MAUDSLEY ON HEREDITARY DESCENT. 39 



of association merely, account for our primary be- 

 liefs in self-evident truths, and especially not for our 

 convictions that certain propositions hold good be- 

 yond the range of experience. It is asserted, how- 

 ever, that, if our individual experience will not thus 

 account for our necessary beliefs, that of our ances- 

 tors will. We have not had a trial long enough to 

 account for our certainty that every change must 

 have a cause, and that two straight lines cannot 

 enclose a space ; but our race has had a trial suffi- 

 ciently long for that purpose. We are giving up, 

 in the conflict with the materialistic and with the 

 associational school in philosophy, any very elaborate 

 attacks upon the theory that all our necessary beliefs 

 come from individual experience. Faint and few 

 are the soldiers that stand in the line of the defence 

 of that proposition at the present day. But many, 

 and bold, and exceedingly hopeful are those who 

 would account for our necessary beliefs by hereditary 

 descent, that is, by the experience of the race, not 

 only since we became men, but during all that time 

 when we were being lifted by the law of develop- 

 ment from inorganic matter. 



Allow me to give a general reply to this precious 

 theory that our necessary beliefs are derived from the 

 experience of our ancestors, and then to descend little 

 by little into detail. If all my necessary beliefs, 

 intuitions, first principles, come from experience, 

 either of myself or of my race, then my convic- 

 tions ought not to outrun the range of the expe- 

 rience either of myself or of my race. You cannot 



