186 FRAGMENTS OP SCIENCE. 



experience is m'Z; but it has the benefit of ancestral 

 experience. In its inherited organisation are registered 

 the powers which it displays at birth. So also as re- 

 gards the instinct of the hive-bee, already referred 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 in- 

 telligence during infancy and youth are probably less 

 due to a lack of individual experience, than to the fact 

 that in early life the cerebral organisation is still in- 

 complete. 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 individ- 

 uals, we do not always find the precocity of youth 

 prolonged to mental power in maturity; while the dul- 

 ness of boyhood is sometimes strikingly contrasted with 

 the intellectual energy of after years. Newton, when 

 a boy, was weakly, and he showed no particular apti- 

 tude at school; but in his eighteenth year he went to 

 Cambridge, and soon afterwards 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 sub- 

 sequently displayed. 



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 



