Ribot laid down that “‘the psychological functions
most rapidly attacked by disease were the most recently
constituted ones, the last in point of time in the develop-
ment of the individual (ontogonesis), and then reproduced
on a general seale in the evolution of the species (phylo-
genesis).”? Janet, Freud, and their followers have applied
this statement to all the nervous affections, and from
them to all the activities of the mind. From this it is
only a step for them—a false step for us—to the con-
clusion that the most recently effected operations and
the most rapidly worn out are the highest in the hierarchy,
and that a return to the others is a retrogression in 0
backward sense, a fall of the mind.