II MENTAL ECDYSES OF MAN 79 



when tested by the larger knowledge of their 

 successors. 



In a well-worn metaphor, a parallel is drawn 

 between the life of man and the metamorphosis 

 of the caterpillar into the butterfly ; but the com- 

 parison may be more just as well as more novel, if 

 for its former term we take the mental progress 

 of the race. History shows that the human mind, 

 fed by constant accessions of knowledge, periodi- 

 cally grows too large for its theoretical coverings, 

 and bursts them asunder to appear in new habili- 

 ments, as the feeding and growing grub, at 

 intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes 

 another, itself but temporary. Truly the imago 

 state of Man seems to be terribly distant, but 

 every moult is a step gained, and of such there 

 have been many. 



Since the revival of learning, whereby the 

 Western races of Europe were enabled to enter 

 upon that progress towards true knowledge, which 

 was commenced by the philosophers of Greece, 

 but was almost arrested in subsequent long ages 

 of intellectual stagnation, or, at most, gyration, 

 the human larva has been feeding vigorously, and 

 moulting in proportion. A skin of some dimension 

 was cast in the 16th century, and another towards 

 the end of the 18th, while, within the last fifty 

 years, the extraordinary growth of every depart- 

 ment of physical science has spread among us 

 mental food of so nutritious and stimulating a 



