THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE OYSTER. 157 



our inmost being. How can we account for this apparent contradic- 

 tion ? In reality, there is no contradiction. Observe, indeed, thut, 

 even if the most indifferent causes can effect in us one and the same 

 sensation, and thus delude us as to the outer world, our soul is never 

 cheated. It knows perfectly well how to refer this one sensation to 

 the dissimilar objective causes which have affected it ; in other words, 

 the causes which are alike, and are confused in one in the purely phys- 

 iological act of sensation, divide and grow distinct in the psychologi- 

 cal act by which the soul recognizes them, and conceives them as dif- 

 ferent. If we had, to give us knowledge, only the dull and ignorant 

 passivity of our senses, there would be no reality for us ; but the wise 

 activity of the soul can not merely assert the reality of outward ob- 

 jects, for a reason similar to that which makes it assert its own exist- 

 ence it? can still further argue, from its various modes of affection, 

 to a corresponding variety of external forces. It moves in harmony 

 with the world, rather than in harmony with the senses. In presence 

 of the latter, it is like a good prince, who would be nothing without 

 his subjects, but who regulates and civilizes them, by giving them 

 laws, and ruling their morals. Thus, and this is the conclusion at 

 which we aim, it is in the soul, regarded as the focus of all those rays 

 refracted through the senses, as the central light outshining all others, 

 that we must set the power and the right to discern what the senses 

 do not discern, and to pierce to a depth forever beyond their reach. 

 We shall never know what relation there is between the outward 

 world and those images of it which we perceive, but the soul can 

 hold the unshaken belief that the various points of those images cor- 

 respond to points in the outer world situated in a like order, and that 

 the forces which affect it are, in their essence, of the same nature as 

 those forces of which, in its inmost depths, it feels itself the lord. 



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THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE OYSTER. 



By Eev. SAMUEL LOCKWOOD, Ph. D. 



II. 



IN the former article, attention was given chiefly to what might be 

 called structural and industrial considerations of our bivalve. 

 We are now to note some matters in the life of the oyster of a natal 

 character. Its friends and enemies must be looked after. Its die- 

 tetics and weoo-raphical ransje must be dealt with. It must also be 

 viewed in certain geological and ethnological aspects ; for we may 

 find even the oyster holding a singular relation to the American au- 

 tocthonic man. 



The Oyster's Birth and Growth. According to the popular 



