The Evolution of Mind. 251 



in the process, more frequently only when the work is- 

 completed. The physical laws of the organism domi- 

 nate and determine the whole. The intuitions of 

 space relations, the principles that form the conditions 

 precedent to experience, the primal elements of reason, 

 as well as the laws of discursive thought are, on this 

 theory, fixed functions of fixed nervous structures 

 which have been organized through the invariable 

 experiences of ancestral organisms reaching back to a 

 time long antecedent to the differentiation of the 

 human race. 



Let this doctrine be called materialism or not it 

 assumes that the laws of the physical organism, not 

 only correspond with, but are the laws of thought. 

 Just as the " physiological units " are supposed by 

 their polarity to build up new particles into the spe- 

 cific structure of the animal, or as the equilibration 

 which has been correlated with the ancestral structure, 

 fixes the colour of the hair or the contour of the face ; 

 so do these same units mould the nervous system into 

 those modes of nerve-action, which are the forms of 

 thought the regulative principles of reasoning. The 

 processes of thought are pre-determined by the inborn 

 forms of though^ the forms of thought are determined 

 by the inborn law of organic action, that law is a 

 mode of molecular motion of the physiological units 

 their equilibration as constituents of the organized 

 body and is the resultant of the entire series of inci- 

 dent forces which have impinged upon the organism 



