THE BELFAST ADDRESS 



37 



relations of the Non-Ego, they must be 

 responded to by conceptions that are the 

 substrata of all other relations in the 

 Ego. Being the constant and infinitely 

 repeated elements of thought, they must 

 become the automatic elements of 

 thought the elements of thought which 

 it is impossible to get rid of the " forms 

 of intuition." 



Throughout this application and ex- 

 tension of Hartley's and Mill's " Law of 

 Inseparable Association," Mr. Spencer 

 stands upon his own ground, invoking, 

 instead of the experiences of the indi- 

 vidual, the registered experiences of the 

 race. His overthrow of the restriction of 

 experience to the individual is, I think, 

 complete. That restriction ignores the 

 power of organising experience, furnished 

 at the outset to each individual ; it ignores 

 the different degrees of this power pos- 

 sessed by different races, and by different 

 individuals of the same race. Were there 

 not in the human brain a potency ante- 

 cedent to all experience, a dog or a cat 

 ought to be as capable of education as a 

 man. These predetermined internal re- 

 lations are independent of the experi- 

 ences of the individual. The human 

 brain is the " organised register of infi- 

 nitely numerous experiences received 

 during the evolution of life, or rather 

 during the evolution of that series of 

 organisms through which the human 

 organism has been reached. The effects 

 of the most uniform and frequent of 

 these experiences have been successively 

 bequeathed, principal and interest, and 

 have slowly mounted to that high intelli- 

 gence which lies latent in the brain of 

 the infant. Thus it happens that the 

 European inherits from twenty to thirty 

 cubic inches more of brain than the 

 Papuan. Thus it happens that faculties, 

 as of music, which scarcely exist in some 

 inferior races, become congenital in 

 superior ones. Thus it happens that out 

 of savages unable to count up to the 

 number of their fingers, and speaking a 

 language containing only nouns and 

 verbs, arise at length our Newtons and 

 Shakespeares." 



AT the outset of this Address it was 

 stated that physical theories which lie 

 beyond experience are derived by a pro- 

 cess of abstraction from experience. It 

 is instructive to note from this point of 

 view the successive introduction of new 

 conceptions. The idea of the attraction 

 of gravitation was preceded by the obser- 

 vation of the attraction of iron by a 

 magnet, and of light bodies by rubbed 

 amber. The polarity of magnetism and 

 electricity also appealed to the senses. 

 It thus became the substratum of the 

 conception that atoms and molecules are 

 endowed with attractive and repellent 

 poles, by the play of which definite forms 

 of crystalline architecture are produced. 

 Thus molecular force becomes structural. 1 

 It required no great boldness of thought 

 to extend its play into organic nature, 

 and to recognise in molecular force the 

 agency by which both plants and animals 

 are built up. In this way, out of expe- 

 rience arise conceptions which are wholly 

 ultra-experiential. None of the atomists 

 of antiquity had any notion of this play 

 of molecular polar force, but they had 

 experience of gravity, as manifested by 

 falling bodies. Abstracting from this, 

 they permitted their atoms to fall eter- 

 nally through empty space. Democritus 

 assumed that the larger atoms moved 

 more rapidly than the smaller ones, which 

 they therefore could overtake, and with 

 which they could combine. Epicurus, 

 holding that empty space could offer no 

 resistance to motion, ascribed to all the 

 atoms the same velocity ; but he seems 

 to have overlooked the consequence 

 that under such circumstances the atoms 

 could never combine. Lucretius cut the 

 knot by quitting the domain of physics 

 altogether, and causing the atoms to 

 move together by a kind of volition. 

 Was the instinct utterly at fault which 



1 See Fragments of Science, vol. ii., article on 

 " Matter and Force "; or Lectures on Liqht, No. 

 III. 



