United States or Tunisia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


In nerve tissue, impressibility, conductivity and modifiability are developed to a marked degree. The nerve-cells in the sense organs are impressed by stimulations from the outside world. The nervous current thus generated is conducted over long nerve fibers, through the spinal cord to the brain where it is received and we experience a sensation.

He is not less certain that a good constitution will make men virtuous, than was Bentham that he could grind rogues honest by the Panopticon. The indefinite modifiability of character was the ground upon which the Utilitarians based their hopes of progress; and it was connected in their minds with the doctrine of which his essay upon education is a continuous application.

There is a comforting thought, however, which is derived from the factor of modifiability, in that with each succeeding repetition, the task becomes easier, because the path becomes worn smoothly and the nervous current seeks it of its own accord; in other words, each act and each thought tends to become habitualized.

The Organ of Mind. Gross Structure. Microscopic Structure. The Neurone. The Nervous Impulse. The Synapse. Properties of Nervous Tissue Impressibility, Conductivity, Modifiability. Pathways Used in Study Sensory, Motor, Association. Study is a Process of Making Pathways in Brain. Definition of Habit. Examples. Inevitableness of Habits in Brain and Nervous System.

Most living tissue is modifiable to some extent. The features of the face are modifiable, and if one habitually assumes a peevish expression, it becomes, after a time, permanently fixed. The nervous system, however, possesses the power of modifiability to a marked degree, even a single impression sufficing to make striking modification.

As might be expected, the two functions of impressibility and conductivity are aided by such an arrangement of the nerve-cells that the nervous current may pass over definitely laid pathways. These systems of pathways will be described in a later paragraph. The third property of nerve-cells which is important in study is modifiability. That is, impressions made upon the nerve-cells are retained.

He would even take this point the modifiability of the ordinary moral code as a sort of test question distinguishing his own system from that of the intuitional moralists; and in one place he says that "the contest between the morality which appeals to an external standard, and that which grounds itself on internal conviction, is the contest of progressive morality against stationary of reason and argument against the deification of mere opinion and habit.

In this case the action is double, for it implies the disuse of certain connections which have been made and the forming of others; for the breaking of a bad habit means the beginning of a good one. The plasticity of neurone groups seems to vary in two respects as to modifiability and as to power to hold modifications.

During the whole period of childhood and adolescence we may never assume that the results of previous education, whether they be favorable or unsatisfactory, are permanent. Whether we succeed or not in achieving the ends which we desire, the fact of modifiability, of docility, and of plasticity remains.

The late maturing of the sex instinct, so old and strong in the race, and the early appearing of the tendencies towards vocalization and grasping, both of late date in the race, are facts that are hard to explain on the basis of the theory of recapitulation. As has been already suggested, one of the most important characteristics of all these tendencies is their modifiability.