UNLIKENESS IN OKGANISMS. 149 



ins: currents themselves. Just so the ice which has 

 covered the surface of a large part of philosophy, 

 the uncertainty as to the authority of self-evident 

 truth, the frigid sheet of speculation on which has 

 been built the assertion that conscience might have 

 been another thing had our environment been dif- 

 ferent, is breaking up. It is being shot through 

 and through by the returning vernal season of confi- 

 dence in the plan of human nature. The central 

 currents are already in sight ; they begin to shoulder 

 the edges of ice ; occasionally a great roar is heard 

 along the banks ; the crushing of the blocks has 

 begun ; and by and by we shall have this philosophy 

 of nescience and materialism, this doubt whether 

 there are any ultimate grounds of certainty, this 

 scepticism concerning the soul's necessary beliefs, 

 melted, running with the great currents, received 

 into the ocean, and casting up its gleaming and its 

 exhalation into the face of the sky, with all the tides 

 that God draws upward in the sea. [Applause.] 



I am not prophesying in vain, for I hold in my 

 hands the proof that the prophecy is being fulfilled. 

 Stuart .Mill and Dr. McCosh were accustomed to 

 walk over this field of ice ; and I must show you, 

 before I advance to the physiological side of their 

 problem, how unwilling Mill was to bear his weight 

 on the central ice. He would walk near the shore 

 with a very firm tread ; but toward the end of his 

 career, Mill, in his " Examination of Sir William Ham- 

 ilton's Philosophy," said, " Whether the three so-called 

 fundamental laws of thought are laws of our thoughts 



