390 REFLEX ACTION, INSTINCT, AND REASON 



who suppose that memory (like extension in space) is a property 

 of all living protoplasm, and who attribute it, therefore, even to 

 the protozoa and to plants. Others, declaring that without memory 

 there can be no feeling, place the beginnings of the faculty at the 

 beginnings of conscious life. Second, if we regard the power of 

 growing mentally under the stimulus of experience as the essential 

 thing, and the intelligence and reason which result from the exercise 

 of this power as accidents, even then, if we are consistent, we 

 must regard all the characters of living beings, including memory, 

 as accidents ; for, in exactly the same sense, all ' inborn ' characters 

 arise merely because there has been evolved a power of developing 

 under stimulus in this case that of nutriment. Here, then, is 

 the point on which I wish to fix the reader's attention. As he 

 peruses the remaining chapters of this book, he must constantly 

 bear in mind, not only that he is studying * acquirements? but that 

 acquirements are products of evolution, parts of normal growth, 

 characters without which the individual, who belongs to a species 

 which has evolved the power of making them, cannot achieve complete 

 maturity. If we study mind from this point of view, we shall not 

 only observe it in a light that is new, but also in one which will, 

 I think, enable us to penetrate more deeply into its mysteries 

 than has been possible hitherto. 



648. The reader perceives that I am what is termed an 

 ' extreme ' Darwinian or Selectionist. Indeed I am a very extreme 

 Darwinian. For me the great outstanding truth concerning living 

 beings is the wonderful closeness with which, notwithstanding the 

 vast multitude and diversity of species and characters, they 

 are all adjusted by all their structures, faculties, and chemical 

 reactions (for the individual is a complex chemical factory) to their 

 environments an adjustment which includes an equally close 

 adjustment of their parts and faculties to one another, as well 

 as such fundamental characteristics as the degree of variability 

 of each character, and the normal limitation of variability to a 

 portion of the germ-tract. Experience tells me that just in 

 proportion as I increase my knowledge of any species, I am forced 

 to believe that parsimonious nature has bestowed on it little or 

 nothing but adaptations. Of necessity I know my own species 

 best ; and I, a medical man, can think of hardly a human structure 

 or faculty to which I am unable to assign a useful function. I 

 know, and as a human being can know, comparatively little about 

 species that are far remote from my own, such as beetles, butter- 

 flies and plants ; and of the uses of their structures and faculties 



