Page:On an Evolutionist Theory of Axioms.djvu/13

6 The question, as is well known, is one of those fundamental ones which divide philosophers into opposing schools.

I propose to consider the contribution made to it by the Evolutionist school of philosophy.

May I be allowed to say that in the discussion which will follow, I use the words 'evolution' and 'evolutionist' in reference to evolutionist philosophy, and not to evolutionist science. Why I am anxious to make this distinction will appear hereafter.

The Evolutionist claims to have solved the vexed problem, and to have reconciled all previous schools of philosophy.

The principal representative of this philosophy says—'Already I have pointed out that the hypothesis of Evolution "supplies a reconciliation between the experience-hypothesis as commonly interpreted and the hypothesis which the transcendentalists oppose to it;" and here we see how complete the reconciliation is.'

This claim is a high one and made, as we see, with some conviction. The theory, though distinctly empirical, recognises that induction is insufficient for axioms. It is well known, but its essential features must be re-called.

The sufficient and the only guarantee, it is said, of a universal proposition is that we cannot conceive its contradictory. This is the ground of our belief in axioms; and thus they are à priori for the individual, being due to the constitution of his mind and not to his experience. But this constitution of his mind has been itself produced by experience, not his own, but that of the race.

The effect of experience is to modify the nervous structures: the modifications have been accumulated by inheritance from generation to generation, so that the mind is at last, in the case of axioms, completely adapted to the object Thus, in the well-known formula, axiomatic beliefs are said to be à priori for the individual, but à posteriori for that