HERMANN VON HELMHOLTZ 



objection to the empiristic view of things that some 

 animals, when newly ushered into the world, seem 

 already to possess a large amount of knowledge. He 

 remarks : * The accuracy of movement of many 

 new-born animals, or of those who have just escaped 

 from the egg, is very striking ; the less mentally 

 endowed these are, the sooner do they learn all they 

 can possibly learn. The newly-born human child, 

 on the contrary, is very slow in acquiring visual 

 perception ; it takes several days to learn how to 

 judge as to the way in which it has to turn its 

 head to reach the mother's breast. Young animals 

 seem to be more independent of individual experience. 

 But what this instinct is which guides them may be 

 .... those are matters of which as yet we know 

 practically nothing (dariiber wissen wir Bestimmtes 

 noch so gut wi nichts).' 1 



This matter, however, does not seem so inexpli- 

 cable in the light of the Darwinian hypothesis, with 

 which Helmholtz often expressed his general agree- 

 ment. If the origin of an eye or an ear can be so 

 far explained by the Lamarckian principle of the 

 adaptations of an organ to its environment, and if this 

 be supplemented by the law of variation and sur- 

 vival of the fittest, it does not seem difficult to 

 explain the gradual accumulation of experiences 

 through countless generations leading to the forma- 



1 Quoted by Du Bois Raymond. Gedachtnissrede, s. 39. Berlin, 

 1896. 



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