nt
differentiation in kind whereby each has become peculiarly fitted for
the performance of its allotted functions; that, nevertheless, these
cells of the human body are still free-living, intelligent organisms,
of which each is endowed with the inherited, instinctive knowledge of
all that is essential to the preservation of its own life and the
perpetuation of its species within the living body; that, as a part of
the specializing economy of the body, there have been evolved brain
and nerve cells performing a twofold service--first, constituting the
organ of a central governing intelligence with the important business
of receiving, classifying, and recording all impressions or messages
received through the senses from the outer world, and, second,
communicating to the other cells of the body such part of the
information so derived as may be appropriate to the functions of each;
that finally, as such complex and confederated individuals, each of
us possesses a direct, self-conscious knowledge of only a small part
of his entire mental equipment; that we have not only a
_consciousness_ receiving sense impressions and issuing motor impulses
through the cerebro-spinal nervous system, but that we have also a
_subconsciousness_ manifesting itself, so far as bodily functions are
concerned, in the activity of the vital organs through the sympathetic
nerve system; that this subconsciousness is dependent on consciousness
for all knowledge of the external world; that, in accordance with the
principles of evolution, man as a whole and as a collection of cell
organisms, both consciously and unconsciously, is seeking to adapt
himself to his external world, his environment; that the human body,
both as a whole and as an aggregate of cellular intelligences, is
therefore subject in every part and in every function to the
influence of the special senses and of the mind of consciousness.

The Supremacy of Consciousness

CHAPTER VI

THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

CONCLUSIONS DRAWN FROM STUDIES IN HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY, ANATOMY AND
PHYSIOLOGY

[Sidenote: Striking off the Mental Shackles]

Stop a moment and mark the conclusion to which you have come. You have
been examining the human body with the scalpel and the microscope of
the anatomist and physiologist. In doing so and by watching the bodily
organs in operation, you have learned that _every part of the body, even
to those organs commonly known as involuntary, is ultima