ORGANIC MOVEMENTS 79 



rains and rivers, also depend on its individual geological 

 " history." Granite resists destruction longer than limestone, 

 but why do my critics not say that a mountain " acts," 

 whenever it is lowered by atmospherical agents ? In fact 

 they do not say so and I suspect they never will. 

 But let us formulate the distinction as strictly as possibla 

 In the elastic after-effect one and the same process occurs 

 the first time in a typical manner, considered as to quantity, 

 and the second time a little differently. In dynamical 

 geology different phases of history are followed by merely 

 passive different effects in later days, the first differences 

 corresponding with the second in locality. In acting, 

 however, historical specificities (including differences) in 

 quite a special class of occurrences, namely, sensation in the 

 widest sense of the word, are responsible for specificities 

 (including differences) which firstly are active and true 

 reactions to real stimuli in the narrowest sense of the 

 term, and which secondly occur in quite another field of 

 happening, in the field of movements. In the face of these 

 diversities all " analogies " between " experience " and 

 inorganic events appear to be a mere playing with words. 



Analogies like these would never have been even 

 suggested, had it always been borne in mind that so-called 

 experience, or rather the principle of the " historical basis 

 of reacting " in our strict definition, not only means the 

 mere recollection of what has happened, but means also the 

 ability to use freely in another field of occurring the elements 

 of former happening for newly combined individualised 

 specificities of the future which are wholes. We see one 

 of our fundamental principles of acting always united with 

 the other, and this fact may also be well expressed by 



