LOGETIC CHARACTER OF GROWTH 59 



but which may perhaps be shown to be identical, viz., memory, 

 Weber's law, and attention. 



MEMORY AND THE 'EGO' IN SOMATIC AND MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 



On memory I shall not dwell long. Better qualified men (Her- 

 ing, Laycock, Butler, Semon) have pointed out the part which 

 engrammata may play in all organized matter and the impor- 

 tance of their reproduction, their 'ekphorie,' as Semon calls it. 



That authors have occasionally gone too far in the 'engram 

 theory' and in what respects, I will not discuss for the present. 

 Here I will only point out a £ pecial part which the engrams play 

 in our conscious or subconscious mental life and what analogy 

 they have with our bodily life. 



In this connection I must point, in the first place, to an appar- 

 ently very great contrast between the construction of our mental 

 life and the differentiation of our body. For, whereas the physi- 

 cal development begins as a real unit — the germ cell— which 

 contains all potentialities, and this unit is sustained in the devel- 

 oped individual, the conscious integration of the observations 

 and conceptions is, on the contrary, very incoherent in the be- 

 ginning, and besides confined to very few data, as we know from 

 our own spiritual development. 



The phylogenetic development of the brain, too, would seem to show 

 that the integration of impressions advances but gradually. In fishes 

 the forebrain, midbrain, oblongata, and spinal cord function to a 

 large extent autonomously. Only in the higher animals, and espe- 

 cially in man, is there a greater linking or integration by the associa- 

 tion of everything, or at least of a great deal, in the cortex cerebri. 



In the mental integration (as well in the phylogenetic integra- 

 tion of brain functions) the coherent unit seems to come only 

 as a final result, indeed, is only very incompletely reached in 

 this final result as the many 'gaps' in our knowledge prove. 



Concerning ourselves, the contents of our spiritual life, how- 

 ever, are not built up merely by secondary linking of observa- 

 tions, for as we know by experience, every separate observation 

 and stimulation falls into the primitive but in a certain way com- 



