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. Daring 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 

 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 



