636 PSYCHOLOGY. 



enough) applicable to it. That is, it yields expressions 

 which, at given places and times, can be translated into 

 real values, or interpreted as definite portions of the chaos 

 that falls upon our sense. It becomes thus a practical 

 guide to our expectations as well as a theoretic delight. 

 But I do not see how any one with a sense for the facts can 

 possibly call our systems immediate results of ' experience' 

 in the ordinary sense. Every scientific conception is in the 

 first instance a ' spontaneous variation ' in some one's brain.* 

 For one that proves useful and applicable there are a thou- 

 sand that perish through their worthlessness. Their gene- 

 sis is strictly akin to that of the flashes of poetry and sallies 

 of wit to which the instable brain-paths equally give rise. 

 But whereas the poetry and wit (like the science of the 

 ancients) are their ' own excuse for being,' and have to run 

 the gauntlet of no farther test, the ' scientific ' conceptions 

 must prove their worth by being 'verified.' This test, how- 

 ever, is the cause of their preservation, not that of their pro- 

 duction ; and one might as well account for the origin of 

 Artemus "Ward's jokes by the ' cohesion ' of subjects with 

 predicates in proportion to the 'persistence of the outer 

 relations ' to which they ' correspond ' as to treat the genesis 

 of scientific conceptions in the same ponderously unreal 

 way. 



The most persistent outer relations which science be- 

 lieves in are never matters of experience at all, but have to 

 be disengaged from under experience by a process of elimi- 

 nation, that is, by ignoring conditions which are always 

 present. The elementary laws of mechanics, physics, and 

 chemistry are all of this sort. The principle of uniformity 

 in nature is of this sort ; it has to be sought under and in 

 spite of the most rebellious appearances ; and our convic- 



* In an article entitled ' Great Men, Great Thoughts, and the Environ- 

 ment,' published in the Atlantic Monthly for October 1880, the reader 

 will find some ampler illustrations of these remarks. I have there tried to 

 show that both mental and social evolution are to be conceived after the 

 Darwinian fashion, and that the function of the environment properly so 

 called is much more that of selecting forms, produced by invisible forces, 

 than producing of such forms,— producing being the only function thought 

 of by the pre-Darwinian evolutionists, and the only one on which stress la 

 laid by such contemporary ones as Mr. Spencer and Mr. Allen. 



