Likenesses; or, Philosophical A7iatomy 277 



reaching intellectual power not shared by most naturaHsts, 

 or else assert that the very natural phenomena were them- 

 selves sufficient to make manifest such transcendent concep- 

 tions. But, in fact, the acceptance of such prototypal ideas 

 follows as a consequence, not upon the investigation of 

 irrational nature considered by itself, but upon its investi- 

 gation considered as a portion of one great whole, of which 

 the human mind, endowed with intelligence and free-will, 

 forms a part, and which is consequently to be viewed as the 

 creation of God. Let the idea of God be once accepted, and 

 then it becomes simply a truism, to say that the mind of the 

 Deity contains all that exists in the human mind, and 

 infinitely more. Thus it is that such human conceptions, 

 gathered from nature, must, so considered, be asserted to be 

 ideas in the divine mind also, just as every separate indivi- 

 dual that has been, is, or shall be, is present to the same 

 mind. Nay, more, such human conceptions can be but faint 

 and obscure adumbrations of corresponding ideas which must 

 exist in perfection and in fulness in the mind of God. 



We have seen that even by viewing organisms from all 

 the points of view possible to us, we can but attain to a very 

 imperfect comprehension of such organisms. But the wider 

 and wider generalisations of broader and better-informed 

 miuds, continually advance our power of comprehension. All 

 then who admit that the natural world is the product of a 

 divine mind must also admit, suice such mind is infinitely 

 above all human minds, that it possesses in perfection what 

 the most perfectly developed human minds possess, as it 

 were, in germ. 



Thus viewed, the questions of philosophical anatomy 

 acquire a fresh value, and it becomes plain that we owe 

 a debt of gratitude to those who, years ago, forced questions 

 such as these upon willing and unwilling ears. Not less 

 plain is the justification which the most modern views afford 



