is
equally the result of that invisible and unimaginable play of the
forces of growth within the nervous system which, irresponsibly to the
{251} environment, makes the brain peculiarly apt to function in a
certain way. Here again the selection goes on. The products of the
mind with the determined aesthetic bent please or displease the
community. We adopt Wordsworth, and grow unsentimental and serene. We
are fascinated by Schopenhauer, and learn from him the true luxury of
woe. The adopted bent becomes a ferment in the community, and alters
its tone. The alteration may be a benefit or a misfortune, for it is
(_pace_ Mr. Allen) a differentiation from within, which has to run the
gauntlet of the larger environment's selective power. Civilized
Languedoc, taking the tone of its scholars, poets, princes, and
theologians, fell a prey to its rude Catholic environment in the
Albigensian crusade. France in 1792, taking the tone of its St. Justs
and Marats, plunged into its long career of unstable outward relations.
Prussia in 1806, taking the tone of its Humboldts and its Steins,
proved itself in the most signal way 'adjusted' to its environment in
1872.

Mr. Spencer, in one of the strangest chapters of his Psychology,[17]
tries to show the necessary order in which the development of
conceptions in the human race occurs. No abstract conception can be
developed, according to him, until the outward experiences have reached
a certain degree of heterogeneity, definiteness, coherence, and so
forth.

"Thus the belief in an unchanging order, the belief in _law_, is a
belief of which the primitive man is absolutely incapable....
Experiences such as he receives furnish but few data for the conception
of uniformity, whether as displayed in things or in relations.... The
daily {252} impressions which the savage gets yield the notion very
imperfectly, and in but few cases. Of all the objects around,--trees,
stones, hills, pieces of water, clouds, and so forth,--most differ
widely, ... and few approach complete likeness so nearly as to make
discrimination difficult. Even between animals of the same species it
rarely happens that, whether alive or dead, they are presented in just
the same attitudes.... It is only along with a gradual development of
the arts ... that there come frequent experiences of perfectly straight
lines admitting of complete apposition, bringing the perceptions of
equality and inequality. Still more de