77 



ject. It is not meant, Spencer states, "that material actions 

 thus become mental actions. As we said, 'No effort enables 

 us to assimilate Mind and Motion'." 1 



"A succession of such changes being thus the subject- 

 matter of psychology, it is the business of psychology to 

 determine the law of their succession." 2 In accordance with 

 this, Spencer defines "all life, whether physical or psychical" 

 as "the combination of changes in correspondence with ex- 

 ternal co-existences and sequences", and that , consequently, 

 "if the changes constituting psychical life occur in succession, 

 the law of their succession must be the law of their correspond- 

 ence" that is, with external co-existences and sequences. 

 This is evident, he intimates, because of the fact that "the 

 inner relations must correspond with the outer ones; and there- 

 fore the order of states of consciousness must be in some way 

 expressible in terms of the external order." 3 The persistence 

 of the connection between the states of consciousness "is 

 proportionate to the persistence of the connection between the 

 agencies to which they answer. The relations between ex- 

 ternal objects, attributes, acts, are of all grades, from the 

 necessary to the fortuitous. The relation between the answer- 

 ing states of consciousness must similarly be of all grades, 

 from the necessary to the fortuitous." 4 



The law of intelligence, then, is "that the strength of the 

 tendency which the antecedent of any psychical change has 

 to be followed by its consequent, is proportionate to the per- 

 sistence of the union between the external things they sym- 

 bolize". 5 



The significance which the above quotations have for 

 mathematical relations and other fixed intuitions, is no doubt 

 obvious. Spencer makes this definite in the statement that 

 "relations which are absolute in the environment are absolute 

 in us". 6 And further, "where a relation has been perpetually 

 repeated in our experience with absolute conformity, we are 

 entirely disabled from conceiving the negation of it". "An 

 infinity of experiences will produce a psychical relation that 

 is indissoluble." 7 



Spencer's use of the term 'experience', of course, is of some 

 psychical entity definitely related to some portion of the ner- 



1 " Principles of Psychology" 177-179. 



2 O.C. 181. 



8 O.C. 181-2. 



4 O.C. 183. 



5 O.C. 187. 



Ibid. 



7 O.C. 189. 



