This type of interest, originating in the hunt, remains dominant in the mind down to the present time.  Once constructed to take an interest in the hunting problem, it takes an interest in any problem whatever.  Not only do hunting and fighting and all competitive games—­which are of precisely the same psychological pattern as the hunt and fight—­remain of perennial interest, but all the useful occupations are interesting in just the degree that this pattern is preserved.  The man of science works at problems and uses his ingenuity in making an engine in the laboratory in the same way that primitive man used his mind in making a trap.  So long as the problem is present, the interest is sustained; and the interest ceases when the problematical is removed.  Consequently, all modern occupations of the hunting pattern—­scientific investigation, law, medicine, the organization of business, trade speculation, and the arts and crafts—­are interesting as a game; while those occupations into which the division of labor enters to the degree that the workman is not attempting to control a problem, and in which the same acts are repeated an indefinite number of times, lose interest and become extremely irksome.

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.  Sometimes he escapes, and becomes a criminal, tramp, sport, or artist; and even if made into an impeccable and model citizen, he periodically breaks away from the network of social habit and goes a-fishing.