Chap. XL] UNCONSCIOUS COGNITION. 163 



natural order lias commended itself from the peculiarities 

 of the facts to be explained. 



As to the existence or nature of the phenomena which 

 take place on the side of the ingoing current in lower 

 animals we can know nothing directly. We can only 

 infer that processes of great importance occur on this 

 side, because of the increasingly complex and purposive 

 character of the movements which higher or older animals 

 become capable of manifesting. 



The characters of the movements, therefore, are the 

 objective facts, and it is only by an attentive study of 

 them, and of the conditions under which they are mani- 

 fested, that we are entitled to come to an opinion as to 

 the occurrence of organic discriminations on the side of 

 the ingoing current — as to the existence, in fact, of what 

 we can only term * unconscious cognitions.* 



The increase in the number and variety of the nervous 

 impressions, both simultaneous and successive, to which 

 Animal Organisms become attuned to react, takes place 

 at a comparatively slow rate. The addition to the receptive 

 powers of any one individual are only slight, and it is 

 during the period in which it is acquiring these powers 

 that the corresponding structural changes will become 

 more and more perfected, partly in the form of new or 

 altered nerve cells, and partly by the formation of inter- 

 cellular processes and connecting fibres. And owing to 

 the fact that the germ or egg produced by an organism 

 always tends to develop into a form similar to that of its 

 parent (similar that is not only in external shape but in 

 the intimate texture and arrangement of its organs and 

 tissues), the successive lineal descendants of any one kind 

 of organism may in effect be regarded as portions of the 



