200 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



i 

 the race. His overthrow of the restriction of experience 



to the individual is, I think, complete. That restriction 

 ignores the power of organizing experience, furnished at 

 the outset to each individual; it ignores the different de- 

 grees of this power possessed by different races, and by 

 different individuals of the same race. Were there not 

 in the human brain a potency antecedent to all experi- 

 ence, a dog or a cat ought to be as capable of education 

 as a man. These predetermined internal relations are in- 

 dependent of the experiences of the individual. The 

 human brain is the "organized register of infinitely nu- 

 merous experiences received during the evolution of life, 

 or rather during the evolution of that series of organisms 

 through which the human organism has been reached. 

 The effects of the most uniform and frequent of these 

 experiences have been successively bequeathed, principal 

 and interest, and have slowly mounted to that high intel- 

 ligence which lies latent in the brain of the infant. Thus 

 it happens that the European inherits from twenty to 

 thirty cubic inches more of brain than the Papuan. Thus 

 it happens that faculties, as of music, which scarcely exist 

 in some inferior races, become congenital in superior ones. 

 Thus it happens that out of savages unable to count up 

 to the number of their fingers, and speaking a language 

 containing only nouns and verbs, arise at length our New- 

 tons and Shakespeares. " 



At the outset of this Address it was stated tnat phys- 

 ical theories which lie beyond experience are derived by 

 a process of abstraction from experience. It is instructive 

 to note from this point of view the successive introduction 





