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238 HERBERT SPENCER

intimate and exact kind between states and changes of con-
sciousness on the one hand, and states and changes of brain
on the other. As respects complexity, intensity, and time-
order, the concomitance is apparently complete. Mind and
brain advance and decline pan pasm; the stimulants and
narcotics that enliven or depress the action of the one tell in
like manner upon the other. Local lesions that suspend or
destroy, more or less completely, the functions of the centres
of sight and speech, for instance, involve an equivalent loss,
temporary or permanent, of words and ideas."

Experience and Intuitions.—The history of psychology
discloses a long drawn-out dispute between schools
of "empiricists," who said "all our knowledge is
derived from experience," and schools of "intuition-
alists," who said, " Nay, but we have innate ideas or
intuitions which transcend experience." A parallel
dispute was long continued in regard to moral ideas.
Between the disputants Spencer appeared as a peace-
maker, and the reconciliation he proposed was in
terms of evolution. We can best express it by a
sentence from a letter to John Stuart Mill:—

" Just in the same way that I believe the intuition of space,
possessed by any living individual, to have arisen from
organised and consolidated experiences of all antecedent
individuals who bequeathed to him their slowly-developed
nervous organisations—just as I believe that this intuition,
requiring only to be made definite and complete by personal
experiences, has practically become a form of thought,
apparently quite independent of experience; so do I believe
that the experiences of utility, organised and consolidated
through all past generations. of the human race, have been
producing corresponding nervous modifications, which, by
continued transmission and accumulation have become in us
certain faculties of moral intuition—certain emotions respond-
ing to right and wrong conduct, which have no apparent
basis in the individual experiences of utility."



	238 HERBERT SPENCER intimate and exact kind between states and changes of con- sciousness on the one hand, and states and changes of brain on the other. As respects complexity, intensity, and time- order, the concomitance is apparently complete. Mind and brain advance and decline pan pasm; the stimulants and narcotics that enliven or depress the action of the one tell in like manner upon the other. Local lesions that suspend or destroy, more or less completely, the functions of the centres of sight and speech, for instance, involve an equivalent loss, temporary or permanent, of words and ideas." Experience and Intuitions.—The history of psychology discloses a long drawn-out dispute between schools of "empiricists," who said "all our knowledge is derived from experience," and schools of "intuition- alists," who said, " Nay, but we have innate ideas or intuitions which transcend experience." A parallel dispute was long continued in regard to moral ideas. Between the disputants Spencer appeared as a peace- maker, and the reconciliation he proposed was in terms of evolution. We can best express it by a sentence from a letter to John Stuart Mill:— " Just in the same way that I believe the intuition of space, possessed by any living individual, to have arisen from organised and consolidated experiences of all antecedent individuals who bequeathed to him their slowly-developed nervous organisations—just as I believe that this intuition, requiring only to be made definite and complete by personal experiences, has practically become a form of thought, apparently quite independent of experience; so do I believe that the experiences of utility, organised and consolidated through all past generations. of the human race, have been producing corresponding nervous modifications, which, by continued transmission and accumulation have become in us certain faculties of moral intuition—certain emotions respond- ing to right and wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility."