IX.] Mr. Buckle's Fallacies. 139 



the acts of the two children will be caused, so far as 

 we know, solely by the pressure of external circum- 

 stances ; by which I mean the surrounding opinions, 

 knowledge, associations — in a word, the entire mental 

 atmosphere in which the two children are respectively 

 nurtured."^ 



This is only bringing up again the old dispute 

 about " the innate " and " the acquired," which 

 has raged for centuries among metaphysical 

 thinkers, but which we thought had been satis- 

 factorily settled by the physiologists some time 

 before Mr. Buckle penned the above passage. After 

 it had been proved that every organism is constantly 

 advancing in the vigour and complexity of its func- 

 tions in relation to the conditions which surround it, 

 nothing more was needed. But Mr. Buckle appears 

 to have forgotten this. He not only ignores some of 

 the late results of physiological investigation, but, 

 still worse, in the passage just quoted, he flatly con- 

 tradicts a theory which he elsewhere upholds. We 

 refer to the doctrine, held by many naturalists, which 

 supposes all the varieties of organic life, present and 

 past, to have arisen from one or two primitive forms, 

 by successive modifications of structure and function. 

 With the evidence which might be brought forward 



^ Vol. i. p. 162. 



