MIND IS FUNCTION 203 



were memory images, and innumerable past sensations 

 of falling bodies, and of astronomical bodies revolving 

 in apparent circles, and of Kepler's three laws, which 

 were known to Newton. The fusing of these images, 

 on the brain cortex, was the concept, or abstraction, 

 of the great principle of the attraction of gravitation. 

 This might, also, be the answer to Huxley's question, 

 put to himself, upon reading for the first time Darwin's 

 "Origin of Species," "Why could not I have drawn 

 the same conclusions, from the same well known 

 facts?" The point is, that all of Shakespeare's and 

 Newton's contemporaries were in the same environ- 

 ment, but could not interpret it as these two did, be- 

 cause they lacked the brain structure. 



If new fibres from the ganglia of reflex arcs, making 

 more complex connection in the noetic device, can be 

 formed by the exercise of mentality, then Newton, by 

 his profound studies in mathematics, probably did this. 

 In this manner, he may have greatly enlarged the 

 power of his brain. However, it is best to remark 

 here, that an inferior brain could not throw out these 

 "short cuts" by any amount of mental exertion, which 

 it is capable of making. 



THE USEFUL Is THE ONLY KNOWLEDGE. We do 

 not need "noumenon" or "absolute truth," any more 

 than we need an "absolute cause." Truth to us 

 must be relative to our space, time and needs. In 

 other words, as we are only relative beings, our knowl- 

 edge, our truths, must be adapted to our conditions. 

 Unconditioned, or absolute truth would not be ap- 

 plicable to conditioned individuals. It is only what 

 has a bearing upon our dependence on a material envi- 

 ronment, that can be known, or be of use to us. There- 

 fore the efforts to understand the absolute, or uncon- 



