Facts and Factors of Development 53 



grace of a new dispensation, in which education by experience 



comes in as an amelioration of the law of elimination. . . . Intelli- 

 gence implies varying- degrees of freedom of choice, but never 

 complete emancipation from automatism. 



Freedom of action does not mean action without stimuli, but 

 rather the introduction of the results of experience and intelli- 

 gence as additional stimuli. The activities which in lower animals 

 are "cabined, cribbed, confined," reach in man their fullest and 

 freest expression ; but the enormous difference between the rela- 

 tively fixed behavior of a protozoan or a germ cell and the rela- 

 tively free activity of a mature man is bridged not only in the 

 process of evolution, but also in the course of individual develop- 

 ment. 



6. Consciousness. — The most complex of all psychic phenomena, 

 indeed the one which includes many if not all of the others, is 

 consciousness. Like every other psychic process this has under- 

 gone development in each of us; we not only came out of a state 

 of unconsciousness, but through several years we were gradually 

 acquiring consciousness by a process of development. Whether 

 consciousness is the sum of all the psychic faculties, or is a new 

 product dependent upon the interaction of the other faculties, 

 it must pass through many stages in the course of its development, 

 stages which would commonly be counted as unconscious or sub- 

 conscious states, and complete consciousness must depend upon 

 the complete development and activity of the other faculties, par- 

 ticularly associative memory and intelligence. - 



Germ Cells Not Conscious. — The question is sometimes asked 

 whether germ cells, and indeed all living things, may not be con- 

 scious in some vague manner. One might as well ask whether 

 water is present in hydrogen and oxygen. Doubtless the elements 

 out of which consciousness develops are present in the germ cells, 

 in the same sense that the elements of the other psychic processes 

 or of the organs of the body are there present; not as a miniature 

 of the adult condition, but rather in the form of elements or fac- 



