with the exception of his one not lengthy address published some fifteen or sixteen years ago he has said nothing upon the subject, so far at least as I have been able to ascertain; I tried hard to draw him in 1880, but could get nothing out of him.  If, again, any of our more influential writers, not a few of whom evidently think on this matter much as I do, would eschew ambiguities and tell us what they mean in plain language, I would let the matter rest in their abler hands, but of this there does not seem much chance at present.

I wish there was, for in spite of the interest I have felt in working the theory out and the information I have been able to collect while doing so, I must confess that I have found it somewhat of a white elephant.  It has got me into the hottest of hot water, made a literary Ishmael of me, lost me friends whom I have been sorry to lose, cost me a good deal of money, done everything to me, in fact, which a good theory ought not to do.  Still, as it seems to have taken up with me, and no one else is inclined to treat it fairly, I shall continue to report its developments from time to time as long as life and health are spared me.  Moreover, Ishmaels are not without their uses, and they are not a drug in the market just now.

I may now go on to Mr. Spencer.

CHAPTER II—­MR. HERBERT SPENCER

Mr. Herbert Spencer wrote to the Athenaeum (April 5, 1884), and quoted certain passages from the 1855 edition of his “Principles of Psychology,” “the meanings and implications” from which he contended were sufficiently clear.  The passages he quoted were as follows:-

Though it is manifest that reflex and instinctive sequences are not determined by the experiences of the individual organism manifesting them, yet there still remains the hypothesis that they are determined by the experiences of the race of organisms forming its ancestry, which by infinite repetition in countless successive generations have established these sequences as organic relations (p. 526).

The modified nervous tendencies produced by such new habits of life are also bequeathed (p. 526).

That is to say, the tendencies to certain combinations of psychical changes have become organic (p. 527).

The doctrine that the connections among our ideas are determined by experience must, in consistency, be extended not only to all the connections established by the accumulated experiences of every individual, but to all those established by the accumulated experiences of every race (p. 529).

Here, then, we have one of the simpler forms of instinct which, under the requisite conditions, must necessarily be established by accumulated experiences (p. 547).

And manifestly, if the organisation of inner relations, in correspondence with outer relations, results from a continual registration of experiences, &c. (p. 551).