Note 529 — Chapter XXVIII

Mr. Grant Allen, in a brilliant article entitled Idiosyncrasy (Mind, viii. 498), seeks to show that accidental morphological changes in the brain cannot possibly be imagined to result in any mental change of a sort which would fit the animal to its environment. If spontaneous variation ever works on the brain, its product, says Mr. Allen, ought to be an idiot or a raving madman, not a minister and interpreter of Nature. Only the environment can change us in the direction of accommodation to itself. But I think we ought to know a little better just what the molecular changes in the brain are on which thought depends, before we talk so confidently about what the effect can be of their possible variations. Mr. Allen, it should be said, has made a laudable effort to conceive them distinctly. To me his conception remains too purely anatomical. Meanwhile this essay and another by the same author in the Atlantic Monthly are probably as serious attempts as any that have been made towards applying the Spencerian theory in a radical way to the facts of human history.