A House of Cards. 77 



whom "full justice is done to Kant, as the 

 originator of that 'cosmic gas theory/ as the 

 Germans somewhat quaintly call it, which is 

 commonly ascribed to Laplace." l 



Professor Tyndall agrees with both. Having 

 discerned in " Matter " " the promise and potency 

 of all terrestial life," 3 he lays it down as funda- 

 mental that " the doctrine of evolution derives 

 man in his totality from the interaction of organ- 

 ism and environment through countless ages 

 past" 8 By that " vision of the mind," which, 

 as he tells us, " authoritatively supplements 

 the vision of the eye," 4 he sees " the cosmic 

 vapour " as a primitive " nebular haze " (the 

 " universal fire-mist " of the " Vestiges "), gradu- 

 ally cooling, and contracting as it cooled, into a 

 " molten mass," in which " latent and potential " 

 were not only "life" before it was alive, and 

 M form " before it was formed, ;-"" not alone the 

 exquisite and wonderful mechanism of the 

 human body, but the human mind itself; 

 emotion, intellect, will, and all their phenomena 

 ... all our philosophy, all our poetry, all 



1 "Critiques and Addresses," Macmillan, 1873 (*& 

 " The Genealogy of Animals "), p. 304. 

 8 " Belfast Address," p. 55. 

 Ibid., p. 59. 

 Ibid., p. 55. 



F 



