LOUIS AGASSIZ AND GEORGE BERKELEY 333 



If future discovery should demonstrate that Darwin is right, if 

 the value of our rational minds should prove mechanical and no 

 more than might have been expected from our structure and history, 

 how could this prove that their value is not real value? While 

 individuals survive or fall in the struggle for existence, this struggle 

 produces nothing, for natural selection, like all natural laws, is a 

 generalization from experience, and not an efficient cause. 



While no one can doubt his senses, we do continually doubt or 

 question the value of our sensations; for if the Lamarckian holds 

 that knowledge is produced by experience, the Darwinian asks 

 whether what we call the evidence of our senses is anything more 

 than a stimulus in the presence of which knowledge arises in the 

 mind; anything more than the condition or occasion of knowledge. 



" We know a thing when we understand it ; and we understand 

 it when we can interpret, or tell what it signifies. Strictly, the 

 sense knows nothing. We perceive, indeed, sounds by hearing and 

 characters by sight. After the same manner, the phenomena of 

 nature are alike visible to all ; but all have not alike learned the 

 connection of natural things, or understand what they signify, or 

 know how to vaticinate by them. There is no question, saith 

 Socrates, concerning that which is agreeable to each person; but 

 concerning what will in time to come be agreeable, of which all 

 men are not equal judges. He who foreknoweth what will be in 

 every kind is the wisest- According to Socrates you and the cook 

 may judge of the dish on the table equally well, but while the dish 

 is making, the cook can better foretell what will ensue from this 

 or that manner of composing it. Nor is this manner of reasoning 

 confined only to morals and politics; but extends also to the natural 

 sciences. 



" As the natural connexion of signs with the things signified 

 is regular and constant, it forms a sort of rational discourse. 

 Therefore the phenomena of nature, which strike on the senses, 

 and are understood by the mind, do form not only a magnificent 

 spectacle, but also a most coherent, entertaining, and instructive 

 Discourse; and to effect this, they are conducted, adjusted, and 

 ranged by the greatest wisdom. This Language or Discourse is 

 studied with different attention and interpreted with different 

 degrees of skill. But so far as men have studied and remarked 



