PASSAGES FROM POPULAR LECTURES. 929 
PASSAGES FROM POPULAR LECTURES. 
;, BY F. T. MOTT, F.R.G.S. 
IL—THE SCALE OF BEING. 
When a human baby opens its dazed eyes upon this world, what it 
first perceives is simply light and darkness. It distinguishes neither 
forms nor colours. It is mentally in the condition of the oyster, 
the starfish, the worm, and other animals of low type. But a few 
weeks of exercise and experience bring it toits second stage. It perceives 
the outlines of things. It recognises differences of sound and of colour, 
and knows its mother’s voice and face among a thousand. It has. 
reached the condition of a vertebrate animal—a lamb or a sucking pig. 
But it does not stop here; it is only in the bud yet, and has a great deal 
of capacity still to be developed. 
Ina few months it knows a tree from a steam engine, and when it 
sees the picture of a cowit will say ‘‘moo!” But it calls every horned 
creature a cow, and everything with leaves and branches a tree. It is a 
human child, but a very ignorant one; nevertheless, it is already learning 
the elements of science, of which a very large part is simply the know- 
ledge of one thing from another, and of the connections between one 
thing and another; the perception of differences and likenesses, of causes 
and effects, first among visible objects, and then among invisible forces. 
The more we have learned to comprehend the real differences by 
which objects are separated from each other, and the real likenesses by 
which they are connected together, the further we are from babyhood. 
We are accustomed to reckon a man’s age by the number of years he has 
lived. A better standard would be the number of ideas he has got. The 
use of lectures and classes is to give us afew more ideas than we had 
before—to add a few degrees to our real age. The kindof ideas does not 
very much matter so that they are new to us and true in themselves. 
They are all useful, all add a little to our age, taking us a few steps further 
from the cradle and nearer to heaven. Let us endeavour to gather up a 
few ideas—there may be a new one among them here and there, new to 
some of us at least—about those inhabitants of the world which have no 
speech and little motion, but to which we owe the whole of our physical 
life, and at least one-half of its enjoyments. 
We call these creatures Plants. We class them together as the 
vegetable kingdom, perceiving that there is a mineral kingdom below 
them, and an animal kingdom above them; and we call the study of 
this class of creatures Botany. 
What do we mean when we say that the mineral kingdom is below 
them and the animal kingdom above them? We don’t use these words 
below and above in reference to height, that is, to distance from the 
centre of the earth, as when we say that a man’s nose is below his eyes 
and above his chin. The mineral kingdom is not in this sense 
altogether below the vegetable, for the great mountain ranges of the 
world rise up far above all trace or possibility of vegetation. We use 
them not in reference to a scale of feet and inches, but in reference to a 
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