12 



HABIT AND INTELLIGENCE. 



To know 

 what a 

 thing is, 

 we must 

 know its 

 origin. 



Wide ap- 

 plicability 

 of this 

 axiom. 



Artistic 

 criticism. 



Political 

 institu- 

 tions. 



I'he T'ecog- 

 nition of 

 this prin- 

 ciple is 



exceptions, of which I shall have to speak when I come 

 to the subject of the Origin of Species ; but I shall 

 endeavour to show that they are more apparent than 

 real : of its general truth there is no doubt whatever, and 

 no naturalist would regard the classification of any newly 

 discovered form as more than merely provisional, until he 

 had ascertained the mode of its development. 



Now, this axiom, that development is the criterion of 

 morphology, or that, in order to know what a thing really 

 is, we must know the process of its origin, — this axiom, 

 I say, though it was first stated of living beings, is really 

 of much wider application ; it is applicable to all things 

 ■whatever which are produced by a process of development, 

 according to an internal genetic law. It is, for instance, 

 impossible — impossible, I mean, in the sense of involving 

 a contradiction — really to understand a work of art, with- 

 out understanding the mind of the artist who produced it, 

 at least sufficiently to perceive his meaning and intention : 

 and this is identical with a rudimentary knowledge of the 

 mental process by which his work has been produced. 

 This is perhaps the clearest and best instance that can be 

 quoted from among the studies that arise out of human 

 history and the productions of the human mind ; but the 

 same is true, and is now generally recognised as true, of 

 political institutions. No institution, or, to use a wider 

 expression, no state of human society, can be really under- 

 stood unless its origin and its history are known ; and it 

 is possible for institutions to be exactly the same in form 

 and yet totally unlike in reality, if they are different in 

 origin. Constitutional government, for instance, may be 

 one thing in a country where it has spontaneously grown, 

 and may be a totally different thing in another country 

 where its forms have been exactly imitated, but where it 

 has no historical root. 



These truths are now commonplaces : the saying that 

 " constitutions are not made, but grow," has become a 

 proverb. The fact that this class of truths has become 

 commonplace among us, constitutes, as I think, the in- 

 tellectual peculiarity of the present century, and, I will 



