GENESIS OF MAN, MORALLY 



fully affect any of the senses. The work of mak- 

 ing the needful adjustments is thrown largely 

 upon the cerebrum, with its power of forming 

 ideal sequences like those formerly experienced, 

 and of directing action so as to anticipate them. 

 Here, indeed, we come suddenly upon one of 

 the conditions of human progressiveness, as 

 above illustrated. 



We can now begin to see why man finds 

 pleasure in so many kinds of activity which are 

 noxious to himself. In no other animal are 

 the failures of adjustment between pleasurable 

 and painful states, and beneficial and hurtful 

 actions, so numerous or so conspicuous as in 

 man. Though in the adjustments upon which 

 the maintenance of life immediately depends, 

 the correspondence is of necessity unimpaired, 

 yet in those less essential adjustments concerned 

 in keeping up the greatest possible fulness of 

 life, there is frequent and lamentable imperfec- 

 tion. Thus, — to take one instance out of a 

 hundred, — we continually see pleasurable states 

 of consciousness associated with hurtful actions 

 in the cases of men who ruin themselves by the 

 use of narcotics. The fact that men, who are 

 so much wiser than brutes, should often persist 

 in conduct unworthy of brute intelligence, has 

 long formed the theme of much sage but fruit- 

 less moralizing. By Calvinistic theologians such 

 phenomena were formerly cited in proof of the 

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