620 P8YCHOL0O 7. 



ing in us at birth ; we can see their growth under experi- 

 ence's moulding finger, and we can see how often experience 

 undoes her own work, and for an earlier order substitutes 

 a new one. ' The order of experience,' in this matter of the 

 time- and space-conjunctions of things, is thus an indis- 

 putably vera causa of our forms of thought. It is our edu- 

 cator, our sovereign helper and friend ; and its name, 

 standing for something with so real and definite a use, 

 ought to be kept sacred and encumbered with no vaguer 

 meaning. 



If all the connections among ideas in the mind could 

 be interpreted as so many combinations of sense-data 

 wrought into fixity in this way from without, then experi- 

 ence in the common and legitimate sense of the Avord would 

 be the sole fashioner of the mind. 



The empirical school in psychology has in the main 

 contended that they can be so interpreted. Before our 

 generation, it was the experience of the individual only 

 wdiich was meant. But when one nowadays says that the 

 human mind owes its present shape to experience, he means 

 the experience of ancestors as well. Mr. S]3encer's state- 

 ment of this is the earliest emphatic one, and deserves 

 (quotation in full : * 



" The supposition that the inner cohesions are adjusted to the outer 

 persistences hj accumulated experience of those outer persistences is in 

 harmony with all our actual knowledge of mental phenomena. Though 

 in so far as reflex actions and instincts are concerned, the experience- 

 hypothesis seems insufficient; yet its seeming insufficiency occurs only 

 where the evidence is beyond our reach. Nay, even here such few facts 

 as we can get point to the conclusion that automatic psychical connec- 

 tions result from the registration of experiences continued for number- 

 less generations. 



" In brief, the case stands thus : It is agreed that all psychical 

 relations, save the absolutely indissoluble, are determined by experiences. 

 Their various strengths are admitted, other things equal, to be propor- 

 tionate to the multiplication of experiences. It is an unavoidable 



* The passage is in § 207 of the Principles of Psychology, at the end of 

 the chapter entitled 'Reason.' I italicize certain words in order to show 

 that the essence of this explanation is to demand numerically frequent ex- 

 periences. The bearing of this remark will later appear. (Cf. pp. 641-3, 

 infra.) 



