NECESSARY TEUTHS— EFFECTS OF EXPERIENCE. 625 



catechism, or iu some way have the interests of obscuran- 

 tism at heart. I am entirely certain that, on this ground 

 alone, what I have erelong to say will make this a sealed 

 chapter to many of m}'- readers. " He denies experience ! " 

 they will exclaim, "denies science; believes the mind created 

 by miracle; is a regular old partisan of innate ideas ! That is 

 enough ! we'll listen to such antediluvian twaddle no more." 

 Regrettable as is the loss of readers cajDable of such 

 wholesale discipleship, I feel that a definite meaning for the 

 word experience is even more important than their company, 

 * Experience ' does not mean every natural, as opposed to 

 every supernatural, cause. It means a particular sort of 

 natural agency, alongside of which other more recondite 

 natural agencies may perfectly well exist. With the scien- 

 tific animus of anti-supernaturalism we ought to agree, but 

 we ought to free ourselves from its verbal idols and 

 bugbears. 



Nature has many methods of producing the same efleci;. 

 She may make a ' born ' draughtsman or singer by tipping 

 in a certain direction at an opportune moment the mole- 

 cules of some human ovum ; or she may bring forth a 

 child ungifted and make him spend laborious but successful 

 years at school. She may make our ears ring by the sound 

 of a bell, or by a dose of quinine ; make us see yellow by 

 spreading a field of buttercups before our eyes, or by 

 mixing a little santonine powder with our food ; fill us with 

 terror of certain surroundings by making them really dan- 

 gerous, or by a blow which produces a pathological altera- 

 tion of our brain. It is obvious that we need two words 

 to designate these two modes of operating. In the one case 

 the natural agents produce perceptions ivhich take cognizance of 

 the agents themselves ; in the other case, they produce percep- 

 tions ivhich take cognizance of something else. What is taught 

 to the mind by the ' experience,' in the first case, is the 

 order of the experience itself — the * inner relation ' (in 

 Spencer's phrase) * corresponds ' to the ' outer relation ' 

 which produced it, by remembering and knowing the latter. 

 But in the case of the other sort of natural agency, what is 

 taught to the mind has nothing to do with the agency 



