THE BELFAST ADDRESS. 195 



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. 



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. Spencer 

 has turned so skilfully round upon its own antecedents 

 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 are many other things appertain- 

 ing to man, whose prescriptive rights are quite as 

 strong as those of the understanding itself. It is a 

 result, for example, of the play of organism and en- 

 vironment that sugar is sweet, and that aloes are 

 bitter ; that the smell of henbane differs from the 

 > perfume of a rose. Such facts of consciousness (for 

 which, by the way, no adequate reason has ever been 

 rendered) are quite as old as the understanding; and 

 many other things can boast an equally ancient origin. 

 Mr. Spencer at one place refers to that most powerful 

 of passions the amatory passion as one which, when 

 it first occurs, is antecedent to all relative experience 

 whatever ; and we may press its claim as being at least 



