MI V ART'S GROUNDWORK OF SCIENCE. 455 



The question we are to ask the gardener is, therefore, something 

 to this effect: Whether he thinks the cherry tree exists because he 

 sees it and feels it, or because, when he sees it and feels it, he knows 

 that he does so? 



If he weighs his words will he not ask how he can know that he 

 does sec it and feel it unless he knows that he does so? I, myself, am 

 no philosopher; but, to my untutored mind, Mivart's distinction be- 

 tween things perceived by sense, and things perceived by sense, seems 

 a mere verbal difference of accent and emphasis, rather than a funda- 

 mental distinction. 



As most men use the word, " mind " implies consciousness of that 

 sort which Mivart calls self-consciousness, and while there is no reason 

 why those who choose should not so use the word as to include uncon- 

 scious or "subconscious" or " consentious " cerebration, most plain, 

 untutored men prefer to use words as their neighbors do. 



If long waiting on Nature has given to the old gardener more 

 shrewdness than we commonly find in those whose pursuits are less 

 leisurely, he may say that, while he knows the tree is there because 

 he has planted it and tended it and watched it grow, it now falls on 

 his eyes day after day, without attracting his notice, unless something 

 about it which calls for his skill catches his eye, and commands his 

 attention. 



If we see reason to believe that this difference is a matter of words 

 and definitions; rather than a real difference in kind; if we fail to 

 find any sharp dividing line between unperceived cerebration and 

 " mind," is not this, in itself, enough to lead even Macaulay's school- 

 boy to ask whether mind may not be a slow and gradual growth from 

 small beginnings, and a co-ordinated whole, to the common function 

 of which all its parts contribute, rather than a " gift " of " lower 

 faculties" and "higher faculties"? 



We must ask, however, whether mechanical explanations of mind 

 are in any way antagonistic to the conviction that it is a gift. May 

 not one study the history of the mechanism of mind, and the way 

 this mechanism works, in a spirit of profound and humble gratitude 

 to the (liver of all good gifts? 



Is the lamentable prevalence, among plain untutored men, of 

 the notion that mechanical explanations of Nature are inconsistent 

 with belief that all Nature is a gift, to be laid to the charge of the 

 men of science? 



Is it not rather the poisonous fruit of the ill-advised attempts of 

 '" philosophers " like Professor Mivart to teach that a gift can not be 

 a gift at all unless it is an arbitrary interruption to the law and 

 order of physical Nature? 



