MR. HERBERT SPENCER. 27 



that personality could not be broken as between gene- 

 rations, without also breaking it between the years, 

 days, and moments of a man's life. What differen- 

 tiates " Life and Habit " from the " Principles of 

 Psychology" is the prominence given to continued 

 personal identity, and hence to dond jide memory, as 

 between successive generations ; but surely this makes 

 the two books differ widely. 



Ideas can be changed to almost any extent in 

 almost any direction, if the change is brought about 

 gradually and in accordance with the rules of all 

 development. As in music we may take almost any 

 possible discord with pleasing effect if we have pre- 

 pared and resolved it rightly, so our ideas will outlive 

 and outgrow almost any modification which is ap- 

 proached and quitted in such a way as to fuse the 

 old and new harmoniously. Words are to ideas what 

 the fairy invisible cloak was to the prince who wore 

 it — only that the prince was seen till he put on the 

 cloak, whereas ideas are unseen until they don the 

 robe of words which reveals them to us ; the words, 

 however, and the ideas, should be such as fit each 

 other and stick to one another in our minds as 

 soon as they are brought together, or the ideas will 

 fly off, and leave the words void of that spirit by the 

 aid of which alone they can become transmuted into 

 physical action and shape material things with their 

 '■ own impress. Whether a discord is too violent or 

 no, depends on what we have been accustomed to, 

 and on how widely the new differs from the old, but 

 in no case can we fuse and assimilate more than a 



