248 The Evolution Hypothesis. 



experience. Mr. Spencer, on the other hand, claims for 

 his theory that it brings into harmony the two great 

 schools : while holding that all knowledge is derived 

 from experience, he maintains that organized experi- 

 ences constitute forms of thought. Axiomatic truths 

 are innate to the individual, but experiential to the 

 race. The space - intuitions which are recognized as 

 necessary and universal "are the -fixed functions of 

 fixed structures that have been moulded into corres- 

 pondence with fixed outer relations The truth 



that a straight line is the shortest line between two 

 points lies latent in the structure of the eyes and the 

 nervous centres which receive and co-ordinate visual 



impressions Just as it has become impossible 



for the hand to grasp by bending the fingers outwards 

 instead of inwards ; so has it become impossible for 

 those nervous actions by which we apprehend primary 

 space-relations to be reversed so as to enable us to 

 think of these relations otherwise than we do." * 



This view is expounded more fully in. another 

 passage : 



" What is the meaning of the human brain ? It is 

 that the many established relations among its parts, 

 stand for so many established relations among the 

 psychical changes. Each of the constant connections 

 among the fibres of the cerebral masses, answers to 

 some constant connection of phenomena in the ex- 



* Psychology, Vol. II., 332. 



