Note 155 — Chapter IV

Mr. Fowler, in the little volume just referred to, describes another "Theory of the Origin of Universal Beliefs," as follows:—"It would admit that all beliefs alike are ultimately derived from experience, and still it would freely adopt the language that there are some beliefs which are 'native to the human mind.' The word 'experience' as ordinarily employed by psychologists, includes not only the experience of the individual, but the recorded experience of mankind. On the theory, however, of which we are now speaking, it has a still more extended meaning; it includes experience, or to speak more strictly, a peculiar facility for forming certain experiences, transmitted by hereditary descent from generation to generation. While some ideas occur only to particular individuals, at particular times, there are others which, from the frequency and constancy with which they are obtruded upon men's minds at all times and under all circumstances, become, after an accumulated experience of many generations, connatural, as it were, to the human mind. We assume them, often unconsciously, in our special perceptions, and when the propositions, which embody them, are propounded to us, we find it impossible, on reflection, to doubt their truth. It is by personal experience of external objects and their relations that each man recognises them, but the tendency to recognise them is transmitted, like the physical or mental peculiarities of race, from preceding generations, and is anterior to any special experience whatever on the part of the individual. This theory, to which much of modern speculation appears to be converging, is advocated with great ability in the works of Mr. Herbert Spencer." Inductive Logic, p. 31.

This account of our Belief in the Inductive Principle agrees, in effect, with the opinion of those who hold that our acceptance of its truth resembles our acceptance of Mathematical Truths in two very important respects: (1) Its Certitude. To use Dr. Whewell's words; "We are as certain of it as of the truths of arithmetic and geometry. We cannot doubt that it must apply to all events past and future, in every part of the universe, just as truly as to those occurrences which we have ourselves observed. What causes produce what effects;—what is the cause of any particular event;—what will be the effect of any peculiar process;—these are points on which experience may enlighten us. Observation and experience may be requisite, to enable us to judge respecting such matters. But that every event has some cause, Experience cannot prove any more than she can disprove. She can add nothing to the evidence of the truth, however often she may exemplify it. This doctrine, then, cannot have been acquired by her teaching," Whewell's Hist. of Scientific Ideas, B. III. Cap. ii.

(2) In the fact of its being intuitive; that is, as Mr. Fowler says, "connatural," or "native to the human mind."

Whether we can trace the process through which it became one of the mental possessions characteristic of Mankind is a further question, and a very curious one. The subjects of improvement by education, and of the transmission of improvements thus acquired among men and the lower animals, belong in part to our next Chapter;—they are, of course, deeply interesting to every philanthropist, every promoter of true progress and wholesome civilization.