Feb, 20, 1873] 
conceive it as manufactured out of motion; that is to say, 
_ the one and the other proposition are alike absolutely 
unthinkable. On this point Mr. Spencer writes, “Can we 
think of the subjective and objective activities as the same? 
Can the oscillations of a molecule be presented in con- 
sciousness side by side with a nervous shock, and the two 
_ be recognised as one? No effort enables us to assimilate 
them. That a unit of feeling has nothing in common 
with a unit of motion, becomes more than ever manifest 
when we bring the two into juxtaposition.” Mr. Spencer’s 
idea is that feeling and nervous action are two faces of 
the same ontological something,—a view that prohibits the 
notion of the one passing into or being expended in pro- 
ducing the other. The conclusion is that the transforma- 
tions of physical energy remain unaffected by the presence 
_ or absence of consciousness. 
Psychology has as yet been made a serious study by 
only a few individuals. Accordingly it is only the more 
striking and easily grasped peculiarities of Mr. Spencer’s 
system that can be referred to with advantage. Of these 
the most imposing, and the one of which the educated 
_ public have already a slight second-hand acquaintance, 
is the doctrine that the brain and nervous system is an 
organised register of the experiences of past generations, 
_ that consequently the intelligence and character of indi- 
viduals and of races depend much more on this, on the 
experiences of their ancestors, than on their individual 
experiences. The flood of light thrown by this conception 
on so many things previously dark and unfathomable, its 
power of bringing about harmony where before there was 
nothing but confusion and unsatisfactory wrangling, ought 
to have been sufficient to have secured it a universally 
favourable reception. This, however, has not been the 
case, and partly, perhaps, because of the very merits that 
recommend it. It may be that veterans who have won 
their laurels on, say, the battle-field of innate ideas, love 
the old controversy, and are not anxious to learn that 
_ both sides were right and both wrong. Moreover, it is 
the misfortune of this important addition to psychology 
that it shows that previous workers in this field of inquiry 
nave at times been labouring in the dark to solve prob- 
lems like in kind with the famous difficulty of accounting 
for the supposed fact, that the weight of a vessel of water 
is not increased by the addition of a live fish. For 
‘instance, should Mr. Spencer be right, the celebrated 
_ theory of the Will, elaborated by Prof. Bain, the able repre- 
sentative of the individual-experience psychology, becomes 
a highly ingenious account of what does not happen. 
Thus, the new doctrine can be accepted only at the ex- 
pense of giving up much of what has hitherto passed for 
mental science. 
The following sentences will serve to indicate Mr. 
Spencer’s position : “‘ The ability to co-ordinate impres- 
sions, and to perform the appropriate actions, always 
implies the pre-existence of certain nerves arranged in a 
certain way. What is the meaning of the human brain? 
It is that the many esfad/ished relations among its parts 
stand for so many esfadlished relations among the psy- 
chical changes. Eachof the constant connections among 
the fibres of the cerebral masses, answers to some con- 
stant connection of phenomena in the experiences of the 
“Those who contend that knowledge results 
wholly from the experiences of the individual, ignoring as 
NATURE 
299 
they do the mental evolution which accompanies the au- 
togenous development of the nervous system, fall into an 
error as great as if they were to ascribe all bodily growth 
and structure to exercise, forgetting the innate tendency 
to assume the adult form.” “The doctrine that all the 
desires, all the sentiments, are generated by the experi- 
ences of the individual, is so glaringly at variance with 
facts, that I cannot but ponder how anyone should ever 
have. entertained it.” The circumstances which account 
for the existence of the individual-experience psycho- 
logy, and which enable it still to hold out as a rival of the 
more advanced form that Mr. Spencer has given to the 
science are these: (1) the immaturity of the human in- 
fant at birth; (2) the lack of precise knowledge with 
regard to the mental peculiarities of the lower animals ; 
(3) the still popular notion that the human mind does not 
resemble the mental constitution of the animals, that it is 
of a different order. Of course this last is now-a-days 
little more than a popular superstition, nevertheless it 
can be taken advantage of; and an argument to the 
effect that the mental operations of the animals are, to 
all appearance, so very different from the workings of the 
human mind, that they can supply nothing more than a 
worthless, if not a misleading analogy, has a very specious 
and scientific look about it, in the eyes of those who are 
not very well acquainted with the subject. Our ignorance 
of animal psychology may be still more boldly drawn on 
in defence of the theory under consideration. With a 
hyper-scientific caution, its advocates refuse to take into 
account anything (incompatible with their theory) con- 
cerning any one species of animal that has not been 
proved by a very overwhelmingly large number of very 
accurate observations. And they find it possible to main- 
tain that it still remains unproved that any species of 
animal possesses either knowledge or skill not wholly 
acquired by each individual. A better acquaintance with 
the mental peculiarities of the animals is certainly a de- 
sideratum, and we hope that this rich field of investigation 
will not long remain uncultivated. In Macmillan’s Maga- 
sine for this month there is an account of a series of 
observations and experiments on young animals by the 
present writer, which, unless they can be discredited, 
may reasonably be expected to go far to establish the fact 
of instinct, the fact of innate knowledge and unacquired 
skill ; in other words, the phenomena on which the expe- 
rience-psychology, minus the doctrine of inheritance, can 
throw no light whatever. Now, had not Mr. Darwin 
banished from every scientific mind the hypothesis of 
the miraculous creation of each distinct species of animal 
just as we see it, with allits strange organs and, to most 
people, still stranger instincts, the presumption against 
asystem of human psychology that not only can give no 
account of the most striking phenomena in the mental 
life of the animals, but which strongly inclines those who 
hold it to pronounce such phenomena incredible, might 
not have been so apparent. But in the present state of 
our scientific knowledge, such a psychology, professing 
to be a complete system, is self-condemned. Inits funda- 
mental principles the science of mind must be the same 
for all living creatures. Further, if man be, as is now 
believed, but the highest, the last, the most complex 
product of evolution, asystem professing to be an analy- 
sis and exposition of his mind, yet confessing itself in- 
