Note 335 — MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS.

If mental action is electric, the proverbial quickness of thought—that is, the quickness of the transmission of sensation and will—may be presumed to have been brought to an exact measurement. The speed of light has long been known to be about 192,000 miles per second, and the experiments of Wheatstone have shewn that the electric agent travels (if I may so speak) at the same rate, thus shewing a likelihood that one law rules the movements of all the “imponderable bodies.” Mental action may accordingly be presumed to have a rapidity equal to one hundred and ninety-two thousand miles in the second—a rate evidently far beyond what is necessary to make the design and execution of any of our ordinary muscular movements apparently identical in point of time, which they are.