3 1 2 Heredity. 



the first fact is always followed by the second. The phenomenon, 

 taken in its totality, is presented to us as something made up of 

 two groups, so arranged that the first always necessitates the 

 second; in other words, in the sum of qualities and relations 

 which make up this inseparable pair we find, as an essential 

 element, the relation of constant succession between the first and 

 the second the property that the first is always followed by the 

 second. This fundamental property, which is also found in many 

 other pairs, is denominated causality. 



The foregoing analyses are not borrowed from the English 

 philosophers, .but we think they exactly represent their views. 

 Now, if with them we hold that the mind is formed as well by the 



- action of external objects upon it as by its reaction on external 

 objects ; if we hold that accidental, variable, changeable attributes 

 must produce in the organism, and hence on the mind, accidental, 

 variable, changeable modifications, but that fixed and essential 

 attributes must have permanent modifications answering to them ; 

 if we observe that the attribute of duration being found in all the 

 groups, that of extension in nearly all, and the relation of causality 

 in a very large number of couples, they must recur millions of 

 times during the life of each, and so, by repetition, tend to become 



> organic ; if, finally, we observe that these modifications are here- 

 ditarily transmitted to a new individual, who in turn experiences the 

 same fixed and permanent impressions, and by him to another and 

 another without limit, we shall then be able to understand the part 

 played by heredity in the genesis of the forms of thought, and to 

 see how heredity may produce, in the second or third generation, 

 a mental habitude so deeply rooted as to be rightly called innate, 

 provided it be borne in mind how it has come to be so. 



* We have seen,' says Herbert Spencer, 1 * that the establishment 

 of those compound relief actions, called instincts, is compre- 

 hensible on the principle that inner relations are, by perpetual 

 repetition, organized into correspondence with outer relations. We 

 have now to observe that the establishment of those consolidated, 

 those indissoluble, those instinctive mental relations constituting 

 our ideas of space and time, is comprehensible on the same 



1 Psychology, 2nd ed., 208. 



