SECTION VI 



MENTAL FACULTIES AS ACQUIRED AND INHERITED CHARACTERS 



Those who refuse to admit the inheritance of acquired 

 characters must also deny that mental faculties have been 

 produced and perfected by experience and the inheritance of 

 this experience. 



And yet the mental faculties can only have arisen in con- 

 sequence of the mutual relationship between organisms and 

 the external world. 



The Function of the Brain 



The brain, which is the organ of spontaneous action, is 

 nothing else than an apparatus for the storing up of faculties 

 and experiences, which have been either acquired and trans- 

 mitted by the ancestors or acquired during the individual life 

 of its present possessor. 



I say experiences intentionally, and will endeavour to 

 justify the expression. 



It is the function of the brain that, having the experiences 

 of every time at its disposal, it shall enable the body to make 

 use of any external demands upon it — stimuli — according to its 

 requirements, not to respond to them directly in merely reflex 

 action. This is rendered possible by the accumulation of 

 experience, and by the acquired and hereditary faculty of the 

 brain to bring experiences into their proper relations, to use 



