Septembeb 24, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



397 



by using words as counters it becomes 

 possible to increase enormously the power 

 of the nervous system to deal with its own 

 experience. Education now involves the 

 learning of these counters and of their 

 significance in sense experience; and the 

 reactions of the highest animal, man, are 

 for the most part carried out in response 

 to words and are governed by past educa- 

 tion of the experience-content involved in 

 each word. 



The power of speech was probably de- 

 veloped in the fii-st place as a means of 

 communication among primitive man liv- 

 ing in groups or societies ; as a means, that 

 is to say, of procuring cooperation of dif- 

 ferent individuals in a task in which the 

 survival of the whole race was involved. 

 But it has attained still further signifi- 

 cance. Without speech the individual can 

 profit by his own experience and to a cer- 

 tain limited extent by the control exercised 

 by the older and more experienced mem- 

 bers of his tribe. As soon as experience 

 can be symbolized in words, it can be dis- 

 sociated from the individual and becomes 

 a part of the common heritage of the race, 

 so that the whole past experience of the 

 race can be utilized in the education— i. e., 

 the laying down of nerve tracts— in the 

 individual himself. On the other hand, the 

 community receives the advantage of the 

 foresight possessed by any individual who 

 happens to be endowed with a central nerv- 

 ous system which transcends that of his 

 fellows in its powers of dealing with sense 

 impressions or other symbols. The fore- 

 sight thus acquired by the whole commu- 

 nity must be of advantage to it and serve 

 for its preservation. It is therefore 

 natural that in the processes of develop- 

 ment and division of labor, which occur 

 among the membei-s of a community just 

 as among the cell units composing an ani- 

 mal, a class of individuals should have 



been developed, who are separated from 

 the ordinary avocations, and are, or should 

 be, maintained by the community, in 

 order that they may apply their whole 

 energies to the study of sequences of sense 

 impressions. These are set into words 

 which, as summary statements of sequence, 

 are known to us as the laws of nature. 

 These natural laws become the property 

 of the whole community, become embodied 

 by education into the nervous system of its 

 individuals, and serve therefore as the ex- 

 perience which will determine the future 

 behavior of its constituent units. This 

 study of the sequence of phenomena is the 

 office of science. Through science the 

 whole race thus becomes endowed with a 

 foresight which may extend far beyond 

 contemporary events and may include in 

 its horizon not only the individual life, but 

 that of the race itself as of races to come. 

 Social Conduct.— I have spoken as if 

 every act of the animal were determined 

 by the complex interaction of nei'vous 

 processes whose paths through the higher 

 parts of the brain had been laid down by 

 previous experience, whether of phenom- 

 ena or of words as symbolical of phenom- 

 ena. The average conduct, however, of the 

 individual, determined at first in this way, 

 became by repetition automatic— i. e.. the 

 nerve paths are so facilitated by frequent 

 use that a given impulse can take only the 

 direction which is set by custom. The gen- 

 eral adoption of the same line of conduct 

 by aU the individuals of a community in 

 face of a given condition of the environ- 

 ment gave in most cases an advantage to 

 tho.se individuals who were endowed with 

 a ner^^ous system of such a character that 

 the path could be laid down quickly and 

 with very little repetition. Thus we get a 

 tendency, partly by selection, largely by 

 education, to the establishment of reac- 

 tions which, like the instincts of animals. 



