v] LATER PROGRESS 141 



make its way into their beings. Or say, the world 

 is locked, and living things must make their own 

 keys to it. So it is with men : educating their minds, 

 they forge key after key, each opening a new chamber, 

 letting in a new flood of light from every material ob- 

 ject. Show a flower to an aboriginal savage : what he 

 sees is something very different from what Wordsworth 

 or Sir Joseph Hooker would have seen. What he 

 sees, however, contains more of reality than what 

 a beetle or a snail, with their imperfect eyes, could 

 see. The effect produced on an organism when some 

 object is presented to its senses thus depends partly 

 on the perfection of its sense-organs, partly on that 

 of its brain. As we go down the scale, both dwindle : 

 veil upon veil is let down : till at the last there is an 

 almost utter darkness, and not of sight alone. 



It is this darkness at the base of the animal king- 

 dom which has there made it almost imperative that 

 the parts of an individual should cohere physically ; 

 separate them and they would be lost, and could 

 never enter again into their mutual relationship. 

 Once produce a sense-organ, however, which with the 

 brain behind it is capable of clearly perceiving and 

 accurately localizing distant objects, and it at once 

 becomes possible to construct an individual, such as 

 an ant-community, whose parts, though not contiguous 

 in space, are yet bound together as fast as the cells 

 of a sponge or the persons of a Siphonophoran ; here 



