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nnd withouf effort fused to a single perception. Instance the 

 1)illiard-player, whose muscles of hand and eye, when he reaches 

 the perfection of his art, are unsconsciously co-ordinated. In- 

 stance the musician, who by practice is enabled to fuse a multi- 

 tude of arrangements, auditory, tactual, and muscular, into a 

 process of automatic manipulation. Combining such facts with 

 the doctrine of hereditary transmission, we reach a theory of 

 instinct. A chick, after coming out of the egg, balances itself 

 correctly, runs about, picks up food, thus showing that it ]5os- 

 ses^cs a power of directing its movements to definite ends. How 

 did the chick learn this very complex co-ordination of eye, 

 muscles, and beak? It has not been individually taught ; its 

 personal experience is nil : but it has the benefit of ancestral 

 experience. In its inherited organisation are registered all the 

 powers which it displays at birth. So also as regards the instinct 

 of the hive-bee, already referred to. The distance at which, the 

 insects stand apart when they sweep their hemispheres and 

 build their cells is "organically remembered." Man also carries 

 willi liim Ihe physical texture of his ancestry, as well as tlie 

 inherited intellect bound up with it. The defects of intelligence 

 during infancy and youth are probably less due to a lack of 

 individual experience tlian to the fact that in early life the cerebral 

 organisation is still incomplete. The period necessai-y for com- 

 pletion varies with the race and with the individual. As a round 

 shot out.strips a rifled one on quitting tlie muzzle of the gun, so 

 the lower race in childhood may outstrip the higher. But the 

 higher eventually overtakes the ■ lower, and surpasses it in range. 

 As regards individual?, we do not always find the ]n'ecocity of 

 youth prolonged to mental power in maturity, while the'dulncss 

 of boyhood is sometimes strikingly conirasted with the intellectual 

 energy of after years. Newton, when a boy, was weakly, and 

 he showed no particular aptitude at school ; but in his eighteenth 

 year he went to Cambridge, and soon afterwards astonished his 

 teachers by his power of dealing with geometrical problems. 

 During his quiet youth his brain was slowly preparing itself to 

 be the organ of those energies which he subsequently displayed. 



By myriad blows (to use a Lucreliau phrase) the image and 

 superscription of the external world are stamped as states of con- 

 sciousness upon the organism, the depth of the impression 

 depending upon tlie number of the blows. When two or more 

 phenomena occur in the environment invariably togetlier, they 

 are stamped to the same depth or to the same relief, and are in- 

 dissolubly connected. And here we come to the threshold of a 

 great question. Seeing that he could in no way rid himself of 

 the consciousness of space and time, Kant assumed them to be 

 necessary " forms of thought," the moulds and shapes into 

 which our intuitions are thrown, belonging to ourselves solely 

 and without objective existence. With unexpected power and 

 success Mr. Spencer brings the hereditary experience theory, as 

 he holds it, to bear upon this question. " If there exist cer- 

 tain external relations which are experienced by all organisms at 

 all instants of their waking lives — relations which are absolutely 

 constant and universal — there will be established answering in- 

 ternal relations that are absolutely constant and universal. 

 Such relations we have in those of space and time. As the 

 substratum of all other relations of the Non-Ego, they must lie 

 responded to by conce|3tion3 that are the substrata of all other 

 relations in tlie 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 extension of the "law of 

 inseparable association," Mr. Spencer stands on totaHy dif- 

 ferent ground from Mr. John Stuart A'till, invoking the regis- 

 tered experiences of the race instead of the experiences of t!ie 

 individual. Ilis overthrow of Mr. Mill's restriction of expe- 

 rience is, I think, complete. That restriction ignores the power 

 of organising experience furnished at the outset to each indi- 

 vidual ; it ignores the different degrees of this power possessed 

 by different races and by different individuals of the same race. 

