over the subject, an electric circuit of discovery were suddenly closed. Not by reasoning is it that we get knowledge-we only make the implicit explicit by that conscious process; the knowledge is latent in structural organization before it is self-revealed in conscious function. Accidents are oftentimes the happy occasions of inventions, as observations of animals have been sometimes, because, by presenting things to the mind under new aspects and in new relations, they startle thought out of its deep grooves of habit, and so provoke new adjustments and reflections. No doubt there is sometimes as much new instruction to be had out of old and common things, were they only observed carefully and curiously with open sense and free mind, as can be obtained from the most ingenious experiments to devise new combinations of things; but the difficulty is to break the enthralling chain of unheeding habit and to stir attention to what one is not used to heed. So it becomes necessary to go about to make new experiments, or to await the happy thought-kindling accident, in order to discover that which a familiar instance lying close at hand might teach plainly if duly minded.

§ Laws of Assimilation and Discrimination.

In the strong impression made and left on the mind by coincidences and resemblances, whereby it happens that dissidences and differences are so easily overlooked and neglected, both in observation and reasoning, we have then at bottom an instance of the law of mental assimilation. Like takes to itself like as that which agrees with it, and naturally likes to do so; and inasmuch as, while doing that, it occupies the attention, usurping consciousness, the contradictory instance or difference is inevitably left much or entirely in the dark. To attend is literally to tend to, and one attention, when it is so strung as to be tension, necessarily excludes another attention. The perception of analogies and resemblances in nature leads easily to generalizations, which are afterwards verified or not. If the generalization be not verified because of the contradictory or irreconcilable instance presenting itself, then this dissentient experience, if taken sincerely home and registered faithfully in the mind, is organized there into a new organ or faculty, so to speak, and thereafter assimilates its likes. A new track of function is opened, to which associations or, as it were, junctions are formed in due course; a rich addition being thus made to the cerebral plexus of the mental organiza->

tion. To see difference, that is, to discriminate— which was probably the primal condition of the origin of consciousness-certainly is as essential a part of mental development as to see resemblance, that is, to assimilate; the complementary aim and work of the functions being to reflect, as far as possible, in uniformities and varieties of mental growth, the uniformities and varieties of external nature-to develop a mental order in conformity with the order of things.

The order of notions in the best mind, and in the highest achievements of all the best minds together, falls infinitely short of reflecting the order of things in nature, either in exactness or in completeness, since it consists of multitudinous partial, incomplete, fragmentary, scattered relations and groups of relations ; and that always within a very limited range compared with the limitless range of inaccessible phenomena. It is the business of observation to make the correspondence more exact, more connected, more complete within its range, and, if so be, to extend the range; a work which must in the nature of things always be effected by slow degrees, since changes in the order of events, demanding corresponding changes in the order of ideas, are equivalent to a demand upon the mental organization to put in function, if not to develop, new lines of organic structure. This it cannot do at all unless it retains its plastic energy. Compare in this

relation an old man with a child: both hold confidently to the associations of ideas which experience has ingrafted in them; but while the former, whose mental tissues, so to speak, are dull and stiff with the rigidity of age, is unable easily or at all to relinquish them, and little curious or able to assimilate new ideas and to make accommodations to new circumstances, the latter, though quite as strongly dominated by the few notional associations which he has, and which in the nature of things he cannot conceive otherwise until exposed to new experiences, is full of eager curiosity, quickly impressionable by new facts, and readily adapts himself in thought, feeling, and conduct to new surroundings. Let the brain, by reason of a natural simplicity of constitution, as in the low savage and in the animal, or by reason of congenital defect, as in the imbecile, be without the nervous substrata which are necessary to subserve new developments of function, then it is impossible to ingraft the finer and more complex associations of ideas, and almost impossible to dissociate the few simple and common ones which the circumstances of life have occasioned.

How should the savage separate in thought two events that have occurred together uniformly in his experience? It would be as easy for him to separate two movements which he had never in his life per

formed separately. How can he learn a new thought, the organic basis of which, being laid only by the gradual work of culture continued through many generations, his simple brain is destitute of? Charms and prayers, auguries and omens, oracles, sortilege, ordeals, exorcisms, incantations, and divinations, are the natural resort and refuge, as they are the exponents, of active imagination co-operating with defective observation and little-developed understanding.* Man must have something definite in the way of belief, in order to act at all; acting, then, in relation to a vast and mysterious universe of which he knows nothing, he is compelled to fashion for himself some sort of fixed stay or support, however provisional. Believing in sorcery, he must frame some vague conception of a sorcerer and strive to get rid of him; accordingly he institutes trial by ordeal, in order to detect the secret worker of mysterious evil, and thus at any rate establishes a relative agency with which he can hope to deal, and gains some sense of security from unknown dangers. For a like reason

* In the language of cultured people it is common enough yet to hear events ascribed to good or ill fortune, as if that were explanation at all—anything more than meaningless superstition. A remarkably successful person is said, perhaps, to have had astonishing luck.

"Wie sich Verdienst und Glück verketten

Das fällt den Thoren niemal ein;

Wenn sie den Stein der Weisen hätten

Der Weise mangelte dem Stein."-FAUST.