THE BACKGROUNDS OF PERSONALITY 193 



ing energy (as a result of inherent chemical reactions accelerated 

 by the absorption of food). This process of local accumulation 

 of energy associated with general loss of energy may be observed 

 even in the ameba, in the form of stored reserve food material. 

 Evolution created a system of organs, the viscera, as specialists 

 in energy conservation, utilization or transformation. 



For intercommunication and interaction between the viscera 

 two systems were elaborated: a younger system of direct con- 

 tacts, the nerves, and nerve cells, through which influences could 

 be conducted for the stimulation, acceleration, retardation or 

 inhibition of an energy process in them; and the older, the 

 endocrine gland association, for the production of chemical sub- 

 stances to act as messengers to be sent from one viscus to 

 another, and also to the nerves, through the blood or lymph which 

 bathe all the cells. They could affect only one or certain organs, 

 because by selection only the chosen organ or organs knew the 

 code, as it were. The chemical system is much the older system, 

 and preceded the nerve system by seons of time. The whole 

 system, viscera, visceral nerves and the endocrines gradually 

 united into a complete autonomous organism within the organ- 

 ism, and as such functions as the vegetative apparatus. 



Evolution of the Endocrines 



2. In the course of evolution, variations occurred in all three 

 components of the apparatus, the viscera, the nerves, and the 

 endocrines. Now variations in the viscera and the nerves are 

 essentially grossly physical and quantitative. That is, there may 

 be a bigger stomach or a smaller stomach, larger nerve fibres or 

 smaller. And as Life always has worked with a large margin of 

 safety, and always played for safety first as regards quantity, 

 these variations have not become of much significance for the 

 history and destiny of the animal. 



But variations among the endocrines made a tremendous differ- 

 ence. To have very much thyroid and very little pituitary, much 

 adrenal and not enough parathyroid meant a great deal to the 

 Organism as a whole, as well as to the vegetative apparatus. For 

 states of tension and relaxation, activity and inactivity in the 

 nerves and viscera would be determined by these variations in 

 the ratio between the variants. The vegetative apparatus in its 

 virginity, say in the new-born infant, may be said to have its 

 development primarily determined by the reaction potentials of 



