88 Physical Heredity and Social Transmission 



Such a view extends the application of the general 

 principle of selection through fitness to the activities of 

 the organism. After years of study and experiment with 

 children, etc., devoted to this problem, the writer is con- 

 vinced that this ' functional selection * bears much the same 

 relation to the doctrine of the special creation of ontogenic 

 accommodations by consciousness which Professor Cope is 

 reviving, that the Darwinian theory of natural selection 

 bears to the special creation theory of the phylogenetic 

 adaptations of species. The facts which Spencer called 

 ' heightened discharge ' are capable of formulation of the 

 principle of * motor excess ' : ' the accommodation of an 

 organism to a new stimulation is secured — not by the 

 selection of this stimulation beforehand (nor of the neces- 

 sary movements) — but by the reinstatement of it by a 

 discharge of the energies of the organism, concentrated, as 

 far as may be, for the excessive stimulation of the organs 

 (muscles, etc.), most nearly fitted by former habit to get 

 this stimulation again,' ^ in which the word * stimulation ' 

 stands for the condition favourable to adjustment. After 

 several trials, with grotesquely excessive movements, the 

 child, for example, gets the accommodation aimed at, more 

 and more perfectly, and the accompanying excessive and 

 useless movements fall away. This is the kind of * selec- 

 ting ' that consciousness does in its acquisition of new 

 movements. And how the results of it are conserved from 

 generation to generation, without the Lamarckian factor, 

 has been spoken of above. 



Finally, a word merely of the relation of consciousness 

 to the energies of the brain. It is clear that this doctrine 



1 Mental Development, p. 179. Spencer and Bain hold that the selection 

 is of purely chance adjustments among spontaneous movements. 



