i Growth Parasitism. 3 



is properly the spiritual world. His chapter on 

 Growth, for instance, is a beautifully-written treatise 

 on the stillness and silence of all growth, spiritual as 

 well as organic. But we have always known that 

 these are characters of all growth ; and in showing 

 that they are characters of spiritual as well as of 

 bodily and mental growth, he only shows that 

 spiritual growth and development are effected under 

 the laws of life and mind, and goes no way what- 

 ever towards proving what is the very foundation of 

 his system, and indeed of all religious philosophy, 

 namely, the distinctness of the spiritual life, and its 

 introduction into the world of human life and into 

 the heart of man by the same Creating Spirit who 

 in the beginning moved on the face of the dark and 

 formless waters. The same remark applies to the 

 chapter on Parasitism, which is an ingenious, elo- 

 quent, and picturesque illustration of the truth that 

 as animals, and even plants, degenerate when they 

 obtain their subsistence too easily, 1 so it is with the 

 spiritual life. Any religious system causes de- 

 generacy which tends to relieve the individual of 

 responsibility, and to relax exertion : such is that 

 of the Church of Kome, and Protestant Churches are 

 not altogether free from the same tendency. This 



1 The most remarkable instances of this are probably those 

 of the Cirrhipedes or Barnacles, which begin life as freely- 

 swimming Crustaceans, but lose their organs of motion and 

 of sight, and degenerate into fixed shell-fish ; and the Rhizen- 

 cephala, which begin life in the same form, but become external 

 parasites on fishes, and degenerate into the likeness of worms. 



