The movement evoked from a point of cortex is not always the same; its character is determined by movements evoked from neighbouring points of cortex immediately antecedently.
But from this perfectly correct observation a conclusion which is by no means warranted was drawn, namely, that the chick as a whole really exists in the egg antecedently to incubation; and that what happens in the course of the latter process is no addition of new parts, " alias post alias natas," as Harvey puts it, but a simple expansion or unfolding of the organs which already exist, though they are too small and inconspicuous to be discovered.
On the other hand, if laws of social phenomena, empirically generalized from history, can, when once suggested, be affiliated to the known laws of human nature; if the direction actually taken by the developments and changes of human society, can be seen to be such as the properties of man and of his dwelling-place made antecedently probable, the empirical generalizations are raised into positive laws, and sociology becomes a science."
But, above all, it is antecedently certain that defection from the ordinary standard of morality would have precluded the success which the sophists unquestionably sought and won.
Manifestly all three propositions are antecedently improbable.
