400 THE EVOLUTION OF MEMORY 



66 1. We learn to do new things, acquire new knowledge, and 

 think new thoughts with toil. But practice confers facility. In 

 the end we know or perform with ease that which was acquired 

 with difficulty. We cannot unlearn, however, as we have learned 

 by an act of will. The facility (the brain change) lingers, and, as 

 a consequence, since we tend to lose our powers of making new 

 acquirements, our action and thoughts, our mental tones and 

 attitudes, our whole outlook on life, becomes more or less 

 'automatic' or stereotyped. 1 In other words, our acquirements 

 come at last to resemble reflexes and instincts. Not only do 

 they take the place of those reflexes and instincts which retro- 

 gressed when memory was evolved, but they are infinitely more 

 numerous. So like are they to reflexes and instincts that they are 

 often so misnamed. Thus psychologists usually place automatic 

 actions in the reflex category. As a fact, reflexes and automatic 

 actions are as poles apart ; but of this more presently. 2 



662. Again we often apply the term ' instinctive ' to emotions 

 and 'physical 5 dexterities which have been acquired. For 

 example, deceived by the quickness and readiness of the act, we 

 speak of such actions as that of a boy when he dodges a blow as 

 instinctive. But the boy has learned to dodge, and would learn to 

 dodge still better and quicker if he went into training for the prize 

 ring. When untaught by experience, he can no more dodge a blow 

 than he can solve a problem in quadratics. His action is intrinsi- 

 cally different from that of a house-fly, which learns nothing from 

 experience, and dodges as well at the first attempt as at the last. 

 It is the mode of origin, not the quickness, readiness, or facility in 

 performance which constitutes the difference between reflex and 



expression may pass, though it is apt to mislead. But, if by it be meant that 

 ' channels ' are somehow made in the brain analogous to those which water wears 

 on or under the ground, the expression is, probably, not only misleading, but 

 wrong in every sense. There is nothing to justify it except an impossible analogy. 

 It is admitted that mental happenings are correlated to cerebral happenings. If 

 mental growth occurs, for example increased thinking capacity, we have every 

 reason to believe that this growth is correlated with actual cerebral growth 

 analogous to muscular growth though possibly this growth may often imply 

 little or no increase in the size of the brain, but only an adjustment which 

 increases its working power. 



1 It would be well for the avoidance of subsequent confusion if the reader 

 carefully noted the meaning here given to the word ' automatic.' An automatic 

 action is one which we have learned to perform, but which, through practice, has 

 become so easy of performance that, like a reflex action, it is done, apparently, 

 without mental effort. It is sharply distinguished from a reflex action in that it 

 is a product of individual experience. 



8 See 676 et seq. 



