68 COSMIC PHILOSOFHY. [pt. n 



tills formula is justified, it will be sufficient for our present 

 purpose to select but one or two. " The stinging and con- 

 tractile powers of a polyp's tentacle correspond to the sensi- 

 tiveness and strength of the creatures serving it for prey. 

 Unless that external change which brings one of these 

 creatures in contact with the tentacle were quickly followed 

 by those internal changes which result in the coiling and 

 drawing up of the tentacle, the polyp would die of inani- 

 tion. The fundamental processes of integration and dis- 

 integration within it would get out of correspondence with 

 the agencies and processes without it ; and the life would 

 cease." So in higher animals, " every act of locomotion im- 

 plies the expenditure of certain internal mechanical forces, 

 adapted in amounts and directions to balance or out-balance 

 certain external ones. The recognition of an object is impos- 

 sible without a harmony between the changes constituting 

 perception, and particular properties coexisting in the en- 

 vironment. Escape from enemies supposes motions within 

 the organism, related in kind and rapidity to motions without 

 it. Destruction of prey requires a particular combination of 

 subjective actions, fitted in degree and succession to overcome 

 a group of objective ones. And so with those countless 

 automatic processes exemplified in works on animal instinct." 

 And similarly, as will appear still more clearly when we 

 come to treat especially of the evolution of intelligence, 

 " the empirical generalization that guides the farmer in his 

 rotation of crops, serves to bring his actions into concord 

 ■vith certain of the actions going on in plants and soil ; and 

 the rational deductions of the educated navigator who calcu- 

 lates his position at sea, constitute a series of mental acts by 



posed from a resultant into an initial condition, the name given to the whole 

 group of phenomena becomes the personification of the phenomena, and the 

 product is supposed to have been tbe producer. In lieu of regarding vital 

 actions as the dynamical results of their statical conditions, the actions ar« 

 personified, and the personification comes to be regarded as indicating some< 

 thing independent of and antecedent to the concrete facts it ox'^resses."— • 

 Problems of Life and Mind, vol. 1. p. 110. 



