Orr 253 



obscurity : "When we consider the protoplasm's respon- 

 siveness to stimuli and to the effects of repetition or prac- 

 tice, with the intricate co-ordinations that may thereby 

 be effected, also the impressions made by stimuli which 

 remain long fixed as "memory," we are led directly to 

 suppose that the property which is the basis of bodily 

 development in organisms is the same property which 

 we recognize as the basis of psychic activity and psychic 

 development." 



"On the same principle that a thought in the mind 

 calls up an associated thought, or one tone of music 

 calls up another, or one action in an oft repeated series 

 of actions calls up the next subsequent action or actions, 

 so the initial stimulus being given to an incipient organ- 

 ism, its responsive activity each time tends to produce 

 by association the next activity in the oft repeated series 

 and so on through the successive steps of growth and 

 development." m 



The points of contact between the mnemonic phenome- 

 non of the association or succession of ideas and the phe- 

 nomenon of ontogenetic development have already been 

 very rightly brought forward by others and we shall 

 return to them for closer examination in the last chapter. 

 It may be remarked here merely that the first can in no 

 way serve to explain the second. For in the first place 

 it belongs to a class of phenomena still more specialized 

 and more complex than the phenomenon to be explained, 

 in the second place the conditions of origin and of repeti- 

 tion are quite different in the two phenomena. 



When a melody strikes the ear for the first time and 

 is later often repeated it leaves behind impressions on 



181 Orr: Ibid. P. 238239, 142. 



