iv.j THE EVOLUTIONISM OF SPENCER 367 



each other in nature project into the human mind images 

 which represent them. To the relations between phenom- 

 ena, therefore, correspond symmetrically relations between 

 the ideas. And the most general laws of nature, in which 

 the relations between phenomena are condensed, are thus 

 found to have engendered the directing principles of thought, 

 into which the relations between ideas have been integrated. 

 Nature, therefore, is reflected in mind. The intimate 

 structure of our thought corresponds, piece by piece, to 

 the very skeleton of things — I admit it willingly; but, in 

 order that the human mind may be able to represent re- 

 lations between phenomena, there must first be phenomena, 

 that is to say, distinct facts, cut out in the continuity of 

 becoming. And once we posit this particular mode of 

 cutting up such as we perceive it to-day, we posit also the 

 intellect such as it is to-day, for it is by relation to it, and 

 to it alone, that reality is cut up in this manner. Is it 

 probable that mammals and insects notice the same aspects 

 of nature, trace in it the same divisions, articulate the whole 

 in the same way? And yet the insect, so far as intelligent, 

 has already something of our intellect. Each being cuts 

 up the material world according to the lines that its action 

 must follow: it is these lines of possible action that, by 

 intercrossing, mark out the net of experience of which 

 each mesh is a fact. No doubt, a town is composed ex- 

 clusively of houses, and the streets of the town are only the 

 intervals between the houses: so, we may say that nature 

 contains only facts, and that, the facts once posited, the 

 relations are simply the lines running between the facts. 

 But, in a town, it is the gradual portioning of the ground 

 into lots that has determined at once the place of the houses, 

 their general shape, and the direction of the streets: to 

 this portioning we must go back if we wish to understand 

 the particular mode of subdivision that causes each house 



