220 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



As regards our own mental organization, psy- 

 chological science has recently shown us the enormous 

 importance of what we may call the extra-personal 

 portion of our mind — ^all that which is normally 

 subconscious, or has not been during our mental 

 growth incorporated to form an integral part of our 

 private personality. But this extra-personal part of 

 the mind may from time to time irrupt into the per- 

 sonal, and does normally do so at some period of 

 life. It is the merit of psychology to have shown 

 the true nature of this relationship between personal 

 and extra-personal, which was in the past a source 

 of an infinity of mistaken ideas — revelation, inspira- 

 tion, possession, direct communion with angels, saints, 

 gods, or devils, and so forth. 



Thus the powers operating in the cosmos are, 

 though unitary, yet subdivisible ; and, though 

 subdivisible, yet related. There are the vast powers 

 of inorganic nature, neutral or hostile to man. Yet 

 they gave birth to evolving life, whose development, 

 though blind and fortuitous, has tended in the same 

 general direction as our own conscious desires and 

 ideals, and so gives us an external sanction for our 

 directional activities. This again gave birth to 

 human mind, which, in the race, is changing the 

 course of evolution by acceleration, by the substitu- 

 tion of new methods for old, and by introducing values 

 which are ultimate for the human species ; and, in 

 the individual, provides, in the interplay of conscious 



