430 Life as a Fine Art. 



ME. WILLIAM POTTS: 



I am not a psychologist, but it requires no knowledge of psychology 

 to enable me to realize that there are many things in the life of man 

 which have become automatic besides digestion and the vital func- 

 tions. If we had to think out all our actions for the day, we could 

 not possibly accomplish the work which we do. All things which we 

 do habitually, or after long practice, become to some degree auto- 

 matic ; and it appears to me that Dr. Janes is right in regarding this 

 quality as characteristic of our higher or perfected activities. The 

 performance of the trained musician is largely automatic, and so of 

 all high forms of artistic work. The same principle holds good in 

 every department of our life from the training of the infant to walk 

 and use his hands up to the exercise of our highest mental faculties. 

 Things which at first need to be thought out and wrought out with 

 foresight and plodding labor, by practice become intuitive or auto- 

 matic. 



DE. JANES: 



I think no higher compliment can be paid to a lecturer than that of 

 an intelligent criticism. Such a criticism I have learned always to ex- 

 pect from Prof. Merwin, and I thank him for it. As he proceeded, 

 however, it appeared to me that his remarks indicated a more intimate 

 acquaintance with text-books of systematic psychology than with 

 works bearing upon the higher phases of the doctrine of evolution. 

 No one who reads Spencer, for example, can fairly object to my use of 

 the word " infinite." This great master teaches us that the apprehen- 

 sion of the infinite is as normal to the human mind as is our compre- 

 hension of any of the laws or phenomena of either mental or material 

 things. It is fundamental to all our thought, the condition precedent 

 to all other knowledge. My critic thinks there is some poetry in my 

 essay. This I shall not deny, though I make no pretense to be a poet. 

 But I object decidedly to the inference, " The more poetry, the less 

 truth." Poetry is one of the modes of expressing truth. The poet 

 sometimes arrives at truth even scientific truth in advance of the 

 apostle of the scientific method ; as did Goethe and our own Emerson 

 in regard to this very doctrine of evolution. Prof. Merwin thinks that 

 the fact that the lower organisms possess a greater number of auto- 

 matic functions than man somehow discredits my theory. Not at all. 

 This is simply the order of Nature. The lower grade of functions 

 is first perfected first becomes automatic. The higher are developed 

 and perfected later. Man, though the highest of all the animals in the 

 scale of intelligence, for that very reason has a smaller proportion of 



