198 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



about, picks up food, thus showing that it possesses a 

 power of directing its movements to definite ends. How 

 did the chick learn this very complex co-ordination of 

 eyes, muscles, and beak? It has not been individually 

 taught; its personal experience is nil; but it has the ben- 

 efit of ancestral experience. In its inherited organization 

 are registered the powers which it displays at birth. So 

 also as regards the instinct of the hive-bee, already re- 

 ferred to. The distance at which the insects stand apart 

 when they sweep their hemispheres and build their cells 

 is " organically remembered. " Man also carries with him 

 the physical texture of his ancestry, as well as the in- 

 herited intellect bound up with it. The defects of intelli- 

 gence during infancy and youth are probably less due to 

 a lack of individual experience than to the fact that in 

 early life the cerebral organization 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 pre- 

 cocity of youth prolonged to mental power in maturity; 

 while the dulness of boyhood is sometimes strikingly con- 

 trasted with the intellectual energy of after years. New- 

 ton, when a boy, was weakly, and he showed no particu- 

 lar aptitude at school; but in his eighteenth year he went 

 to Cambridge, and soon afterward astonished his teachers 

 by his power of dealing with geometrical problems. Dur- 

 ing his quiet youth his brain was slowly preparing itself 

 to be the organ of those energies which he subsequently 

 displayed. 



