910 Evolutionary Significance of Human Character. [September, 
Returning to the primary elements of mind, we may examine 
their divisions with reference to the question of growth. To be- 
_ gin with the perceptions, there are great diversities in the acute- 
ness of the general and special senses, and greater and less sus- 
ceptibilities to physical pleasure and pain. In the important rep- 
resentative faculty memory, the differences between people are 
great. As perception as well as thinking involves a certain 
amount of structural change, it is evident that susceptibility or 
impressibility of the senses, which is the first stage of memory, — 
signifies ready metamorphosis of tissue. Unimpressibility, which 
impedes memory, is a consequence of resistance, on the part of 
tissue, to the usual stimuli. Hence the effect of “ sights, sounds : 
and sensations” is greatest in childhood, and the memory is most — 
impressible, for at that time the nervous tissue is undergoing con- — 
stant change, and nutrition being in excess of waste, constantly 
presents new material to be organized. And I may here refer to : 
the general truth, that consciousness of all kinds is the especial 
and distinguishing attribute of life as distinguished from death or 
no life? Whatever other phenomena we may be accustomed to 
regard as “ vital,” are only distinguishable from inorganic motion 
or force, because they primitively took their form under the 
chik 
guidance of consciousness, and are hence, so to speak, its & r 
may speedily do so in pathological conditions. This preni 
is now restricted to the nervous system, and to certain parts ar 
the one which is, histologically speaking, the most generalized 
the systems. And it is quite consistent with the “ doctrine T 
unspecialized,” that nervous tissue in its unfinished state in a 
hood should be more impressible to stimuli than at later pa 
of life. But this statement requires this modification, that 
is a stage of imperfection of mechanism which does not With 
high sensibility, as for instance in the earliest infancy. i 
age sensibility gradually diminishes. í 
the appearance of many or all of the intellectual wee i 
is also true that their full development precedes that 0 Hee 
lect, in so far as they are developed at all. The prionnt m 
1 The Origin of the Will, Penn Monthly, 1877, p. 440" 
