But it is probable that what we speak of as the imitative tendency is, in any given species, the expression of a considerable number of particular responses each of which is congenitally linked with a particular presentation or stimulus.
To the theory of knowledge Spencer contributes a "transfigured realism," to mediate between realism and idealism, and the doctrine that "necessary truths," acquired in experience and congenitally transmitted, are a priori to the individual, though a posteriori to the race, to mediate between empiricism and apriorism.