 Were there not in the human brain a potency antecedent to all 

 experience, a dog or cat ought to be as capable of education as a 

 man. 'J'hese predetermined internal relations are independent 

 of the experiences of the individual The human brain is the 

 "organised register of infinitely numerous experiences received 

 during the evolution of life, or rather during the evolution of that 

 scries 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 intelligence 

 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 process of abstrac- 

 tion from experience. It is instructive to note from this point of 

 view the successive introduction of new conceptions. The idea 

 of the attraction of gr.witalion 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 

 appealed to the senses ; and thus became the substratum of the 

 conception that atoms and molecules are endowed with definite, 

 attractive, and repellent poles, by the play of which definite 

 forms of crystalline architecture are produced. Thus molecular 

 force becomes slrnclural. 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 experience arise conceptions 

 which are wholly ultra-experiential. 



The origination of life is a jioint lightly touched upon, if at 

 all, by Mr. Darwin and Mr. Spencer. Diminishing gradually 

 the number of progenitors, Mr. Darwin comes at length to one 

 "primordial form ;" but he does not say, as far as I remember, 

 how he supposes this form to have been introduced. He quotes 

 with satisfaction the words of a celebrated author and divine who 

 had " gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception 

 of tlie Deity to believe He created a few original forms, capable 

 of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe 

 that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids 

 caused by the action of His laws." What Mr. Darwin thinks of 

 this view of the introduction of life I do not know. Whether he 

 does or does not introduce his " primordial form " by a creative 

 act, I do not know. But the question will inevitably be asked, 

 " How came the form there?" With regard to the diminution 

 of the number of created forms, one does not see that much ad- 

 vantage is gained by it. The anthropomorphism, which it seemed 

 the object of Mr. Darwin to set aside, ii as firmly associated with 

 the creation of a few forms as with the creation of a multitude. 

 We need clearness and thoroughness here. Two courses, and two 

 only, are possible. Either let us open our doors freely to the con- 

 ception of creative acts, or, abandoning them, let us radically 

 change our notions of matter. If we look at matter as pictured 

 by Democritus, and as defined for generations in our scientific 

 text-books, the absolute impossibility of any form of life coming 

 out of it would be sufficient to render any other hypothesis pre- 

 ferable ; but the definitions of matter given in our text-books 

 were intended to cover its purely physical and mechanical pro- 

 perties. And taught as we have been to regard these definitions 

 as complete, we naturally and rightly reject the monstrous notion 

 that out of such matter any form of life could possibly arise. But 

 are the definitions complete ? Everything depends on the answ-er 

 to be given to this question. Trace the line of life backwards, 

 and see it approaching more and more to what vi-e call the purely 

 physical condition. We reach at length those organisms which I 

 have compared to drops of oil suspended in a mixture of alcohol 

 and water. We reach X\\s protogcncs of Hacckel, in which we have 

 "a type distinguishable from a fragment of albumen only by its 

 finely granular character." Can we pause here? We break .- 

 magnet and find two poles in each of its fragments. We con- 

 tinue the process of breaking, but however small the parts, eacii 

 carries with it, though enfeebled, the polarity of the whole. And 

 when we can break no longer, we prolong the intellectual visi'iu 

 to the polar molecules. Arc we not urged to do somclhinj; 

 similar in the case of life? Is there not a temptation to close to 

 some extent with Lucretius, when he affirms that " Nature is seen 

 to do all things spontaneously of herself without the meddling of 

 the gods ? " or with Bruno, when he declares that matter is not 

 " that mere empty capacity which philosophers have pictured her 

 to be, but the universal mother who brings forth all things as thi 

 fruit of her own womb ? " The questions here raised are inevi- 

 table. They are approaching us with accelerated speed, and it 

 is not a matter of indifference whether they are introduced with 

 reverence or irreverence. Abandoning all disguise, the confes- 

 sion that I feel bound to make before you is that I prolong the 

 vision baclai-ard across the boundary of the experimental evi- 

 dence, and discern in that matter, which we in our ignomnce, 

 and notwithstanding our professed teTertncc for its Creator 



