1068 The Relations of Mind and Matter. [November, 
might have some relation to the frequent difficulty of recalling 
an old memory, and the general disappearance of memories from 
the grasp of consciousness, until recalled by some association. 
For consciousness may be looked upon as a superficial affection 
of the mental organism, aroused only when this surface is acted 
upon by cerebral energy. But present sensations might be able 
to connect themselves with old memories in the manner just 
described. And in so doing they might rouse a whole sheet of 
memories, spread over some deep mental lamina. The energy 
which produces a surface consciousness, through rapport between 
the mind and the cerebrum, might through this rapport of the 
mental laminz make its way to deeper regions, and awake long 
dormant impressions of the mind. 
The hypothetical idea of the constitution and development of 
the mental organism just given, while perhaps very remotely 
analogous to the reality, yet answers to the conditions of sensory 
reception and memory with sufficient exactness to be worthy of 
a clearer delineation. In this view, then, each man derives hered- 
itarily a firmly-constituted germ of the mental organism, destitute 
of ancestral experiences, yet, like every part of the body, pos- 
sessed of its innate habits, capable of exercising more or less 
control over all subsequent mental activities, and also limiting by 
its conditions the degree and direction of the subsequent devel- 
opment. This is the hereditary mind, the granite rock basis of 
its future formation. It has no power in itself to develop beyond 
this. All the other organs of the body may fully unfold from 
their innate forces while the mind remains in the germ. Its 
development is a purely individual process, and the results are 
not transmissible to offspring. 
Still considering it as a substantial organism we seem to behold 
layer after layer of new substance laid down upon it, as strata are 
laid upon the granite basis of the geologic formation, and taking 
form from the form of this basic organism. Each of these lamina 
is delicately sensitive to the impress of external energy, and be- 
comes covered with a series of pictured images, the fossils of the 
= memory. With the formation of each new lamina all preceding 
__ ones are buried below the immediate contact of energy and the 
direct reach of consciousness, But as the impressed images on 
ach lamina are in horizontal contact with each other, so each new 
à seems to be drawn to a locality of the organism which 
