CONDITIONS OF DEVELOPMENT. 239 



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 develop- 

 ment in organisms is the same property which we 

 recognise as the basis of psychic activity and psychic 

 development. A broader view of living organisms 

 will only strengthen the supposition ; for when we 

 know that certain purposeful material changes begin 

 in a germ and continue in an unbroken causal 

 series, until this finally becomes the series of brain 

 changes concomitant with the thinking processes 

 of a Shakespeare or a Newton, we can readily sup- 

 pose that the whole series rests upon the same 

 property of organic matter — the property which 

 is at once the basis of development and of psychic 

 activity. It would be difficult in the face of the 

 facts to imagine that organic developmeilt differs in 

 its nature from psychic activity, or rather — to speak 

 more accurately — from the material accompaniment 

 of psychic activity. For instance, the nest memory 

 of birds is transmitted by the sexual germs ; now, 

 can we imagine that all the psychic qualities con- 

 gregate in one portion of a certain blastoderm cell 

 which shall later produce the epidermis, and does 

 that one portion of the blastoderm cell produce 

 those particular epidermis cells which later form 

 the brain.? We have no evidence for such a view, 



