The mental life of an individual is subject to the same law. How the physical life of the organism is maintained by the selective assimilating of substances (through the adaptation of internal relations to external ones) through accumulation th experience 1). Spencer look at the manifestations step by step mental life from the simplest elements, from reelex to memory, reason, will. But we must pay attention mainly to the following circumstance; important not only for characterizing his doctrine, but also for comparing Spencer’s ethical and political views with previous utilitarians. When Spencer talks about experience as a means of mental development of an individual, he means not only individual experience, but also the experience of previous generations (psycho-physiological phylogenesis), experience inherited from the ancestors of the family.
Due to phylogenesis, it is as if innate to the individual that obtained by the psychic experience of the previous generations.
That is why, imFya at its unaccountable disposal indivisually crystallized experience, the individual is inclined to sexto say that he has intuitive knowledge. Thus,
Spencer reveals the b10-psycho-genetic roots of apror ideas, innate properties, and therefore innate
1) Informed by psychologists. See especially General Synthesis and Special Synthesis.
2) Spencer proves that the gnossological empiricism of the associational school is not able to consistently arrive at the establishment of the concept of necessity, i.e., understanding that the connection between the things of the external world is adequate to the connection between the representations of our mental experience. And empiricists must admit the reality of being, that is, truth that cannot be obtained empirically.
o ekottororritttisichmleiuyvetic l t right “What you call natural law,” Spencer might say to the metaphysicians, “is not innate. the idea of some properties of freedom and equality inherent in the human personality, but a consolidated product of emotions and ideas of those who suffered from the inconsistency between their individuality and the social environment, who tried to explain such inconsistency with a new normative understanding and, having explained it, introduce it into the general consciousness. The law is similar. biological. Because the body. physically similar to the environment, insofar as he is a passive participant in its life. And on the other hand, to the extent that he reveals a dissimilarity with the environment, insofar as he feels within himself the ability and strength of resistance. The assimilation of the elements of the environment reaches in the body the degree at which an already formed individual appears before us, and at which it is able to oppose itself to the environment, in other words, to implement the law of self-preservation and self-affirmation. Otherwise, if there is no individually organized being, the individual is unable to preserve itself and dies, due to the inability to find it to create favorable conditions, to fight the hostile forces of physical or social environment, i.e., in the latter case, it dies from other individuals, more powerful ones. Spencer agrees here with Darwin's law. Namely: natural selection takes place. through the most individually perfect actions; they have properties that distinguish them from other specimens of the species. Organisms that are the simplest and most homogeneous in structure, says Opener, are most susceptible to the dangers of destruction. But the higher the 060b in its intellectual properties, the more complex its nervous system.
structure, it is important to develop the ability to vote
Nago assimilated and the power of self-preservation. and assert yourself. Opener calls such an individual reaching the highest degree of individualization. This is “the highest manifestation of individuality in man.”