160 COSMIC PEILOSOPHT, [pt. ii 



coordinated "before birth, thougli they are easily coordinated 

 during childhood,* 



A great number of psychical phenomena are thus satisfac- 

 torily explained by the hypothesis. But one further service, 

 and a most signal one, is rendered by it ; and this we must 

 briefly indicate, in accordance with previous promises, before 

 leaving the subject. The view of cerebral action here 

 adopted settles the long-vexed question between the Lockian 

 and Kantian schools as to the sources of knowledge; and 

 the verdict, while partly favourable to each of these schools, 

 is not wholly favourable to either. Let us reconsider the 

 portion of our hypothesis which bears upon this question. 



It follows from the general principles involved in the 

 foregoing exposition, that the peculiar intellectual activity 

 of any parent, by modifying the nutrition of his cerebral 

 tissue, must impress itself upon the unstimulated and half- 

 developed brain of his infant offspring. Eliminating the 

 effects wrought in it by countless environing circumstances, 

 we may say that the infant brain just as surely tends to 

 develop transit-lines similar to those in the parental brain, 

 as the infant face tends to develop muscular peculiarities of 

 expression like those characteristic of the parental face. 

 And while the tendency is so slight as to count for little 

 or nothing in the case of the more complex and infrequent 

 associations of ideas, it must be a resistless tendency in the 

 case of those nerve-connections which answer to associa- 

 tions involved in every act of experience, — as, for example, 

 those concerned in building up our conceptions of space, 

 time, force, and causation. A concise restatement of the 

 case will now lead us at once to our conclusion. AVhilo 

 ancestral experience impresses upon the brain a nutritive 



1 In the concluding chapter of this Part, I shall endeavour to show that 

 this origination and prolongation of the period of infancy, which is the effect 

 »i increasing intelligence, is in turn the proximate cause of the genesis o( 

 ■ocial relations and of ethical feelings, and thus, indirectly, of tho entir* 

 InteUectual aad moral supremacy of man. 



