The Unification of Knowledge Impossible. 23 



game matter, organisms endowed with vegetal life, 

 organisms endowed with animal life, and man en- 

 dowed with self-conscious intelligence and a moral 

 nature. 



These great fountain-heads of created being are 

 distinct throughout all the cosmic history in so far 

 as we can know it, and they seem destined to con- 

 tinue distinct departments of knowledge until the 

 existing framework of things shall be dissolved. No 

 principle has been discovered, nor is, as we believe, 

 discoverable, which will unite all these orders of 

 existences in one coherent organic body. No principle 

 can be found and if it could be found its applica- 

 bilty must be for ever undiscoverable through which 

 it can be shown how consciousness may rise out of and 

 sink again into the unintelligent world. No principle 

 has heretofore been brought to light, nor can be, 

 which, operative in all forms of being and furnishing 

 an explanation of their distinctive characteristics, is 

 adequate to bring existences subject only to dynamic 

 laws, and those which are subject to the higher laws 

 of life, sensation, and mind, together in one. 



The unification of knowledge is not complete" ; nor 

 is completeness of unification possible. The pretence 

 of completeness can only be attained by hiding the 

 difficulties from view. But to do so is to be false to 

 scientific progress. Knowledge advances towards per- 

 fection by clearing, not blurring, the lines of discrimi- 

 nation. If there are distinctions in nature, these must 



