The Origin of Sentient Life. 183 



at fault. He cannot set it in its true place as an 

 integral part of the universal system. His hypothesis 

 compels him to attempt what can never be accom- 

 plished to assign to feeling its place in an order 

 dominated throughout by physical law. If he take 

 refuge in the unknowable, and affirm that feeling is a 

 manifestation of the inscrutable power in a mode not 

 existing potentially in any antecedent manifestation, 

 he transcends scientific knowledge, and derives his 

 doctrine from a source which, if it be not supernatural, 

 lies admittedly beyond nature, so far as nature con- 

 sists of phenomena that may be known. The cause to 

 which feeling, in that case, is referred is not a cause of 

 which science can take cognizance. 



In dealing with the question of feeling, the evolu- 

 tionist encounters further insurmountable difficulties. 

 At the moment when this new mode of the unknow- 

 able power appeared within the knowable, the process 

 of change was profoundly modified. The evolution of 

 animal organisms must have proceeded henceforth in 

 every part of it, in relation to this unique manifesta- 

 tion, which stands related to every molecular move- 

 ment throughout the range of animal life. 



The relations subsisting within the organism are ex- 

 tremely complex : physical forces are related to physical 

 forces, forces to feelings, feelings to feelings, feelings 

 to feelings through forces, and forces to forces through 

 feelings. Take the last set of relations. Where a feel- 

 ing, say of hunger, is aVakened, it calls forth a series 



