CHAP. XV.] THE PEDIGREE AND ORIGIN OF THE CAT. 521 



To seek, tlicn, the genesis of species, as species, would be to in- 

 vcstigute the origin of certain ideas. But that would not be at all 

 the oljjcct here pursued. That object is to enquire how it is that a 

 certain concrete entity (a certain animal, which is the living 

 embodiment of one idea) gives rise to another concrete entity — 

 which is the living embodiment of a different idea. 



§ 11. Now all our knowledge being derived from experience, we 

 can only (revelation apart) judge of things as they have been, by 

 things as they are ; and as every animal is now the product of a 

 parent organism more or less like it, so the natural inference with 

 regard to any antecedent animal, is that it also was the product of 

 a parent organism more or less like it. 



But it may be said : " this analogy does not apply to the embodi- 

 ment of a new species, because " (it may be asserted) " we never sec 

 the origin of such an embodiment — we never see anything like a 

 change of species : we cannot, therefore, from our present experience, 

 even guess what may have been tbe mode of appearance of a con- 

 crete entity embodying an idea different from that embodied by the 

 entity which preceded it." 



This assertion, however, is here denied, while it is on the contrary 

 affirmed that we do see — as far as human eye ever can see or ever 

 could have seen — the origin of concrete embodiments of ideas which 

 are not only as distinct as one species from another, but as distinct 

 as genera, families, orders, classes, and even kingdoms, one from 

 another. It is also here contended that we may see this daily, even 

 in the case of the cat. 



It was this consideration — an anticipation of the argument here 

 to be advanced — which caused the facts, and the significance of the 

 facts, of the cat's embryonic development to have been so dwelt 

 upon, as they have been in the tenth chapter of this book. For the 

 incipient embryo of the cat, is no cat : it is not even an animal. Its 

 existence is merely vegetal, and the successive ideas which it em- 

 bodies (in the course of its evolution) approximate only by degrees to 

 that embodied by the adult animal. The embryo which is to become 

 a cat, successively embodies ideas which are analogous to, though 

 they are never identical with, those which are manifested in rhizo- 

 pods, sponges, worms, fishes, batrachians and other inferior animal 

 natures. We see these changes as facts ; the actual " how," the 

 intimate mode in which the li\ang idea or form is embodied in and 

 identified with the matter it informs, is one of those impenetrable 

 secrets of nature for ever closed to human ken, as the mode in which 

 — the actual " how " — the mind is enabled to know itself and 

 things external to it, is closed to human ken. None the less, every- 

 one who admits that the living cat when adult is informed by a 

 psj'chical principle of individuation, may be called upon also to admit 

 that its developing embryo is successively informed by psychical 

 principles of individuation of different orders — orders which present 

 no trifling analogy to different orders of animals which exist perma- 

 nently. After the true cat form has been once attained, such changes 



