CH. xv.J THE COMPOSITION OF MIND, 121 



In short, we have seen that there can be no cognition, of 

 whatever order, which is not a recognition, necessarily im- 

 plying some previous combination of psychical states. How, 

 then, it is asked, can there be any first cognition? How 

 can intelligence ever begin at all, if the first and simplest 

 intelligent act implies a reference to experiences which, in 

 accordance with the theory, must have preceded any intel- 

 ligent act ? 



Formidable as this objection may seem, and unanswerable 

 as it would have been, if urged half a century ago, it has 

 to-day no force whatever; and those who now deliberately 

 urge it succeed only in betraying their entire lack of acquaint- 

 ance with the progress which psychology has made since 

 the times of Eeid and Stewart. As long as psychological 

 questions were settled simply by introspection — by observing 

 what goes on in the consciousness of adult civilized man — 

 the objection here cited must have seemed conclusive. But 

 familiarity with the conception of evolution has now led us 

 to regard things in general, not as coming at once into 

 fulness of being, but as gradually beginning to be ; and in the 

 case of the phenomena of intelligence, this view of the ques- 

 tion is amply justified by experiments in objective psycho- 

 logy presently to be mentioned. The conception of an 

 absolutely first cognition, not determined by previous psy- 

 chical states, rests upon a fallacy similar to that upon which 

 rested the preformation theory in biology. Just as it was 

 formerly held that the embryo started as a fully-developed 

 organism, differing from an adult organism only in size, so 

 the objection which we are now considering involves the 

 hypothesis that the earliest cognitions of an infant are like 

 ctiose of an adult in point of definiteness, the only difference 

 being in the quantity of them. The latter hypothesis is as 

 contrary as the former to the Doctrine of Evolution, and it 

 is quite as decidedly negatived by the observation of facts. 

 For, let us observe what is implied by the acquiring of a 



