MATTDSLEY ON HEREDITARY DESCENT. 43 



east. Four thousand heavenly bodies, visible to the 

 naked eye, rise in the east every day. Experience 

 has been just as uniform about the sunrise as it has 

 been about any mathematical axioms ; but you can, in 

 thought, reverse the motion of the sun, and you cannot 

 reverse, even in thought, a mathematical axiom. (See 

 Boston Monday Lectures on Transcendentalism, pp. 

 12-25.) Those are self-evident truths of which the 

 opposites are not conceivable. They reach beyond 

 all experience ; for we feel sure that they are true 

 beyond the North Star and in all the constellations. 

 They were true in all past time, and will be in all 

 time to come. Now, if the uniform experience of 

 ourselves and ancestors is the origin of both these 

 classes of convictions in our minds, why is there such 

 a difference in the way the mind acts when we bring 

 it face to face with the conceivable and the incon- 

 ceivable as to each class ? There are propositions of 

 which the opposite is utterly inconceivable. They 

 reach beyond the range of experience infinitely in 

 time and in space. Experience cannot account for 

 what goes beyond experience. The universal, self-evi- 

 dent truths of the intellect and conscience, therefore, 

 cannot be deduced logically from the finite experiences 

 either of the individual or of his ancestors. [Ap- 

 plause.] 



To descend now to detail, let me emphasize a 

 few of the differences between living and lifeless 

 matter : — 



1. Living beings retain their identity in spite of 

 the constant change in the particles that compose 



