112 UNIVERSAL EVOLUTION 



organs, and thus increase the associative complex. 

 The greatest benefit of school education is the effect 

 that its repeated exercises have upon the multiplication 

 of cross cut nerve threads, and the forming of com- 

 plexes of these. In reading, music, painting, writing, 

 the advance from painful effort toward automatism, 

 means the gradual formation, in the brain, of short 

 circuits from sense organ, to motor muscle. The per- 

 fection of all human effort, and behavior, is parallel 

 with the like perfection of the flow of sensation through 

 the plexuses of the human brain. Frequent repetition 

 makes the effort less conscious, because it clears away 

 in the brain any resistance to the chemical action, or 

 molecular motion; and this is done, if Max Meyer is 

 correct, just as the variations of sensory paths increase 

 in number and power. He says the progress is by steps 

 to a first level of accomplishment, and thence to higher 

 levels, stopping for a time at each level. 



It seems that these halts are due to the necessity 

 for the growth of new fibres from the old unused cells, 

 in reaching the higher arcs in the brain. 



The growth of new variations in the neural paths 

 depends upon (1) the intensity of the sensations and 

 (2) the continuity of them. Forgetting is the negative 

 susceptibility of the nervous paths. By non-use they 

 lose their power. They are kept up only by continual 

 use. 



In discussing the effect of the nervous system of 

 moths, Meyer concludes that the excitation of the 

 eyes of the moth, by which the wings are set in motion, 

 toward the light, is of great benefit to the moth family, 

 notwithstanding that millions of them are destroyed 

 by artificial lights. The moth evidently obtains his 

 food by his instinct of flying toward the light, and the 

 lights of nature do not injure him. 



