INORGANIC EVOLUTION 19 



calls the operation of intellect on matter, or on the 

 material only. The plainest explanation of what we are, 

 is that mentality is the presentation of environment to 

 the psychical device, and the ability of that to reason out, 

 from these presentations, the philosophy of life and 

 r nature. The truth is what works in man's brain, with 

 this correspondence; error is the want of a proper con- 

 ception of harmonious working. Whether the intellect is 

 thus cutting into a flux, or duration, in which the solid 

 matter is a degradation, or an inverse motion of descent, 

 or whether the image on the brain is the reality by which 

 human action should be guided, is of importance only, as 

 the one. or the other view, will effect man's welfare, as a 

 denizen of this globe. We must act upon sense impres- 

 sion, and not intuition, or mysticism. It is a practical 

 question, not an academical one. The hunt for something 

 beyond the reach of the human intellect, is a waste of 

 precious time, and as William James said he could not 

 always understand Bergson, it is not worth while for 

 others to try. 



EVOLUTION NOT MECHANISM. It cannot be said, in 

 truth, that the process of evolution described above by 

 Spencer is the same as that of mechanism. There is 

 no analogy between the method of nature, and the 

 operations of the hands of a man, in manufacturing 

 a machine. In fact, the operations of nature are not ex- 

 plainable, by comparing them with those of man. Paley's 

 illustration of the watch, as being parallel, and proving 

 design, in works of nature, or any endeavor to use the 

 works of man, as in any way applicable, in the elucida- 

 tion of natural evolution, falls far short of satisfactory 

 reasoning. Especially is this so in the development of 

 an organism from an egg cell to a mature form. This 

 process is a division of cells from within out, and not the 



