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1895.] “A New Factor in Evolution.” 705 
birth to stamp out every provision of the type above cited. 
Over and above this, every intelligent organization against detri- 
mental forces would be impossible from the moment of birth. 
This is no small obstacle to the universal acceptance of Mr. 
Baldwin’s “ New Factor,” yet the more intimately we approach 
it the more do the difficulties increase. This time for a bull’s- 
eye example we will take a plunge straight at the “ pain-pleas- 
ure discharge” itself. Mr. Baldwin tells us it is “ central ”— 
let us now ask to what is it proportional? What gauges 
its “heightening” or its “restriction?” The pain or the 
pleasure, of course, Mr. Baldwin answers, since his “ New Fac- 
tor” isa psychic factor. But to which is the pain or pleasure 
proportionate—the incoming sensory nerve current, or the “ benefit 
from the external stimulus ?” Itis just here that a “ tremendous ” 
(to use a favorite word of this enthusiastic writer) stumbling- 
block arises. Mr. Baldwin tells us with emphasis that the 
pleasure comes in and by the stimulus. But how and in what 
manner does the external pleasure-stimulus connect with the 
centrally rising “ heightened discharge”? Plainly it cannot be 
through the mere intensity of the ordinary incoming sensory 
nerve-current; for the pleasure is proportional to the benefits 
from the external stimulus; and these benefits are by no means 
proportional to the intensity of the stimulus. But, perhaps, 
Mr. Baldwin conceives—he does not tell us here in the least 
what he does conceive, though it is an absolutely essential 
point—of some specific kind or mode of neural activity to 
convey his pleasure-stimulus from the periphery to the centre, 
and one in no way parallel to the intensity of the external 
stimulus. If so, then a still greater difficulty now arises to 
conceive how the “ benefit” or the “detriment” from the ex- 
ternal event expresses itself through this new mode of com- 
munication. We are told that the pleasure is proportional to 
the amount of the benefit worked by the stimulus, not to its 
intensity. But just how and when does this “amount” get 
transformed into this new kind of ingoing pleasure current? 
Benefit is a “ tremendously” abstract affair. Where does it 
end, and when does it act? The benefit does not happen in- 
stantly—when then is its pleasure experienced? How and 
