PHILOSOPHIC ANTS 187 



ference between their universe and ours was due to a 

 difference in their mental machinery, which they had 

 succeeded in adjusting so that it registered in a dif- 

 ferent and a better way. 



It is at least clear that something of the sort can 

 happen in the intellectual sphere. To the unedu- 

 cated, the totality of things, if ever reflected upon, is 

 a compound of fog and chaos: advance is painfully 

 slow, and interlarded with unpleasant falls into pits 

 and holes of illogicality and inconsequence; to those 

 who have taken the trouble to push on, however, an 

 orderly system at last reveals itself. 



The problem of the origin and relationship of spe- 

 cies gave such mental distress to those zoologists of 

 the first half of the nineteenth century who were con- 

 scientious enough to struggle with it, that many of 

 them ended by a mental suppression of the problem 

 and a refusal to discuss it further. The publication 

 of Darwin's Origin of Species was to them what 

 psycho-analysis is (or may be) to a patient with a 

 repressed complex. Or again, no one can read ac- 

 counts of the physicists' recent work on the structure 

 of the atom without experiencing an extraordinary 

 feeling of satisfaction. Instead of wallowing in un- 

 related facts, we fly on wings of principle; not only 

 can we better cut our way through the jungle of 

 things, but we are allowed a privilege that has uni- 

 versally been considered one of the attributes of Gods 

 — the calm and untroubled understanding of things 

 and processes. 



