NECESSARY TRUTHS— EFFECTS OF EXPERIENCE. 623 



infant's brain not only make possible certain combinations of impres- 

 sions, but also imply that such combinations will hereafter be made — 

 imply that there are answering combinations in the outer world — imply 

 a preparedness to cognize these combinations— imply faculties of com- 

 prehending them. It is true that the resulting compound psychical 

 changes do not take place with the same readiness and automatic pre- 

 cision as the simple reflex action instanced — it is true that some indi- 

 vidual experiences seem required to establish them. But while this is 

 partly due to the fact that these combinations are highly involved, 

 extremely varied in their modes of occurrence, made up therefore of 

 psychical relations less completely coherent, and hence need further 

 repetitions to perfect them ; it is in a much greater degree due to the 

 fact that at birth the organization of the brain is incomplete, and does 

 not cease its spontaneous progress for twenty or thirty years afterwards. 

 Those who contend that knowledge results wholly from the experiences 

 of the individual, ignoring as they do the mental evolution which 

 accompanies the autogenous development of the nervous system, fall into 

 an error as great as if they were to ascribe all bodily growth and struc- 

 ture to exercise, forgetting the innate tendency to assume the adult 

 form. Were the infant born with a full-sized and completely-constructed 

 brain, their position would be less untenable. But, as the case stands, 

 the gradually-increasing intelligence displayed throughout childhood 

 and youth is more attributable to the completion of the cerebral organ- 

 ization than to the individual experiences— a truth proved by the fact 

 that in adult life there is sometimes displayed a high endowment of 

 some faculty which, during education, was never brought into play. 

 Doubtless, experiences received by the individual furnish the concrete 

 materials for all thought. Doubtless, the organized and semi-organized 

 arrangements existing among the cerebral nerves can give no knowledge 

 until there has been a presentation of the external relations to wliich 

 they correspond. And doubtless the child's daily observations and 

 reasonings aid the formation of those involved nervous connections that 

 are in process of spontaneous evolution ; just as its daily gambols aid 

 the development of its limbs. But saying this is quite a different thing 

 from saying that its intelligence is wholly produced by its experiences. 

 That is an utterly inadmissible doctrine— a doctrine which makes the 

 presence of a brain meaningless — a doctrine which makes idiotcy unac- 

 countable. 



" In the sense, then, that there exist in the nervous system certain 

 pre-established relations answering to relations in the environment, 

 there is truth in the doctrine of ' forms of intuition ' — not the truth 

 which its defenders suppose, but a parallel truth. Corresponding to 

 absolute external relations, there are established in the structure of the 

 nervous system absolute internal relations — relations that are potentially 

 present before birth in the shape of definite nervous connections ; that 

 are antecedent to, and independent of, individual experiences ; and 

 that are automatically disclosed along with the first cognitions. And, 



