Thoughts on Causality. 



225 



most striking examples of apparent design ; that instincts 

 are only inherited and accumulated experiences ; and finally 

 that Darwinism has become firmly rooted in the convic- 

 tions of thinking minds. 



In the recent progress of scientific research, the doctrine 

 of the conservation of energy has become established ; and 

 this principle is held to embrace organic nature as truly 

 as inorganic. Next, the origin of mind itself has come 

 specially under review, and Spencer is maintained to have 

 established for it a developmental history parallel with that 

 established by Darwin for the physical organism. Eyes 

 and other organs of the senses are but portions of a primi- 

 tively homogeneous mass, differentiated by the influence 

 of light and other external agents. The tactual sense is 

 observed to possess a development correlative with the in- 

 telligence of animals; and the inference is that it deter- 

 mines such intelligence. Instincts and intuitions are but 

 the accumulated experience of races, transmitted from gene- 

 ration to generation. Space and time are "elements of 

 thought" or, as Kant phrases it, " forms of intuition" in- 

 stead of objective realities. 1 



The author now approaches the critical point of his dis- 

 cussion. Having admitted that the scientist often feels 

 himself impelled to pass beyond the field of physical 

 phenomena, and from phenomena to induce an abstract 

 generalization under which an entire category of pheno- 

 mena may be ranged — as in the case of the force of 

 gravitation — it is not strange that Lucretius should have 

 reached the generalization that his atoms were endowed 

 with life ; or that Darwin should have permitted himself 

 to be understood as abstracting creative power, exercised 



1 The phrase " elements of thought" as here used is too loose for philosophy. 

 Space and time are not the " elements" but the concomitants, and probably 

 the conditions of thought. " Forms of intuition" is more exact ; but still, 

 " conditions of intuition" or " conditions of the possibility of intuition and 

 thought" would be better. 



Trans. viii.~] 29 



