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Relative plasticity. Is there any relation between the degree of mental modifiability which remains in adult life, and the character of the mental evolution in respect of mass, complexity, and rapidity? The animal kingdom at large yields reasons for associating an inferior and more rapidly-completed mental structure, with a relatively automatic nature.
The biologist regards memory as a special phase of a universal property of organic structure, namely, modifiability by the exercise of function, or the survival after any particular kind of activity of a disposition to act again in that particular way.
As early as 1842, in a series of letters to the Nonconformist newspaper on "The Proper Sphere of Government," he propounded a belief in human progress based on the modifiability of human nature through adaptation to its social surroundings, and he asserted the tendency of these social arrangements to assume of themselves a condition of stable equilibrium.
Many travellers comment on the unchangeable habits of savages. The semi-civilized nations of the East, past and present, were, or are, characterized by a greater rigidity of custom than characterizes the more civilized nations of the West. The histories of the most civilized nations show us that in their earlier times, the modifiability of ideas and habits was less than it is at present.
"Lastly, if this theory of indefinite modifiability be sound, what meaning can be attached to the term language, and what definition can be given of it so as to distinguish a language from a dialect?" In reply to this last question, the philologist might confess that the learned are not agreed as to what constitutes a language as distinct from a dialect.
If, therefore, we attribute the forms of organisms to the action of external conditions, i.e. of incident forces on their modifiable structure, we give but a partial account of the matter, removing a step back, as it were, the action of the internal condition, power, or force which must be conceived as occasioning such ready modifiability.
Manner in which favoured Races prevail in the Struggle for Existence. Formation of new Races by breeding. Hypotheses of definite and indefinite Modifiability equally arbitrary. Competition and Extinction of Races. Progression not a necessary Accompaniment of Variation. Distinct Classes of Phenomena which Natural Selection explains.
We may try to think of retention in terms of nerve cells and say that at the time when the material was first impressed there was some modification made in certain nerve cells which persisted. This trait of nerve modifiability is one factor which accounts for greater retentive power in some persons than in others.
In proportion as our faith in these views grows weaker, and the phenomena of the organic or inorganic world presented to us by geology seem explicable on the hypothesis of gradual and insensible changes, varied only by occasional convulsions, on a scale comparable to that witnessed in historical times; and in proportion as it is thought possible that former fluctuations in the organic world may be due to the indefinite modifiability of species without the necessity of assuming new and independent acts of creation, the number and magnitude of the gaps which still remain, or the extreme imperfection of the record, become more and more striking, and what we possess of the ancient annals of the earth's history appears as nothing when contrasted with that which has been lost.
Every one who has studied cattle-breeding, or turned pigeon-fancier, or "pomologist," must have been struck by the extreme modifiability or plasticity of those kinds of animals and plants which have been subjected to such artificial conditions as are imposed by domestication.
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