This means that the brain acts pleasurably on the principle it was
made up to act on in the most primitive times, and the rest is a
burden. There is no brain change, but the social changes have been
momentous; and the brain of each generation is brought into contact
with new traditions, inhibitions, copies, obligations, problems, so
that the run of attention and content of consciousness are different.
Social suggestion works marvels in the manipulation of the mind;
but the change is not in the brain as an organ; it is rather in the
character of the stimulations thrust on it by society.
The child begins as a savage, and after we have brought to bear
all the influence of home, school, and church to socialize him, we
speak as though his nature had changed organically, and institute a
parallelism between the child and the race, assuming that the child's
brain passes in a recapitulatory way through phases of development
corresponding to epochs in the history of the race. I have no
doubt myself that this theory of recapitulation is largely a
misapprehension. A stream of social influence is turned loose on the
child; and if the attention to him is incessant and wise, and the
copies he has are good and stimulating, he is molded nearer to the
heart's desire.
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