Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/550

534 the last chapter in Professor James's text-book is one of the most important contributions to the future of psychology ever written, yet I think grave misuse is made there of the term a priori as applied to traits of mind inherited from a like source to those treated of in this paper. Whether the origin of these traits is 'spontaneous' or 'acquired,' the result is the same; and experience plays the same part in that result in either case. It is only played in a different way according to Weismann than according to Lamarck. By rejecting the unfit and perpetuating only 'her own,' Experience as truly moulds our organic and mental functions as if for each individual she formed them wholly and anew. No traits of mind, then, are 'independent of experience,' except in the sense that all traits are so; except in so far as the first cause of all things is unknown. This is important relative to the way in which we should look at the inherited characteristics of our primary or pleasure sense. Looked at as traits of our ancestral worm, we are sceptical regarding the whole postulate. Looked upon as traits of our present neural system, of similar origin and like function with all the rest, and as mediatory and expressive of our present environment as any traits of our other senses, the postulate at once loses its strangeness. Human nature is said to be much alike in all men. That we have much in common; that we are moulded much alike; that, as 'moulds,' we are much alike; that nature and experience between them have worked through unknown periods in fashioning the moulds to be filled so differently in our individual lives, — all this ought no longer to be a difficult hypothesis of mental science.

Acknowledging the many blunders likely to be made in so broad a departure from traditions, I yet must declare this whole matter of the biological origin of mind to be one of the most promising sources of future psychological investigation. To me, also, it is a main avenue to the deeper secrets of the universe and of man's futurity.

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HARVARD UNIVERSITY.