The Part played ~by Infancy 107 



muscular adjustment or an intelligent adjustment, 

 there has got to be some registration effected in the 

 nervous system, some line of transit worn for ner- 

 vous force to follow ; there has got to be a connec- 

 tion between certain nerve-centres before the thing 

 can be done, whether it is the acts of the viscera or 

 the acts of the limbs, or anything of that sort ; and 

 of course it is obvious that if the creature has not 

 many things to register in his nervous system, if he 

 has a life which is very simple, consisting of few 

 actions that are performed with great frequency, 

 that animal becomes almost automatic in his whole 

 life; and all the nervous connections that need to 

 be made to enable him to carry on life get made 

 during the foetal period or during the egg period, 

 and when he comes to be born, he comes all ready 

 to go to work. As one result of this, he does not 

 learn from individual experience, but one genera- 

 tion is like the preceding generations, with here and 

 there some slight modifications. But when you get 

 the creature that has arrived at the point where his 

 experience has become varied, he has got to do a 

 good many things, and there is more or less indi- 

 viduality about them ; and many of them are not 

 performed with the same minuteness and regu- 

 larity, so that there does not begin to be that 

 automatism within the period during which he is 



