THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 195 



part. We can trace the development of a nervous sys- 

 tem, and correlate with it the parallel phenomena of 

 sensation and thought. We see with undoubting cer- 

 tainty that they go hand in hand. But we try to soar in 

 a vacuum the moment we seek to comprehend the con- 

 nection between them. An Archimedean fulcrum is 

 here required which the human mind cannot command; 

 and the effort to solve the problem to borrow a com- 

 parison 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 differentia- 

 tion 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 con- 

 tact, 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. 



The doctrine of Evolution derives man, in his total- 

 ity, from the interaction of organism and environment 

 through countless ages past. The Human Under- 

 standing, for example, that faculty which Mr. Spen- 

 cer has turned so skilfully round upon its own antece- 

 dents is itself a result of the play between organism 

 and environment through cosmic ranges of time. 

 Never, surely, did prescription plead so irresistible a 

 claim. But then it comes to pass that, over and above 

 his understanding, there arc many other things apper- 

 taining to man, whose prescriptive rights are quite as 



