76 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING
will, as a rule, be more marked i.e., the individuals of a race will at birth be more sharply differentiated from one another in their peculiar organization the more highly developed the race is and the more varied and complex the life-conditions of the race are. Men, for instance, are probably more highly differentiated from one another at the very beginning of individual life than the lower animals are. But, in the third place, the individual organism thus equipped at birth has the capacity to acquire habits, to re ceive relatively permanent modifications of its general struc ture, and especially of its nervous organization, resulting from its individual experience. Man s capacity in this re spect is immeasurably above that of the lower orders of life, and the variations among men in this respect also are far greater than in inferior species. Of course, the term " organization " should not be understood in the static, but in the dynamic sense; it should not be taken as indicating simply or mainly a fixed adjustment of parts to one another, but functionally as referring to regular and correlated modes of the operation of vital forces. There is in the organism a more or less fixed relation and proportion of physical parts ; but the more significant thing in its constitution is that the vital processes or reactions are related to one another in regular and characteristic ways. Now, this correlation of the vital processes is different in different organisms ac cording to their constitution and acquired habits. We must bear in mind, in the third place, that processes of activity are going on in the adjustment of the organism to its en vironment. These current activities are largely under the control of the organic and acquired tendencies; but not wholly so, for in that case it would be impossible to acquire habits at all. They are in some measure guided by intel ligence, i.e., they are voluntary. Their function is the adaptation of the organism to a complex and changing en vironment, and they result in the further organization of the life. The organization of rational beings is not com plete, and the organization is proceeding in these voluntary,
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