188 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



early life the cerebral organisation is still incomplete. 

 The period necessary for completion varies with the 

 race, and with the individual. As a round shot outstrips 

 the rifled bolt on quitting the muzzle of the gun, so 

 the lower race, in childhood, may outstrip the higher. 

 But the higher eventually overtakes the lower, and 

 surpasses it in range. As regards individuals, we do not 

 always find the precocity of youth prolonged to mental 

 power in maturity ; while the dulness of boyhood is 

 sometimes strikingly contrasted with the intellectual 

 energy of after years. Newton, when a boy, was weakly, 

 and he showed no particular aptitude at school; but 

 in his eighteenth year he went to Cambridge, and soon 

 afterwards astonished his teachers by his power of deal- 

 ing with geometrical problems. During his quiet 

 youth his brain was slowly preparing itself to be the 

 organ of those energies which he subsequently dis- 

 played. 



By myriad blows (to use a Lucretian phrase) the 

 image and superscription of the external world are 

 stamped as states of consciousness upon the organism, 

 the depth of the impression depending on the number 

 of the blows. When two or more phenomena occur in 

 the environment invariably together, they are stamped 

 to the same depth or to the same relief, and indis- 

 solubly connected. And here we come to the threshold 

 of a great question. Seeing that he could in no way 

 rid himself of the consciousness of Space and Time, 

 Kant assumed them to be necessary ' forms of intui- 

 tion,' the moulds and shapes into which our intuitions 

 are thrown, belonging to ourselves, and without objective 

 existence. With unexpected power and success, Mr. 

 Spencer brings the hereditary experience theory, as he 

 holds it, to bear upon this question. * If there exist 

 certain external relations which are experienced by all 



