2 METAPHYSICS 



organic material common to what is in everyday use in 

 the vegetable world, while the zoologist convinces himself 

 that a common protoplasmic element constitutes the foun- 

 dation organic currency, so to speak, of the whole animal 

 kingdom, the psychologist discovering that while man has 

 much mentally in common with the pure systemic nervous 

 system possessed animal world, he has much superadded 

 of which nothing in common with his remote and near 

 animal ancestry can be claimed to exist, and in virtue of 

 which he claims his prerogative of lordship and predomi- 

 nance over the whole organic world. 



Man may, therefore, be described as a telescopic en- 

 folding of all the forms of life which have preceded him 

 and with which he is at present surrounded, and the 

 representative in his own person of the various forms 

 of life, from the most rudimentary and elementary to 

 the most complete and complex. Besides, in his moral 

 nature and qualities he may be regarded as absolutely 

 unique in the whole range of being, and as forming an 

 absolutely new and higher kingdom of nature, with attri- 

 butes and qualities, mental and metaphysical, which enable 

 him to penetrate the outer world and to realise that he is 

 not the Alpha and Omega of the universe, but that outside 

 himself there is a great world into which he may, and can 

 to some extent, project himself, and from which he may 

 in turn realise that life is really " worth living " and that 

 work is worth working. 



The manner of telescoping his various phases of being 

 may be described, comparatively, as follows, viz. : in an 

 outer encasement of vegetative organisation, dominated 

 and vitalised by his sympathetic nervature, is developed a 

 systemic nervous system, which takes unto itself a skeletal 

 support and a motor and sensory mechanism which in- 

 fluence and dominate his outer and surrounding vegetative 

 encasement, and which in turn contribute an intermediate 

 organised encasement for all his mental and " moral " 

 faculties, with their energy producing, conserving, and 

 distributing machinery, together with the "indwelling" 

 of the absolutely intangible and immaterial components of 

 his " inner man." Man may thus be said to be a thrice 

 hollow and thrice filled being, in the intra-spaces and 



