820 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



sports. The latter, however, often become the healthy natural 

 corrective to the evil effects of the other stimuli, even though 

 such corrective takes the form, with more earnest men, of 

 normal work accomplished in steady fashion. 



Dilettanti like these are a constant product of and form 

 one of the greatest menaces to every advancing civilization. 

 They become most obtrusive and dangerous wherever an excess 

 of wealth tends to accumulate amongst individuals. They 

 view with a sensuous, carnal, supercilious, and selfish eye the 

 more earnest, endeavoring, and striving masses of humanity. 

 From their ranks come the individuals who are "content" 

 with the world, and who ridicule the noble souls whose minds 

 and mental eyes can proenviron higher and truer aims for 

 humanity. It has often been said that such "lead a butterfly 

 existence," and there is much more of exact truth in the plirase 

 than even appears on the surface. 



But, since all sensuous and carnal pleasures in time dull 

 the higher cogitic and the spiritic natures, the latter end of 

 such individuals is that they tire of existence; ennui and a 

 blase indifference take possession of them; and their outlook 

 on life is summed u]) in the sentence, "without God and with- 

 out hope in the world." 



The human career that combines the biotic, the cognitic, 

 and the cogitic energies and their associated substances is 

 one that abounds today in our midst. The '"sharp business 

 man," the "active professional gentleman," the "successful 

 working man," usually show all three of these energies oper- 

 ating in a more or less combined proportion. AYhen all three 

 are fairly well balanced, but are uninfluenced by highest cogitic 

 or by spiritic action, the individual becomes usually a "suc- 

 cessful man of the world." By aid of the inhibitor}^ nerves, 

 and ])y judicious action of the motor nerves, the sensuous 

 and the carnal stimuli and their reactions are held in check, 

 the varied and complex mental activities that the daily life 

 of higher civilized men call forth excite the gray matter of 

 the brain and the associated nerves, to those responses which 

 ensure the successful accomplishment of cogitic or mental 



