PSYCHOGENESIS 357 



opinion on these subjects, suggests a kind of psycho-morpho- 

 logical alchemy, transmuting thought into substance and into 

 form by work, i.e., by systematic cumulative effort, both 

 physical and mental. 



Bodily form may be almost regarded as idea and memory in a 

 solidified state as an accumulation of things each one of them so 

 tenuous as to be practically without material substance. It is as a 

 million pounds formed by accumulated millionths of farthings ; more 

 compendiously it arises normally from, and through, action. 



He could scarcely have been more explicit in emphasising 

 "action," which becomes "work" as soon as we look 

 upon it from the wider biological point of view. Though 

 morphogenesis require substances, yet what matters most is 

 " action " ; in particular, as we have seen, biological, i.e., bio- 

 economic action. Hence also, as we have seen, the adequacy of 

 a substance for assimilative purposes depends so largely on 

 the legitimacy of its derivation. I quote with a certain amount 

 of sympathy Butler's further inspiration. 



Action arises normally from, and through, opinion. Opinion from, 

 and through, hypothesis. " Hypothesis," as the derivation of the word 

 itself shows, is singularly near akin to "underlying, and only in part 

 knowable, substratum " ; and what is this but " God " translated from 

 the language of Moses into that of Mr. Herbert Spencer. The concep- 

 tion of God is like Nature it returns to us in another shape, no matter 

 how often we may expel it. Vulgarised as it has been by Michael 

 Angelo, Raffaelle, and others who shall be nameless, it has been like 

 every other corruptio optimi pessimum : used as a hieroglyph by the 

 help of which we may better acknowledge the height and depth of our 

 own ignorance, and at the same time express our sense that there is 

 an unseen world with which we in some mysterious way come into 

 contact, though the writs of our thoughts do not run within it used 

 in this way, the idea and the word have been found enduringly con- 

 venient. 



The theory that luck is the main means of organic modification is 

 the most absolute denial of God which it is possible for the human mind 

 to conceive while the view that God is in all His creatures, He in 

 them, and they in Him, is only expressed in other words by declaring 

 that the main means of organic modification is, not luck, but cunning. 



Butler tries to show that all hereditary traits, whether 

 of mind or body, are inherited " in virtue of, and as a 



