TUB BELFAST ADDRESS. 489 



The strength of the doctrine of evolution consists, not 

 in an experimental 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. Snenci-r 



