CONTACT CEPTORS 93 



the interpretation of man's phylogeny. As the geol- 

 ogists have reconstructed the earth's past history 

 from the evidence of fossilized remnants buried deep 

 in its crust, so we may reconstruct the history of 

 man's physical contact with nature from its effects 

 upon his structure and its functions. As philologists 

 found a key to the unknown, long-buried hieroglyphic 

 language of ancient Egypt in the Rosetta Stone, so 

 we find in the distribution of contact ceptors a key to 

 that mysterious language of communication between 

 the structure and the environment, which, being trans- 

 lated, tells of a racial experience that coincides closely 

 with the incidents of geologic evolution, as we know 

 them. That is, man has been evolved, much as other 

 animals have been evolved, by fighting, by pursuing 

 and being pursued, by crouching, grasping and killing, 

 by cowering from the hostile wind and weather as he 

 cowered from living enemies; by seeking out the 

 warmth, moisture and sunshine, as do all living things 

 to-day. 



Law of Phylogenetic Association 



But more than the past history of the species is 

 revealed by this relation between mechanisms in the 

 body and agencies in the environment. In our experi- 

 ments we found that whenever we reproduced approxi- 

 mately one of the environmental stimuli which had 

 given rise to adaptive responses in the organism, we 

 evoked simultaneously a transformation of energy com- 

 mensurate with the energy required for the phylo- 

 genetic response to that environmental stimulus. 

 When we reproduced the insect stimulus by tickling, 



