54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



verse in order. She at once began to make distinctions by getting 

 her material together, and turning out worlds. It was the first step. 

 Leaving other worlds to themselves, watch the progress of affairs at 

 home. As soon as the first flurry is over, Nature settles down to the 

 creation of differences. She puts the solid earth as a foundation, and 

 piles the hot atmosphere above it ; then she takes the water from the 

 atmosphere, and we have air, earth, and water. With these she gets 

 up some low forms of life. But, as she has only begun her work, she 

 makes very little difference between the opposite ends of these forms. 

 One end of a worm is so much like the other end that you may cut 

 him in two, and one part putting on a tail and the other a head, you 

 will in a short time have two very respectable worms. From these 

 low forms, which carry as much life in one end as in the other, Nature 

 goes on differentiating, till at last we find her getting up forms whose 

 parts are so widely different that each has its own work to do, and 

 one part cannot be substituted for another. A man losing any organ 

 is imperfect ; and many of his organs are such that the loss of one of 

 them requires that he should go back into Nature's melting-pot, and 

 be moulded over again into a new form of lite a Rhode Island pippin 

 it may be, as good Roger Williams was. There is no record of any 

 surgeon's having cut a man in two, and having made two men of the 

 pieces. Nature is not content with multiplying species alone. She 

 shows the same love for difference in varieties, and even in indi- 

 viduals, so that, as we are often told, there are no two peas exactly 

 alike. 



The utilitarian may ask : " But what is the need of all this variety ? 

 Why not have all peas alike?" This brings me to the important part 

 of my essay ; for, whimsical as some of my notions may appear to 

 others, the conclusion to which I hope to bring my readers is to me a 

 source of moral rest : 



1. Relation of Difference to Consciousness. How is it that we 

 gain a knowledge of the external world whereby we become conscious 

 intelligences ? Simply by a perception of differences. What would 

 follow were there no difference in color or shade ? Go into a dark 

 cellar with an extinguished candle to find a black cat that is not 

 there. I know black is said to be no color, but it answers as an illus- 

 tration. Your eyes are wider open than when above-ground in broad 

 daylight, looking for a white cat that is there. Things being " all of 

 a color," as common people remark when left in the dark, you are for 

 the time as blind as the eyeless fish. Were white light put in the 

 place of darkness, and each object to reflect it with absolute sameness, 

 you would be just as unable to distinguish between objects, or between 

 an object and its background. Were the black cat there eating a 

 white rabbit, the cat having become white you could not tell where 

 cat left off and rabbit began ; neither could you tell where cat and 

 rabbit ended and cellar-floor began. Everything would be of a piece. 



