Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/275

Rh that the two traits may, and ordinarily do, coexist. An infant, quickly weary with each kind of perception, wanting ever a new object, which it soon abandons for something else, and alternating a score times a day between smiles and tears, shows us a very small persistence in each kind of mental action: all its states, intellectual and emotional, are transient. Yet, at the same time, its mind cannot be easily changed in character. True, it changes spontaneously in due course; but it long remains incapable of receiving ideas or emotions beyond those of simple orders. The child exhibits less rapid variations, intellectual and emotional, while its educability is greater. Inferior human races show us this combination, great rigidity of general character, with great irregularity in its passing manifestations. Speaking broadly, while they resist permanent modification they lack intellectual persistence, and they lack emotional persistence. Of various low types we read that they cannot keep the attention fixed beyond a few minutes on any thing requiring thought even of a simple kind. Similarly with their feelings: these are less enduring than those of civilized men. There are, however, qualifications to be made in this statement; and comparisons are needed to ascertain how far these qualifications go. The savage shows great persistence in the action of the lower intellectual faculties. He is untiring in minute observation. He is untiring, also, in that kind of perceptive activity which accompanies the making of his weapons and ornaments: often persevering for immense periods in carving stones, etc. Emotionally, too, he shows persistence not only in the motives prompting these small industries, but also in certain of his passions—especially in that of revenge. Hence, in studying the degrees of mental variability shown us in the daily lives of the different races, we must ask how far variability characterizes the whole mind, and how far it holds only of parts of the mind.

6. Impulsiveness.—This trait is closely allied with the last: unenduring emotions are emotions which sway the conduct now this way and now that, without any consistency. The trait of impulsiveness may, however, be fitly dealt with separately, because it has other implications than mere lack of persistence. Comparisons of the lower human races with the higher appear generally to show that, along with brevity of the passions, there goes violence. The sudden gusts of feeling which men of inferior types display are excessive in degree as they are short in duration; and there is probably a connection between these two traits: intensity sooner producing exhaustion. Observing that the passions of childhood illustrate this connection, let us turn to certain interesting questions concerning the decrease of impulsiveness which accompanies advance in evolution. The nervous processes of an impulsive being are less remote from reflex actions than are those of an unimpulsive being. In reflex actions we see a simple stimulus passing suddenly into movement: little or no control