194 UNIVERSAL EVOLUTION 



the daily observations of natural phenomena in physics, 

 psychology, biology, sociology, and ethics, by induc- 

 tion, are the main sources of desirable education. Each 

 student brain responds to such environment, in pro- 

 portion, to the brain's quality and intensity, and to 

 the new channels possible to be opened, for molecular 

 motion, to operate in the brain. A certain tonicity is 

 thus given to after psychical processes, and those 

 neural associative centers greatly increased and 

 strengthened, which produce mentality. Memory con- 

 sists of the readiness and power of the cross associative 

 conduction paths, to recall ; and the will, the power to 

 apply, the images thus made, in all the psychical pro- 

 cesses of after life. "Reasoning is a synthesis of 

 images" by the following process: For example, the 

 individual sees a funeral pass along the street. The 

 image of it is instantly formed on the optical center of 

 his brain, and there it evokes, by association, the 

 memory of numerous other funerals he has seen, and 

 what he has read, and learned, in the past, upon the 

 subject of death. These like images fuse into a gen- 

 eral image, viz., that all men will die, therefore he will 

 die, which is an abstraction. Without the former ex- 

 periences of the same, or similar impressions, he could 

 not have thus concluded. A child gradually attains a 

 knowledge of likenesses and differences, all the rela- 

 tions that common objects bear to each other. by the 

 constant use of sight, touch, hearing, taste and smell. 

 Upon the experience thus obtained his powers of men- 

 tality, in after life, are gradually developed, by their 

 direct effect in improving the mobility of his brain in 

 quantity and quality. The limit of these powers is 

 fixed only by the physical complexity of his nervous 

 structure, those plexuses through which ideas are 



