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The metaphysical question, whether the soul as a spiritual substance is capable of being wholly inactive, or whether it is not in what seem the moments of profoundest unconsciousness partially awake the question so warmly discussed by the Cartesians, Leibnitz, etc. need not detain us here. Of more interest to us are the psychological and the physiological discussions.
Numerous and well-known physiological researches, especially those of Mosso, show that all intellectual, and, most of all, emotional, work, produces cerebral congestion; that the brain-volume increases, and the volume of the peripheral organs diminishes. But that tells us nothing particularly about the imagination, which is but a special case under the rule.
If one sees a live dog's head, it is extremely probable that a dog's tail is not far off, though nobody can say why that sort of head and that sort of tail go together; what physiological connection there is between the two. So, in the case of the Montmartre fossil, Cuvier, finding a thorough opossum's head, concluded that the pelvis also would be like an opossum's.
This definition was destined presently to meet with yet another modification, as we shall see; but the conception of the protoplasmic mass as the essential ultimate structure, which might or might not surround itself with a protective covering, was a permanent addition to physiological knowledge.
When several of these internal or physiological modifications are accompanied by variation in size, habits of growth, colour of the flowers, and other external characters, and these are found to be constant in successive generations, botanists may well begin to differ in opinion as to whether they ought to regard them as distinct species or not.
The greater physiological complexity of woman, as compared with man, lends especial force to the argument in her case.
The psychological explanation of this is very evident. Both lack of interest in the learning and the presence of discouragement are likely to result in divided attention and that, as has already been shown, results in unsatisfactory work. A third cause for plateaus is physiological. Not only must the learner be in the right attitude towards the work, but he must feel physically "fit."
My experience when a practising laryngologist made me acquainted with the extent of the ruin that may be brought about by incorrect methods of using the voice, both as regards the throat and the voice itself; and contact with teachers and students has so impressed me with the importance of placing voice-production on a sound foundation, not only artistic but physiological, that I have felt constrained to tell others who may be willing to hear me what I have learned as to correct methods, with some reference also to wrong ones, though the latter are so numerous that I shall not be able to find the space to deal at length with them.
The phenomena are physiological and not electrical. Our conviction is, that the results proceed entirely from imagination acting with a peculiar condition of the brain, and that this peculiarly passive and impressible condition of the brain is induced by the fixed gaze upon the disk.
The one scientific instrument it seemed possible to use was an ergograph, a complicated and expensive instrument kindly lent to us from the physiological laboratory of the University of Chicago.
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