Bain says that novelty is not an emotion, but “merely expresses the superior force of all stimulants on being first applied.” But from the point of view of psychic history the initial force of stimulants is always very inferior and slight. For example, to taste and to qualitatively distinguish tastes is an extremely slow growth in the race, and by no means suddenly completed even in the offspring of the most advanced individuals. Place a drop of wormwood extract on an infant’s tongue and it may have a novel sensation and a disagreeable one, as evidenced by the reaction, yet the real force of the sensation is certainly quite inferior to that of a ten year old child in the given case. The absolutely new impression is always slight, for mind is, in the natural course of evolution, always slow at fully experiencing things, it is by effort and by effort alone that it attains the several orders of sensation and perception, and it is only by effort that they are realized with greater and greater force and clearness. By the very nature of psychic evolution as a progressive process toward helping adjustability the novel exercises at the first but a slight reaction. However, in the exigencies of existence the most wide awake, those most susceptible to perceiving novelties and new circumstances and to being suitably affected by them, have the advantage. Hence the apprehension, interpretation, and application, of novelties is the path of progress which finally culminates in the achievements of human invention. An openness to the novel is thus of prime importance in a practical way, though this is quite distinct from the pleasing sense of novelty. However, the novel is not primarily attractive and interesting in and for itself, but this must be accounted a late evolution in an artificial period. The novel is at the first anything but charming. The absolutely novel is never pleasant for its own sake. It is only in a relative way that the objectively novel pleases, that is, in the way of variety and change. Where overflowing mental energy by reason of habituation finds no full and easy diverse activity the mind is hampered and constrained. Thus youth in particular finds delight and relief in new sights and sounds, in fresh experiences of all kinds. Quickly wearied and exhausted in one channel and yet full of active power, the mind springs rapidly from object to object along those lines which ancestral experience has rendered the lines of least resistance, thus especially in the plays and sports of childhood.