What are Animals and Plants ? 375 



le world of animals and plants as presenting no really 

 iniial difference from that of the inorganic world ? 

 We are far from thinking men are compelled to do this, 

 id we will endeavour briefly to give our reasons why we 

 link men are not so compelled. 

 Physical science is great, but it is not everything ; and 

 cannot, by its very nature, be supreme. It essentially 

 )oses upon our sense-perceptions, but it is not ' sense] but 

 \tellectl which is and Tfiust be supreme in us. It is not 

 but ' thought' which teUs us that we have sense- 

 perceptions at all, and which criticises them and makes 

 use of them. They are the indispensable servants of our 

 intellect ; without them it cannot move a step, but they are 

 none the less its servants. Though we can have no imagina- 

 tion, and therefore no thoughts, till our minds are roused 

 to activity by the action of the world about us on our sense- 

 organs ; though we can imagine nothing, of the elements of 

 which we have not had sensuous experience, nevertheless 

 we gain through the ministry of sense that which is not 

 sensuous, but which regulates our every thought and rational 

 action. The great principle, called that of contradiction, which 

 lies at the root of our intellectual life — the principle that 

 nothing can, at the same time, ' be ' and ' not he,' may be 

 taken as the type of conceptions which are gained through 

 sense, but are not of sense. 



Reason in man is supreme ; and it relates to those first prin- 

 ciples which have been recognised by one of our best-known 

 living biologists as ' underlying all physical science! Great 

 therefore, as may be the utility of a mechanical view of nature, 

 fuUy justified as men of science are in making use of it, and 

 advocating its use for their own ends, it by no means follows 

 that we should regard this useful working hypothesis as the 

 very truth ! We should or should not so regard it accord- 

 ing as it may appear when viewed, not in the light of 



