But, when this
passing lecture is over, there is nothing in the
bare notion that ideas have been its agents
that would seem to guarantee that my present
purposes in lecturing will be prolonged. _I_ may
have ulterior developments in view; but there
178
is no certainty that my ideas as such will wish
to, or be able to, work them out.
The like is true if nerve-cells be the agents.
The activity of a nerve-cell must be conceived
of as a tendency of exceedingly short reach, an
'impulse' barely spanning the way to the next
cell -- for surely that amount of actual 'process'
must be 'experienced' by the cells if what
happens between them is to deserve the name
of activity at all. But here again the gross
resultant, as _I_ perceive it, is indifferent to the
agents, and neither wished or willed or foreseen.
Their being agents now congruous with
my will gives me no guarantee that like results
will recur again from their activity. In point
of fact, all sorts of other results do occur. My
mistakes, impotencies, perversions, mental obstructions,
and frustrations generally, are also
results of the activity of cells. Although these
are letting me lecture now, on other occasions
they make me do things that I would willingly
not do.
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