THE GENESIS OF PERSONAL TRAITS 153 



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world or from internal disorders, arouse the partly formed motor centers 

 and create in them an abnormal activity. Motor strains, bone displace- 

 ments, muscular irregularities and undue local sensitiveness are thus 

 caused, which force disjustive trains of thought into consciousness with 

 each renewed activity. All such thinking must be suppressed before 

 adjustment is effected. 



Motor domination begins about the fourth year and ends ten years 

 later. It is the means by which adjustment is secured. Sensory trains 

 of thought are adjustive only when they help men to foresee the elements 

 of future adjustment. Their usefulness comes after the motor adjust- 

 ments are formed. Any reversal of this order produces a disjustment 

 which is intensified if motor strains have been produced by the prema- 

 ture activity. These disjustments are due to the abnormalities of the 

 child's environment and to wrong notions of education. Parents not 

 only fail to guard their children against sensory storms, but they intro- 

 duce artificial trains of thought under the mistaken notion that vivid 

 concepts and well-organized memories are an aid in a child's de- 

 velopment. 



Environmental maladjustments thus have three leading causes: 

 defective nutrition, poisons formed within the system, and premature 

 motor activity. The first two are prenatal, the third is due to the later 

 development of the motor than of the sensory powers. In their genetic 

 manifestations these maladjustments show themselves as retardations, 

 accelerations and motor strains. Their pathological effects become sex 

 morbidness, senility and motor morbidness. As mental phenomena, they 

 become egotism, dogmatism and mysticism. 



Symbolism is an intense form of mysticism and beyond it are visions, 

 hallucinations, subconsciousness and finally double personality. The 

 essence of them all is the same. Some of the motor powers do not 

 readily come under the control of the will. The amount of this dis- 

 ruption of personality varies, but its presence is always a manifestation 

 of motor disorder. 



The important facts to be recognized are the difference between 

 senility and morbidness and the two distinct sources of morbidness, the 

 one in sex disorders and the other in motor strains. Senility is a sensory 

 condition making mental associations difficult or impossible to alter. 

 The causes of morbidness lie not in the brain but in the body. It is thus 

 a pathological, not a mental disorder. Morbid parts are easily excited 

 to action and act apart from, or in opposition to, the dominant person- 

 ality as expressed in the will. 



To simplify this argument still more I shall divide mental reactions 

 into three groups, visual, motor and senile. Visual reactions involve no 

 movement of thought beyond itself. Motor reactions create thought 

 movements which end in activity. Senile reactions create a sequence 

 with no elements not found in antecedent mental concept. Colored 



VOL. LXXXIII. — 11. 



