Our intelligence is first awakened by the stimulus of our
animal wants and of our stronger and coarser desires; and these for
a long time almost exclusively determine the direction in which our
intelligence shall work: but once roused to activity, it assumes more
and more the management of the operations of which stronger impulses are
the prompters, and constrains them to follow its lead, not by its own
strength, but because in the play of antagonistic forces, the path it
points out is (in scientific phraseology) the direction of least
resistance. Personal interests and feelings, in the social state, can
only obtain the maximum of satisfaction by means of co-operation, and
the necessary condition of co-operation is a common belief. All human
society, consequently, is grounded on a system of fundamental opinions,
which only the speculative faculty can provide, and which when provided,
directs our other impulses in their mode of seeking their gratification.
And hence the history of opinions, and of the speculative faculty, has
always been the leading element in the history of mankind.
This doctrine has been combated by Mr Herbert Spencer, in the pamphlet
already referred to; and we will quote, in his own words, the theory he
propounds in opposition to it:--
/#
"Ideas do not govern and overthrow the world; the world is governed
or overthrown by feelings, to which ideas serve only as guides.
Pages:
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127