TEE BELFAST ADDRESS. 439 
The strength of the doctrine of evolution consists, not 
in an experimented demonstration (for the subject is 
hardly accessible to this mode of proof), but in its general 
harmony with scientific thought. From contrast, more- 
over, it derives enormous relative cogency. On the one 
side we have a theory (if it could with any propriety be so 
called) derived, as were the theories referred to at the 
beginning of this address, not from the study of nature, 
but from the observation of men a theory which converts 
the Power whose garment is seen in the visible universe into 
an Artificer, fashioned after the human model, and acting by 
broken efforts as man is seen to act. On the other side we 
have the conception that all we see around us, and all we feel 
within us the phenomena of physical nature as well as 
those of the human mind have their unsearchable roots in 
a cosmical life, if I dare apply the term, an infinitesimal 
span of which is offered to the investigation of man. And 
even this span is only knowable in part. We can trace the 
development of a nervous system, and correlate with it the 
parallel phenomena of sensation and thought. We see 
with undoubting certainty that they go hand in hand. 
But we try to soar in a vacuum the moment we seek to 
comprehend the connection between them. An Archi- 
medean fulcrum is here required which the human mind 
cannot command; and the effort to solve the problem to 
borrow a comparison from an illustrious friend of mine 
is like that of a man trying to lift himself by his own 
waistband. All that has been said in this discourse is to 
be taken in connection with this fundamental truth. 
When "nascent senses" are spoken of, when "the dif- 
ferentiation of a tissue at first vaguely sensitive all over" 
is spoken of, and when these possessions and processes are 
associated with "the modification of an organism by its 
environment," the same parallelism, without contact, or 
even approach to contact, is implied. Man the object is 
separated by an impassable gulf from man the subject. 
There is no motor energy in the human intellect to carry 
it without logical rupture, from the one to the other. 
SECTION 9. The doctrine of evolution derives man, in 
his totality, from the interaction of organism and environ- 
ment through countless ages past. The human under- 
standing, for example that faculty which Mr. Spencer 
