Organization in Relation to Environment 809 



up the lives of these men. Each individual knows only fairly 

 well his own personality, gets glimpses — more or less intimate 

 — of his daily associates, learns slightly regarding others, and 

 therefrom makes up his estimate of human personality. 



But the carefully recorded studies of the past 30 years re- 

 garding child development shed a welcome flood of light on 

 human behavior, and entirely confirm the views just set forth 

 for adult conduct. Thus, as has already been indicated (p. 88), 

 the child at birth shows wholly or almost wholly biotic or 

 protoplasmic response. Food can be absorbed, digested, and 

 assimilated; breathing also goes on. But the cognitic or chro- 

 matin relation is scarcely, if at all, exhibited till the third day. 

 Thereafter for four to six years direct or increasingly complex 

 resultant responses to environal stimuli give rise to a cognitic 

 education that may be continued in many cases to adolescence. 

 The chromatin substance during this time will be exercised 

 in flows of cognitic energy that — hereditarily made easy by 

 relation to previous generations of men — evidently confer on 

 it added stability and complexity in molecular linking to- 

 gether. 



But child-mentality, or the cogitic state, only begins to 

 show itself about the fourth year, and may be said to increase 

 and expand as a mental education till the brain ceases to grow, 

 at the age of thirty to forty years. 



Now it is alike the result of observation, experience, and 

 experiment that if the environal stimuli that start cognitic 

 and cogitic response be of a pleasing helpful or synthetic nature 

 the organism is correspondingly benefited, while the opposite 

 is equally true in cause and effect. It would be impossible 

 to deal with the wide question of human emotions or senti- 

 ments in such a work as the present, and after the able analyses 

 that have been made of these since Spencer's and Darwin's 

 time, by Hobhouse, Washburn, Parmelee, and others. But it 

 may shortly be said that, while over-indulgence biotically — 

 as by a surfeit of eating and drinking — tends on the whole 

 to dull the cognitic and cogitic sensibilities, any action or 

 actions which cause synthesis or upbuilding, or which pro- 



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