O'SHEA — ASPECTS OF MENTAL ECONOMY. 61 



If one should seek for an explanation of these phenomena, he 

 would find the most rational one, and one in every way consistent 

 with the principles involved in the preceding discussion, in the 

 theory of recapitulation; which postulates that the individual 

 retraces in some measure and retains in his own being to a cer- 

 tain extent the principal mental structures, intellectual and emo- 

 tional, developed throughout racial history. The emotions most 

 prominent in earlier phylogenetic epochs have been those con- 

 cerned with the preservation of self against the enemies lurking 

 everywhere, and which constantly threatened annihilation. 1 It 

 was self against all the world else. The development of the 

 altruistic or social emotions has been of very recent origin in 

 racial evolution ; and by virtue of a principle of heredity where- 

 by latest developed phylogenetic characteristics are most unsta- 

 ble in ontogenesis, one is warranted in holding that while the 

 social emotions are for the most part pre-eminent in the individ- 

 ual under normal conditions, yet these very emotions are most 

 affected, in fatigue, when the last formed and highest areas of 

 the brain are first disturbed in their functioning. The process 

 in racial ascent of gradual specialization of brain areas to take 

 on more and more delicate and elaborate motor and psychic func- 

 tions has resulted seemingly in the highest bodily, intellectual, 

 and emotional activities becoming so intricately interwoven that 

 one cannot suffer except at the expense of the others. Speaking 

 neurologically then,, the conditions requisite for co-ordination in 

 intellectual and motor activities are requisite for the efficient 

 control by the highest social emotions of those which are of a 

 lower order, and represent earlier predominant characteristics 

 alike in phylogenetic and in ontogenetic history. 2 A matter 



!One is impressed with this thought as he reads accounts of animal life in 

 its native wildness, — such accounts as one finds in Kipling's books, or in 

 Thompson's Wild Animals I Have Known, or Cornish's Animals at Work and 

 Play. 



2 For a detailed presentation of this theory, see, Marshall: Biological Lectures 

 and Addresses, lecture on Recapitulation ; Morgan : Habit and Instinct, whole 

 book ; Drummond : Ascent of Man, whole book ; Le Conte. Religion and Evolu- 

 tion, p. 133 et seq. ; Oppenheim, op. cit., chaps. I and II ; Haddon : The Study of 

 Man, Part II ; Baldwin : Mental Development, Methods and Processes, chaps. I, 

 IV, XIII ; Sail : Fear, American Journal of Psychology, vol. VIII ; Burk, op. cit. ; 

 Pedagogical Seminary, vols. Ill, IV, V, articles on Reverie, Mental Automations; 

 Bullying and Teasing, Games and Plays, Truancy, etc., etc. 



