MR. HERBERT SPENCER. 23 



like action at some past time or times, and that he 

 remembers how he acted before, so as to be able to 

 turn his past action to account, gaining in proficiency 

 through practice. Continued personality and memory 

 are the elements that constitute experience ; where 

 these are present there may, and commonly will, be 

 experience ; where they are absent the word " experi- 

 ence " cannot properly be used. 



Formerly we used to see an individual as one, and 

 a race as many. We now see that though this is true 

 as far as it goes, it is by no means the whole truth, 

 and that in certain important respects it is the race 

 that is one, and the individual many. We all admit 

 and understand this readily enough now, but it was 

 not understood when Mr. Spencer wrote the passages 

 he adduced in the letter to the Athenmum above 

 referred to. In the then state of our ideas a race was 

 only a succession of individuals, each one of them new 

 persons, and as such incapable of profiting by the 

 experience of its predecessors except in the very limited 

 number of cases where oral teaching, or, as in recent 

 times, writing, was possible. The thread of life was, 

 as I have elsewhere said, remorselessly shorn between 

 each successive generation, and the importance of the 

 physical and psychical connection between parents and 

 offspring had been quite, or nearly quite, lost sight of. 

 It seems strange how this could ever have been allowed 

 to come about, but it should be remembered that );he 

 Church in the Middle Ages would strongly discourage 

 attempts to emphasize a connection that would raise 

 troublesome questions as to who in a future state was 



