580 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



Avenarius, who published in 1876 a tract with the 

 significant title " Philosophy as thinking of the world 

 according to the principle of least action." On the 

 other side Prof. Pearson comes in contact with 

 Herbert Spencer in his attempt to conceive our funda- 

 mental notions as unconsciously elaborated and per- 

 fected through inheritance. This is supposed to work 

 through adaptation ; strengthening and firmly establish- 

 ing in the human mind and in the course of many 

 generations fundamental notions and axioms which are 

 best fitted to symbolise and describe the experience 

 gained through the senses. These are further elaborated 

 by science into a convenient and practical system of 

 abstract reasoning on things natural. 



This idea of adaptation and inheritance explains how 

 certain fundamental notions and axioms appear to be a 

 priori (in the sense of Kant) for the individual human 

 mind, although they are a posteriori i.e., empirically 

 acquired, so far as the civilised human race is con- 

 cerned ; and it further explains how it comes about that 

 the human mind is nowadays in possession of a frame- 

 work of ideas with which it can construct a correct 

 and useful, though merely symbolical, image or model of 

 the facts and processes of nature. Another school, who 

 do not necessarily accept the Spencerian or Darwinian 

 theory of evolution and adaptation, are forced to con- 

 sider this adaptation of human ideas to real phenomena 

 as a matter of happy chance or good luck which might 

 equally well not have existed at all. 1 



1 Dr Kleinpeter has summarised 

 the theories of Mach, Stallo, Clif- 

 ford, Kirchhoff, Hertz, Pearson, 



and Ostwald in an interesting 

 treatise, ' Die Erkenntnistheorie 

 der Naturforschung der Gegen- 



