442 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Englishmen. Similarly, my " ego " is the expression of the aggre- 

 gate force co-ordination of the elements that make up my body. 



The old dictum of the philosopher, " I think, therefore I am," is 

 not literally and wholly true. " We think, therefore we are," we 

 co-ordination of brain cells, would be quite as rational. But we 

 brain cells do not think individually, only collectively or colonially, 

 so no single sentence can express the whole truth, nor can a trust- 

 worthy philosophy grow out of any axiom of this sort. 



The development of the character is the formation of the ego. It 

 is in itself the co-ordination of the elements of heredity, the bringing 

 into union of the warring tendencies and irrelevant impulses left us 

 by our ancestors. The child is a mixture of imperfectly related 

 impulses and powers. It is a mosaic of ancestral heredity. Its 

 growth into personality is the process of bringing these elements into 

 relation to each other. 



In a remarkable study of the phenomena of " conversion," 

 Mr. Edwin Diller Starbuck gives this view of the physiological 

 phenomena associated with the development of personality, the 

 building up of a self by a process which is primarily unself- 

 ing " : " It is pretty well known," Mr. Starbuck says, " that 

 the quality of mind is much dependent upon the fineness of 

 nervous structure. The child has about as many nerve cells 

 as the adult. They differ from those of the adult in form. 

 Those of the child are mostly round, whereas those of the adult have 

 often very many branches with which they connect with the other 

 cells. Nervous growth seems to consist largely in the formation of 

 new nervous connections. The rapid growth at puberty probably 

 means that at that time there is a great increase in nervous branch- 

 ing. The increased ramification of nervous tissue probably deter- 

 mines the ability for seeing in general terms, for intellectual grasp, 

 and for spiritual insight. The rapid formation of new nerve con- 

 nections in early adolescence may be the cause of the physiological 

 unrest and mental distress that intensifies into what we have called 

 the sense of incompleteness which precedes conversion. The mind 

 becomes a ferment of half-formed ideas, as the brain is a mesh of 

 poorly organized parts. This creates uncertainty, unhappiness, de- 

 jection, and the like, because there is not the power of free mental 

 activity. The person is restless to be born into a larger world that is 

 dimly felt. Finally, through wholesome suggestions or normal de- 

 velopment, order comes and the new world dawns. Often some 

 emotional stress or shock strikes harmony into the struggling imper- 

 fection, and truth comes like a flash." 



The evil effect of the excess of sense impressions and of thought 

 dissociated from will and action has been noted many times and in 



