PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS—SECTION J. 159 
associated act has to be eventually performed, the attention in 
the first place being directed separately to certain groupings of 
action, which ultimately constitute the whole. Herbert Spencer 
takes speech as furnishing an illustration: “Each muscular 
adjustment of the vocal organs, and each articulate sound made, 
have in childhood concomitant sentient states that are vivid, and 
for the moment all-absorbing.” We may suppose that in this 
case the auditory sphere has been stimulated to a sufficient in- 
tensity to produce a shock. Then that the impulse has spread to 
the closely adjoining area, more especially in relation to the 
muscles of the face, tongue, and larynx. The result may be 
simply the production of a sound. The frequent repetition of 
these shocks causes extensions of connections into the occipito- 
temporal area, and eradually paths are formed which allow of 
the psychic association of certain sounds with certain objects, or 
groups of things. | 
It is seen that when these extensions have become organised 
that a small excitant may liberate large amounts of nervous 
energising. This is because that when once a route has been 
established impulses pass along it with facility, and there is a 
minimum of loss. As a consequence large areas physiologically 
connected may be stimulated, but of whose functioning we may 
be quite unconscious. If it were not so, our mental efforts 
would never get beyond the arduous efforts of the child learning 
to read or to write. It is therefore necessary in education that 
stimuli of a certain intensity should be constantly repeated 
until the effect can be easily reproduced. The only difference 
between this acquired functioning and “instinct” is that the 
latter is inherited in an organised developed condition at birth, 
whilst the former is an acquisition after birth and the resultant 
of subsequent functionings. Another result is that the actual 
direct stimulus may have no conscious connection with the train 
of psychic conceptions it may arouse, owing to the intermediate 
tracks having long passed into an automatic functioning. It is 
owing to this that our ideas appear to have an independent 
spontaniety, which, however, is quite fictitious, because they can 
only be the ultimate resultants of previous excitations. 
Systematic functioning is therefore a valuable aid to what is 
called education, and in forming the desired organisation of the 
cortex. The result of education will be in direct proportion to 
the extent of this laying down of a physical substratum. As 
the initial quality of the neurons will vary with each individual, 
the resultant will differ in each case, and we cannot expect to 
raise everyone to the same educational level. 
Whilst nutrition, sufficient stimulation, and repetition of 
excitations causing organisation, are absolutely necessary for 
producing future effective mentalisation, there are other condi- 
tions which tend to retard it. One of the most important of 
