HIS PHILOSOPHICAL POSITION 



tion of what are termed instinctive habits. Thus 

 we may account for the origin of even a priori 

 conceptions. These seem to be so universal, so true 

 when stated, that the element of experience in their 

 formation is overlooked. In this way the mind is 

 not a clean tablet, as supposed by Locke, but it is 

 a tablet already modified by the accumulated experi- 

 ences of a pedigree. The great difficulty met with 

 in such lines of thought, is the question of why 

 modifications go on in a particular line and appar- 

 ently with a determinate end ? Why are organs 

 modified in a particular direction ? why has the 

 physical subtratum of mind been gradually so 

 built up that certain statements, and not others, are 

 recognised as intuitive ? The evolution hypothesis, 

 while it may apparently reconcile the empiristic and 

 nativistic views of the origin of certain conceptions, 

 as held by Spencer and Du Bois Reymond, does not 

 explain the whole matter. It is certainly difficult, 

 as stated by Du Bois Reymond himself, to reconcile 

 with the empirical theory the fact that a butterfly 

 only just escaped from the larval state should, during 

 its short existence as it flits from flower to flower, 

 apparently recognise and know, as if from experience, 

 space in its three dimensions, the resistance of the air, 

 the feeling of falling, and be able to discriminate the 

 colours of flowers. As it could not have gathered 

 experience of these things during its lowly life as a 

 caterpillar on a cabbage leaf, in what stage or stages 

 R 



