THE UNKNOWABLE 



study it without inquiry as to its origin, we may 

 well decline to recognize any community of origin 

 between it and the reality that underlies a piece 

 of "dead" rock, or even what Wordsworth, with 

 poetic insight, calls the "living air." But if we 

 recognize the psychology which Spencer revealed, 

 and apply the law of evolution to an adult human 

 consciousness, seeking to explain it by a study of 

 the consciousness of a new-born or unborn child, 

 of a dog, or an amceba, we come to a different 

 conclusion. We find that the ignorant and con- 

 temptuous distinction between living and "brute" 

 matter has utterly broken down. We can trace 

 the rudiments of a perceiving consciousness not 

 merely in the embryo of a man, but in any one of 

 the millions of white blood-cells that circulate in 

 that embryo's blood. We discover that "brute 

 matter," ingested as food by a sentient organism, 

 may pass to its brain and take its temporary place 

 as the material constituent of that organ with 

 which the more obvious forms of consciousness are 

 inseparably associated. Thus reflecting, we have 

 little difficulty in seeing good reason to believe 

 that the unknowable reality which underlies the 

 phenomena of objective things is identical with 

 that which underlies the phenomena of mind, and 

 that the Rig- Veda was right in its assertion, many 

 millennia old, that "the real is one." 



Spencer arrived independently at this conclu- 

 sion, and gave it a certainty and a proof which it 

 never before possessed, but ere the tubercle bacil- 

 337 



