624 PSTCnOLOOT. 



as here understood, it is not only these fundamental relations which 

 are thus predetermined, but also hosts of other relations of a more or 

 less constant kind, which are congeuitally represented by more or less 

 complete nervous connections. But these predetermined internal 



relations, though independent of the experiences of the individual, are 

 not independent of experiences in general : they have been determined 

 by the experiences of preceding organisms. The corollary here drawn 

 from the general argument is that the human brain is an organized 

 register of infinitely-numerous experiences received during the evolution 

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

 through which the human organism has been reached. The effects of 

 the most uniform and frequent of these experiences have been succes- 

 sively bequeathed, principal and interest ; and have slowly amounted 

 to that high intelligence which lies latent in the brain of the infant— 

 which the infant in after-life exercises and perhaps strengthens or fur- 

 ther complicates — and which, with minute additions, it bequeaths te 

 future generations. And thus it happens that the European inheriti^ 

 from twenty to thirty cubic inches more brain than the Papuan. Thub 

 it happens that faculties, as of music, which scarcely exist in some 

 inferior human races, become congenital in superior ones. Thus it hap- 

 pens that out of savages unable to count up to the number of their fin- 

 gers, and speaking a language containing only nouns and verbs, arise 

 at length our Newtons and Shakspeares." 



This is a brilliant and seductive statement, and it 

 doubtless includes a good deal of truth. Unfortunately it 

 fails to go into details ; and when the details are scrutinized, 

 as they soon must be by us, many of them will be seen to 

 be inexplicable in this simple way, and the choice will then 

 remain to us either of denying the experiential origin of 

 certain of our judgments, or of enlarging the meaning of the 

 word experience so as to include these cases among its 

 effects. 



TWO MODES OP ORIGIN OF BRAIN STRUCTURE. 



If we adopt the former course we meet wdth a contro- 

 versial difficulty. The ' experience-philosophy ' has from 

 time immemorial been the opponent of theological modes 

 of thought. The word experience has a halo of anti-super- 

 naturalism about it ; so that if anyone express dissatisfac- 

 tion with any function claimed for it, he is liable to be 

 treated as if he could only be animated by loyalty to the 



