92 Herbert Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy. 



recognize in our mental constitution have been acquired by 

 a process of gradual development in the race corresponding 

 to that which we trace by observation in the individual. . . . 

 The doctrine that the intellectual and moral intuitions of 

 any one generation are the embodiment in its mental con- 

 stitution of the experience of the race was first explicitly 

 put forth by Mr. Herbert Spencer, in whose philosophical 

 treatises it will be found most ably developed. 



Lewes remarks : " Such is one of the many profound con- 

 ceptions with which this great thinker has enriched philoso- 

 phy, and it ought to have finally closed the debate between 

 the a priori and the experiential schools, in so far as both 

 admit a common ground of biological interpretation, though, 

 of course, it leaves the metempirical hypothesis untouched." 



Spencer saw that this conception affords a solution of the 

 problems of sensorial experience and innate faculties, and is 

 a compromise between Locke's and Kant's school of thought ; 

 between the sensation philosophy and transcendental ideal- 

 ism. With Hume, and against Kant, this view maintains 

 that all knowledge is derived from sensorial experience. 

 But with Kant, and against Hume, it asserts that we are, 

 nevertheless, born with predisposed faculties of thought, 

 which necessarily constitute a preformed recipient and 

 norm for all new experience. 



As regards the inseparable bond of connection between 

 experiential particulars, it holds that it is, indeed, estab- 

 lished through habit, but by means of generical inherit- 

 ance, and not merely during individual life ; that it is, how- 

 ever, certainly not established through the functional play 

 of faculties inherent in mind prior to all experience, indi- 

 vidual or ancestral. 



Hume ignored completely the existence of anything be- 

 yond consciousness. He does not assume powers outside of 

 us awakening our sensations. He takes account of nothing 

 but vivid and faint ideas and their combinations. Spencer, 

 on the contrary, assumes with Kant the existence of a realm 

 external to us that has power to affect our sensibility. But, 

 unlike Kant, who allows these affections to fall chaotically 

 into empty space and time, and to receive all their signifi- 

 cance solely from the combining, systematizing, and appre- 

 hending power of the intellect, Spencer teaches that the or- 

 der found obtaining among conscious states has been estab- 

 lished by vital and organic adjustment to a corresponding 

 order obtaining among the forces that constitute existence 



