COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



is asked, can there be any first cognition ? How 

 can intelligence ever begin at all, if the first and 

 simplest intelligent act implies a reference to 

 experiences which, in accordance with the theory, 

 must have preceded any intelligent act ? 



Formidable as this objection may seem, and 

 unanswerable as it would have been if urged 

 half a century ago, it has to-day no force what- 

 ever ; and those who now deliberately urge it 

 succeed only in betraying their entire lack of 

 acquaintance with the progress which psycho- 

 logy has made since the times of Reid and Stew- 

 art. As long as psychological questions were 

 settled simply by introspection — by observing 

 what goes on in the consciousness of adult civil- 

 ized man — the objection here cited must have 

 seemed conclusive. But familiarity with the con- 

 ception of evolution has now led us to regard 

 things in general, not as coming at once into 

 fulness of being, but as gradually beginning to 

 be; and in the case of the phenomena of intel- 

 ligence, this view of the question is amply jus- 

 tified by experiments in objective psychology 

 presently to be mentioned. The conception 

 of an absolutely first cognition, not determined 

 by previous psychical states, rests upon a fallacy 

 similar to that upon which rested the preforma- 

 tion theory in biology. Just as it was formerly 

 held that the embryo started as a fully devel- 

 oped organism, differing from an adult organ- 



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