THE LAW OF EVOLUTION CONCLUDED. 403 



complex groups. The subsequent advance to dissyllables 

 and polysyllables, and to involved combinations of words, 

 shows the still higher degree of integration and heterogene- 

 ity eventually reached by these organic motions. The 

 acts of consciousness correlated with these nervo-muscular 

 acts, of course go through parallel phases; and the advance 

 from childhood to maturity yields daily proof that the 

 changes which, on their physical side are nervous processes, 

 and on their mental side are processes of thought, become 

 more various, more defined, more coherent. At first the 

 intellectual functions are very much alike in kind — recog- 

 nitions and classifications of simple impressions alone go on; 

 but in course of time these functions become multiform. 

 Reasoning grows distinguishable, and eventually we have 

 conscious induction and deduction; deliberate recollection 

 and deliberate imagination are added to simple unguided 

 association of ideas; more special modes of mental action, 

 as those which result in mathematics, music, poetry, arise; 

 and within each of these divisions the mental processes 

 are ever being further differentiated. In definiteness it is 

 the same. The infant makes its observations so inac- 

 curately that it fails to distinguish individuals. The child 

 errs continually in its spelling, its grammar, its arithmetic. 

 The youth forms incorrect judgments on the affairs of life. 

 Only with maturity comes that precise co-ordination in the 

 nervous processes that is implied by a good adjustment of 

 thoughts to things. Lastly, with the integration by which 

 simple mental acts are combined into complex mental acts, 

 it is so likewise. In the nursery you cannot obtain con- 

 tinuous attention — there is inability to form a coherent 

 series of impressions; and there is a parallel inability to 

 unite many co-existent impressions, even of the same order: 

 witness the way in which a child's remarks on a picture, 

 show that it attends only to the individual objects repre- 

 sented, and never to the picture as a whole. But with 

 advancing years it becomes possible to understand an in- 



