THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 483 
showed no particular aptitude at school; but in his 
eighteenth year he went to Cambridge, and soon after- 
ward astonished his teachers by his power of dealing with 
geometrical problems. During his quiet youth his brain 
was slowly preparing itself to be the organ of those energies 
which he subsequently displayed. 
By myriad blows (to use a Lucretian phrase) the image 
and superscription of the external world are stamped as / fin, , 
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 indissolubly 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 intuition," the molds 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 organisms at all instants of their waking lives rela- 
tions which are absolutely constant and universal there 
will be established answering internal relations, that are 
absolutely constant and universal. Such relations we 
have in those of Space and Time. As the substratum 
of all other relations of the Non-ego, they must be re- 
sponded to by conceptions that are the substrata of all 
other relations in the Ego. Being the constant and infi- 
nitely repeated elements of thought, they must become the 
automatic elements of thought the elements of thought 
which it is impossible to get rid of the "forms of 
intuition." 
Throughout this application and extension of Hartley's 
and Mill's " Law of Inseparable Association," Mr. 
Spencer stands upon his own ground, invoking, instead of 
the experiences of the individual, the registered experiences 
of 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 
degrees of this power possessed by different races, and by 
