690 The American Naturalist. [July, 
conscious experience, and its repetition repeats that experience. But 
the experience may also be repeated in the form of an idea without 
the occurence of the stimulus, and this idea may take the place of the 
stimulus and produce the reaction. This is termed conscious imita- 
tion, and is the germ of voluntary action. Furthermore these ideas, 
or copies, may be associated with one another, so that any one tends 
to awaken others and with them their appropriate reactions. Thus 
all the higher functions originate from and involve the lower. Some- 
times, by the principle of lapsed links, the true stimulus may dis- 
appear and the movement be produced, to all appearance, by one of 
the associative antecedents of the stimulus. 
ASSIMILATION AND RecoenitTion.—The copy image may be so strong 
as to assimilate to itself the new experiences, their motor discharges 
uniting in one—this union in motor discharge is the basis of associa- 
tion by contiguity ; association by similarity is found “when both of 
them, by association with a third have come to unite in a common 
discharge. The energy of the new presentation process finds itself 
drawn off in the channels of the old one which it resembles; the 
motor associations, therefore, and with them all the organic and 
mental elements stirred up by them, come to identify or unite the new 
content with the old.” (309.) Assimilation then is due to the 
tendency of a new sensory process to be drawn off into preformed 
motor reactions. Some of these reactions are directly useful. Others 
constitute a more special kind of motor reaction upon the mental 
content. This latter is attention. It consists of three factors. First, 
the grosser muscular strains in brow, scalp, etc.; second, the more 
special strains of sense accommodation; third, the still more special 
strains peculiar to the content in question. When a new experience 
is repeated, not only is it assimilated to the memory of the original 
experience, but the third factor in attention is facilitated ; these two 
constitute what we call recognition. (P. 314.) Upon the first factor 
of attention depends the peculiar sense of “ warmth ” or “ ownership ; ” 
it is due to the fact that the attention strains constitute a large part 
of the sense of self. Recognition is an advanced form of adjustment 
to environment and has been of great phylogenetic significance. 
CONCEPTION AND THouGuT.—The principles already developed fur- 
nish a basis for the evolution of the higher mental processes. Judg- 
ment, or the demand for identity, is the conscious representative 
of the irresistible tendency to act in one way upon a variety of 
experiences. Belief is the conscious representative of the assimila- 
tion of new to old tendencies to action. Conception and per- 
