The Science of the Mind 545 



heritance ; in other words, what comprises the innate constitution 

 of the human mind? The question is not easy to answer. Dr. 

 McDougall puts the question in the following form: 



Does the native basis of mind comprise any disposi- 

 tion, in addition to those which enter into the composition of 

 the instincts ; and if so, to what extent are they systematically 

 linked together? 



We cannot answer this question with a negative. There 

 is certainly much beside the faculties and the instincts com- 

 prised within the native basis of each human mind. If there 

 were not, it would be impossible adequately to account for 

 the vast superiority of mind of the human adult to that of 

 the highest of the animal. Some of those who regard the 

 mind purely from the physiological standpoint, and who be- 

 lieve that all we have called the structure of the mind can be 

 adequately described in terms of the organised structure of 

 the brain, take the view that the superiority of the native en- 

 dowment of man consists, chiefly or wholly, in the presence 

 in the brain of the infant of a great mass of unorganised 

 nervous tissue which offers unlimited possibilities of pro- 

 gressive organisation. But, even if we accepted the assump- 

 tion that the structure of the mind can be wholly described 

 in terms of nervous disposition and their connections, we 

 could not accept the view that nothing of the mental organ- 

 isation beyond the instincts is innate. 



The bearing which all this has on our present problem is 

 this: can we say that the particular kind of activity known to 

 us as thinking, feeling, and willing is implicit in the germ-cell 

 just beginning to develop into an organism of great complexity 

 an individuality in the one-cell phase of its being, a mind-body 

 or body-mind telescoped down. It varies, it makes experiments, 

 it makes its own essays (in internal rearrangement) in self- 

 expression. 



The germ-cell is a sort of a blind artist ; its sketches are 

 submitted to the criticism of the fully formed organism, the 



