same conditions both the cells and fibers

of the subepithelial and perivascular networks stain in a normal manner and show no degenerative changes in their structure.

9. Some of the cells of the network are therefore true nerve cells and exert a trophic influence upon the fibers connected with them.

10.

The networks are comparable to the diffuse nervous system of certain invertebrates, and their existence is incompatible with the idea that the nervous system is composed of of distinct cellular units.

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THE BEGINNINGS OF SOCIAL REACTION IN MAN

AND LOWER ANIMALS.

By C. L. HERRICK,

Socorro, New Mexico.

It seems to be easy to employ the word "social" in a very slip-shod manner and it may very well be that greater care in its definition would remove several bones of contention that are being worried from time to time in the journals.

When we admit that human experience "polarizes" (to use Professor BALDWIN's expression) into ego and alter extremes, it becomes necessary very carefully to guard what is meant by the social self or social consciousness. CLIFFORD, and other writers since, have written of a tribal conscience or tribal self. Such expressions may easily be interpreted as though society were possessed of a consciousness in the same sense that the individual is. Now this is, of course, nonsense, or rather, a frequently exposed fallacy.

When we speak of the social self we mean the social reflected in the individual or else we mean an abstraction of common elements in the individual selves constituting the society, which common factors we may thereafter use, like an algebraic expression, as though it had an independent existence. It would be of immense advantage in simplifying philosophical and anthropological inquiry if some sort of an agreement could be reached as to the use of words in this connection. Ought we not carefully to distinguish the two elements just referred to? Let us, for example, call the first the "socius consciousness," meaning thereby all that portion of our conscious acts which involves the recognition of other-in-self and self-in-other, or if the line cannot be drawn, our conscious acts in so far as this implication is under consideration. Let the second element be

termed "society consciousness," meaning thereby the common elements in the consciousness of the constituents of society or the consensus of society. In this way we avoid the ambiguity of the term social consciousness, or, if that term must be used, then by all means limit it to the social reactions within the individual consciousness and use the necessary circumlocutions to express the consensus idea.

Professor BALDWIN, in his genetic series, lays great stress on the "bipolar self." He shows that development of the ego goes pari passu with that of the alter; that self is social from the start. But this is only a phase of the general psychological law that self is reflexive. The wave of effort is met by an inflowing wave of resistance. Without both of these elements experience would be impossible. Just as the simplest form of subjectivity is coupled necessarily with an objectivity (substance), so the most rudimentary personality involves the social ele

ment.

For ethical purposes it is necessary to note that every moral act or thought has a social implication. This is part of the meaning of KANT'S well-known rules of morals. But psychology has, or ought to have, something to say as to the origin of the social faculty. Much of this has been interpreted by Professor BALDWIN in his description of the projective and ejective stages of social development.

Perhaps, however, some attention should now be given to the condition back of the projective activity, namely to the continuum habit, or, negatively expressed to fit its more common manifestation, the hiatus effect. If the equilibrium theory of consciousness be true, the elements in the equilibrium may be roughly classified into relatively constant, and variable elements, the a, b, c, series and the x, y, z series respectively.

By a process of familiarization, one of the variables may be converted into a constant and become a part of the usual furniture of consciousness. The process of assimilation causes the stimulus or group of stimuli increasingly to participate in

1 The law of dynamogenesis is implied throughout.

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