452 Eimer on GrowtJi and Inheritance 



tion, and subsequently for dealing with them, must have had 

 their capacities exercised and strengthened. 



To these representations we have no objection, provided 

 that it be admitted that in such sentient organisms there 

 must first be a latent power different from that possessed 

 by purely non-sensitive organisms, such as Professor Eimer 

 admits plants to be. But what is a ' different power ' ? It 

 is and must be something dynamic and non-material. Let 

 the existence of such an entity (one perfectly conceivable, 

 though necessarily unimaginable) be alloAved, and then we 

 can understand that stimuli, and incipient activity thence 

 resulting, may call forth into active exercise what before w^as 

 but potential. 



He says,^ later on, 'Only function could impress upon 

 nervous, as on other cells, a definite morphological character.' 

 Yet nothing can act before it is ; but the dynamic agency, 

 we affirm, can be understood as simultaneously giving rise 

 both to morphological characters and physiological activities. 



From this similarity of origin, common to the different 

 sense-organs, he infers ^ that all the external activities which 

 stimulate diverse sense-organs in such different manners 

 ' may be but different qualities of one and the same stimulus, 

 different forms of motion of external media — even the 

 stimuli of taste and smell.' But all that need be inferred 

 from such similarity as there is between our different organs 

 of sense, is that the objective causes — the various activities 

 — which act on such organs possess a similarity as regards 

 their modes of action. It does not on that account really 

 foUow that sight and taste should be ' motion ' any more 

 than that motion and hearing should be really ' smeU.* Our 

 readiness to refer other activities to ' motion ' is the simple 

 and necessary result of our constant and universal experience 

 of ' motion,' which cause it to be so much more easy to 



1 P. 342. 3 p. 333. 



