CH. xn.] LIFE AND MIND. 88 



hues, as well as a great variety of intensities and qualities ; 

 but each particular manifestation of sound or of light is 

 capable of arousing in the organism very different psychical 

 combinations, entailing different muscular actions, according 

 to circumstances. Tennyson's traveller, who, walking at 

 nightfall in a strange land, hears the moaning of a distant sea, 



•* And knows not if it be thunder, or a sound 

 Of rocks thrown down, or one deep cry 

 Of great wild beasts," 



will adopt a course of action more or less in conformity with 



environing relations, according to the degree of his sagacity 

 and the extent of his experience. Streaks of light and 

 strata of cloud in the horizon will lead the practised mariner 

 and the unskilled passenger to different conclusions. A 

 cartoon of Eaphael or a symphony of Beethoven will excite 

 different emotions in an artist and in a person of feeble 

 impressibility. And from the swinging of a cathedral lamp 

 the young Galileo drew inferences which had escaped the 

 attention or baffled the penetration of thousands of less 

 acute beholders. Thus, with civilized man, the modes of 

 response to outer relations are almost infinitely numerous and 

 heterogeneous. 



But now, in this briefly indicated contrast between the 

 lowest and highest extremes of life, regarded as a correspond- 

 ence between the organism and the environment, we have 

 j'assed abruptly from vital relations which are purely physical 

 to vital relations which are almost purely psychical. The 

 relations contemplated have been, in each of the instances, 

 relations internally set up in adjustment to external relations. 

 But while the relations set up within the tree are simply 

 physico-chemical ; and while the relations set up within the 

 polyp, though involving nascent sensitiveness, are neverthe- 

 less, in the absence of specialized nerve-matter, unattended 

 by consciousness, and therefore cannot strictly be classed as 

 psychical ; on the other hand, the relations set up withm 



