MR. HERBERT SPENCER. 41 



instinct and heredity generally, to memory on the part 

 of offspring of the action it bond fide took in the 

 persons of its forefathers." The reviewer made no 

 reply, and I concluded, as I have since found correctly, 

 that he could not find the passages. 



True, in his "Principles of Psychology" (vol ii. 

 p. 195) Mr. Spencer says that we have only to expand 

 the doctrine that all intelligence is acquired through 

 experience "so as to make it include with the expe- 

 rience of each individual the experiences of all ances- 

 tral individuals," &c. This is all very good, but it is 

 much the same as saying, " We have only got to stand 

 on our heads and we shall be able to do so and so." 

 We did not see our way to standing on our heads, and 

 Mr. Spencer did not help us; we had been accus- 

 tomed, as I am afraid I must have said usque ad 

 nauseam already, to lose sight of the physical connec- 

 tion existing between parents and offspring ; we under- 

 stood from the marriage service that husband and wife 

 were in a sense one flesh, but not that parents and 

 children were so also ; and without this conception of 

 the matter, which in its way is just as true as the 

 more commonly received one, we could not extend the 

 experience of parents to offspring. It was not in the 

 bond or nexus of our ideas to consider experience as 

 appertaining to more than a single individual in the 

 common acceptance of the term ; these two ideas were 

 so closely bound together that wherever the one went 

 the other went per force. Here, indeed, in the very 

 passage of Mr. Spencer's just referred to, the race is 

 throughout regarded as " a series of individuals " — 



