Summary 265 



overproduced movements projected out from the platform 

 of the habitual adaptations of the members brought into 

 play ; in the sphere of the social environment it consists in 

 the accommodation of the attention, secured by the over- 

 production of motor variations projected from the platform 

 of the habitual attention complex. The presentations from 

 which the selected motor variations issue are beHeved or 

 called 'true,' while the organization which the motor com- 

 plex gradually attains holds the data of knowledge in rela- 

 tions of theoretical and analytical 'validity.' In the case 

 of physical selection the internal organization represented 

 by systematic determination gradually serves to free the 

 organism from direct dependence upon the control of the 

 environment ; ^ in the intellectual life this is even more 

 true, the development of the individual's judgment grow- 

 ing more and more independent of social control as prog- 

 ress is made in the 'systematic determination.' 



This general sameness in the operation of selection in 

 the two spheres is what we should expect if the method 

 of motor accommodation be what I have described as the 

 imitative or 'circular' reaction. For it is just through 

 reactions of this type, with the antithesis between pleasure 

 and pain by which they are furthered and maintained, that 

 motor accommodations are all the while passed over to 

 the domain of habit, that is, integrated in the system of 

 ' intra-organic determinations.' Thus organized knowledge 

 in all its development may be looked upon as due to the 

 synergies of motor processes selected as accommodations 

 to the world of things and persons.^ 



1 This is seen in psychogenetic evolution in the rise of memory, thought, 

 etc., considered as variations, which constitute a more or less self-subsistent 

 and independent ' mental life.' 



2 Argued in detail in Mental Development. 



