622 PSTCHOLOO T. 



responded to by connections among inner feelings, that are, above all 

 others, indissoluble. As the substrata of all other relations in 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 irifinitely- 

 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. ' 



" Such, it seems to me, is the only possible reconciliation between the 

 experience-hypothesis and the hypothesis of the transcendentalists ; 

 neither of which is tenable by itself. Insurmountable difficulties are 

 presented by the Kantian doctrine (as we shall hereafter see) ; and the 

 antagonist doctrine, taken alone, presents difficulties that are equally 

 insurmountable. To rest with the unqualified assertion that, antece- 

 dent to experience, the mind is a blank, is to ignore the questions— whence 

 comes the power of organizing experiences ? whence arise the different 

 degrees of that power possessed by different races of organisms, and 

 different individuals of the same race ? If, at birth, there exists noth- 

 ing but a passive receptivity of impressions, why is not a horse as 

 educable as a man ? Should it be said that language makes the differ- 

 ence, then why do not the cat and the dog, reared in the same house- 

 hold, arrive at equal degrees and kinds of intelligence ? Understood in 

 its current form, the experience-hypothesis implies that the presence of 

 & definitely-organized nervous system is a circumstance of no moment 

 — a fact not needing to be taken into account ! Yet it is the all-impor- 

 tant fact— the fact to which, in one sense, the criticisms of Leibnitz and 

 others pointed — the fact without which an assimilation of experiences 

 is inexplicable. Throughout the animal kingdom in general, the 



actions are dependent on the nervous structure. The physiologist shows 

 us that each reflex movement implies the agency of certain nerves and 

 ganglia ; that a development of complicated instincts is accompanied by 

 complication of the nervous centres and their commissural connections ; 

 that the same creature in different stages, as larva and imago for 

 example, changes its instincts as its nervous structure changes ; and 

 that as we advance to creatures of high intelligence, a vast increase in 

 the size and in the complexity of the nervous system takes place. What 

 is the obvious inference ? It is that 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 established relations 

 among its parts stand for so many estaUislied relations among the psy- 

 chical changes. Each of the constant connections among the fibres of 

 the cerebral masses answers to some constant connection of phenomena 

 in the experiences of the race. Just as the organized arrangement sub- 

 sisting between the sensory nerves of the nostrils and the motor nerves 

 of the respiratory muscles not only makes possible a sneeze, but also, 

 in the newly-born infant, implies sneezings to be hereafter performed ; 

 so, all the organized arrangements subsisting among the nerves of the 



