artner is the glands of internal
secretion, which act upon the viscera both directly and indirectly
through the check and drive effect upon the vegetative nerves.
The glands are like tuning keys, by which certain strings in the
instrument may be tightened, so that its vibratory activity is
increased, or they may be loosened, the vibrations decreased, the
activity lessened. Tuning up the motors is a constant process in the
organism. Finally, there are the large nerve masses at the base of the
brain known as the basal ganglia, which contain the nerve centers for
the co-ordination of the other three. All these together constitute
the oldest family of the corporate organism. Beside them, the brain
and the face and the prehensile organs are mere parvenus.

THE OLDEST PART OF THE MIND

Granted, then, that this vegetative apparatus is the most deeply
rooted core of our being. What warrant is there for the grandiloquence
of the phrase: the Oldest part of the Mind? There is, indeed, room for
rhetoric, even poetry, here. For all the evidence points to it as the
rightful occupant of the throne upon which Shelley placed his Brownie
as the Soul of the Soul. Or to put it in another way, we think and
feel primarily with the vegetative apparatus, with our muscles,
especially the involuntary, with our viscera, and particularly with
our internal secretions. Whenever there is thought and feeling, there
is movement, commotion, precedent and concomitant, among these. They
are the oldest seats of feeling, thought and will and continue to
function as such.

Just what evidence is there for this conception? In the first place,
there is the fascinating story of the origin of vertebrates from
invertebrates of the sea scorpion or spider type. Then there is a
whole group of data which demonstrate that the primitive wishes which
make up the content of a baby consciousness are determined, settled by
states of relaxation or tension in different segments or areas of the
vegetative apparatus. According to this, the brain enters as only one
of the characters in the play of consciousness. It is just the organ
of awareness by the organism of itself as an integer which must adjust
itself to the specific condition within the disturbed vegetative
apparatus. Consequently the brain emerges not as the master tissue,
but as merely the servant of the vegetative apparatus.

Consciousness is a circuit. Swinging around in it are the
wish-feelings generated by th