The Psychological Consequences of Heredity. 307 



habits, would be the result of the accumulation of psychical acts 

 which, originally very simple, have, in virtue of the law of evo- 

 lution, passed from the simple to the complex, from the homo- 

 geneous to the heterogeneous, thus giving rise to those highly 

 complex acts which seem to us so wonderful. 



Hitherto we have restricted ourselves to looking simply at the 

 bearings of this doctrine ; we are now to meet with it under 

 another form, and we shall study its bearings here also. 



n. 



The same question, in fact, arises with regard to the intellect. 

 Here some assign to heredity only a secondary influence, asserting 

 that it allows the transmission and accumulation of certain charac- 

 ters, and makes the development of the intellect possible, in the 

 individual and in the species. 



Others go much farther, and attribute to heredity an actual 

 creative power. According to them, the genesis of the constituent 

 forms of intellect and of the laws and conditions of thought is the 

 work of heredity. 



We will first examine this latter doctrine, the most radical, the 

 most recent, the least known out of England. There it has been 

 held by a few contemporary philosophers, and has given an 

 entirely new shape to the famous problem of the origin of ideas. 

 If this doctrine be true, it gives so important a part to heredity 

 that we must here discuss it fully. 



It is one of the great merits of the school of sensationalists that it 

 early perceived the importance of questions of genesis. Through 

 all its researches into the origin of our cognitions it was really 

 concerned with the embryology of mind. It does not, however, 

 appear to have been at first clearly conscious of this, or it would be 

 impossible to explain the conception of a statue by Condillac 

 and Bonnet an actual adult individual, whose genesis could 

 not but be illusory and artificial. This is as though the physio- 

 logist were to take man at his birth, without concerning himself 

 about the embryonic period which preceded it It is singular 

 to see how superficial, external, and imperfect are the processes 

 of Condillac, and with what simplicity he thinks the most in- 

 volved and complex phenomena may be explained and produced. 



