i6o Herbert Spencer 



the surrounding conditions), such structures must be due 

 to such environment. But there is not even an attempt to 

 show how the environment produces such structures, nor any 

 proof that it does so produce them. 



Mr. Spencer, however, not only evolves the intellect from 

 sensation, but he evolves the various special senses from a 

 common root, i.e. from shght nervous shocks. He says:^ 

 ' There is reason to believe that the susceptibilities to odours, 

 colours, and sounds arise by degrees out of that irritability 

 which animal tissue, in its lowest forms, possesses.' Now, 

 there is a certain ambiguity in the phrase ' out of,' as here 

 employed. Many who would be willing enough to accept 

 it with the signification ' from amongst ' would utterly deny 

 it in the sense of ' originating from.' For how can a smell, a 

 colour, or a sound, be a modification of touch, however they 

 may be conditioned by some form of touching — whether 

 through ethereal undulations or what not ? As Aristotle 

 pointed out ^ two thousand years ago, the special aptitudes 

 of the several special senses must be innate before the least 

 particle of such special senses become actual. And what 

 must be asserted of sense may be declared as unhesitatingly 

 of intellect. The special faculty of apprehending truth and 

 goodness must be innate before the expressions 'true' and 

 ' good ' can in any way be made use of. 



The absence of an adequately refined analysis is amus- 

 ingly illustrated by the following sentence : ^ ' The abihty to 

 discriminate between organic and inorganic matter appears 

 to be possessed in some degree even by the simplest animals.' 

 In a certain sense this is most true ; but such a form of ex- 

 pression would lend itself to a confusion between the sorting 

 faculty of the apertures of a sieve and the sorting faculty of 

 the man who employs it for sorting. 



1 Psychology, vol. i. p. 304. 2 jy^ Anima, book ii. 



3 Psychology, vol. i. p. 307. 



